I have a page-a-day calendar at home near where we sort our mail that I’m usually pretty good about keeping up-to-date, or at least only a couple of days behind. It’s called Never Not Knitting by net-sensation Stephanie Pearl-McPhee (who writes a highly compelling blog, by the way, even for those who don’t knit). It’s a good calendar. Interspersed with silly stories about the things we crazy knitters do and tips for making the most of our fibercraft are quotations. Yesterday’s is one I plan to keep:
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood. . . Make big plans, aim high in hope and work.
-Daniel H. Burnham
As I think about how this applies to knitting, I realize that my tendency is almost always toward big plans. When I took up running, I planned to run a marathon, not a 5K. When I returned to knitting as an adult, my first project was not a scarf or a dishcloth, but a cabled afghan. And when it comes to the public library, I spend a lot of time with the details, but it’s usually with a bigger, nobler plan in mind.
In tough economic times, it’s easy to get bogged down in doing only what you know you can safely do with the resources you have. For Daniel Burnham, architect of the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, scarcity might not have been an issue, but he certainly knew the power a big dream had to infect others with optimism. Give librarians big dreams, and they’ll rise above the discouraging details.