STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

The night before the Community Library’s renovated expanded lecture hall was to reopen, Morley Golden texted the library’s director Jenny Emery Davidson and its philanthropy director Carter Hedberg a four-word message:

“This is true joy,” wrote Golden, who has been serving as project manager of the renovation.

The following afternoon Golden stood in the middle of the room, which boasted a new wood smell from the oak stage and the maple trim, and beamed as he watched a line form outside the double doors which would not open for another 45 minutes.

Cathy Butterfield had filled an enormous shelf in the back of the room dubbed “The Mountain of Books” with large coffeetable book-sized tomes, such as “Tibetan Medical Paintings,” “The Physiology of Taste,” “Thing Explainer,” David McCullough’s “1776 Illustrated Edition” and “Gathering Remnants,” featuring photographs and prose from Wood River Valley residents Kendall Nelson and Felicitas Funke-Riehle.

On the wall were Audubon prints of ruffled grouse, white heron and a long billed curlig—perfectly sized for the space they occupied.

But everything was not in its place. The state-of-the-art glass screen designed to fit into the front wall had broken enroute from Ohio. But luckily, Golden noted, the library was able to borrow a backup screen used at the annual Burning Man Festival in Nevada from a Bellevue man who provides the screens for the festival.

The room was still in need of spotlights that would illuminate the speakers so they wouldn’t look as if they were lurking in the shadows.

Constructions workers were still scurrying to and fro.

And the library’s technology director Brad McClane was staring at an array of buttons and joysticks that he would soon use to livestream events from the closet-sized audiovisual room at the front of the lecture hall.

“It’s going to be a steep learning curve,” said McClane, who had been setting up makeshift livestreaming equipment in a sink in the back of the lecture hall.

Finally, the door to the lecture hall opened, offering hope that those who had seen their brains shrink to the size of a pea during the two-and-a-half month renovation would soon see them expanding again, given the slate of lectures proposed over the coming weeks.

“I love it,” said Lisa Cesari. “It’s light and airy, and the Audubon prints are very appropriate. And that mountain of books is gorgeous. Wouldn’t you want that in your house?! At least, if you had a mansion with high ceilings?!”

The hammering and drilling that has become as ubiquitous to the library as its stacks of books since began work on the roof two years ago ceased—at least, momentarily since the library is undergoing renovation through 2019.

And Jenny Emery Davidson walked up to the podium, addressing those who had filled each of the 194 seats in the room.

“When you walked through those double doors, you activated this space,” she told them.

Davidson recounted the story of one of the construction workers who had told her that the Community Library was one of his mother’s favorite spaces “in the whole wide world.” She had died at 93 years just a couple months earlier and so he felt blessed to have had the opportunity to have taken care of this space in her honor.

Davison said the renovation was a manifestation of the community’s generosity and civil mindedness, as she gave a shout out to the Draper Family Foundation, the Greg Carr Foundation and the Wood River Women’s Foundation for the special roles they’d played in getting it built and providing equipment.

“I hope the library whispers to each of us: ‘I have someplace to go.’ ‘I have something to learn,’ ” she added.

Then she nodded to the man standing next to her—Adam Johnson, who had won a 2013 Pulitzer Prize for his book “The Orphan Master’s Son,” which takes readers on an epic journey into the heart of North Korea’s mysterious dictatorship.

“To have such a prominent author to kick things off--wow!” she said, as she added how fiction like Johnson’s can stretch minds to understand places like North Korea that are shrouded in mystery.

And Johnson proceeded to deliver, enthralling the audience with his tale of a fought-over country which has a library with just a hundred books.

Come the next day, Golden promised, the new lecture hall room would look totally different as some of the chairs would be taken away and five tables put in their place. Non-profit organizations will be allowed to use it as a meeting space free of charge.

“We want people to use this room even when it’s not being used for lectures,” he said. “We want them to come in and read here. We want them to have meetings here. It’s a community gathering place.”

WANT TO KNOW WHAT ADAM JOHNSON HAD TO REVEAL ABOUT NORTH KOREA?

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