On the evening of October 19, the Levenson Room at Portsmouth Public Library will fill with yarn. Not the tidy, wound-into-balls kind, necessarily, but the loose, frizzy, snipped-and-braided kind that ends up hanging off someone's chin by seven o'clock. Build-a-Beard, which runs from 5:30 to 7 p.m., is exactly what it sounds like: a workshop where library staff help patrons construct custom beards out of yarn in a range of colors, sized to fit what the library cheerfully calls "a variety of wizards."
The premise is practical before it is whimsical. As the library's own event listing puts it, "Whether you are preparing for All Hallows' Eve or getting an early start on your ensemble for our Hobbit Party on 11 December, everyone needs a sturdy beard in their costume box." Materials are provided, but crafters are invited to bring their own special yarns, beads, bells, trinkets or baubles — or, as the listing adds with a parenthetical aside, "rings, Precious." Registration is required and supplies are limited, so the room will hold a finite number of future dwarves and wizards.
The beard night is one thread in a much larger tapestry. Portsmouth Public Library's current building turns twenty this year, and the staff got to thinking about iconic birthday parties. The one that came to mind was Bilbo's birthday in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. From that thought grew an entire autumn season devoted to The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and all things Tolkien.
The library's reasoning is laid out plainly on its events pages: libraries, it argues, represent so many of the values hobbits believe in — "the communal spirit and taste for simple pleasures, the pursuit of peace and friendship, and the power of stories to change our lives." It is an unusual pitch for a library anniversary, and a disarming one. Rather than a ribbon-cutting or a gala, the celebration is built around second breakfast sensibilities and the pleasures of making something with your hands alongside other people.
Build-a-Beard is only the opening move. The library also plans a special Hobbit Book Club, a Foundations of Storytelling session for those who want to start their own legend, and in November showings of all three extended editions of The Lord of the Rings films. The library is also collecting submissions for a Hobbit Art Show, open to all ages, all skill levels, and all forms of media, with work inspired by The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion, and the wider legendarium; the pieces go on display in the Levenson Room and lobby from November through December 31, and are displayed but not sold.
The season culminates on Friday, December 11, from 6 to 8 p.m. with a Hobbit Party — an after-hours affair with refreshments, prizes, crafts, games, and live music, free and open to all ages. Costumes are encouraged, whether you lean hobbit, elf, dwarf, ent, or orc, though the library notes with a straight face that shoes are required. Registration is optional and walk-ins are welcome. The event page signs off with a line borrowed from Bilbo himself: "The road goes ever on and on — and you'll arrive at the Hobbit Party precisely when you mean to."
The building hosting all this has a story of its own. Portsmouth Public Library was established in 1896, and for decades it occupied a facility on Islington Street that, in 1954, was joined to the adjacent Benedict House. The library only moved to its present Parrott Avenue home in December 2006. That new building was designed in a U shape so that library users would feel a connection with nature on all sides, with native plantings and gardens on the grounds. It was also the first municipal building in New Hampshire to achieve LEED certification, earning silver certification with strong marks for reuse and recycling, energy conservation, daylighting, and the use of local materials.
Inside, the building carries a piece of much older Portsmouth history. Perched in the main stairwell is a gilded wooden eagle, about 43 inches high with a 31-inch wingspan, carved around 1824 to cap the Liberty Pole — the more permanent successor to the pole erected in 1766 at the time of the Stamp Act. The eagle originally sat 110 feet up and was fitted with a metal sheath so it could spin as a wind indicator. It was repaired along with the pole in 1872, survived the pole's replacement in 1899, and stayed aloft on Marcy Street until 1977, when it was judged too fragile to withstand the weather. Conserved and brought indoors in 1978, it has been regilded at least twelve times over its long life. The eagle is attributed to Laban Beecher, a Boston wood carver who would have been about nineteen when he made it.
That is the sort of detail that makes the beard night feel less like a novelty and more like a natural expression of the place. A library that has spent two decades in a daylight-filled, recycled, locally sourced building, guarding a two-hundred-year-old eagle in its stairwell, has a credible claim on the hobbit virtues it cites. The communal spirit, the taste for simple pleasures, the power of stories — all of it fits.
So on October 19, the Levenson Room will host an evening of scissors and skeins and the particular concentration of people trying to get a beard to hang right. Some will be there for Halloween. Some will be getting an early start on December 11. Some, presumably, will simply want to know what a yarn beard feels like. All materials are provided, staff will be on hand with guidance, and the only real requirement is that you sign up ahead of time. Supplies, after all, are limited — even in the Shire.