As summer approaches, my stint as an intern at 826LA draws to a conclusion. In my all-too-brief months here (as measured in standard spacetime), I feel lucky to have been graced by the timeless wisdom of the staff, volunteers, and students of Echo Park. From playwright Kimberly’s satirical renderings of Hannah Montana to poet Matthew’s stunning deconstructionist inclinations—“Roses are blue / Violets are black”—the creativity of our students has never ceased to amaze me. No less amazing is the seemingly endless energy of those who have built tables, painted walls, designed ads, sewn time-travel machine canopies, and displayed the remarkable ability to explain the intricacies of third-grade math, whenever called upon. When I arrived today, the floor was coated with sawdust from the creation of bookshelves—shelves needed to hold the overflowing boxes of books that have been so generously given to us. Now the writing lab is noisy with kids and tutors working on homework and haikus, and the centuries-famous Echo Park Time Travel Mart is open for any temporal wanderers in need of assistance. Remember: whenever you are, we’re already then. And if you happen to be headed toward the summer of 2008, 826LA is looking for tutors and interns to help out with our variety of exciting summer programs—please shoot us an email at info@826la.com or drop by to learn more.

Working on EPRICoTT has been like working a second weekend job—the most amazing second weekend job that ever was. Of course, working on this sort of thing is my job, and for the upcoming workshop, we have the following volunteers to thank:

• Captain Mike Jamoom
• "Professor" Eli Bergmann
• "Professor" Adriane Jones
• Intra-Temporal Secretary (and seamstress) Lauren Varner
• Pam Martin
• Amanda Krieg
• John Meehan

There are more, but this is the core EPRICoTT crew, and without any one of them this workshop would be impossible to pull off.

The core premise of EPRICoTT is simple. Our students will get mixed up with some rather eccentric adults and have fun jaunting through the fourth dimension. They'll accidentally wipe out humanity (by writing well-intentioned but ultimately short-sighted letters to the future). They'll scramble through time to catch and revise the letters before they can do anyone any harm. They'll return to the present to find their parents have become way cooler before embarking on two more equally disastrous (yet less lucrative) adventures.

To make this all happen, our volunteers have put in weekend after weekend after weekend building all of EPRICoTT's equipment and props at 826LA East. The pictures below will give you an idea of what we've been up to. And this will be nothing compared to the workshop (we're getting a fog machine).

Here, we're preparing to sew space blankets together to make the canopy for our time machine.

Yes, we said sew. And thankfully, the whole thing folds away neatly after it's put together.

Here're costume samples for our Time Travel ponchos (for EPRICoTT research purposes only, in both adult and child sizes) and our Time Bandit gear (which didn't pass QA).

Now we're reading to start testing; we've slipped the canopy over the time machine's cardboard hull.

And with the help of our time turbine/electric fan, the EPRICoTT Apricott comes to life!

We've got robots, too.

The robots, of course, travel via flying saucers. Cooler than those, though, are our prehistoric fauna. We've taken our schematic, built a wireframe,

and turned that into a flying pterosaur.

That's Ptimmy the Pterodactyl, who looks a lot like Tommy the Dragon (our answer to a request for a dragon workshop); we've really messed up the time stream. Let's hope our students can fix it on Saturday.

According to our 50-Year Calendars (available for sale at the Echo Park Time Travel Mart), 826LA East has been open for almost two months! Over that time, students have produced stories about stars, rabbits, brothers, monsters, worm-eating kings, and spinners—the mysterious devices kept handy by our time-traveling students in case of caveman attacks, robot malfunctions, or completed homework.

We’ve also seen plenty of changes around here: our office space has been transformed into, well, an office, complete with freshly painted desks and new windows. We recently had lovely new floors poured in the store and the writing lab, and have gained possession of a couch, chairs, and a giant chalkboard (big enough for blueprints of our time travel machine, the parts of which can be seen in our rug-covered storefront windows).

While the store currently looks like a battlefield from the Fourth Punic War (not coming soon, don't worry), our informants from the future tell us that it will be set-up and fully functional by the end of the month. As it is, we are open to any wanderers in need of robot emotions, centurion helmets, or our totally awesome Echo Park Time Travel Mart T-shirts, which are also available in our online store. We hear they’re all the rage in 2188.

Our blog may give the impression that we have been busy buying chain metal suits and finding toilets (only the grooviest for us, thanks) for our center on Sunset. All of these things are, in fact, true. However, in the not even two months since the official launch of 826LA East in Echo Park, all of us—staff, interns, volunteers, and students—have accomplished so much more.

The upstairs office is feeling very much like home, complete with black-and-white tables we constructed ourselves. And our Time Travel Mart has been a hit! The still-developing store receives daily visits by patrons of all sorts. Women giggle riotously over our Ricky Martin lunchboxes (brought to you from circa 1999), and shoppers ask about getting our fresh dinosaur eggs through international and intertemporal customs.

A few weeks ago, we once again welcomed Dave Eggers to 826LA East! He's been compiling tutor experiences to help all the 826 chapters, as well as other organizations invoved with children's education. Our tutors were excited to meet with and talk to him about their experiences with drop-in tutoring, and they offered up stories of both funny and frustrating experiences with our students. Hooray!

Speaking of drop-in tutoring, the young love of the students and tutors has gotten off to a wonderful start! Eighty students have registered here at our center, and we see twenty-five or more students daily. Our volunteer tutors have also been wonderful! Thanks for your hard work and your good humor, tutors!

Today is an exciting day here at 826LA East; we launched Stars, Hearts, and Monsters, the first collection of writing by students of the drop-in tutoring program. We are so proud of them! There are stories about caterpillars turned killer, brothers time-traveling to the future, and three friends adventuring together. Thanks to our authors for reading for the eager and star-struck crowd! The reading was followed by book signings and, of course, champagne glasses full of milk and slices of delicious chocolate cake!

Big changes, inside and out.

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New floor upstairs (and people posing with meaningless tools).

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Making our mark.

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The wreckage of time and old convenience stores all all on our floor.

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Walling up the bathroom.

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Framing out the bathroom.

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