Musings - On the editor's mind

Attending the Mount Vernon Library Foundations fundraiser in support of building the Mount Vernon Library Commons got me thinking – again – about libraries in my life. And right, I wrote about libraries within the first 90 days I was in La Conner. Here is that musings.

Lucky me. I keep getting to find out new things. Did you know September is Library Card Sign-up Month?

I learned about this reading the Weekly News.

Nerd or not, I love libraries. I remember going with my family as a kid. Weekly, I stacked the books to be returned on the stairs of the house.

I was crazy about sports, and war, and read biographies and histories. Go Yankees. I read books twice.

I bought my first typewriter – parents, explain – at a sales and repair store across from the downtown library. It’s a 1920s Smith & Corona. Come to the office and take a look.

My college typewriter was a portable Underwood, with a hard, boxy case. Probably more for efficiency than frugality, the “1” was the “l” key. Explain that to your kids, also.

I have spent more time in libraries than any place except home and school. This is true over the decades, before free WiFi.

Downtown Seattle or downtown Mount Vernon, I have been in both libraries. The downtown Minneapolis library was designed with a wing roof, to add a signature building to the city scape.

Same with Toledo’s library.

It’s a WPA project, first, which is not only handsome but provided years of work for thousands of people during the Depression. The 1990s addition was again a commitment to employing people and revitalizing the downtown.

Remember card catalogs? And long wooden tables with brass lamps on them? That’s the library through my young adult years.

Remember the murals and sculptures and embossed reliefs naming Art, Music, Literature, Philosophy, and Science in libraries of that era? Those murals and sculptures are designed into the fabric and bones of old libraries. Spend a day, well, half a day, in the Library of Congress and be slack jawed at the esteem ideas and values were once given in our society.

Maybe that is why I revere knowledge and ideas as well as words. I imprinted on all those ideals in my formative years.

Libraries are like shoes, or the ground. If we don’t use them, if we don’t stand in – by – them, our mobility is limited. Hard to go far, then.

So God bless librarians and library cards. Words, ideas and knowledge are still a child’s best ticket to a sustainable future. Whether or not we promote a yes to the offer is up to each of us.