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Only Libraries Can Save Us Now

Only Libraries Can Save Us Now

Last updated on: April 13, 2016 at 9:44 am by Erin Wathen

Only Libraries Can Save Us Now 2016-04-13T09:44:53-07:00 Erin Wathen

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I did not know that National Library Week was a thing, but I am a fan. Let’s face it, there is a made up holiday for every-damn-thing-ever these days; if Hallmark didn’t dream it up, then Facebook did. So if there is a national pancake day, redhead day, sibling day, and “I used to be in a cool band but now I’m a grown up” day (Ok, maybe my husband made that one up) then libraries deserve a week of their own.

The library is, and has always been, my happy place. I grew up in a small town in southeastern Kentucky so my days were not filled with, shall we say, “activities.” My kids can walk to about 6 different playgrounds; there is a hiking/biking trail nearby; a gorgeous arboretum and a children’s farm within a 10 mile radius; and every kind of sport or fine art imaginable. And that’s just in the suburbs. But when I was a kid, my primary entertainment was neighbors, the Brady Bunch, church… and the public library.

There’s nothing wrong with a small town upbringing low on amenities. In hindsight, the lack of other ‘stuff’ to do made me love reading. I remember everything about my hometown library (though it’s since been torn down). I remember getting my very own library card (it was orange), and signing it myself, as soon as I learned to write my name. I remember the strange retro-mod windows on the building; the little path that cut over from the bank, where you had to park; the weird little sponge thing on the checkout counter (WTF was that, anyway? Something to do with stamps?). I remember story hour, the children’s reading area, and a little stage where, sometimes, there were puppets. Puppets!

My love of all things biblio has stuck with me. I worked at the library at my seminary for about 5 minutes, but it turns out I lack attention to detail, and Dewey Decimal is nothing if not a stickler for details. Come to think of it, I applied for a job at the public library right out of college, before I even went to seminary. Had I been hired, I might have become a librarian instead of a minister.

But either way–the library is like church to me. It always has been.

Where I live now, there are county libraries AND city libraries. Our suburb alone has two town branches.

A few weeks ago, the location we frequent most had a water line break, resulting in a major flood–and an indefinite closure. (DID THEY SAVE THE BOOKS??? my daughter wanted to know). I’m not going to lie–even with another branch almost equidistant from my house, it was deeply unsettling to see that sign on the door –“Closed Indefinitely Due to Flooding.”

My sense of foreboding comes, in part, from recent political events in my state. The Kansas experiment with extreme right-wing Tea Party economics is resulting in a systematic defunding of everything from SNAP benefits to public education. Most recent on the chopping block–public libraries.

A flood I can deal with…a plague of locusts, sure. But a closure due to political posturing and governmental negligence? That is about as un-American a thing as I can imagine. Libraries are the heart and soul of who we claim to be as a country. They are the great equalizer–open to one and all, and FREE (unless, like me, you are a total flake about returning stuff and wind up with monthly fees that cost as much as your car payment…) Libraries are situated to be walkable, or accessible by public transport. They offer language resources, tutoring for at-risk youth, actual print newspapers, and–let us not forget–books.

Sure, I grew up in a small town, but let me tell you about my grandmother. My grandmother was born in 1912 in rural Kentucky–and to her, my library-book reading, Sunday School-going, Brady Bunch-watching childhood would have looked like Disneyland.

Her mother died in the flu epidemic of 1919. She had lots of siblings. Then her father remarried and had more kids. In her memoir, she recalls the day when she found out that her stepmother was pregnant, again. At age 10, my grandmother knew what this new baby would mean: that she, as the oldest daughter, would have to quit school and stay home to help with the children. She writes about going out to the barn, where she sat on the fence and cried. She loved school.

And she was right. She did wind up having to stay home and care for her younger siblings. Want to know how it is that she was able to grow up and write a memoir?

The bookmobile.

The bookmobile (today is National Bookmobile Day) was the only outpost of civilization on the dirt road to the farm. Thanks to its occasional visits, she continued to read anything she could get her hands on. As a young married woman, she got her GED. She never learned to drive a car and never had a job outside the home–but she could read.

And that is the story of America. At least, the America I want to live in.

Books are power. And access to books is critical to our claim that we are a “free” country. The things you find at a library–like ESL classes, print newspaper, local history lectures, story hour and free internet for job seekers–these are the only things that separate us from the animals. Or at the very least, they separate us from the developing world.

Some people fear big government… I fear a world in which people take pride in being ignorant and illiterate. But that seems to be the version of America that some politicians are peddling.

Still, I have great hope. Because I go to the library so often, I get to see frequent snapshots of the very best our country has to offer. Now that we are down to one branch in town, the remaining location has become even more of a melting pot. I see Muslim families gathered around tables, doing shared religious studies with their children. I see multi-generational Indian families who never go anywhere without grandma or grandpa in tow. I see recent immigrants from Central America, learning English; alongside white high school kids, learning Spanish (lack of funding forced our district to cut it from the public school curriculum).

I see a sign for the addiction recovery group that meets on Tuesdays; the job counseling services offered on Wednesdays; and family movie night on Friday. I see people who rode the bus sitting next to people who drove here in their SUVs. You rarely see that kind of diversity around these parts.

Not even at church.

In celebration of National Library Week, listen to this StoryCorps piece about a judge who used to “steal” books by black authors…and what he found out later about how those books came to be on the shelves.

After you listen to that, go hang out at your public library branch–see if you catch a glimpse of the country we claim to be.

Then thank a librarian. Then write a note to your representatives –tell them that if they aren’t going to support public education, then our libraries are more important than ever. Libraries, in fact, might be our only hope of salvation in the “pick yourself up by your boot straps” dystopia this new regime has promised.

Then–when you’ve done all that–settle in with a good book. Give thanks that the gospel comes in so many and varied forms. And then breathe in the great library book smell that rests between the pages. If that’s not a breath of the spirit, I don’t know what is.

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