I’ve started a few newsletters now on different topics, but they didn’t feel done yet. I’ll circle back to them. Instead, I was trying to figure out what to write about when I came across my husband Christopher’s post showing off the four library cards he currently holds.
If your local institution doesn’t give you Oxford English Dictionary access, by the way, the New York Society Library is a steal of a way to get access to it. Plus, look how cool its card is.
I have an — ahem — storied history with libraries and librarians. Growing up in the small-town south, with my parents both in the school system, the school libraries were absolute magical beacons of sheer wonder. I always had full run of them, for much of it during the summers too, and both my elementary and high school librarians used me as a resource in ordering. I also IDOLIZED them. They could give you unfettered access to BOOOOOKS.
I’ll never get over the thrill of pride when I convinced the high school librarian to order Francesca Lia Block’s Weetzie Bat books after reading about them in Sassy Magazine and they were so popular, and ever-checked out, I still had to beg my mom to purchase them for me. My mother (who is now back home as of yesterday, hooray!) was the high school principal and as such the arbiter of the site-based council’s decision-making when someone challenged a book. The one I remember vividly was a parent’s complaint about The Color Purple, due to its sapphic relationship; Mom read it, said there is nothing inappropriate for high school kids to read in here, and it stayed in the library and on the course curriculum.
Obviously, this should be decided by experts in reading, and this is a happy story when the person who had the say believed in free speech and education, because it doesn’t always go down that way.
I wouldn’t be who I am today without the run of the library. We didn’t have enough money to feed my appetite for books. Our small-town library — especially back then, though I’m happy to say it has a new building and a more robust collection now — was underfunded and I’d have read the entire collection in a summer… If, uh, the academic team hadn’t checked out a bunch of research books for a team-based competition on my library card and failed to return them. Along with something I had checked out called Hot Fudge Sundae Affair that I forgot to return. I wouldn’t even walk by it for years. (Later, I paid off the fines, and they’ve even brought me in to speak locally a few times. *chagrin face*)
Somehow I lost the library in college, due to that little panic fear with the academic team thing. When Christopher and I first moved close to the downtown library branch of the Lexington Public Library — which has my sword, forever, it is SUCH a great library system — as adults, I finally got a library card. It made me giddy.
Over twenty years later, it still does.
Here’s today’s read, and I have um, mumble-mumble books checked out, despite the fact I also buy a lot of books. But the library is always a place for discovery, whether it’s browsing when I pick up holds — something I missed intensely during the pandemic — or on the Libby app.
As far as I’m concerned, librarians are among the most important people in our country, always and right now. So: I appreciate you. I wish the system had your backs and empowered you more. We know the barbarians are at the gates. They’re eager to burn through your autonomy and the list of available books in an attempt to torch hope, knowledge, freedom, and, especially, equal access to those things. We ride at dawn. Daily, apparently.
(And, of course, librarians and libraries are about far more in the community than just books. But this is a newsletter, not a book. Speaking of which, someone once pointed out characters visit libraries in pretty much all of my books. A tick I didn’t know I had, but checks out.)
I could go on, because, obviously. THANK YOU. But instead…
Question Time
Do you have books out from the library right now? What’s one? If not, I dare you to go visit online or in person and then report back what you snag. And while you’re there, thank a librarian and tell them to have a fabulous day. Also, please feel free to share your heartwarming or fist-pumping librarians-are-amazing stories.
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You’ve probably heard about Substack notes, a sort of twitter alternative, by now. I’m there, and I’m also having a little fun telling a tiny story about a very strange garden art object that came into my possession. That thread starts here, and I’ll add to it a few times a week.
Librarians at the Windows and the Doors
I spent my childhood in libraries! They were a godsend, and a welcome alternative to joining a gang, playing football or doing nothing. In Britain, more than 500 libraries have been closed since 2010, and the ones that remain are mostly staffed by volunteers rather than qualified librarians. I feel so sorry for kids for whom books are beyond financial reach and who have no local library.
I currently belong to 5, including a university one and a college one.
An example of the books I currently have on loan: The Anomaly, by Herve Is Tellier 😁
The books I currently have out on loan, from a combination of the Lexington Public Library's collection, the University of Kentucky's collection, and Interlibrary Loan are:
Kindred : Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art by Rebecca Wragg Sykes
The Middle Ages : Everyday Life in Medieval Europe by Jeffrey L. Forgeng
The Mongols and the West: 1221-1410 by Peter Jackson
The Devil's World: Heresy and Society, 1100-1300 by Andrew Roach
Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Jospeh Gies
Bronze Age Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe by Marija Gimbutas
The Rise of Bronze Age Society : Travels, Transmissions and Transformations by Kristian Kristiansen and Thomas B. Larson
The Fifty-Minute Hour: a Collection of True Psychoanalytic Tales by Robert Lindner
The Cambridge History of Medieval Monasticism in the Latin West, vol. 1: Origins to the Eleventh Century ed. by Alison I. Beach and Isabelle Cochelin