I missed National Library week. It was back in April. Back in April, it wasn’t really important. You know, it’s just about books available to everyone for free. One of our early founders, as it were, came up with the idea. Years later Andrew Carnegie, an immigrant from Scotland, who became a rich capitalist, made his fortune in the steel industry. The scars on this nation can never be erased. The pollution and CO2 emissions are probably still responsible for climate change. Carnegie’s guilt drove him to start giving his fortune away to build libraries.
The written word preserved and available for all to read is a valuable treasure. I think, although I’m late, you should visit your local library soon. I mean really soon, like today or tomorrow. You see, there’s an effort to erase the history of our country that’s afoot and while the concentration is on monuments and statues and place names, they’ll be coming for our books. Now you might say, ‘Who needs books? I can find everything I need to know on the internet.’
I looked up the word “scar” on the internet and in fractions of a second I had 25 million results. The word was picked out of millions of web pages. Some were medical, others were news reports. On a document I had written I choose to change the word “fascism” to “persuasive” and the entire document was instantly, or pretty close to instantly, corrected. The power of computers is truly awesome.
Support your library. Support freedom of the printed word. Better yet, use it.
This article appears in Aug 31 – Sep 7, 2017.