Perhaps we can use this space to tell our stories about libraries and what they mean to us.<\/p>\n
The public library in my hometown was, when I first visited at abot 6 six years old, in a little corner of the municipal building \/ fire house\/ courthouse. (With a population of 5000, you can kind of put everything in one place.)<\/p>\n
It had a distinctive smell, of course, of books. It’s a small I love to this day.<\/p>\n
The librarian gave us all a little talk about how the library works. When she said we could actually take books home, I looked around in wonder at all the books and felt a sense of ownership. I blurted out, “You mean any of them? We can take them home?”<\/p>\n
So then I had to find one…and there were lots of choices. That was the day I learned the pleasure of browsing book shelves…something that I continue to do today although its harder with progressive lenses.<\/p>\n
I picked out a book, some children’s book about a cartoon character I liked, maybe bugs bunny. And I took it home and kept it by my side for a week, reading it over and over, until we took it back and got another one.<\/p>\n
I probably would have been a reader if we had no public library. But going to the library the first time was a kind of ritual trip to a sacred place. In a world too devoid of sacred places and ritual, the library still serves that purpose. A first trip to the library is still a religous experience that confirms us as a member of the company of readers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Perhaps we can use this space to tell our stories about libraries and what they mean to us. The public library in my hometown was, when I first visited at abot 6 six years old, in a little corner of the municipal building \/ fire house\/ courthouse. (With a population of 5000, you can kind of put everything in one place.) It had a distinctive smell, of course, of books. It’s a small I love to this day. The librarian gave us all a little talk about how the library works. When she said we could actually take books home, I looked around in wonder at all the books and felt a sense of ownership. I blurted out, “You mean any of them? We can take them home?” So then I had to find one…and there were lots of choices. That was the day I learned the pleasure of browsing\u2026 Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[50],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p35YuU-u6","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1866"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6317,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1866\/revisions\/6317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcstier.com\/blog2\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}