IT'S IMPORTANT TO HAVE A LIBRARY

IT’S IMPORTANT TO HAVE A LIBRARY

I am a techie. Being retired from teaching, my morning schedule almost always involves joyfully checking my email, logging on to Facebook, reading various online newspapers from around the world, as well as the all-important reading of poetry and book reviews. I deeply value our digitized world wide web…as it continues weaving the evermore interlocking strands of our consciousness.

However, I do not want to lose our libraries—those evermore important houses for our cultural memorabilia.

Before his death in 2004, Wink Franklin, as president of The Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, had asked my opinion on the development of a library there at the institute—whether he should go digital or paper...I answered, "OH BOTH!!!!" (I had been participating for several weeks in a New York Times forum discussion of Chris Hedges' book about war. (War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, which had won an award from Amnesty International.) ..and because of Wink's question to me, I asked Mr. Hedges a specific question about the value of the library experience in regard to what I like to call benevolent evolution.

Hedges' response is below. He writes eloquently of the healing effect upon him of his time at the Smyth library...after the horrors of his experience as war correspondent.

Wink said back to me that he wanted to talk to me more about it...then things changed rapidly. Wink said the matter would have to wait. He did not tell me at that moment (the board gathering with consideration of James O'Dea as the new president) that he was in fact very ill. So I never really had the opportunity again to bring up the subject.

I am still thinking about libraries as I begin the task, once again, of unpacking and arranging books here in Loomis. War correspondent Chris Hedges wrote eloquently about the value of being surrounded by books and their particular 'aromas'.

From a New York Times forum, here are his words in response to a question from me about his experience within the actual walls of the Smyth Classical Library. I am struck by the role the sensual experience with actual books, and their environment, plays in his healing reintegration of self.

My question within the forum: “I wonder if Mr. Hedges could/would elaborate on his feelings for Smyth Classical Library, and its contribution to his ongoing development.”

Chris Hedges: I loved Smyth. It was my refuge from a world of violence and madness and grief. I was surrounded by volumes, many left to the university by professors long departed, which were by great thinkers and poets and historians who in another time, in another age, struggled with the issues I battled with intellectually and morally.

I loved the worn leather chairs and noisy radiators and the creaking floor boards and the smell of the books. I loved the oak tables, where I could spread out my books and think and read and write. I loved the windows where in the winter I could watch the snow fall gently on Harvard Yard. In Smyth I was freed from the cant of modernity.

In Smyth I reflected not so much on other times, but my own time. The study and understanding of classics, the long continuum of human civilization, is essential if we are going to grasp where we came from, who we are and where we are going. Without an understanding of the interconnectedness of our culture, our art, our history and our philosophy with the past we are doomed to a dangerous and frightening provincialism.
--Chris Hedges. New York Times Forum, May, 2003.

I am excited about the role our electronic media can play in preventing that “dangerous and frightening provincialism”…and for the in-depth communication opportunities afforded through such media, yet I plead that we take good care of our books too. A cherished memory is that of my grandchild, curled on the couch, under the lamp, book on pillow across the lap…reading. What can compare with the feel and aroma of an old book? Techie or not, I am a book lover too.
--Barbara Smith Stoff