On Libraries

               Without exposing the banal and heroic blow by blow of small-town life and politics to the whole wide internet, my township attempted to close our library. A swift bipartisan response turned things around, at least for now. And it got me thinking about libraries.

Growing up out west, a town with a library sent a certain message, it said: this isn’t just a place where people have settled, this is a place where people live. Opening a library, it was a beacon of civilization; there is a beating heart here! This is a community that has made a commitment to each other, even to those as yet unborn!

              So much of who we are as people, individually and collectively, is wrapped up in our routine activities, our habits. A town with a library is a town that has established habits, civic habits! We do things in a certain way so that when things are scrambled and weird, we have established patterns to pull back to, to catch us. One such civic habit, I would suggest, is searching for answers and socializing in a library. Having that kind of space for habitual free inquiry is woven into our democracy.

In Robert Putman’s famed book Bowling Alone (as well as the recent film Join or Die) he noticed the disappearance of “Third Places”, spaces that were neither work nor home, where people could meet and be together. This kind of loss had disastrous consequences, everything from increased crime to political polarization to intergenerational breakdowns.

The library is a third place that remains! In our little township it is one of the few third places that are open year-round and free. If our country is founded on freedom of association and assembly, then fostering local places where that can happen is important!

I have seen the beauty of freedom of association and assembly up close and firsthand at our library. As one of the 25 members of the Thursday Evening Book Club, I can tell you: seeing three generations of one family all showing up to talk books (and a forth generation in that family identifying our library as his library!)… seeing Republicans and Democrats engaged in deep discussion and even disagreements that breaks upon non-partisan lines, because it is about the space race or what a giraffe symbolizes or the nature of amnesia or the origin of video games—is healthier for our township than most any other activity available!

Libraries are signs of civilization, they inculcate civic habits that are healthy, and are third places where bonds of trust can be established, even as information is gathered and imaginations are stoked! I’m so glad we still have our library!