Comments on: grateful for my job http://cygnoir.net/2008/07/18/grateful-for-my-job/ the black swan with digital wings Mon, 13 Feb 2012 03:17:00 +0000 hourly 1 By: Towse http://cygnoir.net/2008/07/18/grateful-for-my-job/comment-page-1/#comment-2131 Towse Mon, 21 Jul 2008 17:09:44 +0000 http://cygnoir.wordpress.com/?p=1834#comment-2131 I read your library bits with interest and understanding. Back when, probably about the time you were toddling or maybe even before you were a glimmer in your parents' eyes, I worked for the San Jose Public Library @ Main on San Carlos Street. Daily we had patrons who were living in halfway houses or supported housing down by State who would leave their homes after breakfast and come to the Library for shelter, for human contact, because they loved to be surrounded by books and/or because they loved the music room where they could sit in a carrel with a pair of headphones and have someone spin an LP of their choice for them. Libraries are marvelous places, filled with information and art and, for me, pure soul-hugging bliss. Heaven, if there is one, is a library. No, make that ... Heaven, if there is one, will be a bigger and better Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin. Ten years ago, Vartan Gregorian said, "Libraries contain the heritage of humanity: the record of its triumphs and failures, its intellectual, scientific, and artistic achievements, and its collective memory. They are a source of knowledge, scholarship, and wisdom. They are an institution, withal, where the left and the right, God and the Devil, are together classified and retained, in order to teach us what to emulate and what not to repeat. Libraries are, in short, the mirror held up to the face of humankind, the diary of the human race." [http://www.carnegie.org/sub/about/pessay/pessay98.html] Hang in there. Savor the bliss. Survive the misdirected bits of anger and thunder. Enjoy Main for all that it is. I read your library bits with interest and understanding. Back when, probably about the time you were toddling or maybe even before you were a glimmer in your parents’ eyes, I worked for the San Jose Public Library @ Main on San Carlos Street.

Daily we had patrons who were living in halfway houses or supported housing down by State who would leave their homes after breakfast and come to the Library for shelter, for human contact, because they loved to be surrounded by books and/or because they loved the music room where they could sit in a carrel with a pair of headphones and have someone spin an LP of their choice for them.

Libraries are marvelous places, filled with information and art and, for me, pure soul-hugging bliss. Heaven, if there is one, is a library. No, make that … Heaven, if there is one, will be a bigger and better Long Room at Trinity College, Dublin.

Ten years ago, Vartan Gregorian said, “Libraries contain the heritage of humanity: the record of its triumphs and failures, its intellectual, scientific, and artistic achievements, and its collective memory. They are a source of knowledge, scholarship, and wisdom. They are an institution, withal, where the left and the right, God and the Devil, are together classified and retained, in order to teach us what to emulate and what not to repeat. Libraries are, in short, the mirror held up to the face of humankind, the diary of the human race.”

[http://www.carnegie.org/sub/about/pessay/pessay98.html]

Hang in there. Savor the bliss. Survive the misdirected bits of anger and thunder. Enjoy Main for all that it is.

]]> By: Ned http://cygnoir.net/2008/07/18/grateful-for-my-job/comment-page-1/#comment-2132 Ned Sat, 19 Jul 2008 10:35:00 +0000 http://cygnoir.wordpress.com/?p=1834#comment-2132 Nicely put. Nicely put.

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