I can remember being as young as six and needing books around me constantly, though I wasn't sure I could read well. I liked books, the feel of them especially, but if I had been born a few years later, I would most certainly have been put on medication for attention problems because I had trouble getting through books.
Eventually, I had teachers who insisted on teaching great writing and, through them, I learned to read. For real-- with depth and inquisitiveness. Great books continue to shape and change how we read and, for that, we must partly thank librarians. Although libraries may seem like dinosaurs now, there is nothing quite like sitting, reading, thinking, writing, and researching in one, among rows and rows of tomes and tomes.
For a few years, I served as Copy Editor for The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal. Each year, one member serves as President and, in 2019, my friend-- the librarian and archivist Rachel Killebew-- was chosen. The President honorarily gives a speech at the conference each year and I wrote this poem to introduce Rachel. Our mutual friend, JWHA Executive Director Cheryle Grinter read the poem prior to her remarks.
Dropping in a Tome
For better or for worse,
we are readers, researchers.
Our eyes have weakened
from pouring over tomes.
Yet, we would have it
no other way
for, in a book, there are
worlds opened up to us
And the bringer of those worlds
is the librarian, the archivist.
She allows us to drop into
the paper, spelunk in its ideas.
For her, we are grateful.
For without her, we are left
with a world less adventurous,
less artful, less remarkable.
To the librarian! In an age
where books are often
electronic things with no feeling
of the scratchy paper and hardcovers,
may she always bring
the Gospel of a more
sophisticated time, where our entry
into the real world was through a book.
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