public libraries
open, free civic spaces where
everyone’s welcome

“Public libraries are particularly vulnerable during this kind of disorder as they are often in prominent locations and are, rightly, easily accessible. Yet they are also symbolic of community safety and cohesion – open and free civic spaces where everyone is welcome.”

Ed Jewell, the president of Libraries Connected – which represents library services in England, Wales and Northern Ireland – as quoted in the article, Liverpool library torched by far-right rioters raises repair funds Ella Creamer in The Guardian.

Not much makes me feel worse inside than a paragraph like this one:

Police said when firefighters arrived at the library, the rioters attempted to stop them from getting to the fire to put it out. “They even threw a missile at the fire engine and broke the rear window of the cab”, said police in a statement. The library has suffered severe fire damage to its ground floor.

At least in the same article was the paragraphs that said:

A fundraising campaign has raised more than £120,000 to help repair a Liverpool library and community hub that suffered severe fire damage after being targeted by rioters on Saturday night.

The fundraising page had an initial target of £500 but has gone on to raise more than £120,000 in two days, from more than 6,000 donations.

“I never imagined that the fundraiser would spread and far and wide as it has,” said McCormick, who is now liaising with the council and library management. “I’m so overwhelmed with the response and the sense of community”.

The sense of community.

Say it again outloud.

The sense of community …

Pull down your buildings and your freeways and your public arenas and you will build them again.

Pull down your libraries, and grass will grow in city streets.

(Okay so William Jennings Bryan said that about farms but …)

ignored needy, poor
and God is going to hold
us responsible

Ezekiel the prophet once said, “Behold, this was the iniquity of Sodom, pride”.

Sodom was very proud.

They excluded God.

They were proud of themselves and the things they’d done.

And then they were filled with bread, it says. “And abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters”.

In other words, they had all the things that they needed to give them leisure in their lives.

“Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy”.

They ignored the needy and the poor.

And the oppressed of the world.

Many times we ignore those of other races.

We ignore those people in Africa that are suffering from famine.

Or maybe we don’t ignore them, but we don’t do much about it.

Not as much as we could do.

And God is going to hold us responsible.

And they were haughty, and committed abominations before me.

In other words, they were proud, haughty, rich.

They had it all, and they neglected the poor and the oppressed of the world, and God said, “Judgment is going to come”

Billy Graham speaking at a Crusade in Sheffield, UK in June of 1985.

We hear a lot of Sodom the wicked city and this old place works its way into today’s new cycle more and more.

And what was Sodom’s sin?

NOT WHAT YOU’RE THINKING!

“Behold, this was the iniquity of Sodom, pride” says Ezekiel.

Pride.

“Neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.”

As the Rev. Graham says, “In other words, they were proud, haughty, rich. They had it all, and they neglected the poor and the oppressed of the world, and God said, “Judgment is going to come”

Does raise a certain level of conversation does it not?

a frustrated
exhausted and divided
nation hungry for

Regardless of your side or point of view, there was a paragraph that resonated for most folks in the NYT opinion piece, I Was a Kamala Harris Skeptic. Here’s How I Got Coconut-Pilled by Lydia Polgreen where Ms. Polgreen wrote:

Americans have been through a lot since early 2020 —

a pandemic,

Jan. 6,

a turbulent economy and high inflation,

the invasion of Ukraine,

the slaughter in Israel and Gaza and the never-ending 2024 presidential race.

I also wondered if the Trump-Biden era changed what we want from a president.

We are a frustrated, exhausted and divided nation.

Most Americans believe we are on the wrong track, and we spent the past 20 months staring at a grim choice between Biden and Trump, the two men whose presidencies sent us down that track.

Many of us are hungry for something new.

We are a frustrated, exhausted and divided nation.

Wasn’t our political system supposed to deliver the best and the brightest

A frustrated, exhausted and divided nation forced into reelecting one of the two men whose presidencies sent us down that track.

I am reminded of Will Rodgers when he said, “Why don’t they pass a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting anybody from learning anything? If it works as good as Prohibition did, in five years we will have the smartest people on earth.”

people never know
more than vaguely where they are
in the scheme of things

People can be truly amazing …

I got this little theory, an utterly unimportant theory, that most people never know more than vaguely where they are, either in time or in the scheme of things.

People can’t read contracts or time schedules or identify countries on blank maps.

Why should they?

I don’t know.

There’s a wonderful fraudulence to literacy.

Yet these same people have emotional lives as intricate as that Bach piece …

From the book Sundog by Jim Harrison.