Shelter is my guiding word for this year. It is a non-striving word. A shelter offers refuge, provides safety, and embraces calm and quiet.
To me, the library definitely serves as a shelter. A shelter for my intellectual curiosity and a place of peaceful contemplation.
My mother was head of the Louisville Free Public Library’s Jeffersontown branch for many years. My first job was with the library. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that I have a fondness for these sheltering institutions.
Full disclosure: That library job was when I was in high school. The librarian of the Outer Highlands branch was a friend of my mother’s and I suspect that is why I was hired. I was paid 50 cents an hour to shelve books. Unfortunately, and perhaps as an embarrassment to my mother, Mrs. Bader had to let me go. “Lucy, you spend too much time looking at the books and not shelving them,” she told me.
Today that makes me laugh, because, yeah, that’s what I do. I spend too much time with books.
I have often thought it would be wonderful to spend the night in a library. Just to see what spirits might show up. I inquired one time about having such an adventure at the main library of LFPL but was told it was not possible. I was disappointed. But what fun it would be to wander alone from shelf to shelf – mysteries to magazines, art history to American history, philately to philosophy. Sitting comfortably in the silence, reading and resting and refreshing my inquisitiveness in many areas of life.
Investigating libraries in other cities might not be on everyone’s travel agenda, but I have visited libraries in, among other places, Phoenix, Nashville, Los Angeles, Lompoc, and the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. Also, the British Library in London. I tried to set up a private tour of the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, but, to my great disappointment, wasn’t able to arrange that visit.
Closer to home, the library in New Harmony, Indiana, established in 1838, is located in the Working Men’s Institute building and serves as library and museum. It offers an interesting collection of turtle shells, gems, and a glimpse of 18th century life alongside its bookshelves. A very comfortable spot and one I have often visited.
Although the more modern library buildings offer their own attractions, I prefer the older, cozier library environments as found at Crescent Hill, my own neighborhood branch. For me, there is nothing quite as pleasurable as touching the spines of real books and pulling out something that the Universe wants me to be sure to read. I love settling in at one of the solid wooden library tables and feeling very studious. The smell of the books, the whisper of pages turning, the quiet and serenity found in the library. To be surrounded by so much knowledge and wisdom. A true shelter from stormy days and times.
By Lucy M. Pritchett
P.S. You may also enjoy Do This! Louisville Orchestra Coffee Series.
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