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Jun. 19th, 2009 02:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
d_aulnoyLibraries are the souls of cities. I believe this strongly. They're not just the hearts: that's too corporeal, too practical and down to earth to be applicable. They do not merely pump vitality through the streets and alleys and other arterial passageways of a city: libraries animate cities in a way that's as inexplicable and as wondrous as the life-spark itself.
The local library was one of the big reasons why we chose to live in the town that we do: it was nestled in a lovely little park with the biggest low-lying tree that I've ever seen in my life directly in front of it, right in the heart of the "downtown" (read: smack in the middle of the one street that passes as a "downtown" in an LA neighborhood), and it had the most charming life-sized statue of Mark Twain looking up from a book, his arm stretched comfortably over the back of a bench, almost beckoning you to come and take a seat.
So of course, 6 months after we moved in, they boarded up the park in order to remodel the library.
It's taken over a year and a 1/2 to complete the job, but I actually think it was worth it. I visited the new library today for the first time, and it is airy and spacious and technologically up-to-date and just generally delightful.
Also, it was well-stocked with old Peter Straub books, which is exactly the anodyne required for my weekend'o'gradin'. I mean, seriously, the little girl in Julia? Totally makes reading undergrad. finals much less scary by comparison.
The local library was one of the big reasons why we chose to live in the town that we do: it was nestled in a lovely little park with the biggest low-lying tree that I've ever seen in my life directly in front of it, right in the heart of the "downtown" (read: smack in the middle of the one street that passes as a "downtown" in an LA neighborhood), and it had the most charming life-sized statue of Mark Twain looking up from a book, his arm stretched comfortably over the back of a bench, almost beckoning you to come and take a seat.
So of course, 6 months after we moved in, they boarded up the park in order to remodel the library.
It's taken over a year and a 1/2 to complete the job, but I actually think it was worth it. I visited the new library today for the first time, and it is airy and spacious and technologically up-to-date and just generally delightful.
Also, it was well-stocked with old Peter Straub books, which is exactly the anodyne required for my weekend'o'gradin'. I mean, seriously, the little girl in Julia? Totally makes reading undergrad. finals much less scary by comparison.
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Date: 2009-06-20 12:28 am (UTC)oh, and here's this.
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Date: 2009-06-22 02:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-06-22 12:01 pm (UTC)Alas.
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Date: 2009-06-22 02:07 pm (UTC)You can't refurbish a *soul* ....
Well, that, and, how I mourn for all the mid-range books. Not even for the valuable first editions of blah-blah, because I'm guessing even an idiot would know to save them, but the Mary Stewart adventures and the Georgette Heyer romances and the 1940s-70s chick-lit equivalents that I do so love.