Went on a guided tour of Giffentown on the only sunny day of the weekend. Found this on the door leading into the now vacated horse stables...the condos are winning out...and was reminded of a book I just bought - Debbie Millman's Look Both Ways - Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design...
I have to go back and be more careful with my picture...the words need to be saved and are easier to save than the horses.
And that reminded me of libraries...I don't use libraries even though there is one two blocks up and I work for the volunteers who make money for said library.
I don't use libraries because fifty years ago at McGill, the librarians made it very clear to me that I was an intruder...I caused their books to be disturbed...
That has stayed with me and now between my Kobo and Amazon, I don't need the library...
However I was in the library the other day thanks to a Bloomsday project. On June 16 for 24 hours the text of Ulysses was read around the world.
I was reading with the Montreal readers and we were practicing...and enjoying ourselves thoroughly. Unfortunately we were enjoying ourselves loudly and we did not realize that the room though over a hundred years old was not sound proof.
A desk clerk fluttered into the room and without hesitation began her speech: Don't you know you are in a library? You can't behave like this in a library. You will have to whisper or I will have you removed.
Our average age was 60 (I'm being gracious.) Four of us were retired teachers. All of us were academics. We were horrified and embarrassed. We had no idea. And we apologized immediately.
The librarian was not satisfied and in fact repeated her speech three times.
I would like to think that she was treating us like school children, but in fact I'm afraid she was treating us like senile seniors who didn't understand where we were.
And that's when I realized that whereas fifty years ago I was afraid of what the librarians would say to me, now I was afraid of what I might say to this young woman who didn't have the sensibility to understand that she had made her point the first time around.
     We left and did not return...until the event...we broadcast from the library to a world wide audience.
      That young woman is probably very proud of her achievement. Little does she know - we upstaged her by fifty years!!