Saturday, April 29, 2017

BEN WOULD HAVE BEEN CONFUSED!


Every now and then I go to the library that is right around the corner from me. I have been going to this library all the many years I have lived in my town, that is over 43 years! Going to the library is a special treat for me, seeing the sea of book-filled shelves on every topic under the sun. It is a great place to be. Capturing articles written to a specific topic in a magazine is like finding gold.

There is even a place to sit and have a coffee or something to munch on and read.

My need to read and write in my retirement have given me new life, writing makes me whole, whether or not anyone reads what I write, my blog sustains me and gives me a reason to get up every day and feel my blood flow.

Walking through the building I realize how much things have changed from what we had originally, what we have now is so much more inviting, and yet my community deemed it not enough, they made even more changes!

But as I walk the aisles and turn the corners I noticed what is the most important changes yet! The electronic age has indeed intruded, turning the art of bookmaking, the beauty of the life of a book into a non-entity.

One of the things I learned in college was just how much a book has value, the story is only the larger part of the total art. The art of bookmaking, an ancient art handed down for centuries is very much a part of the experience of reading and appreciating literature. I look at it as a beautiful woman, her beauty may be in her face, but it is her soul that brings home the total beauty of the woman. Without the art of the bookmaker, the story doesn't carry the reverence I feel for the writer and his/her story.

Sadly, due to convenience, we have created a faceless, soulless wonder called e-books that sit within an electronic conveyance, losing the beauty of the art of books. I fear Ben Franklin would be very disappointed.


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