library-funding

Everything I am is based on this ugly building on its lonely lawn__it up during winter darkness; open in the slashing rain__hich allowed a girl so poor she didn__ even own a purse to come in twice a day and experience actual magic: traveling through time, making contact with the dead__orothy Parker, Stella Gibbons, Charlotte Brontë, Spike Milligan.A library in the middle of a community is a cross be-tween an emergency exit, a life raft and a festival. They are cathedrals of the mind; hospitals of the soul; theme parks of the imagination. On a cold, rainy island, they are the only sheltered public spaces where you are not a consumer, but a citizen, instead. A human with a brain and a heart and a desire to be uplifted, rather than a customer with a credit card and an inchoate __eed_ for __tuff._ A mall__he shops__re places where your money makes the wealthy wealthier. But a library is where the wealthy__ taxes pay for you to become a little more extraordinary, instead. A satisfying reversal. A balancing of the power.