A lifetime of loving libraries

Everyone who loves libraries has a library story. Here’s mine:

It begins in Brooklyn, New York, where I had the great fortune to live near my maternal grandparents for the first six years of my life. Saturday mornings my mother would drop me off at my grandparents’ apartment, and my grandmother and I would walk several blocks to the Brooklyn Public Library. It was a huge, dark building, scary and thrilling, busy yet noiseless. I loved it. My grandmother would use her library card to sign out a small stack of books for me.

When I was four, I asked for a library card of my own. The library rule was that the cardholder had to be able to write his or her name – in cursive – to get a card. I had just recently learned to print my first name in large wobbly capital letters. But I wanted a card of my own, and my grandmother wanted me to have a card of my own. So together we practiced.

It took weeks of work and dozens of Crayolas. I would clench the crayon so tightly that it snapped halfway through the “L.” My grandmother put her large freckled hand over mine to guide me through the loops and swirls and slowly my fingers relaxed and learned the motions. Then, one Saturday, I signed my name in cursive at the big mahogany library desk, and the librarian handed me my card. She said I was their youngest patron.

Since then, libraries have been a force in my life – as a reader, a student, a teacher, a mother and a writer…from the Lincoln room in the Chicago Public Library to the basement of the old San Francisco library to the sprawling Seattle library to the lovely old Carnegie library in McMinnville to the stunning downtown library built by the citizens of Eugene.

As a nonfiction writer who engages in deep research, I make professional use of libraries. But I also appreciate libraries the way a painter appreciates a museum: a place of inspiration, a living monument to what I do. It is both exhilarating and humbling to be around thousands of books, surrounded not just by information but by knowledge and wisdom, art and culture.

I write this love letter to libraries in appreciation of Eugene’s venerable Fortnightly Club, a group with a history dating back to 1893, an alliance of smart, powerful, civically engaged women who were the force behind our very first city library and continue to be extraordinary supporters. And I write in appreciation of the tireless work done by the Eugene Library Foundation to enhance our library, strengthen its programs, and work to promote literary.

You can support these efforts too! Come to…

Authors and Artist Fair
Saturday, December 7, 10-4
in the Atrium next to/ part of
Eugene’s Holiday Market (Lane County Fairgrounds)

There you can buy an autographed book from a talented, hard-working local writer (many of whom have national reputations). Twenty-five percent of all sales go directly to the Eugene Library Foundation. So the book (oh, go ahead, buy more than one!!) you purchase is a win-win-win.

You get a great holiday present for someone (maybe yourself)
You support a talented Eugene-based writer
You join many of your friends and neighbors in supporting our public library

                        PLUS: I will be there with many of my books from 10-1:30.