How the Library Helped Us Buy Our Land.

Well I'm pretty upset. Libraries are closing around the country due to budget cuts. Some are cutting hours, some are cutting days, a lot are on the brink of closing all together. Our little library is now closed on Thursdays. Also they are only having one night a week of extended hours, used to be three nights.

I am one of their most patrony patrons. Usually I have 20 - 30 library books at home.
Along with a few DVD's and CD's.

Here is the story of what the library has meant to me...

Larry and I were on the same page ever since we met back in 1970. (I was 12, he was ummmm....older ) We both loved living in the woods and wanted to some day own a good amount of land and build our own home. And even after losing touch for 27 years we both kept that dream.
When we found each other again, in 1998, we made a plan. To save as much as we could and in 2 1/2 years buy land.

I moved up here from N.C and got a job as a pharmacy technician in a drugstore one block from the 1 bedroom apt. that Larry had rented right before I moved here.

He was working as "an agragate relocation specialist" (he hauled gravel) The apt. he rented was 3 rooms, heat, water and trash included, so the bills we had were: rent,electricity,phone and car insurance.We drove an old car, one he could work on himself and we both took packed lunches to work.

We bought nothing. Went out to eat once a week at "an all you can eat" place. And socked away our money.

Here's where the library comes in....Our soul form of entertainment was built around it.
We checked out tons of music. Loads of movies and read books on how to garden, digging wells, building houses,plumbing your own home, wiring, canning food, woodstoves, compost toilets, greenhouses, catching rainwater, frugal living...and so much more.

By utilizing all that the library has to offer, we managed to save almost $30,000 in those 2 1/2 years. Enough to buy almost 10 acres of land and build our home. And learned so much along the way. Giving us a wonderful knowledge of how to do for ourselves.

And now they want us all to buy a Kindle or some other reader. To me, a plastic "reader" is just never gonna be the same I tells ya. There's just something about holding a book, seeing them lined up waiting, with goodies inside, on a bookshelf.

I've always had bunches of books around. Always had a book nearby with a bookmark in it. I grew up in foster homes and so many times a book was my only friend. I could be anywhere, and pretend I was anyone through a book.
I learned how to "Be here now" with the help of a book titled "Be here now".

When I was little and my mother was still here, I had piles of books. I was an early reader and I know this helped me survive the after years.
When my kids were babies I read to them and we would go for the books at yard sales. They always got books at Christmas and birthdays. And we would go to the library.
They loved the library.
I would catch both of them at night, up reading after I had called lights out. I never got upset. I was just so happy they had an early love of books. They both did well in school and they are both wonderful adults and they both still love books.

Well, this is my rant about loving the library and feeling sadness every time I read about another town or city having to close theirs.

Please support your local library.
It would be horrible to one day hear a child ask "Mommy, what's a book"?