I found this article I wrote for a reception held in my honor after I wrote a history of the Modesto Library. It sums up many of my feelings about books and art.
As far back as I can remember, I have been surrounded by books. I took it for granted that everyone’s parents read as much as mine did and that books were as an integral part of their lives as they were in mine. I learned how to read from Donald Duck comics and Dr. Seuss books. The world was my oyster for now I could go anywhere because I had books.
I was lucky enough to grow up during a time when children were allowed to walk places by themselves. My family happened to live in Stockton, about six blocks from the downtown library. One summer day when I was about 10 or 11, my mom said I could walk to the library by myself. I remember the children’s library being in the basement. I walked through the stacks, looking at anything and everything. I judged books by their covers, which was unfortunate, because I distinctly remember passing over Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time”, a book which became a favorite of mine when I grew up. First one book, then another caught my eye. Soon I was loaded down with books. Proud of my loot, I carried my overfull totebag and an overlarge stack of books in my arms. Never was a six-block walk longer. Greed has its price.
My love of books has not diminished over the years. I majored in art in college partially because I wanted to make books and because I loved paper. Paper is multi-purpose. It can be made into something which is pleasing to the eye or pleasant to the touch and has a smell which brings back memories. There is nothing so wonderful as the smell of a used bookstore or an old library. After college, a series of events transpired over several years which led me to enter library school.
It is one of the unfortunate necessities of Library School to have to take core classes. These are the classes are required of every student before they can sign up for the ones they are really itching to take. The first class I signed up for after taking the basics was “The History of the Book.” While in college for my bachelor’s, I’d taken a bookbinding class where the teacher arranged for us to visit the Special Collections room in the university library. There I got to look at and, when the curator’s back was turned, touch illuminated manuscripts and early printed books. There is a romance about old or ancient things. Everyone says “if only walls could talk.” I wonder what it would be like if anything could talk. Those manuscripts that I looked at, what could they tell me about the world they were born into? How many hands had touched them? What journeys had they gone on? What tendernesses and what horrors had they witnessed? History is distilled within ancient objects and it is our privilege to be able to discover it every once in a while.
I was lucky enough to grow up during a time when children were allowed to walk places by themselves. My family happened to live in Stockton, about six blocks from the downtown library. One summer day when I was about 10 or 11, my mom said I could walk to the library by myself. I remember the children’s library being in the basement. I walked through the stacks, looking at anything and everything. I judged books by their covers, which was unfortunate, because I distinctly remember passing over Madeline L’Engle’s “A Wrinkle in Time”, a book which became a favorite of mine when I grew up. First one book, then another caught my eye. Soon I was loaded down with books. Proud of my loot, I carried my overfull totebag and an overlarge stack of books in my arms. Never was a six-block walk longer. Greed has its price.
My love of books has not diminished over the years. I majored in art in college partially because I wanted to make books and because I loved paper. Paper is multi-purpose. It can be made into something which is pleasing to the eye or pleasant to the touch and has a smell which brings back memories. There is nothing so wonderful as the smell of a used bookstore or an old library. After college, a series of events transpired over several years which led me to enter library school.
It is one of the unfortunate necessities of Library School to have to take core classes. These are the classes are required of every student before they can sign up for the ones they are really itching to take. The first class I signed up for after taking the basics was “The History of the Book.” While in college for my bachelor’s, I’d taken a bookbinding class where the teacher arranged for us to visit the Special Collections room in the university library. There I got to look at and, when the curator’s back was turned, touch illuminated manuscripts and early printed books. There is a romance about old or ancient things. Everyone says “if only walls could talk.” I wonder what it would be like if anything could talk. Those manuscripts that I looked at, what could they tell me about the world they were born into? How many hands had touched them? What journeys had they gone on? What tendernesses and what horrors had they witnessed? History is distilled within ancient objects and it is our privilege to be able to discover it every once in a while.
