Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. - Albert Camus

 

One of the basic reasons I don’t own a kindle or any other instrument of its ilk, is this – if you ask someone to close his eyes and think of a library, maybe a library he went to as a child, the first thing that will jump to his mind is the smell.

 

 

You cant sell news stories that have data and cautious predictions. Where is the panic? Where is the impending doom? C'mon people , give me something to work with here…

    Opinions / Science / Theory of Relative Ignorance  
 

..and as I was a yuppy marketing and advertising executive for the better part
of a decade, I am not really impressed with stories of selling your soul to the devil...

    Art & Culture / Music / Blues / Robert Johnson  

Libraries - What's that?

One of the basic reasons I don’t own a kindle or any other instrument of its ilk, is this – if you ask someone to close his eyes and think of a library, maybe a library he went to as a child, the first thing that will jump to his mind is the smell.

Libraries have a very distinct smell, the scent of a living thing, you can smell the trees that were sacrificed to create that library, the dust that comes with seniority and gravitas, and you can almost smell the silence.

 
When I got my library card, that's when my life began." - Rita Mae Brown
 
As a child, going to the city library was a weekly treat, entering the big white building, passing the marble cold floors and the frowning receptionists and entering that embrace of smell, that land where stories live, a jungle made out of paper just waiting for me to explore, to take with me home, brining that sacred smell of knowledge with me. You don’t get that in a kindle or ipad no matter how many "knowledge and antiquity smell apps" you may download.
 
A good library is a place, a palace where the lofty spirits of all nations and generations meet."
- Samuel Niger
 

I know, I know, I am old. I am against kindles on principle and I have problems adapting and accepting change. Right? Wrong. I love change, I just hate it when it goes in the wrong direction.

You know where can you still find the same sacred atmosphere I used to get walking into the public library? In apple stores. Those shinny temples of superficial materialism have the same effect on people. They walk in with eyes wide open looking around ,opening this, looking through that, choosing, tasting….exactly like I used to do when I was surrounded with shelves of books, of all sizes, about all subjects, in all styles. Writing down in words this comparison makes me sad.

 
If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library."  - Frank Zappa
 

Libraries are essential to the city and our daily life like running water. The fact that we get most of our drinking water from plastic cancerous bottles and not from the tap is just one more sign of how stupid we are and how distorted is our sense of priorities in life.

Libraries are essential to the city and our daily life like the air we breath. Ahm…ok, another bad example. poluttion wins again. Jeeze, I really can't get a break can I?. the stupidity is surrounding us. Time to circle the wagons.
I like being old. It's fun.

I don’t really have to argue with the trend hopping morons as they dismiss me from the start as old, and it is actually very beneficial to their health that I don’t argue with them, so it’s a win win situation.

Nobody can tell me that downloading a file is like reaching up to a high shelf and taking out a book that caught my eye, just to open it for a minute and see what's inside. Nobody can tell me that opening an I-book is the same as opening a book, that excitement of discovery, the anticipation, the thrill of taking a journey into new lands of the imagination.

Nobody can tell me that moving a finger over a glass surface is the same as touching that living material books are printed on, separating the pages and sometimes feeling disappointed when you discover there is only half a page left until the end of the chapter.

Libraries are a service. An almost free service, so of course it has no place in the world as we know it today. Giving away information? For free? Are you crazy? Yes. I am. And I love libraries.

 
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need." - Cicero