Tuesday, March 01, 2005
A Library Rarely Fails to Comfort.
I found the best library ever. actually it is very much like my Ideal Home. A big historical doctor's office building. It looks like a very large, homey two story office thing and it's marvelous. I love the word marvelous. Where the Pasadena Library is the penultimate in my Ideal Study hall of Magnificent Proportions this is my Ideal Home in the Country in Which To Bring up Cunning, Clean Little Children. Perhaps not my own children. There has been too much of that talk around here of late, as everyone in the county seems to know someone in a particularly painful state of pregnancy, labour, or post-birth. All-in-all I'm quite disgusted with the entire process.
"For although some have called it the most meaningful experience of their life, for me it was akin to doing the splits-- over a crate of dynamite." - Lorelai Gilmore, Gilmore Girls
But back to the library. There is frosted glass on the back offices, which were rented out to another doctor and the entire thing is decorated... I want to say like a house but it's not. Like an old-fashioned homey office. Pretty framed photos and prints, wooden floors, rooms that in the 30s were dedicated as the gentleman's smoking rooms wherein ladies did not dare venture. Actually I think it was only one room, but both looked quite appropriate as a place for one to have a cigar and brandy. My favourite room is the upstairs room, across from the ladies bathrooms (all the bathrooms are decorated as you might find in a fashionable old lady's home, and there is one with little teeny stalls that implies women were quite petite back in the day).
That particular room, not the bathroom but the other, is where all the classics and some of the adult fiction overflow are kept. It was set up by a Stanford professor who organized all the books chronologically. He is on my list of heroes now, with a gold star even. I never thought to do it that way and I love it. I've always had such trouble sorting out eras and events in their right order and it's nice to be able to scan the shelves and see the evolution.* Mark Twain being a contemporary of Willa Gather was a suprise.
It's a sunny room with nasty flourescent lights and all the books are circulated. I hate the thought of a library circulating such old, lovely, worn hardcovers. But it's also nice. The professor insisted that all the classics be circulated. It's the kind of thing that makes one smile, before developing a nasty twitch in your eye as you imagine all the nasty, careless people who might check them out.
Also, the mysteries are kept separate from the rest of the fiction so as to protect the more sensitive readers. This was instituted by the previous owner, and is kept on as an odd but sweet little tradition. Only one book is supposed to be checked out at a time, but my mum and I got two each because one of the proprietors goes to our church. I took "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and some odd one my mother suggested called "Mosquitoes" by Faulkner.
The deeply depressing bit of all this is that the library was privately owned until very recently, but has now become a part of the city and will be joined with the county system. I hate the thought of their books going through the interlibrary loans and getting sullied by people who never bothered to go to this special little place.
"A Million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on." - Montresor. From the library publicity bookmark freebie majigg.
And because I am lazy and blah blah blah sick:
The Earle W. Webb, Jr. Memorial Library & Civic Center, at 812 Evans Street, is a Federal-style brick building that was donated by Earle W. Webb, Sr. as a library for Morehead City in 1937. Until recently a trust fund supported its operation, but the Morehead City Council now provides an operational grant, while the Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative has supported new acquisitions. The library houses both the classics and modern works and has a substantial children's library. Local groups meet there and the formal garden and reading rooms are available for visitors. Membership is free to county residents.
Further news: There is to be a so-called wild animal show in the area as advertisec on local tv. However the commercial video shows a rather different story. It is a stuffed carcass and dear head exhibit with target practice games, gun/archery/bambi-killing vendors**, and the possibility of winning a shiny truck. It is times like this that reminds me how different the culture is here. That, and when I went to a republican dinner last week where we were served fried chicken and slaw and hush puppies on paper plates.
*I'm a nerd. nerd. nerd. nerd. dork.
**I have nothing against hunting per se, and I love archery. I just think all this newfangled stuff is cheating and I don't like seeing cute furry things all corpse-ified.
. -- G 'Bye, Sonya -- . ( 1.3.05 ) .
I found the best library ever. actually it is very much like my Ideal Home. A big historical doctor's office building. It looks like a very large, homey two story office thing and it's marvelous. I love the word marvelous. Where the Pasadena Library is the penultimate in my Ideal Study hall of Magnificent Proportions this is my Ideal Home in the Country in Which To Bring up Cunning, Clean Little Children. Perhaps not my own children. There has been too much of that talk around here of late, as everyone in the county seems to know someone in a particularly painful state of pregnancy, labour, or post-birth. All-in-all I'm quite disgusted with the entire process.
"For although some have called it the most meaningful experience of their life, for me it was akin to doing the splits-- over a crate of dynamite." - Lorelai Gilmore, Gilmore Girls
But back to the library. There is frosted glass on the back offices, which were rented out to another doctor and the entire thing is decorated... I want to say like a house but it's not. Like an old-fashioned homey office. Pretty framed photos and prints, wooden floors, rooms that in the 30s were dedicated as the gentleman's smoking rooms wherein ladies did not dare venture. Actually I think it was only one room, but both looked quite appropriate as a place for one to have a cigar and brandy. My favourite room is the upstairs room, across from the ladies bathrooms (all the bathrooms are decorated as you might find in a fashionable old lady's home, and there is one with little teeny stalls that implies women were quite petite back in the day).
That particular room, not the bathroom but the other, is where all the classics and some of the adult fiction overflow are kept. It was set up by a Stanford professor who organized all the books chronologically. He is on my list of heroes now, with a gold star even. I never thought to do it that way and I love it. I've always had such trouble sorting out eras and events in their right order and it's nice to be able to scan the shelves and see the evolution.* Mark Twain being a contemporary of Willa Gather was a suprise.
It's a sunny room with nasty flourescent lights and all the books are circulated. I hate the thought of a library circulating such old, lovely, worn hardcovers. But it's also nice. The professor insisted that all the classics be circulated. It's the kind of thing that makes one smile, before developing a nasty twitch in your eye as you imagine all the nasty, careless people who might check them out.
Also, the mysteries are kept separate from the rest of the fiction so as to protect the more sensitive readers. This was instituted by the previous owner, and is kept on as an odd but sweet little tradition. Only one book is supposed to be checked out at a time, but my mum and I got two each because one of the proprietors goes to our church. I took "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and some odd one my mother suggested called "Mosquitoes" by Faulkner.
The deeply depressing bit of all this is that the library was privately owned until very recently, but has now become a part of the city and will be joined with the county system. I hate the thought of their books going through the interlibrary loans and getting sullied by people who never bothered to go to this special little place.
"A Million candles have burned themselves out. Still I read on." - Montresor. From the library publicity bookmark freebie majigg.
And because I am lazy and blah blah blah sick:
The Earle W. Webb, Jr. Memorial Library & Civic Center, at 812 Evans Street, is a Federal-style brick building that was donated by Earle W. Webb, Sr. as a library for Morehead City in 1937. Until recently a trust fund supported its operation, but the Morehead City Council now provides an operational grant, while the Carteret-Craven Electric Cooperative has supported new acquisitions. The library houses both the classics and modern works and has a substantial children's library. Local groups meet there and the formal garden and reading rooms are available for visitors. Membership is free to county residents.
Further news: There is to be a so-called wild animal show in the area as advertisec on local tv. However the commercial video shows a rather different story. It is a stuffed carcass and dear head exhibit with target practice games, gun/archery/bambi-killing vendors**, and the possibility of winning a shiny truck. It is times like this that reminds me how different the culture is here. That, and when I went to a republican dinner last week where we were served fried chicken and slaw and hush puppies on paper plates.
*I'm a nerd. nerd. nerd. nerd. dork.
**I have nothing against hunting per se, and I love archery. I just think all this newfangled stuff is cheating and I don't like seeing cute furry things all corpse-ified.
. -- G 'Bye, Sonya -- . ( 1.3.05 ) .