My First Library

This the Longview Public Library and was my first library. My memories go back to the early sixties when I was three or four years old.

I took this picture in December of 2007 on my previous visit to my Mom's. I'm posting it today because I got to go to visit it today. I took pictures but they are still on my camera and I'm too wiped out to fuss with them. Besides I didn't get any of the front today and it was a cloudy, cold day so the outdoor pics I took would not look this pretty.

I brought home a huge bag of books. I didn't go with much of a plan as to what to check out. I purposely kept it vague. I wanted to browse the shelves and let books call themselves to my attention. It has been a long time since I've been able to browse the shelves of a significantly large collection. I suppose someone from a big city library wouldn't see Longview's library that way but in comparison to the dinky Phoenix branch of our Southern Oregon Library system it is quite large.

Since 2001 I've mostly ordered the items I want from the library system's online catalog and have them delivered to the Phoenix branch for pick up. That has a very different feel to it than walking along the shelves and absorbing all the sensory detail--the colors and fonts and size; texture, smell and heft. All of that combined contributes to the sense of a book's personality.

Speaking of texture and heft--my hands are itching to grab up one of those books right this second. I haven't really got to handle them since I got home. It was time to start dinner prep the instant I got back home and then I hung out with my family until eleven--my sister, Mom and nephew and I watched the two hour Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice crossover event tonight as we had watched the first two hours of it last week. I was the one who introduced my sister to it when I was here in the fall of 2005. But by the followig spring I'd weaned myself off it. I so do not want to get hooked on it again. But the storyline of this crossover event combining the casts of the two shows was continued again tonight. And of course the idea is to get Grey's Anatomy fans hooked into its spinoff Private Practice. Argh!! Must resist. But probably not until after next week anyway.