Connecting invisible dots in the library

One aspect of having a library, is connecting subjects. Events help me to find a book, and then perhaps bounces me to other book on a different topic. It is curious to be reading something in my reading chair, and then notice another book in the stacks, and then my eye is drawn to scan additional ones. Suddenly, I have four or five books to read. Is it me, or could the library be drawing me from one tome to another. I would like to give an example from yesterday.

Recently Jimmy Carter passed away. Carter was our 39th president and had reached the age of 100 before he died. I personally was not a fan of Carter when he ran for president. It was my first presidential election, and I had voted for Gerald Ford.

In college, I still was not a fan, and with some fellow students, actually protested the Iranian consulate to release 52 American prisoners captured and held in Iran during Carter’s presidency. I was wearing the hat.

Jimmy Carter was rated as a below average president, in large part to the handling of that Iranian Hostage Crisis.

History has been kinder to Carter with his “second life”…after being president. Projects like Habitat for Humanity that he personally supported, were embraced. He struggled at first with change after his election loss, and wrote about those challenges in a very interesting book.

I have “Everything to Gain: Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life” by Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter, published in 1987. My mother bought this book at Marshall Fields in Skokie the year it came out. It was signed then by both Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter.

The book is very good in showing how to refocus one’s life. A passage from his book, “If we have not achieved our early dreams, we must either find new ones or see what we can salvage from the old. If we have accomplished what we set out to do in our youth, then we need not weep like Alexander the Great that we have no more worlds to conquer. There is clearly much left to be done, and whatever else we are going to do, we had better get on with it.”

I then moved to reading about a man who wrote about presidents and politics long before Carter was president. Here are a few comments by Will Rogers:

“The Republicans mopped up, the Democrats gummed up, and I will now try and sum up. Things are terribly dull now. We won’t have any more serious comedy until Congress meets.“

“If you ever injected truth into politics, you have no politics.“

“This country has gotten where it is in spite of politics, not by the aid of it.“

I have “The Phrase Finder” by J.I Rodale, published 1953. He tells us that “Will Rogers was a humorous, far-seeing, sensible American, who saw the American picture as a whole, with its virtues and its vices, its needs and its best courses. He expressed what he felt about it all in a wise, drawling, keen commentary in the vernacular of the people.”

Will Rogers was in vaudeville, and then movies, making over 70 movies-both silent and talkies. He later wrote in newspapers, and then books. Eventually he became a folksy and famous writer and public speaker about politics. Recently, his old ranch house and museum burned down in a California wildfire. The Museums’ Journal just published this picture.

The museum was a total loss, including many examples of his book and newspaper writings. It made me go to the book “The Enemies of Books by William Blades, published in 1902.

This book describes many dangers to books, especially in libraries (or museums). The first chapter talks of large library fires throughout ages, first with the library at Alexandria. It was incredible to read of other large fires, some by Christians destroying Heathen books, Heathens destroying Christian books; Hebrew books burned, Monastery books burned, along with some famous other libraries that were burned. Even the first Library of Congress was torched by the British.

The author had some interesting thoughts stating “These fires have, time after time, thinned the treasures as well as the rubbish of past ages until probably not one thousandth part of the books that have been are still extant.“

Thinking back to Will Rogers, another cowboy moved into the Hollywood lights-Leonard Franklin Slye. This “singing cowboy” was given the name Roy because it was cowboy-ish sounding, and the name Rogers also because of the cowboy similarities with Will Rogers. Roy Rogers was in many movies and TV shows, along with his horse Trigger, and wife Dale Evans.

Roy Rogers also had his own museum. In it was Trigger, after the horse died, and was then taxidermied. While his museum was not recently burned down, (there were actually two, one in California, and one in Missouri) one closed, and then the other, and finally all the contents were sold.

I have a book by his wife “Dale Evans Prayer Book for Children”, published by Golden Books in 1956.

This is is a book of children’s prayers that Dale Evans collected to be used at various times. One prayer in particular by Alexander Pope, can be said today:

“Teach me to feel another’s woe,
 To right the fault I see:
That mercy I to others show,
 That mercy show to me.“

So with that thought, let us react to tragedies around us, along with those who have recently left, with some mercy and understanding, so that perhaps we can have a little mercy shown to us.

Thanks for reading.