. . . in a small pond. I was surprised and pleased to receive an honor this past weekend. The Friends of the Thomas Branigan Memorial Library made me an honorary life member.
It was a surprise because I haven’t done very much with them (in my estimation). I’ve been busy serving on the Library Advisory Board, which serves as liaison with the City Councilors, for the last eight years.
True, I did encourage support and pay attention to the Friends, come to book sales and every other event I could get to, and work toward a closer connection between the two organizations. (The Advisory Board can’t raise money; it advises and supports the Library Administrator on financial and other matters. The Friends do raise funds and receive a wish-list from the Administrator for items beyond the city budget.)
So they decided to thank me. In the bio I wrote for them I did stress the importance of libraries in my life.
Libraries have been important to her from her childhood in Campbell, California to taking her sons to the Ardmore library in Pennsylvania, to research in the Philadelphia Free Library and the Library of Congress.
I didn’t mention that when I had a career module in early high school, I didn’t have the courage to find a writer to interview, so I interviewed our local librarian. It has always seemed to me the next best thing. If you can’t write books, take care of them.
I’m sure I’ll be hearing from the Friends of Branigan Library about further support. That’s how these things work. That’s just fine with me.
For more on the Branigan library, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Branigan_Memorial_Library
Weaving the Terrain is a large collection edited by David Meischen and Scott Wiggerman. It contains 211 poems, by many poets—a minority of the contributors have supplied more than one poem. The subject matter ranges across the southwestern states and over many themes. There are plenty of roadrunners, vultures and coyotes, historical moments both familiar and lesser known, and a lot of sand. There are personal stories as well, events that “just happen” to take place in a southwestern locale.
Lee Van Ham’s From Egos to Eden is a big book about a very big topic: keeping earth livable for humanity. If that turns your mind to issues of cutting back, doing without and judgmentalism, put them aside. This book will guide you into another approach entirely. It is about growing into broader consciousness, growing from ego control to a larger sense of self, entering – or continuing – a journey toward what Van Ham calls One-earth Living.
The last class “Mr. Bob” worked with will be moving on to Middle School this summer. Children who read the books in the future won’t know who Bob Kaufman is. But perhaps some of them will notice the labels and realize that someone cared that their library has these books for them to read. 
freethoughtandmetaphor 