LIBRARIES: Thank you Katie Blank

Thank you so much for all of the work that you have put into nurturing and expanding our libraries and library services over the last thirty years. While it absolutely breaks my heart that our library system is losing its greatest current advocate, I am especially grateful for the difficult work you’ve done over the last few years. We will continue to hold space open for everyone who comes into our libraries, and so rest assured in the knowledge that there are those who will joyfully take up the mantle.

Those who would try to seal our libraries into a starkly narrow and closed ecosystem of knowledge will have always already failed, because closed systems can only ever develop autoimmune disorders. And it’s extraordinarily difficult, probably impossible, to completely shut off curiosity and wonder, to seal off all access to outside input. Even those who come in to check out books and movies or scour the internet for information that seemingly reinforces one bias or another have demonstrated willingness to explore additional information, and doing so always always bears the simultaneous risk and reward of unexpected consequences. We can never know precisely what we will make of new additions to our mental and emotional worlds.

In other words, Katie: You have won, you will have always already won, and you’ve earned some rest. Thank you.

JOSIAH MANNION

Coeur d’Alene