Libraries

I often credit so much else as the origin of who I am today and what I do. I would say that the one thing that defined me and still does is The Library. Yes, the Library; The use of the library.

I stumbled upon this site today (http://everylibrary.org/) and realized the genesis of my life was, in addition to a couple of other life branding situations, the Library took precedent.

I was born into a poor Puerto Rican family, unaware of our poverty. First living in a Brooklyn tenement then a Brooklyn public housing Project (Wyckoff Gardens Housing Project – 185 Nevins St, Brooklyn NY 11217) my life, our lives were not one of abject poverty but one of dismal outlook and ne’er around the desire to do or be more; including civil employment, or a one of the many to spend my life earning a basic income and following the traditional trajectory toward publicly funded retirement. Despite finding out years later that we were poor and how poor; I had what I felt was an acceptable life. An absent father who often almost all the time found pleasure in other women, even another whole family instead of us; a younger brother and older sister and brother. It was through my older brother that I discovered the love of the library.

I don’t recall the first time or who actually took me there, (The Brooklyn Public Library - 25 4th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217) but I know it’s still there. It was a place I spent a lot of my life at and borrowing from, every two weeks and four to six book at a time. Books and magazine of all kinds, fiction, text books and non-fiction for leisure and research; to read, ingest and get beyond the complacent story I seemed to be destined to be the star. And the only role I imagined for myself required a great amount of knowledge, not just now but forever. And the Library is where I would and could get it…

Today it isn’t just the library, but access to knowledge in general through the internet. Yes, the internet is often just a collection of attic paraphernalia but looking for the right information or collection of information from multiple sources can prove a thought correct and very often the truth to support for an a subject; just as much, reading more than one book or more than one author or source used to allow a search become a successful find…but it all begins in the Library; a place for knowledge that bring to the truth…