Georgetown Library, Georgetown, Texas

This morning I woke up to a dark and squalling forecast. A big thunderstorm was rolling in. I was checking out of the Austin airBNB place today, so busied myself with preparations, all while the storm yelled and hurled things around outside. Dawn, my airBNB host, advised I stay for a little while, at least until it cleared, since the weather service had issued flash flood warnings and a tornado watch for the area. I made some coffee using Dawn's mini french press and hung out in her kitchen, watching lightning strikes in the near distance. The trees were rotating to and fro, but every once in awhile everything would stop dead and I would freeze, too, wondering if a funnel was about to drop casually from the sky to kick the party up to 11. It's like when a cat strolls in the room and suddenly widens its eyes and arches its back at the closet door. What do you know that I don't know?

But the storm abated and I packed up my car to trek out to the next and last Austin-area library. On a whim I decided to stop by a pick up breakfast from a place I'd seen all around town, Shipley Do-Nuts. I'd never heard of them before, but there's no forgetting them now. I ordered a maple frosted and a regular glazed. I have to get maple when I can find it--it's my favorite--and I found Shipley's to be acceptable. Not quite on the same level as other joints, but still very good. The glazed, however, was intense. As you are eating it you are not quite sure how it holds solid form. It was so ooey gooey, melt-in-your-mouth good, I cannot recommend it more highly. Like, go there. Now. Get it. Inhale it.

The sky was still bleak and grumbly when I arrived at the Georgetown Library, the central public library for the same-named town just north of Austin. I didn't know anything about the library until settling in, so at first I assumed it was some sort of university library. To my delight, this treasure is all local, all public, and a true gem in the Georgetown crown. This library is amazing (a big thank you to Dawn for suggesting it!).

When I walked in everything was glittery and shiny and reminded me immediately of fresh mallage, you know, when they first built the anchor stores and all the merch was fresh delivered and you could smell the rich, capitalistic, chemical-laden aroma of New Things? All the surfaces are gleaming and sharp, and the light is focused, bright, and deliberate. The first floor is dominated by the children's section (lit up like the surface of the sun), teen section, and a cafe, with generous seating all around. The cafe workers were busy readying for their day (the library had only just opened minutes before, at noon) so I caught the eye of a library staff member nearby and asked about the beverage policy. Totally open, you can have food and drinks anywhere in the library. Austin was the exact opposite (while Houston and Dallas allowed covered drinks) so it was a nice surprise. And even more of a surprise the further I got into the library.

Georgetown is spic and span from the first floor carpets to the skylights above the second floor. It is immaculate. You wouldn't think such a relaxed refreshments policy would allow for such a pristine environment, but they've clearly made it work. This library has been operational since 2007, but it looks like it opened maybe last year. It is obvious that the public and staff take great care of this public space.

The second floor is just as shiny and efficient as the first, with bright skylights above the main floor, and workspaces tucked around the perimeter of the stacks. I am sitting in the main workspace area, where one long desk stretches across the front wall (with outlets), and several big wooden desks fill the space behind it (without outlets). I am facing the front windows, where I can see some municipal buildings, banks of trees, and a mountain range of receding, angry-looking clouds in the distance. Goodbye, thunderstorm, and please do not send your cousin for a follow up visit tonight when I am sleeping in the car!

One of the best parts of this library is located on the second floor bridge, in the center/front of the library--a stained glass window dedicated to a librarian who passed away back in 2007. Her name was Dixie Sue Hanna (don't you love her already?) and she was the sole curator of adult library materials for 20 years. Her story--and the story of the window--can be found here. Of course I cried a little, but only a little, you know the cry that is just tears on the precipice that never fall. Rambo tears. They loved this lady so much, and she was such a significant part of the library's development, that they made this permanent monument for her.

That's the real gut kicker, isn't it? People work jobs their whole lives and when they leave it is almost as though they were never there. Someone else comes along and picks up the work, or changes it, streamlines it, reduces it to nil, naught, garbagio. And that's that. It is almost better not to think about the time you spent in the working world, wondering what it added up to besides survival (which should not be undervalued, I know). My grandfather was a typesetter for the local paper back in the 70s and 80s. At the time the paper was called The Wichita Eagle-Beacon (now just The Wichita Eagle) and it was a point of pride that my grandpa had a hand in creating the daily news. These were the days when TV was still pretty much 3-4 channels, cable was in its infancy, and papers ruled the news. He worked second shift, and would come home sometime around midnight, having put the paper to bed for the next morning's edition, turn in, and then get up at the crack of dawn to listen to the news on the radio station KFDI while also reading that very same paper set the night before, fresh delivered to his doorstep.

My grandfather put his hands to the type and created permanence in this world. Maybe small permanence, but still significant. I hope he was proud of that. Even though he served as Treasury secretary for the local Typographical union chapter for some years (and worked for the Eagle for the same) there are no plaques mounted anywhere in his honor, but that is okay. The permanence was in the words, printed and cataloged probably in bound copies archived in the Wichita library system, and certainly on microfiche and via the web. I do hope the keepers of our history remember to retain the actual artifacts of newspaper, knowing that it probably won't last forever, and certainly not in the format we know now. Everyone should know what a newspaper smells like: the soft, grainy pages and black print that would sometimes rub off on your fingers (depending on the paper, of course--some papers were "filthier" than others). You could spend hours going through each section, reading every morsel, assessing, collating, deciphering, and in the end you would feel owlish and a little tired. Full of news.

It's no mystery why Ms. Dixie Sue Hanna's stained glass memorial was particularly touching to me. In my work life I built up a functioning, efficient little kingdom over 15 years, and in less than a year I watched it evaporate into the mists of Otherness. My own little Roanoke island of Despair. I am happy that the Georgetown library loved Dixie Sue Hanna and made sure that the community will always know it--it's a rare and benevolent honor. My monument will just have to be me, trailblazing to the whatever and whenever of the next chapter, which doesn't scare me at all. Why should it? I've already slept in a bed of fire, simmering in icy dreams, troubling, fearsome, and new.