Public Library

It is Memorial Day here, also called Remembrance Day.  Same thing.  We think of our heroes, reflect on what they've done for us.  In the meantime, the war at the eastern border is not yet over.  47,500 Ukrainians have entered the country, a small 5000 have found employment, their children are attending school.  Thankfulness for our peace and for the fact that we can share it with them. 

I have been a member of the public library here for well nigh 33 years.  Even when we moved to another place and lived there for 24 years, it never even crossed my mind to cancel my membership.  It is the one act of charity I have absolutely no regrets about, and I have followed its growth all that time, too.  I forget where it used to be, but the old building that used to stand at this spot was torn down, a new one built in its place, and the library was moved here, together with the music school where I had my piano lessons.  I had already graduated by that time, but I did return later to do research.

Funnily enough, the street is called the 'Molenstraat', or 'Windmill Street'.  There are no windmills here today, and I can't recall even having come across an old one in the list of demolished mills, but maybe there used to be one which was never recorded.  It doesn't matter.  Today, there's this lovely library.  I parked my bicycle nearby and first went to the copy shop where they do printing and laminating work, including prints for T-shirts.  I brought along 6 large illustrations that I wanted to convert to placemats.  Left them there and I'll return next week to pick them up.  Then to this library where I simply browsed, but I had also brought along 6 books, doubles of books I already have, which were mailed to me by mistake.  Maybe others will benefit from them.  Took some shots, this being my favourite.  The library is in a kind of basement so that there was no need for the roof to stick out too high above the rest of the buildings, resulting in a super well-ventilated and very bright reading area the size of a football field.  From this angle, one can see the houses on the other side of the street.  It was busier than I had expected, as the strict rule of absolute silence no longer applies -- people are now allowed to hold study group meetings in certain corners (decibels within reasonable levels, of course), and there is even a small juice and cookie bar, in case reading has made you hungry.  I do see myself visiting more often in the future.  Two extras!

Back home, some gardening for AW, cooking, TV-watching, and a whole lot of coughing.  I had the writers' group ZOOM meeting, no MOOCking, and a catch-up with gaming.  Later, at night, we did admit to each other that we still had our individual anxieties, our elephants in the room.  It's not that we don't want to talk about them, it's just that we've already discussed them often enough and, as well, the conclusions have not substantially changed.  That said, we could, and can, still say that we are in a much better place than where we were when we first started.