More podcast fun! This time from the Guardian Books podcast…

The title of this one is a little deceiving: author Tracy Chevalier [think The Girl with the Pearl Earring] talks about library loans. Isn’t that nice?! But is she just talking about how wonderful libraries are, how important literacy is? Nope. Way better and more unexpected. Get this, libraries in Britain actually PAY authors a little something when their books are borrowed from a library.

Seriously!

See, I told you you’d be surprised.

How civilized and forward thinking of the British .. I like it! Why don’t we have one, I thought? Turns out that Canada does participate in this program, it’s called The Public Lending Right Commission, or rather has a version of the program running here. The US however does not.

From their international website, “Public Lending Right is the right of authors to receive payment for free public use of their works in libraries.”

If you are an author in the US, get on the bandwagon man. Call your senator or representative. Wow, call someone. This just seems like an all around wonderful solution, one that acknowledges the rights and needs of everyone: the importance of literacy, the need to support writers who maintain and extend our literacy through their work while maintaining that iconic institution we know and love as the library.

p.s. a friend gave me a set of not-so-old-to-be-useless encyclopedias that i was very happy and thankful to receive. ya think I can find a shelf for them? Nope. Gah, I’m tired of seeing them lying around in grocery bags but don’t have the hutzpah yet to do the reorganization of bookshelves required to fit them. The list of things left undone because we hope to move this year is getting biggggger. Scary.

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That knowing feeling.

That indescribable assurance that what you are doing or about to do is the right decision.

Where does yours come from?

What faith calms your twittering heart when on the verge of a yes or a no?

I used to rely on my religious faith, based in Roman Catholicism. But – as long time readers know – I don’t find much comfort there these days.

Knowing that God loved me, knowing that I had followed all the rules, knowing that I had been taken care of many times before lent a certain credibility to walking into darkness. I could do it.

See, I think with religion, answers were easy. Or rather I thought that with religion answers *should* be easy. Like, if you are X, then Y is the decision you make. But even that is not right and not good. I threw out that book long ago. Cookie cutters I called them. Bah. Boring. Restrictive. Let me out! I screamed without knowing I screamed it. And when I finally heard myself, it all went… kaboom!!!

Kaboom was fun and freeing and all, but now I feel flag-less. Who am I cheering for? Me? Wow, that seems vain. And yet, who else will do it and who else deserves it?

I’m on the verge of making a decision. I’m scared. I can’t depend on religion to offer solace, I can’t depend on someone agreeing with me, it’s just me. Yet I want so desperately to know that I am doing the right thing. I need the security of being sure.

I have always always wanted to be the good girl. I try to blame my mom for that. Certainly she didn’t make the sentiment any easier. But that idea seems so seminal to who I am and has sprouted again in another generation that it starts me wondering that maybe it is simply who I am.

What a boring life, eh? To always want to be good. What IS good? For you it is surely different than for I. And yet both good.

Wow, to even acknowledge that enough to write it threatens the borders of my mind. And yet life will not let those borders be, events constantly acting as waves against the fences built so high by some strange combination of genetics and environment.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

Maybe all those years, I gave religion the credit where it ought to have been my own back getting the pat.

But if that is true, why does knowing now still seem so frightening? Why do I need someone to tell me its OK? How many books have I read in so many different genres by widely different authors who teach the same lesson over and over? How many blog posts must I write? (Yes, even my little blog is a humble acting out of what seems to be my life lesson.) How many times do I need to hear it before patterns and anxiety dissolve?

I must beat this out of myself. For I must foster a new person, let her grow up without this hindrance, for she is a radiant beautiful thing. And I want her to know it.

There is some place inside of me that knows.

“Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.”
— Henry David Thoreau

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she told me to…

To Mother

I hope that soon, dear mother,
You and I may be
In the quiet room my fancy
Has so often made for thee, –

The pleasant, sunny chamber,
The cushioned easy-chair
The book laid for your reading,
The vase of flowers fair;

The desk beside the window
Where the sun shines warm and bright;
And there in ease and quiet
The promised book you write;

While I sit close beside you,
Content at last to see
That you can rest, dear mother,
And I can cherish thee.

Louisa May Alcott

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