June 30, 2025. As I write this note the ALA’s (American Library Association) annual fair is wrapping up in Philadelphia. Soon visitors and exhibitors will make their high-speed descent down the escalators at the Philadelphia Convention Center back into the real world. For Rare Book Hub, this has been our first appearance. We enjoyed meeting hundreds of librarians. They are overwhelmingly women, and interesting people. They are their community’s interface between the everyday world and the printed word. They provide vital, necessary and needed alternatives to the internet and television.
Books have long been the standard solution for ignorance. These days the internet broadcasts predigested opinions embedded with memory triggering commonplaces, encouraging hate, disrespect, and disregard. When you read, you absorb ideas in your left brain and it encourages you to think, and better understand the greys. When you absorb pre-digested crap in your right brain, you often feel emotions that tend to be negative. Bingo, you remember every slight, every perceived crime. Oh gosh, you’re a victim!
Research suggests that the human brain shrinks when you hate.
The solution: turn off your social media. Read a book every month. Go to your library or nearby bookstores.
Does it matter? Your children learn from you.
Your children and your children’s children will thank you.
My hat's off to the ALA. Democracy lives in our libraries.
![<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Ernest Hemingway. <i>Three Stories And Ten Poems,</i> [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.](https://ae-files.s3.amazonaws.com/AdvertisementPhotos/acf970a0-a15d-4c79-aa24-5e8e414cb465.png "<b>Sotheby’s:</b> Ernest Hemingway. <i>Three Stories And Ten Poems,</i> [Paris], (1923). First edition of Hemingway’s first published book. $75,000.")
