Taking the First Step
My first job out of college was working for a statewide political campaign in Missouri. For most of 2004, I worked long hours calling reporters to come to events they didn’t want to cover, mispronouncing rural counties I had not even known existed, driving to Springfield to staff events I was sure no one would attend, and endlessly, endlessly talking to people around the state about why my candidate had something better and different to offer than that other guy.
It all left me drained, disillusioned, lost, and wary by its losing end that November. My state had turned red or had perhaps always been that way, and my eyes were awakened to the reality of that, and the reality of the political process up close and personal. I was not the candidate, but for my feelings of defeat, I may as well have been one. I wish I could say I took that experience and grew from it, but the reality is that for a long time I ran from it. After a lifetime of being in student government, I no longer had any desire to be involved in politics. I gave up my dreams of going to law school. I decided I no longer had the drive to pursue that particular goal. I wanted no part of that life.
There were a lot of other personal and familial challenges that year, so I did what only a privileged Midwestern white girl could do: I took a trip to Europe that December (funded entirely on credit cards that I would be paying off for the rest of my 20s) and by January 2005, I moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts. I know, you are thinking: why not New York City? Why not California? What? Not Seattle or Portland? The shortest and most honest answer is that I had a friend in Cambridge who had already offered to let me sleep on her pullout couch for a while. A more elaborate answer is that I looked at the electoral map and found the most blue place, and with my thoughts turned towards self-preservation, I moved there.
I was not in a healthy place mentally, physically, or emotionally. Silly me to think that Boston winters would be conducive to me pulling myself back together. I thought just being in the mere presence of more liberal-minded people, I would feel inherently better. Instead, I unraveled daily on that pullout couch. I did not have a job. I had dwindling money living in one of the most expensive cities in the country. And the grace period for my student loans was drawing to a close. And I had abandoned my seeming lifelong dream of becoming a lawyer. My friend was good enough of a person to welcome me at every turn, while at the same time urging me to get off my ass. In over a foot of snow, I plowed through Cambridge and Boston looking for work. I was 22 years-old, had zero professional connections in all of New England, and a nearly blank resume.
I cried when the various non-profits I approached did not respond to my inquiries. I cried even more when I got a follow-up interview with the International Institute of New England. I stopped crying when they did not offer me a job. I was still hurt by the election and by how the results made me question the basic decency of people. Facing rejection in a place where I thought I would find belonging was a bitter reality. After nearly two months of pushing myself through the snow and slush and fighting off tears on a daily basis, I humbly and graciously, ecstatically took a job at Whole Foods.
I thought I had seen all I needed to see about the “basic decency of people” previously on the campaign trail. If you have ever worked for prolonged periods in the food service industry, I am sure you are aware I was completely wrong. Despicable behavior, outright rudeness, unbelievable kindness, true heroism, and teamwork were all on display. I think if every person in the U.S. were required to work at least one week at Whole Foods and one week at Wal-Mart (preferably during certain weeks in November and December), everyone would have a clearer picture of what we are dealing with here. People might still go on murderous rampages because yet another asshole left shrimp tails in the middle of the wine racks, but at least we all might better understand that individual’s rage.
I moved out of my friend’s adorable Cambridge apartment where I had taken up residence on the couch and into a spare bedroom in a 500 square foot apartment off of Rindge Avenue in North Cambridge. The best attribute of the spare bedroom was a functioning door lock. My new roommates were a Mexican woman named Yadira and her four children. Yadira and I worked together at Whole Foods.
Yadira, who reminded me of the actress Sofia Loren (yes, I know — Italian), had been renting the room to a close friend who had just gotten engaged and moved in with her boyfriend. Yadira needed someone to help pay rent right away, and I needed a cheap place to live. I paid her $300 a month, and we all survived together in that place for about 6 months. Yadira was generous and loving, and her children were as well-behaved as children can be. When Yadira decided her eldest son should have my room, and I decided I really needed to not be living in tiny apartment with a 2-year-old anymore, I moved into an apartment in Roxbury with two other girls I met through craiglist.
I sometimes think of that time now and struggle to figure out how I survived. There are all kinds of articles out there about the make or break time of one’s early twenties. This is not a story of how I managed to save $20 a month for the future. I did not. If I somehow managed to have even an extra $4 a month, I can guarantee you I spent it on one of three things: beer, food, or The T. This is not a story about improving myself to any great degree. It is a story of getting by.
These are the blessings I counted off to myself regularly. First, I had friends. More friends than I had a right to or so I thought. I had family that loved me, whose distant presence was a reminder that someone in the world cared about me. Thanks to Yadira, I had shelter. I had a job. Almost as important as having income, I had somewhere to be. My time of endless, jobless wandering in the snow was over. Thanks to my place of employment, I always had food. Even if I ate stale bakery bread that we would have thrown out otherwise, I did not go hungry.
And one day a week, every Tuesday when my work schedule remained consistent, I had the O’Neill Branch of the Cambridge Public Library.
For purely selfish reasons (full disclosure: I am now a librarian), I want more people to use the library. For less selfish reason, I want more people to use the library.
Please consider supporting libraries in your community as an act of participation in our society. Even if you can afford to buy everything your want on Amazon. Even if you hate reading. Even if you have subscriptions to Netflix and Hulu. I promise, there is something at the library for you. Even if it is the simple soul deep revelation that not everyone is like you. If you are at a loss as to what to do next (or first or ever), head to the library and meet your community there. Maybe check out a few books about politics or activism or something written by a person from a different country or with a different viewpoint or religion or political party than your own. There may come a lot of other steps after that you feel called to take, but you are not wrong to take this as your first one.
If you are reading this thinking, but I already use and support the library then you most likely fall into one of three camps.
- You are not as economically solvent as those people who say that our society no longer has a need for libraries, and you need the library in a very real way as an access point to the Internet and other sources of information and connection.
- You are a book-loving fanatic word junky who needs a reading fix on the regular.
- You are the parent of a young child and have wisely realized like countless parents before you that one of the best things you can do for your child is to read books with them and since you cannot possibly stomach “Moo Baa La La La” one more freaking time, you decided to give the library a chance.
Good for you. Keep doing what you are doing. Bring a friend next time you visit. Invite someone you would not think would use the library. Reacquaint them with the experience. Join a book club or other discussion group. Attend free public lectures. Be a library ambassador.
I have been a member of both camps one and two for most of my life. My family never had much money, but thankfully I never went without. I still remember my mother taking us to the Oak Bend Library regularly after school and swinging into the bookmobile on my way to the Shrewsbury Pool on Saturdays during the summer to pick up the next run of Nancy Drew books.
In Cambridge, on Tuesdays in 2005, the O’Neill Branch was the center of my world. I paid all my bills online, I replied to all the emails in my Hotmail account, I caught up on celebrity gossip, I talked with the various people in the building from the circulation clerks to the grandmother on the computer beside me, and I checked out a week’s worth of reading materials with my library card. Yadira’s apartment did not have an Internet connection. Wi-Fi was not available in every restaurant or coffee shop way back then, and I did not have the money for a laptop (which would have been about the only option) or coffee shops anyway. I had thought being in a liberal blue state meant that I would instantly become involved in lots of worthy, world-saving activities. Turns out, I did not have the energy for any of those activities what with barely scraping by and all. I worked on my feet 40 plus hours a week for little more than minimum wage, and Tuesdays were my favorite day of the week. They were the day I could catch my breath, take time to think and dream and plan.
The books I borrowed went into my oversized yellow tote bag and along with a jar of creamy peanut butter and a spoon kept me company in my locked spare bedroom. Maybe I was hiding from the world. Maybe I was escaping. Maybe I was just distracting myself. But what I remember is that I needed something desperately to hold onto at that time in my life, and the library helped hold me together. (If you are reading this thinking, wait, why didn’t you go see a mental health professional? You have more insight than I did at 22. I did not come to that realization until a good ten years later).
If you are reading this thinking any of the following: wait, people still go to the library?/I have access to the Internet at home, why would I go to to the library?/I haven’t had a library card in ages./I hate reading./I read all I wanted to back in school./I read everything on my Kindle, why would I go to the library?/Who needs the library? etc. then you are due for a visit my friend.
Welcome back! We missed you. As a purveyor of books, information, and media, I truly hope you will find something engrossing at the library.
If you are new to this whole library shtick, allow me to enlighten you a bit. Public Libraries are generally funded by a combination of tax dollars and friends/supporter groups i.e. a mix of public and private funding, and many of the services we provide are made possible only through volunteers (craft programs, early literacy workshops, book sales, homework help etc.). We are open to all members of the public, so unless you engage in some particularly inappropriate activity that might get you banned, you are welcome to walk into just about any library anywhere in the country.
If you suddenly want to become “more involved” in society or be an agent of change, but for whatever reason do not want to be too political in your involvement (personal safety concerns, worries for your children, totally disgusted by the thought of politics etc.) or you simply don’t know where to begin, I urge you to contact your local library and see if they have opportunities for you to assist them. Even if the only thing they have for you to do is cut out 200 dinosaur masks for an upcoming event, your efforts will be appreciated.
You will meet people you wouldn’t otherwise interact with in your daily life. Some people will be challenging. You may wish you did not have to deal with them. Some of these encounters with be enriching. If you keep coming long enough, you will realize that some of those challenging interactions become the most enriching. I have long since left Boston and have bounded across red state after red state. I have had a library card in each and every one of those places.
If volunteering isn’t for you, consider just paying us a visit. Not many institutions can promise you that your presence, your mere entrance into the building will matter, but for the library it does. Because our boards look at these numbers. Our funding is dependent on these numbers. Our existence requires your continued participation. If you pay taxes, you are part of our funding agency. Don’t you want to know how we are investing your money?
While we all may be looking at the future with anxious eyes, there is comfort in the embrace of our loved ones, in words of a stranger written on the pages of a book, or in the meeting of a neighbor in the democratic third space that is the library. I am not saying this is the only way forward. There is a lot of other very necessary and hard work that has to happen. As for me, I may have rediscovered that political muscle I thought I lost in 2004. So keep in mind, “(…) with politicians trying to “drain the swamp” of government funding. If your reelection depended on voter ignorance, you’d want to starve libraries too.”
