HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-10-10, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2013. PAGE 5.
“A circulating library in a town is an
evergreen tree of diabolical knowledge! It
blossoms through the year.”
– Richard Brinsley Sheridan
The first library I ever saw didn't
have leaves or branches. It was even
weirder. It had a steering wheel, a
windshield, an exhaust pipe and it sat on four
wheels.
It was a bus – a bookmobile, we called it.
We lived in the deep boonies with no town
hall, no police station and certainly no bricks-
and-mortar library. So once a week, on a
Thursday evening, for two hours at a time, the
library came to us.
It was the first time I truly understood what
civilization meant.
As I recall, you entered at the back door of
the bookmobile, browsed your way down a
narrow corridor surrounded by floor-to-ceiling
books, and emerged, with your selections duly
stamped, by the front door.
Seems almost Dickensian now, traipsing
to a book wagon at a crossroads to pick up
your weekly supply of words. Today
the country is festooned with public libraries
that border on the palatial. Heck, you
don’t even have to put your shoes on – you can
stay home and order books on the internet;
even download entire texts to your e-book or
iPad.
I’m not the only one who’s noticed. Two
independent bookstores in my town have
closed this past year.
Libraries are adjusting to this new reality.
Recently in the Canadian magazine
The Walrus, Michael Harris wrote of his visit
to the brand new City Centre Library in
Surrey, B.C.
From what he saw, it’s surprising the word
‘library’ made it into the official name of the
building. Inside, Harris found a café, a fully-
staffed recreation centre, lots of ‘interactive’
sculpture and furniture – and oh, yeah – books
too.
A ‘librarian’ explained to Harris that “Our
jobs are becoming more about helping
newcomers with their language skills, or
helping people access government
services….we’re kind of social workers,
actually”.
Harris interviewed the architect of the new,
multi-million-dollar City Centre Library and
he notes that in their conversation about the
architect’s motivation and vision for the
structure, the word ‘books’ was not mentioned
once.
It’s the way of the world. The opening
chapter of Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities
consists of one magnificent sentence of 120
words. We live in the time of Twitter, a
communication device that allows only 140
characters.
But Dickens didn’t have to contend with
Hollywood, a 300-channel TV universe, smart
phones and YouTube,
Did you know that when Dickens was
writing Great Expectations (in longhand,
with a quill pen on parchment) he did it in
instalments which would be duly dispatched
on board trans-Atlantic ships from
England to his fans in North America?
Those fans would line the shore as the
ship docked in New York, shouting up
to those aboard such questions as
“What happened to Little Nell? Does she
die?”
I miss Dickens. I miss my bookmobile too.
Arthur
Black
Other Views
Let’s hear it for our local libraries Shawn
Loughlin
Shawn’s Sense
While I did grow up in Huron County,
I didn’t really grow up in what you
would call its agricultural or rural
sections of it. Until I was five years old, my
family lived in Seaforth and then we moved to
Goderich. For the following seven years I
attended school there, walking to and from
school (there were no busses to my school, not
a single one), and wasn’t really aware that
there was much difference between Goderich
and any other community in the county.
By the time Grade 7 started, however, I had
moved to Egmondville, and, with stopovers
just outside of Egmondville and St. Joseph, I
eventually found myself living in Seaforth.
However, while I went to school with
farmers’ children and yes, even spent some
time enjoying some definitely rural parties, I
really wasn’t what you would call agricultural
or rural. I didn’t know much about anything
when it came to farming.
Looking back, I think I missed out on some
great opportunities to get a better view of what
it means to farm and be a farmer.
It’s because farming is such an important
part of the community I’m now a part of it and
because farming is such a large part of my
work I think that students in schools like
Maitland River Elementary School, North
Woods Elementary School and Hullett Central
Public School (and the former schools that fed
in to them) are so fortunate to be able to get in
touch with those rural roots.
Sure, as a student in Seaforth I could have
attended the Seaforth Fall Fair. Most years,
however, I didn’t.
Students at the aforementioned schools,
however, can, or in some cases, have to attend
the annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer
Thresher and Hobby Association, the
Elementary School Fair in Belgrave and the
Brussels Fall Fair.
Getting to see the (sometimes literal) fruits
of the labours of not only the agriculturally-
inclined, but of those with a greener thumb, a
passion for preserving or a knack for
decorating may not seem like a lot to the
students at the time, but through those
experiences they will learn a lot more about
growing and making their own food than
through nearly any other experience.
Getting to see the 4-H clubs show off what
they’ve learned, having the opportunity to taste
some fresh preserves (and yes, I get the irony
there) or just having a look at the giant
pumpkins, some heavier than the students
themselves, provides a great opportunity for
the young folks to enjoy the natural bounty
that Huron County provides.
Getting to know the people who produce
your food, or who may produce your food in
the future if they take over their family’s farm,
is important for any number of reasons, but I
think the most important one is trust in the
value of the product.
When I was away at school, I found a great
little farmers’ market just two blocks from my
school. I went there at least twice a month and
stocked up on everything from ground beef to
home-grown herbs. A friend from London and
I made it a bi-weekly trip and, when asked
why we did it, we both had the same reason:
we were used to knowing where our food
came from.
I’m not about to say that I knew where every
morsel was grown, processed, packaged and
shipped to (well, shipped to I could guess,
there is only the one grocery store in Seaforth),
but both of us knew people who were farmers
and liked to think we were still somewhat
connected to that lifestyle.
I got to know the butchers, the bakers and
the farmers (no candle-stick makers) at the
market and enjoyed shopping there.
That kind of knowing about growing
provides a unique sense of safety and even
local grocery stores get in on the act,
promoting their own store-made products.
Both of these conditions provide a unique
sense of comfort in a time when food recalls
from massive international corporations
dominate the news every few months.
It also was nice to know that, by removing
the middle-man, both local grocers and food
markets and local producers are getting a
larger slice of the financial pie than they would
if they sold pre-packaged goods.
Now, don’t get me wrong, I still did the
majority of my grocery shopping at a grocery
store.
Farmers’ markets are great for meat, veggies
and the occasional flowers for a date, but for a
student like me who isn’t fond of Kraft Dinner
(yes, blasphemy, I know), “breakfast” cereal
and milk made up the majority of my diet (and
heck, it still does whenever I can manage to
keep milk in the house long enough).
Through my university years I lived on off-
brand versions of Fruit Loops and Frosted
Flakes... as well as coffee. A lot of coffee.
Oh... and pizza and garlic bread. A lot of
pizza and garlic bread as well.
Plus there was this place called The
Admiral’s that was, unfortunately, right
between my place and the gym. It was famous
for its bacon double cheeseburger which, I’m
not exaggerating this at all for reference’s
sake, was actually a double peameal bacon,
quadruple-quarter-pounder burger and so large
that most people couldn’t take a bite and
capture both buns and all the slabs of meat. I
guess having a big mouth made me fortunate
in that one instance.
Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, the farmers’
market.
It was a quick elevator ride, followed by a
short walk and another elevator ride away and
was actually inside a building, so it ran all
winter long. I’m not ashamed to say that I
didn’t realize what grew in different seasons
until I spent four years buying my groceries
there and learning what was good when and
what I simply couldn’t get when.
Sure, it wasn’t exactly the education that I
would have received had I, like local students,
got to go to fall fairs and see what farming is
all about, but it was an education nonetheless.
Hopefully they realize, some day, how
beneficial these events are and continue to
keep them strong.
Denny
Scott
Denny’s Den
An education in a shopping experience
A look in the mirror
Last week I was involved with what could
be called a bit of a focus group. Pru
Robey from Artscape in Toronto was in
Blyth to discuss the repurposing of the former
Blyth Public School, one of the three prongs of
the highly-anticipated 14/19 campaign.
Robey was in Blyth to meet with 14/19
Project Manager Peter Smith, as well as the
owners of the school and other Blyth Festival
supporters.
In addition to a tour of the former school
building, Robey’s visit included a
brainstorming exercise over lunch with
residents, business people and councillors from
the Blyth area.
The Citizen’s camp was well represented
with Publisher Keith Roulston attending, in
addition to reporter Denny Scott and myself.
None of us were there “working” as we had
been brought in for our opinions.
We broke into two groups, one led by Smith
and the other led by Blyth BIA Chair Rick
Elliott, and named some things that made
Blyth, and the greater Huron County area,
culturally significant.
Basically, we needed to produce a list of
what made Huron County great.
The results were fascinating and far-
reaching. Answers ranged from the Blyth
Festival, to volunteers to apples.
My table, headed by Smith, worked in a
cyclical format, where Smith went around the
table asking someone to name something they
love about Huron County and around and
around the table we went. It was amazing to
see just how many times we went around the
table without hesitating and without stopping.
Driven by a determination to “beat” the other
table by coming up with a bigger list than they
did, our list was well over 100 items long. And
when our tables switched leaders, and Elliott
came over to our table, we realized that even
with our vast list, we had missed some.
It was refreshing to think of all that this area
has going for it.
Bad news can be weighty sometimes and it
can dominate our minds. So when we hear of
rural Ontario missing out on this funding or
that program, it can be easy to get discouraged.
However, within a group of people dedicated to
the betterment of the community, it’s a
different kind of wake-up call to realize all that
these communities have going for them, rather
than being told all the ways big cities have
them beat.
It was great to think about all that service
clubs do for local communities and all that is
accomplished thanks to volunteers. It was
reassuring to think of all of the food we have at
our disposal in Huron County, whether it be
through farmers’ markets (which I know
Denny wrote about this week) or through small
farm gate stores.
I was also proud to hear that The Citizen and
its sister publications were also cited as a
cultural asset to Blyth and Brussels and their
surrounding communities.
I have often commented about how lonely
writing can be sometimes (not in a cry-myself-
to-sleep kind of way, but in a solitary, vacuum
sort of way). We write stories that we, in this
office, feel the people in the community want
to read, so it’s nice to hear that we’ve been
right some of the time and that people like
what we’re putting out there.
So, in short, it was nice to have a lunch like
that. Everyone in this community should have
a lunch like we had last week to know just
what they have at their fingertips by being
here, rather than letting other people convince
them of what they’re missing by being here.
“It takes less time to do a thing right than
to explain why you did it wrong.”
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Final Thought