Day: January 27, 2011

Several people have asked me on the library tour about my education, and I have to say I don’t have much. I lurked and loitered my way through public education and was booted out of the two colleges I attended for failure to participate in much of anything. I never had a teacher who liked me much, and I returned the favor. It might be differnt now.

I am an uabashed fan of Beavis & Butthead and their credo: because I am stupid, I am free. Because I don’t know what I am supposed to think, I am free to think.

I respect education and would still like to go and get some. I’d love to go back to college one day, but I’d ever make it through the paperwork I feel it’s my role to be outside the tent pissing in. It gives me a worldview that is certainly not noble or superior, but it is my own. Walking through Brown today with Maria, I fairly bristled at a sort of nameless rage  about my own life outside the gates of the mind. I always wanted in. Then I learned not to want what you don’t have, and celebrate what you do.

Life is a powerful teacher, and I wonder sometimes how my life might have evolved if I had gone to a college like Brown, which I desperately wanted to do as a kid. Today I stood outside of the same gates I often looked through when I was young, and I did not feel that yearning or wish to be on the other side. One day I might like to go back to college and learn something I don’t know, perhaps even teach something. But my guess is that I have found my place, and I know which side of the fence I ought to be living in.

The Ragtag Used Bookstore, Cobleskill, N.Y.

It was a neat scene. Mounds of snow were everywhere, and cars could hardly pass one another on Hope Street. Tom O’Donnell, the Rochambeau Community Library’s gracious and charismatic director, was waiting for me in the doorway. The storm had paralyzed Providence for much of the day, and the event had been cancelled for a time yesterday before Tom urged that it be held as scheduled. I was expect a handful of people. About 30 showed up, and we had a cozy, warm and compelling time together.

I am not a fan of nostalgia and memory can be a trick. The library was nothing like I had remembered it, and a beautiful new addition had been added. Circulation is up, and the community is ferociously supportive. I liked Tom a lot. An actor and former bookseller, he is running a vibrant library. I saw the place where I first came into the library, read my books, was told I might become a writer. It meant a lot to be there, and to have such a warm, receptive and appreciative group of people. I see that the blog has an impact beyond my own narrow imagination and it is worth working hard to maintain and upgrade, which I will keep doing.

It felt good to be a writer. It was very meaningful to come to Providence, to say goodbye to some things and greet others. The circle turns and turns. My writing about farms, libraries, fear and depression touch some deep chords, as well as dogs and other animals. I need to hear that sometims. It was a bit wrenching to go see my parents in their windswept cemetery off of a highway and I talked to my mother about my life. Tomorrow, I’m going to find my grandmother’s house. No one in my life until recently had ever loved me as much as she did, and I want to visit her tenement and tiny mom-and-pop store where she saved Hershey Kisses and Twizzler’s for me. And shiny new pennies.

Thanks to the Rochambeau Library and the people who turned out. If my writing and blog means a lot to you, your words mean as much to me.

Tomorrow, onto Osterville, 2 p.m. Then Scituate, 7 p.m.Books will be sold and signed at both places, and I will sign any books people bring, as well as body parts. Maria will be sketching and we will also be selling notecards to benefit family farms.

When I was a kid, I hung out at Brown pining for my sense of what might be going on inside those buildings. I don’t pine for other lives any longer, I am happy with mine. But the buildings of Brown had a big impact on me, and they still do. I was struck by the wondrous design of this classroom, which also has a dance studio inside of it.

I’m happy to be on the library tour. Libraries are the best of us, a foundation of our cultural soul.

Went to visit the Rochambeau Branch of the Providence Public Library. The library was closed today due to the big storm that hit overnight, and will reopen tonight for my talk at 7 p.m. It’s changed since I went there. The library is about five blocks from my house in Providence. I remember when I first went in there. I was playing hooky from school to avoid a test and ended up getting chased by some kids. I hit behind the A& P, then made a break  down Hope Street, but didn’t quite make it.

I dove into the library, feeling a bit put upon, and there was Miss McCarthy, standing tall as a statue, glowering at me. She said if I was going to be there, I had to have a library card, which I did  not have. I loved the smell and feel of the rubber stamps they used on the date stickers, and the leathery smell of the books.  I was quite proud to get a library card.  It was the first thing I ever belonged to that merited a card. She warned me to be quiet, to clean up after myself, not to leave books strewn about, to return them promptly and never steal one,  and to behave. She was formidable.

She then took me to a shelf and gave me some stories and books by Mark Twain, and then two or three others, including one about a frightened boy who went on to become a great general – George S. Patton. I could not imagine then why she gave me this story. I came back a week later, and a stack of books was waiting for me to sort through. Miss McCarthy never asked a thing about me, or why I was there. But we somehow got quite close, nonetheless. She came to know me through the stories I loved and the ones I wrote for her. She gave birth to me as a writer. Wherever you are, Miss McCarthy, thanks, and I want you to know that am very sorry about the Hemingway book that I slipped out one day and didn’t return, because I couldn’t bear to part with it and couldn’t afford to buy it. I will pay for it. For years, I have imagined you will appear in the night with your handkerchief tucked into your blouse and ask where the book was.