Old doorknob, Bedlam Farm

November 3, 2010 – Good news. My brother Steve Kass,  a famous radio and political personality  in Rhode Island, just called to tell me that I have been invited to the Rochambeau Branch (Hope Street) of the Providence Public Library on Thursday, January 27, as part of my rapidly evolving library tour. Big appearance for me. The Rochambeau Library Branch is the place where I first became a writer, where a tough and loving librarian told me she would one day see my books on her shelves. I believed her. And her prophecy came true.

I was born in Providence, and have always loved its spirit, character and sense of neighborhood. It was not always a happy place for me, but that was not the city’s fault and the Rochambeau Library arguably saved my life. Least I can do is go back there.

Steve said the library was excited about my appearing there, and the appearance is scheduled for 7 p.m. on the 27t.

The Providence Public Library, like most others, is battling staff and budget and hours cuts. I am grateful to go there.

I am swamped with invitations, but so have agreed to go to Sharon, Conn, the Osterville Library in Chatham, the Doylestown Public Library and will probably also appear in Granville, N.Y., at the Pember Library, although that is not yet confirmed. My library tour – meant to support libraries and focus attention on their struggles, as well as sell my book, has to be in January as I can’t do it any other time next year.

I am probably adding stops in Cobbleskill, N.Y.,  Westchester and Vineyard Haven, Mass. as well. And now, Providence, my home library and the place I learned to love libraries. That will be a special event for me, and I am very eager to get there and grateful to my brother for helping set up, something that is very fitting and important to me. Life took Steve and I apart from one another, and is now bringing us back together, where we should be. This library tour is shaping up to be something important. Libraries are the best of us, and if we lose them, we lose a part of us, a part of the American experience, that cannot be replaced by Facebook, the Internet or cable TV.

Those things have their place, but they are not about refuge, community, ideas and story-telling, which libraries are in the real and material world, where real and material people desperately need them. A country that cannibalizes its libraries sheds a part of its soul.