In America, Nostalgia For Things Is Apt

We Want To Create A Sort Of Linguistic Lourdes, Where Evil And Misfortune Are Dispelled By A Dip In The Waters Of Euphemism

For The Machine Meant The Conquest Of Horizontal Space. It Also Meant A Sense Of That Space Which Few People Had Experienced Before – The Succession And Superimposition Of Views, The Unfolding Of Landscape In Flickering Surfaces As One Was Carried Swiftly Past It, And An Exaggerated Feeling Of Relative Motion (the Poplars Nearby Seeming To Move Faster Than The Church Spire Across The Field) Due To Parallax. The View From The Train Was Not The View From The Horse. It Compressed More Motifs Into The Same Time. Conversely, It Left Less Time In Which To Dwell On Any One Thing.

The Point Of A Library's Existence Is Not Persuasion Or Evangelism, But Knowledge. It Is Irrelevant To The Good Library Whether, As An Institution, It Shares Or Promotes Your Core Values Or Mine, Or The Attorney General's Or Saddam Hussein's. The Library Is Always An Instrument Of Choice, And The Choice Is Always Yours, Not Your Elected Or Designated Leaders.

On The Whole, Money Does Artists Much More Good Than Harm. The Idea That One Benefits From Cold Water, Crusts And Debt Collectors Is Now Almost Extinct, Like Belief In The Reformatory Power Of Flogging.

It Was A Secular Cathedral, Dedicated To The Rites Of Travel.