Chain Reaction
Difficulty ● ● ◐ ○ ○
Puzzle Notes
Greetings Friends,
With a library you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how ~Doris Lessing
While checking out Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste” from the library recently, the librarian asked if I needed a receipt (no, thank you) and handed me the book, with information about the 17-Across (which got the ball rolling for this week’s puzzle theme.) I started to think about why we love libraries so much.
In grade school, I was in awe of the one-room public library that gifted me my first library card – an orange piece of cardboard, rectangular, with rounded edges, issued by a librarian wearing a large coral cameo ring on the index finger. (Does anyone ever forget their first library card?) In college, our school IDs doubled as library cards and off I went, (with a cup of coffee smuggled into a knapsack), up the grand inner staircase of Columbia University’s Butler Library, and into the stacks. Heaven. Later, the New York Public Library would become an extension of our living room.
Doris Lessing sums it up beautifully. We love the place that allows us to read whatever we want and to educate ourselves totally on our own terms. Amen.
Welcome to Week 571 of Crossword Nation. We humbly invite you to solve “Chain Reaction” as your diversion of the week. Happy solving and reading.
Thank you for subscribing and for re-upping! Until next time, I remain . . .
Cruciverbally yours,
Liz
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Happy solving and be well!
Liz Gorski