I didn’t always love libraries. Shocker, isn’t it? Wouldn’t an avid reader and writer have fond memories of library visits, snuggled against mom during story times and carrying out as many books as her little arms could hold?

That would be closer to my own children’s memories. No, my memories are of a dark, dank, old place. Dull, musty, stern, and lifeless. It gave me the heebie-jeebies. In elementary school, I won a writing award sponsored by the library. Somewhere I have a newspaper clipping of me, sitting alongside the other winners, on the steps outside of the library. Some enormous trees grew outside the library, maybe sycamores. The steps and those trees were about as close as I liked to get to the place.