Rite of Spring

The Friends of Otis Library Book Sale starts this Friday and I’d like to offer some words about it that I feel bear repeating.

According to a survey I just created children who are raised with books in their homes have 75% fewer misspellings on their visible tattoos. If you had difficulty finding the humor in that sentence, maybe the problem isn't related to tattoos. But if you did smile even wanly, thank a teacher and a librarian.

I and my siblings were fortunate growing up to have a houseful of books, and my wife and I did very much the same in the household in which we raised our two children. Literacy is not a lost art, but in the not-too-distant future when Carmen San Diego finds Waldo, he'll probably be reading a book, about striped shirts but holding it upside down (oh! the humanity!).

In the world today it's not just television, video games, computers, or smartphones that are changing our relationship with the written word, it's the tendency to regard books as a rationed resource or a luxury we feel we can't afford.

That is NOT the case, especially this weekend in Norwich. Starting this Friday, at 9 in the morning with an Early Bird preview hour (ten dollars gets you first crack at some delectables and collectibles), the Friends of Otis Library unlock the basement doors for their Annual Spring Sale.

Aside from that Early Bird business, the entire three days are free and whatever your heart, mind, and eyes desire can be found. All winter long, the Friends have been sorting and organizing for this Bookanalia. Sports, history, biography, gardening (since Spring seems to finally be here), mystery, classics of traditional and modern literature, and categories invented since I started writing this sentence are all sorted, stacked, and shelved throughout the subterranean recesses at bargain basement prices.

Maggy Rudy's Mouse Houses

And it's not just books. There are CDs, DVDs BVDs (I could be making this up, tread lightly) and prices are so low you'll buy twice as much as you planned at a fraction of the cost. On any of the days you stop by the library, and free admission is from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on both Friday and Saturday and from noon to 3 on Sunday, you'll learn there are all kinds of free parking downtown, despite what so many people people who never go downtown keep saying.

After your book-buying binge, follow your nose and sate your ravenous hunger and check out one of the restaurants as close to Otis Library as Dewey is to Decimal. You can work up quite an appetite book shopping, a lot of people don't know that; don't be one of them. Because you haven't been downtown in a while you may not have noticed, but we have terrific places for a quick bite or to savor a full meal.

And isn't it strange how many people you'll see on the sidewalks and crosswalks downtown that those no-parking experts insist aren't even there? And if the weather is even close to the spring we feel we are entitled to, it'll be a perfect time to break out one of those purchases and enjoy a sidewalk scene and a coffee. 

Perhaps you'll be inspired to write the next Great American Novel. I believe I know a library where people will enjoy it.
-bill kenny