A little girl learning to read sits in a chintz chair in her bedroom, The Tale of Peter Rabbit in her hands. She found the story in the local library, thrilled that she can read and follow the tale page by page.

That little girl was me. Being excited that I could read, that story launched my weekly visits to the library. Later, when I could read more advanced books, I took out at least two books a week and immediately sat in my chintz chair to start reading them. Soon I graduated to biographies of important women like Martha Washington and Abigail Adams along with other interesting biographies about heroic girls and interesting women. I have loved reading ever since.

Our library was a great place to go. It was full of promising tales, both true and fictional. I remember creeping along the shelves, my hands touching the dark wood, as I searched for books I might want to read, first in the children’s section and later among the young adult shelves and then marveling at the seas of adult offerings.

I was thinking of this lately because last month was National Library month which celebrates the critical role libraries and librarians play in expanding our knowledge, encouraging our curiosity, and facilitating our attempts at research, which comes in handy when there is something you desperately want to know more about, or simply want a good book to curl up with on winter’s snowy days.

I recalled long drawers of index cards that told me where to find a pre-internet book. If I wasn’t successful a librarian would help me, which often led to a conversation about what I wanted to read.

Later, when I began to visit historical libraries that had long rows of tables with green glass lamps where serious scholars worked, I was fascinated by how intense they were. And I have been lucky enough to visit amazing libraries in several countries, like the Trinity College library in Dublin where the Book of Kells resides. Written more than 1200 years ago, it is known for the beauty of its stunningly illuminated borders on the manuscript pages that people wait in line to see.

There’s also the Bodleinan libraries in Oxford, England, comprised of 23 libraries. Lots of historic European libraries are amazing. They are beautiful, both for what’s inside but also for their exquisite architecture. They’re worth a visit if not a pilgrimage.

But you don’t have to go abroad to see a world-famous library. The New York Public Library is known for its huge research collections, its marble lions at the entrance on Fifth Avenue on Manhattan and its Beaux Arts architecture. It houses the Gutenberg Bible, the Declaration of Independence, and the real Winnie the Pooh doll!

One historic library to note is the Pack Horse Library that was established as part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration (WPA) to help lift America out of the Great Depression in the 1930s. It was an interesting initiative, because it provided roving horseback libraries to boost employment and literacy.

It’s not only libraries I admire. Librarians are among the special people who make libraries work. And they go all the way back as far as 276 – 194 BCE, a Greek mathematician and astronomer was the head librarian at the Library of Alexandria in Egypt. Some other famous librarians include Benjamin Franklin, who founded the Library Company of Philadelphia and served as its

first librarian. Lewis Caroll was also a librarian before he wrote Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. And the artist Marcel Duchamp worked as a librarian in Paris.

Thankfully there are also activist librarians, like the ones who refuse to remove banned books from their shelves and even showcase them. Barbara Gittings was a radical librarian who promoted LGLBTQ+ literature. She also created the first gay caucus in the American Library Association. And Effie Lee Morris, an early 20th century librarian advocated for library services for children, the visually impaired, and minorities, becoming the first Black person to hold an administrative position in the San Francisco public library.

It’s no wonder librarians are special people who quietly go about their work in support of learning, literacy, and legacies. Some of them are heroic, like Belle da Costa Green, who was a prominent librarian and manuscript expert in the 20th century who passed as white while curating J.P. Morgan's rare book collection. She hid her identity to navigate a racist society and became a powerful cultural force, serving as the first director of the Morgan Library & Museum.

So, I’m belatedly thankful for librarians and libraries, especially in these difficult times that call for solace and quiet pleasure. Reading new works by favorite authors, or new ones, is like comfort food. They soothe us, perhaps inspire us to be courageous, and often gives us hope. As writer Neil Gaiman has said, "Libraries are the thin red line between civilization and barbarism.”

Albert Einstein was right about libraries too: “The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” Next time you visit a library, give the librarian a high five or say Thank You. It’s well deserved and bound to make their day.

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Elayne writes from Brattleboro, Vt.

Most years when we’re on the threshold of a new year, I don’t think about resolutions I probably can’t keep. But I do contemplate my life as a writer as I put aside prior works and enter a new ever changing writing landscape. I ask myself what I will write about and worry that I will not honor my annual resolution to return to revising my novel. I consider the fact that occasionally people are offended when I am being political in my commentaries, and I will likely continuing doing so.

This year I was inspired by George Orwell, author of Animal Farm and 1984, to ask myself the question the renowned writer asked himself: Why do I write? Where does the compulsion I have to put words on paper originate? Do my words, thoughts, and ideas matter? I found some answers in Orwell’s notable personal essay, “Why I Write,” written at the end of his life.

Like Orwell, I knew from an early age that I loved writing, reading, and rolling words around in my mouth but I didn’t know until I was ten that I wanted to be a writer. At that tender age I went to the “Five and Dime” store to buy the biggest pad of lined writing paper I could find. When the saleswoman asked why I wanted it I said, “Please don’t laugh at me. I want to write a book.” She smiled so I told her I already had the plot in my mind. At thirteen I submitted a Christmas poem to The Saturday Evening Post magazine. It was rejected but I still think it was a good poem.

As I grew older my fantasy life involved story ideas including pot-boiler romances, poems of people and place, and serious thoughts about life as I observed and lived it. In high school I loved writing essays, and I loved words, thanks to some fine, challenging teachers. Words were music to my ear, and I took profound pleasure in picking the right ones to express myself.

I was a bit of a truth teller by then and I had a growing propensity for standing up to authority when I thought those in power were wrong. I built a case in my head, choosing my words carefully, delivering them verbally or in writing with visible effect. Then I described the events with meticulous accuracy and a dose of drama to my friends. Just as Orwell wrote in his essay, “I wanted to write detailed descriptions and arresting similes …in which words were used partly for the sake of their sound.” I also wanted my words to make a difference in how I, and others, were treated by authority figures.

Orwell believed that there were four main motives for writing: Egotism, Aesthetic enthusiasm (“the desire to share an experience one feels is valuable in words and their right arrangement”), Historical impulse (“the desire to see things as they are”), and political purpose (“the desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s ideas of the kind of society that they should strive for.”)

These four motives resonate mightily for me. I saw myself in all of them, including ego. Most writers want to be noticed, praised, and remembered posthumously. But it is Orwell’s other three motives that helped me know why I write. It’s because I believe I have something worthy to say, in my own voice, not only in commentaries and personal essays, but also via fiction, poetry, and memoir, all of which expose and grapple with human experience. The feedback readers share with me when they aren’t offended by my political perspective is a form of validation, and a gift that keeps me doing it, Also, I can’t not do it. It’s a way of being part of the human family, and it’s in my DNA. Like Orwell, my starting point is almost always “a sense of justice.” And like him, I “suffer the struggles of being a writer, driven by some demon which one can never resist.”

The writer Joan Didion also wrote about why she writes after reading Orwell’s essay. She famously said, “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means.” In short, she is saying “How do I know what I think until I see what I’ve written.” Like her, writing gives me clarity as well as enormous relief when I am struggling with daily reality or existential challenges.

Didion asked, “What do we do with knowledge that we cannot bear to live with? What do we do with the things we don’t want to know?” Photographers like Diane Arbus and Dorthea Lange answered that question visually. Like other writers who view the world through lenses of human frailty, foibles and promise, I write my way through the challenges they present, not only for myself, but for others too. I’m sure I will be compelled to do it to my dying day.

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