We go to literature to be changed. -- Maggie Smith I was taken captive by a book last week. I tried to resist. Every couple of hours I turned off the light and closed my eyes, but sleep would not come. The book kept whispering to me. When I squeezed my eyelids tighter, the whispers grew louder. I thought a few more pages would satisfy the whisperer and tire me out, but no! At 5 AM, I closed the cover on the last page and then lay in the light of early dawn savoring what I had consumed. I was tired the rest of the day, but I had no regrets. The story still stirs in me today. Language is a miracle. And so is the power to read and to write. It is a gift I would like to give to everyone. It is the rich inheritance I leave to my daughter who is a reader too. When you are a reader your life and your thinking are shaped by a chorus of voices, of possibilities that give flexibility to thoughts and points of view. Words change us. Yes, they have the power to harm, but more often, they teach us and guide us and heal us, and sometimes they save us too. Words on a page are a commitment. Handwritten, or printed and published, there is no turning back. A writer exposes and is exposed making writing an act of bravery. Committed words on a page encourage us to speak and to speak up. And it takes perseverance to write a book and to read one. Mariann Edgar Budde wrote that perseverance is the hidden virtue of every courageous life. Rarely do we see what it costs others to do what seems effortless to us. Books heal shame and give hope when we read of the perseverance of others. We find pathways and solutions and people like us. We know that if another endured that, than we can endure this. Through words we live more fully in the here and now even as we relive the past and enter the future. Books open another person’s heart and mind, and we peek inside. In doing so, we see our own lives more clearly; we understand the impact of history, circumstances, and choices on people, on ourselves. It makes us wiser and more forgiving. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote: I was made for the library, not the classroom. The classroom was a jail of other people’s interests; the library was open, unending, free. I was not much for school either, but give me the library any day. And it is at the library that words are gathered, categorized and catalogued. Words are there to serve us. Someone left their words behind so that we might go forward smarter, more thoughtful and better prepared, changed by examination and re-examination. We find words to grow into and words that expand our own web of knowledge. There is meaning and purpose on the shelves. Our own lives are faced as we explore the lives of others and the knowledge they accumulated. Books are good friends to me. Each fits into my own story and speaks to me at a particular moment in my life, a particular stage of my own development. Some friends were with me at the beginning, some as the plot thickened, and I know that some will accompany me for the entire ride. Each of our lives is a storybook in progress. Everything that we see, hear and experience is stored in memory, the bookshelf of the mind. Hope and worry are make-believe stories we tell ourselves. Grief and pride are what we feel when a chapter ends. When we lose memory, individually or collectively, that is how we are erased. Books and good writing comfort me in these difficult times. I marvel and give thanks that there continue to be so many gifted writers, so many wonderful books. As Thomas Jefferson said, “I cannot live in a world without books,” and I thank the forefathers for our library system. And I want to thank Dr. Seuss for teaching me to read with words and rhymes that tickled my mind and my imagination. And a thank you to Nancy Drew for making me a page turner and introducing me to chapter books and the pride of reading a “big” book, and for showing me that girls born in the 1950s could be smart and do interesting things, live adventurous lives. Reading a book is a private experience with public consequences. It requires effort and introspection unlike the loudspeaker of social media contrived to fill us with outrage in order to sell advertising. I have read that the ultimate freedom is to imagine and think for ourselves. That is the foundation of democracy. When we read, we are reminded of how much we have in common. The Republic of Imagination is a country we can all believe in. On the worst days the state of the country and the world seem hopeless, and then I read a wonderful book or hear the lyrics to a beautiful song, and I think: that came from inside someone’s mind, someone’s heart, and it gives me hope that hatred and careless people will not get the last word. So, please, let's tell a new story.
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I set out on the walking path as usual this morning. At the end of the path there is a large commercial property. Most days I pick up a few extra miles by circling the lot twice before reversing for home. Lately, I have encountered a maintenance worker there on my first pass around the lot. The maintenance worker is an older gentleman. His build is so slight that his baseball cap alone seems to overwhelm his small frame. He pushes a cart full of brooms and shovels, sprays and rags while pulling a vacuum cleaner behind him. This busy man is not much taller than the cart he maneuvers around this giant property. Most days I greet him with a smile and a simple hello. Some days I compliment him on the way he keeps the property looking so lovely. This morning as I came around a bend in the sidewalk I saw the maintenance worker taking a break at a picnic table inside a small pavilion. He turned to me and said, “There’s my little lady.” I laughed and said, “I think God intended for us to meet. I’m Lilli.” Smiling broadly, he extended his hand to me, “Jesse.” The encounter was pleasant and brief, but as I walked on I could not ignore the strength that came from his hand. Had we stood side-by-side, no one would have doubted that I was the sturdier one of this pair, and yet the strength there in his hand… And that feeling of strength remained upon my palm and at the base of my thumb for much of the day. Ironically, the right hand I offered to Jesse is a hand weakened from radiation following breast cancer treatment. It started with a fibrosis in my shoulder and the nerve pain inched its way down my arm into my hand. I first noticed the pain and the weakness as I struggled to lift a small pot of boiling water from the stove. But here, after this brief encounter, I felt a renewed if not unusual strength in my right hand. I know that it has become cliché to say that people and things are not always what they seem or that looks can be deceiving, but the strength in Jesse’s hand was a needed reminder for me. We make big judgments about people based on a glance, but most people have unseen strengths earned through hardship, work, and even the ordinary demands of daily living. I study my weakened hand and feel Jesse’s strength upon it, a strength that was given freely and generously in response to nothing more than a smile and a kind word or two, and I wonder: can it really be that easy? Share your strength with someone today.  The votes are in, and there is no doubt in my mind that we have a legitimate winner. The best word won! And in my book, it is the best invention since deodorant. It is just too good to keep to myself. Earlier this week, in a “eureka!” moment I clicked on the link supplied by a friend who is also a lover of words, a thinker, and a seeker. Being from the school of If You Can Name It, You Can Tame It, I am thrilled to have a name for the disease that has overtaken society and an answer to my incessant question, “What the hell just happened?” I feel like a scientist who has spent a lifetime looking down into a microscope or up into the sky and who suddenly arrives at a cosmic breakthrough. What I don’t understand is how this has stayed so quiet. Why hasn’t the inventor rocketed to fame? Applause please for Cory Doctorow and the American Dialect Society word of the year: enshittification. I am no John Maynard Keynes or Milton Friedman, but my take on economics is that unchecked capitalism moves toward greed and corruption. There are no “free markets” where supply is created by demand. The suppliers psychologically and physically manipulate us into “demanding” their products and services. This is why we need government—to keep us all socially responsible, but enough about online platforms and the state of the economy and American politics. I am bringing this new word of the year into common use to include anything that once was good but has been degraded by negative social forces. Like a kid who just learned the power of dirty words, I find opportunities everywhere to use my new vocabulary. Scrabble anyone? My children will be pleased to know that I am finally replacing the F word in my daily speech, something else that has gone to ruin as I age in this time of general degradation. If you knew me in the past, you might think I am a prisoner of war making coerced statements, but no, it’s really me, another case of the rot done by technology. Enshittification. Say it once more with feeling! We know what we’ve got. Or what’s got us. Get out some hand sanitizer. Put on some gloves. Let’s clean up this mess! |
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August 2026
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