This is the first public library I ever visited, when I was very young and lived in a little town in Pennsylvania called North East, before we moved to Ohio.  There was already a Free Library Association in the town in 1904, and in 1913 John McCord who lived in Chicago but who had once also lived in the town, gave the money to build this building which opened in 1916. 

A library is probably the most subversive place you can go to in a small town.  What you find there can save a small child's life.  It can give a little kid hope.  It can give him glimpses of a world he can't even imagine otherwise. 

"Someday," my mother used to say when I would come home sad from school, "you will meet people who are more like you."  She did not say, "who will like you," although that was understood, but "who are more like you," meaning that someday I would find people who liked the things I liked and read the books I read and thought about the things I thought about.  And she was right.  

So my mother was also subversive.  Like the library.  She knew there was a big world out there.  

She also knew that sometimes "fiction" was a polite word for the opposite of truth.  She was far too well-bred to call people liars, but she made it very clear what she thought of people who made things up.  She believed the Truth had tremendous power, right up there with Love.  She also believed there was a moral way to live in this world, which meant caring about people who were different from you.  What happened to the littlest and the youngest and the least fortunate happened to all of us.  There was a bell tolling, and you didn't need to ask for whom. 

She was born the year this library opened in this little town in Pennsylvania.  She was a Methodist and a Republican and yet listening to the President last night was like hearing the very things my mother used to say to us when we were growing up.  That we were all smart enough to know better.  That we were to be held responsible and accountable.  That we all had to learn to share and get along.  That money didn't buy manners and was no excuse for bad behavior either. That if we wanted to have a civil conversation she was willing to listen, but not if we were going to shout.  That good people do not ignore wrongs or injustice to their fellows, or to their little sister either.  That there is a place for each and every one of us in this world.  That God doesn't make mistakes, and He doesn't forget you, even if He happens to be very very busy.  He loves all of us and wants us to be good and kind to each other all the time and especially when we don't think He's looking. 

Like I said, she was subversive.  She's been gone a long time now but I feel pretty certain she would have liked what the President had to say.  I think she would have enjoyed hearing him.  I also think she would be surprised to hear some of the "fiction" people have been spreading around.  Or shouting.  There's no need to shout, she would say.  It's a big world out there, room enough for everybody, but not so big it has room for people to hurt or be hurt.  And not so big you can hide the truth either.