Read?— Between the Lines? Part Two
The Library of Congress What’s the Big Deal?
Well it’s not just a library for congress, however, what if…. Every member of congress checked out 100 items from the library a year? How long would it take for each member to get through the entire collection held as of right now? Well …. Here’s an argument for term limits… It would take just about 2000 years or 1,000 freaking elections for members of the House. Now if the average American (reading an average of 12 books a year and lives about 80 years started reading just the books and left the “media” collections behind it would take 260 or so lifetimes to get from the table of contents to the acknowledgements or index so to speak. Yep..if you then included the media… let’s round that off to a cool millennium per person. If you read a book from the library every day. It would take you over 68,000 years and that’s without listening to any of the recordings or browsing the incredible digital image collection.
Just one more bit of info to give folks a perspective on the size of this library? If you take the “average” size of a library for a city of 50,000 th 100,000 the Library of Congress is 1,000 times that size. How many librarians would that take to be walking around telling kids like me to be quiet….wow!
If you want to know more about this library of congress or if you are wondering if most of our elected officials even know how to read…well you can find out a whole lot more by going to the website http://www.loc.gov and digging in.
So what’s exploring the scope of this massive collection have to do with seeking peace and joy? It would seem there are two lessons that you can pull from the shelf without even using the card catalog. What’s a card catalog? If you are a pre-Netscape Navigator person try explaining that to a youth…
Anyway the two lessons
The first is that you can learn something new every day and in the never ending adventure we call life gaining new knowledge to overcome fear of the unknown and to solve problems/challenges having access to information sure helps.
Second… there is a good reason to honor humility. So you think you know a lot? Do you know people who think they know it al? Well… given the above facts it would seem evidence proves just how little everyone might know. Maybe we need each other to help fill in the gap and maybe the gap is like the Grand Canyon rather than the little crack in the corner of your phone screen?
Let’s face it the Library of Congress has been collecting information for a couple of hundred years and has materials that date back centuries including a Gutenberg Bible (which I think I used in Catholic grade school). Yet, that’s just one collection of knowledge and even if it is the largest library in the world it’s a literal drop in the bucket. so take some peace and joy in the notion that you can always find new clues to the mysteries of life and that you will never be searching alone. Know that there. Will always be wisdom to be had each day and that no one can claim to have it all.
And speaking of “all”. This is about all I am inspired to write today… I have a book to listen to and a walk to take and encourage you to do the same. Peace
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