Ode to a Library

As a graduate student at Georgetown, I relied heavily on inter-library loan and the Library of Congress. But occasionally, I liked to get away from the academic grind, and turned to the local library.

My local branch was a beautiful mansionesque building at Wisconsin and R. Set up on a hill, it looked over the rest of the neighborhood. And on Monday, it burned. And I can't tell from news reports how much was salvaged. It wasn't alone either - another DC treasure, Eastern Market - was also heavily damaged by a fire earlier in the day.

History suffered too:

The library's archivist, meanwhile, stood at Wisconsin and R streets, heartbroken over warped and soot-covered historic paintings and documents that firefighters were bringing out and placing on plastic sheeting on the sidewalk.

The branch's holdings include photos, maps and paintings of the neighborhood and individual files on each home in Georgetown that have been donated over the decades.

I have no words. Libraries and history should never be lost.

Cricket - c.1989-2006

this is my fuzzy little princess, seen last Christmas

On a day tailormade for memorials, it saddens me to add to the bunch Cricket, my (parents') tortoiseshell who was terrified of just about everything, and a little bit bitchy, but all in all a very sweet little cat.

She became part of our household in July 1995; she came into the animal shelter in a carrier while we were there and settled into my mother's arms before ever going into a shelter cage. And though she hid for the first few days in our house, and was later pestered by her rambunctious fellow kitty Mikey, she settled in. We named her Cricket after the squeaky noise she made, although she came to whine imperiously more than squeak. And even though she had been ailing for quite some time, it is still a shock to lose her.

Lest you be thinking this is unrelated to books, Cricket used to like to lie on my back or the back of my legs if I was reading on my stomach. (Each of my cats has had a different way of reading with me. Pushy used to like to curl up under my chin and drool on the pages; Mikey would prefer to swish his tail in front of my face so that I couldn't see.)

Farewell Cricket. We've loved you very much.