— cw / mentions of genocide
Dear Mika,
I miss the trees, too. I miss standing in the water and watching the salt come up to kiss your hair. I still carry part of those burns and I would bear that pain again and again if it meant returning to Long Beach with you (though maybe we stay clear of the wolves).
I still have history on the brain. Legacies, not as much, though I know yours will stretch through time in ways you can’t fathom (through Danica, and water soaking your shoes after a sudden storm, and you and me, emphasis on ‘and’.)
Yesterday I wrote a 6-page paper on the first library in Bath, North Carolina, even though I have never been to North Carolina or any town called Bath. It was intended to be a parish library, but the minister that came with it was apparently a hot mess and left the library and his parishioners completely unattended after 3 short years.
Anyway, the parish library had books on all kinds of subjects, from theology (of course), to math, and history, and sports, and even poetry. All that and more for a total of about 166 items (if my memory hasn’t failed me too quickly), which is honestly smaller than my collection of books, to put it into perspective. These books were for the clergymen to use, so they could learn about the world and apply that knowledge to their ministry. A second collection came years later for the “layman,” which consisted of about 800+ pamphlets focused entirely on theology. People could check those out, of course.
The thing that got me about this library was that people rarely even got to use it! The aforementioned minister was supposed to keep the library, and didn’t, and the man that supposedly kept it afterward was not a minister, and not really equipped to be lending out books either. He just cared about them, so he kept them, which meant a lot in the coming years, because Bath was subject to a 3-year conflict with the Tuscarora people, who, if you could guess it, were not really loving the new settlement of Bath.
In the end, as I understand it, that parish library, small and hopeful, was subject to years of neglect and chaos before it was transformed, due to the peoples’ fondness for rare books, into the first public library of North Carolina. At least for a time. It was later disbanded during the Revolutionary War, and no other public library would form in North Carolina until the late-1800s.
I’ll spare you the existentialist look back on the people that wanted to read those books, or on the reverend who was too distracted to look after them, or on the Tuscarora people who chose to fight back against English colonizers (though I just learned that the Tuscarora migrated to Ontario after this, which is not so much a “fun” fact as it is a surprising one, for obvious personal reasons).
I don’t entirely know to what end I brought this up, except that it was on my mind because I spent hours on it and I found it pretty interesting.
But I suppose I also want to acknowledge the fact that it’s strange and remarkable and upsetting to read about a largely good thing (the development of public libraries) when it was contextualized by a very terrible thing (genocide, colonization, displacement, poverty). Nothing is ever all good or all bad, apparently, and context is important for understanding the past.
Really, I wanted to discuss academics or procrastination or libraries (which are so important and need to be protected!) today, but apparently my mind is still on history, the big and the small, of a nation providing public services on stolen land, or of the jigsaw moments that make up our trip to Tofino and Long Beach where we did not, thankfully and disappointingly, see (sea) wolves.
My next letter will be about something fun.
Always,
Becca
letters to kepler 