I hesitated in the grip of withdrawals. “Go! Get out!” Lynn Tanaka firmly told me on my final day on Mayne Island. Taking a few reluctant steps towards the door, my eyes locked on the neatly arranged shelves in her Miners Bay Books. “No more books for you,” she said. There was no sense in arguing with Lynn. She had an ally at her side, my wife, Terri. “I’ve never had to tell a customer not to buy more books. He has already spent over $400 in three months,” Lynn said. Terri nodded. “We shipped them home.” Head bowed like someone arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, I exited to their laughter. Relief from my exile from Lynn’s bookshop on Mayne Island was found in The Haunted Bookshop in Sidney on Victoria Island, British Columbia.
I awoke on Sunday craving bagels and lox. Without a doubt, Terri suspected there was more to our going to The Egg’lectic Café & Bakery in Evoraburg. I pleaded the Fifth. The Egg’lectic is next to Serendipity, new and used books. Bookshops are neither designed to be stormed like the U.S. Capitol Building, nor for the impatient. The exception to these rules is the holiday season. The stores, particularly the independent shops, are for browsing rows of shelves, and pausing to read a few paragraphs (the first paragraph often reveals what to expect). Like most independents, the Serendipity provides comfortable chairs for deliberations: “To buy or not to buy⸺ that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler to the mind to read here, or at night when slumber weighs the eyelids to sleep” (with apologies to Shakespeare).
Reading is an adventure in possibilities. We enter previously unexplored places and encounter strangers who sit with us to tell their stories. On Sunday, over breakfast, I journeyed with Zach Weissman to Chelm, Poland with its “medieval buildings and cobbled town square.” Humorous stories about Chelm’s “Wise Men” tales, based on the Talmudic arguments of the sages,” were once popular. Weissman writes in his newspaper article how he would “clandestinely steal stories from the pages of a book I had smuggled into my room past my bedtime! I could join the stories; I could be a Wise man! I felt fulfilled, satisfied, excited all at once…” I could relate. Good books make us feel this way as we slip into their covers.
When I was a child, the library in my hometown of Oakland, New Jersey, was housed on the second floor of the fire department’s two-garage building. I recall climbing the wooden stairs and entering what was, to my eyes, a magical place. That sense of wonder still accompanies me when I enter a library, particularly an academic or presidential library, to conduct research. With each book, a world of possibilities waits to be opened. My library has been referred to as “dead weight” by moving companies. Movers, unless they are friends, as one told me, “love dead weight.” My daughters once counted 6,000 volumes. This has decreased to about 3,000. Chaucer owned 58 volumes. Dante borrowed books from his friends’ libraries during his exile from Florence. Terri wishes I would follow their examples.
Librarians, academics, and serious readers are quiet by nature. I share their passion for books and learning. However, like them (including former colleagues), I find myself struggling in the Trumpian Age. The attacks on academic institutions and libraries continue to raise questions concerning the state of democracy. As Dr. Carla Hayden told CBS reporter Bob Costa, “Democracy is under attack. Democracies are not to be taken for granted. And the institutions that support democracy should not be taken for granted. And so, that’s what the concern is about libraries and museums. It’s part of a fabric. Think of it as an infrastructure that holds up – the libraries have been called one of the pillars of democracy, that you have these institutions in every community that allow anyone to come in and access knowledge.”
Dr. Carla Hayden was fired from her position as the Librarian of Congress in May. The author, Kwame Alexander, summarizes my attitude. At a gathering at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Library in Washington, D.C., Alexander said, “The firing of our distinguished, esteemed Librarian of Congress, Dr. Carla Hayden, makes it clear to us that the freedom to read, the freedom to learn, the freedom to express ourselves is under attack. … We are simply going to be bold.”
The American Library Association issued the “Freedom to Read” statement in 1953. The document reads, “The freedom to read is essential to our democracy.” Keep this in mind the next time you enter a library, a bookstore, or read to your children at night.
Note: I hope you will take a few minutes to read the following article.
Military Spouses Fight Back Against Pentagon Book Bans
Military.com | By Rebecca Kheel
Published June 09, 2025 at 3:55pm ET
A group of military and veterans’ spouses is joining forces to advocate against book bans at Defense Department schools, service academies and elsewhere within the military.
While starting small — the group has six core members — the organization they’ve dubbed Military Families for Free Expression has plans for virtual events and “activations” in communities around military bases with the goal of educating other military families about the book bans and empowering them to speak out.
References:
Zach Weissman, “A Weissman in Chelm,” Washtenaw Jewish News, June 2025, page 1.
A vibrant Jewish community existed for 500 years in Chelm until 1942. Of the 33,000 Jewish residents, 15,000 were murdered by the Nazi occupiers and their collaborators. Today, there are no Jews in Chelm.
Bob Costa’s interview with Dr. Carla Hayden can be found at:
Image: A library patron chooses an book from the shelf at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe, Belgium, Oct. 29, 2021. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Katharine Winchell).
Source: Military.com
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Charles van Heck's Woodhull Journal 
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