<
https://lithub.com/a-single-ray-of-light-on-ray-bradburys-all-summer-in-a-day-and-living-in-the-shadow-of-long-covid/>
"When I was a child, I spent many long afternoons at Jefferson Market Library
in Greenwich Village. It seemed more castle than library, with its red brick
walls, gothic windows, and soaring clock tower. In fact, it was constructed in
the late nineteenth century as a courthouse, along with an adjoining prison,
now gone. The Children’s Room, where I spent my earliest years, had been a
police court, and in the brick-arched basement, where I scrolled microfiche in
middle school, prisoners once awaited sentencing, most of them women, many of
them on the fringes of society.
In 1929, the prison portion was torn down and replaced with the New York
Women’s House of Detention, an art deco structure that loomed high over the
courthouse. The House of D, as it was known, became a site of protest and queer
activism, and detainees included revolutionaries like Angela Davis. While the
courthouse was abandoned and then refurbished as a library in the ’60s, the
prison kept its original purpose until it was shuttered in 1971. By 1979, the
year I was born, the prison had been demolished, lush gardens planted in its
place.
But as a child in the ’80s, I didn’t yet know this history, recent as it was,
and I was oblivious to its ghosts. To me, the library was a castle, and there
was always a bit of magic in ascending the spiral staircase to its upper
floors, my steps echoing off the cool stone. Two decades later, my husband
would begin a birthday scavenger hunt for me there, the first clue tucked into
a volume of Proust. Three decades later, I would bring my own son to the
library to look for graphic novels and comics—hero stories—and he would tear up
those stairs ahead of me, feeling the magic of the place as he enacted the
tales."
Via Violet Blue’s
Threat Model - Covid: April 10, 2025
https://www.patreon.com/posts/covid-april-10-126346326
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
