On Looking for the Good

   Just as I was mourning the loss of actually handling and reading books…feeling as so many do that the digital media era will eliminate books eventually …I ran across an article (in a real newspaper) that celebrated the book scene in the San Francisco Bay Area. Apparently it is robust and thriving, with independent book stores burgeoning and book festivals and reading clubs proliferating.

A "secret library of hope"....

Amazingly, poet and artist, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, at 98, still enjoys City Lights Books, which he created in 1953. He was definitely on the scene with Beat generation authors, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg long years ago. City Lights these days wants to inspire hope in a new generation as it creates a " 'secret library of hope’, as a resistance reading list that points the way forward to a new society.” Currently there are those who are dispersing the politically-influenced malaise which dispirits us as Americans and would chop us into separate, divisive cultures that fear and hate the “other.”

Another pocket of hope and encouragement...

Through beautifully-made, hand-cradling books, some are writing again to inspire and uplift readers to seek the best and choose the good. These are things I can stroke with my hand and plop into a chair to inhale…words in a book that can touch my soul and my fingertips as well! How glad I am to find another pocket of hope and encouragement! There was a time when, in my daily mental hygiene, I used to practice an affirmative idea regularly, a simple one: Look for the good and praise it! However could I have let this slip away from me??  I will not do so again.

http://More Essays About Everything is now available on Amazon
You might also enjoy "Spirit as Flow, Spirit as Form."