Hometown Wanderlust is an adventurous, weekly blog featuring one girl’s experiences with food, music, shopping, history, art and life in general around Dublin GA. This week, Dublin GA’s favorite redhead rediscovers a familiar childhood escape, the Laurens County Library.
Memories
The library, as I was raised anyway, was the cornerstone of learning and the perfect hideaway, a place of escape to other worlds and times and circumstances. As a child we would stop at the library and spend hours, hidden in corners perched next to the towering bookshelves absorbing as much information as we could. I discovered myself by discovering others between the covers of those books.
As time passed I discovered the internet in those same walls. Connecting with family and friends, separated by miles through e-mail, searching out ideas and unearthing stories from every part of the world. Even immersed in the new found technology, the smell of aging pages and the particular stillness brought the same comfort of curling up with a favorite edition, all the while… learning.
Years pass and like most I haven’t made those regular trips to the library. Caught up in the hustle of life and continually immersed in ever expanding technology I all but had forgotten such a familiar escape. In keeping with the times the library provides a plethora of events for children and adults alike, including movies. Some silver screen classics (my favorite), kiddie friendly and on this particular day the recent historical drama Selma.
Curtain Raise
Walking into the library I was enveloped by the silence and smell those earthy books covered in fingerprints and aging on the endless shelves. I’m a bit saddened I haven’t visited more frequently in the recent years…
We’re greeted with a warm smile by library employee Cristina who shows us to the auditorium. Warm, buttery popcorn is graciously delivered and we settle in for the film.
Selma, an emotionally stirring and eye opening film based on the 1965 voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery led by Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights movement leaders, is a film that I highly recommend…have tissues handy. I’m stirred by the film’s take on the unrest and struggle during that period.
Thoughts
As we leave, I’m overwhelmed with feeling from the couple hours that I’ve just spent in such a familiar surrounding. I’ve once again walked out of the doors of the library with a greater understanding of my world and a hunger to continually learn more. Something so simple. A movie, a conversation, a book shared with a child…my next visit will be a lot sooner.
For more information on the Laurens County Library and upcoming events visit https://www.facebook.com/laurenscountylibrary/
Did you know…? Martin Luther King Jr. gave his very first speech in 1944 at the age of 15 in Dublin GA. Visit https://visitdublinga.org/news/3092/ for more information on the MLK monument project right here in our hometown!
