Lecturing

LIBRARIES ARE AMONG my favorite places, but librarians, whom I often find priggish, are not generally among my favorite people. Often, however, they are very helpful. My favorite aspect of libaries is the tradition of their being places of quiet. Patrons are always expected in libraries, or at least in the dozens I have visited, to maintain silence, except the one in the small town in the American south where I live. There, verbal cacophony often but not always adheres. I had to adjust. If you can't beat 'em, join 'em, as folks say. I began by engaging in superficial banter of the usual sort, inquiring as to the health of this or that librarian, exchanging pleasantries. Often as not, my conversations with the librarians they started. Sometimes, I started them. But over time, the conversations became somewhat more intellectual. That's how I roll, as some say. I found myself lecturing, lecturing on my favorite topis, politics and religion, usually within an historical or sociological context, in which I tried to "stick to the facts" and avoid expressing any strongly held personal opinions. Still, I got into trouble. I got into trouble by talking about Thomas Paine, and my favorite of his panphlets, "The Age of Reason", in which he "bashes" the Bible and the Christian faith. I highly recommend it to all Americans. Paine paid dearly for writing it. I talked about the "founding fathers" of the United States, the people (wealthy white men) who designed and implemented our current system of constitutional republicanism. I made it clear, or tried to, that most of the seminal founders were in fact not Christians, but rather "deists", and that they to a person strongly favored a separation of church and state, and the maintanence of a secular democratic republic. I talked bout Harvard historian and philosopher Mathew Stewart, and his illuminating monograph "Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic". I recall describing William Miller and the "Millerites" of the middle nineteenth century, among other topics. All this got me banned from the library for six months, convicted of "systemic harassment". One man's historical, factual lecture is another man's, or woman's systemic harassment. I thereby learned to never talk too much in a library, to never converse too intellectually, and to never speak of books or facts which can be interpreted as an attck on or contempt for teh deeply held Christian beliefs of a librarian, for they have the power of eviction. Talking about "The Age of Reason", especially giving a cursory overview of its contents, or the book by Mathew Stewart, the title of which reveals its central theme, tends to inspire people to believe that you embrace their message, which in fact I do. Altogether, I much prefer quiet libraries.