It's Independence Day here in America. Libraries are closed pretty much everywhere across the land. Fortunately if one can't go to a library, one can come to Clerkmanifesto to read about them.
If I decide to write about them.
Which I did today! Right here on the eve of the famous holiday July the Fourth, sitting at the front desk of a mighty Saint Minneapolis Library, watching my community roll by me like a little stream, and occasionally dipping my toe in.
"Have a good day." I might say on a whim.
"We're open til' eight." I occasionally inform someone at their request.
So far people haven't needed much from me.
It is 95 degrees out this evening. Someone just walked past in a flannel shirt, so Minnesota! Another person came by to get a book we special ordered from him, some stories by the French Writer Andre Maurois. The book said it included an "imaginary interview with the author".
"What is an imaginary interview with the author?" I asked the dead writer Andre Maurois.
"I think you know that." Maurois replied drily.
"No rust on you." I conceded.
"Modesty and unselfishness- these are the virtues which men praise- and pass by." Maurois said drolly.
"You've been reading Internet comments again, haven't you Andre?"
"Un petit." He replied.
A man came by the desk to tell me about the death of his wife. Someone wondered whether the self check out machines would stop a person from checking out books that were not held for them. An older lady wanted to renew the paper shredder she had checked out.
What?!
Why, when I was a child libraries checked out books rather than things one could use to destroy them!
Ah well, a person must roll with the times. Don't you think so Andre Maurois?
"To be witty is not enough. One must possess sufficient wit to avoid having too much of it."
Hmmm.
That might not be the real Andre Maurois.
I think it is possibly just an Andre Maurois Chatbot.
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