http://arsl.info/2009/10/robert-frost-rural-american-libraries/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=robert-frost-rural-american-libraries Thu, 23 May 2013 21:30:31 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 http://arsl.info/2009/10/robert-frost-rural-american-libraries/#comment-16 Lisa Shaw Fri, 16 Oct 2009 23:11:41 +0000 http://www.arsl.info/?p=516#comment-16 I am proud to call myself a Reference Librarian in a rural library. I am proud to call myself a colleague of Sonja. And I am proud to call myself a Robert Frost fan.
I also once was homeless, with young children.
It was difficult and scary to say the least. One image I will never forget was when I brought back to the shelter a simple second hand doll house I had gotten at a yard sale or second hand shop for my daughter (then a toddler, and my son an infant). She looked at it and exclaimed with joy, “A HOME!”
I did not have my college degree at the time, was battling an illness and an absolutely paralyzing depression. I also remember looking at an encyclopedia and telling myself that I had to get myself going again somehow, and started with learning and memorizing the countries of South America, and then the moons of Jupiter, and so on. It was the first tenuous step on a journey that took my back to college (I did not even know how to turn on a computer when I went back!) and into a professional career.
It’s not the end of my story. I still fight to keep out the cold, and one never knows when one will wind up back in that same situation; many professionals are. The homeless who come in every day are not Them – they are Me, and I am grateful for every day that our library has a place for them to go on their journey in life.

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