The Person Who Reads Can Bail, But

I Spent Uncounted Hours Sitting At The Bow Looking At The Water And The Sky, Studying Each Wave, Different From The Last, Seeing How It Caught The Light, The Air, The Wind; Watching Patterns, The Sweep Of It All, And Letting It Take Me. The Sea.

This Beginning Motion, This First Time When A Sail Truly Filled And The Boat Took Life And Knifed Across The Lake Under Perfect Control, This Was So Beautiful It Stopped My Breath.

I've Been Reading And Researching Various Aspects Of History - Dickens' London, Nelson's Sea Battles, Magellan's Nautical Explorations, The Weapons And Battles And Key Figures Of The American Civil War - For Most Of My Life. I Pick Up A Book Here Or There Or See A Documentary Or Talk With An Expert In The Subject, And My Curiosity About The One Area Of Study And Discovery Always Leads To Another.

It Was As Though I Had Been Dying Of Thirst And The Librarian Had Handed Me A Five Gallon Bucket Of Water. I Drank And Drank. The Only Reason I Am Here And Not In Prison Is Because Of That Woman. I Was A Loser, But She Showed Me The Power Of Reading.

She Was Brilliant And Joyous And She Believed- Probably Correctly- That Libraries Contain The Answers To All Things, To Everything, And That If You Can't Find The Information You Seek In The Library, Then Such Information Probably Doesn't Exist In This Or Any Parallel Universe Now Or Ever To Be Known. She Was Thoughtful And Kind And She Always Believed The Best Of Everybody. She Was, Above All Else, A Master Librarian And She Knew Where To Find Any Book On Any Subject In The Shortest Possible Time. And She Was Wonderfully Unhinged.