REFLECTION
“ No loitering for good books”

For the last six weeks Anita and I have been sorting through the books we have collected over the 31 years of our marriage and have decided it is time to give many of them away since they have been sitting on our book shelves collecting dust. We thought it would be an easy task, but it was not. Let me tell you why.

In a book of poetry, Robert Frost writes a poem – “Out! Out!---“ - about a young boy who dies tragically on a farm. He hurries his work because he doesn’t want to be late for dinner.

In a powerful short story, Flannery O’Connor tells us why “A good man is hard to find.”

In his powerful drama - “The Death of a Salesman”- Arthur Miller tells us why attention must be paid even to losers such as Willy Loman.

For us, these few selections and countless others have been valued gifts, constant companions, treasured mementoes of the days we spent in classrooms. But sitting unused on book shelves, they have been prisoners, some for many years. So we are giving them their unconditional freedom in the hope that they will circulate and influence others as they have influenced us.

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