How to destroy a culture...

book
Originally uploaded by ericblauer.

You dont have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.
-Ray Bradbury

This is a picture of a recent book my father gave me when he came up to Spokane last week. It's bound in leather, falling a part, everytime you leave it on something and pick it up, theres book dust left behind...simply delicious! The contents are even better, it's packed full of quotes and short teachings, like:

Remember that the secret studies of an author are the sunken piers upon which is to rest the bridge of his fame, spanning the dark waters of oblivion. They are out of sight; but without then no superstructure can stand secure. -Longfellow.

After reading in this old tomb, and trying to figure out how to preserve it better, I realized how tragic it is that people just don't like to read much anymore. I set up a library of my books in our church and in almost one year, I've only loaned out about 6 I think. :(

6!!!! Oh the magnitude of a sin this is, you just don't understand. So many of the books in my library are pure gold. To read them is to become endued with wealth from the minds of some of the greatest souls to walk this earth. But they are weekly ignored, passed over, shunned...Oh I feel like repenting to the dead for such sacrilage!

If a man empties his purse into his head, no one can take it from him.
-Benjamin Franklin

Alas! There are far too many empty heads and fat purses today. We spend our money on what doesn't satisfy. We are becoming "numb & dumb" as a people...it's tragic.

But I know I am barking up a tree with no one in it...so I will mutter to myself in some lamp lit corner, with book on my lap, my pipe in my hand and a mind that is lost in days gone by...

I have sought for rest everywhere, but I have found it nowhere,
except in a little corner with a little book.
-Thomas a' Kempis