Electricity among the stacks

Walking up the grand staircases of the Library of Congress, you see marble columns with gilt edging. Important statuary panels line the walls – I like especially the one of a carved angel – shall we say a seraphim? – holding an old fashioned telephone, the kind which you hold the cupped earpiece in one hand and the desktop mouthpiece in the other. That cherub is called the Electrician "with a star of electric rays shining on his brow.” There’s a special viewing window from which one can see the main reading room from on high. The readers below, like so many worker ants, pore over their documents. The library staff moving books around like worker bees – collecting them from the centralized conveyor belt, organizing them by reader onto the main counter, pushing carts around collecting books from the readers’ desks that encircle the circulation center. Then one’s eyes lift above to the profound sayings etched in gold beneath the splendid dome. “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Really? As I mull over the reports emerging from North Korea on people’s degrees of starvation. “The history of the world is biography of great men.” Here, the library shows its age – all the names and portraits memorialized in the library are men, the women are representations of the abstract (Truth, Beauty, Electricity). But then, for those toiling away, uncertain of their knowledge, querulous in their grasp of wisdom, there speaks from the walls the words of a cheerleader past, “ The chief glory of every people arises from its authors.” Carry on, then. (Main Reading Room, Thomas Jefferson Building, Library of Congress, Washington, DC)