When I am asked about the state of libraries, what I’m really asked is the value of libraries. What is the impact on a community in the absence or loss of a library, and what does it have to offer? The history of libraries would have us believe these are structures built only to preserve history, but the newer philosophy of libraries more closely resembles maintaining space for the living.
Libraries reside in the intersection of bread and roses through the care they provide. In Helen Todd’s 1910 speech on women’s suffrage, coining the term for its 20th-century use, she described “life’s Bread, which is home, shelter, and security, and the Roses of life, music, education, nature and books.” This joining of hands between life’s bread and roses became foundational in multiple movements throughout the rest of the century, emphasizing that life’s essential needs are not only food for the table but enrichment for the betterment of the future.
The speech was the basis of the poem “Bread and Roses” by James Oppenheim, published in 1911 and eventually put to music as the well-known song of the women’s suffrage and labor movements. My alma mater sings a variation of “Bread and Roses” as students march in procession through the campus during graduation week. This ritual has been done for over a hundred years, connecting us with past graduates and the combined labor that it took to get to the present moment, on both an individual and a collective scale.
As Oppenheim and the many voices that followed him sang:
Our lives shall not be sweated
from birth until life closes
Hearts starve as well as bodies
Give us bread, but give us roses
Bread and roses are the heart of labor, joy and human connection. They are the fire that urges people to work with and for the public. The roses of libraries — literature, valuable conversation, and education — bring just as much value to the public as the bread: access to local resources, access to communication, and access to shelter from the storms.
We provide these things for our communities because we feel called to care. Caring is an action and a practice. It is a command, a plea and a call to a higher purpose. To stand arm in arm with your community, to care for them and to address their most essential needs is the core of the work we do.
When you look to your family, your neighbor, your fellow human beings, I urge you to care. When they weep, I urge you to offer solace. When they are in need, I urge you to offer your hand. With this practice, we can be uplifted together in a sharing of life’s glories: bread and roses, bread and roses.
Elyse M. Kiehn is the deputy library director at the Mark & Emily Turner Memorial Library in Presque Isle, and can be reached at 764-2571 or via email at ekiehn@presqueisleme.us.
