Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.
Interpretation
Public libraries serve as vital community hubs that reflect a community's connection to broader culture.
In this quote, Russell Banks emphasizes the importance of public libraries as the last remaining community centers in America. He suggests that the extent to which these libraries engage with the larger cultural landscape mirrors how connected the community is to that culture, highlighting the role of libraries in fostering cultural awareness and community engagement.
In practice
In a speech about community engagement, one might say, 'As Russell Banks stated, public libraries are the sole community centers left in America.'
They were gone and I missed them but even so I was very happy. For the rest of my life no matter where on this planet earth I went and no matter how scared or confused I got, I could wait until dark and look up into the night sky and see my three friends again and my heart would swell with love of them and make me strong and clearheaded.
I much prefer working with kids whose life could be completely upended by a reading of a book over a weekend. You give them a book to read - they go home and come back a changed person. And that is so much more interesting and exciting.
Motivations are too tangled and complex.
Lists of books we reread and books we can't finish tell more about us than about the relative worth of the books themselves.
Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.
I do not write for this generation. I am writing for other ages. If this could read me, they would burn my books, the work of my whole life. On the other hand, the generation which interprets these writings will be an educated generation; they will understand me and say: 'Not all were asleep in the nighttime of our grandparents.'
Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. Traveling is my form of self-education. Every stream I fish now is not as good as it used to be. If you keep your eyes open as you travel around, you realize we are destroying this planet.
Anyway -- because we are readers, we don't have to wait for some communications executive to decide what we should think about next -- and how we should think about it. We can fill our heads with anything from aardvarks to zucchinis -- at any time of night or day.
Education - lifelong education for everyone - from toddlers to workers well advanced in their careers - is indeed an excellent investment for individuals and society as a whole.
The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours
Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers - not the defined.
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