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01/03/2017 11:00 PMMy mother was a bibliophile and our local library was her second home. We’d visit to check out books, attend meetings, listen to stories, lectures, borrow music, movies, and talk (quietly) with the many people we would invariably run into. Rebuilt in the early 1970s, it was a central meeting place in town. Its books and magazines launched me in the direction of the life I still live, bringing the world, its challenges and hopefulness, to life. And its stacks held every single book my mother’s book group read over the 45-plus years that they met.
The Scranton Memorial Library is now my local library. I joined its Board of Trustees three years after my mom passed away to honor her memory and to work with a group of like-minded people giving their time and energy to bring our library into the future. On Feb. 7, 2017, Madison voters will have the chance to vote “Yes” to enhance our library and do for all of our citizens, young and old, what my local library did for me growing up. The library expansion will create new and separate spaces for teens, young children, and adults to read, think, discuss, and learn. I will vote “Yes” to ensure a future that will provide us with quiet learning spaces, rooms for lively debate, and a community room to provide our artists and students and musicians and cultural historians space to share their talents and knowledge in welcoming rooms, steeped in windows, and bathed with natural light.
The proposed library expansion will breathe new life to an important, historical landmark in the heart of our town. It will help keep our beautiful downtown vibrant and generate business for merchants. A vote for the library expansion is a vote for the future—our future.
Laurie E. Ruderfer
Madison