I have arrived in Merrie Olde England, but I still have a miscellany of thoughts hanging over my head. Let me get these out of the way before I conquer the largest of the British Isles.
Little Free Library
One of my interests as a former book dealer has been the promotion of books through the Little Free Library. This international organization began in Hudson, Wisconsin in 2009. It was here that Todd Bol built a model one-room schoolhouse. He filled it with books and put it on a pole in his front yard. It was an instant hit with his neighbors, so he built more.
Today, there are more than 150,000 such little boxes (and all kinds of other box designs) on every continent in more than 120 countries. More than 300 million books have reached the hands of readers. This success has been documented in The Little Free Library Book written by Margret Aldrich and published by Coffee House Press.
Illiteracy
Statistics tell us that more than 30 million adults in the US cannot read or write above the third-grade level. These same statistics have shown us that when children learn to read, their chance of graduating from high school is greatly assured. The Little Free Library comes to the rescue. Their mission is to be a catalyst for building community, inspiring readers, and expanding book access for all through a global network of volunteer-led Little Free Library book-exchange boxes.
I stumbled on such a free library while in Germany. It was unlike any I had previously seen. This box was a free-standing structure with sliding glass doors. The books were placed spine out for easy access. It was not difficult to find soft cover English-language books (when they were placed there) as English spine titles read from the top down; German spine titles read from the bottom up. I was easily amused.
Is there a Little Free Library in your community? If not, perhaps you can start one.
City Park and Botanical Garden
Before leaving Gütersloh, I managed to get back to the City Park and Botanical Garden. I simply wandered around taking photos. This 38+-acre park is a visual delight. The City Park is laid out like an English garden, with curved paths, lines of sight, and ponds (which become skating rinks in the winter). Tall trees and numerous flower beds catch the eye.
The Botanical Garden is a series of these curved paths and squares, alongside of which are plantings of most of the herbs you could ever think of. Each bed is labeled in case the smell doesn’t tell you what the herb is.
Lying on the edge of the city center, this park is the people’s living room. What an assess this is for the city.
Travel Sketches on Facebook
I place my posts on my Facebook page in addition to my blog. If you read my posts on Facebook, you miss most of the photos I use. Facebook allows only one photo for my posts. A case in point is the post two weeks ago about the Miele Museum. With that post, I included photos of the bicycles and automobile they manufactured. I’m including these photos with this post for those of you who asked. You will always find my complete posts on my blog (TravelSketches.info) rather than on Facebook.
Fact: As of 2022, 21% of Americans over 18 years of age were illiterate
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