As a reader, librarian, and writer, I appreciate The Commons every week, but the Dec. 14 issue in particular I found to be extremely well done.
In the Voices section, I was so struck by the first two sentences in this Viewpoint about the Vermont builder's group supporting the water protectors at Standing Rock in Cannon Ball, N.D. by Anna Mullen and Alana Fichman that I telephoned an English teacher friend to read them aloud.
“We were two of many white, impassioned, brokenhearted millennials drawn like flies to the sticky-sweet crossroads of environmental justice and indigenous sovereignty on sacred land scarred by old and new wounds gouged by settler colonialism,” they wrote.
“We were asked to come, and for all our reasoning, flawed and sound, we arrived at this intersection to witness and participate in a powerful movement.”...
I have been following the news about the Rockingham Free Public Library and its firing of its director, Célina Houlné, in the newspapers and on FACT-TV with incredulity, dismay, sadness, and anger. I was the library director in that library from 1979 to 1985, when I resigned to become...