So here's a picture of the third important library in my life, in Nassau, Bahamas, which I visited from the ages of 9-12 (the late 1970s). Sadly, the children's section wasn't all that great, and the only book I vividly remember reading from the library at all was an adult book about Cassandra, that was rather disturbing and my mother shouldn't have let me read it. "The house reeks of blood," says Cassandra. "It is but the odor of the sacrifice." And then everyone gets raped/killed.
It was built between 1798 and 1799, to serve as a workhouse and prison, and became a library in 1873.
It looks pretty from the outside. I'm just realizing how small my elementary school library was in comparison to most. It was just a classroom with bookshelves around it. I read anything I could but there wasn't much choice.
ReplyDeleteSorry for your week. I'm having that kind of week too.
I hope yours improves!
DeleteThis is too funny - the whole part about Cassandra and your mom, not the library itself :) Did you find that picture online, or did you actually take it? I love the idea of highlighting all of your life's libraries. And to have lived in the Bahamas for 4 years? What a life!
ReplyDeletefound it on line, and had a pleasant thrill of recognition!
DeleteWow, even their workhouses are kind of pretty there.
ReplyDeleteI send chocolate and éclairs to you over the homework sitch. I made a point of not giving out very much homework when I was teaching, because at our school, elementary kids were required to sit and do no more than an hour a night - so that's homework for ALL subjects, it had to add up to only an hour. To me, being able to see the assignment done in class shows more mastery than having Mama help anyway - but clearly, that's not what everyone believes. Ugh.
It's not that I have to help him with the work, qua work--it's all the hours of nagging that get me down...
DeleteThat's a great looking library.
ReplyDeleteIt's a beautiful library! (and a breath-taking prison) You can almost forgive its lack of childrens' books.
ReplyDeleteMy mother didn't always pay the best attention to what I read as a child either... I read some interesting stuff!
ReplyDeletePretty library, but the Cassandra book sounds frightful.
ReplyDeleteIs this your dear child's first year of middle school/junior high-whatever they call it there? Because I remember when my fifth graders left me for the wilds of sixth grade and the middle school all I heard about when I would run into them and their parents was how much/how hard the homework was. I am personally of the same homework philosophy as Tanita (as both a teacher and a parent).
Yep--sixth grade. I don't know if it really it a lot of homework, or the fact that he spends most of his time dropping his pencil that is to blame for the familial stress levels rising to hideous proportions....
DeleteWe have days like that in our homeschool too. Pencil gets dropped a lot during math.
DeleteA workhouse/prison that got converted into a library? That's interesting! And it looks pretty in the picture that you posted.
ReplyDeleteI wandered into a library in the Bahamas on my only trip there (but this one does not look familiar) and found a copy of The Flowering Spring by Elfrida Vipont - at the time, the only juvenile she had written that I did not own. As there was no sign of security or a librarian, I became caught in a terrible struggle with a good and bad angel on each shoulder. The presence of my younger sister forced me to put it back on the shelf and I was rewarded with my own copy several years later, which I duly paid for.
ReplyDeleteLooking on line for this post I was impressed by how the libray system has changed! I wonder if that copy of Flowering Spring was there when I was a kid....and if so, why the heck didn't I find it????
DeleteLove the library series! Don't get me started on homework! Grrr...
ReplyDeleteI visited this library back in 2010, when I went to the Bahamas for a wedding! I couldn't not duck in, it being a library and all. :) I had a wonderful time poking around. All the rooms were quite small to begin with, and they'd been piled high with so many books and newspapers that it was a bit of a squeeze. The librarians watched me careefully; I wonder if they have a lot of trouble with tourists nicking books?
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