{thanksfully 3.0 ♦ a candle}

“Better,” it is said, “to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Today I’m grateful for the candles in the form of individual people doggedly Doing Things; people who don’t collapse in despair at the state of the world, but who find their tiny corner of it, and get to work.

I think of my friend Colleen, who since 2011 has been organizing a tiny book fair for a Ballou Sr. High school in D.C., a school that I’ve never been to, probably will never visit, and don’t know much about, except that they are an underserved population in a school of over 1,200 students. They finally got a new school when the old one was falling to bits around them. But, in that new school, they started out with 1,150 books in their library. That worked out as less than one book per student, which is considered fairly shameful for a public high school, that place where you go to get information… The American Library Association (ALA) standard for a school library is 11:1, not 1:1. Over the years, Colleen has been chipping away at this book imbalance – with the help of friends and strangers. Five years later, they’re getting closer.

It’s one school, not the world. It’s books, not college tuition or jobs. It’s a candle in the dark.

Hayford Mills 233 HDR

(P.S. – Their wishlist is still on Amazon.)