Much is made with the power of the credit card. The card gives you a certain amount of power. Think about it; with one swipe of a card you can buy anything from a toaster to a toilet. Well, those might be extremes but you get my point. The great news is that it does allow you to purchase most anything you like in a split second. The bad news is it allows you to purchase most anything you like in a split second!

We have all heard of buyer’s remorse. Well, that certainly can be the case with the powerful card. Think about how wonderful you feel when you have made a great and wonderful purchase, the immediate high you get before the remorse sets in, and then the agony when the bill comes in. Talk about extreme highs and lows. The card can do that to you for sure.

There are also other types of cards available today. You know the kinds that accumulate points so that you can buy items or services. Loyalty cards are what they are referred to. Now, I like most of you have a few of these. They are great in theory but at the end of the day you still have to buy something. And typically you have bought that something with a credit card – a vicious circle if you ask me.

But the card I am referring to is all powerful, all knowledge, and available to anyone young or old who wants one. That card my dear friends is the Library Card. Oh, how I love my library card!

With this one little card you can go into one of the most creative, peaceful places in the world. A library is a place overflowing with knowledge, information, and pure enjoyment. You can learn about each and every president, pope, king, or queen. You can learn about gardening, painting, or even origami. You can learn all of this in one place – the library. How great is that?

I understand we live in a world of immediate knowledge and information. We have that capability due to the internet. We can download books and articles on our computers, Kindles, or iPads in a nano second. All of these tools are wonderful, but nothing, and I mean nothing, beats wandering through stacks and stacks of books looking for just the right one. Getting lost in a library is pure joy to those of us that love the feel of a book in our hands.

Now, I have to admit I went to the dark side for a while and occasionally will slip back to ordering books on Amazon. Sometimes it is easy and quite frankly, fast. I do like to own a few books,especially cookbooks and the like for my own personal library. But for the most part the library is my paradise.

I have heard say our libraries are struggling. I for one hope that is not true. They are and will always be treasures to our communities and we as citizens need to support them. We need to take our children and grandchildren to story hours, and visit when authors are presenting. We need to support the book sales they have and we need to support the events, like art shows that are held there. We need to use our libraries.

Well, with that I will close, I have a book to return and a new one to check out. In other words, I need to escape for awhile.