There is much about the value of our public library system that I leave aside here, not only because to me it seems almost too obvious for words, but also because others in the recent past have done a fine job making that case. Let’s take it as a given that public libraries are invaluable. I want to concentrate my focus on the latest little treasure I unearthed there.
When we think of libraries, of course we think of books (the very term is from the Latin librarium, “chest of books”), but there’s much else available in the modern public library, not the least of which is recorded music to loan. Since long before I moved to Long Beach, I availed myself of this service to discover songs ranging from John Coltrane’s “Naima” to Pink Floyd’s “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and beyond.
In these futuristic days of instant online access to just about anything you could ever wish to hear, such a service is less needful for a boy looking to expand his musical horizons. But if you’re a girl on a budget—or you just don’t like listening to music on your computer (which you’re on so much of the damn time as it is)—borrowing CDs remains a beautiful thing. I don’t mind paying $1.29 to give a relatively new band like Foster the People a little coin for bringing me an all-time great dance song like “Pumped Up Kicks”, but perhaps I can be forgiven for copying “Rock Lobster” (another one of Greggory’s Shake-Your-Ass Classics), since the B-52’s are set for life.
Forgivable or not, that’s what I did the other day, ripping a handful of tunes from a B-52’s “greatest hits” collection, as well as a second handful from The Essential Bob Dylan. And it was within the CD case of the latter that I spied a dedication sticker applied by the Long Beach Public Library:
In memoriam
Donald Kroll
Presented by
his family and friends
We frequently come across this kind of thing—in books, on park benches, on little brass plaques with dates of dedication. Rarely do we give it any thought. But on this occasion I paused for a moment over the simple words in remembrance of the dear departed. Clearly, the album in my hands had once been in someone’s record collection. That someone died, and his heirs found themselves confronted with the practical but, in the face of their loss, almost unimaginably trivial decision of what to do with his CDs.
Their choice was to allow them to benefit the public library and its patrons. And so for 30 cents a poor schlub like me gets to augment his iTunes collection with much-loved, familiar songs such as “Like a Rolling Stone” and “Subterranean Homesick Blues”, along with new discoveries such as “Not Dark Yet”.
But not only that. Such a gesture on behalf of those Donald Kroll left behind allows those of us who never knew him to connect, in some tiny way, with one who went a few links before us on a local part of that great chain of being uniting the first person with the last. And so I sat and listened to “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere” and “Knocking of Heaven’s Door” and vaguely imagined Kroll as he purchased this album or received it as a gift. I wondered which songs touched him the most and mused on whether he was annoyed that a double-disc set calling itself “the essential Bob Dylan” unconscionably omitted “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” and “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again”.
It took little effort to find out a bit about Mr. Kroll, and to see that the gesture made by his friends and family was totally in keeping with the man he was in life. From the City of Long Beach’s Website:
Tribute to a Lifelong Educator—Donald Kroll
Long Beach lost a treasured friend recently with the passage of Donald Kroll on April 19, 2006. Donald dedicated immeasurable time and energy to the education of our children, as a teacher aide, teacher, librarian, and library-media specialist with the Long Beach Unified School District. His efforts to improve our community led to his involvement in numerous organizations, committees and programs, including what must have been his favorite: participating in the YMCA Indian Princesses with his daughter. Donald is survived by his wife of 37 years, Sandra; daughter, Katie Kroll; sister, Carol Kerr; and nieces, nephews, an aunt, uncles and cousins. Councilmember Lowenthal joins Donald’s friends, family and community in honoring his lifetime of service.
The Essential Bob Dylan was released in 2000, which means Donald enjoyed it for less time than it has been available to us living Long Beachers. If that sounds like a depressing statistic, it really shouldn’t (at least not beyond whatever existential sadness we feel in the face of the terminal quality of human life), because all of us are going to be dead a lot longer than we could ever hope to live. And since you can’t take it with you, I hope you hope that the stuff you leave behind will be put to good use.
The Long Beach Public Library—an organization with a painfully small operating budget that seems to get smaller by the minute—benefits everybody, even those of us who never walk through the doors of any of the branches that manage to remain open. So God knows this bit of generosity in Donald’s remembrance went to a worthy cause.
But beyond that, one little sticker in the back of one little album once owned by one little person reminds us that we are indebted to those preceding us, just as those who follow will inherit that which we leave behind. We live in an eternal present, a forever fleeting flash of time that can never be isolated from past and future. It all comes together. Sometimes we just forget.
They say ev’rything can be replaced
Yet ev’ry distance is not near
So I remember ev’ry face
Of ev’ry man who put me here
I see my light come shining
From the west unto the east.
Any day now, any day now
I shall be released
–Bob Dylan, “I Shall Be Released”
(Disc 2, Track 3 of The Essential Bob Dylan)