Severe Book Withdrawal in Lawrence, KS

There are many things my beloved hometown of Lawrence, Kansas is known for.

We are a Civil War destination town, since Southern sympathizers burned our town to the ground in 1863. That's history.

We are a basketball town, known as the home of James Naismith and a continually HOT basketball team. Here is my current favorite player on this year's team, Kevin Young. I love his enthusiasm almost as much as I love his FRO. (Kevin is on right below, photo courtesy of our shriveling local newspaper, the Lawrence Journal-World.)

What you may not know is that is a town of book lovers! Really! This is something I've long suspected BUT with the closing of our public library for the past 2 weeks as it moves to temporary quarters (while our new, improved library will be built in the next 2 years on the just vacated current downtown site), let me just say the library lovers are in a total frenzy. WITHDRAWAL tremors were detected at a luncheon last Thursday. I actually overheard this statement, "Yes, I have 10 books checked out but I've already read them ALL!! What time is that university library open?"

Then yesterday we stopped in Half-Price Books and the place was JAMMED! People needing a book fix on a January day were crammed in the place!

Tuesday. if we can just last until Tuesday, we can visit our beloved library in it's temporary headquarters, either ironically or fittingly in the old Borders store site downtown. Surely we can wait a few more days, right?