{"id":2437,"date":"2017-03-31T23:51:26","date_gmt":"2017-03-31T23:51:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/happiness-among-the-shelves\/"},"modified":"2023-04-20T18:11:49","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T18:11:49","slug":"happiness-among-the-shelves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/blog\/happiness-among-the-shelves\/","title":{"rendered":"Happiness Among the Shelves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/janko-ferlic-174927.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3173\" src=\"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/janko-ferlic-174927.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"800\" height=\"739\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"artcred\">\n\tWords: <span style=\"color: #ca877f;\"><a style=\"color: #ca877f;\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\"> Christen Hammons<\/a><\/span>\n\t<br\/>\n\tPhoto credit: <span style=\"color: #000000;\"><a style=\"color: #000000;\" href=\"\" target=\"_blank\">Janko Ferlic<\/a><\/span>\n\t<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The first time I stepped foot in the Downey City Library, I couldn\u2019t believe my eyes. <\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Shelf after shelf was filled with books just waiting to be picked up and devoured, and all you had to do was show the woman working at the counter a piece of plastic? I felt as though I had truly found heaven on Earth. I would load up my book bag with all kinds of stories, read them all, and return so I could repeat the process all over again.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Nearly 30 years later, and I still feel like I\u2019m stepping into a magical land whenever I step inside a library. It\u2019s a monthly ritual of mine. I walk through the doors, armed with a tote bag and my journal where I\u2019ve recorded all the things I want to read, and take in the sight of all the books stretched out before me.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s in this moment that I\u2019m my happiest. I walk through the aisles, pulling books that are on my list but also any that catch my eye. I grab a book, and as I do, a paper falls out. It\u2019s the receipt of what the book\u2019s previous borrower also checked out. I suddenly have a pile of books so large I\u2019ll never get through them all in the time allowed, but I check them all out anyway so that I\u2019ll have plenty of options to choose from. I\u2019m still amazed each time I hand my library card to the clerk that I get to read all these books\u2026 for free. I say goodbye to Marian, the librarian who always seems to be working whenever I come in and who has the best book recommendations, and tell her I\u2019ll see her again next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; The first time I stepped foot in the Downey City Library, I couldn\u2019t believe my eyes. &nbsp; Shelf after shelf was filled with books just waiting to be picked up and devoured, and all you had to do was show the woman working at the counter a piece of plastic? I felt as though [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":1109,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1109"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bellagracemagazine.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}