Reading about the World - Weekly

Life has changed so much since I was a young person - it's actually mind-numbing to consider how far we have come.  Nearly every day, we can look for information on the world wide web through Google or some other search engine.  We see pictures and video of events in other parts of the world live - as they are happening.  These appear on our phones, our iPads, our computers - yes, even our smart televisions.  The information we have at our fingertips is simply amazing.

Contrast that with how we received information in the mid-60's.  At a grade schooler, our sources of information were discovered in the library.  We would walk through the underground tunnel at Vandyke Grade School to the Coleraine Carnegie Library - right across the street.  When you walked in this library, you knew you were in a library.  The smell of the books, newspapers and archives was unmistakably unique.  Books were plentiful.  We would check out the books we thought we would like and we learned about the world through the writings of those books - some classic stories. some true and others pure fiction.  It spurred our quest to learn more about the world in which we lived.  (Incidentally, that particular library was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and is still open today, 113 years after it was first built.  You can read more about it here.)

There were other means of learning back then.  Our school library also had what most libraries carried - a set of encyclopedias.  My folks purchased a set of World Book encyclopedias, complete with an annual subscription for a yearbook and a science yearbook that brought all the information up to date.  I remember Nancy and I purchasing a set for our children - way before the internet became a thing. 

But there was one item in my memory that is dear to my heart even as I think about it today.  The Weekly Reader.  During our grade school years, each week we would receive the latest copy of My Weekly Reader.  In our classrooms, we would pour over the information found in each issue, learning about the latest developments in space exploration, world events, and modern inventions.  We learned about world leaders and so many other lands which we could only dream about.  With our teachers leading the conversation, we learned more about the world each week.  We learned together, as classmates.  We learned from our teachers, who we respected and looked up to.  They were our role models of the day.  We brought the papers home and talked with them with our parents, interacting with them about our day at school.  And I would like to believe, we learned from our parents what they thought about the things that we were learning about in school.  We can't even imagine how precious and important those moments were in our early development.

Looking back, I treasure the memories of these instruments which helped to shape us as people.   I believe we have lost a great deal since those days.  

I wonder if we could google that to see if we could find it again.