Our friend Jay Bridge, who is an engineer and a carpenter, dropped off our new Little Free Library, one of the more than 40,000 now sprouting all across the country, and especially in rural America. There is one other in our small town. Jay does remarkable work, this will grace the front lawn near the mailbox.

The idea is for people who are readers to stop and take a book, and then, if they can, return a book, the one they took to read or another.  This movement started in 2009 when a Wisconsin man build a free library and put it on his lawn in honor of his mother, a librarian.

The movement has spread rapidly despite a number of conflicts from towns and zoning officials and snooty neighbors who demanded the libraries be taken down, claiming they are illegal structures (they are smaller than many birdhouses). The movement seems to have weathered most of those assaults, but they still occur in towns where some people think they are ugly and inappropriate.

The libraries are all about two issues close to my heart, books and community. The libraries are also meant to make reading and book-sharing easier for children and young people. We spotted one in nearby Vermont a few months ago and have been taking and replacing books, and we have plenty to stock our library with.

This is grassroots community organizing at its best. People can build their own libraries, but we couldn’t do it. Jay did a great job, as always.

This weekend, we will stain and paint our library and next week, Jay will come back with a pole and put it in the ground in front of our house.

We are very happy to find this when we came home from the movies, we went to see an interesting movie called Baby Driver. We decided to be bad and stop working a bit  early. It felt good. Spiderman is next on the list.