The Free Public Library!

Extra! Extra! Read all about it! The public library is free, and believe it or not, it's not even guarded! That's right ladies and gentlemen of all ages and all shapes and sizes! You can just walk right into that incredibly valuable building and just take whatever priceless knowledge you want without even paying for it! Yup! You can just take it! You don't even have to wait for the drawbridge to drop to storm this castle! Just rush inside like a knight in shining armor and take whatever books and whatever knowledge that you want!

It's so amazing that I'm going to have to say it again! The public library is free, and it will give you an incredibly valuable education, as well as anything else your little heart may desire. You can actually walk in there and spend as much time as you want, and then walk out as a higher quality person. Can you believe that?

I feel so lucky to have known about our free public library system for the last twenty-five-years. And during that time I have never stopped sipping from the fountain of knowledge and potential power that has been made so easily available to all of us. And come to think of it now, I can't see myself ever stopping the winning habit of sucking up everything I can from this country's library system.

Hmm... Imagine another twenty-five-years of this country's public library system feeding my brain and quenching my thirst for knowledge and potential power. Wow! Now I'm imagining fifty more years of feeding my brain and quenching my thirst... It's mind-boggling, wouldn't you agree? Nothing is impossible with sustained effort over time in a library.

How could any one of us not take advantage of how easy the public library system has made it to be a lifelong learner? Just look at all that information floating in the middle of all of those neatly stacked aisles of books!

Now teens and even tweens, go learn, lead, and lay the way to a better world for all of us. Remember, the public library is free and it will give you an incredibly valuable education. But this will only happen if you stop sitting on your hands and get up and get your feet moving toward your public library; and don't forget your library card! And once again, thanks for all that you do, and all that you will do...

Award-Winning Author, Speaker, Educator, and Life Coach Daniel Blanchard wants you to start spending more time in the free public library. It's guaranteed to make you a better person.

Life Is Interesting

Life is full of adventures, interesting encounters, and opportunities. Most of these, I find, include the study of people and their actions and reactions. Some are funny, some exhilarating, and some puzzling or sad, but they all lead to the fullness of my life and extend my understanding. Three years ago I was selected as a member of the State Task Force on Alzheimer's Disease and Other Dementias. A heady title, it is a volunteer position that included creating a state planning and then actively working with our legislature to help enact laws to educate and train citizens, health professionals, law enforcement, and any other interested individuals about this horrendous disease and to safeguard those who have it and their caregivers.

Because legislative action is slow and the fact that my legislature meets every other year I decided to initiate my own awareness campaign to educate individuals throughout the expansive rural section of my state. I designed and purchased posters and brochures plus created a letter of introduction and explanation and then outlined my first route. When a member of the state Aging and Disabilities Services learned of my plan, she found funding for the materials and to cover mileage, a blessing that allows me to do more and with more authority. And so I set out on my first 600-mile education and information circuit. The first stop, 74 miles west of home was the public library. The librarian greeted me with an effusive welcome and expressed the desire for a live presentation on Alzheimer's disease. What a terrific, encouraging beginning. In the same town the senior center asked for more brochures and to please come share my information at Frontier Days in August. The long-term care facility and sheriff's department were excited as well and so I smiled, felt my heart lift, and drove on.

60 miles later I visited my second town and while the greeting was not as thrilling, law enforcement especially was interested in training to better understand and work with individuals with Alzheimer's disease and other dementias. And so I sped on visiting every town in the loop trying to always stop and visit with law enforcement, long-term care facilities, senior centers, and libraries. Because my state has been hesitant to require training and education for police, highway patrol, fire fighters, and other first responders, I was jazzed at the fact that every community's law enforcement agencies appeared eager to read the posters and study the brochure and intent on learning more.

Back to the interesting part, let me tell you about a post office I visited in a tiny town. I placed my materials on the community bulletin board and then took my explanation hand-out into the postal matron. She nodded, sighed, and announced, "No one here is interested in this."

Surprised I tossed out a couple of statistics and the importance of education and she repeated her negative reply. I tried a third shot, only to be shot down again. I pointed out my name and phone number and my email address on my flyer as I sort of pleaded with her, "If you do have someone ask about this, please have them contact me." With her, "I doubt it," good-by, I jumped in my pickup and headed 90 miles up the road to the last stop on this swing as I wondered at the disinterested voice of one person, the self-decreed spokesperson of the town.

Since a library had been my first inspiring stop, I made it my last in this community, the last on Loop #1. The room was entirely empty and I had to search for the librarian who was hidden in the stacks. I offered my spiel as she gazed at me thoughtful while keeping her distance at the same time.

"And what would I have to do?" I explained to her that it required nothing other than setting a date and time with me, then placing an announcement in her bulletin. She wrinkled her brow with consternation, scratched her head, pondered some more and then asked again what she would have to do. I reiterated and must have appeared forlorn enough that she finally gave in, handed me her card with library hours and a phone number for future contact. I guess that was a rousing cheer of encouragement.

This driving and driven moment of life I am finding, is full of adventures, interesting encounters, and opportunities. This is my chance to spread the word about Alzheimer's disease, increase understanding through education, and encourage citizens to contact Congress about increasing the research for a cure budget. I am seeing new sites and meeting new friends. I am studying and learning. My goal, my dream, is that every single person in my enormous region will know more about Alzheimer's with facts and figures and also know resources and help available to those with the disease and their caregivers and family. If we talk enough, know enough, and raise a ruckus, this disease will be brought to the forefront of everyone's conscience and we will demand and receive a cure now!

Current Comment: Search for a New Labour Leader

It seems strange to many people that in a search for a new leader for the UK's labour party the leading candidate is being criticised for proposing to offer a real alternative to the ruling conservative party of David Cameron. In recent decades the belief has arisen that to have a realistic chance of being elected to government a political party must occupy the middle ground. This has led the two main parties to squeeze together into an ever narrower band of policies and the people have been denied a meaningful choice.

The election of May 2015 saw the rise of two parties that did seem to offer some new policies; on the right, the UK Independence Party proposed to curb immigration into the UK, and on the left, the Scottish National Party advocated less austerity and more help for the poor and needy. The first is showing the conservatives that there is room to move further to the right, and the second is showing labour that there is room to move to the left, which, after all, is what the leading candidate, Jeremy Corbyn is proposing.

Although Mr Corbyn is being demonised by his opponents for advocating outdated policies that would return labour to the political wilderness, his pronouncements have been both tentative and moderate. The main concern is his promise to look into the possibility to re-introduce clause four of the party's original manifesto, which concerns the nationalisation of key industries. At a time when the privatised energy companies and national railway system are in crisis, calls for renationalisation are being heard from many quarters and such a policy could win many votes. At least the policy would open some space between the parties and provide the voter with a clear choice between privatised exploitation and nationalised inefficiency. If that does not seem much of a choice, at least the latter provides many more jobs for working people rather than huge profits for a few, and isn't that a socialist objective?

It is strange in a democracy in which poor people greatly outnumber the wealthy that policies that favour the poor are so hard to sell. The answer must lie in the power of big business to influence policy and threaten economic disruption. The myth that the poor can only get richer through continual economic growth should be challenged by left-wing politicians. Economic growth has not been found to 'lift all the boats' as was promised in the 1960s, neither have the benefits trickled down, as some still maintain. The left now has an opportunity to advocate redistribution of wealth in new terms that all can understand.

John Powell

To learn more about life in general and the intriguing story of the grassroots industrial revolution in the turbulent Ghana of the second half of the twentieth century, read John Powell's novels The Colonial Gentleman's Son and Return to the Garden City or his non-fictional account The Survival of the Fitter. More details of these books and photographs of the informal sector artisans of Suame Magazine in Kumasi will be found on the following websites.