Libraries: One links nations / One culture-washes a robber baron
The Haskell Free Library and the Morgan Library were founded within a year of each other (1905 and 1906, respectively), but aside from both housing books, they could hardly be more different. One is emblematic of community and learning; the other enshrines a legacy of power and wealth.
Vermont’s Haskell Free Library and Opera House—small, quirky, and overseen by a taxidermied moose head—literally straddles the US-Canada border, with Stanstead, Quebec, on one side and Derby Line, Vermont, on the other. From its inception, patrons from both countries freely entered through the US side—without passing through an official border check. Deliberately positioned to encourage community and international friendship, the Haskell has now fallen victim to Trump’s hallucinatory obsession with the inherent criminality of foreigners. His Department of Homeland Security is closing Canadian-side access, claiming—without evidence—that the public library harbors “drug trafficking and smuggling.”
On one level, that charge may be true(-ish), since prescription drugs in the US can be significantly more expensive than the same meds on the Canadian side of the black electrical tape that bifurcates the library floor. So who knows—concealed by shelves of books, those sneaky Canadians may be trafficking asthma inhalers and insulin.
The drugs of choice for Morgan Library founder J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913) were gold and greed. Exuding the cold charms of a gilded mausoleum, his ostentatiously opulent NYC home-turned-museum preserves his collections and stands as a testament to the potency of culture-washing. But his support for the arts aside, Morgan was first and foremost a robber baron, whom the library website decorously dubs an “American financier”—which is like calling Jeffrey Dahmer an “eccentric gourmet.”
“Eccentric gormet”. 😂
Stellar!