Meditations on the Nature of Community at the Library Grand Opening
We share this place. We may not use words the same, vote the same, have the same diet, or the same hopes. We may not be afraid of the same things.
I had the grand opening of the new Redmond Library on my calendar for weeks. I think a lot about community. I talk a lot about community. In that thinking and talking, I grow more and more confused about what community is, but I want it, and this was going to be an event of Peak Community.
It was a March day where the seasons grapple for control of the high desert. The coat I had put on was now bulky extra luggage I shifted from arm to arm. The temperature climbed just in the time it took to walk a few blocks to the new library. Parking had filled up the curbs, and not that efficiently — this town that does not parallel park much.
I missed the ribbon cutting but joined into the crowds gathering to explore the new Redmond Public Library.
A short sleeved high school pep band was going at it on the sunny, South facing entrance. Two fairies unloaded their gear from a small SUV. There are lots of kinds of fairies, these were women with shining strands woven into long flowing hair over layers of flowing glimmering robes. Jim Henson could learn a thing or two from their sophisticated wings.
The doors of the building never got a chance to close as the town made its way inside. I joined them. What is the feeling you get in a space where humans are moving with intention in all possible directions? Folks were mounting the wide central staircase, gazing up at the massive floating sculpture above the landing.
An older man was hefting his cane while reclining in one of the very new, very inviting chairs.
Two teenage girls, one wearing fingerless gloves, were assembling plastic parts at a table in the maker space. Beside them was a busied 3D printer that had gotten as far as sculpting the feet of some kind of dinosaur. The printer head, continuing to dispense dinosaur, moved with intention under the fascinated gazes of an a older man and a young girl.
The tall ceilings of the brand new building were a relief from the bustle. I raised my eyes up and the tornadoes of humanity dissipated into the serene air.
The fairies set up their forest glade in a wing by the kids area. The kids area is ringed by tall imaginative seating which indeed could be used to encase a small child and a book getting lost together in imagination. But anyone with much knowledge of young humans could have predicted that they are also effective as a parkour obstacle course for energized cadres of children showing each other how to clamor to the definitely-you-could-hurt-yourself-if-you-fell summit.
Tyler and his son had just come through the other entrance. We met and hugged in the middle of the maelstrom. He wears a trucker hat, a long beard, has tattoos down his fingers, and rebuilds old Jeep Trucks. His wife and he, of the South, fly a "Yall means Y'all" derivation of the Pride flag at their house. Horses and chickens wander about.
His son engages well with other kids and so the four year old went off to make music, play games, and yes climb the furniture while Tyler and I caught up.
He and I are in a lot of community. We have similar political beliefs. We wear similar hats. We also live close to each other, sharing the same route into town, the same taphouse.
The owner of that taphouse does not share our political views, but they share the roads and weather and reports of animals.
My mom joined us. Since we both grew up here, we have a depth of place that sometimes comes out as judgment of the present. I guess this is what people call nostalgia.
This new building is built on the footprint of my 4th grade school. Mom and I don’t understand why they did not use a lighter brick for this building to remember the character of an old school house. Within view of this building is her high school, now city hall, built of the splotchy red and white brick she and I both would have preferred here at the new Redmond Library.
Take a tour of our new library with Gen Z translator and Deschutes County Library Director Todd Dunkleberg
Here at the library in town, Tyler, my mom, and I are mingling with people who share this space, share a curiosity about the 3D Printer in the maker space. Share the confusion of what a maker space has to do with libraries. We share this place. We may not use words the same, vote the same, have the same diet, or the same hopes. We may not be afraid of the same things. This is community, and these days it is never without a little bit of tension for me.
The word community gets used a lot, and there is an instinct today to build community. Find community. Foster community. People seem to know that they want more of whatever community is.
I was sent an article about community from Colorado Public Radio (January 2025).1 The producers spoke to three different groups about community: rural farmers, college students, and immigrant refugees from Colombia.
In a young person at a college, their communities are of interests and attributes. They use text threads to keep up to date with each other. They lean on each other for support of their identities.
The rancher and farmers in rural Colorado talk about sharing a space, like Tyler and Mom and I in the buzzing Redmond Library. They talk of dealing together with the fact that different people want to drive the road at a different speed. Tyler and I can relate!
The stories of the Colombia refugees are difficult for me to comprehend. Their community in Colombia could not protect their children from the cartels, and so they left.
I am so tied to place. It is my first connection to community. To give up place and the community of a place seems so perilous to me.
In our Old Truck Good Coffee podcast with John Durso,2 Leo came to the idea that community is defined by that which we focus on.
Of late I am focused on my geographical space; This library, the streets between Tyler's house and mine.
The idea of community of values, such as the college students, can fade from my attention. Then I am invited to a dinner for fellow exhausted progressives. I drive 45 minutes to a city. We eat vegan enchiladas and talk about our rescue dogs and how we attempt to digest the next wave of terrible news. I hunger for this community, too.
These ideas of community share something, though they function so differently. They are links that pass through us. Our instinct forges them through us.
Folks use the word community to describe different connections but, walking out of the library still carrying my too-bulky coat, I think it describes the same hunger inside everyone.
https://www.cpr.org/2025/01/16/colorado-community-conversations-seeking-common-ground/ I really recommend the five minute listen to the audio version. Produced by Lauren Antonoff Hart and Stephanie Rivera.
Check out our dulcet voices asking John questions!
You can see over every bookshelf in this library. Lean your forearms on one and talk to someone on the other side and they will mirror you. This re-enacts conversations I had outside the post office and in the parking lot of the hardware store those years when Joel Barker was a grade school student in Redmond. Community made audible in both illustrations.