Purity of mind and salvation through libraries? Wise words from a local broadsheet
One of the often overlooked but perhaps critical functions of the civic knowledge space provided by public libraries and most famously celebrated by German social philosopher Juergen Habermas is the assembly of local, often transient, publications. One such, a free broadsheet published from the local University of Toronto campus, was recently discovered by a Beyond Librarianship supporter in the Mississauga Public Library, near Toronto. It's called Commuting and draws on the ambiguity of its title word's simultaneous reference to proliferating transit behaviours and the reduction of decrees, often criminal sanctions. Commuting asks how do we reconcile current society's consumerism with our resulting desperate need for reduction, most acutely conservation of our natural environment. From a medieval saint can our salvation come? "Sister Water", one article of several like-minded in Commuting, cites "Canticle of the Sun", a song, legend has it, sung ...