The Witchy Bitches on Nostr: this morning, I rolled out of bed, for once excited to be awake early because a book ...

this morning, I rolled out of bed, for once excited to be awake early because a book I've been waiting to read for literally years was finally published. I logged onto the bookshare website, and there it was! I pressed the "download" button and a few seconds later it had downloaded onto my device ready for reading. It was a process that took about 30 seconds from start to finish and it really hit me how far we've come. I never owned a book until I was in college. When I was growing up, I got books from the National Library Service for the Blind-- a government-funded library run as part of the library of Congress. You never got to keep the books, and you could choose between braille books, large print, or books on tape which came with a giant beast of a machine which my sisters and I christened the "BYC" which stood for "Big Yellow Clunker." It had the footprint of your average-size laptop but was about 3 times as thick. It weighed at least 5 lbs. I would call the ladies at the library, ask for the book I wanted. If it was a mainstream book by a popular author, they might have it. If it was recently published, you'd have to wait a year or more for the library to get it. So when you call, if they had your book they would send it in the mail and it would arrive on my doorstep about 3 or 4 days later. My postal worker probably nursed a secret hatred for me because they had to haul giant black boxes of braille books or stacks of plastic boxes full of cassette tapes for me. If I was expecting books in the mail, i would wait at the bottom of my driveway for the postal worker, relieve them of their burden and grab the book I was most excited to read first. My sisters, who could see soon grew to love the books on tape so once the mail arrived we would grab the BYC, and the book and make a break for the river or the park to hide from our mother so she couldn't force us to do chores like we'd the garden or help can tomatoes. Books were treasures. They were tickets to a different place and time, populated with dragons, hobbits, and with historical figures like Amelia Earhart or Harriette Tubman, women I wanted to emulate and who inspired me. I used to wish to be able to own a book, to have the ability to put it on a shelf so I could retrieve it at any time. No waiting at the bottom of my driveway, or hoping that the library had this obscure fantasy novel all my friends were reading. Today I woke up, and just like everyone else I'm reading a book on a day of its release into the wild. When I'm done with it, I can store it on an SD card-- my metaphorical bookshelf-- so I can read it any time I want. I am struck once again by what a miracle this is.