Magic in the printed word

I love books. I love the tactile sense of the paper in my hands and the smell of the ink. I love the potential held inside the two covers of a new book and the anticipation of the adventure I’ll find inside.
I work for a newspaper and I’m an author of two books. I have a stake in the printed word.
So, why did I buy a Kindle?
For those of you who haven’t discovered the Kindle, it is a hand-held device used for reading books in electronic format. My new Kindle holds 3,500 books in the palm of my hand.
Over the weekend I met Don Carlos Barrios, a Mayan elder and shaman, at a ceremony near Madison. When I got home and searched the internet, I discovered he has written a book titled the Book of Destiny. His book provides information about Mayan prophecies about 2012 and the Mayan calendar. I decided it sounded like an interesting book so I checked to see if it was in Kindle format. It was.
Here’s the amazing thing: with one click of a button on my computer I ordered the book in electronic format. While I turned off my computer and put my dogs to bed, the book was automatically downloaded to my Kindle (which wasn’t even turned on). I got into bed, turned on the device and began to read the book. All of this happened within about ten minutes and the only factor that slowed down the process was putting my dogs to bed.
It has to be magic.
As I began to read, Barrios was describing the new age of consciousness that is part of the Mayan prophecy of 2012. He speaks of the fifth sun which will bring the human consciousness into alignment with the ether world, the world of the unseen.
It feels like we are already there. How else can we explain the magic of the entire contents of a book flying through the air from one computer to the next in less than a minute? How does the information know where to land? This transmission is faster than the speed of sound or light.
With my Kindle, I can carry with me the entire collection of Charles Dickens writings, every Sherlock Holmes book written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the complete stories of Edgar Allan Poe. And the device weighs only 8.3 ounces.
Any avid reader can understand why I now say “I love my Kindle.”
I have not forsaken printed books. I still have my library of treasures at home and I’m sure I will continue to add to it.
In these times of ether world magic, it is still important to give our children the experience of reading a book they can hold in their hands. I don’t want to lose the image of my pajama wearing grandbaby cuddled up in her mother’s lap while having her favorite picture book read to her. A Kindle can’t give my grandbaby the sensation of touching the fur piece attached inside her book about animals, or the experience of seeing the colors of all her favorite books lined up on her bookshelf.
I still like the experience of reading an old book and finding a personal note hand-written in the margins, or having a small piece of paper fall out of the back of the book with an old grocery list on it. I like tattered edges and folded pages.
And I like things that help bring literacy to new levels. This is the image I hold for these new electronic readers. In this busy world we live in, being able to carry an entire library of books in the pocket of your coat just might encourage young people to read more. It can certainly lessen the load of the backpacks children carry. Being able to adjust the type size with the click of a button might mean that elders and people with limited sight will be able to continue to read.
Yes, I have a stake in the printed word, and I also have a stake in preserving our mother earth. The more books I read on my Kindle, the more trees we have to beautify our world and create the oxygen we breathe.
Which, to me, is another form of magic.