LAPL.org – Fare Thee Well, Glen Creason, Glen Creason, Librarian III, History & Genealogy Department, October 14, 2021: “…I’ve been here for 8 presidents, 5 Mayors, many numbers of Microsoft Windows, 3 Dodgers World Championships, 11 Laker crowns, flip-phones, and smartphones, subways, a spectacular Olympics, a book, and the birth of a wonderful daughter. There were also the dark times of 2 catastrophic Fires, the Aids epidemic, the LA uprising, 9/11, a mental health sinkhole, and Covid. This grand old library was always my refuge and inspiration through deaths, divorce, and depression. This precious Village of Central has been tested but always held together by folks who share my love for the true value of the old beauty. There are just five fire survivors left but we have a tempered bond as strong as iron. Over the decades I have watched hundreds and hundreds of staff members pass through my life under the pyramid. Most of them were devoted to a noble cause and many stayed for the duration. I would wager every one has a bushel of great stories about bringing knowledge or guidance and even humor to the great washed or unwashed people of L.A. There is nothing quite like the variety in the ridiculous to the sublime public who visit libraries. I will miss the unpredictable curiosity of my patrons. Once I could rattle off  “the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus” as one of “the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World” or patiently explain that I found no evidence that Columbus was wearing cuff-links when he discovered America. I could go on for several hundred more pages but it is only the law of averages when you get a hundred thousand questions there will be some bizarre fun in there. I learned so much from all of these inquiring Angelenos (or many other states when their libraries closed) that classrooms could never come close to these five hundred months of instruction. There were plenty of inquiries I could not satisfy…the existence of the Nazi tarot deck, the location of the Lizard People’s golden tablets, the Jesuit maps of Los Angeles… I knew how crazy people were long before the internet made it crystal clear…”