Day 117, Sunday July 14, 2024: Albany, New York to Addison, Vermont

Carnegie libraries visited: Ticonderoga, New York

Days sober: 388

I slept in Brendan’s bedroom last night, left unchanged from when he lived there. You see, Wayne and I are members of the club that no parent wants to join; the “club” for parents who have lost a child. The bedroom of Wayne’s son was lined with trophies and posters; a bathrobe hung on the door, and photographic equipment was in their original boxes.

After leaving Albany I drove north towards Lake Champlain, where I would catch a ferry to the Vermont shore. The most glorious part of the drive took me along the shores of Lake George, which was dotted with tiny libraries and old school motels and resorts in Caldwell, Diamond Point, and Bolton Landing. I imagined generations of families coming there for the summer to enjoy. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, those families included the Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, and Rockefellers, none of whom shared motel rooms with two twin beds. They and their cronies had their own private estates, so take that, plebes. At least those without material riches had their public libraries.

Caldwell Lake George Library

Hillview Library in Diamond Point

Bolton Free Library in Bolton Landing

The Black Watch Memorial Library in Ticonderoga, a town nestled between the northern edge of Lake George and the southern tip of Lake Champlain, was established through the will of Rosemund Wicker Bradley. It was the ninth bequest on her list – the first eight were for various family members and friends – and included the residual of what was not distributed to the others. It was given for the “purpose of purchasing, supporting, and maintaining a Library, provided the said organization shall be formed during my lifetime or the period of one year of my decease…” Ticonderoga needed to hop to it, and it did. Rosemund died in 1899, and the library was established in 1900. 

Blackwatch Memorial Library

Bradley’s gift, generous as it was, soon became insufficient to meet the growing needs of the town, and by 1903 a couple of the community’s residents approached Carnegie. Frederick Richards, writing on behalf of the Ticonderoga Historical Society, had done his homework. The library was to be named The Black Watch Memorial Library in honor of the men of that Highland regiment who perished in the Battle of Ticonderoga in 1758. Richards wrote to Carnegie that “When you are at Skibo castle [Carnegie’s home in Scotland] you are therefore in the Black Watch country and are of course aware of their glorious record at Ticonderoga.” He awarded Ticonderoga $5000.

I wish I could have just enjoyed the drive, as I continued north passing Port Henry, Westport, and Essex. I couldn’t, because the news of President Trump’s attempted assassination kept worming through my head. An inch or two to the right, and he would have been killed; it’s a miracle he wasn’t, although I won’t be attributing it to any Higher Power. Now, his “Fight, fight, fight!” response is likely to help him win reelection. 

Sherman Memorial Library in Port Henry

Westport Library Association

Belden Memorial Library in Essex

Assassinations – and I’ll call most gun murders by that name – are the price we pay for our 2nd Amendment rights. That’s not just my opinion: it’s the one offered by Charlie Kirk, who himself was assassinated in 2025. Kirk (in)famously said “I think it's worth it. I think it's worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights." Whether or not it’s “worth it” I’ll leave to you (You can read his full statement on this here, and it’s well worth reading.) 

Kirk raises a point that I have often used in my policy ethics classes. Here’s the hypothetical case I suggest: 

Imagine a new technology that will vastly improve, in many ways, life in America. It will promote freedom and prosperity. Millions will depend on it for their way of life.

But: It will kill 50,000 Americans every year.

Should this technology be legalized?

You might anticipate – as Kirk does – that the answer is that we already have legalized it. It’s the automobile. As a society, we have chosen to accept those deaths because of the benefits we receive. Virtually any policy that produces good things will also have harmful effects, so we need to grapple with the question “Do the costs outweigh the benefits?”

To many, the idea that the “benefits” of gun rights outweigh their clear costs in human lives is preposterous. To which I say: hold on. To many, the “costs” of such freedoms as speech, press, and assembly are also dangerously high. I’m thinking especially of books here, as I spend so much time in libraries and reading what’s on the shelves there. The ideas that books contain are seen by some as even more threatening than guns, because rather than killing individuals they can poison the entire body politic. Even though my inclination is to put much stricter rules on gun ownership, I am sympathetic to the idea that to protect my Constitutional rights then I must allow others theirs. All rights have costs.

Mark on Ferry on Lake Champlain