Drinking Fountain

Today I spent a couple of hours at the Canadian Authors Vancouver booth at Word Vancouver. After talking to a lot of people, I felt thirsty and left my fellow table minders briefly in search of something to drink. I was planning to buy some bottled water, but I popped in to the library for a moment to pick up my hold and remembered they had water fountains.

As kids in elementary school, we routinely drank water from the fountain or bubbler, as it was sometimes called. The bubbler was a great thing for kids who had trouble sitting still, providing a welcome break in the unwelcome routine of sitting for long hours at a desk.

"Miss Holden, can I please go to the fountain?" a child would say, waving an arm in the air. And if the kid asked politely, the teacher would usually agree.

Now we've become used to the concept of drinking bottled water, and paying for it too. In today's society so many things are monetized. But the best things in life are still free, and that includes public libraries and water fountains.

Drinking at the fountain in the VPL today, I felt how blessed we are to have this free place for all to slake their thirst for water, and for knowledge too. As Bill Richardson once said, "If free public libraries hadn't been invented long ago, probably nobody would be willing to fund them now."

But free public libraries have been around for a very long time. Drinking fountains are old too -- even the Romans had them. And people are starting to use them again. Very sensible, too.