Stop, read no further if you require modestly restrained “thank you” notes with wilting roses. What follows, shortly, is nothing short of an unrestrained geyser of adoration and love.

This letter is an unstopped spigot of “thank you” and “hallelujah” for the San Juan Island Library.

I have taken full advantage of most every service offered by our library: trashy magazines, ridiculously elaborate cookbooks, interlibrary loaning, children’s programming, travel maps, movies, books on tape and I have done it all with profligate disregard for restraint. Some weeks, and I go every week, I check out great mountains, piles and bags full of this stuff. And, when the staff and volunteers see me coming, do they avoid my demands to reserve this and order that and look up this other thing and, by the way, my rambunctious 9-year-old will be here every Monday? No, they welcome us with a smile, even welcoming the little loud ones, and make room on the counter for our piles.

I love the people at the library, all of them: the volunteers, the children’s librarian and, of course, Laura, our adventurous head librarian. Farewell, Laura, and well done — you will be missed. Thank you for stewarding our library and making it a place of welcome and discovery.

Amy Windrope
Friday Harbor