Do you feel like a Poor Pilgrim wandering the Infinite? Are you laid low by language limitations? Computer complications? Fractious offspring? Frantic spouse?

Take heart, fellow Traveler. Whatever your condition, almost, you too can possess a means to leap over limitations inflicted by base considerations like pinched pennies and pressed circumstance. A means available to you, in the Here and Now. This present-day cure-all really can work. No prescription necessary. No experience necessary. No skills to speak of, either. Just a bit of plastic!

Yes, you too, aided merely with a pocket-sized piece of plastic known as your library card, can transform a lackluster everyday landscape into limitless vistas populated with rivers of information; founts of inspiration; streams of data.

Like membership in the WBFN, which has no fee but offers lucky “eligibles” a lifetime of perks, membership in the Montgomery County Public Library system is virtually priceless, yet free to all who qualify.

It hasn’t always been that way.

During the Great Depression (oh no, we’re not going there; we’re going to stay right here in the realm of Happy Thoughts), the fledgling Newcomb-Bethesda library resorted to charging $3 a year—nearly $45 in 2008 dollars— in a last-ditch effort to stay open. Needless to say, that wasn’t much of a draw for families already feeling squeezed; membership plummeted, from over a thousand, to just 51 die-hards.

For a chunk of the next decade, the library vanished entirely. Phoenix-like, however, it persisted, rising from the ashes to regroup in place after place. Its current incarnation began not long ago, in 2003, after an interminable two years’ closed for reconstruction.

It was worth the wait.

Times have changed since the founding of the public library now at 7400 Arlington Road. The decades since 1930s have delivered, not decline, but improvement – reams and reams of it—some quite spectacular…improvement and innovation (which are not necessarily, as we well know, always the same).

Even the parking has gotten better, once you appreciate how it works. This ingenious system was devised to stave off the need to charge library patrons for parking, while defending the library’s coveted downtown-Bethesda spaces from those on the prowl for a convenient place to leave their cars while they ventured off to nearby shops and restaurants. Just remember the number of your spot, so that when you go inside the library you can punch the corresponding two or three digits into the thing that looks like an ATM that will reward you with a ticket signifying two carefree parking hours.

Originally operated out of the basement of a local hardware store and stocked with a few hundred donated books by a few committed volunteers, today’s Bethesda library has evolved into a veritable Temple of Knowledge, a model for Montgomery County Public Libraries everywhere—and for neighborhood libraries anywhere, for that matter.

These days, you can even access much of what the library offers remotely, say, if you’d like to renew the books you borrowed (you can receive e-mail reminders of when items are due), or if you have a topic you want to investigate. Or for a variety of reasons: maybe you’re feeling unsociable, under the weather, or simply don’t want to change out of your comfy flannel jammies.

Language limitations? Look up what’s available to you right now, at your fingertips, from your own computer, at NO CHARGE. Take your pick of real-live virtual instruction anytime online: lessons 1 through 100, for English, German, Portuguese, Brazilian Portuguese, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and more – ESL (English-as-a-Second-Language) versions in some cases.

Computer limitations? Oh no, you’re not going to slip by with that tired excuse—neither lack of a computer NOR the skills to use one need stand in your way. You just march yourself down to the library in person (yes, there are buses that go right by there, plus it’s not far from the Bethesda Metro: it’s open every day of the week at this time of year. Enter, and head for one of the up-to-date flat-screen computer monitors awaiting use.

For serious study, there’s a Quiet Study Room enclosed in floor-to-ceiling glass (no flat screens there, just seriously intense people hunched over intensely serious materials), among other appealing features that include an adorable Children’s Section; oh, and lots of tapes and DVDs and CDs and such in addition to all the usual print-type goodies.

Just Plain Lonely?

Though it may seem unimaginable, the day may come when you have had your fill of solitude and solitary pursuits, and actually want the company of others of your kind. Great, because yet again, the library is there for you, offering free book discussions and author lectures and all kinds of activities and events, many of which are geared for specific Latino/Hispanic, Asian, African, along with any number of special-interest audiences.

These days, armed with your beauteous hologram-enhanced library card (almost suspiciously snazzy; taxpayers may wonder uneasily how much these cost to design and produce), you can borrow, renew, query, research, learn, play, watch, listen, and generally occupy yourself and the entire family with pursuits and activities to fill many months of Sundays.

Dubious? Curious? Take a moment, and—if you can’t quite work up the steam to visit the library in person—do visit the library online: www.montgomerycountymd.gov/Content/Libraries/Index.asp

Check it out. Because, face it: unless you at least bother to click on the Calendar of Events, you won’t even know what you’re missing—literally. Go there; go crazy (figuratively speaking). Happy trails!

Mary Lee Kingsley