What the commonwealth still requires
I had an opportunity to play tourist in my hometown the other day. Planning a day of visiting museums with a friend in from out of town, I was reminded that a different kind of cultural institution would also be worth a visit: the Boston Public Library (BPL) on Copley Square, with public tours of its art and architecture.
Maybe I was feeling some postelection aftershocks, or maybe just a surge of pre-holiday gratitude. But it seemed like a good idea to celebrate this palace of learning. At a time of stress and division in the body politic, cultural institutions keep us together. Great libraries remind us that beauty and truth are 鈥渇ree to all,鈥� in the BPL鈥檚 simple but memorable phrase, and what鈥檚 more, that there are facts of given situations that can be discovered, even in the world of 鈥減ost-truth.鈥�
The BPL is a municipal institution, but it serves the entire commonwealth: Anyone who lives, works, studies, or owns property in Massachusetts can have a full-service BPL card. And commonwealth is a good word to keep in mind in connection with the library.聽
It originally meant something like 鈥渢he public welfare or general good,鈥� a sense now taken over by . By the 16th century, commonwealth meant the 鈥渨hole body of people constituting a nation or state, the body politic; a state, an independent community, esp. viewed as a body in which the whole people have a voice or an interest,鈥� according to the Oxford English Dictionary. The philosopher John Locke used the term as an equivalent of the Latin civitas.
Massachusetts is one of four states in the United States formally designated as 鈥渃ommonwealth.鈥� The other three are Pennsylvania, Virginia (like the Bay State, one of the original 13 Colonies), and Kentucky, once part of Virginia but hived off in 1792 to become the 15th state.聽
was in the news again recently, and for another reason than usage look-ups. Merriam-Webster鈥檚 list of top 鈥渢rending鈥� look-ups tells you all you would want to know about the election cycle just ended, maybe more: fascism, bigot, xenophobe, racism, socialism, resurgence, xenophobia, misogyny.
But no single word describes the whole global political cycle so much as Oxford Dictionaries鈥� : 鈥�,鈥� with its abandonment of truth in favor of perception and assertion.聽
Before we taxied off to Isabella Stewart Gardner鈥檚 Venetian palazzo on the Fenway, I wanted to show my friend the on the Boylston Street side of the library, a quotation attributed to its Board of Trustees. It always moves me to see it, but I was surprised to feel the catch in my voice as I read it aloud: 鈥淭he commonwealth requires the education of the people as the safeguard of order and liberty.鈥�
With its mention of 鈥渙rder,鈥� you鈥檇 have to call it a conservative motto. But the commonwealth, I suggest, is not 鈥減ost-truth.鈥澛�
