Yes, I do.

Among my errands and appointments today was a trip to the library to return some cookbooks I never got a chance to read. On the way in, I saw a little girl with long, sandy brown hair and bangs, about three, I think. She was wearing little green pants with the cuffs rolled up and a flower on one pocket, running in that stubby way that little people do. In her hands was "Corduroy the Bear". She was so excited about going to the library, where all the wonderful stories are kept, she could hardly run fast enough. If I didn't know that I was me, I would have thought I was watching myself.

I remember a haircut my mother took me to get("You'll look just like Joey Hetherton!" I looked just like a boy.) just before we moved to Modesto. I spent the afternoon in the John Steinbeck Library in Salinas, reading a stack of Peanuts cartoon books on a bean bag in the children's section and feeling the back of my newly-shorn head in a sort of suspended state. In the hot (doesn't begin to describe it) summers in the Central Valley, the big downtown library was an icy refuge, and a place to be publicly alone with my imagination. I'd always bring home a big stack of books and arrange them in the order I wanted to read them, then rearrange them in the real order I wanted to read them, finally sneaking the most tempting one out of the middle of the pile. I would read for hours and hours. So today I came home and made this shirt. If you like it, you can buy one, and I'll donate the proceeds to libraries. Here's one organization that accepts donations. I believe in libraries. Yes, I do.