To Whom it May Concern

             In 1930’s America, during the height of the Great Depression, an out-of work architect named Alfred Mosher Butts turned his attention to a matter of great importance—the creation of a word game involving both chance and skill, that valued originality of word and thought, and created a hierarchy amongst the previously democratic English alphabet.  Butts converted his studio from one of architecture into one for game-making. He spent days carving twenty-six letters into small wooden blocks and until finally, he was satisfied.  Originally he called his invention “Criss-Cross Words”—luckily for modern-day enthusiasts, however, the name did not stick. (Imagine inviting everyone over for a casual game of “Criss-Cross Words”).  In the end, the name was changed to a catchier word meaning “to frantically grope” and the game Scrabble was born!

Alfred Butts at a Scrabble factory in Vermont in 1985. (Photo originally from http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidewalt/2011/08/02/alfred-butts-scrabble/)

               The twenty-six letters Butts used for Scrabble were not always a forgone conclusion. The evolution of the modern-day English alphabet has been a long and arduous one. According to freedictionary.com, a letter is “any of a set of conventional symbols used in writing or printing a language, each symbol being associated with a group of phonetic values in the language”.  Prior to the most recent edit of the alphabet, both the ampersand (&) and the thorn (Þ) were proud members of the group, but the early printing press kept getting stuck every time it used either,  so they didn’t make the cut.  
             There is rarely a need to spell out a letter—usually they are only seen as a precursors to other words such as the “tee-shirt” or a “dee-jay”.  As any avid Scrabble player knows, however, spelling letters is a legitimate and valuable knowledge base. “Em” will get you four points, “Vee” lands you six, and “zee” is a whopping twelve pointer!  

  Point earning is not the only draw to this friendly form of fun—there are also anagrams (mixed up letters or exiled strumpet?) and palindromes (Yo, banana boy!) or maybe a quick game of “if-you-don’t-guess-this-word-soon-I’m-going-to-pretend-to-hang-you-on-this-paper”.

But it’s when those letters begin appearing in appealing combinations with each other that the real fun begins. Where would words be without letters? Short words, lengthy words, serious words and playful words make a monster mash and solemn smash until they start churning out such classics as Lolita, Moby-Dick and Calvin and Hobbes.

What if it’s NOT an alphabetic character that we’re talking about? Maybe it’s a missive, the old-fashioned pencil to paper snail mail kind of a letter. To be more specific, "a written or printed communication addressed to a person, company etc, usually sent by post in an envelope.” What if Herman Melville had written:  “Dear so-and-so, Call me Ishmael…etc.    Best, H.M.”  The original version is pretty good, but the brevity of a letter is an admirable quality as well.

            Other than the point value system hierarchy Butts created, letters in the USA today are becoming increasingly democratic. Now, as opposed to the days when the idiom “a man of letters” was invented, letters are a part of the public domain. They are learned in public schools, displayed on public bill boards, and read in public places. In public libraries, they are read in paperbacks and hard covers, on glowing digital screens and pop-up books. Anyone can walk up the stairs, pull open the doors, and access hundreds of thousands of letters, mostly arranged in ways that are entertaining, enlightening, and engaging. Taking the books home generally requires proof of residency, about which some libraries are more stringent than others.

 In Chicago, you can present a valid photo ID such as a driver’s license, as long as it proclaims a zip code in the 60647 region or somewhere thereabouts. For those without a permanent Windy City address, the Chicago Public Library System website demands “two pieces of current identification, one of which must include name and Chicago address. Accepted forms of ID are: personal check; current telephone, gas, electric or cable bill; mail with a current postmark (within 30 days) or voter registration card. (Post office box numbers are not accepted).

The public library system in Alexandria, Virginia requires photo ID as well, but is a bit more accommodating. According to their website, they extend lending privileges to “anyone who lives, works, owns property or attends school within the city limits of Alexandria…is temporarily living in Alexandria for less than six months… [and] those who live in the following counties or cities: Arlington, District of Columbia, Fairfax, Falls Church, Fauquier, Frederick, Loudoun, Prince George's, Prince William and Montgomery.”  The library system has come a long way from 1930’s Virginia, when Samuel Wilbert Tucker, an African-American lawyer and native of Alexandria, arranged a peaceful sit-in at the library to protest the library’s discriminatory practice of banning the black community from being issued library cards (http://www.arlingtoncemetery.net/swtucker.htm).  The court eventually ruled that separate libraries be established for whites and blacks in Alexandria.  Today, however,  the public library system is a unified whole for people of all races.

These days, having a public library is considered to be a sign of a sophisticated and forward-thinking community, in addition to being an inalienable right of all those who live within the boundaries of two specifically shining seas.  According to Donald Miller in City of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America, after the Great Fire of 1871 destroyed the majority of Chicago, generous overseas donors sent thousands of books to the city to replace the ones they had lost. The only problem—at the time of the fire, Chicago did not yet have a public library. Embarrassed city leaders hurriedly threw together a makeshift one in an abandoned water tower to house their new collection.

Public libraries depend on their home communities for financial support.  Tax money keeps the doors open, but when times are tough, library budgets are usually some of the first ones to be trimmed. Their numbers may not be adding up, but the game is not over for them until their letters stop scoring points in communities nationwide.