I'm tending to personal matters this weekend that prevent me from attending the grand opening of the newly renovated Cesar Chavez Library.

Which is a big bummer for me. The library was a huge part of my academic life growing up. From getting my first library card in third grade to studying until closing time while attending Hartnell College, the library was there for me.

More recently, the library was where I hosted local teen poets in the group Teen Salinas Speaks. I'm excited to see the new library and hopefully develop some youth outreach programming there in the future.

The bigger fail regarding my absence at today's opening ceremony is I won't get to share a new poem I wrote specifically for the event.

A few months ago, Salinas Public Library director Elizabeth Martinez asked me to write a new work to celebrate the reopening.

I jumped at the chance before realizing I hadn't written any new material in so long. I was unsure if I could pull it off.

As I began developing a piece, I kept coming back to the idea of cynicism and youth, and good vs. bad.

I have witnessed firsthand how dangerous cynicism can be to our young people. Adults sometimes reinforce that cynicism with our actions (a prime example — the Salinas City Council's flirtation with shuttering the library system several years ago).

So here is the piece I wrote in celebration of the grand re-opening of Cesar Chavez Library in Salinas.


Advertisement

To Martinez, branch manager Maria Roddy, and all the wonderful, hard-working library staff, congratulations on a job well done.

I try not to wear my cynicism as an honorable badge
I truly believe good far outweighs bad

If the universe took this moment to reflect on all we have
It would amount to more than one lifetime
Five billion awesome seconds
Simple math

Just look around
At what's been lost and refound
Understand when you balance out the count
The result is a dream fleshed out

Because this right here
This moment, ever clear
Is a vision remodeled
To outlast fear

We have wealth of words in meager times
We have a promise for youth amidst mindless crimes

We have a foundation
Our east side proclamation
Abundant knowledge will always crush stagnation

My folks, my brothers, my sisters
Don't give an inch to cynics
To misguided critics hiding behind
Unearned privilege

Because this moment today
is Exhibit A
On why the good
Will always outweigh
the bad

Follow Marcos Cabrera on Twitter at Twitter.com/MarcosACabrera.
http://www.montereyherald.com/marccabrera/ci_22099786/marc-cabrera-renovated-library-wealth-words
www.montereyherald.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2014-42
59962
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:B5BX5GFEIJZDN37LZFUT2ZP3XNQW3DME
<urn:uuid:7e4bb762-8dcd-402f-bd09-88099f507c40>
2014-10-25T07:02:01Z
23.62.6.50
sha1:O25OTVSOT7RLRSQR7KTDKPKEUTRAJPZY
<urn:uuid:495c6c7a-1577-4c16-b059-b7bb8c4d3832>
http://www.montereyherald.com/marccabrera/ci_22099786/marc-cabrera-renovated-library-wealth-words
response
<urn:uuid:2abe6ff7-47e6-4c72-900d-0b78236c6aa9>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-16-133-185.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2014-42
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web with URLs provided by Blekko for October 2014
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf