[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 55 (Thursday, May 1, 1997)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E814-E815]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                      READING CAN OPEN MANY DOORS

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                           HON. NITA M. LOWEY

                              of new york

                    in the house of representatives

                         Thursday, May 1, 1997

  Mrs. LOWEY.Mr. Speaker, yesterday I joined several of my colleagues 
in introducing President Clinton's America Reads Challenge Act. This 
legislation will help mobilize reading specialists and trained 
volunteers to ensure that every child can read by the end of the third 
grade.
  Today I want to share with the House an essay written by Adam 
Frankel, the 18-year-old grandson of two of my constituents. Adam 
writes eloquently about the joys and benefits of reading. As we pledge 
our efforts to ensure that all children enter fourth grade reading on 
their own, I thought it might be helpful to hear how one young American 
uses this gift to learn about the world.
  I insert the text of Adam Frankel's essay at this point in the 
Record.

                      Reading Can Open Many Doors

                            (By Adam Frankel

       When I hold a book between my hands, I do not feel the 
     paper and I do not see the words. I feel as though I am 
     holding ``knowledge'' in my hands, and the more complicated 
     the book, the better. That way, it is not just entertaining, 
     but it is something far more enjoyable: challenging and 
     revealing. After reading and understanding a complicated 
     phrase or book, you feel a sense of accomplishment. When I 
     hold in my hands William James and move my eyes slowly across 
     each word, I know I am looking into the mind of James 
     himself. The words he uses to describe things are as much a 
     part of him as his fingerprint.
       When writing, your words build up within and explode out 
     onto paper with your own patent on them. A word can be so 
     much more, if it is allowed to be. The difference between a 
     word's various connotations determine the feeling of a 
     character, or description of a scene. The word can even 
     determine the future of a state, depending on whether it is 
     used correctly or not in policy planning.
       Walter Lippman once said that he wrote each sentence as if 
     the article were to be judged on that sentence alone. It is 
     this appreciation of the written word that I try to give to 
     everything I read. And what I have chosen to read has largely 
     defined not only my interests at the moment, but even my

[[Page E815]]

     character and future interests. Reading a biography of Allen 
     Dulles led me to Franklin Delano Roosevelt and a century of 
     wise men. Reading about the Russian Revolution led me, 
     through a limited understanding of Karl Marx, to other 
     political philosophers.
       Philosophy opened up great new doors for me that I had 
     previously not known existed. I suddenly found myself 
     fascinated in how different people saw life and how I could 
     attain that higher form of being. Lippmann helped answer that 
     question for me. He wrote that the best way to live life is 
     to keep removed enough from anything that could affect you 
     negatively, so that you could see it in an objective light. 
     From his biography I learned that he was going through an 
     awful marriage at the time he wrote that and was probably 
     developing a plan to deal with it, but it nevertheless 
     affected me greatly.
       It taught me to ``storm the barricades'' if a problem 
     arises rather than ``retreat into a monastery.'' He also 
     taught me to never waste time, but to evaluate any action I 
     take in regard to how it will affect me now, and in the 
     future and whether it is really worth doing.
       And so now, I collect as many books as I think are worth 
     collecting, not because I will read them all now, or read all 
     of them later. I collect them because when I look at my 
     bookshelf, I feel I'm looking at my potential, and when you 
     are constantly reminded of your potential, it is hard not to 
     do your best to fulfill it.
       Perhaps by reading philosophy, but probably even before 
     that, I have always had a great sense of history, and my 
     future. I sit sometimes on the porch with my father and 
     grandfather in Bermuda or Scarsdale. We sit around, look up 
     at those stars that are so noticeably lacking in New York 
     City and we philosophize:
       My grandfather explains the theory of ``priming the pump'' 
     one minute and then gives lessons from those days when he was 
     living through the Depression. He tells me the story of a 
     speech he submitted for Hubert Humphrey, which opposed the 
     Vietnam War and was firmly rejected by the candidate, who was 
     then vice president.
       We all sit around: my grandfather, a testament to history; 
     my father, a testament to intellectualism, and I, a testament 
     to potential. I think of how much they have influenced me and 
     how much I want to be as intelligent and as well read as they 
     are. And then I realize that I have a long way to go; and 
     that through reading the books which I collect, I will slowly 
     chip away at the large block of space between theirs and my 
     intellectual stamina.
       I can't wait until college, when required reading will be 
     Nietzsche and Hegel. Hopefully, by then, I'll be able to 
     grasp more of them than I can now. I do know that the pride 
     of my household will always be my library. For, looking into 
     the books' eyes, I see, I know, my future.

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