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One Door, Two Nations
For 120 years, the Haskell Free Library defied borders. Now, the Trump Administration wants to draw a hard line.
Like all myths, its origins are murky, but some believe an honest-to-God Beatles reunion was set to happen at a modest library in the modest town of Derby Line, Vermont, sometime in the early 1970s.
Not a reunion performance, mind you, just four lads from Liverpool who were looking for rapprochement a few years after their acrimonious 1970 breakup.
Why Derby Line? Because the Haskell Free Library and Opera House straddles the US-Canadian border.
With John Lennon unable to leave the US without violating his visa and Paul McCartney and George Harrison briefly unable to enter the US due to drug-related charges back home, the library was literally the only place in the world where they could be together at the same time without breaking any immigration laws.
The story is (mostly) bunk, but the image of the Fab Four bro-ing out in the Haskell reading room or having an impromptu jam session in the opera hall is appealing — and just what the library’s founder would have wanted.
When Martha Stewart Haskell (1831–1906) donated $50,000 (equivalent to about $2 million today) to build a library for her…
