Mort Rosenblum: Improving our world, one child and one book at a time

Earth, now spinning so fast, risks falling on its axis. Hungary's election was huge. Iran is showing why America's president belongs in a cell, padded or otherwise. Mother Nature, badly mistreated, is letting hapless humans feel her wrath.

But for inspiration, drop by Make Way for Books on Stone just north of downtown. It was an old-timey grocery store, now spiffed up, gaily painted and hardwired with big screens, techie playrooms to fire up young imaginations. Mostly, endless bookshelves.

It is a community-supported venture with a brilliant insight: kids who develop a taste for printed words and illustrations in their first five years learn to see beyond their line of sight. They start thinking critically, flush with curiosity, and find purpose in life.

Anyone is welcome, but most visitors are poverty-line parents who bring their kids to the very definition of a happy place. Recent refugees find books in three dozen languages from Somali to Swahili, Amharic to Yoruba.

For Native Americans, there are books in Diné (Navajo), Apache dialects, among a wide range of other tribal tongues.

After a few visits, kids can take home 22 free books to start their own libraries. Outreach programs work with local libraries and cultural centers. Teachers are trained to help preschoolers learn English as a second language.

For years, I routinely passed it without a glance, like so many (almost) native Tucsonans long inured to peripatetic urban renewal. But then I recently reconnected with David Lovitt, an old high school pal with whom I had lost touch.

He smacks of George Bailey, that James Stewart guy in "It's A Wonderful Life," whose decency touched so many people. But he was an insurance broker, not a banker. And if he ever pondered leaping off a Tucson bridge, he'd have only suffered sand burns.

David was a generous donor, a longtime board member and served several terms as president. Now he recruits "ambassadors" to widen the nonprofit's reach -- about 30,000 adults and kids. It is a model for close-knit cities like Tucson with a heart and soul.

The staff of 25 bubbles with enthusiasm, from Marc Acuña, the new director, on down. Its tireless power cell is Fernando González, a Californian of Mexican-Mayan roots, an educator-activist with an M.A. in computer wizardry from the University of Arizona.

Fernando and Cynnamon Woodberry showed me around. She was headhunted for her ebullient spirit. "Books," she said, "are joyous." Then we sat down to talk about why books are so crucial to keeping us humans among Earth's surviving species.

We cannot fend off climate collapse, growing conflict and authoritarianism without understanding their root causes.

I saw a glaring need for early education from my first days of reporting abroad. In fact, that's how I got started. A big world map in my third-grade class at Peter Howell fired up a passion to check out all those colorful, contoured places up close.

My first job as a foreign correspondent was in the Congo during the 1960s. Departing Belgians had taught school kids French and Flemish, but most mainly spoke a few of 250 distinct tribal tongues. Only a handful had gone beyond high school.

Transportation and civil services soon collapsed in a country the size of America east of the Mississippi, with unimaginable mineral wealth and enough arable land to feed much of the continent. But barely literate, corrupt authoritarians plundered it at will.

Washington propped up President Mobutu with showy projects to counter Soviet rivals. I asked the embassy USAID director why he did not fund primary education. "That's too long term," he said. Rather than books, America supplied bombs and bullets.

Tens of millions of needless deaths later, the Biden administration added schools to the U.S. mix. Then Elon Musk fired up with chainsaw, and Donald Trump eliminated non-military aid across the world.

France did better. Universities in ex-colonies created solid societies. Senegal has yet to suffer a coup d'etat. Leopold Sedar Senghor, its first president, was a poet admitted to the prestigious Academie Francaise. Today, educated Africans fight against violent chaos.

The Hungarian landslide that turfed out Viktor Orban after 16 years is a far more apt example — an open-and-shut case for far-seeing ventures like Make Way for Books.

Hungary has symbolized Soviet resistance since 1956, when the world welcomed refugees fleeing Russian tanks that crushed a rebellion. I got a taste of the place in the early 1980s, when intellectuals and activists began to dent a rusting Iron Curtain.

I drank until dawn in woods outside of Budapest with dissidents who wrote incisive books and essays. They were widely read in clandestine editions passed from hand to hand. In 1989, Hungary was the first Soviet satellite to break free.

Like Trump, Orban began a creeping coup by building a conservative base that evolved into a cult with simplistic policies for complex problems. He ignored past generosity by America and Europeans neighbors. Migrants were a convenient scapegoat.

And, like Trump, he kept close ties with an authoritarian Russia, which only feigned free elections. He muzzled the media and allowed his inner circle to amass wealth while workaday families struggled to get by. "Illiberal democracy" is an oxymoron.

Peter Magyar is also conservative, for a time in Orban's party, but with a far broader view of human rights and geopolitical security. He supports Ukraine, eager to help Europe defend the struggling nation Trump seems ready to let Putin subdue.

Elections were rigged. But so many voters showed up at the polls, Orban skulked away in defeat. He knew any Trump-style claim of "stolen" elections would spark tumultuous, sustained public protests

Hungarians with long memories saw returning signs of the old Evil Empire, with no Ronald Reagan-type Republican to stand in the way. Arizona's own Kari Lake had already muzzled Radio Free Europe, which reported truth in earlier days.

The question in America is whether enough voters can see the looming dangers and cast ballots in November. And then keep fighting. It took decades for the United States to come unstuck. At best, it will take a long time to reunite.

Make Way for Books offers preschoolers a head start. A line painted on one wall among colorful images makes the point: "If you plant a seed, it will grow and grow and grow."