blahg, blahg, blahg…

CNN.com shares with us today yet another story on the “changing library”. While I rarely read comments to online pieces – let alone post a comment myself – in this case I felt inspired. They posted it, too. (Pretty cool, but not the point.) It goes like this:

While the thesis of your article may well be true i.e., libraries are changing, the overused introduction is just that – overused and off target. To say that “the stereotypical library is dying” is wrong. The stereotypical library described – one with shushing ladies and dank smelliness – has been DEAD for years. Years.

I graduated from college almost 25 years ago. My college library then was nothing like this stereotype. Come to think of it, save the “shushing lady librarian”, neither was my high school library. Or the public libraries I spent hours in as a child. I’m going on 50 years of age and I don’t know this library. Maybe I’m overly fortunate, but I can’t help but wonder, as I see this stereotype repeated ad nauseum in the press and other media outlets, when was the last time the authors and/or reporters set foot in a library? Enough with it.

The most accurate line in the entire piece is this, “The library has never been just about books.” The library has, thankfully and to the benefit of all, always been a place where knowledge and information, wisdom and learning – and all of the interest and excitement that comes with it – happens. Go to your local library and discover this.

Signed (unsurprisingly),

A Librarian

Why fall is my favorite season:

• cool temperatures
• new beginnings
• orange, gold, red, yellow
• football
• Thanksgiving
• school supplies
• sweaters
• Smiley Sherman
• homecomings

It is the season of possibility and the season of harvest. It is the time to be busy, to prepare for the long, restful winter ahead. It is the time to begin anew and to rekindle old. It is the time of my favorite colors and my favorite wardrobe and my favorite holiday.

Welcome “-ber” months. Happy to see you!!

I saw the movie “Public Enemies” over the weekend. Like its big-screen predecessor “The Untouchables”, it traces the story of 1930s gangster-laden Chicago. John Dillinger and Baby Face Nelson. Pretty Boy Floyd and Al Capone. The gangsters rule, the government comes in, the idealistic agents (Treasury Department or Bureau of Investigation) are assigned the task of bringing them down, they try every legitimate and legal way to “get their man”… and they fail. They always fail. Until, of course, they become gangsters themselves. Unless they themselves break the rules, they simply cannot catch the rule breakers. 

One of my favorite movie lines of all time is spoken by Gene Hackman playing Agent Rupert Anderson in “Mississippi Burning”. The FBI has come to Mississippi to investigate the disappearance of civil rights workers. Agent Alan Ward (Willem Dafoe) is adamant that the FBI will solve this case using its superior intelligence and modern crime-fighting techniques. He believes in the good of what they are doing, the justice of it.

But they get nowhere and in time the violence grows worse. Mounting frustration leads to a heated exchange between the two agents and Mr. Anderson finally shouts, “These people crawled out of a sewer, Mr. Ward. Maybe the gutter is the place we should be!”

And they go there. They use the same tactics of the Klan – fear and torture – and then they get them. Beat them at their own game, so to speak. It’s Hollywood. Or is it?

Does good ever really win without becoming a little evil along the way? Can justice prevail without breaking the law? Can acceptance come not disguised as tolerance? Can peace come without war?