Letters to the Editor
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You're kidding me!!
Like most of the librarians who will inevitably respond to this letter, I have to wonder at the Wobegon nonsense Mr. Keillor is espousing here. While it would be splendid if libraries were (and were they ever?) a keystone of the democratic process, the truth is that libraries today fill a far more important role. Most librarians, especially those working in urban libraries, act as social workers. I spend far more of my day walking semi-literate people through section 8 housing applications than I do educating the next generation of voters. This isn't to say that most of us don't enjoy our line of work. Still, Mr. Keillor, please don't paint us as the wise old sages of the stacks. That archetype died years ago. Librarians today are far more dynamic, and maybe even more important, than the quaint image most of us maintain.
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Of course they exist!
"What isn't true is that neighborhood libraries still exist. I live in Memphis, Tennessee, and our brilliant, insightful leaders (who are demanding money to build a new stadium) have just ordered the closing of several of our public libraries, including the White Station branch, which was to me growing up what Keillor's library was to him."
I don't get the "There isn't a nice library in MY neighborhood, therefore nice libraries do not exist" logic. Well, actually I do. It boils down to "What's true in my town must be true in all of America," an attitude that has caused much mischief.
If you are ever in Cedar Falls or Waterloo, Iowa, come and stop at the local library. (Each city has one, even though we border each other.) If you come on a Friday morning, you will see me and my daughter there watching the story-time puppet show. (The librarian reads the stories, and the puppets act them out, often bantering with her) Make sure to say "hi" to Sable, the library rabbit, whose sign says, "I love books and I love children, be gentle with me and I will be your friend."
While the book selection isn't like a big-city libraries, they'll order you anything you like via inter-library loan, and it's certainly large enough to satisfy a book-hungry browser.
And our librarians are just plain incredible.
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Nice
It's refreshing to read Mr. Keillor's work -- original, with insight and humor. There were lots of pieces on Dick Cheney today. So let's act on it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Seen in a positive light
Sure Garrison paints an all too idyllic picture of what libraries were and arguably still are or can be. But is that not a part of his art? Is that not what all good artists do? I'm reminded of the inscription on the front of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art which I paraphrase here: 'it is by the ideal that we live and in the real that we exist'
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Libraries as reflections of the community around them
While many of the posts here reflect an ugly reality that I do not see in my little town, it's perhaps an even uglier truth that public libraries such as Mr. Keillor describes do exist. It's a symptom of wider social injustice that some towns offer the traditional library experience (along with information age improvements), whereas in others poverty and general social breakdown has destroyed the library as a peaceful haven.
In defense of the political links made in this essay, I can easily see a link between torture and the decline of reading. Novels open you up to worlds and points of view you could never enter otherwise. Avoiding them is one way to maintain the belief that your enemies are inhuman.
As a person who for many years spent most of my leisure time buried in books, I can attest to the sense of safety and well-being engendered by entering the kind of library described by Mr. Keillor. When I moved to the town where I now live, I was adrift for months. One day, I went to the public library for an afternoon. I was browsing the shelves, leafing through a biography of Walt Whitman. Suddenly, I felt an unfamiliar emotion I hadn't felt in a long time. It took a minute to identify it. It was happiness.
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Of course we have libraries? Not where I come from.
I live in Jackson County Oregon where all the public libraries have been closed. Nearby Josephine County libraries are also closed. No libraries in walking distance? Try no library within public transportation distance. As far as I know, the closest public library to me right now is 40 miles away in Yreka, California. We do have a small local university library but it costs money to be a "friend" of the school's libaray and you can't check out some media or get interlibrary loans. This story has been somewhat covered in the national news but I still run into people who are incredulous when I pass this sad story along. Well, it is true and it is a shame.
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Libraries
My hometown has a Carnegie Library. With pillars and everything. There's branch libraries, too. Last time I was there, I stopped in to the main branch, and had to flee because they were busy having a pizza party to celebrate the new architectural plans; the main branch is doubling in size. It'll be at least the second time the town has built up the library, based on the funky architecture around back.
Even when I was a kid, the place was full of sketchy people, but it's a *public* library. Homeless people need to reference things too, and the hooligan kids mostly stayed out of the stacks. Unless they were making out... but that's better than smoking pot in the Pines, don't you think? I like to think that everyone once in a while, those kids or homeless folk might get bored enough to read something. That is a good thing.
The quality of your local library is determined by local politics. Unlike, say, the war in Iraq, this is something you, normal folk, can fix. By far the easiest way to fix it is to get some rich person to buy some good PR by building up your library - like Carnegie. Or you can get active in local politics. Or you can avoid government support altogether, and get all your bookcrossing and wordnerd friends to pitch in, buy an old ice cream truck, and run a bookmobile. Print gutenberg books on demand or something.