A defense of Library Funding

The Texas Legislature’s budget proposal will cut 70 to 98% of funding for state library programs, gutting services and displacing higher costs onto local libraries. Libraries are essential places in our community, especially in small communities like ours.

Here is why libraries are so important:

Libraries enhance the future of our country by supporting the education of our children. Libraries extend learning by making knowledge both available and valuable.

Libraries make readers. In a library, even reluctant readers can find something that sparks an interest, lights a fire, matches or challenges their growing abilities, makes them want to read and know more.

Libraries build community. Bulletin boards, paperback swaps, children’s story time, book clubs, civic group meetings, educational workshops, reading support, job training. Libraries are a place for people to connect to other people. When my children were small, Mr. Kippy’s Story time was a place for me to be with my children and meet people with shared interests. Story time was a high point in our schedule and a valuable stop on our learning journey.

Libraries provide safe, cozy, and reassuring places to gather. Places to learn, to study, to work, to contemplate. Quiet places of knowledge, set aside for thinking and reading and learning.

Libraries are portals of knowledge. To the past and to the world outside our physical reach. History, novels, foreign language resources, newspapers, magazines, music, photography books, encyclopedias. The library is a place we can expand our knowledge reach and to keep learning even if we’re no longer in school.

Libraries provide resources and expertise for personal and professional development. Computer work stations, testing spaces, professional development books, self-help books, printing and copying resources, a place to check email, prepare for college entrance exams, or figure out how to find a better job. In a down economy, the library becomes an even more important place for people struggling with economic displacement or limitations.

Libraries are sources of reliable, credible, and stable information in a world where the internet sometimes flies too fast. While some would argue that a book doesn’t update fast enough to be reliable, the stability of information in a library means we have credible data when we need to make critical choices.

Libraries employ experts who know how to find information and media. We can sift through that data more efficiently with the assistance of librarians, who are trained to know how the information is organized, where to find the answers to our questions, and how to get our hands on resources that we need. Librarians are priceless.

Libraries are essential repositories of information in a democratic society. The free access to information allows citizens to make informed decisions and to fulfill civic responsibilities.

As author Philip Pullman so aptly put it in a recent protest of cuts to his local library, “Leave the libraries alone. You don’t know the value of what you’re looking after. It is too precious to destroy.”

Please oppose these drastic cuts to library services in Texas. Please protect the essential services that Texas libraries provide.

What can you do?

* Share this message.

* Contact your state representatives and local media.

* Visit your local library. Check out books. Read the bulletin board. Talk to the librarians. Be involved.

* Get more details through the Texas Library Association.

Etude: An umbrella, a feather duster, and a book, Part 5/5

A continuation. Read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

“Great, I’ll help you check out right over here.” She took the package from his hand and walked behind the counter. The manager stood and made some inane remark about the software, which he’d never used. The man wanted him to evaporate. She did too, but not for the same reasons.  

He tried not to do anything stupid as they conducted the transaction. He wanted to touch her fingers as he handed over his credit card, but then consciously tried not to, thinking he’d come across as weird. Her smile seemed more relaxed with the counter between them. She felt more secure in the enclosure of the checkout stand. Not that she felt threatened by him, just that she liked having that barrier between her and all of the customers.  

“You’ll have to let me know how it works out for your.” She handed him his receipt and his bag, incidentally brushing her fingers across his palm. Coming back to tell her whether he liked the software would be another chance to talk to her. Good. Good. He felt relieved that he wouldn’t have to think up an excuse.  

“I will,” he said. He stood there, maybe a little too long.  

“Have a great night,” she said, prompting him to go. “Stay dry out there.”      

He left the store, disappointed that he hadn’t asked her on a date, but also even more interested in her than before. Thoughts raced through his head as he walked down the mall. He had hoped that she was smart and knowledgeable, but their conversation had confirmed that and more. He was ready to go home and tear into the package so that he could come back as soon as possible to report his findings, and then perhaps in his gratitude he could naturally segue into inviting her to dinner or something.  

“Mr. S_______?” A voice called out behind him. Not very many people called him that. He was thirty, but somehow not involved in many circumstances where people used anything but his first name. He paused and looked behind him. His heart jumped into his throat. She was walking briskly up the mall. He smiled and breathed a bit heavily, wondering if she was taking the initiative to talk to him. He liked the idea of her surprising him again, of being bold enough to pursue him. Then he saw his umbrella in her hand. “You’ve left your umbrella. Sounds like you might still need it.” She smiled and gestured toward the skylights, clacking with the continuing downpour.  

“Oh.” He struggled not to show his disappointment. The smile in her eyes saved him. “Thank you.”  

“You’re very welcome.” She handed him the umbrella and began to walk away, sideways for a few steps, looking at him, but moving away. “Don’t forget. I want to know if that works out for you.” She pointed at the bag in his hands.  

“Definitely. I’ll be back to let you know.” The smile she returned took his breath away, but she didn’t see that part. She was now walking away, with purpose, in her clunky black shoes.  

Etude: An umbrella, a feather duster, and a book, Part 4/5

A continuation. Read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3. 

“Yep, these and one other that we don’t carry. Didn’t like that one.” She was irritated by his surprise. Just another dude, underestimating the girl on the staff. She fought the urge to roll her eyes, and her Customer Smile slipped a bit at the corners.  

He recovered himself, clearing his throat. He forgot about asking her out for a few moments. “That’s great. I’ve been hoping to find someone who can answer some specific questions. None of the rest of the staff have used them.” 

She relaxed a little. Ok, maybe he wasn’t underestimating the girl. “Well, it’s a pretty specialized piece of software. What sort of scanning do you want to do?” She felt that impostery twang of anxiety that snuck up on her sometimes, worried that she didn’t really know anything that he’d want to know. His questions were specific, the questions of someone with some first-hand knowledge of similar programs, but they were all pragmatic. She was able to give firm, clear answers.  

The manager stood up at some point, stretching his shoulders. He watched them for a moment before sighing and once more settling in to the paperwork.  

“If you don’t mind my asking, in what capacity have you used this software,” he asked. He looked up at her and was struck by the blueness of her eyes, made somehow more vivid by the tired redness surrounding them. Remembering his mission, his heart started to beat faster again.  

“I also work as an editorial assistant for a professor on campus. He is compiling an edition of previously published essays.  I could retype them all myself, including footnotes, or figure out a way to scan them in. Truth be told, I might as well type the footnotes myself. The resolution on the scanners I use isn’t good enough for the OCR to sort those out.” He was looking at her intently. She shifted her weight back onto her heels, a bit flustered by the intensity of his look, but unwilling to offend him with a full step backwards. His eyes were very blue.  

“Two jobs? That must keep you pretty busy.”

She shrugged, still trying to maintain the smile. “A little.”

He looked down at the package. Words were failing him now. “I-I, um, hadn’t thought about the scanning resolution. I have to check my scanner.” 

She turned and put a package back on the shelf. He still held one in his hand, the one that she preferred. “So what do you think? Want to take that one home and give it a whirl? Or think about it some more?”  

Businessy. He almost had the words in his mouth, but it was no good. Asking her out now was too—odd. Incongruous. “Um, you know, yes. I think I’ll try this one.” He looked at the price for the first time. A bit more than he had wanted to spend, but he thought he might lose face now if he backed out. He wanted to appear confident to her.  

Tomorrow, an ending…

Etude: An umbrella, a feather duster, and a book, Part 3/5

A continuation. Read Part 1 and Part 2.

She was talking, telling him about the different optical character recognition software packages they carried. He only half heard her. He was looking earnestly where she pointed, but his mind was filled with her. They were standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder in a cramped, non-prime corner of the store. He could smell her—what? Shampoo? He wondered. Fruity. She wore a silver charm bracelet on her left hand, the charms jingling as she gestured at each of the boxes. Then she picked up one package and pointed to some information printed in a small font on the back. He took that opportunity to lean closer, nodding as if contemplating all of the options listed there.  

She looked at him, waiting for him to say something or take the package from her hand.  He smelled nice. A mild cologne or aftershave. Spicy, but not overwhelming. The stubble of the day was rough on his cheeks. She wondered if he ever shaved at lunchtime. She decided that she’d hate to have to shave often if she had heavy beard growth.

“I can give you some time to look them over? You let me know if you have any questions.” She bobbed the box toward him a bit, and this time he took it from her, nodding and smiling. 

“Thank you. I will,” he said. 

They exchanged smiles and she walked a few steps away, pretending to straighten the shelves so that she looked busy. She didn’t go too far. Of course, it only took about ten long strides for her to cross the entire store, so unless she left, she wouldn’t be far.  

He pretended to read the packages. He’d read them all many times before. He really did need an effective OCR program. It would save him loads of work manually transcribing documents. He imagined placing each page on the flatbed scanner, clicking two buttons and having a fully manipulable text file on his computer. Nothing was quite so simple though. OCR was still so quirky. Scanned documents still had to be proofread meticulously to sort out errors between easily misconstrued letters. 

Right now though, the software was just a handy pretense to try to talk with her. He wasn’t exactly the video-game type and he was trying to project an air of sophistication to her. Hence the umbrella in the doorway, the trench coat draped over his arm. He’d have bought the software already if someone reliable had actually used any of the programs, but none of the college kids who worked here had any need of OCR apparently. He had no reason to think she was any different. He was wondering how to segue from studying the boxes to talking with her again. He had practiced a few possible lines at home, but all of them sounded absurd to him here in the store, under the glare of the fluorescent lights, with the beeping and random music in the background.

“If you’re having trouble deciding,” she interrupted his thoughts. He didn’t notice her return to the corner. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.” She laughed a bit, in sympathy, he thought.  

“What? Oh, that’s ok. I guess I was just—uh,” he laughs. “It’s ok. What were you saying?”

“Um, if you’re having trouble deciding, I can tell you off-the-record that this one is almost useless unless the print is clear and large. This one here works fairly well, but still gives a pretty significant number of misreads. This one here is my favorite. It seems the most accurate and to a limited extent can ‘learn’ the quirks of a document and thus recognize its own errors sometimes.”

He blinked at her. “You’ve, you’ve used these?”

More tomorrow…

From the Archives: On the State of the Union

President Obama delivers the State of the Union Address this evening. I’ll be there, with popcorn, for a lot of good reasons, both civic and personal.

Below is a transcript of a post from January 2008 which explains why I’m a State of the Union geek. Please note that the tally of years is up to sixteen now. 

Love you, babe.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Politics, Personal

According to the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 3

“[The President] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

I celebrate the State of the Union Address today, not so much because of any political motivation, but because the (generally) annual speech to the joint houses of Congress and to the nation and the world, coincides with a more personal event for me. Thirteen years ago, my partner and I set off on our first adventure together.

It started on a Friday. We worked in the same lab together, he a molecular biology grad student, me a biochemistry undergrad. Chatting over epi-tubes one Friday morning, we planned a lab-group outing. A performance art group was presenting a new piece that night on campus. I was on my way to class, and so he said he’d pass along the event to the other members of the lab group when they came in. We agreed to meet at the theater 15 minutes prior to showtime.

I showed up a few minutes late to find him waiting outside the door to the theater. Alone. He shrugged, and said that he guessed everyone had other plans. I learned later in the weekend that he had completely neglected to mention the plan to any of our friends or colleagues. We watched the show. We went out for coffee. The time we spent together stretched longer and longer. The sub-zero nighttime air of the desert in January did not deter us from ending up on the roof of the Chemistry building in the middle of the night to look at the stars. We ended up at a different coffee shop at five a.m. And not a thing had passed our lips but conversation and food.

Our waitress happened to be another chemistry student. She was due to get off work at six. We cooked up a hair-brained scheme to go to Tucson all together when she got off work. (Tucson was a four or five hour drive from where we were, across the desert and one state line, and none of us had ever been there). We waited, but she backed out, begging fatigue. Undeterred, we climbed into his truck and hit the road.

There is no rational explanation for why we did this. It was really rather stupid. For both of us. For a lot of reasons.

We spent the day in Tucson, driving around, eating again, and then drove back home late in the afternoon. Sleep-deprivation makes the next couple of days a hazy blur for me, but by the time of Bill Clinton’s second State of the Union Address in January of 1995, after a dizzy weekend, we were firmly Together.

And though we were married in July a couple of years later, each year we tend to note the passing of the state of the Union with a little bit more nostalgia and enthusiasm.

So here’s to us babe, and our Union. May we bear witness to many more presidential speeches together.