Public libraries. 21st Century saloons?

[Judas Maccabeus]

The two nearest libraries that we go to are both getting brand new buildings. Both are spending big bucks for new ones. Redmond is scheduled to open their new building Fall of 2024. Madras library, which is about a block from my office, is at the architect step.

I don’t know where the money is coming from.

Of course you know where the money is coming from. Local tax dollars, supplemented perhaps by state and federal grants.

I don’t know specifically where it is coming from. I read something about fundraising and grants. And when a country is so upside down financially as this one is, I don’t know where there is money to be wasted like this. Not that libraries are a waste, but the two we had seemed to be in very good condition.

Libraries are chump change. Want money? Look at “national defense “. They waste more money in a minute than libraries use in a year.

Maybe a listen to Eisenhower’s “Military Industrial Complex “ speech.

[Szdfan]

I will say we live in a conservative rural area so while yes the city seems to have gotten on board with pushing the LGBTQ agenda it hasn't spilled to the library- which is county not city owned. Maybe that is why.

Or perhaps these things are not as widespread as people say they are. I get a bit suspicious if it's always someone else's library that's causing all these problems.

My OP is a first-person example of visiting a smaller satellite King County WA library with my young grdaughter.
What a shock when the sweet young librarian addressed me so politely, walked with us to find certain books we requested,
THEN .. when my back was turned, she slipped in a few UNwanted books, silently giving them directly to the child.

i was clueless, until the child took the books to her mother, saying she didn’t want them.

This is the basis for this topic. First person experience in a smaller neighborhood library.
i’ll never trust a librarian again, not with any child.

What were the books? Did you or your daughter talk to the library or the librarian's supervisor? What was their response?

[Szdfan]

Were Chuck Jones and the Warner Brothers animation department pedophiles and grooming children in the 1940s and 50s?

Probably. Same with Walt Disney. At any rate, they did in fact insert a lot of dirty stuff - stuff that my grandparents generation strongly objected to.

Yes, obscene for sure. What were their intentions? Hard to say, but the radio/tv industry has been full of creeps and deviants and filthy minds since it began. My grandparents had good reason to put radio and TV out of their homes.

I don't agree, but I'm not surprised by these responses. I know from my own background the conservative Mennonite suspicion of Hollywood and art-making in general. It's fine that you feel this way and it's fine that your grandparents refused to have it in their homes.

But there is also a difference between not having certain content in your home and demanding that your library not offer that content to anyone else.

It's okay for you to not watch Bugs Bunny cartoons, it's not okay for you to demand that your library not make Bugs Bunny cartoons available to anyone else.

[temporal1]

Or perhaps these things are not as widespread as people say they are. I get a bit suspicious if it's always someone else's library that's causing all these problems.

My OP is a first-person example of visiting a smaller satellite King County WA library with my young grdaughter.
What a shock when the sweet young librarian addressed me so politely, walked with us to find certain books we requested,
THEN .. when my back was turned, she slipped in a few UNwanted books, silently giving them directly to the child.

i was clueless, until the child took the books to her mother, saying she didn’t want them.

This is the basis for this topic. First person experience in a smaller neighborhood library.
i’ll never trust a librarian again, not with any child.

What were the books? Did you or your daughter talk to the library or the librarian's supervisor? What was their response?

This was in 2019, 100% unexpected. i don’t recall titles. Since 2019, as reflected in this topic, the situation has become public knowledge.

i was flabbergasted at the deceit by one i obviously trusted+respected, a librarian, i appreciated her outward courtesy, appalled to realize her “courtesy” was underhanded manipulation - to influence an 11 year old child.

My daughter was livid, her immediate reaction was that she would go to the local library supervisor and King County Library in Seattle. i encouraged her. She ruminated. i don’t believe she did anything.

Btw, Knight was appalled and strongly encouraged reporting. He didn’t mince words.

- - - - - - -

This is my daughter who was brutally raped by a football player as a new freshman in a large state university.
She didn’t tell me until after she graduated. She did not report it to anyone.
i was horrified and assured her it was not too late to report it, that i would be with her in every way possible ..

She has done nothing, said nothing, to this day. i’ve never known his name. nothing.
We rarely mention it. She never mentions it. On rare occasion, i ask her about it. Silence.

A lot of evil goes on like this. i’m sure you’re aware.

i 100% empathize with silence, for various valid reasons.
Public shame, fearing retribution, not wanting to relive painful experiences, not being believed, etc.
The biggest downside is it allows perpetrators to find new victims.

[temporal1]

.. I think it’s entirely reasonable to:

#1, not allow minors to access pornography, as a society wide decision. (This is already the law of the land, actually.)

#2, otherwise allow minors free access to a wide variety of information without censorship.

Pornography is not “information”. There is no need for it. Whereas freedom of political speech is very important.

THE FEDERALIST / “No, Age-Appropriate Library Restrictions Are Not ‘Book Bans’ “
“A public, taxpayer-funded entity refusing to purchase and disseminate a book does not constitute a ‘ban,’
contrary to media reports.”
https://thefederalist.com/2023/03/15/no ... book-bans/

This whole thing is blown ‘way out of perspective by those with no common sense and too much time, money+power.
It’s the duty of parents and those responsible for minors, dependents, to protect them. To refuse is to neglect if not abuse.

Speaking of “literature”
2019 / DrWojo: Orwell

[Josh]

If libraries are so necessary, perhaps they can find a way to turn a profit instead of demanding to feed at the public trough.

The Amish sometimes organise their own private libraries and contribute a small fee to be a member (typically just a few dollars). At our churches and schools, we have a library.

Myself/my business partners are actually frequent attendees at libraries: going to library sales where books are being liquidated by the dumpster load. I don’t think libraries throwing out tonnes of books need even more funding. Maybe they should get with the times and replace librarians with automation and more modern technology, right? Just like those out of date sawmills?

It's a question of values.

If your community wants to burn down its libraries, go for it.

I'm thankful to live in a community that has other values. Even though I don't actually use them that much, I have plenty of students who make good use of our public libraries and for that reason alone it is worth it.

My local area is spending large amounts of tax dollars and grants in new library buildings, expansions, new programs that have nothing to do with books, and hiring more staff and giving raises to librarians (“librarian” is a job as obsolete as a lumberjack or sawmill worker). Yet they do less and less of actually storing and making books available.

The library my kids go to has a “sensory room” and play rooms with toys in them, which is nice, but I’m not sure millions of dollars of spending on such an area is needed. And in any case, a room full of toys is not a library.

[Josh]

My OP is a first-person example of visiting a smaller satellite King County WA library with my young grdaughter.
What a shock when the sweet young librarian addressed me so politely, walked with us to find certain books we requested,
THEN .. when my back was turned, she slipped in a few UNwanted books, silently giving them directly to the child.

i was clueless, until the child took the books to her mother, saying she didn’t want them.

This is the basis for this topic. First person experience in a smaller neighborhood library.
i’ll never trust a librarian again, not with any child.

What were the books? Did you or your daughter talk to the library or the librarian's supervisor? What was their response?

This was in 2019, 100% unexpected. i don’t recall titles. Since 2019, as reflected in this topic, the situation has become public knowledge.

i was flabbergasted at the deceit by one i obviously trusted+respected, a librarian, i appreciated her outward courtesy, appalled to realize her “courtesy” was underhanded manipulation - to influence an 11 year old child.

My daughter was livid, her immediate reaction was that she would go to the local library supervisor and King County Library in Seattle. i encouraged her. She ruminated. i don’t believe she did anything.

Btw, Knight was appalled and strongly encouraged reporting. He didn’t mince words.

- - - - - - -

This is my daughter who was brutally raped by a football player as a new freshman in a large state university.
She didn’t tell me until after she graduated. She did not report it to anyone.
i was horrified and assured her it was not too late to report it, that i would be with her in every way possible ..

She has done nothing, said nothing, to this day. i’ve never known his name. nothing.
We rarely mention it. She never mentions it. On rare occasion, i ask her about it. Silence.

A lot of evil goes on like this. i’m sure you’re aware.

i 100% empathize with silence, for various valid reasons.
Public shame, fearing retribution, not wanting to relive painful experiences, not being believed, etc.
The biggest downside is it allows perpetrators to find new victims.

t1, back in 2013, I lived with a housemate had just graduated with a bachelors of library science. She was gender non binary and preferred to go by “xie/xer” some weeks. My girlfriend and I were very liberal and open minded but we couldn’t even figure out what pronouns she preferred.

She was also a massive pothead and couldn’t get a government job since they drug tested back then, so she went off to get a master’s degree in library science with a goal of getting a cushy government or school job with that. She was also too lazy to get a driver licence (plus it’s hard to drive when high all the time). These are the kind of people running libraries.

I am very sorry to hear what happened at the university but unfortunately it is quite common. At my own college around 20 years ago, the football team seemed to have a free pass to commit as many sexual assaults as they wanted and then the administration would collude to cover them up. They would harshly pressure students not to make a police report so no crime statistics would show up in the college ranking. (They did the same to me when my motorcycle was stolen. I told them firmly I was making a police report even if it magically showed back up. The administrator then begged me not to because it would make the school “look bad”.)

My 2nd cousin was a bit of an activist and tried to help some of the girls who had been assaulted, which is how I learned these stories. Some of them were really hair raising, like a girl who was raped at gunpoint. The players later said they were just “joking around” with the gun.

This all happened at a “Christian” college by the way, in fact one somewhat popular with some Mennonites. In good news, the university’s poor financial condition means the football team/rapist team was disbanded a few years ago.

[RZehr]

All of those add up to increased costs.

Logging does actually need regulation. I live in what are essentially the foothills of the Gifford Pinchot national forest and spend a lot of time up there biking, hiking, and skiing. Absent environmental standards the entire place would be one giant clear cut through unstable hillsides, salmon streams, and all kinds of important habitats for a wide variety of species. Salmon would go extinct, barren hillsides would slide into streams and rivers, flooding would be made enormously worse, and our water supply (which is from mountain watersheds and snowpack) would be enormously degraded. We know all of this with absolute certainty because it has all happened everywhere logging has been unregulated.

The 2021 Private Forest Accord was actually a good faith effort by all of the stakeholders to come to some consensus as to how forests should be managed and then implement that consensus into regulations. How would you have done things differently? Just turn Oregon forests over to the massive out-of-state private equity firms that actually own the largest timber companies and let them run wild for the short-term maximization of profit?

That wouldn't have brought back jobs or libraries either.

These industries do need some regulation.

One more thing about the 2021 PFA - there is no way that industry would have had sudden epiphany about the need for that in their own. So I take small issues with framing it as simply a “good faith effort by all of the stakeholders to come to some consensus as to how forests should be managed and then implement that consensus into regulations.” It was a bitterly fought over issue, that ended in the 2021 PFA, because the industry decided it was better off to settle, than to fight and risk losing, and if it lost, it would possibly end up with an even worse deal. It’s just a business calculation. And the big boys, they have international operations. And the big boys voice is louder at the negotiating table, on the side of the industry. What they say will probably go, not what that smaller mills want. So the silver lining for them is that the regulations will fall heaviest on their smaller competitors.

This is the way these environmentalist bring industry to its knees. Because there is no risk for the environmental if they lose. There is only risk for industry if they lose. I’ve seen this same thing play out elsewhere, I’ve seen the settlements at great cost, and I’ve seen worse when they’ve lost.

Maybe if legislators weren’t so spineless or captured by lobbyists, they could figure out regulations themselves instead of delinquently ceding their duties to the courts and hostile parties.

One more thing quick on this bunny trail. I think when regulation is done like this 2021 PFA was, a regulation that ends up largely impacting local rural Oregon businesses and communities, gets negotiated by activist California environmental groups and massive multinational logging companies which are owned and headquartered who knows where, you know who gets the short end of the deal? The local state and communities.

In my own industry, the largest players in Oregon are a company from Ohio; California; The Netherlands; and Denmark. These companies have outsized say in a uniquely Oregon industry that produces over half of our product to the world and USA.

So this is why I think that the local people and local business (or at least in the same state) ought to be the ones making the decisions and laws with their legislators. Not being stuck with regulations that are negotiated between out of state companies, out of state environmentalists, and industry groups which completely leave out the local communities voice.

[Josh]

Meanwhile, the high price of lumber means the cost of building housing has gone way way up.

Maybe those sawmills should have stayed open.

[ken_sylvania]

Were Chuck Jones and the Warner Brothers animation department pedophiles and grooming children in the 1940s and 50s?

Probably. Same with Walt Disney. At any rate, they did in fact insert a lot of dirty stuff - stuff that my grandparents generation strongly objected to.

Yes, obscene for sure. What were their intentions? Hard to say, but the radio/tv industry has been full of creeps and deviants and filthy minds since it began. My grandparents had good reason to put radio and TV out of their homes.

I don't agree, but I'm not surprised by these responses. I know from my own background the conservative Mennonite suspicion of Hollywood and art-making in general. It's fine that you feel this way and it's fine that your grandparents refused to have it in their homes.

But there is also a difference between not having certain content in your home and demanding that your library not offer that content to anyone else.

It's okay for you to not watch Bugs Bunny cartoons, it's not okay for you to demand that your library not make Bugs Bunny cartoons available to anyone else.

I think that a lot of the revelations of the so-called "Me-Too Movement" has proved my parents and grandparents were right about Hollywood.

While I agree that I should not be making demands on what the local library does or does not provide, they are rather distinctively Mennonite reasons that I don't think you would espouse.

Would you be willing to explain why a community does not have the right to restrict lewd or suggestive content from being offered by the community library? Or any content, for that matter?

Incidentally, one of the reasons I don't donate to the local library is because of that kind of content being offered.