There are many ways of celebrating May 1 (also variously known as May Day, Beltane, and International Workers’ Day), some of which are rather more risque (and fun!) than others. A less fun option is bellowing about one’s favorite cause on the Internet. Two groups in particular drive me nuts: the Socialists and the Capitalists.  Specifically, the most extreme fundamentalist segments of both groups.

The Socialists will scream about how workers’ rights have never been at greater risk all over the world (and they’ll have a point.) The Capitalists will scream just as loudly about how if only the government would get out of their way we’d all be a lot wealthier (and they’ll have a point.) That’s actually fine. What ticks me off is when the Socialists wear clothes manufactured overseas by 10 year old girls making 20 cents a day, and the Capitalists beg or threaten their political allies to write them  checks drawn on the public treasury to cover losses for bad decisions, while they scream for their respective causes.

The hypocrisy and selective ignorance of historical fact–not to mention the energy they expend keeping themselves that way–wears thin after about 5 minutes.  It gets a lot louder each year on this day.

Anyway, I wrote an article a couple of years ago that suggested that maybe some middle road between the two extremes would be better than either fundamental position. It’s been edited and expanded a bit since then, and I’ve put it behind the cut. 

Enjoy!

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No introduction I could possibly write would do justice to this great article by Joe Bageant, so I’m just going to post the first few paragraphs then provide a link:

The Audacity of Depression

By JOE BAGEANT

One of the best things about the hundred or so book festivals in America is that, with luck, a writer can manage to get drunk with some of his or her readers. And with more luck, the readers pick up the tab. Bear in mind that 90% of all real writers, people for whom writing is their sole
income, spend much of their time counting their change in the rest room of the hotels where they are being put up while on tour. Believe me, there are better rackets than writing.

So here I am at the Virginia Festival of the Book copping a smoke on the back dining patio of the Omni Hotel in Charlottesville with one of my readers — a somewhat elegant sixty-plus blonde who runs a small public library financial support group down in ancient marshy Northumberland County, Virginia. Created in 1648, it is the area James A. Michener wrote about in Chesapeake, and a place where, she tells me, periwinkles planted three hundred years ago on the graves of slaves still bloom. My wife, a historical librarian doing colonial African-American research, tells me these periwinkle
marked slave graves can be found throughout Virginia.

Immensely energetic and a lifelong activist for literacy and informed thought, this cigarette voiced Northumberland librarian has built the county’s new little library,
      and even managed to coax enough money out of the local government for two employees. In a county with a population of 12,000, that’s no small political feat.   
      

Read the rest here.  Enjoy!

A link to this op-ed in the Gainesville Sun has been making the rounds of the library grapevine, mostly on PUBLIB but also on TSLIBRARIANS, which is where I read it.  It’s an anti-library rant, and not a very coherent one at that. Since it’s been a couple of years since I last gave an opinion piece like this one a good fisking, I figured I needed the practice.  My response is beneath the cut.

A few things about what I wrote–unlike the previous article I responded to, this writer is trying to make his point economic in nature. I say, fine, great. I love arguing about money (I do it all the time, if not with Mrs. Rogue Scholar, then with the little Rogue Scholars.  Sometimes I even win.) But I went through the trouble to download and read the budget documents for Alachua County, Florida before I started.  I suspect my opponent did not.  Tough break.

On to dispel the idiocy!

[Read more…] about Kill the Library! Kill it! Kill it!