Free for All: The Public Library (PBS: Independent Lens)

Featuring viewpoints from PEN America, The American Library Association, librarians, and library users this documentary film provides an historical perspective of libraries from Benjamin Franklin, Melville Dewey, and Andrew Carnegie to the present day culture wars that involve drag queens and a book banning crisis. In addition to many little known librarians throughout history the film gives insight into Arturo Shomburg who built a black history collection during the Harlem renaissance and to Ruth Brown who was fired during the McCarthy era for "harboring" subversive materials. Throughout, the film demonstrates the importance of libraries in all parts of the country (urban, rural, and suburban) as well as the tenacity of librarians in the face of tax cuts and calls to shut down libraries completely.

The documentary Free for All: The Public Library is available for free for all at pbs.org

Innocence Under the Elms - by Louise Dickinson Rich

I've known about this memoir about growing up in Bridgewater, Massachusetts (at the turn of the twentieth century) for some time. Many in my adopted hometown had told me about it and I finally got around to reading it just as I was moving out of Bridgewater after 27 and a half years. 

When I arrived in Bridgewater in 1997 one of the first things I did was to get a library card. Shortly after that I gave birth to my only child with whom I spent many hours in the library, and reading books at home together that we checked out. I also served for three terms on the Board of the Bridgewater Public Library (one as President). Therefore, I especially enjoyed reading about Rich's love of the same library. The Library, in fact, was also the place of the author's "first paid job".

The town, it seemed, had allocated a sum of money to be used for cleaning and refurbishing the Public Library. The two librarians, Miss Lucia Christian (Adults) and Miss Rachel Crocker (Children), considered it essential that in addition to the necessary painting and floor finishing, every book in the place should be taken down and dusted.

In those days the shelves were closed to the public. If you wanted a book, you told the librarian about it, and she went and got it for you, while you waited outside the carved wooden fence that separated the sheep from the goats. The shelves came very decidedly under the category of Sacred Grouind, available only to the librarians or their duly empowered agents and assistants and jealously guarded from unlawful hands and eyes. There was no random and casual browsing by goats, who if they did nothing worse, could surely be counted upon to put the books back in the wrong places. Under this system some books weren't even touched, let alone read, from one year's end to the next. It wasn't very surprising or unnatural that during that time they collected quite a coating of dust. And who better could be found to cope with the situation than the little Dickinson girls, who in addition to being Reliable, were Readers and Respecters of Books, and who, moreover, could be expected because of their tender years to work for much less than a regular cleaning woman would?

We were paid, I think, five cents an hour, which seemed like the wealth of Croesus to us.

From there the author describes the additional benefits of working in the library "turning us loose in the library was like turning an alcoholic loose in the wine cellar...those five or six weeks of dusting books contributed more to our so-called education than sixteen years...of school attendance". By stopping to read the books they were dusting Louise and Alice learned that not everyone held the same opinion about everything "you could believe anything you wanted to! You didn't have to accept what anyone, even teachers, told you!" Quite a heady lesson that we'd do well to remember a century later.

And that's not all! There was more exciting library work for Louise and her sister Alice as they got a bit older. 

The following summer, Miss Christian and Miss Crocker were obliged for personal reasons to take their two weeks' vacation at the same time. ..Faced with the the necessity of leaving their sacred trust in untested hands, they thought of the little Dickinson girls...We went into the library for a week or so to learn the ropes; and then Miss Christian and Miss Crocker took off, leaving us in charge.

Dickinson goes on to describe how she and her sister stamped out books, collected fines, and "frowning at anyone who raised his voice above the lawful whisper". They also determined on their own to "give people not what they wanted to read" but what Louise and Alice determined they should read "for their own good". And so we see why libraries should be run by actual librarians, and not school children, no matter how reliable they might be.

Lula Dean's Little Library of Banned Books - by Kirsten Miller

Lula Dean didn't intend for the Little Library she put in her front yard to be filled with books she had requested be removed from the school and public libraries, but some stealthy young folks replaced her "clean" books with the forbidden ones, hiding them with the covers of the books she originally had in her collection. Suddenly kids know about periods, and women know about witchcraft, and some people even want to remove the statue of a slave owner from the town square. 

Burning books is offered as a solution for those works that some don't want others to read. This is the case for people on the left and the right. Lula Dean and the Concerned Parents Committee (CPC) suggest this for the books they want "reconsidered". Likewise Delvin Crump decides to burn Our Confederate Heroes when he finds it in Lula Dean's library. 

Not once in his life had Delvin Crump ever contemplated burning a book. When he'd joined the army, he had taken an oath to defend the Constitution which gave all Americans the right to free speech, including the backward-ass bastard who'd written Our Confederate Heroes. But it was time to take this piece of shit out of circulation. 

Delvin has his grill fired up when he discovers that Toni Morrison's Beloved is really inside the book cover.

Don't burn books you don't like. You cannot determine for other people what they can read. People have the right to read what books they want, and have their own reasons for reading them. 

This book has 35 chapters, each named for a book. Additionally, a number of books are mentioned in the work but do not have chapters named for them. In her author's note Miller tells the readers that some of the book titles she uses are real, and others are fictitious. I did recognize many of the book titles. Some, such as: Are You There God, It's Me, Margaret; The Handmaid's Tale; and Fifty Shades of Grey have their own posts on this blog. I was particularly interested to find How the Word is Passed among those titles used. It is a book I am currently listening to on Audible.

The town librarian Mara Ocumma is a true defender of privacy and of free speech. When Melody Sykes, one of the members of the CPC shows up at the library looking a book of poison mushrooms, Ocumma knows exactly why. Melody's nasty husband Randy is certainly worthy of a murder fantasy. However unlikeable Melody is, though, she still is entitled to good information and privacy, and Ocumma ensures she gets both.

A fun satire. 
 

The Man of My Dreams - by Curtis Sittenfeld

Introvert Hannah Gavener is uncomfortable with parties in college, and with dating. In order to pay for her therapist she takes a job shelving books at the veterinary library at her university, as a bonus she finds that  she can be "almost peaceful" among the quiet stacks. The job also comes in handy as an excuse when she wants her date, Mike, to leave after a rather awkward date that lasted all night. She lies and tells him she has to go to work early at the library. 

Hannah also has good memories of reading through all the biographies of the first ladies in fourth grade as part of a summer program at the public library. ("If you were a boy you read about the presidents.") 

Hannah loved these books, their cheerful orderly recounting of lives...and by August she'd read all the way up to Nancy Reagan...For Hannah things had seemed good then, it had seemed like she was headed somewhere. 

The Scandalous Summer of Sissy LeBlanc - by Loraine Despres

Set in the summer of 1956 (with a bit of backtracking to fall 1941) Sissy LeBlanc (neé Thompson) is surprised when her high school sweetheart returns to Gentry, Louisiana and thus begins her scandalous summer. 

As a  high school student Sissy uses the library as an excuse to get out of the house in order to "take care" of an unwanted pregnancy.

As an adult Sissy helps her mixed-race cousin, Clara, to use the public library which was "open to all" but only allowed "white folks" to check out books. A sympathetic librarian "who believed it was her Christian duty to eradicate ignorance wherever she found it...liked Clara, a smart, sensible teenager and a credit to her race...[and] took it upon herself to break the rules and allow her checkout privileges".

Daydreamer - by Rob Cameron

 

Charles makes sense of his world through stories and fantasy. He imagines people as dragons, trolls, and other mythical beings. Although he has trouble reading, he discovers that the library can be a magical place as well. His friend Will explains to him that at the "li-brar-y...they give books for free if you have their secret card". Even though he knows that he can gets things for free at the library, Will nevertheless, also has "tapes of Haitian music [he] stole from the library."

Nightbitch (the movie)

First and foremost I must say how much I hate the word "bitch". I avoid using it in just about any context, which is not to say I never say it. For instance, I might use it if it were part of the title of a movie I watched.

This film is tagged as Body Horror, Dark Comedy, Comedy, and Horror on IMDB. Yes, all of those things. Most importantly though, is that the library, and a librarian play piviotal roles in this film. Although the unnamed main character (Amy Adams) claims to hate Book Babies at the library and the other Moms she meets there, she discovers that they aren't so bad after all, and furthermore, the the librarian, Norma, (played by Jessica Harper) knows a lot more than just how to shush loud patrons. She has insights into motherhood as well as book knowledge. Our heroine not only recognizes Norma's worth, she commemorates it.