Taking a Stand

I've made an effort, thus far, to keep my blog free of explicit political content. What I saw today while I was out running made me rethink that. A red pickup parked in a driveway a few blocks from here had this bumper sticker: "Vote Yes for Libraries." I confess that I'm not much for plastering my own ideals on the back end of my car (since most of the time I'm riding a bike). I've seen enough faded Dukakis stickers and paint peeled off from the furious removal of a Nader sticker to let me know the fickle winds of politics should not be the determining factor for decorating one's motor vehicle.
"Vote Yes for Libraries." Just what knuckleheaded lobby is voting "no?" I ask this with my tongue firmly resting in my left cheek, but I still wonder just how long we've been living in a world where there was some kind of question associated with the existence of libraries. Maybe we've got enough books now, and access to them is no longer any kind of issue, so let's start finding ways to limit our proximity to words.
It's that tax dollar thing that makes it a debate at all, right? And it's not like anybody's doing us a favor by taking a break from writing down all those good ideas and recipes and stories - they just keep writing more. Where do all those new books end up? In a library someplace! With mylar dust jackets and little pockets to hold the cards - not to mention all those Dewey Decimal stickers on the spine - running a library is a horrendously labor intensive endeavor.
Maybe from now on, whenever a book gets worn out or used up, or if it just isn't that interesting anymore, we could put it into some sort of recycling program - put all those old tired words back to work in some useful volume that would serve the public in some more cost-effective way. Unless that book is "Charlotte's Web."
"Vote Yes for Libraries." Indeed.