Of Paradise & Parking Lots

Once or twice a month, two women, one who barely qualifies for a senior discount and another with but a year or two to go, arrive at the Screening Room for a Wednesday matinee.

Since that’s my day as a projectionist, we’ve been on a first name basis since about a year ago when they first made a habit of spending a day in Newburyport and taking in a movie. They have always remembered my name after I made it easy for them by pointing out that I’m in the trunk of every car.

That would include the car that takes them the 30 or so miles back and forth to where they live.  I’m not going to name the town, nor am I going to use their real names in what I’m about to report.  Not because they asked to remain anonymous, but because it wasn’t until the show was over and the lights were out that my own light went on.

This past Wednesday was very slow.  When Nikki and Liz arrived some 20 minutes early, I was in a chatty mood, telling of the Nao Trinidad, the replica of Magellan’s ship that had been docked in Newburyport during the week of the 4th.  They saw it with their husbands, and Nikki mentioned a conversation about history that included an aside, “I’m a librarian.”

Couldn’t help but file that away until the subject of Magellan had sailed out the door of the Screening Room lobby and was safely onto State Street.  I gave the pause a three-count and looked at Nikki:

“You’re a librarian?”

“Yes!  In X——, and Liz is on the board of the X—– Public Library.”

Looking back and forth at both:  “I’m about a decade older than you. My introduction to the Lawrence Public Library would have been about when you were born. I’m sure I was assigned certain books to find, but overall, those grade-school visits were more like discovery than anything else, like Magellan sailing round the Horn into an ocean full of islands unknown and unimagined.”

They smiled, no doubt thinking they were in for a pleasant, nostalgic trip into their own profession. I paused, keeping eye-contact, one to the other: “May I ask what might be a contentious question?”

They glanced at each other and both said yes.

“Does the word ‘weeding’ mean anything to you?”

Both women registered mild surprise that a non-librarian would know what is now a librarian’s term of art, though I’d say “artlessness” would be more honest.  Nikki’s explanation was consistent with what I’ve heard from librarians, what few I know, from here to the west coast, citing a computer program that lets librarians know just how often a book is checked out. She looked over at Liz who nodded agreement, and I could see that both were reading skepticism on my face.

I hoped to soften my response with a brief laugh: “That suggests that some algorithm decides what books remain and what get tossed out.”

They seemed to speak at once: “Well, no, we do look at it.” Liz went on, “We also have to consider the condition of the book, and whether it’s in or out of print.”

Sounds to me like an urgent reason to keep older volumes, but I couldn’t tell if being out of print was considered a strike against them. I told the two that such was the case in Newburyport where, among other literary and historical treasures, a two-volume collection of John Greenleaf Whittier’s letters and journals published by his family in 1894 is no more.

Nikki seemed to commiserate: “But I bet there’s plenty of Danielle Steele!”

“That’s my point. Something already well-known, safe, expected. Don’t let Magellan round that Horn!”

Liz noted that the concern was for shelf-space, and Nikki nodded, adding that X—— has a very small library. I don’t doubt that’s true in X—–, but in N-port there is no lack of empty shelves. A day after this conversation, I happened to be in the Ipswich Public Library where entire rows were empty.

Nikki turned the tables on me: “What do you think weeding is?”

I kept making eye-contact with both of them: “I think the word is a euphemism for ‘dumbing down’.”

The two women looked stunned.

“And I mean that literally! You’re paving a paradise of literature and history, and putting up a parking lot of pop-culture. Is there no difference between a library and a bookstore? And what’s the difference between weeding and what the governor of Florida has ordered for public schools?”

Liz: “That’s a total ban. We might weed books, but you can still find and read them”

Me: “No! That’s just what DeSantis says, anyone in Florida can still find and buy and read those books. That rationale is identical whether the reference is to bookstores, to interlibrary consortiums, or to websites. So much for libraries as places of discovery!”

Nikki: “But we aren’t stigmatizing books the way these right wing groups are.”

Me: “No, not at all, but you are erasing them. So the result is the same. We’re erasing history at the same time we accuse others of suppressing it. And we wonder why they laugh at us? Only real difference is that right-wingers claim credit for and boast of what they erase. Algorithms allow us to wash our hands. Who’s in denial now?”

Again, they seemed to speak as one, as well as glancing at a clock on the wall approaching showtime: “Well, yes, we do need to keep an eye on that!”

“And I thank you!”

They slid into the theater as another customer approached to buy a ticket. What I have recorded above is but an extract of a longer conversation far more in agreement than debate, and the quotes are approximate. I was glad that I mentioned my involvement in the annual marathon readings of Moby-Dick in New Bedford and my recent, public feud with the N-port Public Library without getting lost in the (forgive me) weeds of controversy. That ensures that, if they want to know more, it’s all there, a matter of public record. (As well as covered in recent blogs.)

My one regret is that my stop in Ipswich was a day after rather than a day before this conversation. The IPL at the time had just four volumes of Herman Melville at the end of a shelf of over a dozen by pop-fiction writer Brad Meltzer. Recalling Nikki’s crack, I wandered into the aisle marked by the letter S. Danielle Steele had 82.

At that moment, I hoped I had made it clear to them that my argument isn’t about any contest, or any score, or lessening anything for the sake of anything else. Beyond the aisles with S and T was just one that offered everything from U to Z.

Past that were two rows of of stacks, I think five shelves each, top to bottom, perhaps twenty feet long, completely empty.

Don’t know about X—–, but like Newburyport, that’s quite a parking lot.

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