“It Was A Pleasure To Burn.”🔥

 I worked in a small, independent bookstore for a few years, what now seems many years ago. I went back yesterday to see friends and browse again, and celebrate the owner’s 30th anniversary of the store. 

Part of her success (and I hasten to add, pre-emptively, that business is good), was selling books to local school libraries. She told us she doesn’t do that anymore. Not because she fell out with the schools (there was some friction years back with a local school board that went MAGA, but that only lasted ‘til the next election), but because the schools have all fired their librarians. Every single one. 

Budget constraints, in part. But largely due to state law, which now requires every book on the shelf be probationary. It must be available first for review by the parents for 30 days. If no one objects, it can go on the library shelves for the students. If they do, well…it never gets there. I’m not sure of the finer points of the law, but that’s how it works in real time. 

Later, the Lovely Wife pointed out that it would take a librarian to keep track of which new books had passed their probationary period, and which had just started. I pointed out that was another reason the schools didn’t have librarians. It was a feature, not a bug. I pointed out to my friend the bookstore owner that, when I was young, I read Fahrenheit 451, but I never imagined I’d be living in it one day.

If my daughter ever has a child, I’m going to make it my life’s last work to see it goes to a good private school. It’s the only hope I would have for my grandchildren.