Barbarians at the Gate
Barbarians at the Gate
So a week ago we put a little library in the phone booth that mysteriously appeared in the park I care-take here on the South End. I built a fancy bookcase in a tree configuration, painted it like a Jackson Pollock, installed it inside the booth and filled it with novels, how-to’s, kid’s books and CD’s. It lasted less than a week before some anti-literacy vandals decided that very nice wood bookcase would look nicer broken to pieces and thrown out on the lawn and the books would be better off left unread strewn around the Little Library in the rain. They burned a few of them, tore up others and spit loogies on the windows of the phone booth, then started to paint F… something on the sides. Which raises the question: if you didn’t want to read the books, why bust up the library? Just do like most folks in America, don’t go to the library. And don’t defile the temple, even if it is just a phone booth.
I’ve been mowing that park for a decade, a pretty thankless task, let me tell you. I mow the lawn, clear trails, chainsaw up deadfall, plant shrubs and flowers, put in sculpture and birdhouses and art. Three of our sculptures were stolen the first week. A grill was sawed off and taken the second week. If you were the ranger, I bet you’d be discouraged as much as me. I know I stopped trying to add more sculpture and art after awhile, too much a kick in my soft head.
Today I went over to clean up the mess and restock the books. A carload of women drove in while I was there, hoping to see the new little library. Cultural tourism after the Vandals have trashed Rome. They had seen the photo in the newspaper and driven southward to see for themselves the grassroots biblioteca. What they saw instead was the smoldering ruins of our answer to the Library of Alexandria.
These are tough times in post-Truth America, for sure. The ignorant are up on their hind legs braying like donkeys and the politicians are too timid to tell them they’re complete imbeciles, afraid of the angry backlash that might, god forbid, remove them from their coveted offices. The illiterate and the conspiracy promoters walk hand in hand now with monkey wrenches and pickaxes. Who needs government? they howl. Who needs facts? Who needs the truth if it goes against our beliefs. Burn the witches! Burn the books! And who needs a dopey little library right down the road?
Well … I think we know who does. Trouble is, they don’t and they won’t. Our little library is still open. We’ll see for how long.
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Tags: Book Burning on the South End, Vandals vs. Literacy
Sounds like the work of angry teens. Which doesn’t preclude them from also being anti-intellectual Philistines. So sorry this happened.
I got a neighborhood up the road from the park full of kids bored to death down here on the South End. Fifteen years ago their parents were teenage punks who used the park as a drug party. Broke up the picnic tables, turned over the trash cans, anything to keep their idle hands bizzy. About five of the folks on that side of the island decided enuff was enuff so they parked some lawn chairs back at the edge of the woods and waited for our little delinquents to roll in and proceed to wrecking whatever hadn’t already been wrecked. They opened up with shotguns, handguns, deer rifles, a veritable militia, not aiming at the kids of course. Some diapers got dirtied that evening and for years no one came back to bust up the park. Not saying I’m for vigilantism, but … sometimes it takes a village.
I admire your perseverance Skeeter. With what you’re up against in this situation, you’re probably right, the teens without a cause might respond best to The Word For Today if it’s unpronounceable, across the bow, and exceptionally loud.
If nothing else, we’d get the approbation, if not a letter of commendation, from our President.