LOCAL NEWS

Looking at our local paper the past week, our crime blotter had a couple of strange things.

A truck had its passenger side window broken. The owner's wife's purse was taken, containing her Honduras ID and a social security card. I guess the SS card was because she was working here?

Another case found the cops being called out to investigate loud music. They said they could hear the music a block away. Since they were on foot, they found a man rolling a cigarette in his car...with marijuana. Bet he wished the partiers had turned their music down.

Finally, a man got sick in a store and stumbled out to a nearby porch to go to sleep. When a policeman woke him, he was confrontational. So they got him for carrying four bottles of vanilla extract??? Ah, but the vanilla extract was 41% alcohol. Guess that's why he was confrontational.

Not in the crime blotter, but a front page article told about our local library getting its table and chairs back. Our two local libraries were in a system with several counties till last year. After requesting audits of the system's funds and not getting a response, our county withdrew from the system and set up our own. We also kicked the system's director out of our main library (which had been the system's headquarters). She sued to stay longer but lost. When she moved out (without allowing anyone to see what she took), she made off with monies that belonged to us along with a historic table and chairs presented to our library many, many years ago from a coastal mansion.

After more heated discussions, she finally resigned from the position head of the system now headquartered in another county. The new person in charge met with our board recently and we are indeed getting our table and chairs back. The other system also agreed to pay us the money that had been allocated to our library.

We readers are happy about that! Yes, justice sometimes prevails.

UNWANTED PAST

When my best friend and I were young, we haunted the library even though Mrs. Brown, the librarian, was one grumpy old lady. To be fair, she had thousands of books she manually checked out and in, then had to shelve them all by herself. But we were kids. She scared us to death.

We read practically everything in the children's section (this was a small town library in years long gone) and asked Mrs. Brown if she would pick out some adult books we could read (no middle grade/young adult categories then). Yes, we were currying favor with her. But children weren't allowed in the adult section back then. We had no choice.

Anyway, the first things she gave us to read were the gentle romances of Grace Livingston Hill. Maybe you know her. Christian romances. Heroine didn't smoke, drink or -- heaven forbid -- wear makeup. This last was pretty radical even in our day. But we went through them fast, and she started us on some more authors like Emily Loring and others I can't remember. But she kept giving us Grace's books again. And again. And again. When she was finally too busy one day to pick some out for us, she told us to look for our own books. I think it was the happiest day of our lives. Never again, I told myself, will I hear about Grace Livingston Hill.

Well, years later, a friend was recommending books to me. Guess who was at the top of her list? Yep. Old Grace herself.

And today, I look at Kindle's free selections and guess who has a book there. You know it.

Will this woman dog my footsteps forever?

LIBRARIES HURTING

Our libraries are hurting.

Our local two are closing one day a month in each location to save funds. They have already cut back on hours for full-time employees and done away with the beloved Bookmobile. Their participation in our state-wide system for borrowing books from any library member is also threatened.

If this were a more prosperous period, it wouldn't matter so much. But with the economy the way it is, a lot of people can't afford to buy books and are using libraries more frequently. They're also using the library computers to check on job listings and other things because they can't afford a home computer and/or internet service.

I guess I'm just whining, but it still seems to me that this is the very time libraries need to be supported, when people are out of work and worrying about reduced salaries. All I can do is support the library league and help raise money to keep them open.