Back in high school
probably about 30 years ago in the era before the Internet, back when I could
count the channels that came in on our TV using my fingers. I was living
10 miles out of town in North Dakota and did not have the kind of friends that I would call on
the phone and talk to by the hour. I sat in the corner of my bedroom and
perfected my self-taught beading technique that I later learned was called the
Peyote or brick stich by making a loop made of gold giant rocaille beads in six
rows made with orange string, because that is what I happened to have
around. It was not a bracelet. It was a toy and I called it: A Dull
Saturday Afternoon, or DSA for short. I carried it around and played with it
and spun it around on my fingers and would toss it in the air and catch
it. If folks asked me what it was I told them it was a fidget device, not
a bracelet! I had a hard time finding beads to make any more than the one
that I would re-stitch when I the string wore out from much play.
When I went to college
in Wisconsin I had easier access to shopping and did a lot of searching for the
right beads and eventually I was able to get enough that I could make more
DSA’s. I sold them for five
dollars. I would carry several in my
pockets and play with them and friends would ask to hold one and eventually
they would want one. I probably sold a
few dozen though Concordia University Wisconsin and the hard tiled floor would
cause the beads to break if you dropped a DSA just right, so I had to do a lot
of repair jobs on the ones sold. I
experimented with different beads and other types of string but on the whole
the best feel in the hands was still the cotton string and the glass giant
rocaille beads.
Before the Goofus Ball
the bestselling product I had ever made was the DSA. Sometimes a more sarcastic college acquaintance
would ask me after paying $5.00 for one if I paid taxes on my earnings. I would explain that my profits were well
below the level of being taxable particularly since 100% of what I earned went
towards buying raw materials to support my beading habit.
Fast forward thirty
years, Germany is one country again, the USSR is gone, and It’s a dull Saturday
afternoon at Martin Luther King Library and a 20-something gentleman comes up
to the reference desk and asks me where the DSA is meeting. I do a double
take, and then he clarifies: We have a meeting room
-The Democratic Socialists of America. I look at the meeting room
schedule to remind myself, and tell the guy that his meeting is in the
conference room starting in the next hour.
The Democratic Socialists
of America love meeting in our library and since we don’t charge for our spaces
(beyond the taxes folks already pay) it is an affordable space for them to use. Library meeting spaces cannot be used for
commercial purpose, but anyone can put on a program as long as they don’t
charge or solicit funds from the public.
There are also restrictions against religious groups doing overtly
religious things like a Bible study or a worship service, but if you offer a
class based in an Eastern religion, say, a session on mindfulness or Yoga or
meditation, that is perfectly acceptable.
Some religions are more equal than others. But I digress.
So the DSAs met. There were just a few of them at this meeting, all
polite very well dressed Caucasian twenty somethings.
The thing about
socialism is that I work for perhaps the only institution where it sort of works.
That is the thing about libraries. We offer access to information, in the
form of books and internet access that can be fully utilized and fully shared
and never consumed. It is the reason why socialism doesn’t work in
any other facet of society. Think about it. I can take a book
out and read it, meditate on it, take notes from it, gather what I can, and
then return it and the next person can get the same or even more out of it than
I do. It may be the best value tax dollars can offer because the more
people use the resources available the better the value to the public since a
book cost the same to the library if it is checked out once or dozens of
times. Same with internet
access. The two hours you spend online in no way diminishes what the next
patrons can do on the computer during their two hour session. There is
even a common held practice of information providers like databases and periodical
subscriptions to charge prices for the same resource according to the
population being served. Larger populations with more users are charged
more for the same information than smaller population groups. Dare I say, each library pays according to
its need, each according to its means?
Try to do the same
thing with an apple or prescription drugs, or gallon of gas. You do not want what remains when I am done with
the product. And if I share it by
portioning it, I do not get the same value I would have if I kept it for
myself.
In the library consumables
are paid for. If you lose or damage community property then you are
charged for the cost. If you need paper or toner inks it is .15 for black
and white and .50 for color per printed page. If you need a thumb drive
the library will sell you one for a few dollars. When a book or DVD is no
longer seen as good for the collection either because it is worn or just hasn't been checked out for years, it will be offered to general public for a dollar each and the
money goes back into the library.
As amazing as this
collective use of resources that can be used and not consumed is, none of it
would be possible without private individuals and business earning money and
being able to pay taxes. Also important are donations like private
foundations and corporations that help with building projects, renovations and
even grants for some of the programing.
There is a propensity
in my profession towards a left leaning anti-capitalist thought, but such an
environment would be the death of a well-run library. Without the strong tax base that comes from
capitalism we would have to cut the number of books we buy, the staff, cut
hours, and ultimately cut access to places where the Democratic Socialists of
America could meet for free on a dull Saturday afternoon.
