Embracing Your Local Library, and Its Culture

IN THE SMALL AMERICN down in the deep south town where I for some reason live (cheaper to build a house) theres sits a brand new high school and a brand new library, much to the credit of the town. within the library are only a few thousand books, which matters not, for there are computers, which matters. The librarians are, for the most part, portly middle aged women, as our modern American librarians tend to be. In my entire life, much of which has been spent in research libraries struggling to finally complete a doctorate, I have rarely if ever seen a male librarian? Reverse gender discrimination, possibly? Every profession seems to attract its own personality type. policepersons tend, for the most part, to be the strong silent type. Teachers wax pedantic, and seem fond of correcting people. Librarians, as a while, I have found to be priggish, prudish, prim, proper, and tight assed. Walk into a library wearing baggy saggy shorts, and a ball cap turned around like a catcher's, and you're likely to receive a baleful, disdainful gaze from a lady attired in Hillary Clinton pants suit, and eye glasses pointed on each side, with perhaps chains attached. When they say, "may I help you", the message they often seem to be conveying is: "although" I disapprove of your attire, your mannerisms, and your failure to conform to my priggish notions of how a person should present himself, I shall attempt to be rid of you poste haste". Permit me to declare that the ladies in "my" small town library fill the bill, to the letter. The Director, who seems to have forgotten that I am her boss, is built like a fullback, and requires a wide berth. Her daughter, nepotistically part of the crew, is prim, proper, sanctimonious, and always ready to rebuff with a disapproving glance. In their defense, there are librarians in Harvard's esteemed research libraries who are cast in the same mold, and at the Library of Congress, and, well, in every small town in these United States of Antipathy. Never let it be said that the U.S. lacks cultural conformity. I would bet my kingdom that ninety five percent of all American librarians are devout, sanctimonious, Christians, looking down their noses at the slightest trace of social non conformity, through glasses with big, black frames.