Wait... could you repeat that??
So... I was doing my morning Online Reading of News and went to our small town's newspaper site to see what's what, and my eyes were caught by this headline...
"Insert Name of Our Town's Love of Literacy Goes Global."
Um... excuse me... what was that again?? Our love of ... what??? Literacy? Are you kidding me??
The article goes on to describe the actions of a young local woman who is a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa and is an English teacher there. She loves her job, loves her students, and wanting to go the extra mile, collected donations in our town and area to fund construction of a library over there. And this is great, I'm very proud of her. It's awesome, and I admire her parents for instilling the values in her that brought her to where she is today. I have no problem whatsoever with that.
I have a problem with the idea that our town has a "love of literacy."
Excuse me? When? When exactly did this happen? Because I don't see it. Not. At. All.
I don't see it because while we have the oldest continuously operating public library in the state of Texas, people in this town don't seem all that interested in actually reading.
Let's put it this way. While the old part of the library (over 100 years old) is filled with books, the newer part occupies a three story building... and they only utilize one floor. There have been plans to "expand" the library to the other two floors, to purchase books, etc, for ten years now... and it hasn't happened. It isn't that the money isn't there. It is. The interest isn't.
We don't have a bookstore in this town. Not one. We have a plethora of antique stores... but no bookstores. Every bookstore that has opened here fails within six months. Why? Because no one will buy books. Even the Christian bookstore that tried to open here failed in six months.
There was even an attempt to have a bookstore as a little side business within one of the antique stores... and it failed!!
No one here reads. Because people who read get "Idears." You know. Ideas. Can't have that. If you get Ideas, you'd, you know, think. And Thinking, whoa, Thinking is BAD.
So, I find it extremely ironic that citizens who scream about having to fork over money to buy new books, or repair bookshelves in our local library gave generously to build and buy books for a library in West Africa... because they love literacy!!
Right. Pull the other one, yeah?
"Insert Name of Our Town's Love of Literacy Goes Global."
Um... excuse me... what was that again?? Our love of ... what??? Literacy? Are you kidding me??
The article goes on to describe the actions of a young local woman who is a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa and is an English teacher there. She loves her job, loves her students, and wanting to go the extra mile, collected donations in our town and area to fund construction of a library over there. And this is great, I'm very proud of her. It's awesome, and I admire her parents for instilling the values in her that brought her to where she is today. I have no problem whatsoever with that.
I have a problem with the idea that our town has a "love of literacy."
Excuse me? When? When exactly did this happen? Because I don't see it. Not. At. All.
I don't see it because while we have the oldest continuously operating public library in the state of Texas, people in this town don't seem all that interested in actually reading.
Let's put it this way. While the old part of the library (over 100 years old) is filled with books, the newer part occupies a three story building... and they only utilize one floor. There have been plans to "expand" the library to the other two floors, to purchase books, etc, for ten years now... and it hasn't happened. It isn't that the money isn't there. It is. The interest isn't.
We don't have a bookstore in this town. Not one. We have a plethora of antique stores... but no bookstores. Every bookstore that has opened here fails within six months. Why? Because no one will buy books. Even the Christian bookstore that tried to open here failed in six months.
There was even an attempt to have a bookstore as a little side business within one of the antique stores... and it failed!!
No one here reads. Because people who read get "Idears." You know. Ideas. Can't have that. If you get Ideas, you'd, you know, think. And Thinking, whoa, Thinking is BAD.
So, I find it extremely ironic that citizens who scream about having to fork over money to buy new books, or repair bookshelves in our local library gave generously to build and buy books for a library in West Africa... because they love literacy!!
Right. Pull the other one, yeah?