The Rogue Scholar

Librarians and Teamsters Unite to Defend Chicago Library

I was going to write a bit of an introduction to this article but on second thought, I think the first few paragraphs of this bit from the Daily Herald speak pretty well for themselves:

Telling her mother that she wanted to come to the aid of a library under attack, 11-year-old Sydney Sabbagha stood at the podium before the Oak Brook village board.

"I used to go to the library knowing there were people there to help me find a book. Now there is no one to help me," Sydney said solemnly. "It will never be the same without the people you fired."

Sydney nestled back into her seat, but that didn't stop 69-year-old criminal attorney Constantine "Connie" Xinos from boldly putting her in her place.

"Those who come up here with tears in their eyes talking about the library, put your money where your mouth is," Xinos shot back. He told Sydney and others who spoke against the layoffs of the three full-time staffers (including the head librarian and children's librarian) and two part-timers to stop "whining" and raise the money themselves.

"I don't care that you guys miss the librarian, and she was nice, and she helped you find books," Xinos told them.

"Don't cry crocodile tears about people who are making $100,000 a year wiping tables and putting the books back on the shelves," Xinos smirked, apparently referencing the fired head librarian, who has advanced degrees and made $98,676 a year. He said Oak Brook had to "stop indulging people in their hobbies" and "their little, personal, private wants."

Sydney was upset and "her little friend was in tears" after Xinos spoke at the meeting last week, says mom Hope Sabbagha.

In my personal estimation, Mr. Xinos is a creep, and not just because he apparently enjoys making little girls cry at public hearings.

Xinos is that guy who lies awake at night, fuming and worrying that there is someone somewhere in the country who received a break that he or she didn't 120% deserve. He votes Republican, served in the Marines and believes that life is a series of private transactions between individuals. To him, every human action has a monetary reaction. There is no room in his vision of life, the universe, and everything for shared responsibility, common space, or collective action. At least, no collective action that doesn't benefit him personally. Public libraries, being first and foremost entities designed for communal use by the common people, do not fit in to his worldview except as institutions that should be privatized, outsourced, or abandoned. 

I can appreciate his concern for the community's finances--times are bad and will probably get worse before they improve--but if he blanches at the $98k salary the head librarian was receiving, I wonder how he'd feel if someone reminded him that as a 69 year old citizen of the U.S., he's getting (or at least is eligible for) Social Security and Medicare benefits worth a pretty penny, paid for by you, me, and everyone else in this great land of ours. I'm pretty sure he's cashing those free government checks, but hey, I could be wrong.

One point in Xinos's favor from what I can tell is that he is at least honest enough to say he hates paying  for the library in public, unlike this yokel (that other guy) who couldn't even admit that much to himself or to those neighbors who (one would assume) shared his point of view. 

Don't be that guy.

Veterans Day 2009

[Alf Razzell:]"Two things that have haunted me most are the days when I had to collect the paybooks; and when I left Bill Hubbard in no-man's-land. I was picked up and taken into their trench. And I'd no sooner taken two or three steps down the trench when I heard a call, 'Hello Razz, I'm glad to see you. This is my second night here,' and he said 'I'm feeling bad,' and it was Bill Hubbard, one of the men we'd trained in England, one of the original battalion. I had a look at his wound; rolled him over. I could see it was probably a fatal wound. You could imagine what pain he was in, he was dripping with sweat; and after I'd gone about three shellholes, traversed that, had it been...had there been a path or a road I could have done better. He pummelled me, 'Put me down, put me down, I'd rather die, I'd rather die, put me down.' I was hoping he would faint. He said 'I can't go any further, let me die.' I said 'If I leave you here Bill you won't be found, let's have another go.' He said 'All right then.' And the same thing happened. he couldn't stand it any more, and I had to leave him there, in no-man's-land."

 - - -

[Alf Razzell:]"Years later, I saw Bill Hubbard's name on the memorial to the missing at Aras[?]. And I...when I saw his name I was absolutely transfixed; it was as though he was now a human being instead of some sort of nightmarish memory of how I had to leave him, all those years ago. And I felt relieved, and ever since then I've felt happier about it, because always before, whenever I thought of him, I said to myself, 'Was there something else that I could have done?'
[Background: "I'd rather die, I'd rather die..."]
And that always sort of worried me. And having seen him, and his name in the register - as you know in the memorials there's a little safe, there's a register in there with every name - and seeing his name and
his name on the memorial; it sort of lightened my...heart, if you like."
(Woman) "When was it that you saw his name on the memorial?"
"Ah, when I was eighty-seven, that would be a year, ninete...eighty-
four, nineteen eighty-four."

---Roger Waters, Amused to Death

To any veteran who reads this, thank you. Happy Veterans Day.

Yikes!

And then Jon remembered that he had a blog. And offers his apologies . . .