Author Archives: Eric_Tolladay

About Eric_Tolladay

Writer with a bad retouching habit, Husband, Father, Personal attendant to two cats, Some guy you probably don't know. He/Him

Halloween is almost here

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Do you like ghost stories? I do. I don’t collect them like I used to, but I still read them. For some reason I’ve never become a fan of horror fiction, but I like ghost stories. I guess there are limits on how much blood I can take. I noticed Trevor likes them as well. Both in written form and in graphic novels.

Each year I usually finish a good ghost story near Halloween. In 2010 I wrote a ghost story about an old couple swinging to a big band called Last Dance. Since I don’t have a Fiction page up yet on the new site, I think I’ll just post it here tomorrow. If you’ve ever played in a jazz band, you’ll probably enjoy it.

This year my Halloween story, complete with zombies and lots of blood, is still under construction. So I think I’m going to release another story, one I finished in 2011, called Wisdom. I’ve yet to find a home for it, so here is where it will sit. Look for it on Thursday.

Do you have a favorite scary story?

A question about Latin

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First of all, I’m not anything like a Latin scholar. I took several years of Ancient Greek in college, but never Latin. However, I’ve been reading the most wonderful book about language in general called The Power of Babel: A Natural History of Language by John McWhorter, and from that I’ve been learning some things about how languages work. So when a buddy of mine emailed me a question about the Latin text of a song, wanting to know why it’s spelling kept changing so much, I was able to answer him with just a little bit of on-line research.

 

Here is his question:
This text (in Latin) is from the Roman Catholic Requiem Mass:


Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis,

“May everlasting light shine upon them, O Lord, with thy saints in eternity, for thou art merciful. Grant them eternal rest, O Lord, and may everlasting light shine upon them.”

In this text there are these words: aeternum and aeternam.

What’s the difference(s)?

If you could explain it to me in a more plain English…I and particularly my wife would appreciate it very much.
 

Here is my answer:

I’m not all that good at Latin, but I think I know enough to answer this particular question.

The word Aeternus is the Latin adjective that means eternal, or without end. In fact, the word eternal in English is a direct descendant from aeternus. If you say them both fast, they sound similar.

As to why the word aeternus is spelled three different ways (aeterna, aeternum, and aeternam) in the same paragraph, that takes a bit to explain.

See, in many languages, like English, the way you tell what the words are doing in a sentence is by their order. Usually the order is subject, verb, object, although some languages do their order differently.

Take the sentence:  The girl ate a sandwich.

The subject (the person doing the action) is the girl. The verb (the action) is ate, and the object (the thing being acted upon, in this case, being ate) is the sandwich. When you read this sentence you know it is about a girl, eating a sandwich.

But what happens if you rearrange the word order? What if you write: A sandwich ate the girl.

Uh, oh. Those are the same words, but it means something completely different from the first sentence, at least in English.

As it happens there are some other languages, like Latin and Greek, that solve this word order problem differently. What Latin and Greek do is add a suffix to the end of the words so the listener (or reader) knows what is being done to who, regardless of the word order. So in Latin you could write:

The girl ate a sandwich.
A sandwich ate the girl
Ate the girl a sandwich.
A sandwich the girl ate.

And they would all mean the same thing (a girl eating a sandwich) as long as you used the proper suffixes for each of the words. In each case girl would get the subject suffix, ate would get the subject suffix as well (so you know its the girl doing the action), and sandwich would get the object suffix.
This is a neat trick for a language. Among other things it makes it easy to write long epic poems because the author is free of the limitations of word order when writing. They can rearrange the words to work best (in terms of rhyme and meter) without worrying about word order. But its also a bit of a pain for non-native speakers because you have to memorize all the proper suffixes so you can follow what is going on.

Another thing Latin and Greek do, they add a suffix the end of their adjectives so the listener can tell what nouns they are modifying. Other languages, like English, uses word order to accomplish the same thing. So in English if I write:

 

The pretty girl owns a car

You would know that the word pretty applies to the girl.  Change the sentence to:

 

The girl owns a pretty car

And now its the car that is pretty, not the girl. But again, like we saw before, in Latin and Greek you can rearrange the word order all you want, as long as the proper suffix is placed on the adjective so that the word pretty matches the ending of its subject.

One more thing, before we dig into the sentence. Many times in a language, an adjective will be so handy that eventually it starts to get used as a noun. Most languages have a way of taking adjectives and converting them into nouns for just this reason. Usually by changing their spelling. As it happens English does this the same way Latin and Greek do, by adding a suffix to the end of the adjective. Thus the adjective happy, because the noun happiness, by putting –ness on the end. In the same way forgetful becomes forgetfulness.

As you can probably guess, Latin and Greek not only adds a suffix, but they also change the spelling of it to indicate what they are modifying. Roughly the same thing as English, just slightly more complicated.

So now, lets go back to that Latin sentence.

Lux aeterna luceat eis, Domine, cum sanctis tuis in aeternum, quia pius es. Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.

The first use of Aeternus comes at the beginning with aeterna. Here its an adjective modifying the noun Lux (or light) which also happens to be the subject of the sentence, hence the –a ending.  The second time the word shows up as aeternum with the –um suffix. This suffix tells us the word is now a noun. So, instead of the adjective, eternal, it is the noun meaning eternalness. The third time the word shows up, aeternam, its back to the adjective form, only this time its modifying the object of the sentence instead of the subject like above. In this case its modifying the word requiem, meaning rest. Thus the –am ending.

So the same adjective, used three different ways. Once modifying the subject, once as a noun, and once modifying the object.

There’s more to it than this, but I think this gives you a good idea of why the word is spelled so differently.

The inadvertent racist

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I am not the hero of this story. Not even close. But its a true story all the same. This really happened.

I was coming home from work.
I was standing on the Expo line platform at La Cienega and Jefferson. The station there is elevated a good 30-40 feet above the traffic below. It offers a nice view of the lights of Culver City, especially at night. Its also a short block away from a Sees Candy factory/shop. When the wind is right you can smell them making chocolates.

A young african-American man approached me and stood nearby.
He looked to be in his late 20s. My height. Well groomed. He had on slacks, a long-sleeve button down shirt, and a tie. A coat as well, but I can’t recall exactly what kind. Not a suit jacket, more like a trench coat or a rain coat. It was dark, and cold (what people on the East Coast would call cool). The elevated station not only offers a excellent view, but it also exposes you to the on-shore breeze, the Pacific Ocean being only a few miles away. It was cold enough people were wearing gloves, stamping their feet, moving around, and standing instead of sitting on the concrete benches. So we stood.

I was dressed like a person of privilege.
I don’t recall exactly what I was wearing, but this is how I dress for work. Jeans and a fitted t-shirt. On warmed days, tan dockers, but more than likely it was jeans. The t-shirt was colored, and might have been long-sleeved. I buy them at Target because they’re cheap, and because they look good on me. I was probably wearing my skating jacket which is bicycling jacket: comfortable, lightweight, stuffs into a small pouch, is 100% synthetic, and is amazingly warm. The jacket looks like something a cyclist would wear on a windy day because that is precisely why it was made. It was a gift from my in-laws, is the perfect coat for anything but a serious downpour, and is easily hauled around in my back-pack.

All this to say I was dressed like a person who doesn’t give a damn about how they dress. That’s because I don’t. My day job is being an artist, a pixel-pusher, a photoshop expert. A great job for people who like to dress like they don’t give a damn. My outfit has evolved to this point as being the perfect blend of comfort, ease of use while skating, and just professional enough to give the appearance of confidence. As such my outfit is strictly utilitarian; clothes I put on to accomplish the task at hand, and nothing more. The uniform of a slightly socially awkward artist.

But its also important to point out I dress this way because I don’t have to dress better. No one expects me to prove my worth based on my dress. Quite the opposite in fact. No one has ever questioned my value to society based solely upon my clothing. Or at least not since I was in college. And it would be considered rude for someone to do so. Its not something I ever have to worry about.

We started talking.
Possibly because he was friendly, but more than likely because I like to talk to strangers. I try not to be too pushy, but almost anyone will engage in casual conversation. “Sure is cold tonight,” that sort of thing.

I asked what he did for a living.
I do this with everyone. Its a great way to get a stranger to talk about something they’re comfortable with. Since I collect stories, like some people collect butterflies, I use this question, among others, as a method of exploration; a way to dig deeper. Everybody has good stories tucked inside somewhere, and I am shameless in my hunt for them. Up until a friend posted something on Facebook, I didn’t realize that asking someone this particular question has another meaning in the black community.

He told me to “guess.”
I thought this a funny response, a bit like a girl who is flirting with you might want you to guess her age. Only we were definitely not flirting. So I looked at his outfit, at the way he carried himself, noted the other passengers (remember I ride the train and busses all the time, so I’m familiar with the clientele), and took a wild guess.

“Are you a security guard?” I asked.

“I work in a bank,” he said. “As a loan officer.”

He may have said something more about his job. He may have not actually been a loan officer. I don’t recall. All I remember is that he worked in a bank, and not just as a teller.

He was angry after that.
Not sneering angry, not growling angry, not “ball up a fist and punch someone” angry. Nothing so overt. It was more subtle than that. More of a “slight tightening of the jaw” angry.  That, and he all but stopped talking with me.

I won’t pretend to be the most observant guy in the room, but I can tell when someone is done talking with you. They turn a shoulder. Ignore the next question. Don’t say or waive goodbye. They are done. Period. And this guy was done.

He walked far away to another entrance to get on the train.
That is to say, he made it very clear he wasn’t going to sit near me. Now I talk to people all the time on the bus and train, like I mentioned before, so I’ve learned a thing or two. I knew our conversation was over, and I had a pretty good sense the man was angry at me, but at the time what I didn’t get was why. I didn’t know if I had done or said something wrong, or if he was over-reacting. He didn’t have any of the signs of mental illness (I know, I talk to those kind of people all the time), and there was nothing about the conversation that I could see that would make someone upset. Sure I had guessed wrong at his occupation, but so what? I mean he asked me to guess. He could have just told me what he did, and we could have gone on from there. Hell, I would have loved to talk to him about his job. I’ve never worked in a bank, and I could easy have asked a hundred questions. Everything from, “do you still keep banker’s hours,” to “do you get any play with the ladies?”

He probably went home thinking, “what a racist asshole.”
He probably was right.

So that’s the story. Now, I’m going to turn the conversation over, and try to present it from his point of view. He was coming home from work. He was dressed well, dressed better than 95% of the people at the station. He works in Culver CIty which could mean anything, but probably meant he worked at a bank in the nice part of town–and the nice part of Culver CIty could give Beverly Hills a run for its money. He stood for his train, and was approached by an old white guy who dressed like a bum. They talked for a bit, and then the old gut started pestering him about his job.

I’m going to stop here for a moment because I want to talk about this specific topic. Its worth mentioning because its possible the white people in the room might not get all that is going on here. I know I didn’t at the time, so feel free to go to school on my mistake.

There are rules about how society functions. These rules are not written down, nor are they in a real sense enforced, yet they do exist, and they do come into play in public. For instance, if you are out in public late in the morning on a school day, and you see a couple of pre-teens out on the street, you will probably note them, especially if you are a parent. A child out of school sticks out. If you’re a teacher, you will probably say something to them. Anything from, “How’s if going,” to “Aren’t you suppose to be in school?” If you know the kids personally, you definitely will say something to them. “Billy Jones. Does your mother know you aren’t in school?”

There are two things to this example that are important. The first is that perfect strangers in public, who normally do not talk to each other, will speak out at kids who they think should be in school (whether they need to be in school or not, as my friends who have have home-schooled their kids will tell you). Its a social function. A protection. The social equivalent of white blood cells attaching themselves to a virus. Its not done to attack the kid as much as to preserve a perceived order; in this case having kids in school where they belong.

The second important thing about this example is that the person speaking will do so from a perceived place of authority. A kid on the street on a school day will not be enough for most people to overcome their natural inclination to not speak to strangers. But if that person is a parent, they will have more of an emotional stake in the issue, especially if they have kids near that age. They understand deeply what a kid out of school means. For a teacher, this is doubly true. They have first hand experience with kids and their motivations. They also have, what my sister (a long standing middle school science teacher) calls “the voice”. In others words, they know how to be effective. And if the stranger actually knows one of the children and their family, they will almost certainly say something.

In each of these cases, the person doing the talking is doing so from a place of authority. They know something, or feel something and are compelled to act. They do this from a place of privilege. This is what privilege means, having a raised point in a social experience.

So this social system, this method by which people of privilege speak out in public to correct a perceived flaw, also happens to be the very same method by which racism is carried out, and perceived racial divides are maintained. The equivalent of weeding in the racist garden.

I think most of my readers can imagine themselves in the dim dark past, out in a small town somewhere deep in the south, and see how white strangers might have have asked a black person what they were doing out on the street in the middle of the day. Especially during the time of slavery, where free blacks were as rare as kids not needing to be in school. This is what I like to think of as “safe” racism. Its somewhere deep in the past, doesn’t involve us, and doesn’t match or present social context. I mean, after all, no one today would ask a black person what they are doing out on the streets, right?

Well yes and no. You see, I don’t see white people doing anything of the sort, and as a general rule they don’t. But what they actually do is not all that different from it. If you’re like me, you probably won’t notice until its pointed out to you, but these kinds of things often still go on. All you have to do is ask enough people of color. They’ll tell you.

Go to a university and see how often the black students are asked, “are you here on scholarship?” compared to how often the white students are asked. Go around your neighborhood, especially a nice neighborhood, and see how many times a black person is asked, “do you live around here?” compared to a white person. Or go on a public train platform and see how many black men are asked, “what do you do for a living?” compared to the white men. If you are white, and confronted with these questions it doesn’t bother you because the questions will be few and far between, and the answers do not reflect poorly on you. But what if you got asked these things all of the time? What does it mean when every white person you see, even the well meaning ones, ask you the same questions over and over? And why these particular questions?

Are these questions just a part of the friendly banter between strangers in public, or are they analogous to the, “aren’t you supposed to be in school?”? If you’ve only experienced these questions once or twice, I’d guess the former, but if you hear them more often, they start to look an awful lot like the latter.

Which is how I accidentally ended up a racist. See I wasn’t trying to subtly tell this young man he didn’t belong in my world of white privilege, I was genuinely curious what he did for a living. Only its hard to tell sometimes the polite question from the pointed, and intent–as any competent trial lawyer will tell you–is damn hard to prove, and easy to mistake. Asking a young black man if he has a job (which is probably how he took my question) is no joke. The unemployment rate for men of color, especially young men, is incredibly high. Only a few short times since the 1960s has it dropped below twice as high as white unemployment. I’ll say it again. The average is more than twice as high.

So if I had had to work twice as hard to find a good job, and then was bugged about it by someone who looked as if he had been handed their job on a silver platter, I can imagine I would be a little bit testy. Because men, especially young men, often measure their self-worth by their jobs and the money they make, this is a topic that is rife for misunderstanding and hurt feelings. Few things can make a man feel insecure faster than questioning his financial virility. This is true for men of any color.

Since that day I’ve learned to by more circumspect. I’ve learned that if someone talks about their work as being “a little of this and a little of that,” what they are really saying is either they’re unemployed, or they don’t want to talk about their work. Older men tend to be more sanguine about this, then the younger ones. They’ve found other ways to measure their own value to society instead of, or in addition to, making money. But it wasn’t until my friend posted something on facebook the other day that I realized I needed to find a different topic to bring up, or find a more socially acceptable way of asking. That, or I needed to acknowledge that my current style of questioning could end up with me being labeled a racist asshole. Again.

What Our Government Does Well… Corruption

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This one gets missed a lot here in America, and I think its important. Its corruption. To give you some perspective, read this. I’ll quote it here, in case the link doesn’t work, but you really should look at the photo.

I know there is corruption in America. But I have lived here for a year, and have not seen it. In Kyrgyzstan, corruption is everywhere. You can not do anything without corruption. To send your child to school, to apply for a job, you must pay a bribe. If there is a car accident in America, the police and insurance companies determine who is at fault. If there is a car accident in Kyrgyzstan, the person with less money or less power is at fault. In Kyrgyzstan, if you build a business, you can do everything right, and pay all your taxes, and still have it taken away. In America, if you do everything right, it belongs to you.

 

Talk to anyone who’s been to Mexico, Central, or South America, and one things starts to stand out: Corruption. Obviously, as the quote implies there are other parts in the world where it also happens. So I find it intriguing whenever an American talks about corruption. Not that we don’t have corruption, its just not an everyday occurrence, Moreover, most people understand that its wrong, and if they are doing it, they try and hide. That’s because we punish people who destroy the public trust. We find it immoral.

Believe it or not, this is a freedom. The freedom from having to worry about the actions of every petty official, especially government ones. The freedom to report on those who are corrupt with an actual expectation you won’t be harmed in the process. That’s a freedom.

I think it gets missed here in America. We live in such a corrupt free world that it is hard to imagine how difficult and dangerous it can be. Its as transparent to us as water is to a fish. But this wasn’t an accident. Our founding fathers demanded a government worthy of their respect, and ours. They established a government with rules and laws that applied to those governing as well as the governed, and they set up a government with separate branches that oversee each other’s work, and have the power to stop each other. And  they established a government with some iron clad rules specifically designed to protect its citizens from itself.

Think of if as the legal equivalent of bubble wrap. Mind you, it doesn’t completely stop all harm–stopping all harm is a goal which is completely impossible, or at least it is not possible with free will–but it does offer a genuine level of protection, and it does minimize  risk. You still have the freedom to expose yourself to corruption if you want (usually by going to an other country) and you still have the freedom to be corrupt if you want (as long as you are willing to face the legal consequences), but for the most part you are free to not have to deal with corruption, at least on a major lose-your-house-and-all-you-hold-dear scale.

And that, my friends, is a very good thing.

 

____________

If you liked this essay. If you feel, like I do, that in the (often genuine) rush to worry about the size of our government we’ve overlooked its value, I’d like to challenge you. Please do something similar. Think of something you like about our government. Think of some value it brings, something it does well, instead of something it does poorly. And when you’ve thought of your thing, then post it. Put up your words. Put them up here in the comments, on Facebook, tweet them, whatever. It matters not how long it is, it matters not what you say, only that you say it. So say it.

Aztecs react to…

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Trevor and I went for a walk tonight, and because its its favorite topic right now, we talked about military tactics in history. He’s been playing the Total War game series, which allows you to general various armies and go head-to-head with them or to fight against the A.I. At some point we started talking about the Native Americans in general and specifically about the Aztecs. Most people understand that when the Aztecs ran across Cortes they simply did not have the military technology to compete. But what most people do understand is they didn’t have the right ideas either. Cortez and the Spanish not only had a huge weapon advantage over the Aztecs, but the also had an idea advantage.

For instance the Aztec fought a kind warfare that was significantly different form the Spanish. They didn’t even have the same goals. Aztecs fought wars to gain people for sacrifices. To them killing was completely secondary, and killing too much actually counter productive. So a typical Aztec victorious battle would mean ganging up on a neighboring tribe, killing enough of them so they quit, picking 10-20 people of that tribe for sacrifice, and making sure you got 20 more people each year.

Now counter this against the Spanish. Their idea of a victorious battle would start with killing so many of the other guys that you either were to exhausted to kill any more, or they ran away. For them, killing was the goal. It was why you went to war. And a vanquished enemy didn’t just pay you tribute every year, you went and took EVERYTHING from him.

Mind you, the Aztecs were not stupid. Not even primitive. They just had never come across certain ideas about war and warfare before, and it was their inexperience with these ideas that proved to be so fatal. Well that and small pox.

Anyway, it was while we were talking about this, about the native American Indians having the largest WTF experience in history, that Trevor suggested he’d like to see the look on the Aztecs faces when they got charged for the first time by Egyptian chariots.

And that’s when he came up with the idea for a tv show: Aztecs React To…. Every week the Aztecs face a new enemy. Every week its pretty much the same results, Well not quite. The Aztecs really did kick ass, for armies in their area. Pound for pound they were certainly tough.

So we went from Aztecs React To Egyptian Chariots, to
Aztecs React To A Roman fighting square, to
Aztecs React To Napoleon’s Army, to
Aztecs React To modern day U.S. Marines, to
Aztecs React To the 50 cal machine gun, to
Aztecs React To the M1 Abrams tank, to
Aztecs React To Apache Helicopters, to

I think you can see where this was going. Soon it was time for bed.

2,700 words of progress

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Spent a long part of the day working out ice age water levels for San Francisco bay, where someone would put an elusive and somewhat troubling religious order of scientists in San Francisco, and how a Pope might sweet-talk a Dominican who takes his vow of poverty seriously, into wearing a rich and gaudy outfit.

And that was chapter 1.

Gotta jump down spin around…

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…pick a bale of cotton.

This last week has been a rather intense swirl for my writing. I moved my blog to here (erictolladay.com), found my stride with a middle school novel I’ve been working on, and–I’m very happy to say–started the sequel to The Peaches of Saint Ambrose. Those of you who are fans of Brother Barnabas, all I can say is he’s back, and better than before.

There is still a lot of maintenance and cleanup needed for the new site. I need to make an about page, a page specific to my fiction, and find a way to make it easier for you to read my stories on your e-reader, especially the kindle. All of which should be happening soon. So please excuse the mess while I organize.

About that middle school novel… I’ve been working on a novel called Order, The God of Small Things. Its a story about your typical middle school boy who accidentally creates a god, and then has to deal with the very adult consequences of his actions. It has very short (1200 word) chapters with lots of action, which is typical of the genre right now. My goal has been to write a chapter a day, which is a nice length for me. Enough to make it interesting, but not so much that I beat myself up at the end of the day if I didn’t write enough. Twice this week I’ve managed to finish two chapters in a day, which because I set a goal at a level I can manage, feels like icing on the cake.

I’m thinking of serializing the novel here, posting a chapter at a time, but to do this I need to set up the pages and the underlying webpage structure for it. That and write far enough ahead that I can manage it all the way to the end. Look for it in the future. You won’t want to miss this. The story is fast paced and features a lot of smart-aleck humor. And, if all goes well, it will have 2 or maybe even 3 sequels. Yes its intended to be a series. I’ve joked often enough to friends and family about Freon being the goddess of air conditioning, that I think its time I brought her to life. That and the Parking goddess, which will no doubt make my buddy Clark smile from ear to ear.

Something else I’ve done different with Order, I have purposefully tried to not think about finding a market for it, or tried to work in any angles which will make it more sellable. My goal with this was just to have fun, and let ‘er rip. And to do so at a pace I can easily manage. So far I’ve been able to meet both goals.

Now, about the sequel to The Peaches of Saint Ambrose (PoSA) All I can say at the moment is it will feature murder, intrigue, and mystery in that future post-apocilyptic Catholic California. Oh, and a super-human, insane, blood-thirsty, avenging, angle of death, that just so happens to look an awful lot like a werewolf. “Werewolves?”you say. Oh yes. Some very ugly church officials are going to learn first hand why its not a good idea to fuck around with Santa Muerte. See, unlike her sister, Saint Mary, Saint Death doesn’t play nice. She plays fair.

I’m already rubbing my hands in anticipation of this one. I love the PoSA universe and have been looking forward to getting back into it, and I know I’m not the only one. PoSA seems to be the most liked story I have written, based upon the feedback I’ve received. It happens to be one of my favorites as well. In addition to writing this second story, I plan on making available a better version of PoSA. One with a cleaner intro (the language was too stilted, especially in that first sentence) a bit of actually editing if I can swing it (no more typos) and a version that is easy to place on your kindle of other e-reader. You can expect to see both (knock on wood) before the end of the year.

Those of you who are curious, the title is in reference to a song I first heard performed by Harry Belafonte. You can listen to the song here. Ignore the video, which appears to have been cut from a Bollywood movie. I’ll admit the juxtaposition of Bollywood dancing and plantation slave song is fascinating. Its just not exactly the point I was trying to make. But there is lots of spinning.

What Our Government Does Well

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We hear a lot these days about how inefficient our government is, how much it costs, and how wasteful it is with our money. I even hear on occasion how its going to ruin our whole country. Rather than counter these arguments directly as I usually do, that is to reply along the lines of, “yes, but…you see…” I’d like to try something different: I’d like to present the opposite point of view. That is, to talk about what our government does well.

To start with, I’d like to talk about libraries. Yes libraries.

There’s probably nothing better in our country than the local library. Well before the birth of the internet, well before our modern era, there were libraries. They first appeared way back in Roman times, albeit in a strictly limited capacity, and they limped along in little collections at large public monuments like this until the advent of two factors, the printing press, which made books both cheap and ubiquitous, and the middle class.

In America most of our public lending libraries are free to use, that is they are paid for by tax dollars and private donations. Many of them were initially set up as endowments, like the ones made famous by Andrew Carnegie, but even these were built only after local governments promised to pay for their maintenance. They are free to use, but they are not free, especially if you are middle class or higher. From what I can tell, our public libraries cost each citizen about $42 per year.

But what’s in that cost? To quote David Vinjamuri in his article at Forbes, libraries are,

Like the humble starfish that preserves entire marine ecosystems by eating mussels, the American public library is the keystone species in the ecosystem of reading.  Without public libraries to promote the culture of reading and build communities of interconnected readers, publishers would face a diminished market for their titles.  Indeed, the fact that reading remains a vibrant part of American cultural life is somewhat startling in the face of the competition for consumers’ attention: movies, video games, television, online shopping, browsing and social networking.

Indeed. Movies and video games clamor for our attention. There are more television networks putting out more shows than even before in history, especially when you consider what on-line viewing and DVD sales have done for that medium. And that’s not including youtube. And yet people still read. When I get on the subway most mornings I see about equal measure of books and e-readers, with many of the former sporting the distinctive stamp on their edges for the Los Angeles Public Library. I’d guess slightly over half of the riders use their time to read, the printed word still the preferred form of portable entertainment in a noisy and jostled world.

To my knowledge, reading is still maintains the highest entertainment/dollar value. Even the most expensive hard bound books offer hours and hours of entertainment. Compare that to the $14.00 you pay for a 2 hour movie.

Moreover, the ability to read–which is to say, the ability to teach oneself–is still the best, most tried and true, way to make it up the steep and often difficult ladder from poverty to middle-class. In a country that practically fetishizes the rags-to-riches story, books are the bootstraps by which one lifts themselves. Free public libraries are still the one place (besides public schools) where the proverbial poor youth can go to better themselves. Want to learn accounting? Want to fix your own plumbing? Want to know more about breast-feeding? What to surf the net but can’t afford a computer? The cheapest and often the best answer to your needs can be found at the local library. The only entry fee is the ability to read.

So what does it cost to keep a child’s mind open long enough to dream of making themselves better? What does it cost to help a working class man or woman teach themselves the rudiments of starting a business, or of surpassing the educational standards necessary to take college courses? All of these things cost much, or at least $42 a year, but each of them pay dividends well beyond their cost. Just one person transitioning from abject poverty to middle-class, goes from being a net cost to the system to a net benefit. For every year they stay out of poverty, they ad ten of thousands of dollars to our economy, not only paying back the cost for their library use, and public school use, but paying for another hundred or more poor people behind them.

And then there’s another thing often overlooked. Like almost everything else in America, libraries are both a public enterprise and a private one. A mixture of pure socialism (books and buildings being paid for mostly by the well-off, for the benefit of everyone), and yet strongly supporting capitalism. “Capitalism?” you say. “Libraries are at the center of a huge commercial endeavor?” you say.

Yes.

You see, the concept that books are media worthy of our consumption, like we are all crack-head book addicts waiting eagerly for our next paper-and-ink fix, is sold so effectively at our local libraries, and heavily reinforced by our public schools, that it has created a massive group of readers, otherwise known as book junkies. And these book junkies spend their money, let me tell you. Trade sales for last year were $15.05 Billion, according to Publishers Weekly, with an increase of 6.9% over the year before. And who do you think made this massive market? Why you did with your $42 per year investment. Not a bad return, eh?

And lastly, I’d like to point out what should be painfully obvious. A large and well educated populous is the first requirement for a successful democracy. In a political world where both sides seem to think slandering the intelligence of the other side is a requirement, its easy to assume only a few Americans, and only from one’s own political side, have actually taken their free education seriously. The truth is an educated public is a benefit to both sides of the political aisle. Say what you will, but an active and educated mind is still the most effective prophylactic against an over-bearing and over-reaching government.

In short, libraries make our country stronger.

 

If you liked this essay. If you feel, like I do, that in the (often genuine) rush to worry about the size of our government we’ve overlooked its value, I’d like to challenge you. Please do something similar. Think of something you like about our government. Think of some value it brings, something it does well, instead of something it does poorly. And when you’ve thought of your thing, then post it. Put up your words. Put them up here in the comments, on Facebook, tweet them, whatever. It matters not how long it is, it matters not what you say, only that you say it. So say it.

What you wake up to…

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We used to wake up each morning to NPR. Not by choice, more by default. But hearing people talk in the morning was never Teri’s idea of a good time so when the cats in their play one day switched the clock radio from FM to AM we didn’t mind much when the next morning we woke to classical music.

But classical music, at least here in America, is its own weird little animal. Its 300 year old pop music, completely stripped of all its one time more raucous meanings, condensed from a wider amalgam of styles over several centuries, and sweetened by nostalgia to the point of being almost ironically romantic. There is nothing new to classical music, the fences are very well maintained over there. Its the music equivalent of a once proud tiger with a deep voice and massive territory, reduced to a gaunt beast at the zoo who meeuwes pitifully like a kitten as he paces back and forth over the same strip of dirt waiting with a royal pique for the keepers to bring him his next meal.

And the accent they use when the DJs talk is hilarious. Its the closest one will hear to a posh accent in American English. To quote Fitzgerald, it is the “sound of money.”  Old money, at least, or perhaps the sound of new money attempting to usurp on the mantel of the old. And when they do a pledge drive, like KUSC is doing now, the accent gets even better. Imagine seeing the musical Oliver only hearing it done in a posh accent instead of cockney. One simply does not beg well with a posh accent. Its too ironic.

Occasionally, the station play some more modern classical pieces, especially on Friday. Modern in this case meaning music about 100 year old. These songs, which are far more fresh to the ear, and far more energetic, are the classical equivalent of punk. After listening to the dulcet tones of Beethoven and Mozart every morning at 6:15, Berlioz or Stravinsky comes across like Joey Ramone belting it out in his droning voice after just hearing the boy-band bubblegum pop of the early Beetles.

All of which makes me wonder, as I get older, why I appreciate punk rock like I never did before? Is this some form of maturity, and if so, wouldn’t that be ironic? Maturing enough to appreciate punk, now that is a funny thought.

So what it is that you wake up to in the morning?