Regionalism and Libraries

Thanks to Clevelandada for tipping me off to the PD's new series about regionalism in Cleveland. Especially because I probably wouldn't have found it otherwise, what with being totally unable to stomach cleveland.com.

I'm divided (ha ha) on the issue. The division is between the urban enthusiast in me, and the librarian in me. On one hand, I see the benefits of shared services. On the other hand, there's the possible Barnes-and-Noble-ization of the region's libraries.

Out of the wide range of services that a municipality provides, I think that there are some that probably are more, I don't know, personal. Libraries are one of those services.

For the uninitiated, here is an ultra-brief description of how libraries get filled up with books.

Books just don't arrive on the shelf. Someone has to order them. If the library is a large one with many branches, it would be chaos for librarians in every branch to be ordering books. So there's usually a centralized collections department that orders for the whole system. Oftentimes, librarians in the branches get a say about what gets ordered, but often, the collections department, who may or may not have any experience with the communities served by the branches, (and who may or may not have any experience working with the public at all), is the ultimate decision-maker. The end result is that all the branches end up receiving varying quantities of more or less the same stuff.

In a smaller library, it's usually the librarians who have contact with the public who do the ordering of books. The collection gets specialized to the needs/desires/demands of the immediate community.

(There are exceptions to this, of course. Cleveland Public Library, for one. Cleveland Public Library has an hugely diverse collection.)

So if you take away local control and squish all the libraries under one bookish umbrella - say, the Cuyahoga County Library system - you could end up with a more homogenized collection: a lot of choices, perhaps, but not a lot of selection. I say could instead of will because it depends on what that new Pangaea-esque library system's collection policy would be. I won't lie -- the trend now in public libraries is to buy more of what's popular -- John Grisham, The Secret -- than what's useful, traditional, or a "staple of literature."

Why? Because libraries have limited budgets.

Funding for libraries is generally doing one of two things: shrinking or stagnating. In Ohio, libraries get more state funding based on how many items they circulate. Do you see where this is going? If the library buys more popular items, they get more circulation, and the library gets more money.

What's wrong with that? you might ask. Well, the trouble is - and this is where the Library Establishment and I seem to disagree - that while DVD-borrowing patrons might think of the library as a "free Blockbuster," book-borrowing patrons do NOT think of the library as a "free Barnes and Noble." They expect the library to be a repository, at least sort of a complete archive of the human record. They expect the library to have things that they can't find at Barnes and Noble (e.g., obscure plumbing manuals), or which they can't afford to buy tons of at Barnes and Noble (e.g., children's picture books).

A consolidated library system in Cuyahoga County would have to take that into consideration.

Cleveland+, Plus

And anyway, why did the Greater Cleveland Marketing Alliance hire a Detroit-based advertising agency to handle the campaign?

Because there are no creative people in Cleveland?

Because of that old lame-ass excuse that Clevelanders can't be trusted to talk up their own city?

Because it thought an out-of-town company would be better suited to market Cleveland to outsiders?

Maybe that last one has an element of truth in it, but I still think it's based on a misconception. I think your average Joe Blow in Cleveland probably doesn't have much perspective on how things are elsewhere, but you know what? Your average Joe Blow in New York doesn't either, or on the Jersey Shore, or probably anywhere else. I mean, it's not like handing your marketing campaign to your 80-year old neighbor Mr. Brezinski, who's got an IQ of 2 and doesn't have anything good to say about the place. But surely, the smart, snappy, creative types who choose to base their efforts here instead of leave could be trusted, right?

Eh. Maybe I'm getting too paranoid. Detroit's in the Great Lakes, at least.

About Cleveland+

So I couldn't help but be curious about this mysterious Cleveland+ thing....

There's a tendency, I think, in this country, to assume that everyone who's not us is going to do their job badly. Like, a marketing agency charged with improving the region's image, for example. So, of course, I was suspicious about it, prepared not to like it, prepared to formulate a tirade about it.

[Full disclosure: I don't know anything about marketing, really, except what my lifelong friend who works in marketing tells me, and basing my opinion on that, all I can say is that marketing sounds vaguely scummy.]

Personally, I was put off by the whole brand thing. If I were casting around for a place to live, I would write off any that tried to "brand" themselves. The thing is, though, that I'm not exactly the target market for the Cleveland+ campaign. Thus, I really have no grounds on which to say yes, this will work, or no, this won't. So one could question whether or not my opinion really counts. I'll give it anyway, and let you be the judge.

The name
Although I support the regionalist tone therein, I think the actual name, Cleveland+, is vaguely insulting toward the "+." (I mean, it's one thing for some jerk in New York to go on about The Other Ohio, but to take the superior attitude in a marketing campaign....)

Why didn't they go with something incorporating the acronym NEO (NorthEast Ohio), which is widely used in the local technosphere? Wouldn't that theoretically make is sound sort of progressive? I mean, I like NEO and I don't like anything.

Could've been worse, anyway, I mean, how about the CVB's icky "Just Add You" slogan, or Seattle's just-plain-weird Metronatural? Or what about something like Cleveland: The Knuckles on the Fist. You know, like that open-hand, fingers-together, thumb-out thing Michiganders do to show you where they live (look here if you don't know what I'm talking about). Try it: make a fist with your right hand. It sort of looks like Ohio. (Now pretend you're hitting me for coming up with something so stupid.)

The video
Again, my lack of marketing knowledge - should the video have actually said something? Or was it all about the images? If so, I thought the video was all right. I mean, this is coming from someone who hasn't actually seen NEO for, God, what, almost a year? So, you know, I forget about things. I thought the video made the region look really good. Attractive. I would look at it and think, God, that place isn't such an ugly dump. That says a lot, really it does.

So, for the most part, I'm going to reserve judgement until I see the Cleveland+ logo on the billboard outside my office window.

More on the Other Ohio

I grew up pretty much in ignorance of the rest of Ohio, despite one pathetic 7th-grade unit on Ohio history during which I think I did a report on Gnadenhutten. I guess I just assumed that the rest of Ohio was also a decaying industrial urban center, where zoning laws disallowed you from having chickens and ponies (which was always my mom's response to our fruitless crusade to get them.)

In a way, I can't blame myself for thinking that my experience was the only experience – I think it's a natural human impulse. (In "The Indian Upon God," Yeats suggests that perhaps even the beasts of the sea and forest think that way.)

We never took vacations in Ohio, my parents preferring to expose us to exotic lands like Michigan and Ontario. Perhaps this is further evidence that we're Great Lakes people and not Ohioans, as our vacations almost always centered around a major waterway – just as New Yorkers are often afraid to venture into the Heartland, we were afraid to venture into The Heart of it All.

It wasn't until I went to college – one ill-fated year at Oberlin – that I began to realize the Other Ohio was even there. This was because all the children of the coastal elites had cashed in their trust funds (is that what you do with them? I'm not sure) and were coming in, looking around, and passing judgement. Like, "it's so flat. How can you stand to live here?" (Honestly, I'd never noticed that Ohio was flat because in My Ohio, there were a lot of buildings blocking the view.)

I suppose my Ohio dichotomy is essentially the same as the Red State/Blue State divide. From Wikipedia:

The county-by-county and district-by-district maps [of the 2004 presidential election results] reveal that the true nature of the divide is between urban areas/inner suburbs and outer suburbs/rural areas. In "solidly Blue" states, most of the counties outside the major urban areas voted for Bush. In "solidly Red" states, most of the urban areas voted for John Kerry….

But even casting it in terms of Red and Blue Ohio is still imprecise…what troubles me is the subset of Red Ohio voters that seems to be preoccupied with "moral values," the Red Ohio that banned gay marriage. I have real trouble imagining a place for that way of thinking in a civilized society. But does that just make me intolerant of the intolerant?

What a conundrum.

Five Ohios?

While searching for local news on the hopelessly convoluted cleveland.com, I came across this oldie-but-goodie on The Five Ohios, which includes this colorfully annotated map.

First, let me get this out of the way. I find the PD map's description of Southwest Ohio - what they call the Southland, which I always considered a pejorative term used by northerners, but maybe I'm wrong - to be particularly hilarious:

"Southern accents and attitudes flavor this conservative region...."

Simply because I've been saying this nearly verbatim to Jim (who hails from Miami County) for the last five years. Despite his protests, I can now prove that he has a Kentucky accent.

(To the PD's claim that NEO represents "Ohio's only liberal political tradition," Jim retorted, "is really liberal, though? Or do a lot of people just vote Democrat?" Touché.)

So how many Ohios are there?

On a recent trip to Chillicothe, we found ourselves on a long, hilly stretch of the National Road with cows to the left, cows to the right, and not a lot else except the occasional shabby-looking pizza shop. In other words, a totally alien landscape to the one I grew up in. But it occurred to me: this is what people imagine when I say I'm from Ohio.

That's fine because I actually never say I'm from Ohio anymore, having relegated anything outside of NEO to the category of The Other Ohio -- the Ohio that approved the Defense of Marriage Act, the Ohio that kept Bob Taft in office, the Ohio that wanted to withhold precious LLGSF funding from public libraries that refused to install Internet filters.

What do I say instead? I say I'm from Cleveland, of course, but more and more I'm saying that I'm from the Great Lakes.

Although I would hazard a guess that the lakefront communities of Northwest Ohio are more appreciative of and connected to the lake, I've wondered if Cleveland doesn't have more in common with other Great Lakes cities than with the rest of Ohio. In Facing the Ocean, archaeologist Barry Cunliffe examines evidence from the prehistoric coastal cultures of Britain, Ireland, France, and Spain, and determines that they had more in common with each other than with their respective inland compatriots.

It's an interesting thought that I don't have too much to say about right now, but stay tuned.

(ps- I didn't actually find the local news. Can someone tell me where it is?)

This Just In: Monday Moaning Getting Lamer

I've long been a fan of Monday Moaning - seriously, I've been reading it regularly for years - but lately, I'd noticed that the moans were getting pettier, less fun to make fun of. What a bunch of uncreative jerks, I started to think, who couldn't come up with anything more interesting to whine about than snow in Cleveland in January. I figured it was just me, though.

But apparently, it wasn't. Every week, Audient does his Tuesday Talkback, which has been just as entertaining to read as the moans themselves (if not more). This week, however, in response to an especially uninspiring batch of moans, Audient considers throwing in the towel. He says:

Once upon a time, I believed in the power of a well written letter to the editor. I've written a couple in my day. But since then, I look at most letters to the editor with the same sort of disdain that I tend to look at Monday Moaning....Monday Moaning shares the worst attributes of the letters to the editor page with none of the virtues.

Well said. My feeling is that if you want to complain about something, you should first ask yourself what that complaint might accomplish. Theoretically, some of these moans might accomplish something, however trivial: the mailman might be a little politer (or he might not), the snow might get plowed a little earlier (or, again, it might not).

The straw that broke the camel's back, for me, however, was last week's "lost cat" moan:

"To the woman that's been running the lost-cat ad since Thanksgiving: Maybe you haven't noticed, but a gray-striped cat looks like every other gray-striped cat on the planet." - Streetsboro

Now, I consider myself a pretty imaginative person, and I can usually drum up a possible rationale for every irrational behavior. But this one...you know, nobody benefits from this. I can't conceive of why this lost cat ad could possibly be affecting the Streetsboro moaner so negatively that he/she felt compelled to phone this in.

But the most important part of Audient's post today is this:

One of the worst feelings one can have is powerlessness....This is what is wrong about Monday Moaning. It isn't about making a difference. It is about being powerless, complaining in a meaningless way, and then nothing changing. How many of these moaners would be better served if, instead of phoning in, they went to a city council meeting and addressed their elected officials in open forum? But do they do that? There is no evidence of that here.

Now, I guess it depends on what you think the role of a big regional newspaper like the Plain Dealer should be. But. Isn't it maybe a bit irresponsible to foster hopelessness in a down-on-its-luck place like Cleveland? Isn't that like, oh, opening casinos in a state where everybody's poor?

Columbine + 8

You know, what if instead of banning children's books that include the word scrotum, gay marriage, and strip clubs in Ohio, we banned if-it-bleeds-it-leads? And forced the Ol' News Media to scrap the coed-slashings and puppy-bashings, and instead report on nothing but the more pervasive, less romantical stuff like the sorry-ass state of public education, poverty, and health care?

Yeah, yeah, I realize it's pretty much a lot to ask, but the other night while I was lying on the couch, sick, watching Nightline, I recalled that eight years ago this week, I was also lying on the couch, sick, watching Nightline. Since there was already enough deja vu involved, of course, between Columbine and Virginia Tech, this Kleenex-riddled, value-added bonus sent me into a sort of tailspin. Besides the retiring of Ted Koppel and the 30-some pounds I've gained in the meantime, has nothing changed?

I don' t mean about how we're all going to hell in a cultural handbasket. (Hate to burst the bubble of all who think otherwise, but I can point to the enduring popularity of Joni Mitchell, Kurt Vonnegut, and - god help me - maybe even Christo as proof that we're not.) I mean, back in 1999, there was a lot of squawking about NPR having so insensitively played those 911 calls with screaming and gunshots in the background. So why was anyone surprised when NBC aired the images from Seung Cho's "multimedia manifesto"? [author's note: I'm a little bit surprised there's not a Wikipedia entry on this bit of alliterative genius. Yet. To quote the lush-lashed girl reindeer paramour of Rudolph, "There's always tomorrow."]

That being said.

Probably as a reaction to reading too many blog comments, I've lately been asking myself "do I really feel qualified to have an opinion on this issue?" before I open my yap. So when I read this Columbus Dispatch article:

Why is April a month of tragedies?

In April 1995, two men executed what was then the worst terrorist act in American history by bombing a federal building in Oklahoma City.

On an April day four years later, Columbine High School became the site of the nation's deadliest school shooting.

Now, almost exactly eight years later, the mass murder at Virginia Tech has set a new, horrible standard: A single gunman killed 32 victims.

Is there's something about the month of April? [etc.]

I felt qualified to have an opinion on because, as someone whose life philosophy could be paraphrased as "I love mankind; it's people I can't stand" at best and "leeeeeeeeave me aloooooone" at worst, I think I actually have an answer to this.

People act really annoying in the spring.

Seriously -- remember in high school, the first day in April that it cracked 40 degrees, all the jocks showed up in t-shirts and shorts, and, depending on when you went to high school, possibly socks-and-sandals? Just to prove how tough they were? Ever notice how utterly crappily people start driving once the snow's gone? How about all the hordes of teenage girls in tight, rhinestone-bedecked jeans chasing the aforementioned underdressed teen studmuffins like a pack of rabid, randy squirrels? And oh God, that horrible Mister Softee song?

Is it any wonder why a sudden onslaught of this would push unstable people over the edge?

Bad Wolf and Folk Alley

A long time ago, someone asked me what I'd buy myself as a luxury purchase. Since I can't seem to be bothered with buying new pants, even when I need them, I had no earthly idea.

NOW I DO.

No kidding, when I get that big book advance, it's going toward this extremely important and vital thing.

Speaking of purchasing things, Folk Alley is having its spring pledge drive. If you don't feel like donating, at least be aware that songs purchased on iTunes through the Folk Alley site benefit Folk Alley.

You can start with this one.

About Time

I guess what else but the death of Kurt Vonnegut could prompt me to write my first angry letter in, oh, I don't know how long?

I wrote it to the Jim Lehrer NewsHour, in response to this.

Here it is:

I'd like to comment on two points made in the discussion of Kurt Vonnegut's death, aired Thursday, April 12.

The first, by Alan Cheuse:

"Born in the middle of the country, and I guess they [Vonnegut and Mark Twain] looked at life a little bit more sharply than we did, because perhaps there was less immediately to see, and so they looked a little more deeply at life." (emphasis mine)

I realize that Alan Cheuse, who is from the New York metro area, did spend some time teaching in "the middle of the country." But every time I hear so-called "Middle America" characterized this way, i.e., as a less interesting place with nothing to see, I feel a bit like the cavemen in those GEICO commercials. (We're watching, you know!) In addition, even by Cheuse's own implied standards, I beg him to consider this: the population of Indianapolis, where Vonnegut was born, was over 300,000 people in 1920. Hardly a corn-shuckin', moonshine-drinkin', culturally void podunk waterin' hole.

The second point I would like to make relates to the discussion about whether Vonnegut should be considered "juvenile literature," in the words of Christopher Buckley. [who I think is a total pretentious prat, although I didn't say this in the letter I actually sent.]

Yes, I heard what Buckley said about Vonnegut joining the "good company" of Stevenson and Twain. But the unspoken subtext there was that juvenile literature -- which is less serious or important than "adult" literature, of course -- is somehow "uplifted" by the presence of classic authors. Forgive my candidness, but that's a really backwards attitude. The American Library Association has been awarding the Newbery medal to the best children's books since 1922. Additionally, the genre of young adult literature has taken a major upward turn since, perhaps, Buckley read his last Hardy Boys adventure. I think Vonnegut would have been proud to be shelved alongside Meg Rosoff's how i live now or M.T. Anderson's Feed.

Sincerely,
Christine Borne
Queens, NY