Bridges Out of Poverty: Understanding, Acceptance, and Libraries

A version of this post first appeared on the website of the Penn Yan Public Library. Why not check out our Facebook page?

A colleague and I recently attended a seminar at the Pioneer Library System facilitated by the stupendous Prudence Pease, an aha! Process Bridges Out of Poverty educator and the self-proclaimed “most controversial judge in Vermont.”  Her topic?  Poverty—its causes, its costs, and the insidious way it can thread through a life, influencing everything from your decision-making to your storytelling.  And it’s a two-edged blade, because for all that poverty puts people at a disadvantage in so many ways, she says that it also prepares them to be more self-reliant, pragmatic, community-minded, and creative in their problem solving.

It was a fascinating take on the subject, and one that I never considered, looking at it from my privileged position.  People who have experienced poverty have a set of skills that I, with my middle-class background, will probably never be an expert at.

But we can’t underestimate the negative impact that poverty has on those who are living it, and even on those who lived it in the past and found their way out.  One of the most striking examples that Ms. Pease gave of the way life just doesn’t flow the same way for these folks is the simple chore of laundry.  For many of us, it’s as simple as throwing in a load and going about our day.

But imagine you’re a single parent of two kids, with no at-home washer-dryer, no car, and a Laundromat at least ten minutes away.  Now the process becomes a near-Herculean task—and you can’t just do the dishes, neaten the living room or (heaven forbid) relax with a book while you’re wrangling all those moving parts.

People in these circumstances experience the tasks that I take for granted in a very different way, and according to Ms. Pease, ordinary chores like this can take up to five times longer for people living in poverty.  Where is someone to find the time to attend classes, give their job search the attention it needs, or take a moment to read to their kids?

These luxuries are still possible—no one suggests otherwise—but they are undeniably more difficult to attain.

That’s why we should look on all our fellow community members not with tolerance—a well-meaning word that often disguises disdain or annoyance—but with acceptance.  Ms. Pease advised the librarians in attendance at her program that she doesn’t expect anyone to like every action someone takes, but we have to at least try to understand why they took that action.  That’s the doorway to acceptance, and through it, maybe some mutually beneficial dialogue.

What’s more, Ms. Pease spoke about the life of those in poverty as being like a fragile web--one that will fall to pieces if one thread gets tugged.  Transportation, employment, housing...any of these facets of life could bring the whole thing down.

Well, the library is another one of those threads.  We provide access to information for all, helping those in poverty apply for jobs, improve their skills, seek out services, and relax with a book, movie, or some music.  When library funding measures come up for a vote, it’s all too easy to dismiss it as a tax hike supporting a community luxury.  But we’re a very real, and very necessary thread in the lives of struggling community members.  And for pennies a year, we give every patron an excellent return on their investment.

Whether you think of us as a thread or a bridge, public libraries are helping people out of poverty every day, all around the country.

To learn more about aha! Process and Bridges out of Poverty, click here.

Connectivity for the Convalescent

Just a quick update/call to action today inspired by my mom’s recent health travails and, of course, Mother’s Day.

The Moms has recently gone through a lot of stuff, including a back surgery that necessitated a several-week stay at a rehab center.  She was roundly agog at the level of professionalism and care she found there, for which we are all grateful, but the place had a couple glaring cons.

Number one, it had a paltry “library” consisting of 50% awful romance novels and 50% weird melange of everything else, all out of order and without regard to, you know, real people’s reading interests.

Number two, the whole facility was wif-fi verboten.

Now, it is true that the majority of the facility’s patients are on the older end of the spectrum (my very “hip” and “with-it” mom was the youngest by a couple decades at least), but it’s kind of a stereotype that all old ladies only read Harlequin novels and fear the computers/rob’uts.  And even if the vast majority of patients ARE rob’ut-fearing, Fabio-loving seniors, my mom’s sojourn proves that the number does not reach 100%, and so those outliers ought to have their needs addressed as best as possible--to say nothing of the families who come to visit and who might want to page through a good book or pull out the laptop to search for Bahamas cruises for Grandma when she gets out of the joint.

And that’s never mind the fact that we should be encouraging our seniors to become more comfortable engaging in modern technology, as it improves their well-being and sense of connectedness, but I won’t get into that here.

No, instead I’ll just ask my librarian colleagues reading this to keep rehab facilities in mind when thinking about outreach and community engagement efforts in the future, and to point out that they seem to fall into an underserved grey area between straight-up senior living facilities, which tend to be on librarians’ radars for bookmobiles and other services, and hospitals, which tend to have greater built-in infrastructure to see to patients’ informational and entertainment needs.  (Emphasis on “tend,” of course.)

I know that it’s just what we need--yet another node of would-be patrons who, knowingly or not, deserve a slice of our fraying, shrinking temporal and monetary resources.  But we can’t ignore a need just because it’s hard. Some of these people are in real dire straits emotionally--there was a lot of difficult stuff to listen to in my mom’s center.  Something as simple as a well-curated shelf of relevant and interesting books, or a visiting librarian empowered to loan out books for special, longer periods between stops, or even some intensive reader’s advisory/bibliotherapy sessions, could go a long way to easing some pain.

Then there’s this, shifting to the thornier issue of connectivity:

http://blog.mobilebeacon.org/how-one-library-is-loaning-out-the-internet-using-mobile-technology/

That would be a library loaning out the Internet.  Cool, huh?  

Obviously not every library has the funds for such a program, but as responsible trustees of the public good, librarians must not underestimate the powerful intersection of personal giving, crowdsourcing, and social media. My family was very fortunate that a friend of my mom decided to start a crowdfunded campaign to get her a mobile hotspot, keeping her connected to all of us while she recovered away from home.  But such things are expensive and can come with strings attached, so they’re not an option for everyone.  Enter the model introduced by the library above.  Is it a perfect solution?  No, but it’s the kind of innovative step that can have a big impact on people in the short term.  Libraries with the will to do so should look into establishing such a program, and maybe adapt it to a bookmobile model--not necessarily to loan out a week at a time, but to make rounds to area dead zones and provide a few hours’ access throughout the week.  It would be a big boon to the homebound and inpatients at places like my mom’s facility.  And we’re the masters of social media, right?  My mom’s campaign raised over $700 in something like 36 hours through Facebook alone.  Imagine what we can do with our librarianly reach and savvy.

I’m not insensitive to the dictates of dwindling library resources, so I’d love some feedback from my readers about what they think is possible.  Is it feasible to deputize well-established volunteers to bring selections of books to these facilities and rotate read books back as they are finished and their dates come due (and avoid cutting into library employees’ time)?  Can we extend due dates beyond our current limitations for renewals to accommodate those whose circumstances cause them to take longer to finish a book?  Can we reach out to these information-needy people with a kind of needs assessment to determine how we can best serve them?  And what do you think about the mobile hotspot idea--any thoughts on how to improve the basic concept?

We’re so happy to have my mom home this Mother’s Day as we enjoy the sunny weather and make strawberry shortcake and look forward to her full recovery (and tonight’s Game of Thrones).  But so many other mothers and grandmothers (and fathers and grandfathers) are still in places far from their loved ones, without a way to connect with home, without a stimulating book to read, and with nurses and staff who try their best but can’t answer every need.  (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it, library friends?)  Our communal responsibility extends to these folks, and we should do our best to serve them.  If you are a librarian, check out what your institution is doing for these types of populations, and feel free to share them with me and each other.  If they’ve fallen off the radar until now, now’s always a good time to fix that.

Do it for your momma!

Spoiler Alert: You're a Jerk

Warning: This post contains spoilers for the first three seasons of Game of Thrones and some pre-2014 Marvel Cinematic Universe films.  It does NOT contain spoilers for GoT s4, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, or any future MCU films.

I’ve had a couple unfortunate incidents relating to spoilers in the past week, which is a big peeve of mine.  And, as it’s Game of Thrones season, as well as new Marvel movie season--basically the two things I care about most in TEH WORLD--it feels especially like I’m traipsing through a social media minefield.

But what bugged me this week weren’t the spoilers themselves--both were relatively mild--but the attitudes that seem to come with them.

The Shape of Things to Come

The first incident came about on my go-to source for Game of Thrones news, winteriscoming.net, which I’ve been casing all the more regularly as the fourth season has approached.  I know, I know: how can I complain about spoilers when I frequent fan news sites?  Well, I’ve gotten pretty good at reading the kinds of things that, as a previous fan of the books, I’m comfortable knowing about the show, and avoiding the posts that give away things I don’t want spoiled.  We all have to set up these buffer zones of desired ignorance these days.  For me, casting news and crew interviews and things like that are okay because they tend only to reveal, sometimes indirectly, the inclusion of elements of the story I knew had to show up on the show sooner or later.  The things that I avoid are those that threaten to reveal particulars of adaptation and the shape of the season as a whole--which I think makes sense; since I know the story from the books, one of the vestiges of viewerly surprise for me is in the pacing of the season, how the creators choose to dole out incidents, and what level of significance they assign them.

The major info to avoid in that regard, then, are the episode titles, which usually start trickling into the press a few weeks before a season premiers.

So, I go to read a post featuring an interview with a cast member, and what do I get in the very first sentence, before I have time to stop myself, but the title of a late-season episode? And it’s one that clearly betrays the episode’s focus on a particular character--and it’s not, like, “The Tyrion Episode” or something equally expected, but something a bit subtler.  Sad pandas for Alex!

So, annoyed, I post a little comment (prefaced with “Bah”--oh, the temerity!) suggesting that the site runners, who are, after all, not amateurs anymore, might consider being more considerate of those of us who consider episode titles to be overly spoilerly.

Cue the arrogantly snotty reply from the site’s resident unnecessarily aggressive mod (hi, OursIsTheFury!  You picked an apt handle), basically questioning my intelligence for reading pre-season news at all and my manhood (ha, I have to laugh) for being so sensitive.

I recognize the dilemma here.  I can’t expect my standard of appropriate spoiler policies to be in effect everywhere I browse; the onus is on me to be a careful reader.  But the outright dismissal of this as a category of sensitive material left me even angrier than before, implying that it won’t matter how careful I am--on this site, at least, episode titles will be fair game, no one cares about my objection, and I won’t have a way to avoid them unless I avoid the site altogether.  

That won’t do, so I’ll suck it up, and if I learn too much in advance, I’ll put on my big boy pants and try not to let it ruin my enjoyment of things.

But man, that guy’s attitude bothered me.  He didn’t come in contritely and patiently explain that their policy doesn’t cover my concern.  He didn’t express understanding of my feelings on the matter.  He went right for the diminishment and the dismissal.

Are we not your customers, sir?  Do we not click your links and share your posts and provide you with the status you now enjoy?  Can you not, then, treat my concern with appropriate tact, with an understanding that spoiler frontiers are not fixed, and that you should at least be nice to people who feel like you’ve messed something up for them?  

I can understand, definitely, how people might see my personal spoiler comfort zone as really restrictive, but it is my right to define my limits as I see fit and to at least ask you to respect them.  

But even if you’re scoffing at my personal spoiler limit, I ask you to consider this:  It’s one thing for book readers to expect the Red Wedding as it approaches on the show.  We knew it was coming and expected where to find it regardless of whether we knew episode titles.  The show had established a pattern it was not likely to break in this instance.  A momentous event like that one takes on Shakespearean qualities--it doesn’t matter that you know the end.  The impact will be the same--heightened, even, by the sense of expectation.

The same can’t be said of the numerous details, less-epochal shocking events, and hints of character arcs whose coordinates can be revealed by seeing the episode titles early.  Thus, I don’t think it’s unreasonable for some fans to consider titles to be spoiler territory, and to ask that that info be guarded behind spoiler warnings.

It’s especially important for readers of the series like me to conserve what surprises we may, since many of the broad strokes of a given season are known to us.  Yes, a large measure of what remains to thrill us is how those events are adapted--the visual elements, the pacing, the dialogue, and so much more.  But a part of it is also the order that the adapters place them in, and the importance they ascribe to events, both of which can be revealed through episode titles.

Texture and Grace Notes

I avoid casting news on minor characters in Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (read: one-off ‘events’ farther from the adapted source material than Game of Thrones is) for the same reason I tend to avoid episode titles before any show’s release: these characters are small details that inform the texture of a work in the motion picture entertainment medium.  Additionally, in the MCU in particular, they provide a great amount of fun as the studio mines forty-plus years’ worth of bit villains and supporting cast members to round out their world-building.

So I was both heartened (initially) and annoyed (just after) when a “spoiler-free” review of Captain America: The Winter Soldier offhandedly mentioned the appearance of a small, silly classic foe whom I am inordinately fond of.

Look, of course it’s no surprise that TWS would be the Cap, Black Widow and Falcon show--that’s fine, there are your marquis characters right there.  But the surprise of that little “boss level” villain would have given me more of a thrill if I had discovered it on viewing the movie, not in an article beforehand.  I know because I have been pleasantly surprised by previous MCU movies (Kurse!), and even by a better-kept-secret about the current film, which I certainly won’t spoil here.  (I might consider even this hint too spoilery in some cases, but I have to draw the line at some level of insanity.)

These movies also contain what I think of as “grace notes”--entirely unnecessary elements that nonetheless contribute to fans’ overall enjoyment, and often set up future movies--reminding us that we are in the midst of the biggest ongoing film story ever attempted.  Nothing epitomizes that wondrous quality of every Marvel movie better than their now-famous “post-credits” scenes.  Here’s a hint about those in relation to your social media etiquette, folks:

DON’T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT THEM.  Don’t even HINT.  Don’t say one word about the substance of these scenes.  That’s doubly true for those of you who don’t know the source material and don’t know, then, what single word might be a giveaway to a friend who has to wait til the end of the week to hit the theatre.  If you thought it was cool, you can say so; confusing, sure; funny, annoying, bad--any of those basic descriptors, have at them.  But avoid specifics, at the very least until after the opening weekend, and regardless, MARK SPOILERS.  And even saying “Oh, that wasn’t really a setup for any future movie,” as has sometimes been the case, is too much--because that deflates our anticipation for what may be coming in these scenes, and tempers our enjoyment of what may be meant to be humorous or cathartic.  BE SMART.

That’s just some friendly advice.  People will like you better.  Ruining stuff like this is like making a fart noise during a Chopin etude.  Just don’t do it.  Think about whether what you’re planning to say would have ruined things for you, and plan your divulgence appropriately.  (For that matter, all those smug jerks who were talking about “something called the Red Wedding, wink-wink,” you’re guilty of the same kind of thing.  “Gee,” thought no show-viewer ever, “I have no idea what that might refer to and will thus not ascribe any special importance to the much-mentioned wedding coming up in the traditionally-climactic ninth episode.” HINTS AND ELBOW-RIBBING AND COY REMARKS ARE SPOILERS.)

A Few More Kids I Have to Get Off My Lawn

And what’s with saying “spoiler alert” as a mid-sentence parenthetical and then continuing to the spoiler with absolutely no space in between?  My brain doesn’t stop on a dime.  The momentum of reading has carried me forward into more than one patch of spoilage.  ALWAYS SPACE YOUR SPOILERS.

For that matter, what’s the statute of limitations on spoilers, anyway?  The Red Wedding is spoken about pretty openly these days, but I would contend that it’s too soon to dispense with warnings for the few people who have not seen it (remember, I gave an alert at the top of this post!).  Heck, if it were up to me, we’d still be tiptoeing around the first season’s big shockers--you know who you are.

Most of the universe seems to disagree.

I also got into an argument with a friend about a comic book event from decades past that may or may not be due to make a film appearance in the next year or so; I said that all discussion of such an event in relation to the film should be treated carefully, while he maintained that it happened so long ago it is pretty much common knowledge.  But at least 50% of the point of all these film adaptations is to reach audiences unfamiliar with the brilliant source material, who wouldn’t know Hank Pym from Scott Lang, the Nova Corps from the Green Lantern Corps, or a Hobgoblin from a Green Goblin.  They should have no idea of what’s to come--not a hint--and they should be shielded from foreknowledge in the interest of their maximum enjoyment.  Just like we all got to enjoy stuff for the first time, hopefully.

For the record, I’m not saying that discussion of these kinds of plot points should be shut down entirely--I merely contend that we should remain liberal with our use of spoiler warnings when getting into sensitive material.

I feel like this is all an important series of considerations in the modern media consuming era (a topic I also talk about here, from a different angle)--a matter of artistic justice, as it were.  The speed at which we consume, the eagerness with which we approach our material, and the nature of communication in the social media world mean we have to develop a new sensibility when it comes to safeguarding our enjoyment of our favorite media--as well as the enjoyment that our friends seek.  No longer is the water cooler the only front in spoiler wars, and the stories on offer tend to have higher stakes, and thus more emotional resonance, than when America’s main concern was whatever Ross and Rachel were up to the night before.  We all cared so much about that--just a couple of doofy New Yorkers’ romantic life--how much worse is it to ruin the latest life-and-death, bated-breath developments with Tyrion, Dany, Cap and Tony?

Consider yourself warned.

A Policy of Kindness

I have a simple message for my readers in this holiday week of sharing and warmth and compassion.  

Don’t just be kind.  Institutionalize kindness.  And, just as important, root out institutionalized unkindness.

This article brought to my attention that some libraries actually have ‘personal hygiene’ policies in place that allow them to eject patrons based on offensive odors and other considerations.  One patron is suing a Utah library for the humiliation brought on by the exercise of such a policy, which states that “[p]rohibited conduct includes any illegal activity and includes, but is not limited to, the following… Having offensive hygiene, odor or scent that constitutes a nuisance to other persons.”

Stories like this always make my heart hurt.  It’s so tough to walk the edge between (a) providing a comfortable space for all patrons and (b) providing access for the most information-needy among us.

The plaintiff’s claims are questionable, of course--I should hope that library staff didn’t go out of their way to loudly humiliate him beyond asking him to leave.  It also seems unreasonable for the library to have banned him, rather than making clear that he was welcome to return after resolving his hygiene issue.  The article makes no comment on the veracity of that part of the story.

Just in case that’s all true, though, it seems to me that library policy ought to enshrine accountability for staff along with expected patron conduct to prevent unnecessary hardship for our guests.  If we must have hygiene policies, we ought also to insist that they be carried out in a respectful and private manner, and that patrons not be banned outright on the basis of hygiene.

What’s more, hygiene policies should carry exceptions for patrons who, to the best of staff’s ability to discern, are experiencing homelessness.  (If that means that some patrons who are not homeless get caught up in this exception, then so be it.)

But I’m of the opinion that hygiene policies in general are cruel and serve no purpose but to institutionalize biases against the homeless, the indigent, the impoverished and the mentally ill.  These are biases that librarians and staff have no business indulging in.

I want more people IN, not OUT.  Sometimes I look out the window of the library to the people trudging through the snow and cold and think, “Wherever you’re going, don’t you know you can come in here, even just to warm up for a few minutes?”

You won’t scoff, I hope, at the supposed naivete of my hope to see all people make use of the building, based on physical need as much as intellectual.  I hope you won’t reply, “That’s all well and good, but we’re neither flop-house nor warming shed nor utility for the physical convenience of anyone and everyone.  We work in LIBRARIES, for God’s sake!”

Because if you did, I’d point you to this Public Libraries article about the libraries across the nation who opened their doors to bicycle riders, acknowledging that they stopped just to rest, to get out of the elements, to refresh themselves and recharge their devices, and, as a secondary concern, to avail themselves of ‘traditional’ library services.

Smelly, sweaty, noisy...bike riders.

If we can serve this undoubtedly affluent and privileged subclass of itinerant bicycle daytrippers, then we can surely serve in similar fashion the overworked, unemployed, underprivileged, overburdened and transportation-poor members of our everyday communities.

Surely we’re not too elite for that; surely we don’t value squeaky-clean over human life.

And it is a matter of life or death.  Homeless people are dying across the country as climate change alters our expectations for winter cold and regional norms.  

Dunkirk, where I live and work, doesn’t have many homeless people.  But it also doesn’t have much free shelter.  The former is much more likely to suddenly change for the worse than the latter is to change for the better--the Great Recession reminds us of that every day.

If people need to get warm in my community, I’d like them to know that they can come to the library, if only for a couple hours.

Sadly, it seems as if the rest of society is turning its back on the neediest of people, or actively turning against them.  Take a look at this roll call of public shame:

• South Carolina City Approves Plan To Exile Its Homeless
• Los Angeles Considering Proposal To Ban Feeding Homeless People In Public
• Pennsylvania Church Volunteers Barred From Feeding Homeless In Public Parking Lot
• North Carolina Charity Threatened With Arrest For Feeding Homeless People
• Homeless Man Learning Computer Programming Arrested For Sleeping In Public
• Palo Alto Passes New Ordinance To Criminalize Homelessness
• Tampa Passes New Law To Toss Homeless People In Jail For Sleeping In Public
• Miami Considers Jailing Homeless People For Eating, Sleeping In Public
• Since 1999, More Than A Thousand Homeless People Have Been Victims Of Violent Hate Crimes

And so on and on and on.

We, as librarians, need not join that dark chorus.  

Let’s respect all of our patrons’ dignity, and have some compassion for their suffering in circumstances beyond their control.

Our doors are open.  Let’s keep them open, and push them wider where we can--in this season and in all the seasons to come.