Sunday, October 24, 2004

Incredible, isn't it,

That we live in a country where we pay farmers not to produce and where libraries throw books away?

Somerville library had their annual book fair, so of course, we visited. Got a lot of nice stuff, but ultimately I was disappointed with the sale in general.
Not very well set up, sort of weird hours, rather unhelpful and not nice help.

I think that the thing that stuck out in my mind the most was the contrast between one book sale volunteer's call to us to vote for Kerry because 'the current president probably want to burn these books anyway' and a staff member's statement later on that the books at the sale that weren't sold would be dumpstered later on.

Go figure.

3 comments:

Be said...

Hal told me about a scandal from when he was living in SF where the public library, to make room for a new media center, got rid of a lot of stacks by throwing the books out.

Anonymous said...

Is it better to pay farmers not to produce or to pay them to produce food that isn't consumed?

Be said...

I don't know, perhaps give them grants to either produce something that isn't sold here for cheaper, or help them get training in another realm?
Paying people to not produce seems pretty counterproductive to me.