Gotta' book on aircon repair?
The air conditioning in my beloved Mustang conked out, meaning I have to drive with the windows open. For reasons known only to meteorologists, driving with my windows open causes big, hairy, gray cumulonimbus clouds to form directly overhead. My car is now a rolling cistern, having collected at least 90 percent of Saipan’s recorded rainfall over the past six weeks.
During the last cloudburst I said the heck with it, and sought refuge in nearby Joeten-Kiyu library. It took a rainstorm to drive me in there, but it took closing time to flush me out of there. What a great place.
I’ve seen my share of small town libraries, and, in contrast to ours, most are pretty grim propositions. I don’t know why, but a pall seems to hang over them. They even smell funny. They’re presided over by cranky old ladies. There’s always some homeless guy or some weirdo hanging around. They carry magazines that nobody ever reads (“Gingivitis Quarterly.”) The books are stale and ancient and have boogers on them. The chairs are uncomfortable and the interiors haven’t been renovated since 1951.
When I consider how grim such places are, it makes me appreciate our library even more. It is, notably, a comfortable place to park yourself. The staff is extremely helpful. They’ve even got a computer guru who tends the computer center, where you can access the Internet for free.
A lot of us depended on the computer center when we moved here from the states and were temporarily untethered from our ‘puters. Life without e-mail? Perish the thought.
Nobody can stock all the books that everyone in the community could possibly want, but our library, to my eye, is very well stocked for its size.
The magazine rack is pretty well stocked, too, and you can take home old issues (not, of course, the current issue of any given mag).
Keeping any public place clean and tidy and quiet and presentable has got to be a major chore, but they manage to do it, somehow.
Meanwhile, down in Guam, they’ve closed library branches because they’re out of money. I suppose a library is always a ripe candidate for budget cuts, since it’s not exactly the kind of high-powered political department that carries clout and distributes largesse.
And, face it, handouts will always be more popular than literacy is…although from the looks of things, plenty of people can write in Guam–but they insist on using spray paint instead of pens.
But that’s Guam’s problem, not ours.
As for the CNMI, I hope the powers that be will continue to keep our library running no matter what the fiscal situation is. Give credit where credit is due, that’s what I say, and reward success with the continued opportunity to succeed. And, there’s no doubt about it, the library is one of the Commonwealth’s notable success stories.
Now if I can only succeed in finding a book on automotive air conditioning repair, I’ll be all set.
