Organization and Storage

Well, if I got the bookcases away from the walls, then I could fit a scooter or a wheelchair down the hallway. But what they aren't addressing with their logic of making room for a wheelchair is that the doors aren't wide enough, so I could scoot up and down the main hallway, but would then have to get up and walk into the actual rooms.

No, I can't widen the doors; these rooms are small and everything fits just so. The bathroom door is tightly wedged between the toilet and the tub; I can't move anything even one inch, much less 8-10" to accommodate a wheelchair. And the only way to get a wheelchair through the bedroom would be to take out everything except the bed. Not even a small table could be left next to the bed.

Anyway, the issue is not that I'm horizontal because my legs won't support me; it's because when I stand OR sit for long, I pass out. A wheelchair or scooter wouldn't solve that problem, because I'd have to sit up to use it. But people leap to their own conclusions about why you're lying on the couch; 99% of people who don't walk much, it's because they need a wheelchair, therefore, they assume that must be my problem, too, and offer suggestions that have nothing to do with my needs.

LizardGumbo wrote: snip I

Not in Jackson County, Oregon, you can't! Well, you can now, but our entire county library system is closing indefinitely in April :- ((((((( It's really sad and we're hoping that the communities and local/federal governments will be able to figure out some kind of dependable financing for the future but it sure looks pretty dim now. On the other hand, I'll finally have my Saturdays off again and maybe the people on the fence about the issue will appreciate us more once they've gone without the library system for a while. Our local senator (Gordon Smith) is going to try a fillibuster for the budget bill to see if 8 million (or so) can be squeezed out of a multi trillion dollar budget, but we're not expecting a "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" type of happy ending. The County Commissioners want a long term committment before they re-open the libraries, so even a one year extension of the Rural Schools legislation won't help us. The county will take it and put it in the general fund, but it won't be enough to keep the libraries open. It will help the law enforcement and roads, but not the libraries. :-((( Enough whining for now. I'm trying to stay focused on the Saturdays (and other days) off, and not on the young, old and middle aged kids who will have to deal with locked library doors.

I do too, but I would LOVE to have enough extra rooms to have a LIBRARY and a YARN/NEEDLEWORK rooms. I like to do the actual stitching and reading in the living room with DH, the TV and the wood stove, but it sure would be nice to have separate rooms for the books/ videos, another for yarn & needlework items and yet another for when company comes for the night. :-)

Liz from Humbug

Oh, man, I'm really sorry for you all. I am ashamed to admit that I haven't a clue how our library system is funded, but it's been growing by leaps and bounds since I was a child. And further, I'm ashamed to admit that I do take it for granted.

In fact, when I was a child I knew of 2 branches. Now they're all over the metro plus some of the surrounding rural areas, with 30 total branches. We do have a couple of branches closing for renovations, though.

Go here:

Oh Liz--It's so hard to believe that in this supposedly enlightened country they have the nerve to close your libraries. It's positively obscene.

Lucille

That is truly dreadful! People take public libraries for granted and will only miss them when they have gone. We are fortunate in that the mobile library comes over once a month and we can take as many books out as we like; and if we want a particular book all it takes is a quick email to the main library in Kirkwall. I do hope that there is large, public outcry once folk find out that their library is no longer available.

"Lucille" ,in rec.crafts.textiles.needleworkwrote: and entertained us with

It's frustrating, reading is the key to everything and it will be far harder to try to put it all back together again when they realise that!

They do.

When we moved to Redding, the downtown library had just come off being closed for months. The neighborhood library was permanently closed.

Even though the doors were open a few hours a week, they had NO magazine subscriptions, hadn't bought a new book in years... The city had managed to scrape up a few dollars for lights and salaries, with the proviso that when the money ran out, the library would again be closed till the beginning of the next fiscal year.

It just wasn't as high a priority as police and fire.

Then moved here, and in a debate on funding, the police chief actually said that the crime rate goes up when libraries are closed, they could fund more hours for the library so the kids had a place to go after school, or he'd be back asking for emergency funds for more officers. But even here, we went through a phase where the library system had no money for books other than what the volunteers could raise.

So far our library should be fine, the Friends group does a great job fund raising and the school board has made it clear that it needs to exist.

I have 3-4 bags of books and such that will head there on Tuesday...

Cheryl Isaak wrote:

Our Friends Groups did a great job several years ago when the county voters passed a bond measure to build or re-build new libraries. As much as we'd like to be able to point a finger at someone, it really isn't any one person or group's fault. Much of the land in the area is owned by the Federal government, which means that property taxes cannot be collected on it. Because of the logging debates, the timber revenue virtually disappeared so the government had been sending money to counties like ours (also in California, Utah, Idaho, Colorado and other states) to help make up the money lost by the lack of timber harvest. Well, this year, with Iraq, Katrina and who knows what, the money was not renewed, leaving most of the affected counties short of a great portion of their usual budget. One county will have a sherrif, but no patrols at all. Others will lose anything not federally mandated, with a skeleton crew to run things. Voters and propery owners can only pay for so much and, in our case, they said in November that enough was enough. That is a short synopsis of what is going on.

We know lots of people support the library, but many either can't or don't want to pay for it out of their own pockets. We're hoping to eventually have a library district, but that takes a while to set up and put into action. We know that some of the people who voted "no" in November, like the libraries but were mad at the county. We know we'll re-open one way or another, it just won't be in the same form that we have now. Right now, we're "mothballing" the buildings in preparation for re-opening at a future time. We're also preparing to ask the voters to vote on the same levy in May that they voted down in November. If that passes, great, if not, we will come up with something else. The library system itself, doesn't see selling off smaller branches as an option and cutting hours further (we cut them back in 2003, which is when I went back to working every Saturday) is not a popular option either. In some ways, we can't win. People want us open more hours, but they don't want to pay for it themselves. I actually hade a couple of people say "I'm not going to vote for the levy, the government should pay for things like libraries". I didn't ask the where they think "the government" gets the money to pay for "things like libraries". :-)) It's not like any of the congressmen are going to give up their salaries to keep the libraries open or the sherrif's patrols running. Oh well. Back to stitching. It helps keep me sane and I have to admit that I have a couple of week's work lined in the yard and house before my unemployment kicks in. :-) Watch, it will rain the whole time I'm off & then I'll find a 40 hour a week job to replace the 20 hours I work now & won't have any "extra" time for gardening or for stitching. Whine, whine, whine!!!! :-))))) If anyone is interested in reading about it, the website is: . The closure stuff is under the "more information" link. It was wonderful last Wednesday, the second grade class walked over (the K - 8 school is next door) to deliver valentines to my boss/ friend & I. I'm glad I didn't have to read them in front of the kids, some of them were so sweet they made us teary eyed. :-))))) Sorry about the loooooooong post. Liz from Humbug

Liz from Humbug wrote: People want

Our library thing-which-is-not-a-tax was sold to voters with "this is the price of you buying one hardback book a year". Since we had just been through a year of buying very few books, most library users had had to buy at least one book that the library either didn't have the funds for, or had only bought one or two copies, so the reserve list was 2 years long.

Didn't take much for people to extrapolate that we could each buy our own copy of Grisham's latest and have nothing to read the rest of the year, or we could pool our money and let the library buy the new Grisham and the new Steve Martini and the new James Michener, and have a new book every week for the price of one.