Library

A friend of mine lives near Oregon City, but is not thrilled with it because their library is very poor. She feels this reflects the town's overall character.

Beaverton's old library was converted from a supermarket. It was always busy. I used to stop in occasionally. A few years ago they got a brand new, fancy library with landscaping and fountains, fancy woodwork and computers. I stopped by there at lunch one day a couple of years ago and they were closed. Not only were they closed, they were almost never open. Their hours were something like 10am till 2pm Monday, Wednesday & Friday. I could not believe it. Budget cuts, I suspect. I think they may have longer hours now.

Hillsboro had a decent small library. I go there occasionally. Not as often as I used to. They were closed a couple of times when I went there when I thought they should have been open. A couple of trips like that and I just don't bother stopping by anymore. Their hours had likewise been restricted due to budget cuts.

Hillsboro just got a big, fancy new building for a library. I am not sure whether they bought it or they are leasing it. It is a two story office building in an industrial development park. It was finished and sat empty for at least a year before the library moved in. Like most modern stores, it is a commuter library, meaning you have to drive to get to it. I have been by there once or twice.

I get most of my books from bookstores like Barnes & Noble at Tanasbourne, Post Hip in Multnomah Village and occasionally from Powell's in downtown Portland.

I am not too pleased when a city uses tax money to pay for stadiums for professional sports teams, nor am I keen on city funded opera houses. I find the way the business of professional sports is conducted repellent. High brow culture like opera's and symphonies does not appeal to me in the least.

So I am not sure whether I should support public funding of libraries or not. Literacy seems to be on the wane. Should the proles be taxed to support the literate? Or do the literate have enough of an advantage that they should pay for their own habit?

From: Para Publishing

• 58% of the US adult population never reads another book after high school.
• 42% of college graduates never read another book.
• 80% of US families did not buy or read a book last year.
• 70% of US adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
• 57% of new books are not read to completion.

It could be that 57% of new books are not worth reading to completion, but the rest of these statistics are a little scary. 58% of the people never read another book after high school. Sounds like they are assuming they read books before they left. There have been periods in my life when I did not read books. I have always been reading something, sometimes it was just newspapers or technical manuals of one sort or another. I wonder how many people in the US cannot read. I also wonder how many don't read anything. Okay, everybody reads something, even if they don't know English they learn to recognize stop signs. So let's ask instead: how many people in the US read things that contain sentences?

Update December 2016 replaced missing pictures.