Way back in January of 2018, I wrote about one of the odd characters who regularly visited the library, who I dubbed "The Girl Who Knocks." At some point, she disappeared. Families move. Kids from divorced families switch which parent they live with. I don't know what happened, but she just stopped showing up after school.
Today, she returned. She looked a bit bewildered, because in 2019 we remodeled and extensively rearranged the building. Her card was also long expired and her account had been deleted from the system. Good news: no looming fines or lost item charges. Bad news: she needs a parent or guardian to sign off on a new application, because she still isn't an adult herself yet.
After nearly a decade of being a librarian, it's been strange to see people come and go over the years. Kids grew up, old patrons passed away, teens eventually married and brought their own kids to storytime, and I somehow became pillar of the community or something.
And then, I see people claiming libraries are out to corrupt the youth with pornography, grooming kids for pedophiles, and other heinous accusations without any evidence. It's disgusting to see such ignorant bile on display from people who could so easily learn the truth if they wanted, and so many people eager to believe the worst about their neighbors.
It's not just the Community Library Network in the Idaho Panhandle under attack as I previously reported. It appears the challenger for the East Bonner district in Sandpoint, Idaho has similarly accused the incumbent trustee of promoting smut. I don't live there, but I once did, and I still know people who do. I guarantee no one is advocating stripper poles in the library, even with the whackadoodle loonies who run Sandpoint.
This looks like another mess where Californian neo-Puritans are demanding power to save the locals from themselves. The arrogance of such self-righteous authoritarianism should be a warning to anyone who wants to seriously weigh the issues at hand. It's just as unbearable as seeing politicians obviously painfully ignorant of guns demanding power to regulate guns. If only ignorance was as painful to the ignorant as it is to those who know something of the topic at hand.
