An Open Letter to Councillor Doucette Regarding the Mandated Toronto Library Budget Cut

January 10, 2012

Dear Ms. Sarah Doucette,

I was alarmed to hear yesterday that Toronto's budget committee insists on a full 10% cut to the library budget, especially in light of recent news reports that the city has a $154 million surplus. I know that you were active in saving the Swansea library, and I hope that I can count on you to help fight the budget committee's decision, which I hear will force almost 20,000 hours to be cut at 59 branches, not to mention cutting literacy programs, or the collections budget. None of these options are acceptable.

I was astonished to hear the views of certain councillors that libraries are a redundancy because schools already promote literacy. Clearly, something is deeply wrong at council, and I count on your rational, intelligent voice to counter this tendency. As the library union head has mentioned, the city's budget woes (which look increasingly fictional) are not going to be fixed on the backs of the Toronto Public Library, the largest public library in Canada, and the world's busiest urban library system.

While the library has long been touted for promoting literacy, and providing programs to the disenfranchised (both of which are important), libraries should not just be viewed as glorified social programs. Libraries are community anchors that not only improve quality of life, but provide measurable benefit to surrounding businesses. A 1997 survey conducted by Fitch and Warner discovered that 75% of library patrons combined their trip to the library with purchases made at nearby retail stores and that, per year, this added up to $500-600 spent. This is in addition to the economic benefit that a library's presence provides in attracting home buyers, tourists, and businesses through perceived value, and any capital projects that the library might implement.

I am an avid library user and I am willing to help in any way possible to avoid further drastic cuts to Toronto's esteemed and essential library system. Please feel free to contact me. I sure that you are just as incensed by recent developments as I, and I am happy to lend support however I can.

All the very best,

Bronwyn Kienapple

War and Peace, and Other Jail-Like Things

I decided to read War and Peace** over the Christmas holidays because it's one of my bucket list items, and these days I'm in to just doing things. Not like, hm, let's think about this, let's minutely dissect it, let's tell 100 people, let's draw a Venn diagram about it, let's break up with it, cry about it in the shower, and then humour it with flattering insinuations...

No! Do all the things!

Also, ha ha, read War and Peace over Christmas? War and Peace laughs at your pompous pet idea that you can read all 1350+ pages of its glorious wealth in two weeks!! It spits in your pretty little moonbeam face! Idiot!

The impetus to read said wrist-breaking tome is about more than my to-do list, though. I recently came to the conclusion, while plotting out my race training schedule, and sweating over how I was going to fit in Spanish lessons, and also that fun thing called my full-time job, and other lesser things like my social life, and eating, and breathing in oxygen, and exhaling carbon dioxide, when I realized that, once again, I have put myself in jail. And that I like it.

Self-imposed jail is so nice. You lock yourself into this little tight space, and you rail your little fists at its punishingly close walls for a few weeks, and you're so busy railing, and swearing, and toiling, that you don't realize that filling 24 hours of a day is sometimes very boring. You're in jail and it's all jail, all the time, and soon you're singing a merry tune "Jail! Jail!" and nothing else matters.

Anyway, I didn't really think about how much war would be in War and Peace. The battlefield scenes are a bit annoying, but also, so many duels! And balls! And courting of underage virgins! I really like this book, and I'll write a real post about it when I'm done. It really doesn't deserve this sort of treatment.

** That fat hardcover edition you see above? I do not own it. It's on my bucket list for you to buy it for me. You know what to do. My birthday is in about eleven months.

Privatization of the Toronto Public Library isn't the real issue at stake

Recently, Torontonians have read and scoffed at Councillor Doug Ford's comment that Toronto has too many libraries and that Etobicoke has more library branches than Tim Horton's coffee shops (not true, by the way).

This comment comes at a time when an outside consultant has recommended to the City of Toronto that service levels should be reduced and branches closed in the Toronto Public Library (TPL).

While I can't find evidence that the city has directly recommended privatizing the TPL, Mayor Rob Ford's comment made in February 2011 that the city is going to be "outsourcing everything that is not nailed down" has caused considerable trepidation among library advocates.

Many Torontonians (perhaps prompted by Margaret Atwood's Twitter campaign) have also signed the Our Public Library petition to ask Rob Ford to keep Toronto's libraries public, and free from cuts. It should be noted that the Our Public Library website is run by the Library Workers Union Local 4948.

In a July 21 release, the union deplored the consultant's recommendation that cuts be made totaling approximately $35 million (20% of the TPL’s budget). The union says that this move would be devastating for our city as three-quarters of Torontonians are regular library patrons, that our library system ranks first in the world in terms of use (circulation), and yet has only one library for every 28,120 citizens, ranking behind such cities as Vancouver and Ottawa.

As a devoted user of the library system, my knee-jerk reaction is to support a public and well-funded library system.

I rely on the library to provide a significant portion of my daily entertainment and to provide materials for personal and professional growth. I've relied upon the library's computers when I had no personal computer of my own, I've spent afternoons at the library when I want to be social and can't afford other forms of entertainment, and I plan to use the library as a place to spend time with my Little Sister to improve her literacy and knowledge base.

It's hard to see how slashing the TPL's budget would improve anyone's experience of Toronto's libraries, especially those who depend on the library in much more essential ways (more on that later).

And yet a survey published recently in American Libraries magazine revealed that even librarians think that privatizing libraries would allow them to run more efficiently and cheaply.

Is it possible that, despite the Library Workers Union Local 4948's protestations, that, privatization aside, Toronto librarians feel that the fat could be trimmed? Perhaps we should be asking the question of whether efficiencies can be achieved, whether all existing programs are working or necessary?

As the Toronto Star reported, since LSSI, a U.S. company that specializes in private library management, has taken control of the Riverside, CA library system, “circulation, library visits, and library programs all continue to increase." And yet profit was only 1.02% and the system remains "poor."

The Riverside system functions better under LSSI, but the real issue isn't that privatization is actually helpful, or even just innocuous, it's that everything comes down to the level of (government) funding.

The key issue is the level of government support, not the possibility of private intervention.

I admit that I signed the Our Public Library petition before I had fully done my research and I feel now that my support of said petition is less in favour of keeping the library public, and more in favour of overall support of the value of a robust library system in the face of seeming distain from such politicians as Doug Ford. And I ask you, is the petition really a defense of libraries as a sacred institution or a defense of union jobs?**

Still, it's hard not to fear what might happen to less profitable, or visible, library services come privatization.

Libraries aren't just centres for literacy, they are community hubs that provide welcoming environments both for the privileged and the less privileged, the latter of whom rely on libraries for Internet access, and a warm and somewhat comfortable and safe place to hang out in.

It is doubtful that a for-profit company would be as interested in providing some of the less obvious services I just mentioned. These services are hardly lucrative, but essential none the less. Obviously, some of these services should be provided by other public institutions, though the fact that homeless shelter funding might also be on the chopping block, makes it hard to see who will be stepping up here.

Then again, the total proposed cuts could save the city $25 million, savings desperately needed in the face of the city's projected $774 million budget deficit. This is just the beginning of the austerity measures required, including raising property taxes (it doesn't look like the two are mutually exclusive, as Ford suggests).

Proposed privatization of the library system is part of a larger quagmire, one that involves juggling the massive city deficit and the issue of how to both support the disenfranchised (vital) and promote the arts (also vital for stimulating job growth and creating a strong local culture).

I'm interested to hear your impressions of this post, so please submit your comments below, and let's keep the conversation going.

**[from above] This is not to say that I don't support unions, their presence ensures an equitable, healthy society, as proved so brilliantly in The Spirit Level. But, let's be clear on what the petition really seeks to achieve.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand: In This Case, "Charming" Is a Compliment

Major Pettigrew is the quintessential Englishman, living in the quintessential small English village, Edgecombe St. Mary. Despite its occasional small-mindedness and incestuousness, Major Pettigrew takes pride in his home, and in living in the regimented way to which he is accustomed.

And yet, a sudden death in the family catapults the crusty Major Pettigrew out of his comfort zone, and into the world of Mrs. Ali, a recently widowed Pakistani shopkeeper, who shares his love of reading. The two lovebirds quickly encounter difficulty, however, when faced with the real world, one that would rather see them safely confined in their respective social boxes.

I was thoroughly charmed by this tale. It's romantic, but Pettigrew is delightfully sardonic and the characters are so finely drawn. Each scene in the book is similarly drawn with care, and resonates beautifully:

The town spread down the folded valley, opening out along the coastal plain....In the sky, a rent in the fog let down pale shaft of sunlight to gleam on the water. It was as beautiful and absurd as an illustrated Victorian hymnal...the Major felt that the afternoon was somehow already a success.

Simonson has writing in her bones; it's easy to see from page one. This is a love story for adults, one acutely aware that the warm front of passion inevitably must meet and mingle with the cold front of quotidian responsibility and expectation.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand/ Helen Simonson / Random House / Paperback, 2010

**This post is part of a TLC Book Tour. Thanks to Trish for setting this up!

Lonely: Learning to Live With Solitude

Toronto lawyer Emily White found herself experiencing years of intense loneliness following her graduation from law school. Desperate to claw her way out, she sought to analyze her condition, one that carried heavy stigma, and yet had barely been researched or written about.

Lonely is a well-written and well-researched book. Emily White advances the cause for loneliness being a bonafide condition, and not merely something a person should be able to "snap out of." She meticulously puts forth study after study that documents that loneliness causes ill health, can be genetic, is experienced by multitudes more than we suspect, and is not a self-indulgent state.

I'm glad that White wrote this book, as I suspect it will provide, if not relief, then a launching pad for anyone experiencing loneliness, whether long or short term. As she says, knowledge is key–knowing and accepting one is lonely is important in order to tackle it. Loneliness is not depression, is not anxiety (though those conditions can accompany it), and requires specific methods of treatment.

The book includes the words of other lonely people, but it doesn't really give the reader a sense of their experience. The book nicely incorporates both personal story and psychology, but I felt it needed other voices to be truly a definitive book on loneliness. Perhaps, selfishly, what I really wanted was to feel empowered by seeing the words of lonely people finally tacked to a page. This is more a comment, than a criticism.

Further information:

Emily White's website

**This post is part of TLC's Lonely blog tour. I received a review copy from TLC in exchange for an honest review.

The Imperfectionists: Occasionally Perfection Itself

Tom Rachman sure knows how to make a story turn on a dime.

The Imperfectionists is a collection of linked short stories about the employees (and one reader) of an international newspaper based in Rome. Interspersed between these stories are short hits of the paper's history, complete with the dramas of its founders.

The Imperfectionists isn't exactly full of literary flourishes. Plot appears to be of the essence; but the real meat is in the character studies. When Rachman really ties these two elements together, his stories approach perfection. I dare anyone to tell me that the Arthur Gopal story, the tale of a lackluster obituary writer's miraculous transformation after a tragic event, isn't perfection itself. Rachman's portrait of a our public vs. private personas, the sweetness of the mundane, and our natural tendency towards pettiness, as if death's eternal presence relieves us of some level of responsibility, is sharp and exquisite.

The collection is uneven, though. Rachman's dedication towards mundane details can irritate. Rudy, the soppy copyeditor, weaves in and out of spoken and internal monologue and given the tedious workings of her brain, this is no treat. Women also do not come off well here–Rudy is the typical 40-something small-minded harpy; Abbey, the CFO, is the typical overworked, lonely, emotionally stagnant divorcee. Not that the men come off that much better, but there are definitely caricatures at play here.

The Imperfectionists does nicely showcase print's decline in the face of free online content, though without suggesting any solutions. What the book does best is show the intersection of our working and personal lives, and the tiny sadnesses, and small joys that really do make up the average existence.

"[Kathleen] wipes her nose. 'When I'm old and bent and sitting in a chair, you come and hold my hand. All right? That's your job. Okay?'

He takes her hand and kisses it. 'No,' he says. 'When you're old and bent, I'll be gone. I'll hold it now. Later, you'll have to remember.'"

The Imperfectionists / Tom Rachman / The Dial Press / PB, 2011

Making Light of Tragedy: Jessica Grant Is The Real Deal

I did not hate this book.

Again: I DID NOT HATE THIS BOOK.

I know, I didn't hate The Hunger Games, but really reading that book was like being dropped into a vat of chocolate. You swim in that shit, and you enjoy it, because you are swimming in a delicious, irresistible world of chocolate.

Making Light of Tragedy is not just a testament to the capabilities of MS Paint (see: the cover), but a blinding portfolio of a young writer with considerable powers. To read this collection of short stories is to know that Jessica Grant has a natural talent for the written word, and a very distinctive voice (not to mention a biting sense of humour).

The collection is incredibly varied. You get a two page story about a second cousin lost and gained (Deep In My Heart), you get a ridiculous story about a batty woman filling out an application at Holt Renfrew (sample sentence: "The first time I heard my mother use the word 'fuck,' it was in the same sentence as the word 'Santa.'"/Della Renfrew), and a rather touching story about a literary prize juror who falls for the ugly but wonderful author whose book he lauded, but didn't actually read (Ugly And).

I read this for The Vicious Circle book club and most of us agreed that the book needed a good haircut–it read more as a retrospective of Grant's early work, and not a cohesive collection.

That aside, you must all read this book. Read it. It's occasionally twee, and insensitive, and ridiculous, but also very keen and it feels as original as a book can. I had huge, raging belly laughs while reading this, something I only experience rarely (see Corked, or Atmospheric Disturbances). Then you get stories like The Anxiety Exhibit that underscore Grant's acute understanding of the way lives collide and fall away from each other. This occasional gravity, balanced with her acerbic humour, produces a tone that veers away from being trite, or confessional, two things that young writers can fall into, and sounds like something very much her own.

Making Light of Tragedy/ Jessica Grant / Porcupine's Quill / PB, 2004.