Will Unwound

In her senior year at Loyola in Chicago, Sarah Simmons had been captured by the notion that the public library was the University of the People.  This vision came to her in her second semester history course, “The Utopian Tradition;” not from the readings or lectures in the class but from Jim Marsh, the graduate student who assisted the professor.  Ruggedly handsome with a full beard, big smile, a sardonic wit, and a refined social conscience, Jim had caught Sarah’s eye.

One day after class she worked up the nerve to ask him, “I suppose you’re going to go on teaching history after you get your doctorate?”

Jim, pleased and somewhat surprised by her approach, responded, “Actually, no.  There are no college teaching jobs available for white males.  I plan to go down to the University of Illinois and get a master’s degree in library science when I’m finished here.  That is if Reagan hasn’t completely gutted the Library Services and Construction Act.”

“Did you say library science?”

“Yes, I’ve researched it and it turns out that the sky’s the limit.  Once you get your masters, you can pretty much work anywhere in any kind of library.  It’s like a universal union card.  The pay is not great, but jobs are plentiful, and it satisfies my need to do something worthwhile.”

“Worthwhile?  With your talents?”

“Sarah, you’re the only one who does all the readings.  You know that the free library is a common feature of all utopian societies.  I like to think of it as the University of the People.”

The next day, Sarah went to the library on campus to verify this information.  It was true – library science was a feasible profession.  Once established, the concept of becoming a librarian began to coalesce in her mind.  This was a big relief because Sarah had no idea to what practical use she could put her undergraduate degree in history.  This was not a problem that bothered her particularly, but the constant questions from her parents were beginning to be a source of annoyance.

They were good people, and she didn’t want to disappoint them.  Her father was a mailman, and her mother was a crossing guard at the elementary school down the street from their modest three bedroom house in the Bridgeport section of Chicago.  She was an only child and her parents had made considerable sacrifices to send her to Loyola.  They anticipated that the result would be a good job or a good husband or possibly both.

Sarah was the pride of their lives.  Through grade school and high school, she was a model student.  School was her natural habitat.  She loved learning, and she loved the personal validation of getting straight A’s.  At Loyola, Sarah gravitated to history because its wide brush covered all the areas that interested her: political science, sociology, art, music, literature, even science, but it also appealed to a vague notion of hers that in some small way she would leave her stamp on the grand sweep of world events.

A curious blend of personal shyness and steely determination, Sarah was plainly pretty.  She had short brown hair, a trim and petite figure, and she wore no make up.  Her only fashion concessions were pierced ears, a toe ring on her right foot, and a small flower tattoo just above her left ankle. 

She jumped into her new life at Loyola with resolve.  There wasn’t a charitable organization that she didn’t join and eventually lead.  Her days were filled with tutoring underprivileged children, putting together the annual campus Earth Day program, bringing in outside speakers on a wide range of social issues, doing outreach projects for a neighborhood near the campus, and volunteering for the university crisis response team.  During her summers, she helped to set up medical dispensaries in various mountain villages in Haiti, a project she chose because she recognized Haiti as having more poor people than any other country in the Western Hemisphere.

Thinking about preparing for a career was never high on her personal agenda.  An amorphous concept of teaching was always in the back of her mind, but the thought of pursuing a degree in education seemed too limiting.  Her main goal for college was to learn, not train for an occupation. 

Had Sarah been born thirty years earlier, no doubt she would have gravitated to a missionary religious order, but the Catholic Church’s stubborn refusal to grant equal status to women blocked that inclination.  Sarah still dutifully attended Sunday Mass on campus, and her summer project in Haiti was Franciscan based, but the thought of joining a convent seemed too restrictive.

Plus, she was interested in Jim.  Their initial conversation had led to more conversations.  Because of the University’s strict policy on student/teacher relationships, they never really dated, but they spent a great deal of time together talking —over coffee during the day and wine at night.  She and Jim agreed that the library science option seemed right for both of them.  

Sarah and Jim had planned to go to library school together.  It would only take them a year to get their M.L.S. union cards and then they could decide if they had a future.  Unfortunately, however, their cozy little plans ran into a speed bump. 

Sarah’s application was too late to get her into the University of Illinois program.  So while Jim headed downstate to Champaign Urbana, Sarah stayed in the Chicago area.  River Forest, a little town in the northern suburbs, was the leafy location of Rosary College.  It had three masters programs – education, social work, and library science.  Sarah was not too late to be accepted there. 

Because of the overflow of undergraduate students, she was assigned to a room in the half empty convent.  Rosary had been founded by the Dominican sisters.  In the order’s heyday in the late 1950’s, the big, rambling Gothic convent building was too small for all the nuns, and so they had to house some of the novitiates in the graduate dorms.  Now the situation was reversed.  Women graduate students were assigned to the many empty rooms in the convent.  It was a fairly popular option because, compared to the price of an off campus apartment, the convent rooms were quite inexpensive.

Sarah fit in perfectly.  The nuns loved her, and she loved the nuns.  She would wander around the halls at night in search of a conversation.  Inevitably in the convent kitchen or the little library down the hall from her room, she would meet someone to talk to and learn from.  Sister Mary Paul was her favorite.  At 55, she was one of the younger inhabitants.  “Brides of Christ they called us when we took our vows, but then one by one my classmates deserted.  It was a time of renewal.  Pope John XXXIII opened the windows of the Church and out flew all of my friends.”

“Why did they leave?” Sarah asked.  “What were they looking for?”

“Freedom,” she answered.  “What they didn’t understand then, but understand now, is that true freedom comes from service to other.  Free yourself from the bonds of self interest and self happiness, and you find true freedom and happiness.”

“Are you still in contact with some of them?”

Sister answered wistfully: “Many of them actually come and visit with us.  Weighed down by family and financial problems, they seem to envy us our freedom.”

Somewhat to her surprise, Sarah enjoyed the library school curriculum.  Her course in children’s literature re-connected her to the literary treasures of her childhood: Mother Goose, Beatrix Potter, Hans Christian Andersen, Anne of Green Gables, Maurice Sendak, The Narnia Chronicles, and best of all, Paddington the Bear.  She also loved her class in the History of the Book because it provided her with the certitude that the profession she was about to enter was a worthy one. 

What technological advancement had more of an impact on Western Civilization than the advent of printing?  Books had put power into the hands of the common person.  From her many courses on the use of digital technology for the storage and retrieval of information, Sarah realized that the key to the future, however, was not the printing press but the computer.  It was in her Contemporary Library Issues class that Sarah discovered that the digital divide was the professional cause that she would champion.

If knowledge was power and knowledge was now being stored and accessed digitally, poor people would be even more disenfranchised because they could not afford to own and operate their own personal computers.  Sarah gradually saw her life’s work materialize in front of her.  She would dedicate herself to transforming the public library into the central community resource that would bridge the digital divide.  The library would be the place where poor people would get connected.

On the weekends Sarah would drive the two and a half hours to the University of Illinois to get connected to Jim.  He had no interest in visiting her at Rosary because River Forest was in his words “too small, too bourgeois, and too white bread” and Rosary was “too Catholic.”  The crucifix over her convent bed was too much for him to overcome sexually.  On her visits downstate, they drank wine, made love, and talked endlessly about the exciting possibility of together creating the “new public library.”

And then just like that for the first time in her young life, Sarah’s world became murky.  The young woman who had set out to save the world found out how difficult it is to save a relationship with a single person. 

Quite unexpectedly, one of the resumes that Jim had sent out the previous year while he was finishing up his doctorate in history, bore fruit.  The head of the History Department at little Grinnell College in Grinnell, Iowa called him and offered him a full time position.  Without consulting Sarah, Jim impulsively accepted the offer.  It was a gift he never expected and so he immediately said “yes!”

“I’ve got great news!” he proclaimed breathlessly on the phone to Sarah.  “I’m back in the history business.”

The word “business” pierced her like a rusty arrow to the heart.  “What do you mean?” she countered.

“I’ve been offered and have accepted a full time teaching position in the history department at Grinnell College,” he said with unbridled excitement.

“Accepted?”

“Yes.  No doubt you can get a job at the campus library or maybe at Grinnell Public.”

Sarah winced.  She was more angry than heartbroken.  “If River Forest is white bread, Grinnell, Iowa is cornbread.  There are no poor people in the middle of the corn fields! It’s a farming town.  I know this because I visited Grinnell College during my senior year in high school.  It was on my short list.”

“I’m sure that the people are very nice there, Sarah.  Everyone will love you.”

“Jim, how about our dream?  We were going to do something new.  We were going to re-invent the public library to serve the needs of the marginalized and the disenfranchised.  We were going to use the public library to help poor people.  Where are your ideals?  Do you remember our Utopian Literature course?  Do you remember your theory about the University of the People? Who am I talking to?  Can you kindly give the phone to that other Jim, the one I know and love!”

“Sarah, this is my dream to teach history.”

“How about our dream, Jim?”

When Jim went silent, Sarah took a very deep breath in the sudden realization that their relationship was over.  In anger and frustration she put the final nail in the coffin. “Goodbye, Jim, and have a good life.  You never really did care about poor people, did you?”  Then she hung up and had a good cry.

Fortunately, Sister Mary Paul was in her room that night.  Sarah needed some consoling.  What she got was tough love.  “I hope those are tears of joy, Sarah, and not sadness.  Do you know how lucky you are to have found out the truth about your shining young man on the white horse before you were too far down the road with him.  God has given you a great gift today…a revelation.  Learn from this experience.  Life is about learning from your mistakes and misjudgments.  The next time you get stars in your eyes think back to the pain you’re feeling now.”

In the next few weeks while studying for her finals and sending out her resume to city libraries with plenty of poor people, Sarah began to understand the real meaning of Sister Mary Paul’s words…men are fickle.  This made her all the more determined to follow her dream.  She would let no man get in the way. The world needed her determined compassion.  Poor people would benefit from her steely resolve.  That’s what she had learned from this painful little episode.

Graduation from library school was a bittersweet event for Sarah.  It was not just having to say goodbye to her professors and to Sister Mary Paul, but it was having to deal with her parents.  They just did not understand her break-up with Jim (“what a wonderful job offer he had received!”) and they did not understand why she did not have a job lined up for himself (“we thought that this degree would result in a job”). 

It was an act of mercy, therefore, a week later after Sarah had moved back into her parents’ house, that Mr. Beardsley called her.  Beardsley was the director of the East Calumet Public Library.  East Calumet, Indiana was one of the six cities in the Chicago area where there were enough poor people to satisfy Sarah.  She had done a thorough study of the SMSA census data, and had sent her resume to E.C. P.L. just a few days before the phone call. “Could you come over for an interview next week?” Beardsley asked.  “We have an entry level reference job open.”

Sarah resisted the urge to say, “I will come and work for you for minimum wage because my parents are driving me nuts,” and simply said, “Yes. I’d be happy to.”

That weekend, Sarah surveyed the East Calumet landscape.  She loved the bleakness of the place.  Squeezed into the industrial vise between Chicago and Gary, East Calumet was dirty and drab…a smokestack city just one oil slick east of Chicago on the edge of Lake Michigan.  As she drove through the downtown area her eyes lit up at the wide diversity of homeless people.  These people needed her! 

Most of the stores were boarded up and like the homeless who populated its streets, the city itself looked forlorn and lonely.  What a lovely contrast to the affluent leafiness of River Forest.  As much as she had enjoyed the comforts of the convent, Sarah was ready to start her life of service.

The interview was on Tuesday morning.  Mr. Beardsley was a tall, stooped, balding man in his early 60s.  He alone conducted the interview.  “Sarah, how did you gravitate into library science?  Your undergraduate transcript from Loyola is most impressive.”

“Mr. Beardsley, I want to make a difference.  The public library has always been the resource of the people.  It’s where immigrants can learn English, where poor people can get connected, and where the homeless can start a new life.  The public library is the one institution that treats poor people equally with the privileged classes.  I believe that I have the ability and the energy to reach out to those in need.”

“Why are you interested in East Calumet? Our tax base is eroding, our population is dwindling, and our industrial base is in a state of decay.”

“Your library is one of the ones I have targeted.  My  demographic research tells me that you are going through a transition here.  Many of the industrial jobs have moved down south or off shore.  You have a population that is struggling to make a living.  Let’s face it, Mr. Beardsley, this city has seen better days.  I’m here to help.”

“Do you have much experience in an urban environment?  River Forest is a far cry from East Calumet.”

“Sir, if you read my resume closely you will see that I have done a great deal of volunteer work in the Cabrini Greene projects of Chicago.  I also worked a summer in Port-au-Prince, Haiti.  The world doesn’t get more real than that.”

“Yes, Miss Simmons, I noted that, but what do you really want to do … work at the reference desk or save the world?”

“Both! If we give the proper service orientation to the reference desk and re-train our staff we can do both!”

Beardsley asked a few more perfunctory questions about salary expectations and availability and then sent Sarah on her way.  He was amused and touched by her idealism.  There was no doubt in his mind that she was the most qualified candidate for the job.  It only paid $18,000.  The question was did he really want to unleash her on the staff, and did he want to unleash the staff on her. 

Beardsley was within 3 years of his retirement points.  East Calumet was his life.  He was born, raised, and educated there.   It was heartbreaking for him to see the city decay and demoralizing to endure a diminishing library budget year after year.  He thought back to his own youthful days and the efforts he had devoted to building up the library and its programs and services.  This was when the steel mills were humming and the air was filled with a red haze.  It was the pollution of prosperity.

He decided to give Sarah the job.  This starry eyed girl might not be able to improve anything, but it would be fun to watch her try. 

The call from Mr. Beardsley confirming her appointment to the staff of the East Calumet (IN) Public Library, did not surprise or excite Sarah.  She knew the job was hers.  How could Beardsley possibly turn her down?  Her academic record was impeccable and her service projects for the less fortunate spoke volumes about her commitment to serving others.

Besides, right now there was no time to get excited about her first job. There was plenty of work to be done.  Sarah had a week before her first day at ECPL. She needed to find an apartment, buy a used car, and upgrade her working wardrobe, but her first priority was to take Sister Mary Paul out to lunch. 

It was a pleasant visit.  Over quiche and Chardonnay, the two women reminisced about the past year…their midnight visits to the convent kitchen, their long philosophical walks around campus, and their shared passion for the incense filled ritual of Sunday  High Mass at the lovely Gothic church in the middle of campus.  Yes, they had been kindred spirits, but Mary Paul had always been the older sister figure.  She was a valuable mentor to Sarah because she was one of the few people who understood and respected Sarah’s profound need to make the world a better place.  In a way, she had become Sarah’s rock during the Jim breakup and the period of tension with her parents.

Just as the waiter was arriving with the bill, Sarah asked Sister for any last words of advice.  Sister looked up at her, smiled, and spoke the words:  “Illegitimi non carborundum.”

“Sister, my high school Latin is a little rusty.”

As Sister Mary Paul got up to leave, she looked Sarah straight in the eye and said, “Don’t let the bastards grind you down.”

It was good advice.  While Sarah’s first few weeks of work were mostly an uneventful series of introductions, orientations, and getting to know you lunches, the inevitable culture clash began at the library’s monthly staff meeting where the main topic of conversation was the new patron behavior policy. 

Alfred Sloan, a fortyish reference librarian, who had been quite helpful in orienting Sarah to the idiosyncrasies of the city and the library, was the chair of the staff association. Mr. Beardsley, at heart a gentle man, did not like to make decisions.  He had gotten into library science because of his love of books.  He was a closet poet who realized that while poetry made his life worth living, it could never pay the bills.  Management and computers did not really interest him.  Oh, when he had to make decisions and show some leadership, he could rise to the challenge, but now, in the waning days of his directorship, he preferred to sit in his office and fiddle with his poetry.  The staff apparently thought he was fiddling with the budget.  He thought he had them all fooled. 

He even went so far as to paraphrase Jefferson to justify his management philosophy: “The manager who manages least, manages best.”  He liked to stay out of the give and take of staff issues and was often overheard saying, “No one likes a micromanager.”  As a consequence the staff association was quite empowered. 

As Mr. Beardsley settled comfortably in a seat in the back row with a slender copy of the poems of Basho hidden inside his notebook, Alfred Sloan began the meeting.  “The main issue before us this morning is the proposed patron behavior policy.  The subcommittee on patron relations has worked hard over the past six weeks to respond to many of the concerns that you the staff have expressed regarding the anti-social behaviors of a growing number of our regular patrons.  Eleanor Stout chaired that task force.”

Eleanor was aptly named.  A big, stout woman, she supervised the circulation desk with an iron hand.  In just the two weeks that Sarah had worked at the library, she had noticed that Eleanor seemed to take a great deal of personal satisfaction from collecting overdue fines from people who seemed least able to afford them. One older man had asked Eleanor for a fine waiver because he had been in the hospital with a broken tibia.  Eleanor’s booming response was to demand a doctor’s notice, even though the man’s leg was in a plaster cast and he was on crutches.

Today, Eleanor was full of passion: “This new policy, no pun intended, is long overdue!  Our library is increasingly becoming a warehouse for deadbeats, drunks, drug addicts, and derelicts.  We are supposed to be working in a place of learning, not a rescue mission.  The policy before you addresses these issues.”

Marge Sorensen, Sarah’s supervisor, said, “This policy is a start, yes, but I’m not sure it goes far enough.  I like the fact that we can evict people from the building for having offensive odors, but I don’t think we should let them in the building at all.  Some of these bums leave a smell that doesn’t dissipate for hours.”

“We need to beef up security,” said Louise Giddings of the children’s room.  “Sometimes the East Calumet police don’t respond to our calls for hours.”

Periodicals librarian, Edwin Akers agreed: “I’ve been saying for years that we need our own security force.”

Edwina Winch disagreed, “The problem with that is the people who work for security agencies are often criminals.  Look at airport security.  They’re the ones who look like terrorists.”

Alfred, sensing that they were spinning their wheels, stood up and said, “How about the clause on behavior?  Do you all agree with that?  It says that patrons not engaged in reading, studying, using library materials, or accessing the computers can be evicted.”

Marge spoke up: “Again, this doesn’t go far enough.  How about the perverts who use the computers to look at pornography?  It’s disgusting.  All we read about in LJ is the digital divide.  Personally, all I think our patrons want computers for is pornography.”

Sarah, even though, it was her direct supervisor who had made the offending comment, could no longer sit on the sidelines.  “I know I’m new, but really, have you all forgotten our mission.  We are here to serve those who need to be served.  No one can dispute that a lack of personal hygiene can be offensive to some people, but one person’s hay fever is another person’s ambrosia.  One person’s cologne is another person’s foul odor.  The clause in the policy on dress standards is equally unfair.  Jeans with holes represent inappropriate dress to some and high fashion to others.  The point is we are a public library; we don’t get to select our clientele.  This policy discriminates against poor people.  That’s unconstitutional.  I question whether this document would stand up in court.”

Marge looked sternly at Sarah and said, “Your ideals are laudable, Sarah.  I had many of the same thoughts when I was in library school, but increasingly we, the staff, are at risk here.  In six months, you will have a different perspective altogether.  I am sure of it.”

“The fact of the matter,” said Eleanor Stout, “is that we’re not discriminating against poor people.  We’re going after people who display anti-social behavior.  If they happen to be poor … tough cookies!”

Sarah countered quickly: “Well….I may be new but I have worked here for two weeks and I’d say that if we stop serving the poor, none of us will have jobs.  That’s pretty much all that comes into this place.”

Miss Stout was now angry.  She stared at Sarah and raised her voice:  “The poor have driven everyone else away!”

Her raised voice got Mr. Beardsley’s attention.  He looked up out of his notebook and said, “This has been a good dialogue.  Let’s reflect on all the input and revisit the matter next month.”

Over the next five months it became obvious to Sarah that Eleanor Stout’s point of view was somewhat truthful.  ECPL was in fact a poorhouse.  As a librarian, Sarah was adept at classification.  There were the trash bag people, the shopping cart people, and the backpack people.  They were all poor and homeless.  Actually that wasn’t quite true.  The library was their home.  They lined up in the morning waiting for the doors to open.  They reminded Sarah of flies on a screen door.  As soon as the door opened they flew in.  They used the library to pursue a variety of activities.  Some enjoyed muttering nonsensically while pretending to read a book.  Others fell loudly asleep face down in the newspapers.  Others guided their broken down shopping carts up and down the book stack aisles as though the library were a grocery store.  At night they were the last to leave.

Sarah’s favorite patron was Lubie.  Without fail he would answer her “Good morning, Lubie!” with the rejoinder: “Yeah, what’s good about it?”  It wasn’t a mere throwaway line.  Lubie really did appear to be desperate to discover something good about the world, which was perfectly understandable given the shabby condition of his life.  Always unshaven and smelling of a four dollar bottle of whisky, he seemed to be just a day or two away from death.  There was, however, one thing that distinguished him from the other members of his fraternity of the poor.  He wore a wrinkled white shirt every day with a spotted but neatly tied red necktie.  Maybe he only had one change of clothes, but the tie gave him just the slightest touch of class.  It made Sarah think of Charlie Chaplin as the Little Tramp from her history of film course at Loyola.

Of all the strays that wandered into the library, Sarah liked Lubie the most.  Life had obviously knocked him down, but he was determined to go the distance.  That’s why she admired his ill temper.  It was a spark of spirit, a sign that he wasn’t giving into despair, depression, or despondency.  Unlike most of the other poor people who wandered her way, Lubie had spunk.  He gave her hope that the work she was doing made a difference.

She was particularly amused by the daily warfare he waged with a man named Skinner.  Each morning they would race each other to the newspaper rack and wrestle over the Wall Street Journal.   Sarah was amused by the irony that the bible of capitalism was the newspaper of choice for these two poor people.

A week went by without Lubie, and Sarah became concerned.  She didn’t know who to call or what to do.  Then an old woman who claimed to be his sister came up to Sarah and said, “Miss Simmons, Lubie left this for you.  He died last week.”  The woman handed Sarah an envelope.  In it were five well worn twenty dollar bills.  “Lubie left this for you because he liked you, Miss Simmons.”

Sarah immediately protested: “I can’t accept this money.  You must have burial expenses.”

The old woman looked up at Sarah and snickered: “Well, Miss Simmons, the truth is Lubie must not have liked you all that much.  He died with over 3 million dollars in the bank.”