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Leading opponents of library may have T-shirts coming
By Bill Whitaker
The night last week's library bond proposal met defeat, TV news reporters
kept peppering glum-faced library supporters with one question over and
over: "What next?"
Answer: Nothing for now, nothing at all, other than rearranging things
at the current library and making do with what's already there.
Reasons for defeat are varied, depending on who's talking. For instance,
some locals saw a vote against the library as payback for what they consider
the city's use of tax dollars to favor some Abilenians but not others.
Yet other voters still boil over a much-questioned library land deal
that some of us thought was water over the dam. Apparently not.
I even heard some say they might vote against the library bond proposal
because of the decision a few years ago to scrap the card catalog and go
to a computerized system. One wonders, though, if maintaining a card catalog
would have won the library the 500 or so more votes it needed.
Certainly the newspaper made its position known early on. Nor did it
let anyone forget. One voter told me the newspaper, in its support of the
library bond issue, "did everything but drive people to the polls and
push the button for them."
Even so, a war of ideas raged in our paper's letters-to-the-editor section
prior to Election Day. One highlight came from a 79-year-old man who noted
how he didn't really need a library, that his 1958 World Book Encyclopedia,
bought at a garage sale, would suffice nicely, thank you.
Which is absolutely right, of course, unless you've got a kid writing
about the presidents -- all of them.
One thing is sure. The vehemence of those opposing the library bond proposal
astonished even battle-scarred political observers.
A college student manning a phone bank for bond supporters was actually
told by one defiant caller he was not only going down to the polls to vote
against the library, "I'm also taking my blind, 95-year-old mother
so I can show her how to vote against it!"
The feeling was clearly mutual. One particularly vocal advocate for a
new library in Abilene -- normally a gracious, thoughtful lady -- was so
rankled after the election, she considered mailing leading library opponents
T-shirts that read, in so many words: "Damned ignorant and proud of
it!"
Although I don't know anyone who seriously believes this issue won't
return some day, a good chunk of time will likely pass before voters have
to wrestle with it again. Already, though, I've heard some intriguing suggestions
for passage of a future library bond proposal.
Cooper High principal Jim Short has jokingly suggested linking any future
library bond issue to "repairs at Shotwell Stadium." And library
advocate and former school board president Ed Patton has suggested, just
as drolly, a bond issue for "astro-turfing the library."
They may not be far wrong.
DIGGING PRETTY DEEP
During last week's meeting of the Abilene Downtown Association, longtime
funeral director Jack North interrupted proceedings to remind everybody
and anybody that North's Funeral Home has now been totally remodeled, inside
and out.
In fact, the business' new look will be formally saluted by the Abilene
Chamber of Commerce Nov. 18, beginning at 9 a.m.
Fellow businessman Stan Chapman, sitting several feet away, couldn't
help grinning at Jack's very impressive report.
"That's quite an undertaking," Stan told the undertaker.
OW, TAKE THIS
The country that gave us Carmen Miranda, the so-called "Brazilian
Bombshell," is at last getting something in return.
Janet Ardoyno, the human dynamo whose coordination of the annual Make
a Difference Day effort has won Abilene national attention, has recently
been tapped by the Points of Light Foundation to help set up a similar program
in Rio de Janeiro.
Only now emerging from fallout over Abilene's crape myrtle campaign --
one that drew fire over what some perceived as a highly suggestive billboard
(and yet sold a heckuva lot of crape myrtles) -- Janet expects to take her
ideas about volunteerism and cleaning up communities to Rio for several
days beginning Nov. 30.
Her only question: "I wonder if they'll let me take a crape myrtle
into the country."
Bill Whitaker, who thinks Brazil may never be the same after the holidays,
can be reached at 676-6732. E-mail: WTWARN@aol.com.
All content copyright 1997, Bill Whitaker, The Abilene
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