Mayor's office responds to Eastie library concerns

The trustees of the Boston Public Library voted yesterday to accept one of the three plans presented to them to close this year's budget shortfall -- a proposal to shutter four branch libraries, including the Orient Heights branch in East Boston -- and the mayor has accepted their decision. There has been significant public outcry against the plan, and the Boston Globe story says that, "Some on the City Council are vowing a fight."

Ernani DeAraujo, the mayor's liaison to East Boston, released a letter that says Eastie residents should be mindful that part of the plan is also to build a new branch for the neighborhood in an as-yet-undetermined centrally located site. He adds:

In the short term: most of the non-library services performed in the Barnes Ave. building -- reading for preschoolers; senior activities; book discussions; etc .-- will be moved into the Orient Height Community Center. **We will maintain the same level of these types of services as before and coordinate with the Elderly Commission; Boston Public Schools; BCYF; and the private sector to expand services and try new programming.** If there is something new you'd like to see, let me know and we can try it. Also, at that location you will have parking unlike at Barnes Ave.

All specific library functions will be merged into the Meridian Branch. Meridian will NOT have services cut further thanks to the building consolidation and overall pay/workforce reduction (i.e. layoffs of individual library staff). We can arrange for book return pick up in the Heights and will experiment with delivery services for seniors who cannot walk to Meridian.

In the medium term: last July we completed a feasibility study for a new "lead" library in East Boston. The building will have over 20,000 square feet which is nearly twice the usable space of the existing (Meridian/Heights) buildings combined. We are currently looking for a site and then will proceed with design and ultimate construction. East Boston has one of the fastest growing youth populations in the City and we need a modern building that can accommodate our needs.

DeAraujo, who notes that he used the Heights branch growing up, concludes that the overall plan "will be a great benefit to East Boston."

Heights branch on chopping block

The president of the Boston Public Library supports a plan that would shut down the Orient Heights branch and three others across the city to save $3.3 million. The other branches closed under one of the three plans the BPL trustees are considering are in Brighton, Dorchester and South Boston.

There are also two other plans, one closing seven branches and the other closing none, but cutting hours throughout the library system. Each proposal cuts the same number of jobs and saves the same amount of money. The trustees, the mayor and the city council would have to approve the changes, and the council sent to Ryan a letter signed by nine councilors -- including East Boston's Sal LaMattina -- who object to closing branches. The BPL trustees vote on the plans tomorrow.

Photo of the Heights branch from the BPL web site.

Musical branches

The Globe reports that statistics on branch library use were released yesterday and a look at the information would seem to put the Orient Heights branch in the running for cutbacks or closure, depending on the plan approved by the BPL trustees. Many in Eastie are against such a move, and there is a Facebook group that objects to cuts at any of the branches.

Safe cracking

In a move that would make the Taliban smile, a group of Christian conservatives in Wisconsin is demanding that a young adult book be publicly burned. How long before they're calling for another Inquisition?

The book, Baby Be-Bop, by award-winning writer Francesca Lia Block, is about "a young man's discovery that he's gay," according to Salon.com. The Christian Civil Liberties Union has filed suit against the West Bend Public Library, alleging that displaying the book has caused mental anguish to people.

The group that initiated this ridiculous imbroglio is called West Bend Citizens for Safe Libraries, which is the part that makes me angry. Libraries should not be, must not be, "safe" -- not in line with the usage of the word in this context: non-controversial; bleached of ideas; espousing only viewpoints in line with conservatives.

No! Libraries, books, words, ideas, art -- all of these things are dangerous. They threaten those in power; they make people think; they attack the status quo. That is the point. The concept of a "safe library" sounds like an Orwellian term. It's where the tortured citizenry goes to be reeducated in the beliefs of a totalitarian regime.

I don't want safe libraries, or safe books, or safe art. Freedom, justice, equality, compassion, tolerance and truth depend on unsafe ideas being spread as widely as possible.

Controlling the past

Today is observed as Patriots' Day in Massachusetts and, of course, this morning the ride of Paul Revere was reenacted along the course of the original route from Boston to Lexington.

Just last week, at Rodney's Bookstore in Central Square, Cambridge, I came across a used copy of "Founding Myths," a book that looks back at about a dozen stories from the Revolutionary War period, attempting to find the truth among the glorified tales that most of us learned in school.

Turns out that Revere himself wrote an account of the ride not long after it happened, but the story told in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem is what made its way into history textbooks. As you might expect, the truth is always messier, but it doesn't make for easy-to-remember history.

About a decade ago I read "Lies My Teacher Told Me" and was astonished to find out that when the Pilgrims arrived they set up what became Plymouth on the site of an abandoned Native American village. And then they meet Squanto, who had already been to Europe three times by 1620! He spoke English and served as a translator between the English and the natives. Squanto's story is amazing: He'd been kidnapped in 1605 by an English sailor and had tried since to make his way back to his village, Patuxet. After several attempts he arrived to find that all his people had been killed by disease and that the Pilgrims were living on the land. It was disappointing to me that several important aspects of the story had been left out when I'd learned it in school.

Since then I've also read Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States," which provides another view of events that differs from the mythology that we're all taught. I generally find history fascinating and I try to learn as much as I can, but I keep in mind George Orwell's words from the book "1984": "He who controls the present, controls the past."

Book signing today

Former Boston Herald and NY Daily News crime reporter Michele McPhee will be signing copies of her latest book today at 2:30 at 303 Cafe.

McPhee, who is now a talk-radio host on WTKK, has written a book called Heartless: The True Story of Neil Entwistle and the Brutal Murder of His Wife and Child, about the 2006 high-profile murder case of a Hopkinton woman and her nine-month-old daughter.

The cafe is located at 303 Sumner Street in East Boston. McPhee, who currently lives in Eastie, previously wrote Mob Over Miami.

Library renovation or relocation?

An article in today's Globe on the future of the Boston Public Library and its branches had this line: "Library officials ... are looking into consolidating two small East Boston libraries into one larger building."

My understanding is that a renovation is planned of the Meridian Street branch, the older and bigger of the two, but the article seems to imply that both branches would relocate to a new building. However, maybe the expansion of the building is what is referred to here.

Library meeting

I've been told that there is a meeting Wednesday from 6 to 8 p.m. regarding possible renovations to the East Boston Branch Library. Originally housed in the old Lyman School in 1869, this neighborhood was the site of the first branch library in the US. The current location, at 276 Meridian St., opened in 1914. The meeting will be held at the library.

All the pretty words

I would have probably waited a year to buy Cormac McCarthy's latest novel, The Road -- that's roughly the amount of time after the hardcover is released that the trade paperback comes out -- but a friend gave me the book as a gift today. McCarthy is arguably America's greatest living writer, and to date I've read six of his books, including Blood Meridian, which many choose as his finest work.

The first of what McCarthy calls "The Border Trilogy," -- his 1992 novel All the Pretty Horses -- is when I, like many readers, first heard of him. That book spent time on the bestseller list, won several awards and was eventually made into a film. That popular hubbub is atypical for McCarthy, who writes dense prose that sounds Biblical in tone and is reminiscent of Melville and Faulkner. His books are also quite bloody. I remember picking up his previous novel, No Country for Old Men, and reading the first few pages in the bookstore before I paid and left, and in those opening lines three characters had already died.

McCarthy is now 73 and The Road is his tenth novel. It came out just a year after No Country, which is odd for a writer whose books were often six or seven years apart. It has been described as "post-apocalytic," and one gets the impression that it may be the man's final work. McCarthy surely is not for everyone, but to my knowledge there is no one writing in America today who uses words the way he does.