Journal of the Plague Year 5-18-2020: Books Do Furnish a Room (Or Not)

Up at the crack of dawn (or at least before 7 am) to visit Trader Joe’s for the geezer hour.   Lots of cheery young employees wearing masks and taking care of the old folks who crave Joe’s frozen appetizers and other good stuff.   Every customer seemed to fit the over-65 criterion.  Is this our future?

And that is not the only event of the day.  We have an online literary gathering tonight.  In previous years, the prose and poetry were accompanied by wine and goodies.  This year, it is strictly BYO wine.  And I don’t have to get dressed (ladies, you know what I mean). 

Retiree shopping and virtual poetry salons do not take that much time, leaving opportunity for decluttering.  We have gone beyond closet cleaning and are now focusing on books.  A forty-year career in academic social sciences results in lots of books. Sadly, books do not have the utility or resale value they once did.  Hubby tried giving them to his university library, but they did not want old books. He tried taking them to a used book dealer, who gave him $50.00 store credit for a few boxes. He tried Half Price Books, which gave him even less.  So, he turned to me, a one-time rare books librarian whose first job out of library school was with a used book dealer. We worked out a way to reduce his library to a manageable size. 

First, we agreed that if he agreed to get rid of a volume he would accept that it might be recycled. Painful. Second, he would not keep books with library stickers and markings. Easy. Third, he would not keep paperbacks with underlining, highlighter, or cigarette burns. Fourth, he would not keep books in generally poor condition.  I estimate that about one third of the collection falls in these categories.  They will either go in the recycling bin or find new life in the Little Free Libraries around town. 

I estimate that hubby will want to keep one third of the remaining volumes.  That means that I will need to figure out how to dispose of the final third. Because we cannot overwhelm the recycling bin, this will be a long-term project. The way things are going, this project will have the joint benefit of keeping me busy while reducing the weight load of his second-floor library. It’s all good.

Attack on Domestic Tranquility

The peace at our little household, sliding downhill to a genteel retirement surrounded by aging cats, rambunctious flower beds and traffic noise from I-94, has been shattered. The governor of the state of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, has declared war on state employees (of whom OLGS is one among more than 45,000). Not only is he going to require state employees to pay the full amount allowed (but up to now, not required) by law for pension and health care, but he is banging the drum for privatizing their pensions. And he is railroading this through next week, giving those affected little time to respond and the majority Republicans in the state assembly little time to think (if they do, which I doubt).

In addition to affecting professors and public defenders, who seldom vote Republican, the new approach will also affect folks like prison guards, of whom Wisconsin has many and who do vote Republican. It also severely affects part-time employees who are on limited contracts; their access to health care will be eliminated as of March 1. The LTE in OLGS's department makes $13 per hour, has four children and an unemployed spouse. What will happen to them? Where are the governor's anticipated savings if this family goes on welfare and uses Medicaid?

This is grandstanding of the worst type. I secretly expect that the gov simply wants to make a name for himself, a la Sarah and Michelle. Even if he's not successful -- and he probably will be -- he will have marked out his territory as the driver of a tank rolling to crush the greedy state employees and their unions. George Bush was also very good at this, drawing a line in the sand to make his point and then moving on to something else.

This travesty even made the New York Times, which is ever alert to possible train wrecks. And you gotta love the gov's assertion that he is prepared to call in the National Guard to fill in for state workers who decide to rally in Madison or go fishing. Think about your basic 19-year old Guardsman teaching OLGS's class on the prelude to the Civil War or a class on Romantic poetry. Of course, the gov would say that we shouldn't be providing such classes as state expense. He has an answer for everything.