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ALKI: the Washington Library Association Journal ALKI: The Washington Library Association Journal July 1997 Volume 13, Number 2 Table of Contents Features Wired and Inspired! WLA/OLA Conference, Portland Awards Funny Bid'nis, a conversation with Molly Ivins Jennifer Reynolds, The Evergreen State College The Ethics of Affordability: Community, Compassion, and the Public Trust Theodore Roszak, California State University Cultural Rage and Computer Literacy, a response to Theodore Roszak Michelle Kendrick, Washington State University Outsource the Routines, Retain the Expertise Jim Dwyer, Chico State University Columns Upfront - Getting Connected--On An Equal Footing Joan Weber, Yakima Valley Community College From the Editor - Use the Filter You Were Born With Vince Kueter, Alki Editor WLA Communiqué - Legislative Day was a Rousing Success! The Vertical File - News from around Libraryland Focus on Youth - Collecting Memories and Remembering Collections Thom Barthelmess, Spokane County Library District Your Best Face - Washington Libraries Respond Creatively to Internet Access Issues Mary Kelly, Sno-Isle Library System Who's On First - Unrestricted Internet Access at Public Libraries...Or Not? Tom Reynolds, Sno-Isle Library System Only Connect - Don't Overlook the Human Factor James J. Kopp, University of Portland I'd Rather Be Reading - My Own Private "Dui" Nancy Pearl, Seattle Public Library VERSO - The Primal Shush--Don't Fight It! Cameron Johnson, Everett Public Library ALKI: The Washington Library Association Journal July 1997 Vol 13 No 2 Awards WLA Awards Martha Parsons WSU Energy Program Library President's Award Michael Hedges Pierce County Library Merit Award Outstanding Performance in a Special Area (awarded posthumously) Michael Schuyler Kitsap Regional Library Merit Award Advances in Library Services Phelps Shepard Mid-Columbia Library Merit Award Advances in Library Services Laura M. Tuck Lake Washington Technical College Information/Library Technology Program WLA Grassroots Grant Kristina Kauffman University of Washington Graduate School of Library and Information Science WLA Scholarship Washington Library Friends and Trustees Association Distinguished Service Awards Bainbridge Public Library Board of Directors Friends of Everson Library Mid-Columbia Friends of the Library-Kennewick Bond Committee Friends of Mukilteo Library Audrey and Dean Stupke (Orcas Island) Joan and Wayne Hazlett (Orcas Island) Juanita and Roger Ash (Lakewood Library) Margaret Clow (Whitman County Library) Edith Ray (Whitman County Library) Ruth Humphrey (Jefferson County Regional Library) Sally Huntingford (Jefferson County Regional Library) William H. Lawrence (Timberland Regional Library) Lesley Wilson (Issaquah Library) Washington Association of Library Employees Conference Scholarships Michelle Dudley Ocean Shores Public Library Susana Gonzalez Traveling Library Center King County Library System Eileen O'Connor Highline Community College Library Technician Program Cynthia Wigen LaCrosse Branch, Whitman County Library CAYAS Award Judy Gann Pierce County Library District ALKI: The Washington Library Association Journal July 1997 Vol 13 No 2 Funny Bid'nis a conversation with Molly Ivins by Jennifer Reynolds As I entered the Jantzen Beach Red Lion Lobby, I noticed that the slogan for the 1997 OLA/ WLA Conference was 'Get Wired and Inspired'. The meaning was no doubt geared towards the exciting possibilities new technology can bring to our libraries, but for me-a communications major from a small liberal arts college tucked into the evergreen forests of Washington State-it had a different meaning. For years, I have clipped the far-too-rarely- published Molly Ivins editorials from the newspapers in the various Pacific Northwest towns and cities in which I have lived. The newspaper that serves my current community of residence doesn't carry her at all-so my loving mother clips them and sends them to me in the mail. Ivins' Texas humor seeps out of the written word so clearly, while at the same time, her blunt honesty allows the reader to see the political game for what it is. "Sometimes, readers come up to me to say they think I'm an awfully funny writer," she states in her book, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?, "I have perfected this routine where I shuffle my feet, say 'Aw shucks,' and then allow, 'It's all in the material.' This has the dual virtue of allowing me to appear unconceited and also of being perfectly truthful." And so, as I wound through clusters of librarians snapping photographs and getting wired from my double tall Americano in true Northwest fashion, I wondered what liberal arts/communications major wouldn't be inspired by Molly Ivins-and better yet, I'd be interviewing her later that afternoon! When I pictured myself interviewing Molly Ivins, I saw the two of us sitting in her hotel room chatting against the scenic background of the Columbia River. I found, however, the reality was that the interview would take place fifteen minutes prior to her scheduled book signing at the book signing table. The public, of course, was unaware that she was not scheduled to sign books for another quarter of an hour, so Molly and I chatted amidst her adoring fans. Jennifer: In your book, Molly Ivins Can't Say That, Can She?, you explain "how you came out so strange..." Molly: Right J: One fact that you mention is your time spent reading every book on the shelves of the library, can you expand on that? M: I can indeed! My God, I remember them well. We had a crummy little public library not far from where I lived. I was in high school in Houston, Texas, actually. I lived in different parts of Houston-my family did over the years. The public library was not an ornament to the intellectual world. I think it was frequented largely by housewives who liked to read romantic novels. And I used to have a collection of lady authors with three names. Frances Parkinson Keyes, of course, was one... those were, oh God, a marvelous series of books. At any rate, they were perfectly dreadful and [there] were shelves of them and I read them all. But I was also an aspiring intellectual when I was in my teens and so I would read books that I had heard of that I thought I should have read with, y'know, no help and practically no comprehension. I mean, I was wading through War and Peace when I was twelve. I don't think I read them with any... with only the most shallow sort of appreciation. You know, I would have heard from someone somewhere that so and so was a great writer and so I'd go off and read so and so. I looooved the library! I'm sorry to say, it was not architecturally distinguished. It's not one of those relic stories I can tell you where, y'know.... there was a beautiful old downtown library that had tile floors and it had some personality... but the branch that I hung out at was just, y'know...it might as well have been a girdle manufactory establishment. It had cheap fluorescent light, and I just loved it! J: Do you think your love of reading helped make the humorous observer that you are now? M: Oh, no question. No question. Over the years, I s'pose we all do this, I used to draw up great lists of people I thought were the world's greatest writers, and I always put people on them I felt should be on them. Dostoyevsky and all kinds of sort of gloomy people. And when I go back and reread, I find that what I read about once every ten years is Dickens and Austin. And I'm convinced that much of my own humor comes from those two. J: What does freedom of the press mean to you? M: Well, it's really simple to say freedom from government censorship-which is historically the greatest threat to freedom of the press-but I think there are other sorts of menaces as well. I think the corporate structure of the media, which is becoming concentrated to an extraordinary extent these days, is in many ways an obvious threat to the press. And what worries me more than that are the restraints that we seem to internalize unconsciously thinking that there are these things that we shouldn't say or couldn't say or, um, things that aren't really news so we don't look at them very carefully and there's a terrible danger unless you... unless you keep opening your mind, unless you keep working your mind, which I'm convinced is a muscle just like any other muscle. Unless you work your mind, it will eventually atrophy and shrink. There is a terrible danger of not seeing tremendously important things that are going on in our lives. One of the best examples I've ever heard, Gene Roberts, the great editor now at the New York Times, talks about stories that seep and creep. The largest internal migration in the history of this country, rural black Southerners to northern cities took place without a single story ever being written about it within the establishment of the press. We didn't even see it. It was invisible. J: Do you think the media can be irresponsible at times? M: Oh absolutely! Oh yeah, I'm very fond of sitting around criticizing the press. It's one of my favorite things to do. Fan #1: ARE YOU MOLLY IVINS? M: (Graciously) Yes I am! F1: I just have to tell you that I'm one of your great great fans... M: Ooooh, bless your heart! Thank yew... F1: And will you call the Oregonian while you're here and tell them to run your column more frequently? M: (Slaps her knee) By George, I shall do that very thing..
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