Librarians and lost innocence

Sometimes it is the little stories of small eruptions of cultural grievance that remind those of us who live comfortably in Democratic cities that MAGA madness is afoot.

I was gripped by this story of right wing culture warriors closing down a small, necessary and loved, rural public library for fear of The Gay.

A Battle Over Drag Queen Story Hour Shut Down This Town’s Library

Last April, the library announced a one-time addition to its children’s lineup: Drag Queen Story Hour.

“We knew it would probably be controversial,” recalled Amanda Hoffman, who was the library’s director of youth services. “We didn’t expect it to be what it became.”

Over the coming months, someone called in a bomb threat to the library, a board meeting ended in punches being thrown and the library itself became so tense that Ms. Hoffman was hospitalized with stress-induced vertigo. Neighbors denounced one another as “fascists” or “predators” and complained of being doxxed, threatened and harassed.

The library never held a Drag Queen Story Hour.

Finally, this fall, most of the library’s staff and trustees quit, forcing it to shut down. After 53 years of operation, the library — named for the adjacent Rockwell Falls — has not lent a book since Sept. 26.

This sort of thing is going on wherever there is a critical mass of organized outraged objectors to contemporary culture. Since there are people involved, people get hurt -- as do libraries.

Reading the story, put me in mind of my mother who died over two decades ago. She was a children's librarian and a faithful Republican. She was committed to finding the right book for each child that would move them to read. She told the branch public library early in my childhood that I should be allowed to browse and take out any book from the adult section that interested me without restriction. And I did. Though not fully credentialed in the modern sense, she was a supporter of the American Library Association and attended at least one national conference.

The issue of Drag Queen Story Hour would not have arisen (I think) in the private schools where Mother worked. But I find it interesting to mull over how she might have thought about it.

Mostly I think she would have found the idea of drag utterly strange. There were men who wanted to prance around in women's clothes and read with kids? Weird!

She upheld the gender rules about self-presentation, almost always wearing skirts when most women of her class had defaulted to slacks. She just felt better, even while gardening. You can tell I thought this was weird.

But she also came out of a more innocent time when single sex, homo-social, play acting was an understood form of having fun. Before television, given the chance, people (women, anyway) enjoyed playing dress up for their mutual amusement. 

A women's club show from 1937. Mother is the cop.

I think she might have defaulted on Drag Queen Story Hour to, cautiously, understanding the event as men and children playing. It would never have occurred to her that this was sexualizing. She would have found that notion prurient. 

She might not have liked Drag Queen Story Hour much, but if it engaged the children with books, that would be enough.