The country library is demanding either a lot of money or a huge amount of money and is in clear and present danger of getting it.
With knuckleheads running things, and despite the county already cracking under its fiscal burdens, it will take a good deal of common sense to derail the silly idea. Libraries are so yesterday.
Funding a library in 2026 is like funding a horse-and-buggy factory in 1926. Any Ukiahan who thinks our library will become a vital cog in tomorrow’s world of information must also think CB radios are a smart communications investment.
If you think libraries are an anachronism now, wait five years. Today’s teenagers turning into tomorrow’s adults will not be transformed into book lovers or library visitors. They already access more (free) information on the internet than exists in the entire Harvard library, all via a little plastic box in their back pocket.
In a sane world libraries would already be a long way down the crowded path of other quaint, outdated media. Think Time Magazine, the Cleveland Press, Cloverdale Reveille and a hundred other missing or moribund publications.
If the county believes it is imperative to throw millions at our obsolete library then tear it down and move into the abandoned Rite Aid warehouse on South State and Gobbi Streets.
It has more than enough room and is sufficiently ugly to satisfy local architectural guidelines.
Social Insecurity
For a good time head to our local Social Security Office, which is sorta like visiting DMV but without all the music and dancing and balloons.
Ukiah’s Social Security office operates more like a medium security prison. It’s a facility ostensibly dedicated to helping elders navigate the tricky world of federal legalese and confusing technology. Customers are old farmers and retired clerks whose technology and cyber skills dried up around the time of answering machines and CB radios.
So they limp and straggle through the door, hoping for someone to translate government information into common sense. One of the two Security Guards points to a vending machine that spits out numbered tickets, once you figure out how to use it.
The room has glassed-in booths along two walls for experts to dispense advice and solve problems, but has just one (1) live agent to dispense advice and solve problems.
He is polite, capable, knowledgeable, friendly and patient. I wish I’d asked his name; he deserves recognition. His customers are numerous.
He is alone.
There are twice that many armed, uniformed agents guarding the premises just in case some old woman starts flinging her wheelchair around the building, or a retired schoolteacher tries to barricade himself in the men’s room. Nothing like this happens.
What does take place is a solitary “ping” from a woman’s purse indicating she’s received a text message. A Security Guard scowls, scans the room for the violator, then demands all cellphones silenced (!) (!)
Two minutes later comes another “ping” because someone (me) is either flaunting his rebel spirit or doesn’t know how to turn off his phone. The Guard shouts that phones MUST be silent within the Social Security facility.
Grrrr.
Kinda like junior high study hall, but with the underlying threat that violators will be injured, prosecuted or have their phone confiscated.
Don’t miss it. Your Social Security office is open from 9 to 4 p.m. five days a week. Bring your cellphones!
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