Marxen, Janet, Letter - Budget In My View
by Janet Marxen
It's been almost twenty-five years now. Slowly drinking coffee in solitary repose before
my family awoke, a soul-lifting experience came to mind unbidden. Unbidden? Perhaps
not.
This morning I allowed the events of the world, our country, our state, and our city to
loom for a time with frustrating personal powerlessness. Feeling as if the powerful (at
this writing I cannot name who "the powerful" are), I sensed my "individual" voice being
reduced to silence, or, at best, a tiny whimper.
Yet twenty-five years ago, my individual voice felt very large indeed. After publishing a
small poem in Lyrical Iowa, some other lyricists found me. Four Iowa women whom I
had never met, invited me to join their Round Robin poetry group because my poetry
seemed to fit their vision of the world.
They proposed that I would add poems to theirs and we would review, comment, and
pass them on in sequence. Once a poet received comments fi.om all four, she would then
add a new poetry set, critique the others, and the Robin would continue.
Before computers and e-mail, we wrote hand-written letters. Inevitably, we shared our
personal lives, became intensely loyal to each other and superstitious about meeting one
another face to face. I believe we were afl'aid to break the almost mystical experience of
knowing through the written word only.
Which brings me back to powerlessness and the point of this narrative. This world seems
"engulfed" in war, pragmatism, downsizing, budget cuts, and sound bites. We purse our
lips, bite the "bullet," and persuade by massaging our fears with the premise that "it must
be done." (To my mind, this argument usually means sheltering two basic needs--wealth
and protection fi.om ill-defined and every-changing oppressors.)
It seems (again to my mind), that this emphasis is forsaking an equally important "mm"
that is essential to what it means to be human the feeding of our minds, the flush and
excitement of creativity and visionary ideas, words, and thoughts, and ultimately, the
nourishment of America's greatest commodity: its entrepreneurial spirit. To some, budget
cuts to the Carnegie-Stout Public Library may seem more expedient than fire and police
protection. I challenge that assumption.
Andrew Carnegie had a vision. He endowed our nation's libraries with one codicil: that
governments would fund and staff them. Carnegie-Stout was built on that promise--and
although the State of Iowa has refused to fund local libraries--the City of Dubuque has
always done so. To its credit, but not without some painful budget dowutums, the library
has remained a top city priority. Fifteen years ago, the library cut Sunday hours to save
money. Five years later, after much work and research fi.om Acting Library Director Ann
Stmley and the Board of Trustees, the library was able to restore Sunday hours. Now we
face the same challenge again: cutting Sunday hours as welt as weekday hours, reducing
our collection and our programming, and losing accreditation.
Tw~nty-five years ago our small poetry group found its lyrical voice by haunting public
libraries and the information housed there. We used metaphor and the words of the great
masters of the written word to inspire and encourage us. We wept, we laughed, and we
explored what it meant to be human through poetry and song. While never dismissing the
basic human needs of shelter and safety, we rejoiced in the beauty of the human
experience as expressed through the written word--so sacred that we never dared meet
face to face.
Preserving the wealth of knowledge in our libraries should never be compromised.
Reading for pleasure and reading for understanding are what inspires us all. Reading
helps provide the answers we need to do the undoable, to be visionaries, and to break the
pragmatism and boundaries of narrow and powerless thinking. Now more than ever we
need to stop wringing our hands by endorsing what is proposed as the only answer:
budget and staffing cuts.
Go to your library, your librarians, and those who hold the fxeedom to think and write as
sacred. They will deliver some solutions of which you have never dreamed, but which
hold the promise for a future that involves more than budget and staffmg cuts--that in the
end will feed our souls and restore our ability to believe in ourselves.
Janet Marxen is the current president of the Carnegie-Stout Library Foundation. She
served on the Library Board of Trustees and as its president from 1994-1999.