Saturday, September 27, 2008
Sundaes on Sunday!
September is National Library Card Sign-Up Month (informally known as NLCSUM), and here at Missoula Public Library we have a few traditions associated with this month-long celebration of all things library. Certainly the most delicious among them is Sundaes on Sunday, an afternoon of ice cream and music. This year Ben, our blogmeister and local music guru, has arranged for Tater Pig to come and shake the walls with their sound. The fun starts at 2:00pm tomorrow with free tunes for all, and a suggested donation of $1 to enjoy one of our delicious Sundaes on Sunday!
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4 comments:
I've never in my life been as aghast at a decision as I am at MPL's decision to bring in a hard rock band, situate them in the middle of the downstairs open space, crank their amplifiers to 11 and permit them an hour of jamming at unthinkable volume. We could hear them upstairs at the other end of the building. I've been to Megadeth and Judas Priest concerts at which the volume wasn't so loud as it was this afternoon, forced, as I was, to walk right past the band's performance in order to get to the stairs taking me to the stacks.
Citizens go to libraries for quiet, for enlightenment, for refuge. We don't go for bad music and airstrip decibels. If MPL is intent on celebrating National Library Card Sign-Up, why not celebrate with sundaes sans the ridiculous music at ridiculous volume? Why not host a book raffle? Why not give away books and bookmarks? Why not use some of the cash to bring in a celebrity writer of children's books to speak to a crowd of children about when he or she first fell in love with books and why? Why not lock the backdoors and string extension cords outside and let the band play in the back parking lot? Even had the music this afternoon been Tori Amos (whose music I love) with her piano, I would've objected to anything but reasonable volume...as I'm sure Miss Amos herself would have. This so-called "concert" did nothing whatsoever but convince me more than ever that Missoula is a town in which people almost never extend courtesies to others. Missoula is a town in which entitlement is the name of the game. I'm sure your elderly patrons loved the music. I'm sure the parents bringing their little kids to the library appreciated having to cover the ears of their kids, so blistering was the volume. I'm sure 90% of your patrons thought the stunt - the music, the volume, the purported celebration, the delusion under which the MPL director is laboring to greenlight such a decision - a steaming vial of urine. My wife is a former librarian; I was an ILL student worker in my undergraduate university's library; my father-in-law is a retired head librarian; I have friends who are librarians. What I saw and heard this afternoon was an inconsiderate shame. MPL's decision to celebrate reading - to celebrate the induction of children into the mysteries of what libraries have been centuries - with this particular "Sundaes on Sunday" display is a festering sore on the forehead of this solipsistic community. I couldn't have been more disgusted, frankly, had the MPL chosen to mark the day with an invitation to patrons to show up and smear the stacks with paper bags filled to spilling with their own shit.
First off, I'd like to apologize for offending you with loud music in the library. As the person who organized the event, I feel like I should address your complaints, and at least walk you through our thought process in planning this event.
This is the Fourth year in a row we have held Sundaes on Sunday in almost the exact same fashion. The first year, we had a band play upstairs and decided that it was much too loud, so we moved the event downstairs. In the three years since, there have been few complaints, so we assumed our patrons were comfortable with a some noise for a single hour throughout the year.
Over those four years, as well as yesterday, I've been approached by countless patrons who express how much they like seeing this kind of event in Missoula. In fact, those who approached me yesterday said it is random events like these that make them love living in this town.
Our library is more than just books, we strive to include art and opinion in all media: books, films, music, and electronic resources. It could be argued that, in this day and age, musicians such as Neil Young, the Beastie Boys, U2 and even Tori Amos shape public thought through their music more than most authors of written word. Tater Pig (the band who performed) is comprised of a Mother, Father and Son. As a family of local artists I felt like they have a unique perspective on life and should be able to express it in their preferred medium.
We are a local public library, and as such strive to highlight locals as often as possible, be it a band, historian, poet, author (childrens or adult), artist, etc. We also try to bring in outside speakers, but the cost is usually prohibitive. We would rather provide more materials for check out than use all of our budget to bring in celebrity writers or artists.
Overall, we simply wanted to host a fun, community event and hand out some ice cream. I, again, sincerely apologize that you were took offense to both the volume and placement of the music. We will most definitely take your comments into consideration during our planning for next years National Library Card Sign Up Month.
It isn't the music with which I took issue so much as, again, the volume. I've been in the tenth row at concerts in the Adams Center where the volume was more reasonable. My wife and I visit the library every Sunday - it's a little ritual with us, something we look forward to all week. I don't understand a) why neither a conference room nor the back parking lot were chosen over the open downstairs space, or b) why no one thought to insist on either an acoustic set or reasonable volume (after all, music remains music without bleeding eardrums). Can you honestly tell me that you felt the volume was reasonable for an indoor library function? Perhaps the MPL, in encouraging kids to utilize their local libraries for the first time, would be best served remembering that books don't need to be sexed up with rock music - literature was rocking people off their foundations long before Fender marketed the Stratocaster. All of this reminds me of the critique of the hip-swiveling letters A through Z on Sesame Street episodes: when we introduce kids to letters as dancing entities, the unmoving letter on the page has a greater likelihood of being found dull. Ditto words. Ditto libraries. When we bend over backward to make libraries seem cool, we blind ourselves and others to the cool that is innate in libraries. I understand that libraries house media more varied than merely books: again, the problem was not that musicians were performing, but rather that musicians were performing in a spatial and aural environment from which patrons who might find such extraordinary volume offensive, distracting or disconcerting could not escape.
I did think it was too loud. We enjoyed the music and our sundaes out on the sidewalk. The consensus among those outside was that the music was too loud inside.
Christine P.
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