Help me, Obi-Mom Kenobi! You’re my only hope.

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I had this thought as I went through the library today and saw The Boy and his friend Jessica duking it out with their Pokemon card collections.

“He has a high retreat cost.”
“My Tentacool, with his evolution Tentacruel…”
“Oh yeah, well my Abra, Kadabra and Alakazam combo will totally destroy your…”

I completely don’t understand the appeal of this game, but so many kids love it – and a few grownups that I’ve met as well – that it has attained almost a cult following. Let me rephrase that. It has achieved a level seven nerd quotient.

I was reminded of the SNL skit where Paris Hilton introduces a new phone “service” line for the hard core D&D, Star Wars, Star Trek and Lord of the Rings fans. You know who I mean.

We went to the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park with another homeschooling family. They have an exhibit on chocolate that the kids really enjoyed. They also have Rodin’s The Thinker on loan from the Detroit Institute of Art. But the hands down favorite was, as always, Da Vinci’s Horse.

The plan was to go to the playground. You know, that place with the “recycled plastic and rubber” play structures, the “imagination-inducing” theme, the “multi-sensory” environment. Yeah, they played on that for, what?, 90 seconds before heading over to the mud.

C-3PO and Lando Calrissian wore boots, which was thinking pretty far ahead. Padawan Learner and R2-D2 were in mere sneakers. I noticed that the level of water-related abandon, ultimately, became directly related to the goo-shucking ability of each boy’s footwear. Lando ran, quite literally, in-out-and-through the water for much of the time. C-3PO found the best material for his canals in the “softer” parts of the mud. R2-D2 was content to help dig out the canals and pile the detritus alongside of them.

PL shot some home videos with my camera, but they were so vertigo-inducing that I couldn’t post one here. Time to invest in some motion-reducing technology? A few lines of dialog include: “The elusive …”, “The elusive so and so, playing in the sand. Let’s go in for a closer look. It’s like tracking the Yetti, only a lot less exciting,” “It’s the elusive moms,” and “This is a Wookie. This Wookie doesn’t smell weird. He actually smells much like soap.” PL likes the word elusive – a lot.

Public libraries are the epitome of equality, the great levelers of society. They represent every person’s right to information, to education and to the pursuit of happiness. Public libraries do this without regard to age, race, wealth, ability or disability, previous education, national origin or any other personally identifying factor. Any resident has the right to get a library card and then check out and take home the books, music and movies of his or her choice. Where else can this be done? Try it at the local public middle school and you’ll see what I mean. Furthermore, can any public school student borrow any book from any other public school library in the region? Don’t bet on it.

My family frequently checks out materials from around West Michigan due to interlibrary loan. Our world is broadened and our minds are improved by the public library system of Michigan. Our children’s futures as thinking, contributing and eventually tax-paying citizens of Michigan are greatly enhanced by public libraries.  This week’s library bag included books and videos on small space gardening, foreign language movies for listening practice, modern and classic children’s literature, a parenting book on tape, the movie version of a book that my son just finished reading, books about marine life along the seashore, a downloaded travel video from the MyLibraryDV program, history books about pre-historic people and civilizations, and a book about ways to conserve energy. Nearly all of these materials arrived via the interlibrary loan program. That’s not too shabby for a little plastic card.

Think about it, where would a third grader, reading at the high school level, go to find books when he’s bored to tears with the graded readers in his elementary school’s library? The local library. Likewise, where could a sophomore in high school, reading at the fourth grade level, find a large selection of progressively more challenging material with which to practice and improve his reading skills without having to draw attention to the fact that he’s a poor reader? Again, the local library. Yes, we have a serious budget deficit and we must balance Michigan’s budget, but perhaps we should stop pretending that more money, more money, and yet more money, will magically improve K-12 test scores and remember that education is a daily reality in our local public libraries too.

In short, Governor Granholm’s proposal to cut state library funding by 50% will only deprive our youngest, poorest, most isolated, and most at-risk residents. Is this really to be the legacy of Michigan?