Dear President Obama

When I found out you had paid your parking tickets from 1989-1990 when you were a graduate student at Harvard in 2007, I decided it was time to pay my Ohio State University Libraries over-due book fines. Who knows, I might be tapped to be someone important in the future. So today I went to the Ackerman Road location (temporary home while the Main Library is being rebuilt /restored/ revitalized). After asking directions twice (I don't pay my bills on-line like you did--it's a generational thing), I finally found a nice lady who said she could help me pay my fine. I gave her my name, and there it was on her computer. $16.00 for 3 fines, one of which just happened last week. The other two I had no idea how old, but from before I retired, so I thought maybe the late 1990s.

I wrote her a check, she printed out the information, took it to a copy machine to copy the check, then gave me a copy of the bill. It's not that we weren't hi-tech in the old days nine years ago, but for some reason I was really surprised to see how much detail there was. I had no idea what had been overdue--maybe it's on my accessible record and I never noticed. When I saw the titles (1999 and 2000, so the fines were from 2000) I only remembered "Horse heaven," by Jane Smiley. I was the veterinary medicine librarian, you see, so I suppose I thought a novel about horse racing would be interesting. But it wasn't, and I think I only read about two chapters, until I forgot about it and it went over due. Truth be told, Mr. President, I really don't care much for fiction.

The second was one about which I have no memory at all but I'm assuming it was non-fiction, Anthony Arthur's "The Tailor-King," an account of the 16th-century takeover by Anabaptists of the city of Münster and its rapid descent into despotism and anarchy. Oh my! I can see why Martin Luther was so unhappy with the Anabaptists--the 16th century guys were certainly not the pacifist Mennonites and Brethren I grew up knowing! This guy ended up with 16 wives, one of whom he beheaded!!

"It says much about this strange young man's personality and character that he could so effectively turn his mentor's disaster into his own triumph. Of all the qualities that the preceding episode reveals about Jan van Leyden - ingenuity, imagination, timing - the one that stands out most is his intuitive mastery of what would later, in our own century, be called the technique of the big lie. Told with sincerity to a people anxious for reassurance, deriving from some source beyond and greater than its speaker, the big lie is so outrageously improbable that no one could possibly make it up. Therefore, it must be true." (p. 73)

Although some of this does have a familiar ring to it, doesn't it? The part about the big lie so outrageous and the people being so gullible.

But I was just thinking--I mean about the detail in my book fine information after all these years that even I had forgotten. You said you didn't remember you had fines, until the Boston Globe reporters began sniffing around asking questions. (This was back when they were tight with Hillary.) It was really smart of your advisers to get those tickets off the books before the Clintons even realized that you really were serious about becoming President of the United States. I don't know how a poor grad student in 1989 was able to even afford a car in Boston, but the ticket records would have had your DL number, the auto registration, whose house you were parked in front of, how many times it happened, and any other registered autos who were ticketed around the same time. Considering the hay the anti-Bush crowd tried to harvest over an old DUI, this could have gotten nastier than the certificate of live birth or the transcripts from Columbia and Harvard that have disappeared down the rabbit hole.

Anyway, just wanted to let you know I'm one of the many you've inspired to do the right thing. Also, I respect you for not pulling any strings to just make those parking tickets go away. Tim Geithner probably would have. Watch your back with that guy.

My library fines

Before I retired in 2000, I went to the business office to pay my library fine--$12.00. I don't remember how I got it because there's no penalty until it gets to $50, or at least that was then. I was a library manager, so I could have used my password and deleted it, but I didn't. I forget who was out of the office, but I was told to not worry about it. So everytime I checked something out for the last 8 years, I was reminded I had a $12 fine. Then last week I forgot to renew an Ohiolink book, and $4 was added. Now my fine is $16. I have a book about the Apostle Paul waiting to be picked up at Ackerman Road (location of all the offices while the Main Library on campus is being "revitalized.")

Barack Obama had nearly $375 in parking tickets from his Harvard days almost 20 years in arrears, and he didn't pay them until he decided to run for president in 2007. His staff said it was nothing. Another one of those, "everybody does it," I suppose. Look at me. A librarian with a $12 fine going unpaid for 8 years. The woman he decided to crack down on for being less than $1,000 behind in her taxes, Nancy Killefer who had paid it long before he tried to appoint her, had to meet a different standard than either the President or the Head of Treasury, Timothy Geithner, who wasn't just forgetful, but an out and out cheat and crook. After he was caught the first time, he paid his taxes and penalties, then did it again and was trying to outrun the statute of limitations, which apparently I don't have on my library fine, or Obama on his parking tickets. But then, Geithner is the only genius in all the Federal Reserve System or among all the lobbyists from the Clinton era, or all the guys to choose from the Congress, who can save us. Never mind he headed the powerful NY Fed and noticed nothing coming that even hinted at a sub-prime meltdown, just like the SEC whiz kids who thought Madoff was too big to fail.

But I better pay my fine. Obama might just call on me to be the official blogger of the opposition.

No grown-ups allowed

The public library in my community has some terrific resources--not for Christians, not for conservatives--but great for those fascinated by entertainment, popular culture, audio-video, business, computer technology, scrapbooking, gourmet recipes, painting, travel and fiction readers. However, this is beyond the pale.

READ DOWN FINES
Tuesday, Janury 8 at 7 p.m.
Lane Road Branch Library

Got fines? Arrive at the Lane Road Library downstairs meeting room at 7 p.m. and read for one hour. You will receive a voucher for up to $8 off of existing fines for overdue materials. Be sure to arrive on time and with reading material in hand.

This is worse than last year's joke: a list of nine new "holiday/seasonal" titles none of which were about Christmas. "Up to $8?" Does that mean you might only get $6 off your fine if the librarian doesn't like your selection? What if your fines were for overdue DVDs? Can you watch a DVD for an hour if you don't read? What about one of those ear blasting, air guitar programs the library does for the kids? Can you bring a real guitar and work off your fine that way?

I don't know how many Upper Arlington library users have fines at a level that they are willing to work them off at minimum wage in the basement of a library on a cold January night, but I'm willing to bet, not many. And does the library get money by doing this? Of course not! It's just a way to insult and belittle people who owe you money. Why not, 1) write off the fine and take away their library privileges, or 2) send them a letter after dunning them with phone calls at dinner time, 3) Hire a collection agency if the fine is really large.

Upper Arlington has a median family income of $90,208, the average home is valued at $324,200, 98% of the residents are high school graduates and 68% are college graduates. A deadbeat is a deadbeat, no matter what the income. However, reading for minimum wage doesn't sound like it would have much appeal for this community.

Disclaimer: I do not owe any fines to UAPL. I do, however, owe OSUL $12, and have for about 15 years. They don't expect you to pay unless you owe $50. I did try to pay it before I retired, but there was no one in the business office that day who knew how to do it.