Out the lakes way we get a weekly newspaper called, mysteriously, Spinal Column. I like it because they cover news very specific to Oakland County and especially this particular area of Oakland County. The police blotter is occasionally hilarious, but for real laughs you have to go to the letters.
Two weeks ago, some smug genius responded to Shuttle Commander Eileen Collins’ comments on deforestation by pointing out that tropical forests are depleting at the rate of only Only ONLY… one half of one percent per year. So, at the current rate, in 200 years, they would be gone! Ah well, we’ll be dead and cold by then, let the great-grandkids figure that out.
Then this week, another letter from an outraged family, responding to this article about the new library in Commerce Township, where, get ready for it, you can pee on Osama Bin Laden. The director of the library admits, in the article, that the urinal shields were left over from when the building was a country club’s clubhouse*, and they just never got around to removing them.
The letter defends — DEFENDS — the splashguards. It notes, correctly, that Bin Laden is a terrorist, and incorrectly, that the splashguards should remain in the men’s room of the library.
Libraries need to operate outside of jingoism and invective. Libraries are intended for the exchange of ideas and the enrichment of intellect, not for tacky novelty items. I agree in spirit with their message and I think they’d be fine for a bar, or any other private business [though I suspect Morgan Stanley or the other tenants wouldn't have let the management place these things even in the WTC's restrooms]. Heck, even City Hall, if it were a particularly irreverent City Hall. But not in a library.
* For real. The only township library in the western hemisphere with an eighteen-hole golf course… as far as we know!
