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The following article has been sent by a user at UMI SALES MULTI USER
ACCOUNT (PLAT PA) via ProQuest, a Bell & Howell information service.
The Librarian's Image, Unrevised
New York Times
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Print Media Edition: Late Edition (East Coast)
New York, N.Y.
Oct 29, 2000
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Authors: Karen G. Schneider
Document Column Name: My Money, My Life
Pagination: 11
ISSN: 03624331
Abstract:
This image serves us well during conference travels. Dragging canvas bags
filled with conference tchotchkes and clasping copies of ''The Velveteen
Rabbit'' close to our moth-eaten sweaters, we've been known to arouse a
sense of pity in the most pompous maitre d's at restaurants. I might add,
though, that we tip very generously, as well we should when we're ordering
five dinners for eight people.Reduced expectations work well in other
settings,
too. There is my auto mechanic, who, even as I approach an income in the
mid-$40,000's -- making me a tycoon by local librarian standards -- refuses
to change the cup holder in my serviceable, seven-year-old Honda because
it's too expensive (even though, as he points out, I will be driving this
car for five more years). I could go elsewhere to have the work done, but
how can I not be loyal to a mechanic so concerned about my expenses?
Sure, it would be nice to have a jaunt on my own yacht, to learn to use
an escargot fork or to drink a wine so expensive I have nosebleeds just
thinking about it. But we who ride the clattering, square-wheeled caboose
of the economy's bullet train are at least liberated from the expectations
of a money-crazed, high-octane lifestyle.
Copyright New York Times Company Oct 29, 2000
Full Text:
Captioned as: The writer is the assistant director for technology at the
Shenendehowa Public Library in Clifton Park, N.Y. Submit your account of
struggling or succeeding as a worker, consumer, investor or entrepreneur
to My Money, Money & Business, The New York Times, 229 West 43rd Street,
New York, N.Y. 10036. E-mail: mymoney@nytimes.com. All submissions become
the property of The Times. They may be edited and may be republished in
any medium.
I AM a librarian, a part of a feminized profession with a median starting
salary that recently topped $30,000. Despite a growing demand for our
services,
major areas of the country are unable to keep or attract employees for
their public libraries. This must change if librarianship is to survive.
But after reading a spate of articles about young whatever-somethings
complaining
about feeling poor when they're earning six figures, or apple-cheeked
billionaires
bemoaning spiritual emptiness, I would like to note that wading in the
low end of the professional salary scale is not without advantages.
Those of us at the bottom of the hierarchy are not only free of the
chains
that bind fashion victims; our unwritten, excruciatingly wholesome dress
code also helps our image as people with whom the most confidential
information
can be entrusted. Would you feel comfortable confiding your most intimate
medical or marital problems to some pretty young thing in a Prada outfit?
I don't think so.
Try this test. The next time a conference of the American Library
Association
comes to a city near you, drive around and look for my people. Do you see
the earnest, clean-cut middle-age folk strolling on a Saturday morning?
The bearded males in tweedy garb, the women in long skirts or practical
slack sets, and all wearing Rockports? That's us.
This image serves us well during conference travels. Dragging canvas bags
filled with conference tchotchkes and clasping copies of ''The Velveteen
Rabbit'' close to our moth-eaten sweaters, we've been known to arouse a
sense of pity in the most pompous maitre d's at restaurants. I might add,
though, that we tip very generously, as well we should when we're ordering
five dinners for eight people.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hardline: Reduced expectations work well in other settings,
too. There is my auto mechanic, who, even as I
approach an income in the
mid-$40,000's -- making me a tycoon by local librarian standards -- refuses
to change the cup holder in my serviceable, seven-year-old Honda because
it's too expensive (even though, as he points out, I will be driving this
car for five more years). I could go elsewhere to have the work done, but
how can I not be loyal to a mechanic so concerned about my expenses?
Sure, it would be nice to have a jaunt on my own yacht, to learn to use
an escargot fork or to drink a wine so expensive I have nosebleeds just
thinking about it. But we who ride the clattering, square-wheeled caboose
of the economy's bullet train are at least liberated from the expectations
of a money-crazed, high-octane lifestyle.
While others work 100 hours a week and exhaust the remaining time by buying
anything so long as it's expensive, chipping barnacles from their boats
and comparing themselves with one another, my colleagues and I actually
stay home and read books, cover to cover.
Call me a loser, but I've actually read the same book twice in the same
week, just because I liked it, then took time to discuss it with friends.
YES, many in my profession -- and in other helping professions like the
ministry, education and child care -- need much better income and benefits.
And it is the high crime of the new economy that so many service workers
lack basic health care or retirement packages while the rest of the country
is on one hectic, manic splurge.
I wish that it were easier for me to buy a home, or that I had medical
options other than the lie called managed care. And I worry about my
colleagues
who must clothe and educate children, care for infirm relatives or simply
pay next month's bills. We deserve real pay for our work.
Yet I also know that when the market crash came in 1929, men leapt from
window ledges not because they were lonely or spiritually unfulfilled,
or because they wished they had spent more time with their children. They
committed suicide because money had become the center of their universe,
and when bad times came, they had nothing left to fall back on.
I may not own a monogrammed handbag, but at my core, I know who I am,
sensible
shoes and all, and I would not trade that for everything in the world.
Captioned as: Drawing (Katherine Streeter)
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner.
Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
=============================== End of Document
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