Wedge Blog

The Laundry Room Lending Library

Perhaps I’m reading too much into the Laundry Room Lending Library.

If you live in a New York City co-op or condo, you might be lucky enough to have a collection of secondhand books sharing the basement with washers, dryers and wheeled wire pushcarts: the Laundry Room Lending Library (LRLL).

A well-stocked LRLL was one of the checkboxes I ticked off when I was in the market for a little Manhattan apartment–a few disheveled shelves overloaded with hardcovers and paperbacks was a sure sign of intellectual, altruistic, well read residents, the kind of smart folks who don’t need to gush or sign their names half-peeking out from under the dust jacket before passing on a good read.

When I first moved into 300 W. 23rd St., I was impressed by the Man Booker prize winners, the classic literature, the difficult anthologies and weighty reference work I found down there. OK, there was some demonstrably iffy gay fiction and there are always a few pulpy breathers and old computer manuals between heavier tomes.

The pickings are so admirable that I have a hard time snarfing no more than two or three a week; a bloated backlog soon developed on my studio bookshelf–paperback editions of Sam Harris’ The End of Faith; Jostein Gaarder’s Sophie’s World; Junot Diaz’ Drown, a book called The New Feminine Brain, which I carried up to my apartment six months ago and haven’t opened yet (which may confirm that I have one already), and a black linen-bound compendium of essays about NYC called Wonderful Town. I actually do read that one in those rare moments when I need to be reminded.

It’s my first trip back in a few months. Most of the volumes in the LRLL autumn collection are gone, replaced with a winter crop of eclectic literature, another mishmash of fine books, many of which look oddly untouched.

I don’t know about you, but when I really read a book it loses its virginity in an obvious way.  The covers get messed, pages get stained, the spine shows evidence of an unnatural bend or two.  Many of the books in the Laundry Room Lending Library look as though they have never been deflowered.

Last October in the LRLL I found economist Nassim Nicolas Taleb’s The Black Swan, a brainy black book dipped in a thickish ego and rolled like Levantine pastry around 1,200 references of every famous penis-possessing person who ever philosophized about the limits of randomness and fractals. Taleb’s Black Swan begins with a chapter called “Umberto Eco’s Library, Or How We Seek Validation.”  Taleb’s conclusion about the essayist’s vast book collection–Eco claims 50,000+ volumes in two locations–is that, “read books are far less valuable than unread ones.”

The residents at 300 W. 23rd St. may agree. Either that or I have many extremely neat, incredibly self-validated neighbors. Eschewing the appearance of being well-read, perhaps they truly ARE.

Books are being displaced, especially in the City, by e-readers. As the owner of a tiny apartment I appreciate the precious space recovered by offloading printed matter. Imagine the joy of wanting a book and owning it within a moment or two… I just don’t know if I could ever use the laundry room again after carting down my word horde. Seeing familiar titles begin to smell like stale Downy, staring at me like once beloved, abandoned cats in an animal shelter…I’d wind carrying the unpopular ones back upstairs out of sheer pity.

Why are there so many books down there? All the literacy and introspection in my building could be seeping through the old brick, plaster and ductwork, succumbing to these shelves. Could there be something about living at 300 West 23rd that makes residents want to buy books just to give them away or have residents STOPPED reading, resulting in this glut of Anne Rice and Jodi Picoult? If people are purging themselves of print, when I come back in the spring I’ll surely notice.

If, by next winter, there are only two romance novels and an old Time magazine on these shelves, I may have to move.

Photo by Kevin Dooley Dooley http://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/

(Aired on KGPR, Montana Public Radio Wednesday, Dec. 14, 2011)

These are not easy times. You might have a buck or a five-spot. Maybe you’re totin’ around a ten, a few twenties, a fifty. If you’re flush, you might be able to flash a couple hundred dollar bills.

Take a good hard look at that cash. Seven denominations, printed in decayed blackish green, the unfortunate color of oxygen-deficient sludge. Our redesigned $10, $20 and $50 notes add a faded blood-tinged blush, as if to echo current monetary policy: “Help! We are bleeding money!”

I can’t help looking at these long-dead white males, our Founding Fathers and our dear martyred President Lincoln, without imagining what was going on below their shoulders when these engravings were made.

I can say with certainty that Ben Franklin was constipated when his portrait was engraved. Seriously, get the man some fiber, will you? Look at the face gracing the $100 bill, and tell me he’s not expressing particular effort.

On our fifty dollar bill, Ulysses Grant wears a thirsty poker face. Is that a sterling flask in his breast pocket?  Colonel Theodore Lyman, Grant’s contemporary, said it best. “Ulysses Grant habitually wears an expression as if he had determined to drive his head through a brick wall and was about to do it.” This may also explain Grant’s reported penchant for liquid anesthetic.

On the $20 bill, Andrew Jackson’s body is aimed left. His head is aimed right. This is an inside joke. Jackson was notoriously two-sided, with acknowledged strength and fearless pluck, but he could be self-absorbed and vindictive. He openly despised Henry Clay, John C. Calhoun and a Cherokee Indian chief named John Ross, among others. Is Jackson, while posing for posterity, riding right on a reluctant steed, affronted by something coming from the other direction?

Alexander Hamilton’s ten dollar portrait is remarkably attractive. Other paintings of our first Secretary of the Treasury are not as flattering, but Hamilton had enough appeal to stir up a lurid affair and the poor judgement to publicly divulge disgusting intimate details. The dapper Hamilton, wearing a popped collar and white bow tie, is aiming right and looking left. Bet you ten bucks this engraving was inspired when Hamilton was two paces from Aaron Burr, looking the wrong way.

Abraham Lincoln has sunken eyes and cheeks, an unruly strand of hair over one large droopy ear, his tie askew. Our sixteenth president looks, in this portrait, to have just been awakened from a fitful sleep in an uncomfortable wooden chair. Lincoln isn’t about to waste time gussying up, and he’s not going to make chit-chat in hopes of a flattering likeness. Look at that face. He’s planning something. Something unpleasant, something painful, something necessary. Do you really need to spend that fiver? Keep a Lincoln engraving as a solemn reminder that discipline can eventually overcome disaster.

Thomas Jefferson looks vaguely distracted if not downright annoyed.  See that furrow in his brow? The two dollar bill? Hardly worthy of mention. Jefferson looks like he’s realized the backhanded compliment, which explains the part of the picture this engraving might have missed: a small spade hidden in one hand and a sharp quill pen in the other: Jefferson was equally adept at digging furrows in Virginia soil and digging remarks.

George Washington wears a look of weary relief. His overtly phallic neck is festooned with ruffles and a stylish bow. Unlike Lincoln, Washington posed while sitting back on a fine leather wing chair that was dyed the color of oxblood and tanned to a subtle sheen. His small eyes cut a dark warning. Go ahead, pull out a new $1 note and then pull out an older one: see how George’s eyes lose their intensity as this portable engraving passes from hand to hand?  Washington has lost sight of the horizon, along with the rest of us.

These long dead, brilliant, brave, fallible white men, they don’t want us to forget: these United States are a valuable and fragile gift. Never mind what’s going on below the shoulders, please.

PETA is in MY Doghouse This Christmas

I remember when being a vegetarian in Montana was about as bad as being a communist at a Republican rally.  For my first couple of plant-eating decades, I understood I was fair game for all those pig, chicken, fish, and cow eaters.

These days I can even find vegetarian entrées in small-town restaurants, and if someone is going to sneer at me, they usually have the courtesy to do it when my back is turned–and after my check is paid.

To me, the mathematics of meat eating never made much sense.  Concentrating all those resources into a slab of meat for a single meal didn’t seem as smart as feeding the grain and water to needy people.  Meat injected with chemicals and hormones  seems especially unsafe,  and animal fat is a demonstrated hazard to human health.  When you add humanitarian issues and the conditions for humans who work at slaughterhouses and packing plants…Well, I’m not the least bit tempted by a plate of steaming flesh.

I wanted you understand that I was pretty much a wild-eyed radical before I started complaining about an organization to which I’ve belonged for over a quarter of a century: People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. I still support the basic tenants of PETA,  I’m a big fan of spaying and neutering, adoption from responsible animal shelters, banning animal acts in circuses, eliminating factory farms, and drastically cutting animal experimentation in favor of human prevention, like putting plant-based diets into public schools and being sure that everyone gets plenty of exercise every day.

I am not, however, in support of a $265 doghouse.

Recently I received in the mail a solicitation from PETA for a “$265 donation for one sturdy warm and dry dog house for a dog in need”. For a moment I thought this was a typographical error.  When I saw I could buy a fractional sponsorship–part of a dog house–for only  $60, $90, $120, or “other”,  I knew it wasn’t a mistake.

Insulated dog houses are readily available, beginning at about $90 for a small dog,  and going up to about 200 bucks for a good-sized huntin’ dog. Spending $265 for a single doghouse seems to be a shameful waste of funds,  especially at a time when so many humans are suffering…and the Holidays are around the corner.

In that same stack of charitable donations I found a request from the Montana Food Bank Network. Their solicitation claimed that “a single dollar provides enough food for eight meals.”

I am really bad at math, but–even though I pass the meat–I am pretty good at food.  This mailer for the annual Food Bank Network’s Thanksgiving campaign claims that “$35 will provide enough food for 280 meals.” It doesn’t say “help provide” or “contributes to” or that they’ll need “500% matching funds.”

I want to know where the Food Bank is shopping, and I want to know what we are giving our hungry Montana neighbors for dinner for twelve cents per meal? I understand the food bank deserves government subsidies and private donations, and matching funds from other charities, but how can the food bank feed 280 people with less than it costs me to buy half a bag of groceries?

I want the Montana Food Bank Network to share their charitable alchemy, their secret for stretching a dollar with the folks over at PETA, so maybe my animal loving friends can slice the cost of those doghouses from $265 to say, oh, fifty or sixty bucks.

I’ve given generously to both of these charities in the past. The Montana Food Bank network can’t possibly feed anyone with twelve pennies on a plate.

PETA? You’re in MY doghouse this year.