I heard the Mayor on the radio talking about libraries. He said ‘neighborhoods aren’t about buildings, they’re about people.’

Huh? The least of what describes libraries is buildings. Nearly 400 people didn’t pack the lecture hall of Boston’s main branch library because they want to preserve a building. Is the Mayor implying that one’s neighbors will read to your children? Will they buy you books if you’re laid off? Take in your elderly parents during the day? Let your kids use their computer if you can’t afford one?

How many folks making our budget cuts grew up relying on the library? How many of them realized that after-school, the library is often the only safe place in the world? How many have been old and lonely, and had the library as their sole source of entertainment.

On goodreads.com, a popular book site, they have book ‘giveaways.’ Looking at the five giveaways ending soonest there are almost 5,000 people competing to win copies of these five books.

Seems to me that people want to read and learn.

Are we consigning our struggling neighbors television to meet their social needs? Because your neighbors and my neighbors (and I have terrific neighbors) are not planning to provide pre-school story hours, newspaper reading rooms, or lending libraries.

Books are the backbone of culture. Our elders and poor aren’t walking around with Whispernet, downloading books unto their Kindles.

Is Boston too broke to let our poorer neighbors learn? Because it’s not the rich, or the children of the rich, or the solidly middle-class who need libraries in order to read, use the computer, research, have a warm and safe place to peruse the newspaper, have a destination for the elders, look for a job, meet other toddlers, and explore about the world outside their neighborhood. It’s the poor. It’s the working class. It’s anyone and everyone who struggles.

If neighborhoods are people, then the people need a place to gather. Please protect our libraries.

According to yesterday’s Boston Globe, writing about the Boston Public Library system: Circulation in the system has risen 31 percent in the last three years.

This in an article headlined: Boston Public Library may close 10 of its branches.

According to me: The dollars that a city or state will invest in their libraries, measures its willingness to care for its children, seniors, teenagers. It shows how far it will go to help those who don’t have the funds for books, don’t have a warm and safe place to spend an afternoon, or need a place for their little ones to sit with other squirming toddlers to learn the joy of books.

Our economy is down. We need to cut back. Yes. Still . . .if you are a parent and your family loses one quarter of it’s income, do you protect the person who maybe greased your way into a country club membership? (Perhaps, um, akin to a campaign contributor’s sinecure in a remote post in a hidden agency budget line?) Or do you protect the dues you pay for your children’s afterschool program, ensuring they are safe while you’re out looking for a job?

At this moment in my life I can buy the books I need—and I mean need. For me, as for many, books are how I relax, learn, research, get to sleep, get through trauma, celebrate . . . they are right after shelter, food, and health care. But it wasn’t long ago that I got 95% of my reading through the library. As did my children.

Troubled and neglected kids can be saved by books—and I don’t use those words as hyperbole. I was raised by books. Almost every day I walked the twenty or so Brooklyn blocks to get to my neighborhood library branch. Like the steady family I’d wished I had, there it always was.

That’s the beauty of books. They don’t just transport, they heal, they teach, and they soothe. On the loneliest of days, they ask no more than picking them up. In the worst of times, they stand by.

We need to offer this opportunity, now more than ever. Our economy is down; thus people are out of work. Doesn’t it make sense to protect (along with teachers, police, fire-fighters and health workers) the place where folks can (without cost) write their resumes, look for jobs, bring their children, pass the burden of unfilled hours, meet their neighbors, surf the web, learn the future and learn from the past?

I do not believe that the libraries are the only place we can cut in either a municipal or state budget, or that they should be in the first line for slashes. I know it is an easy place to take a whack. Personally, I wish there were a box to check on tax forms to give extra dollars to libraries. And I wish that every politician valued our libraries even a quarter as much as they seem to value campaign contributions.

Sometimes parents aren’t equipped to raise children. Sometimes adult children aren’t equipped to care for elderly parents. That’s when the village should step in.  That’s why we have schools. And hospices. And libraries.