On Their Poor Substitute for a Public Library

The place where i work and live right now is called a City. Even though i can walk all around it in a couple of hours. There is one excuse for a grocery store in which everything costs twice as much as it does everywhere else, which, what with rising gas prices and all that, is quite substantial. The main street consists almost entirely of t-shirt print shops and fudge shops, which i tried to browse once, but the t-shirt people stalk you and the fudge people don't have to. I can't resist. I begin to realize that however peaceful rural life sounds in theory, i have been too spoiled by suburbia. But worst of all is the Library. This is not the one where i work - that is the state park library and archives. This is the Public library. It is a ways out of town - 20 minute walk. A small, brown, tin building, with a few narrow slits for windows. The organization is inconsistent and inconvenient. There is no computer catalogue at all, and the card catalogue is stuck in a corner with the few public computers available, so that it is almost impossible to utilize. However, since a good portion of the books aren't catalogued at all anyway, it doesn't really matter. A good third of the book selection consists of Romance novels. Not that i have anything against Romance novels per say - i am rather fond of Georgette Heyer (although i don't think her novels ought to be in the Romance section, anyway; or, i think they ought to be, and that most of the books now in the Romance section ought to be put under Sex/Lust/Bad Grammar, but that's another story)... where was i? umm... and i like light reading as much as anyone, but their selection of fantasy, science fiction, and mystery is abysmal. They have a few classics, but only the most famed, or the books are so old and in such poor condition they're practically impossible to read anyway. My family's library is much more comprehensive, better organized, and in better condition. Their selection of movies is worse - very few classics, and of course nothing too popular or i suppose it would get stolen... this is a big tourist area, and it it would never get returned. So i do understand that. Libraries are all about the books, anyway. And there they have fallen short. Oh, and the way they divide books between young adult and adult? Also completely nonsensical - worse than usual. Why can't they do everything my way??? AAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! When i do manage to find a book, which sometimes happen (they do have a decent collection of Dickens - which really ought to be catalogued! - and i've just discovered the Septimus Heap series, which is interesting but mainly i like it because of Septimus Harding), i turn down the road towards the water. I walk past the few feet of "woods," the little yellow house with the little white dog with the little loud bark, the nice gray house with the wrap around porch, and the large tree in the middle of a small gravel parking lot. Summer cottages are on either side of me, but there are few trees which means there are fewer bugs (it has been a really wet season here, and they are everywhere, but bugspray makes me break out if i use it a lot, so i just get bitten. my brothers swear by their own unique remedy of swallowing two match heads, but i think they're just trying to tease me.) A bench swing sits in a small plot of sand, just in front of a rather large rock - evidently a memorial of some kind. It is a gorgeous view of the water, with the Bridge on my right, and the sun setting on my left. One tall lone conifer is all that is between me and the sun, and sometimes i feel that if i could climb to the top i would be able to reach out and touch the last rays. Soon the light is gone and the bugs come out in full force. Back to the compound.