Elisabeth Riba links to Teresa Nielsen Hayden quoting from Mike Harris’ blog reprint of a Vanity Fair article. From that tangled web, we get this gem about the Ashcroft family’s attitude toward libraries:
Janet Ashcroft somehow acquired the same high-handed reputation. “It was Mother’s Day, a Sunday, 1990, when I was called by my staff; who told me Mrs. Ashcroft wanted the Missouri State Library opened,� recalls Monteria Hightower, who was then state librarian. Assuming the governor’s wife wanted to show visitors around (“and that I could make a pitch for new computers,� she adds, chuckling), Hightower left her family at home and hurried to unlock the darkened library. She found Janet, outside in a car with a driver, accompanied only by a boy of 12. With astonishment, she heard Janet’s reason for her Sunday appearance at the library: “I want to find something on the Elizabethan era for my son’s homework assignment.�
Now this is petty!
A link to a link to a link 14 years old about Ashcroft’s wife? Get a life. Move this one to your journal if you think it is newsworthy on a library site.
Story
I thought the story was news worthy. The story did not claim to be current. It indicated that the event happened in 1990. I also think that it is still relevant if you were to judge the character or Mrs. Ashcroft. People tend to get set in their ways. If she had the attitude then that the world revolved around her she probably still thinks it does.
Troll
Get a life. Move this one to your journal if you think it is newsworthy on a library site.
Now there’s a troll if I ever saw one.
Re:Troll
I read the Mike Harris rant. And the silly Vanity Fair (has he ever heard of copyright?) smear piece. In fact, he laughs at copyright in his remarks.
The whole mess of links belongs in a journal/blog; it just isn’t library news. Just because some librarians are paranoid about Ashcroft, doesn’t mean we need to pass along silly gossip, “and ya’ know then she said” from vacuous slick infotainment or every smear piece about Ashcroft. Some librarians are poor housekeepers, but we don’t regularly include posts from FlyLady.com.
Judy Bacharach
who wrote the Vanity Fair article practically oozes hatred for all things Christian, which seems to be her main gripe about Ashcroft
LISnews has “news” and space for individual comments and ramblings. Someone didn’t know the difference when this was posted as news.
Point of Fact
Monteria Hightower was not a nonpartisan bystander when at her post. This may explain her acrimony for the Aschrofts.
Fervently Democratic, she later got in hot water when she hired the daughter of the Deputy Secretary of State as a research assistant. Nice gesture however the young woman had no library experience. None.
This was a big deal in the Show-Me-State as I was living down the road in Columbia at the time.
My point, I doubt if Ms. Hightower would have had a problem “opening the shop” if the Carnahan’s had come to visit on Sunday.
Partisan politics…simple.
Patron Expectations
It just boils down to the issue of people thinking we should be open at their beck and call. Obviously, Janet Ashcroft was an exception in that they opened the library for her, due to her husband’s position. How many parents out there have asked us to let little Johnny or Cindy Lou stay after closing to finish an assignment, and expressed outrage and disbelief when we said, “Sorry, we’re closed?”
Re:Now this is petty!
The event was 14 years old, but Vanity Fair‘s reporting of it is current. It’s from the February issue.
I was amused by the route by which it came to me, but I also wanted to point out that it was brought to my attention by way of two bloggers I greatly respect. I’ve also seen the story in at least one other library blog, not posted by me.