Help! I Don't Know How To Be Without a Library.

From the Jackson County, Oregon web site, the final update for the night was posted just before midnight:

PRECINCTS COUNTED (OF 51) . . . . . . . . . . 51
REGISTERED VOTERS - TOTAL . . . . 110,952
BALLOTS CAST - TOTAL. . . . . . . . . . . . 58,588
VOTER TURNOUT - TOTAL . . . . . . . . . . 52.80%

15-75 Local Option Tax for Public Library Operations
JACKSON COUNTY

Yes . . . . . . . . . . . . 24,253 = 41.74%
No. . . . . . . . . . . . . 33,852 = 58.26%
Total. . . . . . . . . . . 58,105


We got the first half of the fifty-fifty requirement: The better than fifty percent turnout of registered voters. But for the second time in under a year, Jackson County, Oregon has said a resounding NO to a library funding levy.

It is going to take me a few hours, if not days to assimilate the understanding that I'll be without library resources for at least several more months. The earliest another measure can get on the ballot is September.

I don't know how to be without a library in my life!

My first memories of visiting the library are from the time my baby brother was still in a stroller. He was 22 months younger. So those memories go back to age three. I have very vivid memories of receiving my first library card at age five and then upgrading to a 13 year old's card with 'upstairs' privileges in the adult stacks. That was in Longview, Washington where I lived until I married just after my 21st birthday and since then I have lived and held cards in Oceanside, California,, Longview again, Jackson County, Oregon, Longview again, Sunnyvale, California and Jackson County again. During the late eighties I had a card with the Southern Oregon State College (now Southern Oregon University) in Ashland as well as the county card. In Longview in the late nineties I had a card with the Lower Columbia Community College as well as the city card.

Remind me again how I am supposed to do this. I know I worked out a plan and nothing has changed to alter its parameters, though there was a close call this past two weeks with the malware attack putting my laptop and relatively unhindered access to the Internet in jeopardy. Maybe I'll feel a bit better by tomorrow night, after I've had a chance to adjust to the let down of the slim hope I was holding onto; after I've had a chance to review my plan for how to live and continue my work for a time without library resources. It isn't a long-term plan though. If this is still going on a year from now I'll have to be reminded why I want to continue living in a community where vested interests are holding access to knowledge hostage and the majority of those who care enough to vote about it are A Ok with the idea.