Asbury Park Press

At 6 a.m. on a recent Saturday, I walked out through the snow and was delighted, but not surprised, to find four double-bagged, dry newspapers had been delivered to my driveway. At 11:15, I drove out for a nice Korean lunch at So Gong Dong on Route 10. Soon after I got back home, my USPS carrier delivered my mail. At 3:45, I drove to the Morris County Library.

It was closed.

Doesn’t that evidence suggest newspaper deliverers, waitresses, chefs and postal carriers are all more dedicated to the people they serve than are Morris County Library employees?

That Saturday closing followed the library’s recent announcement they were closing three days (Dec. 24, 25 and 26) for Christmas, instead of the originally scheduled two days. I called the Morris County freeholders’ office for an explanation. Communications Director Larry Ragonese explained they added the Dec. 24 closure because they couldn’t get enough librarians to agree to work that day. Think of that next time someone tries to persuade you the library elite, those with Masters of Library Science degrees, are either dedicated to patrons or underpaid.

So, on that surprise-closure Saturday, some men were at work on the long-term-never-explained-to patrons-parking-complicating-construction-project. I walked to the front door to be sure the library was closed and, if so, if they’d put up an explanation of why they were closed or offer an expression of sympathy for those who’d driven there. There was neither. You might think common decency required both. Silly you. You’re not a library professional.

More cars were turning in. As I walked back to mine, I passed a man and his little boy getting out of theirs. I told them the library was closed. The father looked around and asked why. His young son, holding DVDs, looked up at me and said, “We have to get in! We have to get in!”

Next time you see a freeholder or a Morris County library professional, please ask him or her what he or she would have said to the father, and to the son.

Why am I angry about those closings?

It’s evidence the Founding Fathers were right to fear government would end up serving the government, rather than serving the people.

I’m old, and have a hatred of stupidity and waste anywhere. That’s an attitude once common among Americans, but now considered unsophisticated.

I’m addicted to reading. I’m aware of my ignorance, and trying to reduce it. I’m like musician Frank Zappa, of The Mothers of Invention, who said, “So many books, and so little time.” Blame it on my father, the one-time superintendent of schools in Berlin, N.H., who was a diligent, effective and inspiring administrator and a responsible parent, but always seemed happiest when he’d found a comfortable place to read.

I respect self-education. We’re a highly degreed and ignorant country. Colleges are turning out people who don’t like to read and have no interest in ideas. Libraries can help anyone anywhere learn anything. Our country was founded by highly educated people with little formal education, people who read and thought.

Unfortunately, government libraries and their employees are treated as sacred cows, above criticism. That’s wrong. Libraries are too important for us to let them, and let freeholders let them, be controlled by unionized MLSs, perhaps the most self-righteous of all greedy special-interest groups.

Terry Dwyer

MORRISTOWN