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Help stock our public school libraries

Barnes & Noble Booksellers, the national chain with stores in several Tennessee cities, was appalled at studies showing that the state’s public school libraries are among the nation’s worst. The bookstore chain determined that if every one of our schools met the minimum state requirement of 12 books per enrolled student, Tennessee would still fall in the bottom half of U.S. states as far as their school libraries go. So Barnes & Noble came up with a project that may rectify that embarrassing situation.

It’s conducting a book drive and book fairs with the goal of bringing the public school libraries into the best equipped 10 percent, nationwide, in five years.

Metro Pulse is a co-sponsor, along with TVA, of the local Top Ten in 2010, arranged by Barnes & Noble to stock up the public school libraries in Knoxville and, eventually, all across the state.

The drive begins officially here this week and runs through Aug. 6. Knox County Schools’ libraries have provided wish lists that will be available at Barnes & Noble for customers who wish to buy a book from the lists at a special discount and donate it to a school library. Already, many businesses and community organizations have donated books or pledged to contribute to the local drive.

It’s not just newspapers and book dealers who benefit from better school libraries and reading programs. It’s everyone in the community—everyone who wishes for a more productive future—whose kids’ and grandkids’ lots in life will be improved as their public school libraries are improved. It’s a matter of fact. Better students, and ultimately better citizens, come from schools with better libraries.

An uplifting ‘jail’ experience

When the Metro Pulse editor was in jail the other day, it set him to thinking about Doc Simpson, the wonderfully earthy former West High School principal who died in the 1980s of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) mere months after his retirement, and of other friends and friends of friends who had suffered debilitating and eventually deadly degenerative conditions. There was Ronnie, one of his best friend’s sons, who barely made it past age 12. A boy with a beautiful mind—a great fan of baseball and other sports, he withered away and died of Muscular Dystrophy without ever playing the games he loved. So, jail was depressing, but it was energizing, too.

It was uplifting because it became readily evident how easily members of this community are rallied to a good cause. The editor raised his “bail” in the form of contributions to the Muscular Dystrophy Association, which stages an annual “lock-up” event to raise money to support victims of all neuromuscular disorders—43 in all, affecting people of all ages—and the research needed to find their cures.

With a quick canvass of MP staff members, most of whose generosity and sensitivity to incurable conditions exceeds their income, and a few phone calls to associates across the Knoxville community, $700 was raised for the MDA’s work. The editor and other volunteer “detainees” who did time on the phones in the lock-up at the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame last week raised about $34,000.

It was part of a nationwide drive that raises money for research, of course, an outlay of more than $30 million a year. But it also was to pay the costs of more personal needs, such as diagnostic consultations, physical therapy, wheelchairs or leg braces, camps for kids, support group meetings and education.

The Knoxville chapter of the MDA provides a clinic at St. Mary’s Hospital and arranges for a summer camp at Gainsboro, Tenn., among its many forms of assistance.

The theory behind the sort of campaign for donations that the lockup represents is that, in the words of the MDA, “Personal contact produces more generous results.” It certainly does. No one who had not contributed through some other jailbird turned the editor down. They all gave some sum, mostly small, but some surprisingly large.

Doc Simpson, who was known and respected all over the state as a high school football and basketball official as well as all over Knoxville as a principal, would have been proud. The editor sure was.

July 8, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 28 © 2004 Metro Pulse