Hard Times

You can't help feeling it, if you work in a public library as I do, where so many come for help:  a sense of desperation.

A man who remembers me, though I don't recognize him, asks if we have case law bulletins.  No, we don't have any case law, just the Florida Statutes and the Rules of Court.  I suggest the State Supreme Court library, down the street.  He says he has lost his job with the Department of Revenue.  He had thought he was safe. He looks about my age, in his fifties.  Who will want to hire him?   A lot of people here in the state capital are sharing his pain now, as cuts to state agencies take effect.

Outside on the first floor landing, I overhear a black woman shout into her phone, "I have zero in my bank account!  Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero!"

I remember telling the man cutting my hair back in the mid-nineties, the Clinton years, that we would remember those years as the good times, and I was right.