Dear Eugene

Dear Eugene, Last night I watched a movie that I've meant to watch for a long time.   In fact I almost passed it up again: busyness, what else? Father Leary : I didn't realise you hated me that much. Father James Lavelle : I don't hate you, at all. Father Leary : Then, why? Father James Lavelle : It's just you have no integrity. That's the worst thing I could say about anybody. Yes, not that he is a heathen, an adulterer, or even a killer.  The worst thing that can be said about a man is that he has no integrity. What is integrity? It has to do I think with a man's reverence (for what?), what he deems sacred and how he lives into that conviction despite all the confusion and convulsion in life posing imminent threat to his living humanly. In the movie there is a brief image of one man leaning on a casket that will soon be loaded onto an airplane to take the body "back home," and another man talking to him, casually and inaudibly to t

Dear Eugene, It's not the first time I've called a book out of its morgue, a place to keep what is dead, pending final burial.  A morgue can also be a reference file in a newspaper office, collecting old clippings and books and such for future use, to move forward by looking back. Can you read the print on the sleeve?  It says: "Borrowers are responsible for returning this book in good condition.  Please examine before taking out and report any defacement."  Beneath it another line stamped on in all caps "OVERDUE FINES 10¢ PER DAY."  And the 10 was hand-printed over the original stamped 5.  That's an 100% increase. The world has become more user-friendly now, a kinder place.  The fine system still exists but only to embarrass the service-givers.  Nowadays if there's a late fee to collect a librarian would by default suggest it can be put off to the next visit in perpetuity.  We've paid enough tax to take care of matter of 5 and 10.