Apolitical Library Is Just Fiction

You’ve been reading a variant of this story for some time: A tiny three-book library in the remote Idaho hamlet of Yorrick faced cutbacks in 2025, threatening service to the four people who live there. “It’s not the worst that could happen,” said one resident at the time, “since we’ve all read the books a few times over, but the library was a place where we could all meet up, or would, if it wasn’t just a box under Gertrude’s porch.” But thanks to a grant from a little-known government agency without which life somehow would cease to be worth living, the town’s library not only got its budget restored, but enough money for two more books in 2027.

Now this agency, the National Fund for Sending Money All Over the Place, faces “chilling” ideological strictures from an administration seemingly bent on enforcing its ideas on the grant recipients.

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James Lileks

James Lileks blogs at www.lileks.com.

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You’ve been reading a variant of this story for some time: A tiny three-book library in the remote Idaho hamlet of Yorrick faced cutbacks in 2025, threatening service to the four people who live there. “It’s not the worst that could happen,” said one resident at the time, “since we’ve all read the books a few times over, but the library was a place where we could all meet up, or would, if it wasn’t just a box under Gertrude’s porch.” But thanks to a grant from a little-known government agency without which life somehow would cease to be worth living, the town’s library not only got its budget restored, but enough money for two more books in 2027.

Now this agency, the National Fund for Sending Money All Over the Place, faces “chilling” ideological strictures from an administration seemingly bent on enforcing its ideas on the grant recipients.