Hearing Problem

I've been meaning to tell my favorite story of the past couple of weeks and for some reason when I sit down to blog, I forget.

As I reported not too long ago, we are working with a library in Greenwich Village that is trying to upgrade (add a teen area, improve wheelchair access, etc...). However, in Greenwich Village nothing is easy and there is a sect of radical senior citizens that is violently opposed to any changes in their library. (In fairness, they are worried about it being closed for a while during construction, but these people would be opposed to replacing one of those library "learn to read posters" with a Rembrandt.)

So, I headed down to this community meetings filled with septuagenarians acting like coyotes. The minute the library staff introduced the plan the seniors pounced. Screaming, swearing, interrupting -- it felt like one of those scenes from Asian parliament that eventually break down into an all out brawl. Check your civility and your walker at the door.

The library staff and the others that were leading the meeting didn't have a chance. Unfortunately they engaged the seniors in screaming back and threatened to cancel the meeting all together. Perhaps I'm a bad person, but I was loving every minute of this -- if I only had a bowl of popcorn.

There were a couple of quotes from the night that I really loved.

After the library announced that they would have to close the library in phases for the construction an old woman stood up and screamed out:
"There goes the Village"

In response to the potential teen area, one woman proclaimed:
"Teens are going to be having sex in the library"

and my favorite ---

There was a person who is deaf sitting in the front of the room and lip reading, the library staff announced that they were going to repeat an announcement
"Because a person with a hearing problem didn't catch it the first time around" after that, an old man screamed out, and I do mean screamed.
"He deaf, he doesn't have a hearing problem, he's deaf"

I don't know about you, but to me that seems like quite a hearing problem.