Absurdist Thinking

Jelani Cobb in a recent New Yorker Talk of the Town used the term "absurdist thinking." It makes me think of the Select Board information meeting on why the library should move - at least temporarily - to 18 Jacobs Road until Sawyer Hall is made ADA compliant. It is indeed absurdist argument for the library to stay where it is under present circumstances. Bill Lattrell put it succinctly when he pointed out that it is the law. To argue that we should ignore it, as we have done in the past, is to ignore the reason for the law: to make all public buildings accessible to everyone - not just the physically able. To deny people with wheelchairs or walkers access to the library, let alone the stacks themselves, is to discriminate. I little thought when we moved to Heath that this town we love so much would be guilty of such discrimination.  —Margaret H. Freeman