Story Out of Place

Libraries, on the one hand, are places to find hard facts, the truth of a matter in proven historical or scientific terms. They are also places to find enjoyable and self-fulfilling stories, often fiction, sometimes inspirational, maybe all in one bite. Except for the fiction part, daily TV news reporting fits the description, too, but bites can sometimes unduly lean to the latter rather than the former even while trying to track a truth. I think that I recently experienced just such an example in person. A Pittsburgh TV camera crew was in town one morning to get material for the imminent closing of an IGA grocery store, a central fixture for many years in its community. I happened to be in the store at just the slow-patronage moment that the crew was in search of interviewees. I be…