I was glad to open the New York Times last Monday and see the headline: “In Steinbeck’s Birthplace, a Fight to Keep the Libraries Open.” After visiting Salinas, Calif., over the weekend, I was eager to find out whether the disturbing and uplifting events there would gain any significant national coverage.

It was a close call. Other than the medium-length Times article, accompanied by a photo of an 8-year-old girl standing next to an endangered library, the media coverage was sparse. And the Times piece -- while doing a good job of focusing on the danger that all three public libraries in Salinas might close by midyear -- bypassed the connections that many participants in a 24-hour “read-in” had made between lavish spending on war overseas and a funding crisis for libraries at home.

Through the night’s darkness, on an outer wall of the Cesar Chavez Library, a projection showed the mounting revenues from Salinas taxpayers that have helped to pay for the war in Iraq -- already more than $80 million. The odometer image kept spinning while authors read into the night as part of the protest against the planned closure of the public libraries

I celebrate your new robotic fleet,
the unmanned killer plane technology.
Behind a far-off screen controllers mete
out surprise attack on unsuspecting enemy.
They continue to war, denying defeat,
and punishing us for the philanthropy,
of our reward expectant GOP elite.
I too face hidden bombers I can’t see,
when I patrol that same endangered street,
so I need  robots who will die for me.

Even if you've heard more than enough about Terry Schiavo, it seems useful to consider why Bush's political grandstanding backfired. Over seventy percent of Americans, including solid majorities of self-described evangelicals, opposed the intervention of the White House and Congress. Those surveyed mistrusted the Bush administration's blatant disregard for local control, the rule of law, and the right to be protected from a capricious federal government.

Their responses also speak to a broader shift in how we deal with difficult end-of-life issues. For twenty years, gradually increasing majorities have agreed that for all our technological inventiveness, what some people need most is the right to die in peace.

You'd think that this belief--that the most difficult intimate decisions must be our own--would also raise support for maintaining the right to abortion. But it hasn't. In the 30 years since Roe v. Wade, support for keeping abortion legal, and without onerous restrictions, has stayed even, at most, and new onerous restrictions keep getting imposed.

The difference comes, I suspect, from the stories we tell-and those we keep

AUSTIN -- Why in the name of sanity, you may ask, should an aging, overweight spinster like myself agree to go bungee jumping with her nephew? My fellow aunts will understand immediately, however, when I explain that the nephew in question is 15, wears his baseball hat backward and has attitude.

As a veteran aunt (helped raise one set of two, am working on the next set of three), I have been enjoying my recent stint as non-parent in residence. Being an aunt is a great gig. You get to hand the kids back at the end of a week or a month, so discipline is not your problem. Veteran aunts never insist on vegetables or museums. Aunts without children of their own have an extra edge, since we're not really, exactly grown-ups. As permanent non-parents, we can still side with kids. We can Mame it up all we want. (All this may hold true for uncles as well. I'm just not well-informed on that angle.)