Field Guide: What Do Federal Cuts Mean for Local Libraries?

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Hi! Happy weekend.

It’s lovely outside; I’m enjoying it despite the pear-colored film covering my car. (From the archives: A guide to pollen season). Hope you are too!

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival takes place in downtown Durham next weekend. Here’s why I’m excited—I probably don’t need to remind you that we’re in a heightened era of political repression, journalism defanging, and empathy-killing creative atrophy, but I think documentaries are a deft tool for meeting the moment.

Here’s a peek at the lineup: 

Thematically, several films orbit the past and present politics of Eastern Europe; four are about Ukraine. Several are about democracy. Several more are about climate change, if by different names. One is about childhood fears and the lurking shadows around the corner, imaginary or real (or, both at the same time?); others invite deep contemplation about sexuality, illness, and aging. Two kinds of bears, both quite different, have titular prominence. Romance factors, if in lowercase. All films, ultimately, tell us a little more about the world we live in.

Are you going and if so, what’s on your list? Beyond the films on this list, I also have my eye on Apocalypse in the Tropics; Coexistence, My Ass!; Seeds; Spit on the Broom; and Where Dragons Live. We’ll be running a few interviews with filmmakers from the festival next week. 

More from the culture section below.

elsewhere in the culture section

Cultural institutions, ranging from the Kennedy Center to local libraries, are under attack from the Trump administration. On the heels of a March 14 executive order that called for the elimination of “non-statutory components and functions” at the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), which administers grants to museums and libraries across the country—a budget line item that makes up less than 0.003 percent of the federal budget.

The administration has also appointed a new acting head at IMLS, Keith E. Sonderling, who has promised to “restore focus on patriotism” at the agency. (If it is unclear what does not constitute patriotism, a February 27 order makes it clear.)

OK, so what does all this mean for North Carolina libraries? Local libraries are funded by a mix of county and city taxes, but special programs and initiatives are often funded by IMLS grants. This can seem abstract, so I broke down some of the programming that has been funded—and often concentrated in rural communities—across the state. 

Here’s a fun republished story from our partners at the Assembly profiling the first man on the N.C. State dance team. Go Wolfpack! Lena Geller did an interesting interview with retiring restaurant lobbyist Lynn Minges, probing her about aspects of the hospitality industry like the state’s low minimum wage and ICE raids.

Also, I interviewed writer Lauren Christensen about Firstborn, her memoir on a much-wanted pregnancy that had to be terminated when she discovered that her daughter was dying in the womb and her own life was in danger. Because Christensen and her husband Gabriel Bump lived in North Carolina at the time, where the law restricts abortions (back then after 20 weeks; now, 12 weeks), they had to travel out of the state for the procedure. I found the memoir candid, gripping, and a refreshing perspective on a grief not often put into words. 

ICYMI: Goodbye Brunello Wine Bar / Art in Bloom / Cornbread flights in Chapel Hill

— Sarah Edwards —
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