Can we say it was a mistake? 
For it was a mistake.

The goal is undeniably grand, and good. 
The means have left much to be desired. 

We poisoned our hand before we played it.  We were approached singly, charmed in confidence, the stranger was beguiling, and we embraced.  For the love of selfish confidence, we spoke neither our fortune nor our misgivings with our neighbors or our friends.  We felt special, invited to loud weddings on far away islands of adventure; in the quiet we may wonder if we were given broken jewelry. 

We could have chosen to question the worth of the marriage under the terms offered.  We might have chosen to hold off the sequined cloaks of confidence that wrapped our suitor’s gifts.  The glamour of it!  Yet we knew there were other wives already, and we might have joined them in union, consulted openly, wondered what would be best for all instead of merely ourselves; but our concerns were narrow.  In our selfishness, and wrapped in the fears we were given, we re-wrote and redefined our aims, misplaced our responsibilities, allowed the light and glory of the ideal to suffuse its glow over the bargain’s deficits. 

Even individually, we might have said, this is not right.   None of us spoke openly; nor did I.  Private conversations spiced with the pleasure of secrecy are to be judged harshly and are not worth their echoes. Misgivings spoken as whispers are hollow if they could have been voiced out loud, and were not.  These were not.  Contract and Confidence are brittle prisons but proved effective; the glassy bars were steel to us, when they might have been shattered.

We might have chosen to be forthright.  We could have dealt with the issues before us and engaged with the publishers and writers ourselves.  Re-written the script given us, spoken with truth and openness, called for action, seized the defining of the future, acknowledged the company of commerce in the aim but broken with the duplicity and the conniving.  Striven for leadership and not fallen into compliance with only shadows of struggle for our gain. 

Can we say it?  The deals are not fair.  We were taken advantage of.  We are asked to be grateful for something wondrous where we could have achieved more for ourselves and demanded more from others.  We let this happen and we should not have.   Now we must count on the beneficence of others. We need speak of the bitterness, laugh at our own stupidity, and move forward. 

Let us re-write the rules for the future. 

Regardless of what is given us, whenever we might feel grateful for the generosity of the enriched, we must still own the defining of our expectations.  We will write a new dialogue.  There are bigger things yet to lose, and the losing, we have learned, is easy.   We have demonstrated that to ourselves; never before having had to worry about loss, never knowing it was really possible, we did not question the taking.  

It is not too late for us – libraries, museums, and non-profit presses – to reassert the validity of our aims, our missions, and our expectations.  Sunderings will yet arise.  They might come from outside our domain; they might come from within.  We might welcome the opportunities their arrival will provide. 

Individual privileges do not sum to a union.  We must speak hard truths together, or we speak only words falling to dust.  It is time for us to gather.  Wives, and ladies waiting, we must gather and speak.

[FN. Please also see a follow up posting, ... "A Reprise with Clarity."  20070309].