Last week voters in Salinas, Ca., approved adding half a cent to the sales tax to keep the town’s library open. Last year the public library almost closed after losing funding. “It really struck a chord on the national level, and we became a poster child for the decline and fall of Western civilization. There was the irony of it being Steinbeck’s hometown and all that stuff, and it did begin to represent something larger than just Salinas losing its libraries.”