I like what Michael Levitin said early on about Occupy Wall Street’s reason for being.  “We are showing up and speaking to each other. It’s first about participation.”

He’s right. People are not staying home and feeling lousy, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. They’re showing up and talking and it feels pretty good.

I know Michael.  His mother is a friend.  He went to high school nearby. He’s a free lance journalist, a well-educated young man, accustomed to unsteady employment in an endangered profession. He was enroute to Europe when he stopped over in New York and went to Zuccotti Park to check out the gathering. He ended up becoming an editor for the Occupy Wall Street Journal. We’re all proud of him and delighted that he snagged such a great journalism job. And in print, of all things.

Now in its second month, the occupation is being pressured to declare itself. What do you want? How would you fix it? It’s sort of a put-up or shut-up challenge.

Ah, let’s see now. What wisdom have we heard from on high lately? All the king’s horses and all the king’s men – including a bunch of those one percent people – haven’t been able to put this country back together again. In fact, they’ve pretty much let Americans down. But they want to know what big idea the protesters have.

It’s pretty clear what the big shots want -  more money and more power. And how they would fix things? They wouldn’t.

What do the occupiers want? So far most still want a place to get together, a park near Wall Street or in front of city hall. That worries some people. How long will they be there? What will they do next? But others find it thrilling to finally have a common listening post.

I was away for the first country-wide occupation in mid-October. My husband and daughter sent videos of the one they attended in Santa Rosa, the sixth largest Occupy event in the nation that weekend.  I flashed them a virtual peace sign.

But recently I stood with a small group at the town square in my town of  Sebastopol on a rainy Saturday. They were trading ideas on forming Occupy Sebastopol. There were students, hikers, teachers, retirees, some city council members, business owners, poets and long haired hippies. They looked just like our town.

It was decided to establish a presence at the square but not interfere with the farmers market which dominates that space very Sunday. Overnight, like mushrooms, half a dozen tents sprung up in a corner of the square and that morning the market went on as usual. All in one place – your late tomatoes, your squash, your protest signs.

I complimented the market’s director on achieving peaceful co-existence and she said, “This way I get to occupy and work at the same time.” An apple seller was excited about young people asking for a better shot at the future. “We had our turn,” she said. “Now it’s theirs.”

The occupy movement is making a lot of people more hopeful than they’ve been in a long time. For all our lives we’ve heard that Americans are better off than everybody else in the world. But a recent survey showed what we knew in our stomachs. Things have been way off.

New York Times columnist Charles M. Blow wrote about a German study by the Bertelsmann Shiftung Foundation in a piece titled America’s Exploding Pipe Dream. The survey showed that compared to other countries the U.S. has a social justice rating that is practically rock bottom. We have greater income inequality than most countries. Our overall poverty prevention rating is lousy. We have dismal child poverty rates and are not so good about taking care of senior citizens.

Can Occupy fix any of that? I don’t know, but like my friend Al said, “In the immortal words of Stephen Stills, “Something’s happening here.”

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A bouquet of daffodils sat on the library’s front desk Monday morning. It was a burst of sunny hope on a black news day. That morning’s newspaper reported that Sonoma County libraries, including ours in Sebastopol, are the latest victims of budget cuts and will be slicing hours and personnel. And the library will be closed on Mondays.

Mondays are our library days. Addison’s and mine. Our granddaughter is almost five and has been coming to our house in Sebastopol every Monday since she was a baby. From the time she gave up her morning nap, she and I have made the library our Monday morning ritual.

I counted roughly 40 customers when the library opened on that bad news Monday. Lots of familiar and long faces.

Addison and I walk to the library on Mondays. She waves hello to the front desk and she goes to the right to find her books – she’s now into the I Can Read, beginning series. I turn left to the reserved section and we meet at a couch in the children’s corner to read. Then we check out, stop at the fountain out front to toss in pennies and make wishes, head over to the cookie store and visit a few shops on the way home.

The library is pivotal. When I forget it’s a Monday holiday and we arrive to find a “closed” sign we’re both disappointed. The first time it happened she asked, “How can a library be closed?” as if it was the most bewildering betrayal.

Come the next Monday she walked in and said, “We missed you guys” to her friends at the front desk.

Painful cuts caused by reduced tax revenues have caught up with the library. The cutbacks will include layoffs and affect children’s programs and class visits. Like with everything else that serves the public good now being axed we are urged to recognize that tough times require necessary sacrifices until things get back to normal.

Libraries are our normal. They’re such predictable civilized places. Business is conducted in soft voices. Well-behaved children are as welcome as well-behaved adults to browse and read and take home books. Return in three weeks. It’s an excellent place to teach little kids to respect other people’s privacy and property, called a lending library because its books are to be shared, not scribbled in, nor lost under a bed.

Addison and I are part of the library community. The librarians comment on her book choices and her colorful fashion sense – the purple striped dress with leopard tights was a big hit. Once we met a man from another town who forgot his library card but could still get books because he’d memorized all 12 numbers on his card.

When her baby brother Theo was born Addison announced it to everyone in line at the checkout desk. Theo was going to be our next Monday regular but given the news, that probably won’t happen.

Book-wise our grandkids will be okay. They have enough relatives who love to read and give books as presents. But we’ll miss our Library Mondays.

The economy is hurting everyone but I don’t think cutting here, slashing there is forward-thinking. We keep hearing about how we must cut spending now in order to protect our grandchildren’s future. But what kind of future are we giving them by whittling away at libraries and schools and swim centers?

Addison’s future is now. Addison’s future is next Monday.

TO LOCALS: That said, here’s one way to help the libraries. On April 23 the Sonoma County Public Library Foundation and the Sonoma County Book Festival will put on a dinner featuring more than a dozen Bay Area authors. You get to drink wine, mingle and dine with well known writers inside the downtown Santa Rosa library. For information and tickets go to the Sonoma County Public Library Foundation website, www.scplf.org.

The California ex-pats have settled into the Pacific Northwest just fine. They have a cozy house, interesting friends and a new life in Port Townsend, Wash. They had been living with the rest of us in Sonoma County, the chosen spot on earth, as far as nature is concerned, as stated by no less than Luther Burbank. But was it enough for them? No, they had to go and choose a new paradise.

It’s bittersweet when old friends move away. You get everyone in their places, establish your A-friends list and then somebody breaks up the old gang – goes off on vacation, discovers a dream spot in a charming village, comes back, sells the house and too bad about you.

It’s more disturbing than a colleague suddenly emptying his cubby. How come he’s moving on and you’re not? It makes you question your own contented state.

But you do the going-away parties and wave goodbye with a touch of envy, admiration and crossed fingers that they’ve made the right leap. (If it’s a flop they can always come back.)

The good thing about friends of long-standing is that even when the location changes the people don’t. I’d know their home anywhere. There would be at least two cats hanging around. Family photos of three boys on the wall. There’d be her funky old living room lamp with the thick fringe that looks like a giant Vietnamese sunhat. He’d have his truck and now a tractor. There would be home-made trail mix, Bon Appetit dinners, antique roses and sweet peas which stay lush into the fall without the frying California heat.

It is reassuring to know that people in late middle age can fearlessly pack up and move on to a new adventure.

They have thrived in their corner of the Olympic Peninsula. They have become sailors. She did her first triathlon, urged on by new friends she met at the gym. He became a crabber. She plays her cello in a community orchestra. They did not become survivalists.

Their new home is a Victorian seaport town but it is not a strange, exotic land. The political and art community and strong hippie heritage make it almost a match for what my friends left behind. The Saturday morning Port Townsend farmer’s market feels and looks like the Sunday market in Sebastopol with everything from lavender to tamales and people talking up the joys of slow food.

They didn’t even have to adapt to a new dress code, except to add sturdier rain gear. Casual outdoors trumps high fashion, just like in West Sonoma County. Fleece and jeans are de rigueur. It is said the only person to regularly wear a suit in Port Townsend is her honor, the mayor.

Our former Californians say that every so often they’ll see a familiar scene of the old surroundings and feel a twinge of homesickness. They love their Doug firs and Cedars but miss the redwoods. A movie shot of the Golden Gate Bridge can send a pang.

We brought them two loaves of sourdough. In exchange they provided sightings of bald eagles, a hot tub that looks into a forest, a film festival, a side trip to glaciers, crab cakes and an introduction to Working Girl White, the local wine.

It’s regrettable when good friends move away. But the pain is lessened when they choose well and add on a guest cabin.