Chapter One - Why are the dots agitated?
Once upon a time there was a group of hard working, fun-loving dots in a large school district. They were smart and funny and played well with others. They labored, not on the front lines in the classrooms, but in the background, helping the district's school libraries to be rich and inviting places. School libraries use a lot of colored dots, so I'll introduce our dots by their colors. There was Blue, the leader; Purple, the web wizard; Turquoise, the video queen; Navy, the singer; Silver, the itinerant guru; Pink, the scribe; and finally, the learned Sage.
Summer, when schools are empty, Dotland is a busy place with all the dots scurrying around getting everything in place so all the librarians would come back to boxes of new books and videos to delight students in the coming months. One day, in the middle of this pleasant flurry, Blue got a call from a dreaded Black Dot, announcing that Dotland was GONE, destroyed in a flood of Bureaucracy emanating from Black Dot Castle. Since Blue was standing in the middle of Dotland, this was puzzling, but Blue was assured that FEMA would be there the very next day to rescue them... or something. This was before New Orleans, so Blue and her crew were still not unduly alarmed.
As promised, the very next day, FEMA and assorted Black Dots from Black Dot Castle arrived only to discover Blue and her crew busy rescuing themselves. They were armed with facts and figures, job descriptions and cost-benefits analyses, and had erected a sturdy dam of hard, sticky, inconvenient facts to hold out the ocean of Bureaucracy. Foiled, the Black Dots announced a year of "strategic planning, wherein all of Dotland's dams would be severely tested to determine whether or not they could hold up to coming storms of underfunding from the Realm.
Unable to weaken Dotlands dams, the Black Dots settled into a long campaign of harassment and , yes, agitating the Dots. Black Dot agents kept spreading the rumor that Dotland was gone, completely destroyed by FEMA. Blue and the other dots countered by posting pictures of their dams and details of their construction.
So it persisted through the year. The Black Dots armed with RightSizing Swords attacked DotLand repeatedly but always retreated from the sturdy shields of those inconvenient facts.
When summer came and Dotland's librarian friends scattered to the four winds, the Black Dot agents laid seige to Dotland with the dreaded 65% Solution. Our Dots are becoming very tired. The Black Dots are big and powerful. But does the Duke of Black Dot Castle know what his minions are doing? What about the peasants in the outside Realm? Would they be happy knowing that part of their hard earned tithe is going to pay for shipping and handling, when our Dots could bulk order to get free shipping? Our Dots truly believe that their cause is just and that saving the duchy purse 250000 coins a year in labor costs is important. Will they be able to break the seige? Will their Cloaks of Logic withstand the dreaded 65% Solution?
Stay tuned!