Karen Greene is seriously low-tech.
She doesn’t have a computer at home. No TV either. She doesn’t even own — gasp! — a smartphone. She does, however, carry a 9-year-old Samsung flip phone. For emergencies.
“I have called AAA with it,” she admits.
No texting, though. Ever.
Full disclosure: She has a Facebook account. Her last post was in December…. 2015.
Greene doesn’t even wear a watch.
The 48-year-old longtime Tucsonan shrugs off that one. “There are always clocks around.”
So, what does she do with all that spare time she doesn’t spend posting pictures of her dinner on social media? She’s active in the community helping people reconnect the old-fashioned way: face-to-face.
She does it at her job, too.
Karen the Librarian — her self-given job title is Librarian on the Move — works at the Joel D. Valdez Main Library downtown, where she’s volunteer coordinator, staffs the reference desk and helps people with job searches. She says she spends the rest of her time on the clock “scheming.” Her biggest scheme to date: the Bookbike.
Now in its fifth year, the book mobile — which has grown from one to a fleet of three, non-motorized cargo bicycles — pedals free donated books and sometimes even reading glasses around town. Staff and volunteers keep the cycles with the blue, wooden boxes rolling out to a wide range of places, including a farmers market, senior housing complexes, a soup kitchen, and a drop-in center for LGBTQ youth.
“I love it,” says Greene, who rides the bike, which can carry 200 pounds of books, to the Armory Park Senior Center once a month.
She knows the regulars and keeps an eye out for their favorite genres. One woman who enjoys religious books still talks about a book Greene pulled for her three years ago.
“It’s this mutual benefit,” says Greene, who started her career as a middle-school librarian. “It feels good. You are making a difference in someone’s life.”
Contrary to her mostly screen-shunning ways of today, Greene grew up in Philadelphia glued to the tube.
“I watched so much TV on Saturday mornings,” she says. “My parents had to shove me outside.”
She didn’t have a television in college and then didn’t miss it once she was in library school.
“I always loved reading,” says Greene, who recently plowed through “The Girl on the Train” in a single day.
Her literary tastes are all over the map, but no westerns. Hard pass.
When she’s not riding her Electra Townie three-speed with the flower-festooned basket to work, she’s behind the wheel of a 2000 Suparoo, as she calls it, a formerly plain green Subaru Outback that her artistic friends plastered with children’s book characters like the Very Hungry Caterpillar and Captain Underpants.
Karen the Librarian promotes alternatives to tech in her social life, too.
Community Karen is active in her neighborhood association and the Lions Club. She runs Adult Spelling Bee, held at Tap & Bottle on the second Tuesday of the month, and launched the year-old Analog Hour. It takes place on the third Sunday at both Tap & Bottle and neighboring coffee house Exo Roast Co. The tech-free time is designed to get people off their devices and engage in some crafting, coloring, conversation or reading something from the Bookbike, which makes guest appearances at the event.
“I love Karen Greene,” says Rebecca Safford, who with her husband, Scott, owns the TV-free tap room and bottle shop at 403 N. Sixth Ave. “She is awesome. She is a champion for getting people to read and turn off their phones and to do things that are different. I just appreciate her so much.”
Safford says as business owners, she and her husband struggle with shutting off their tech. But since they’re parents of a 2-year-old daughter, they’re mindful of how much time they spend online.
“Events like Analog Hour, Spelling Bee, they show people, hey, there are other things that are entertaining than what’s on a screen.”
Greene’s piano-tuner husband, Dan Davis, a mandolin player and singer-songwriter, wrote a song called “Everyone Is Looking Down.” Davis is in a local band called, wait for it, The Determined Luddites.
When their 9-year-old granddaughter visits from California in the summer, their tech-free adventures include riding bikes, cooking and hiking.
Kids are indoctrinated at such a young age to turn to tech for entertainment and that has Greene worried.
“I think sometimes the art of just regular conversation is lost,” she says.
One thing’s for sure: All the low-tech training will serve her well in the event of an apocalypse that wipes out all technological advances.
“I’m not going to have withdrawal when the zombies come,” she says, laughing. “I’ll be scared, but I won’t go through withdrawal.”
