Marian the Librarian would be shocked

One of my favorite musicals is "The Music Man," the tale of a con man, "Professor" Harold Hill, who sells a skeptical town in Iowa on buying musical instruments for town's children and creating a band for them. Harold Hill, played on Broadway and in a 1962 film adaptation by the late Robert Preston, eventually falls in love with a very prim librarian named Marian Paroo.

One of the numbers in the show, "Marian the Librarian," has Professor Hill leading the teen-agers in the staid, "no-talking-please" library in a wild dance around the stacks and the reading tables. Marian is first shocked, then she joins Hill in dancing.

Fast forward to 2014. Another Marian is in charge of the library. Would she be shocked seeing her library studded with naked men? Maybe she might go up to one and kiss him. Maybe not. In any event, we'd probably enjoy seeing the men much more than she would anyway.

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