yes, because she didn't take the time to see whether or not she spelled their names correctly

Agreed, etaoin. Let's call it contributory negligence with the lion's share of the blame falling on those who commissioned the work without reviewing and approving a final design in advance, and without monitoring the progress of the work or conducting a final inspection.

No doubt, Maria and the library have both learned a valuable lesson from this.

But the greatest benificiary of this artistic oops (as the newspaper called it) is the municipality of Livermore, California, which now has a $40,000 mural and a busload-a-day tourist attraction completely funded by the national media, all achieved at a 15% premium over the original cost of the artwork.

Maria Aquilera has put Livermore, California on the map. They should open up a Maria Aquilera Museum and sell postcards showing the original misspellings. I'm not kidding!

And this says nothing of the profound impact Maria's artwork has had, and will continue to have, on the cause of literacy and proper spelling.

"Why is proper spelling important?" Just ask Maria Aquilera.

If all the stakeholders in this "artistic oops" got their heads together - the librarian, the municipality and Maria herself - Maria Aquilera could become a willing and sympathetic national poster figure for the importance of book learning and proper english, and, last but not least, for the importance of dominant-culture sensitivity in a multicultural society.