Conference report, day one

I'm blogging tonight from a terminal in the coffeeshop of the very swanky Grand Traverse Resort. Not a whole lot to report, other than an uneventful trip and the first half of a preconference program called Poetry in the Branches. The most entertaining, if not necessarily the most useful, parts of the program were the occasional brief writing exercises. The first was to write a short poem addressing an audience and telling them to do something. Here's my rather uninspired free-verse offering:

An address to the audience

You with vacant eyes
waiting sadly in your chair
for beauty or vitality
to enter, by the ears or by the eyes,
that closely guarded chamber of your skull:
Hey! You! Get off your ass!
Write! Speak! Do!

The second was to respond to Kim Addonizio's "What Do Women Want?" and the third was to write something beginning with the phrase "I want...." I cheated and combined the two:

What Do Men Want?

I want a red convertible.
V-8, dual pipes, standard shift.
Four on the floor. Oh, yeah!
Roaring down the road
without a care, without a worry,
without a payment or insurance bill,
without paying for the gas.
Driving in the sun along the California coast.
And when it rains...

Hm.

No. I want a red truck!
4x4. Ground clearance. Yeah!
Now we're talkin'! In my red truck,
I'll go anywhere! And everywhere!
Up hill, down hill, through the woods, through the mud.
More powerful than any other driver on the road,
except...

Hm.

I want a red tractor-trailer.
Now we're talkin' power! Air horns!
I'll roam the country as I please.
No one gives me orders! I'm an independent man!
No one gives me orders!

(Except for that woman in the red dress.)

Not exactly masterpieces, but they kept me entertained.

Now I'm off to see if I can find the considerably cheaper hotel where I'll actually sleep tonight, perhaps a nice restaurant, perhaps a beach or bluff looking west over the lake so can feel all romantic and Byronesque and stuff as the sun sets and the full moon floats overhead.

And I'm off again...

... to beautiful Traverse City, on the shoreline of Lake Michigan, for the state library conference. No doubt its proceedings will be enlightening as all get-out, but I'm actually looking forward to a few days of comparative relaxation. For once, I'll have my evenings free to wander on the beach, watch TV, read a few books, or do whatever else takes my fancy. I have a sneaking suspicion that I will be sick-unto-death of the area's cherry fetish by the time I get back. (Cherry fudge, cherry salsa, cherry hamburgers...)

Depending on availability of internet connectivity, I may or may not be able to check e'mail and do blog updates from T.C.

In case you ever wondered...

... about Lynne Cheney's lost and long-out-of-print literary masterpiece, Sisters, www.whitehouse.org is auctioning off a signed copy and has posted copious excerpts online.

Also available online: an extended summary of John Kerry's lost and long-out-of-print book The New Soldier.

Both books are scarce and drawing high prices on the secondhand market, in case anyone's lucky enough to own one. But Your Humble Correspondent predicts a rapid fall in demand for one or the other in one week.

Dammit.

The Libertarian candidate for president came to Huron State, and I missed it. Dammit.

A startling moment

While driving back from Missouri, I stopped at a gas station near Indianapolis. While filling the tank, I popped the hood and checked the oil. Consternation! There was no oil to be seen! I could see the entire length of the dipstick, right down to the very end! Was I running without any oil at all? What new disaster was this?

Running a finger down the length of the dipstick, I realized that it was indeed coated with oil. Clean, translucent oil. Oil that I could see through. After driving that truck for eight years, I had forgotten that engine oil could look like anything other than opaque black sludge.

Blogger back briefly again

Back from the Ozarks again, this time with grand-dads car safely in hand. No doubt about it, it's a land yacht (like this one); however, it seems to be a smooth-riding and mechanically solid land yacht, and it's a definite improvement over relying over Ol' Whitey, who seems to be experiencing grave medical difficulties and is currently parked with the transmission firmly stuck in second gear.

A couple of vignettes from the bus trip:

* * * * *

Waiting at the decrepit, crumbling A-squared bus depot for an hour and a half after the bus was scheduled to arrive, with temperatures dropping and dampness descending out of the darkening sky. Being asked, repeatedly, by a woman with a foreign accent, whether I knew when the bus was going to arrive. Chatting with a cabbie who parked his vehicle under the depot's unused loading bay and cheerfully informed everybody in earshot that the buses had been known to run two hours late, that at the rate things were going, nobody would make their Chicago connections, and that he had "often" taken people to Chicago to make their connections after they missed trains or buses. According to him, the bus company would reimburse any such fare. Uh huh.

* * * * *

"Pardon me, is this seat taken?"

"Uh huh. My friend's sitting there."

(After the bus pulls away from the depot with the seat still unoccupied)

"I'm sorry to see that your friend apparently missed the bus."

"Wha? You talkin' ta me? There weren't no friend! I just did'n wan' you sittin' there! HAW, HAW!!!"

* * * * *

The Chicago terminal is reasonably modern and clean and bustling, but the St. Louis terminal is surrounded by what looks like a bombed-out postapocalyptic disaster area. It's a pity, since the interior of the terminal still has some residual shreds of grandeur. With its two-story tall lobby, towering pillars, and decorated ceiling, it's reminiscent of the old-style grandiose urban railroad depots.

Outside, amongst the boarded-up storefronts and burned-out apartments/housing projects, I couldn't help but notice some apparently abandoned railroad tracks, with what appeared to be rusting catenary-wire supports, that emerged from an alley and promptly dived into an underground tunnel nearby. I doubt that I'll ever find out more than that about them, though.

Thursday's headlines....

... in the Detroit News say a lot about the American electorate:

STATE LOSES MORE JOBS: Factory rolls are down 6,000 while tourism sector takes hit, edging jobless rate to 6.8%

KMART'S EX-CEO TO GET $94M: Payout to departing exec comes as chain cuts workers, payroll

AS GAS PRICES SOAR, DRIVERS CHANGE LIVES: Motorists consider hybrid vehicles, cancel vacation plans to accommodate skyrocketing costs

NEWS POLL: BUSH LEADS IN MICHIGAN.

Let's see. The economy is in the tank, corporate executives are looting companies while running them into the ground, prices for vital commodities are soaring out of reach. Why, clearly what this country needs is... more of the same! "Thank you sir, may I please have another?"

It's eerily reminiscent of the situation described in this book, in which Baffler veteran Thomas Frank seeks to explain why midwestern voters routinely express unquestioning, lemming-like support of a party that just as routinely victimizes them economically.

Blogger back, briefly

Returned from the hills 'n' hollers of the Ozarks last Monday. Grand-dad's birthday party was quite impressive as such things go, with perhaps 40 or 50 cousins and nephews and nieces and relatives of various types in attendance. Unfortunately, I could not for the life of me identify more than a handful of them by name, although I was generally able to distinguish those on my grandmother's side of the family from those on my grandfather's side. It helps when one branch is generally short and slight, with sharp facial features, and the other is generally big & burly.

Heard a few interesting stories about grand-dad. Apparently at one time, a fellow who had boxed professionally in a nearby city came back to D. County and challenged him to a sparring match. According to Uncle B.'s recollections, the onetime pro had the advantage in the first round, and went somewhat beyond the level of "friendly" sparring. By the second round, grand-dad came back at him and drove him out of the impromptu ring. "At first I was only defending myself, but it turned out the only way to defend myself was to hit him first...." (That's not an exact quote, but it's close.)

Looking at the pictures from the 1930's, when he worked in the Civilian Conservation Corps' construction projects around the Ozarks, I find the story believable. In the pictures, he's a tall, burly, dark-haired guy with a rather bellicose, glowering look on his face, invariably wearing a fedora cocked at a rakish angle as if he's daring someone to knock if off his head. Today he spends most of his time in a wheelchair, but he still looks pretty good, I'd say, for someone who's ninety years old. I won't have any cause to complain if I last that long.

The toughness wasn't just physical, either. Several people alluded to the fact that he basically had to assume the duties of a farmer and head-of-household at the age of 12, when his father died of pneumonia and, literally with his last breath, told him to take care of his mother and numerous younger siblings. Something to remember when I'm tempted to bemoan my sad fate because of some comparatively trivial difficulty encountered much later in life.

Mother, as usual, had exerted great effort in organizing and decorating for the party. The cake was a work of art, complete with a photographic representation of a Model T in green-and-black icing, and the booklets that she and Uncle B. put together were well worth reading. (Yam and S., you should get one if you can.)

I'm headed back to Missouri tomorrow evening by bus to pick up a car and drive it back to the northlands. Carlos, as a seasoned aficionado of Trailways and Greyhound, do you have any helpful hints as to proper etiquette and comfort on such trips?

Blogger on the road

Gone to Missouri for the next few days for a relative's birthday. Back early next week.

"We overturn Poletown."

Not exactly breaking news, but worth noting: the 1981 Poletown decision, in which the Michigan Supreme Court allowed a municipal government to use the power of eminent domain to seize an entire neighborhood of private dwellings and businesses and hand it over to a politically-connected business, and in doing so paved the way for a flood of similar schemes across the nation, is no more. (See also here and here. Text of decision here.)

Historical background, with some information about the pernicious effects of the Poletown precedent, here. As I understand it, the Hathcock ruling requires that eminent domain be used only when the intended use of the land is for public USE, not for the private benefit of some politically-connected real estate developer or corporation that speciously asserts that their personal profit is somehow connected to the "public interest" by way of vague promises of "economic development" or "increased tax revenue."

Good riddance to bad legal rubbish.

A vote for Bush is a vote for....

"I am often asked if I still think we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever."

-- Ann Coulter, professional hatemonger and Republican mouthpiece. From her recent book How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), p. 3.

News for game theory geeks

A team from Southhampton University, in England, has developed a program for Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma which can -- in certain circumstances -- beat the reigning champion Tit-for-Tat. Discussed on Slashdot, of course.

Speaking of game-geeks, I did my good deed for today by introducing J.-from-Wixom to a couple of my fellow untenured wageslaves at Huron State. Actually, it was her idea to show up at the library this evening inquiring about the flight speeds of African swallows (laden and unladen), but by serendipitous chance she showed up just after I and my two colleagues had started talking about the game Settlers of Catan. The "reference interview" quickly turned into a cheerful babble of gaming geek-speak, and discussions of plans to meet up for a beer after work. (Where they await me even now, probably planning all sorts of dastardly tricks and ambushes.)

Unfortunately, it means that I probably should not tell J.-from-Wixom about the blog. Pity.

More alarums and clamours

If you still think we live in a democracy, and wish to preserve that illusion, you might try taking the advice of the American Library Association's Washington Office Newsline and raise a stink about the legislative committee which is reportedly working on resolving the differences between different versions of two bills passed by the House and Senate.

The Senate bill, the National Intelligence Reform Act of 2004 (S.2845) is reported to closely follow the actual recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, according to the ALA. The only provision that arouses their discontent is the creation of a de facto national ID card, which Senator McCain has surreptitiously sneaked into an amendment without public debate. (Where, one wonders, are the Republican Evangelicals who always froth at the mouth over such "marks of the Beast"?)

By contrast, according to ALAWON's current issue,

The House bill, H.R. 10, the 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act, goes far beyond the recommendations of the 9-11 Commission and includes a variety of anti-liberties and immigration provisions, including some parts of the PATRIOT II legislation. Among other things, the bill:

* Broadens intelligence surveillance inside the United States to non-citizens with no connection to a foreign entity;
* Permits the deportation of individuals to a foreign country without a functioning government, even if there is a risk of torture;
* Limits the ability of individuals to seek political asylum;
* Expands preventive detention;
* Creates a national I.D. system that goes beyond the Senate bill, requiring all motor vehicle databases to be linked together. It also ties driver's licenses to visa status.

On the other hand, if you'd rather not have your name on the Bush Administration's list of "disloyal" citizens to be put under surveillance and rounded up after the election, perhaps it would be best to keep a low profile.

An assertive paradigm for library service

I got a chuckle out of this posting to the LibRef-L listserv a few days ago. Best quote:

If we want students to locate library reference tools when they enter the library (either in person or online), then force them to encounter these resources whether they're looking for them or not. We should be as ubiquitous as porn sites, and as hard to get rid of as spyware.

Stratford and other wonderful things

Stratford, Ontario, is a fairly small city well out into the farmlands of central Ontario. Nonetheless, it's home to one of the premier theatrical festivals in Canada, and a fun place to visit, especially on a cool crisp autumn weekend, and especially with the right company. And "Fiend" is most certainly the right company!

Despite the Attack of the Overly Friendly Feline (who apparently thought that any human interlopers in his/her territory were fair game for frantic, neurotic leg-rubbing and lap-crawling), we managed to make it to two plays.

The authorship of Henry VIII seems to be disputed. Current scholars seem to think it's the result of a collaboration between Shakespeare and a certain John Fletcher. It's a somewhat melodramatic history play, which portrays a few tumultuous years of the reign of its namesake king. Notably, it portrays only the first two of his famous eight wives, and ends with the birth of Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VII and Anne Boleyn. (Jane Seymour, wife number 3, makes a brief, nonspeaking appearance at the very end, but this doesn't seem to be part of the original script.) It's quite clearly intended to glorify the father and the mother of Queen Elizabeth I, and promote the virtue of Elizabeth, the ruling monarch in Shakespeare's time, and her Protestant rule. The very existence of Mary, Henry's fanatically Catholic daughter by his first wife, Katherine of Aragon, is ignored totally; the Catholic archbishop Wolsey is presented as a scheming, corrupt manipulator who tricks the king into divorcing Katherine in order to promote a marriage to a French princess, thus conveniently absolving the King of responsibility for his divorce. Incredibly, for anyone familiar with the history of the time, Henry's historic split with the Catholic church is completely ignored except for a few oblique references, by very unsympathetic characters, to "spleeny Lutherans" and "heretical" beliefs on the part of the King's eccleciastical supporter, Thomas Cranmer. The closing speech, praising the newborn infant Elizabeth in terms more suited to the birth of a demi-goddess, is such blatant flattery that I could hardly suppress myself from laughing out loud during it.

In short, the plot is politically-motivated melodrama that makes hash of history. But it's tasty hash, full of delicious intrigue and the spice of danger. The actress playing Queen Katherine almost steals the show with her spirited reaction to the shabby treatment meted out to her by the King and Cardinal, and the actor portraying the Machiavellian Cardinal Wolsey is a worthy villian indeed, full of smooth words and sharp dealing.

My favorite moment that didn't happen: a cell phone went off, somewhere in the audience, while the King was summoning a couple of intimidating-looking Guards to the stage, and I found myself wishing that, with a snap of the royal fingers and a commanding sweep of the royal hand, he had ordered them to summarily drag the offending churl out of the theater to be cast into Outer Darkness.

The other play was a fresh interpretation of A Midsummer Night's Dream, with the human characters in modern dress and the denizens of the faerie world attired in form-fitting, jungle-inspired costumes, climbing and dancing with wild abandon and occasionally cavorting in mid-air. (The fairies' trapeze and bungee-cord maneuvers were reportedly developed in consultation with Cirque de Soleil.) Even so, I got the biggest laughs from the clever comedic acting of the actors portraying the confused human lovers, the bumbling amateur actors, and the much-put-upon rational ruler Theseus and his court. There are a few elements that aren't strictly Shakespearean, but I have to imagine that if acrobats flying through the air on bungee cords had been available in his time, he'd have happily used them. Perhaps he would even have found a use for those irritating cell phones.

Of the two plays, I preferred Henry VIII by a small margin. (Sorry, Fiend!) But that may be only because it was entirely new to me. Both were good. I enjoyed the unfolding, unfamiliar plot of Henry VIII, and I enjoyed the spectacle and witty dialogue and broad physical comedy of Dream.

For the bibliophiles among us, Stratford holds a number of decent bookstores to browse. Nothing near the level of Larry McMurtry's monument to bibliophilic obsession out in Archer City, but acceptably interesting. I picked up a book of medieval castle plans and several SF novels by Iain M. Banks which, so far as I know, are not officially "in print" on this side of the border. Fiend managed to score a copy of the Dictionary of Imaginary Places, which should serve her well in trying to figure out just what I mean when I refer to the latest place my imagination has wandered off to.

And, of course, Stratford has a railroad yard and depot. Fiend will no doubt be utterly fascinated to find out that that mysterious green-and-yellow locomotive on the grain train we saw appears to belong to the Virginia Southern Railroad. (Right? Right? *grin*)

Yuck.

Not a "wonderful thing" at all, but noteworthy anyway. I had my first experience dealing with an internet masturbator earlier this evening. A kid, apparently from one of the local high schools. Another library user reported seeing him "wackin' off", so after locating him and verifying his odd behavior, we had the campus public-safety officers come talk to him and escort him out of the building.

Now, who gets to disinfect the keyboard?

A quick note in preparation for tonight's debate

Do you have your Bush Bingo cards ready?

Sadly, I'll be at the reference desk while the Great Debate unfolds, but I'll be dropping by this event afterwards to catch the post-debate chitchat.

More, about Stratford, Ontario, and other wonderful things, later. Must get back to reference desk now.

The right-wing censorship machine rolls on

Florida Gulf Coast University cancels a scheduled speech by author Terry Tempest Williams "after President William Merwin and the board of trustees decided Wednesday that the forum would be too politically unbalanced and negative toward President Bush."

As Williams points out, "the school’s 13 trustees, six of whom are directly appointed by the governor, have ties to the Bush family." And university administrators know who controls their purse strings.

Phone Phollies, episode 3

"Huron State" prides itself on being a technologically advanced institution. However, they can't seem to install a telephone correctly. It's still dead.

A bookstore to avoid

Elder's Bookstore, in Nashville, Tennessee. The Nashville Scene explains why.

As different as can be

I looked over three job postings yesterday. The institutions involved are as different from each other as different can be.

One is a large state library with a strong archival and historical focus. I think they may be looking for someone with more knowledge of genealogical research, but perhaps my involvement with the state historical society and railroad-history groups will appeal to them.

The second is a bare-bones "business college" which focuses on providing vocational training for entry-level clerical and health-related jobs. It's a part-time position which would allow me to keep working at Suburban Public Library and in doing so reduce my work week from 60 hours down to 50 or so.

The third is at a tiny private college deep in the forested hills of Vermont, which originated in 1863 as a Unitarian seminary and has since made itself a testbed for experimental educational ideas. (I didn't even know Unitarians had seminaries.) Its turbulent history has included financial troubles, high administrative turnover, and most recently, suspension of their residential undergraduate program in favor of graduate programs, adult education, and nonresident programs. Its library catalog is largely non-automated, but somehow it seems that working there would be an interesting challenge. How many Institutes Of Higher Education, after all, have the sense of humor to include statements like this in their official histories?

During those years, several applications were made to the regional accrediting association --- and were rejected, in part because the financial resources of the college were fragile, in part because its program and procedures were so radically different from those of most colleges. In early December of 1959, however --- and to the genuine surprise of most people at (G.) --- the most recent application for accreditation was accepted....

They seem to still have a certain innovative spirit, judging from their current calendar of events, which includes a "Celebration of Homeschooling":

(G.) invites homeschooling families with teens to attend a weekend retreat on our beautiful Vermont campus at the height of autumn foliage season. We are designing a new undergraduate (B.A.) program specifically for young people who are ready to begin college studies (full- or part-time) and want to continue learning in the independent, community-based style they’ve enjoyed as homeschoolers. We want to work in partnership with homeschooling families to plan the details of the program, and during this retreat we will hold several open-ended planning discussions.

Homeschoolers are definitely a niche market that is underserved by traditional colleges. But how, exactly, does one provide good library service to a user population this scattered? Especially with limited electronic resources? A library position at such an institution might end up more like being a research consultant or long-distance information broker than like a traditional librarian. What an interesting thought experiment.

Meanwhile, Huron State has issued forth a decree from those on high that all library periodical holdings -- all 5000+ of them -- must be assigned to particular academic departments within two weeks. Why this must be done, no one knows. Why it must be done in two weeks, no one knows. All anyone knows is that the tenure-track librarians can't be bothered to do it, so the lecturers have to.

Of 'Cubas and Camaros

A heartwarming story from the Detroit Free Press: 16-year-old gearhead girl rebuilds her mother's first car from a rusted-out wreck into the drop-dead gorgeous, fire-breathing muscle machine it was meant to be. Most envy-inspiring line:

Christie doesn't dare drive the 'Cuda to school. It might get scratched or dented. Instead, she has a 1969 Chevrolet Camaro, also a classic, for everyday driving.

And speaking of Camaros: David Koresh's Camaro, complete with "David's 427 Go God" stamped on the engine block, was recently auctioned in Fredericksburg, Texas. (You missed your chance, Carlos!)

I am 80% "Mr. Right"

"h4yleyg" from Bookcrossing offers her opinion on what ten books a man should have on his shelf if he wants to impress women... er, I mean, be a well-rounded individual.

But really, War and Peace? Please, no!

Note: 80% calculated on basis of books read, not necessarily books currently owned. Void where prohibited by law. Your results may vary.

America, Bush style

The mother of a soldier killed in Bush's unnecessary war in Iraq is dragged away from a campaign event in handcuffs while the crowd chants "Four more years! Four more years!"

Because, you see, they support the troops. Get it?