A book the ALA needs to read

Not Seeing Red: American Librarianship and the Soviet Union, 1917-1960, by Stephen Karetzky. From the Claremont Review of Books 's commentary :

Stephen Karetzky, Library Director at New Jersey's Felician College, has produced a compelling indictment of prominent American librarian's affection for the Soviet Union from the time of the Russian Revolution through the 1950's. "In thought and deed," Karetzky writes in the introduction, "they betrayed the fundamental values, goals, and interests of their profession and their country." He weaves together institutional and intellectual history to place these attitudes in the context of similarones held by many leading American educators and cultural figures during these years -- including their willful ignorance of conditions in the USSR, despite numerous reliable accounts of those conditions that were published as early as the 1920s.

One of the more interesting aspects of this book, in fact, is its description of the transformation of pre-Revolutionary Russia's libraries to a centralized, totalitarian library system that promoted literary primarily to propagandize the citizenry.... The Soviets consistently boasted of having an astronomically high number of books and libraries, but the the regime defined a "book" as anything more than a few pages and a "library" as any collection of more than 50 books.

American librarians often repeated such fantastical claims in what Karetzky terms "wonder stories" about Soviet libraries that periodically appeared in professional publications. Several of these authors actually believed that the USSR was on the road to utopia and clearly envied the power of Soviet librarians, conveniently overlooking the fact that they were functioning almost exclusively as propaganda agents....

Sounds familiar. Those who refuse to learn from history....

I must have a dirty mind.

For some reason, this sign does not make me think of trains.

Words of Wisdom from Wyoming

It's possible that I and Mr. John Thurman, of Worland, Wyoming, might disagree about a number of issues. His letter to the editor of a local paper about the recent CBS Super Bowl debacle contains a lot of wisdom, though.

I'll go him one better. Wouldn't it have been wonderful to have had musicians or celebrities who have disagreed with each other very publicly -- say, the Dixie Chicks and Toby Keith -- on stage at the same time, singing or talking about the stupendous fact that, because of America's tradition of intellectual freedom, they're not obligated to literally kill each other over those disagreements?

News from the front

Various news reports are confusedly saying that they think US and affiliated troops may be closing in on Osama Bin Laden. This is one overseas military venture that I support. Bin Laden and his followers chose to commit acts of war against unsuspecting, innocent civilians, and they deserve to have the full wrath of God, or, in His absence, the full wrath of a powerful military and judicial system, come down upon their heads. I hope these reports are true.

Despite what the Bush administration may hope, it does not change my opinion that their attack on Iraq, and their ongoing assaults on Constitutional liberties within the United States, are unjustified and unacceptable.

If the news reports are true, and if these events result in the capture or elimination of those responsible for the September 11 attacks, it is my hope that the U.S. may return to some form of sanity.

The Celestial Library?

Discussed this morning on a library listserv: Mediachest, which appears to be a voluntary, online way for private individuals to create a union catalog of their book, CD and DVD holdings, and organize loans of said holdings.

A couple of weeks ago, in response to another subject, S. and Pablo commented about the possibility of private libraries. Well, what about private interlibrary-loan services?

A respondent on the library listserv brought up some questions, though:

(1) What methods are there for enforcing the return of loaned items? It seems that unscrupulous people willing to create fake accounts, or just brazen it out, could "borrow" stuff and refuse to return it or deny ever having borrowed it.

(2) What about privacy concerns, as mentioned by a previous respondent?

(3) Will the RIAA/MPAA and other monopoly-barons seek to legally squash it, claiming that it "aids and abets copyright piracy", and citing Napster as a precedent?

On the side of the angels (for once)

This story from the Associated Press states that the Federal Communications Commission has issued a report to Congress which is favorable to the establishment of small local radio stations. Some interesting discussion at Slashdot.

The monstermedia conglomerates, as you might expect, think this is a terrible idea. I mean, someone somewhere might hear something that wasn't piped straight from the corporate headquarters in San Antonio, and we can't have that! Several commentators on Slashdot have correctly pointed out that this is merely a recommendation to Congress. The monstermedia conglomerates will not be silent on this issue; their lobbyists will be plying Congress liberally with bribes and propaganda to block any action of this type. If you want to increase its chances of becoming more than a recommendation, write your Congresscritter and make it clear that you will be paying attention to their action on this issue. (Representatives here; Senators here.)

I'll be interested in seeing how this develops. Will it pave the way for a more diverse spectrum of broadcasting, with schools, churches, community groups, and/or energetic individuals or small businesses adding spice and variety to the bland banquet of Top-Forty Radio? Or will religious broadcasters (for example) grab up all the available airspace and turn it into wall-to-wall JesusRadio(TM)? Or will Monstermedia Inc. just buy up all the pennyante licences to idle them or turn them into more clones of their existing stations?

Stay tuned.

(Sorry. Couldn't resist that last.)

The Birth of a Nation!

With pride, joy, and hope, the fledging Dominion of the Human Mind has set forth upon the tortuous course of political and economic development, courtesy of an online nation-simulation game created by Max Berry, author of the recent novel Jennifer Government.

It looks like an entertaining way to spend a few pixels. If any of you, Gentle Readers, wish to create your own virtual nations in the same "region" in which The Dominion of the Human Mind is located, feel free to do so. Contact me for the password. It appears that there are ways in which other players could "invade" the region if it's not password-protected, and I'd like to keep this a safe little sandbox until I figure out more about how the game works.

After creating and naming your "nation", you'll have to fill out a little quiz about the political principles that you expect your nation to follow, and occasionally deal with an "issue". I'm not too sure about the "capitalist paradise" tag that the software attached to my colony, or some of the conclusions it drew about the living conditions. We'll see how things develop.

Love at the Library

This romantic soiree at the British Library might have been interesting if I were in London and (sniff) if I were invited. (Link found in Lady Crumpet's Armoire.)

"[G]uests queued for lapel stickers - with suitably anonymous labels such as "Darcy seeking Elizabeth", "Titania seeking Oberon" or "Adam seeking Eve"....

"An older "Narcissus seeking Narcissus" was not convinced, arguing that the modern library, which opened in 1997, had "none of the sexual charge that used to crackle around the old, round reading room at the British Museum".

What say you, Gentle Readers? Anyone feel like sharing their literary lusts? As for me, I can't decide. "Beren seeking Luthien"? "Don Quixote seeking Dulcinea?" Perhaps "Horvendile seeking Ettarre" would be most accurate.

Scrabble geeks, rejoice!

The rest of us will just sit here and scratch our heads in puzzlement. Qi? Za?

Interestingly, the article acknowledges the importance of bluffing:

Against a human, Pate's highest point score in a single turn was 167 points for the misspelled word "graineries." Pate knew it was spelled incorrectly, but his opponent didn't challenge him, and the score stood.

What I want to know is, why doesn't everybody just use the Oxford English Dictionary? (...says the fellow who spent a substantial part of his undergraduate days poring over medieval and Renaissance English poetry....)

For all you grad students out there

The Lord of the Rings is clearly an allegory of working on one's dissertation.

A bit o' fun

Can you tell a computer geek from a serial killer? (Warning: there are a few disturbing sound effects, so don't do this at work if your boss already thinks you might be hiding bodies in the basement.)

I somehow managed to score an unbelievable 9 out of 10. Should I consider changing careers?

Over the transom

Being on a wide selection of magazine mailing lists does have its advantages. Not only do I get to read the hysterical whip-up-the-supporters propaganda of both sides of every conceivable political issue, I sometimes get pleading missives from no less than the President himself. (See? There's his signature, right there at the bottom!)

With both sides' election machinery cranking up to its full whirling fury, I have in the past two weeks received a presidential photograph-suitable-for-framing and a certificate officially designating me a Leading Republican of [This Fair City] (and pleading for money), a survey from the Democratic Party earnestly trying to determine what I think so that their candidates can script their speeches accordingly (and pleading for money), and hysterical pleas for money from the Heritage Foundation, the ACLU, and Planned Parenthood, each of which implores me to ACT NOW!!! because their dastardly opponents control the press and the government and only with my generous help can they save civilization as we know it!

Eh.

I still have the one from the ACLU. I might write back to them. The presidential photo (a differently-cropped version of the one they sent me before - don't they think I have any visual memory?) rests in a Wal-Mart frame in a place of honor on top of the toilet tank. I remind the rare, puzzled visitors to my spartan barracks to remember what I'm doing when I face that photograph.

The issue of the Claremont Review of Books which arrived unsolicited in my mailbox was a more welcome gift. Although the magazine is politically conservative in outlook, it does contain a book review by William F. Buckley in which the dean of modern American conservatism takes Ann Coulter to task -- albeit quite urbanely -- for the "mischief" and exaggerations in her book Treason : Liberals from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism. Buckley, an intelligent man, clearly recognizes that, although he agrees with some of Coulter's impassioned defense of Red-hunter Joseph McCarthy, she has gone off the rhetorical deep end with her hysterical assertions that anyone and everyone who fails to unquestioningly agree with her is a "traitor". The title of his review? "Tailgunner Ann" -- a nickname with a great deal of resonance for anyone familiar with the tale of McCarthy. For those who miss the historical allusion, the illustration -- a drawing of a glaring, poofy-haired Coulter ominously swinging a lynch noose -- makes the point.

Disappointingly, though, Buckley backs off the criticism in his conclusion, allowing how it's "fun" to indulge in "mischief" against the "other guy". Too bad; he was on the verge of regaining my respect.

Also particularly interesting, in light of my own observations on a college campus and a blogfriend's recent cryptic allusions to some unspecified vile behavior on the part of a purportedly human male, was the cover story, Wimps and Barbarians : the sons of Murphy Brown, a lengthy essay by Terence O. Moore, a private school principal and former Marine lieutenant and history professor.

Moore's thesis is that, in the absence of strong education in the classical male virtues, the current generation of young men tend to develop toward one or the other of two models, the Wimps and Barbarians of his title. Those who have spirit, lacking a firmly defined proper channel for that spirit, develop into "barbarians":

Today's barbarians are not hard to find. Like the barbarians of old, the new ones wander about in great packs. You can recognize them by their dress, their speech, their amusements, their manners, and their treatment of women. You will know them right away by their distinctive headgear. They wear baseball caps everywhere they go and in every situation: in class, at the table, indoors, outdoors, while taking a test, while watching a movie, while on a date. They wear these caps frontward, backward, and sideways. They will wear them in church and with suits, if ever a barbarian puts on a suit. Part security blanket, part good-luck charm, these distinctive head coverings unite each barbarian with the rest of the vast barbaric horde.

Recognizing other barbarians by their ball caps, one barbarian can enter into a verbal exchange with another anywhere: in a men's room, at an airport, in a movie theater. This exchange, which never quite reaches the level of conversation, might begin with, "Hey, what up?" A traditional response: "Dude!" The enlightening colloquy can go on for hours at increasingly high volumes. "You know, you know!" "What I'm sayin'!" "No way, man!" "What the f---!" "You da man!" "Cool!" "Phat!" "Awesome!" And so on. Barbarians do not use words to express thoughts, convey information, paint pictures in the imagination, or come to a rational understanding. Such speech as they employ serves mainly to elicit in others audible reactions to a few sensual events: football, sex, hard rock, the latest barbarian movie, sex, football. In the barbarian universe, Buckleyesque vocabularies are not required.

Those who lack spirit or courage become wimps instead:

If barbarians suffer from a misdirected manliness, wimps suffer from a want of manly spirit altogether....

Like the barbarian, the wimp is easily recognized by his personality and preoccupations. His main passion is music. Music does not serve him as it does the Platonic guardian, to balance his soul. Nor is he usually a performer or student of music. He has no affinity for classical symphony or opera. Rather, he finds that certain types of music evoke a mood of listless self-infatuation. He may at times listen to music with friends. And he will probably try to express his interest in a girl by quoting a song lyric. Nonetheless, his absorption with music is essentially a private refuge from the challenges of the world.

In addition to music, the wimp may take an interest in the opposite sex. But his approach to dating and relationships is different from the barbarian. The barbarian has simple appetites. His ideal is the Playboy playmate or the winner of a hot legs contest at Daytona Beach, and his ultimate aim in any relationship or encounter, whatever he may say, is sex. As an athlete, the barbarian is a hero of sorts. He walks with an unmistakable air of confidence. The wimp, on the other hand, has more complex reasons for wanting women. Although sex is certainly one of his desires, more than sex he needs affirmation. He desperately needs a girlfriend to boost his self-confidence. Having someone else notice him will somehow show the world that he is not a total loser. The wimp also needs someone to hear his laments, to commiserate with him when he is feeling down, to discover his secret self. Since he has few qualities or achievements to recommend him, he seeks to appear "interesting" or mysterious. Initially, the wimp might seem amusing to an unsuspecting young lady and very different from the insensitive jocks and rowdies she has known. Ultimately, however, the wimp seeks to draw her into his web of melancholy and self-pity. The story always ends unhappily since romance cannot be based upon pity or the thin facade of personality. He might mope and whine his way into a woman's bed but will find excuses to avoid "commitment." The wimp will begin the relationship by saying, "You're the only one who understands me" and end it by saying, "You don't understand me at all." The truth is that there is not much to understand.

Some choice, eh, ladies?

Well, I'm back.

Not much clever, witty, or wise to say, but there are a few interesting links and news stories I've noticed in the past few days. Here goes.

In tribute

In a recent e'mail exchange, I wrote to a friend that I was reluctant to write about Susan, or try to guess what she would have thought about certain issues, because "that way lies the danger of creating a caricatured plaster saint, reflecting only my own wishes, rather than the memory of an actual person". His response: "Hold the plaster" -- as in "hold the mustard", "hold the mayo". Don't slop good intentions all over the truth. But I can't just go back to casual blogging without acknowledging the death -- and, more importantly, the life -- of one of the most radiant human beings I have ever known. And so I will try to limit myself to saying about Susie only those things which are as simply and objectively true as any of the things that really matter about a person can be.

She was the most faithful of friends, always forthright yet tactful, always willing to offer sympathy and good advice, but never insistent or offended if others failed to follow it (as I often did.) When a friend needed companionship or quiet support she was always there, even if they literally showed up on the doorstep unannounced and dripping with rain and mud at the most inconvenient time imaginable.

She was a devoted and diligent mother to her two sons whom she loved dearly, a loving wife to her husband, and a credit to the parents who bore and raised her. They have every right to feel fierce pride in her achievements even as they grieve her loss.

She was a brilliantly talented writer and teacher, and a particularly articulate advocate of peace and understanding between cultures. She fought with all the tools at her disposal against the ignorance and unthinking bigotry that turn nations and people against one another.

She knew and understood the unique combination of wildly different cultures that had nourished her, and transcended them all by combining the best of all of them.

She had a wonderfully clever sense of humor, and a way of smiling and laughing that seemed to make colors brighter and sounds sweeter whenever she was around.

She was a doer and a creator of things of beauty and worth, rather than a mere dreamer or schemer.

She could be sharp-tongued when dealing with laziness, dishonesty, or bigotry, but unlike the less wise among us, she also knew to avoid inflicting unnecessary pain or embarassment.

It is not "objective" for me to say so, but having known her makes it easy for me to understand the "cult of domnei" by which certain medieval knights were willing to swear service and loyalty to a lady knowing full well that she was as unattainably far above them as an eagle above the creatures of the ground.

Anyone who had the marvellous good fortune to have known her well would, I think, be not only willing, but eager to change places with her if it would bring her back. She was the best and brightest this world had to offer, and the loss of her and her son leaves a void that cannot be filled. She is sorely missed.

Everything and anything that I can say about her is hopelessly inadequate. In a just world I would not have to write such things at all, and her husband, her surviving son, and her parents would not have to endure what they are enduring now.

The Hill is in mourning.

Shall we play a game?

Be a Patriot! Play the PATRIOT Act game!

(Link found on the indispensible www.librarian.net. More commentary here.)

More news from Iowa

It appears that, with protests and embarassing publicity mounting by the day, federal prosecutors have withdrawn their subpoenas for information about protesters and activists who attended a legal conference at Drake University recently, as well as the gag order that prohibited university personnel from discussing it. (More here and here.)

This is a Good Thing. However, it makes one wonder how many other such investigations are still proceeding under cover of similar gag orders. This incident seems to have appeared on the public radar largely because the National Lawyers' Guild, one of the left-wing activist groups being investigated, was not covered by the gag order. How much ya wanna bet that federal prosecutors won't make that mistake again?

Note that, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education, "[S]ince the deliberations of a grand jury are secret, the investigation of the meeting may not yet be over."

The so-called "PATRIOT" Act that makes such things possible is an abomination, and we can't afford to rely on leaky gag orders and relatively well-funded protester organizations like the ACLU to contest every potential abusive purpose to which it will be put. Not every person or group subjected to such treatment will have access to free legal counsel or hordes of conveniently-located college-student protesters. The thing needs to be killed dead.

Meanwhile, with the aid of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , "OPG and the Swarthmore students are seeking compensation from Diebold for misuse of copyright law, as well as a court order stating that those who publish or link to the archive--and ISPs who provide Internet connectivity to them--have not violated copyright law." (EFF press release here.)

Diebold, like the federal prosecutors in Iowa, dropped its demands after public reaction to them became too embarrassing. So why pursue a moot point?

It's become a fairly common tactic for corporations and prosecutors to use the overreaching provisions of the misnamed "PATRIOT" Act, the DMCA, et al, to make intimidating demands and accusations, and then back off (thus avoiding a hostile judicial ruling and the resulting legal precedent) if the targets are able to muster a legal defense or if their actions arouse too much public outrage. But, of course, most people don't have a building full of lawyers on retainer just waiting for them to be sued, and white knights like the EFF and the ACLU, can't be everywhere all the time. I hope that the EFF and its clients are able to get a definitive legal ruling against Diebold's misuse of the DMCA in this case, thus establishing a precedent for reducing the scope of its potential abuses. It will be at best an incremental reduction of the harm, but if Congress is too ignorant or corrupt to repeal the DMCA entirely, an incremental approach is the only way to go.

The ultimate Constitutional amendment to protect Biblical marriage...

...can be found here at this very cool blog.

Although I consider John Kerry to be, overall, about as exciting as overcooked broccoli, the comments discussed here make more sense than anything else I've heard on the subject.

Indeed, why not separate civil unions from the marriage ceremonies required or accepted by various religions? Must the things of God be yoked together with the things of Caesar?
 

Addendum

Jessamyn West, to whom I referred in yesterday's spiel about the ALA, SRRT and Cuban repression, does, to her credit, have a link in her blog's archives to information about the imprisoned dissidents.

A puzzling reference question

A friend asks: Do you know if there is a way to search for blogs by subject, sort of like
yahoo? Like say I wanted to find blogs that focused on bonsai trees or
civil war poetry.

I played around with Google for a while, and came across a few places that claimed to be "directories" of weblogs, but most of them appeared to be woefully inadequate. Librarians, as one might expect, have done a reasonably good job of compiling on-the-fly directories of weblogs dealing with their own particular interests, but is there any good overall "finding aid" for the blogosphere?

Any ideas?

A corollary to yesterday's comments on weblogs: the widespread freedom to publish means that the resulting outflood of writing is nearly impossible to categorize or catalog in a timely fashion. Widely known but bears restating in this context.

A quiz

... which is quite obviously based on the hoary old Myers-Briggs personality-type paradigm. It informed me that [a]s a weblogger, you might not be as concerned about popularity, but more with the ideas and theories that you strive to understand. Because routines aren't your strong point, you might be more likely to work on the concept of how to do a blog, but not be as excited to keep it up.

Pump Up The Volume reconsidered

Back in the long-distant Eighties and early Nineties, I studiously ignored most of the pop culture around me. Let's face it, most of it was eminently forgettable. (Thompson Twins, anybody?) But in the course of ignoring the crap, I also missed out on some good stuff.

This was brought home to me a few months ago when I caught the 1990 movie Pump Up The Volume on a cable channel late at night. Now, I had seen bits and pieces of the film before, but never paid much attention. Just another teen movie, thought I.

This second time around, I was amazed by the topicality of the film. Sure, the clueless parents and the villainous high-school administrators are straight from Teen Movie Central Casting, but how many other films had the prescience to make the Federal Communications Commission one of the villains? Or to show how the vapid, disassociated, condescending consumerism of the dominant mass media leaves intelligent minds gasping for oxygen?

The last scene (which I am NOT going to give away) was both inspiring and heartbreaking. Heartbreaking, because the FCC's recent decisions have, in fact, made such things nearly impossible in broadcast media. Inspiring, because the internet -- and weblogs in particular -- are making that final scene a reality in a different media.

The movie got it right, more than a decade in advance, except for pinning its hopes on the wrong media.

....This is Hard Harry, signing off....

What's going on in Iowa?

It may be too early to know all the details yet, but this situation sounds like just what civil libertarians have been anticipating from the Bush/Ashcroft junta. More here, and here, and here, and (surprisingly enough...) here.

For those who lack a historical perspective on such matters, note that demanding membership rosters and information about leaders of activist organizations was a common intimidation tactic during the Civil Rights Movement and other times of tension between citizen activists and the government. Sometimes it became more than mere intimidation, as those on the membership lists could be targeted for investigation or harassment. Or worse.

ALA hypocrisy

The American Library Association's refusal to forthrightly condemn the Cuban government for its brutal suppression of non-government-approved bookstores and libraries has rankled me for a long time. But because I maintain a certain distance from the slithering, reptilian bolus of its governing Council, I have never addressed the issue directly.

Fortunately, Nat Hentoff is not so discreet. And, as always, his principled defense of freedom of speech shows up the hypocrisy and cowardice of those who would rather ignore the issue.

Those on the ALA Council who most strongly defend the Castro government's "right" to imprison librarians and other distributors of books and other printed materials are the biggest hypocrites of all.

Mark Rosenzweig and Ann Sparanese are two of the most outspoken defenders of the Cuban government in this matter. Rosenzweig is an influential member of the Orwellianly-misnamed "Social Responsibility Round Table"; more about him later. Sparanese, in a recent issue of Library Juice, makes the remarkably specious arguments that (1) the imprisoned librarians aren't really librarians because the only real librarians in Cuba are the ones so designated by the dictatorial government, (2) that the Cuban government is justified in confiscating their materials and imprisoning them because it alleges that they are financially supported from the U.S., and (3) because the U.S. is less than perfect-in-every-single-way, no principles of any kind apply to the Cuban government.

The first proposition is a semantic Rube Goldberg construction so laughable that it hurts. By that standard, the Nazis committed no crimes against humanity because, after all, they defined Jews as nonhuman. Besides, why does it matter whether or not they are "officially" librarians? These are "human" rights we're talking about, not special privileged "librarian" rights. So what if, as Sparanese asserts, they are "dissident politicians, apparently non-violent, who sometimes use the moniker of 'librarians' to enhance their stature"? Don't dissident politicians have any rights in Ms. Sparanese's Brave New World of "Social Responsibility"?

The second proposition truly shows their blatant hypocrisy. Nevermind the idea of free speech and free press being any kind of a universal principle; as far as Rosenzweig and Sparanese are concerned, it applies only to their side. Rosenzweig, not entirely coincidentally, is head of the Reference Center for Marxist Studies, an institution affiliated with the Communist Party USA. If the US government applied the same standards to his "library" as his beloved Maximum Leader applies to dissenting librarians and archivists in Cuba, Mr. Rosenzweig would be spending his days in a solitary cell talking to the cockroaches. Rosenzweig and Sparanese hide behind the (rightful) protection that they enjoy in the United States, while blithely approving of the violation of those same rights by their pet dictator.

The third proposition is either a stunning non sequitir or yet more hypocrisy. What, because person X stole a car and got away with it, person Y is therefore entitled to rape and murder at will? How's that again?

What is most disturbing and disgusting about this whole sordid issue is the fact that otherwise sensible librarians and activists like Jessamyn West and Rory Litwin, who normally speak strongly in defense of free speech, are silent or seem to agree with the pro-repression faction. Is this just more of the same old "No-Enemies-On-The-Left" attitude that led liberals of the early twentieth century to defend the USSR even while "Good Ole Uncle Joe" Stalin starved, butchered, and massacred millions? Or do they actually agree with the idea that anyone who disagrees with a (left-wing) government should be imprisoned?

For shame. The "No-Enemies-On-The-Left" attitude damaged the credibility of the Left for decades after the extent of Stalin's crimes against humanity became known, and American librarians' silence on this issue damages the credibility of our stand against potential abuses of power by our own government, as Mr. Hentoff and other commentators are already pointing out. Does it make any sense at all to tacitly approve of actual, real abuses while condemning potential future ones?

A principle is a principle is a principle. Or else it's no principle at all.

Tell 'em, Annie!

From an interview with author Annie Proulx, published in the January/February issue of Public Libraries:

Public Libraries: Your stories are frequently about people on the edges of civilization --

Annie Proulx: I beg your pardon, sir. Rural places are not the edges of civilization.

PL: I apologize. But areas of life that the general public doesn't know about --

AP: There you go again. You're talking about urban people as the only people in the world who count as being real people while people who live in rural areas are somehow subhuman?

PL: Maybe I should phrase it as, "What it is about these characters, who aren't often talked about in popular literature, that attracts you?"

AP: Right, most people write about suburban or personal or urban affairs. I write about rural areas by choice; I live in rural areas. I have for almost my entire life except for brief stints in New York City and Tokyo, which I figured was my lifetime's worth of urban life. I'm keenly interested in the rural surroundings partly because they are neglected.... [T]hey're seen as places for use; use of extraction for minerals or crops or products of some kind. Or for disposal of unwanted wastes that the cities won't have. And this colonial attitude is something that really irritates the hell out of people who live in rural areas. It's hard to take being treated like invisible people or people who simply don't count. And I write about these people and these places because I like them.

For the bulk of the interview, those who are curious will have to find a printed issue of the magazine. Ms. Proulx was one of the authors that the proprietor of the "Booked Up" bookstore in Archer City, Texas, recommended to me on the one occasion that I got to talk books with him. Perhaps one of these days I'll have to take his advice.

I agree with Ms. Proulx that densely-populated hyperurban hellholes (or, for that matter, tickytacky generic suburban housing developments) are not a place where I want to spend most of my life. And I've noticed a tendency among people in urban areas to blithely ignore the interests of people in less densely populated areas whenever it suits their interest and they're able to use their concentrated political power to railroad it through the relevant governmental body. Unfortunately, my choice of careers -- which was largely predicated on the fact that library reference work and collection development are the only things I seem to be much good at -- makes it difficult to find suitable employment in sparsely-settled and non-crazymaking areas.

Should Vermont secede from the U.S.?

Yes, says Thomas H. Naylor, professor emeritus in economics at Duke and co-author of Affluenza. More here, here, here.

This can't help but remind me of the occasional half-serious proposals for the upper peninsula of Michigan (along with, perhaps, parts of Wisconsin and Minnesota) to secede from the lower half and form the "State of Superior".

Voting with their feet

Meanwhile, the libertarian folks at the Free State Project seem to have set their sights on New Hampshire, and some of the inhabitants of Killington, Vermont, seem inclined to join them.

I wouldn't mind trying it out, personally, although libraries might not be the highest item on a libertarian government's list of budget priorities. I suspect that neither the Green Mountain State nor the Granite State has winters much worse than the U.P. Any libraries in Vermont or New Hampshire looking for a slightly cranky reference librarian?

Spread the word

Project Censored's list of the Top Twenty-Five under-reported news stories of 2002-2003 is worth looking over. If you're concerned about the direction this country's going, mention some of these to people who get most of their news from broadcast TV, radio, or a "major daily newspaper".

All the news that fits the preconceptions

Some of you may have read news articles about President Bush appointing a panel to examine the pre-invasion intelligence reports dealing with "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq. You may not, however, have read anything about its composition or its schedule.

From MoveOn's "Daily Misleader":

[T]he president will appoint the entire commission himself, breaking the previous tradition of allowing lawmakers from both parties to appoint commission members. Although lawmakers have raised objections to the commission's lack of independence, the White House is moving forward with its plans.

Additionally, despite the fact that the commission's work will be critical to national security, the president will only authorize a commission that produces a report after the election -- so as to minimize any political fallout for himself.

It looks like we can expect another (cough) unbiased report along the lines of Senator Danforth's whitewash... er, "investigation"... of the Waco Branch-Davidian fiasco. If the Bush appointees insist -- against all credulity -- in actually conducting a real investigation, it will no doubt meet the same fate as the inquiry into the September 11 attacks which the Bush White House has mysteriously insisted on stonewalling at every turn.

Thanks to Louise, my sole remaining blogfriend, for the link.

Bye to Biblioblog

Carlos has drawn the curtains on his Biblioblog. I'm sorry to see this, because I've enjoyed reading the thoughtful conservative viewpoint he brings to LibraryLand. If you change your mind, Carlos, let me know. If it's the tiresome schedule of daily posting that's getting to you, you could always to what I do and just post whenever you feel like it, with lordly disdain for such tiresome things as schedules.

Without the Biblioblog, I have only one "friend" to list on my sidebar.

Apply for the mystery job!

I think I'd want a little more information first....

Perhaps they should try smuggling rabbits instead?

Cubans sailing vintage car caught off Florida.

Up a creed without a paddle

I thought about applying for this position... until I read more about the institution.

Among their Faculty Membership Requirements, one finds such gems as the following:

1. [X] College faculty members are required to subscribe to three historic Reformed “forms of unity”—the Beligic Confession, the Heidelberg Catechism, and the Canons of Dordtrecht—and pledge to teach, speak, and write in harmony with the confessions....

2. [X] College faculty members are required to be active members in good standing of a congregation in the Christian Reformed Church or a denomination in “ecclesiastical fellowship” with the CRC as defined by the CRC Synod....

3. [X] College faculty members are expected to support and promote Christian education at all levels and are normally required to provide their children with Christian schooling for grades K-12. Schools affiliated with the Christian Schools International (an association of parent-run schools with traditional ties to the CRC community) are expected to be the primary schools of choice, though exceptions are usually granted for home schooling or enrollment in non-CSI Christian schools....

A search of old issues of the Chronicle of Higher Education brought forth even more entertaining bits. To wit:

Howard J. Van Till, a now-retired physics professor at [X] College, had an even more grueling experience when he published The Fourth Day: What the Bible and the Heavens Are Telling Us About Creation (Eerdmans, 1986). The administration had no problem with his writings, but angry members of the denomination objected to his support of evolutionary theory and his suggestion that biblical texts had been strongly influenced by the cultures in which they were written.

Under pressure, the college's Board of Trustees formed an investigative committee. The situation soon turned Kafkaesque. For three and a half years, Mr. Van Till met with the group monthly to explain his theological views. "As the years of questioning and interrogating continued, the arena of concern just got larger and larger," he recalls, "until it became a test of the entirety of my theological position."

This, Pablo, is why I'm wary of "creedal" churches and other institutions that demand unthinking obedience to sets of bylaws concocted by earthly religious authorities. They never content themselves with merely reiterating basic religious principles; oh no, they must dictate everything, up to and including dictating what schools people are "allowed" to send their children to and what results a researcher is allowed to find. ("What Would Galileo Do?")

I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't fit in there for the same reason that I'd make a lousy Catholic, Mormon, or fundamentalist of any stripe. I'm just not very good at that whole mindless-obedience, marching-in-lockstep thing. It's rather sad that these people are so determined to raise their children as intellectual cripples who have never seriously confronted a single foreign idea.

Google amongst the academics

This article from the Seattle Times (Google for a Grade : UW class to study popular search engine) has excited a certain amount of discussion on a library listserv to which I subscribe. From the article:

Using their interest in research and technology as a backdrop, the 50 students who finish [Professor Joseph] Janes' class in March will have to determine whether Google is in fact good or whether researchers' reliance on such a simple and one-sided search tool is degrading the quality of research.

I wonder: will he require them to document the use of non-Googled sources for their research?

Doubt : a history, by Jennifer Michael Hecht

Here's yet another book I may have to read. From the Washington Post's review:

For instance, Xenophanes, another of the pre-Socratics, argued that the gods of mythology must be human inventions. The Ethiopians posited black gods, while the gods of the red-haired Thracians were, unsurprisingly, red-haired. If horses and oxen had hands and could draw, he dryly remarked, they would draw their gods as great horses and oxen. Xenophanes suggested what Montaigne insisted on 2,000 years later: The exclusive authority claimed by competing religions cannot be taken seriously; their myths derive from obviously local sources, and their truth claims cancel each other out....

Montaigne, as it happens, thought that disagreements among scientists showed that science was as much a cultural construction as religion, and ought therefore to be treated with skepticism.

Hang on, Sloopy!

An amusing piece of legalese.

Censorship and consolidation

Last year, the FCC dismissed concerns about the effects of media consolidation on the diversity of viewpoints available to Americans. They were overwhelmingly vindicated this year, when CBS even-handedly accepted ads from all political viewpoints during the Super Bowl.

Oh, wait a minute. They didn't.

The network refused to let political activist group MoveOn buy airtime for an ad that criticizes the Bush administration's runaway deficit spending. That's political issue advocacy, said CBS, and, gosh, we can't allow that kind of stuff on the air. (Meanwhile, an ad from the Bush White House was run in its place.)

Another ad, from PETA, was also banned:

"We just want to be able to present our jiggly women," said Lisa Lange, spokeswoman for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, asking to join advertisers like beer brewers who has boosted sales with images of scantily-clad women . -- from Planet Ark

CBS claimed that PETA's ad "raises significant taste concerns and has strong potential to offend significant numbers of viewers." I guess that's a privilege that CBS reserves for itself.

This story has actually received a fair amount of press over the last few days, and CBS has been on the receiving end of well-deserved jeers. What's less well reported is the fact that such bias is widespread and routine in the broadcast world, and is significantly restricting, even warping, the view of the world that is available to people who receive most of their information from broadcast media.

Adbusters, an activist group that criticizes and mocks consumerist "culture", has routinely been banned from purchasing airtime by all major broadcast networks (other then CNN, which acquiesced after some initial resistance.) The litany of reasons given for banning their ads ("Big Mac Attack", "Buy Nothing Day", etc.) is as damning as it is, occasionally, funny:

"We can't advertise something that's too controversial.... [w]e're a network and we're loyal to our advertisers." -- MTV

"[F]or a broadcast TV network things like boycotting television and anti-consumerism might not go over very well with our other advertisers." -- Fox Broadcast Corporation

"The character is seen burping." -- Channel 5, France

-- from Jan/Feb issue of Adbusters magazine

Now I recognize that a private business has the right to make decisions about what viewpoints it wishes to express, and isn't obligated to provide a soapbox to everyone who has an idea to shout out. But what about a marketplace where the availability of soapboxes is limited by artificial scarcity imposed by a government agency, as when broadcasting licences are controlled by the FCC? And is consolidation and centralized control of those scarce soapboxes, under any aegis, a good thing? (Discuss amongst yourselves, please.)

Progress down under

While the U.S. persists in abandoning and scrapping railroad lines even as traffic increases and railroads experience "traffic meltdowns" with distressing frequency, the Aussies are laying new rails and adding new trains to the schedule. Maybe the folks Down Under know something the American bigwigs have forgotten.

Choice the screen as right....

One of the gifts I received at Christmas is an external hard drive for my computer. Sadly, the instruction manual seems to have been written by one of those legendary typing monkeys:

Step 1: Click on [start], choice the [control panel] in [setting],double click [system] and open [hard disk]. A screen appears as right.

"Step 2: You can see the USB2.0 hard Disk you just add. High light the USB Hard Disk and choice the [property], select [setting]. setting the USB2.0 Hard Disk to [removable].

"Step 3: After restart the system, a removable HDD is added to [My Computer] . Choice the removable HDD and click right bottom of mouse. Select the [format] to format your USB2.0 Hard Disk Drive.....

Unfortunately, none of the above results in the computer acknowledging the drive, either "after restart the system" or before, no matter what I "choice", no matter whether I "click right bottom of mouse" or somewhere else. I expect that I and their telephone technical-support staff will be spending much productive time together.

Political preconceptions

It's interesting to watch people making assumptions right before your eyes.

Last week, while I was chatting with one of my colleagues at the reference desk, he casually asked me: "So, who are you voting for in the Democratic primary?"

It's apparently inconceivable that anyone working at a university could be anything other than a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.

Little does he know that I am a secret servant... er, campaign worker... of Cthulhu For President! ("Why vote for a lesser evil?") I particularly like the Great Old One's statement of political positions ("Eat Them Up, Yum!"), and his associates' "Look-and-Feel" lawsuit against the Thing That Came From Redmond.

Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!

Back from the Sunny Shore

Again, I've been delinquent about posting, but due to overwhelming public demand (thanks, Carlos), I'm back to harass, harangue, and generally blather away from my little virtual soapbox-in-the-ether.

I enjoyed the trip to California, although I quickly realized that the comfort level on crowded, long-distance late-night "cattle car" flights between major cities was going to be very different from what I was accustomed to on shorter and less crowded flights. I also realized that I much prefer flying out of small airports like those at this or thisrather than overcrowded, Dante-esque multi-terminal places like LA International. The Detroit Metro Airport is somewhere in between the two extremes, being fairly new, spacious, and more-or-less logically laid out.

Being trapped in LAX for eternity, with no boarding pass or means of leaving the airport, would be a fair approximation of Hell.

"Saint Barbie" is a very pretty town, but as usual, there's a catch. The median house price is about $550K, and the oh-so-chic residents have passed all kinds of entertaining laws to govern themselves. Among them is a requirement that all construction -- even a Burger King -- must be Spanish Colonial. Now I have nothing particularly against courtyards, or stucco walls, or tile roofs, but an entire city built in a uniformly "cute" architectural style is uncomfortably reminiscent of The Village. And, of course, there are precious few library jobs that will permit one to shell out a mil or two for a house. Most of the people who work in the library seem to commute for an hour or two each morning, and back again in the evening.

Talking with the folks at the library early on the morning of the interview quickly revealed that they were particularly interested in presentations involving electronic show-and-tell, so I scrapped the presentation I had planned to do (for which I was going to rely heavily on verbal interaction, handouts, etc.) and improvised a talk about a subject for which I had prepared an electronic research guide which was accessible on the Internet. I easily managed to fill the allotted time, since it was on a subject in which I have a particular personal interest, but not in a terribly organized fashion. Time will tell what the search committee thought about it.

Saturday was devoted to seeing the sights of Saint Barbie. The South Coast Railroad Museum, in a relocated depot building about a mile from the university, has a model railroad display depicting S.B. when it was a division point yard on the Southern Pacific's Coast Line, as well as a somewhat larger "model railroad" and other exhibits. Unfortunately, although the model railroad looks like it could be operated so as to duplicate the actual operations of the SP, I was informed that it's rarely used for anything but round-and-round display operation nowadays. The Mission and Presidio in were interesting, if a bit crowded in their built-up urban setting, and the State Street shopping district yielded a few interesting restaurants and bars, although the high rents have apparently driven out all the secondhand bookstores, leaving only the Two Big B's. (Those who think that I stood on principle and refused to buy anything from the B's don't know me very well.) A little Thai restaurant supplied a lamb curry with a fieriness balanced exquisitely on the line between pleasure and pain, and a glass of a locally-brewed pale ale provided a nice cool-and-sharp counterpoint. A few dubious business concepts made me shake my head, as when something called Bogart's Bar advertised "genuine Irish style".

Guess I didn't know His Coolness was Irish. (Shakes head, walks on down the street....)

Sunday was devoted to driving around aimlessly to see if I could find any place less grossly overpriced. The crooked, challenging highways through the startlingly jagged coastal mountain range were fun to drive, especially since the rental outfit at the airport had supplied me with a sexy black Mustang instead of the dowdy four-door midsize car I'd reserved. This sleek, sable FelixMobile surely struck fear into the hearts of other drivers on the road, especially when its driver suddenly realized that he needed to be three lanes over on the highway, or decided on the spur of the moment to veer into one of the sightseers' roadside parking spots overlooking a precipitous coastal cliff. It was almost cool enough that I could hold my head up amongst the ubiquitous Porsches and Beemers and Hummers.

"Saint Inez", located about twenty miles inland, proved to be almost as overpriced as Saint Barbie. A kindly and condescending real estate agent advised me to try about twenty or thirty miles further west, near the air force base. While eating a chicken-and-brie sandwich at a local winery/restaurant, I listened to the local horsey set chat about their concerns. The waiter was Hispanic and very obsequious. The historical society across the street was exquisitely decorated, hushed, and watched over by a very dignified lady who made it quite clear that she had better things to do than chat with the hoi polloi. While I was there, a nervous-looking blonde, in high heels and dressed to the nines, arrived for her appointment to discuss volunteering. Meanwhile, I looked over their well-preserved and/or professionally-restored collection of 19th-century carriages and stagecoaches and peered in the windows of what must be the world's smallest public library (a frame building, about 10 feet square, open only on Saturdays from 2 to 5).

The nearby "Saint Inez" mission was well-preserved, but between the Mass in progress and the sign (like the one in Saint Barbie) demanding a $4.00 ticket for a "self-guided tour", I decided I'd pass on anything more than a cursory walk around its exterior.

It's just as well. "Purity" Mission, out in a less crowded area, was a knockout by comparison. Less successful as a mission, it's more successful as a historical site. After being abandoned in the 1800's, it fell into ruins and was reconstructed as a historical site in the 1930's by the CCC, complete with rebuilt irrigation channels, animal corrals, workrooms, gardens, etc. I could easily have spent all day wandering around the place, and I couldn't help but think that it would be the ultimate site for a live-action Old West roleplaying game. Turns out that, according to one of the park rangers, it is in fact used as a set for television and film scenes from time to time.

(Feel free to make comments about me preferring churches as historical artifacts over churches as living institutions....)

This nearby town looked like a place I might be able to afford to live in, although by this time it was too late in the day to find any apartment leasing offices open. So I drove out to the local beach -- much more attractive, and cleaner, than the ones near Saint Barbie, with an Amtrak depot and railroad junction to boot! Unfortunately, although it was open on the day I visited, it seems one cannot count on that always being true.

Closed the day by following the Lompoc Branch of the railroad back to town, noting several modelable features (short length, attractive scenery including fields of commercially-grown flowers in addition to the aforementioned beachfront junction with the mainline, and a small-town terminal with a steeply-climbing switchback spur up San Miguelito Canyon to a plant producing diatomacious earth), then driving back to Santa Barbie via the incredibly constricted Gaviota Pass, which still looks much like this picture, except that the highway has been expanded by blasting a tunnel through one of the rock walls of this geographical chokepoint. I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to commute along such a highway for an hour in and an hour back every weekday, especially if several hundred other people are having to make the same commute.

Gaviota Beach, where a towering iron trestle carries the Coast Line over the beach and a long fishing pier reaches out into the Pacific, seemed like a good place to watch the sun set and have a beer, after which it was back to the SB airport for an 8:00 departure. Or so I thought. When I got there, the folks at the United ticket counter, due to some unspecified problem with their scheduled flight, were frantically shunting all their ticketholders over to the American counter for transfer to an earlier flight. Okay. Despite being tagged for "special treatment" by the baggage-searchers, I managed to make the flight, but without a boarding pass for the connecting flight out of LAX.

Fortunately the "Northwest Club" staff at LAX were able to print me one with a minimum of delay, but they quietly made it clear that non-First Class riffraff were not quite welcome there, so I waited among the crowds of people waiting for an Air New Zealand flight.

My plan to sleep on the overnight flight back to Michigan worked about as well as you might expect, and arriving at 5:30 a.m. local time left me about as dazed as you might expect at work the next day... and the next.

And so back to normal. Or what passes for it.

Goin' back to Cali

Tomorrow I'm off on another trip, this time to the sunny California shore. Rather ironic, considering how often I've characterized California as the Cereal Bowl of the Nation (i.e., fruits, nuts, and flakes!). Perhaps I've finally become eccentric enough to fit in there, lounging in decadent lassitude on the Pacific shore, waiting for the Big One.

In any case, January is a good time to spend an expense-paid weekend outside of Michigan.

Guide to Pr*blematical Listserv Posters

If I ever compile a "Top Ten List of Signs You Spend Too Much Time Reading Library Weblogs And Listservs", one of them is going to be the following:

#: Seeing the name "Don S*kl*d", or the phrase "Guide to Pr*blematical Library Use", or any reference whatsoever to the B*st*n Public Library, makes you scream in fury and lunge for the delete key. Over... and over... and over... and over.... and over....

See why here. But only if you're very, very brave. Or bored. I've been known to be a cranky and obsessive library user from time to time, but this guy takes the cake. He has a couple of weblogs of his own which the interested can easily find by searching Google, but I ain't postin' no links to 'em. It's enough of a nuisance that his name shows up a dozen times a day in my e'mail inbox whenever he decides to harangue one of the listservs I'm on. (And, no, the e'mail service I'm using doesn't allow for mail blocking unless you pony up cash for the "Platinum" option. Grrr.)

This isn't a weblog, it's a bicycle club!

So says the occasionally-sensible Walt Crawford. Whee! Let's all ride our bikes and have fun!

More dangerous reading

We've all probably heard about the FBI's recent warnings about terrorists using almanacs as Tools of Terror. But that's not all they're looking for....

Robert Mueller III, director of the FBI, explains in the current issue of American Libraries that "I am personally committed to fighting the war on terrorism without violating the principles of civil liberty and privacy that make this country great...." He says also that "We must recognize, however, that libraries and their services occasionally attract individuals involved in criminal conduct, including terrorism and espionage." Ted Kaczynski, the good ol' Unabomber, is trotted out as an example:

"Included within the [Unabomber's] manifesto were references to an obscure book, The Ancient Engineers, by L. Sprague De Camp. A librarian in Montana near Kaczynski's home told FBI agents that Kaczynski had ordered 'tons of stuff' on L. Sprague de Camp. Kaczynski was subsequently arrested and convicted for his role in a string of bombings."

Huh? Am I missing something, or are there a few gaps in his logic here?

It's a little odd to characterize de Camp's The Ancient Engineers as "obscure". De Camp was an extremely prolific writer of science fiction, fantasy, and nonfiction, and the winner of several science fiction and fantasy award, most notably the Hugo Award in 1997. At one time or another, I've seen copies of that particular book on the bargain-books rack of just about every Barnes & Noble store I've been to, as well as in numerous used-bookstores. OCLC WorldCat reports that 1028 libraries own the 1963 original edition, with hundreds more owning copies of subsequent editions that came out in 1966, 1970, 1974, 1976, 1977, 1986, and 1990. Does the FBI really think that reading, owning, or requesting a copy of this book, or 'tons of stuff' about its author, is a "terrorist" characteristic? If so, we've got an awful lot of terrorists out there. Enough to make de Camp a bestselling author in his heyday, and enough to vote a Hugo Award to him in 1997. If this is the case, considering that I like to read about old technology, read science fiction, and lived in the same city as de Camp, I have no idea how I managed to avoid becoming a Terrorist.

I note that Mr. Mueller is rather vague about just what connection there is between Kaczynski's reading of de Camp, FBI's snooping into his library records, and his "subsequent" arrest. Does he mean to say that the references to de Camp's book in the Unabomber's manuscript, and some kind of mass trawling through library records for "people who read L. Sprague de Camp", were the critical evidence that allowed the FBI to identify and arrest Kaczynski?

My recollection of the events is that the FBI and other police agencies actually identified and arrested Kaczynski only after his brother recognized his writing style in the published manifesto and turned him in. (See Wikipedia's entry on Kaczynski.) If the FBI inquired into Kaczynski's library records after that point, it was (1) after the case had effectively been broken, and (2) with critical evidence identifying a suspect already in hand -- evidence that evidently met the existing requirements for library disclosure, pre-"PATRIOT" ACT.

Does Mr. Mueller intend to say that if the FBI had had "PATRIOT"-style powers of inquisition at that time, they would have conducted a massive, nationwide fishing expedition through library and bookstore records for the names of everybody who had read best-selling authors like de Camp, Joseph Conrad, Eric Hoffer and other authors cited by the Unabomber? And then somehow magically identified the "right" one from that massive list? What of all those who read de Camp, Hoffer, et al in pure, unblemished innocence? 'Fraid yours truly is "guilty" of reading all three. Although I may be more bookish than most of the population, it seems likely that there are thousands of others who fit the same definition.

In any event, this example is, if anything, an example of why the so-called "Patriot" Act was unneeded. Evidently the FBI got the necessary information about Kaczynski under the pre-existing system. The claim that this supports the "need" for at-will and unsupervised surveillance of all American citizens' reading and researching habits is unjustified.

Recent Reads:

Meals by Fred Harvey : a phenomenon of the American West, by James David Henderson

Since I have a few relatives with the same surname, who lived in the same general area at the same general time that Mr. Harvey was starting his chain of restaurants, I had idly wondered whether there might be a family connection to the man who history credits with bringing both edible food and marriagable single women (the famous Harvey Girl waitresses) to the Western frontier. Unfortunately, what biographical information there was in this short book pretty well nixed that idea. It was an interesting read anyway; if I ever decide to build a western-themed model railroad module, a Harvey House restaurant would be an interesting item to include. (If you look closely at this photo, the Slaton Harvey House appears to have received coal by railcar, and according to the book, Harvey frequently had refrigerator cars of produce and meat routed to his restaurants, adding some local freight switching operations to the mandatory passenger-train stops.)

Insert obligatory pun here

From the Jan. 2004 issue of Locus, p. 13:

Follow the Pulp Paper Road : Two and a half million return copies of old Mills and Boon romance novels, or 92,000 books per mile, were used to produce a new 16-mile stretch of the M6 toll road in Birmingham UK. "Unsold copies of the books were shredded into a paste and added to a mixture of asphalt and Tamac," which "helps to bind the asphalt and the Tarmac, preventing the surface from splitting apart after heavy use." Project manager Richard Beal said, "There is an old saying that the road to true love doesn't run smoothly but thanks to thousands of Mills and Boon romance novels we hope that the M6 toll will."

Pulp fiction reference tools

Since I brought up pulp fiction in the previous post, I'll be a dutiful librarian and mention a few online reference sources that should gladden the heart of pulp readers everywhere.

According to a posting on the Stumpers-L listserv, Gordon Van Gelder, the editor of the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction has recently announced a comprehensive online index covering stories and other items published in F&SF from 1949 to 1999. This includes the first appearances of quite a few stories by well-known authors like Robert Heinlein, Alfred Bester, et al. Now, if only more libraries had the indexed volumes on the shelves for easy access....

The FictionMags Index provides spotty but useful coverage of fiction published in many of the classic pulps such as Railroad Stories and The Shadow, as well as publications both more respectable (The Saturday Evening Post) and considerably less (Spicy Stories , Playboy, and the intriguingly titled Naughty Bits)

And of course there are always the Locus indexes.

Have fun. Drive your local interlibrary loan department crazy. Don't tell 'em I sent you.

Isn't it Romantic?

Jen Wolf has created a fun webpage honoring the sub-sub-subgenre of Library Career Romance novels, a subset of the Career Girl novel of the 1950's, itself a subset of Women's Novels, which is in turn a subset of Pulp Fiction in my own peculiar taxonomy. Who knew that working in libraries was such a whirl of glamour and romance?

Be sure to check out the cover images and excerpts supplied. For example:

"Sue sighed. She was still disappointed that she hadn’t gotten the job at the Main Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library. She had been so sure she would get it. Her pride still ached when she thought of the homeliest girl in the class enjoying that coveted position, even though Sue knew that grades, not looks, were the deciding factor. Sue wasn’t looking forward at all to hacking around in the frozen north. But at least it was a job, a temporary job. Sue bit her lip. Now that it was too late, she wished that she’d studied harder. She knew she could have been near the top of her class in library school if only she’d tried. Then she could have had her choice of jobs. [from Books and Beaux]

Or consider this moment of epiphany from Anne Fuller, Librarian:

The microfilm reader fascinated Anne. It had been so helpful in the libraries where she had worked the last two summers. But she had never before had the responsibility of a machine, as she did now. She arrived early on her second day and went to the metal cabinet beside the machine to study the films which the library had collected. It still seemed a miracle to her that the contents of a whole book, or a big issue of a newspaper, could be recorded on a small roll of film less than two inches wide. [p. 67]

Unfortunately, not a single one of these worthy tomes holds out a scintilla of hope for men in the library profession to Find True Love. Presumably truly Manly Men of the 1950's were expected to be off fighting the Cold War, building Chevys, and generally being Manly while demure Anne gawked at the miraculous microfilm machine. (Don't tell her about the Internet; she'll fall down in a dead faint!)

(Link ripped from Jessamyn West, the sine-qua-non of library bloggers.)

Now playing...

Del and the Boys (Del McCoury Band, 2000)

It don't get much more country than this. I have sometimes winced at the so-called "high lonesome" sound of bluegrass music, and at the cliched images of "hillbillies" that too often accompany it in places like "Dollywood" or "Silver Dollar City". But against all expectations, I enjoyed this album immensely, and it reminded me that bluegrass has a far greater and deeper heritage than the cornball cliches of "Hee-Haw", one that I need to explore.

True, McCoury's voice at full blast has some of the sonic qualities of a high-speed bandsaw cutting through sheet metal, but so help me, it works on these songs. Although there's one instrumental number on the album, and Del's band (including his two sons) plays blazing licks throughout, most of the songs, like the traditional folk ballads and gospel songs that gave birth to the bluegrass genre, depend on the lyrics as much as the music for their impact. They're songs that tell stories drawn from the weird and phantasmagorical world of backwoods American folklore, where angels or devils can lurk behind the faces of strangers on trains or the temptations of the whiskey bottle, and McCoury's their ideal storyteller. As sung by McCoury, a song like "1952 Vincent Black Lightning", a rather tawdry tale of an ill-fated biker and his red-haired girlfriend, becomes high drama despite itself. Even slightly-over-the-top bits like the protagonist's fashion comments ("Red hair and black leather, my favorite color scheme!") and the dying words of a man who sees "angels on aerials / in leather and chrome / comin' down from Heaven / to carry me home" work amazingly well when belted out in McCoury's urgent backcountry twang.

Elsewhere in the album, "All Aboard"manages to bring one of the oldest tropes in the gospel-songwriters' book to vivid, nerve-jangling life, and "Pharisee in Recovery" manages to be both humorously self-deprecating and Biblically sound. The latter song, if I had my way, would be required listening for all church officials of all denominations.

Total Information Hypocrisy

From US News & World Report, January 12, 2004, p 6.

Shushing Homeland
Security is one thing, but how about this from the Department of Homeland Security? The agency has instructed employees to ignore, in some cases, court orders to disclose information. The agency says that an employee who gets a court order should seek a delay. And if he or she is unsuccessful and the court persists, the employee "shall respectfully decline to comply with the demand."

"Rule of Law"? Yeah, right. Thanks to the LU List.

Thunder, Thunder over Bunny Road!

CNN reports that a pair of Belgian desperadoes were recently captured by police despite having a car tricked out with enough gadgetry to satisfy James Bond or Lucas Doolin.

[The car was] reinforced with metal plates to stop bullets. [It} was also equipped with an automated box ready to spring tire traps to slow pursuers. The poachers had fitted a halogen lamp on the outside to blind their prey and shielded the car's number plates with lead sheeting to avoid identification. There was also a device to eject two old bicycles fixed on the back of the car on to the road as an obstacle to any vehicle in hot pursuit....

And the valuable, illicit cargo these daring highwaymen were smuggling? Bootleg liquor? Cocaine? Stolen artwork? Pirated DVD's? Nope. Rabbits.

All together now....

(CHORUS)
And there was (hippity-hop, hippity-hop!) over Thunder Road
(Hippity-hop!) was their engine, and (Hippity-hop!) was their load....

(Real lyrics here.)

With that kind of imagination and mechanical ability, couldn't these guys find anything more, uh, interesting to smuggle?

Guess I'm not the only one with a dirty mind

The city's most prominent and best-known landmark has been officially acknowledged as the World's Most Phallic Building.

Original contest and story from Cabinet magazine available here; text of historical marker plaque here.

Well, I'm back... again

I have been ever-so-gently reminded by at least two different persons that (1) I have failed to "write up" that sumptuous event-of-the-season, the Wedding of the Great Yam, and (2) contrary to appearances, there actually are people who try to read this blog occasionally, and they're mightily aggravated when lazy ol' me fails to throw them fresh meat... er, write new posts.

Really. I'm touched. You shouldn't have. That's so sweet.

Perhaps you will be more understanding of my recent distraction if I supply a chronology of the past month in the Life O' Felix. Batten down the hatches; it involves over 8000 miles of travel and visits to four different states, including the homes of seven different sets of relatives, three old college freinds, and three job interviews... and even so, I missed contacting one person I particularly wanted to see and one entire set of former co-workers. It's got beauty and beasts, pleasure and pain, a wonderful new sister-in-law (Hi, S.) and a horrible troll of a great-aunt. Not to mention an exploding power-steering pump, failing brakes, and an ailing cat spurting bloody urine. Some fun, eh?

Dec. 13 was the happy date of the Wedding of the Great Yam to his lovely bride S. in Austin, Texas, an event at which I was privileged to serve as groomsman. The wedding was held at night in a rural location north of Austin, lit by lanterns and candles, giving it a sort of mysterious pagan ambience. The bride and her bridesmaids approached the groom's party along a path of lights that wound down a small hillside opposite the wedding location, crossing a wooden bridge.

Fortunately, the sky didn't pour down rain on this festive and solemn occasion. However, it was cold, as the temperature began in the 40s (Fahrenheit) and proceeded to drop into the thirties after the ceremony. The bonfire was well attended, although my brother's threats to have a bonfire weenie-roast instead of a traditional reception dinner seem to have been vetoed by a Higher Power. There were those who wondered if the bride were going to start turning blue in her strapless gown; however, she reports feeling no pain all evening. There are of course traditional reasons for brides to be oblivious to trivial things like weather on wedding days, but in this case a judicious application of heat-pads seems to have aided matters. Nonetheless she was heard to murmur something about warmth when the happy twosome embraced after the vows.

While staying in Austin, I visited with a former college roommate whose love of ghost and mystery stories, nautical adventure, secret passages, and good food and liquor makes every visit an adventure, even if his version of ferroequinology differs from my own.

It turned out also that his next-door neighbor, a very attractive young woman, is studying the art of Swedish massage, and as part of her course of study, needs to do a certain number of practice massages. I allowed myself to be persuaded to volunteer. It's a rough job but someone's gotta do it. It is no doubt due to the relaxing influence of her gentle ministrations that I managed to refrain from actually attempting to track down and kill the blithering sadistic idiots who designed Austin's streets and highways.

Dec. 15-19 After the wedding, it was back to Michigan to work in the library for the final week of the semester.

Dec. 20: Back to Texas, this time north Dallas, for Christmas with the immediate family. Frantic last-minute shopping for gifts for forgotten distant relatives who decided at the last minute to come to the Christmas doin's. Swear eternal vengeance against the blithering yuppie idiots in their bling-bling BMW's and blundering chrome-armored SUV's that make driving in North Dallas so very .... interesting. Over next few days, spend too much time and too much money at model train stores, bookstores, etc. Buy more for myself than for others. (At least I know what I want....)

Dec. 22. In between pre-Christmas foolishness, have telephone interview with public library in southwestern Michigan. They don't sound impressed.

Dec. 24. Attend Christmas Eve services at local First Baptist Church. Sadly, rumor has it that this was the last year for the church's signature holiday blowout, the Living Christmas Tree. Somehow I fail to be saddened at the discontinuance of something which always looked to me as if savage headhunters had decorated the tree with trophies of unfortunate missionaries. Nor will I miss the spinning disco-balls used to create "swirling snow" effects.

Thankfully, however, this year's iteration of the Living Christmas Tree has already joined the Ghosts of Christmas Past, and the Christmas Eve candlelight service of prayer and traditional carols is modest, tasteful, and restrained, especially by comparison with the spectacle put on by the archrival crosstown megachurch . I don't think I could have restrained myself from laughing at the twelve-foot-long organdy "angels" swooping over the congregation on wires and metal tracks. "Duck! Incoming!!!"

Dec. 25. Off to the races on Christmas Day for the mad highway dash through Oklahoma (stopping off to visit a newly-acquired set of relatives, the grandparents of my brother's wife) and Arkansas up to Missouri to spend the next few days visiting the aunties and uncles and cousins and granddad and other relatives beyond my meagre powers of genealogical description. (S.'s grandmother is an antiques dealer. Mother is a great fan of cutesy antiques. They should get along famously....)

Notable moment: While visiting Great-Aunt H., she delivers herself of the considered opinion that "You could get married too, if you'd just look like a decent person."

Fortunately, Walgreens takes gift returns, and the gift originally intended for Great-Aunt H. paid for some much-needed office supplies. This is not the first time she's chosen to insult someone at Christmas. Note to self: spiteful old bat can rot in nursing home in future.

Dec. 28. On the way back to Texas, stop off in Springfield to look over the offerings of the various model railroad shops. Springfield, of course, is the center of the Universe for all things Frisco....

Several hours and many dollars later, leave Springfield behind. Make very late arrival in north Dallas. Sleep most of next day.

Dec. 30. Make pilgrimage to that Mecca of southwestern railroad history, the DeGolyer Library. Revel in access to complete microfilmed collection of all Sanborn maps in Library of Congress! Photocopy madly until closing! Speak briefly with head of library who informs me that although they'd like to hire a curator for their railroad materials, well, with budgets being what they are... yadda, yadda, yadda....

Dec. 31. Trek over to Fort Worth to visit with the illustrious Pablo, resulting in random outsputterings of verbiage as seen in prior posts. Watch taped episodes of Firefly. Conclude that the television executives who cancelled the series before completing a single season are pinheads. What else is new.

Jan. 1. During return from Fort Worth, parents' borrowed truck begins making horrible grinding noise as brake pads wear out. Conclude there's nothing I can do about it at 2 a.m. on New Year's Day. Sleep. Make unsuccessful efforts to contact other acquaintances and former co-workers in north Dallas later in the day. Go to see Return of the King with parents. Spend a substantial amount of time explaining background of movie. Am slightly flattered when mother says that Viggo Mortensen looks like me, but recognize that she's biased.

Jan. 2. Truck is in shop, leaving me without transportation, until late afternoon. Make more unsuccessful efforts to contact local acquaintances. Raid local bookstores. Rummage through storage compartment containing books and other property I haven't had access to for two years. Realize that a substantial portion of it is junk. Realize also that there is no way in h*ll that I'm going to be able to find anything specific in that jumble of boxes. (Think of the final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark; then compress all the contents of the scene into one 10x10 storage compartment.)

Jan. 3. Parents' other car needs repair work, too, leading to entertaining shuffle between various people and their transportation needs as I try to get various bulky gifts and purchases mailed to myself before the post offices close at noon. Pablo and Carlos pick me up in afternoon to go see fancy foreign flick at Inwood Theater. (Actually, the sign says I WO D nowadays, but who's counting letters?) Have pleasant lamb-kebob dinner at nearby Turkish restaurant. Chat about wine, women and song. Like Walker Percy's compatriots in his famous essay on Bourbon, wonder "Where Are The Women?" Conclude that we're all doomed.

Jan. 4. Fly back to Michigan to return to salt mines... er, library.

Jan. 5. Telephone interview with Catholic college in Houston, Texas in morning. Will they take me seriously? Don't count on it. At lunchtime, race to credit union to deposit paycheck. Truck power steering pump fails in middle of sharp turn, spraying steering fluid liberally around engine compartment. Steering 1/2-ton, 4wd truck suddenly becomes heavy manual labor. Briefly consider building up muscles by not fixing power steering. After running over a couple of curbs and veering into the wrong lane twice, decide that this is not a good idea.

Realize that paycheck has disappeared. Not metaphorically, but literally. Find out later in afternoon that University payroll won't replace paycheck for at least a week.

Jan. 7. Pick up truck from repair shop just in time to head to airport for interview trip to university in Georgia. Repair shop, to their credit, has actually fixed the problem at reasonable price and more-or-less on time. Arrive in Georgia at 10:30 p.m. and ride mass-transit train to downtown hotel. Risk of being mugged is minimized by short distance from subway terminal to designated hotel, which turns out to be reasonably attractive and comfortable, but lacking internet service. This is inconvenient since I still need to finalize presentation for job interview. Night clerk is ignorant and flippant about lack of knowledge of internet. Go to sleep.

Jan. 8. Up early to finish preparing presentation. Interview all day. Will spare you the details. Finish day by looking over Underground Atlanta, especially the impressive O-scale display layout representing various historically significant Atlanta buildings. No Tara plantation or Burning of Atlanta special effects, though. Return to Michigan on redeye flight.

Jan. 9. Returning to work at the library, find out that colleague who was supposed to cover my virtual-reference shift on the 8th failed to do so. Work most of the day at the reference desk, making up for missed hours of coverage.

Jan. 10 Do nothing all day. Nothing, blessed nothing. Note mysterious reddish spatter in closet. Did I drop something?

Jan. 11. Wake up to sight of cat peeing bloody urine in closet. Cat proceeds to do this repeatedly, every fifteen minutes, in every room of the apartment, with anxious look on face. Locate "emergency" weekend animal clinic. Several hours and many dollars later, begin dosing cat with antibiotics in hope that this is mere bladder infection. Vet also recommends eye ointment for watery right eye. (Cat's previous problem with left eye was surgically corrected this summer, so obviously he had to develop another problem or two.)

Jan. 12. Cat seems to be better; at least he's not spurting bloody pee every fifteen minutes. Begin morning by entering into negotiations with Cat over whether or not he will sit still for eye ointment. Negotiations take a hostile turn very quickly. Fortunately he's less hostile about taking his oral medicine. That may have something to do with the fact that I'm mixing it with canned catfood. (Silly cat!)

And so back to work again.