You don't believe we're on the eve....

I go to bed tonight hoping that the Bush Administration will not spring some last-minute plan to disrupt the election tomorrow. I go to bed hoping and praying that the election will go smoothly, but dreading that it will be tainted by fraud and by blatant Bush administration attempts to suppress democracy to preserve its profitable, cozy grip on power. I find myself wondering whether, if exit polls begin to go against the ruling administration, there will be "terrorist" attacks intended to panick the remainder of the electorate into voting for a warmonger.

Am I paranoid? Or are these thoughts rational when the ruling administration has shown itself to have no moral or ethical principals whatsoever in its singleminded, Machiavellian pursuit of power, profit, and personal aggrandizement? Can it be that the only reason democracy has survived thus far in the U.S. is because no political administration thus far has been amoral and vicious enough to subvert or defy it?

Is it rational for me to wonder whether the Bush Administration, which believes itself to be anointed by God and (more importantly) to have the unquestioning support of the military, will accept the results of any election that goes against it? Or to wonder whether the votes cast will even be counted?

For you who are on the fence, or contemplating voting for Bush: Consider the various proposals that the Bush Administration has floated as "trial balloons" in the past couple of years, and then backed down on because they feared the loss of popular support. Cancelling elections. PATRIOT II. Enabling corporations to import vast numbers of indentured servants from the Third World to replace American workers. Consider its chutzpah in starting a bloody war on blatantly fraudulent premises, and using that war to funnel billions of dollars to its business cronies in no-bid contracts so openly rigged that the FBI is investigating them even in the face of likely retaliation from an administration whose notorious penchant for petty vengeance has led it to betray CIA agents in order to "get back" at their spouses for criticizing it. Consider the President's assertions that he and his operatives have the legal power to seize anyone, at any time, and plunge them into a black hole of perpetual incarceration without trial, without legal representation, without family contact or judicial review or public acknowledgement of any kind. To "disappear" people in the style of the old-fashioned South American goon squads. To torture and degrade prisoners in total disregard of international treaties and basic human decency.

Now consider what that same administration would be like in a second term, with no Constitutional incentive to care about popular opinion.

If you consider Bush and Kerry to be equally offensive, consider this: Kerry will at least have an incentive to acknowledge public opinion if he wants to be re-electable in 2008.

If you are morally offended by Kerry's unwillingness to outlaw abortion, consider this: is Bush's insistence on smugly sending thousands of adult men and women out to die or to wreak havoc on tens of thousands of other human beings in an unwarranted war any morally superior?

I grant that the bulk of the American populace may, in fact, be blinkered and ignorant enough to blindly follow Bush down the path toward further destruction of America's historical tradition of political and economic liberty. As P.T. Barnum famously said, no one ever went broke by underestimating the intelligence of the public. I hope that this is not the case. I don't think it is.

And I go to bed hoping that when the tumult and the shouting dies tomorrow, the tumult and the shouting will be all that dies.

Of Canada and satellite dishes

This legal news from up north might be of interest to one or two readers. Slashdot discussion here, along with discussion of the British Columbia privacy minister's reaction to the US goverment's insistence on indiscriminate data-mining via the so-called "PATRIOT" Act and other means.

A convergence

We want to bankrupt the U.S., says Bin Laden. Okey-doke, says Bush....

A convergence

We want to bankrupt the U.S., says Bin Laden. Okey-doke, says Bush....

Bush spreads lies again

Remember the Bush campaign's telephone smear campaign against John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary? The one in which Bush used anonymous automated telephone diallers to smear McCain with false charges at the last minute?

Guess what.

That's right, they're doing it again. The Detroit Free Press and the Daily Kos weblog are reporting a surge of automated, anonymous telephone calls in Michigan, all either seeking to link Kerry with the phrase "gay marriage" or to fraudulently direct voters in Democratic districts to incorrect polling locations.

If anyone out there's contemplating voting for Bush, at this point you're doing so consciously knowing that you are voting for lies, bigotry, and deliberate subversion of democracy.

An interesting challenge for law students:

Find a way to make sharia law compatible with human rights.

More Bush campaign dirty tricks

Old news, I'm afraid, since I haven't had much time for blogging lately. But for the benefit of anyone who hasn't read it elsewhere:

"Former employees of a Republican-controlled company, Voters Outreach of America, AKA America Votes, which conducted voter registration drives in Nevada, have blown the whistle on its practice of selectively destroying the registration forms of people who attempted to register as Democrats.

"Two former workers say they personally witnessed company supervisors rip up and trash registration forms signed by Democrats.

"'We caught her taking Democrats out of my pile, handed them to her assistant and he ripped them up right in front of us. I grabbed some of them out of the garbage and she tells her assisatnt to get those from me,'" said Eric Russell, former Voters Outreach employee.

"Eric Russell managed to retrieve a pile of shredded paperwork including signed voter registration forms, all from Democrats. We took them to the Clark County Election Department and confirmed that they had not, in fact, been filed with the county as required by law.

"So the people on those forms who think they will be able to vote on Election Day are sadly mistaken...."

"The company has been largely, if not entirely funded, by the Republican National Committee."

The Republican-funded company reportedly skipped out on its Nevada landlord without paying the rent and flew (by night, presumably) to Oregon, where it busily committed further election fraud on behalf of its paymasters. Just another example of the "moral values" loudly touted by the current crop of Republicans.

More here, here, here.

Libraries are thieves!

Old news, but still entertaining: the Writers Against Piracy. "Put down the library book, and back away slowly...."

Of G.W. Bush and solipsism

Apparently, not only does the Bush Administration not care what the rest of the world thinks, they don't want the rest of the world to know what they think.

Durn furriners. Y'all just shet up an' do what yer told!

Conference report, days two, three, and four (belated)

Blogging the succeeding days of the conference turned out to be more difficult than anticipated, due to limited availability of internet terminals and time.

The exhibitors' hall was somewhat smaller and attracted fewer vendors than the ones at prior Texas L.A. and American L.A. conferences I've attended, but I came across a few interesting regional publishers and distributors I wouldn't have found otherwise. At the library association sales table, amongst the high-priced and (ironically) poorly-indexed directories of state associations, lacquered jewelry, library-themed tchotchkes, and recent books by conference-attending authors, someone was selling bars of all-natural "librarian-made" soap in various flavors (pumpkin, rose petals, etc.) I asked her if she'd read Fight Club. She laughed knowingly. I didn't buy any soap. Others did, however; she was sold out by the second day.

The keynote speaker on the first day discussed at some length the various impacts that he thinks technology will have on libraries. Although a great deal of what he said regarding the social impact of constant electronically-enabled social connectedness made sense, I suspect that some of those few who read this blog will take exception to his statement that "bloggers don't care about privacy." It was the first, but not the last, time that the concept of privacy was dismissed as old-fashioned and no longer relevant to the modern, wired, interconnected world.

Gleanings from various sessions and workshops throughout the conference:

The state electronic library plans to change their interface this coming January. I can't see anything wrong with the current interface, but I guess Change is Good (TM).

A speaker on internet privacy recommended ZoneAlarm as a good free-or-cheap downloadable firewall to protect personal computers from viruses, trojans, etc. (Any thoughts/reviews from those more technically savvy than myself?) He also suggested, without overtly saying so, that a dismaying number of government computers were distressingly vulnerable to such malware. The fact that many such computers have access to citizens' private information was duly noted.

All Music Group has good swag at their presentations. I picked up a couple of nice classic-jazz compilation CDs at their presentation table before rudely skedaddling to another talk. (So sue me.) It occurs to me to wonder about the ethics of having commercial vendors do scheduled presentations about their for-profit products on the same featured basis as non-commercial speakers, meetings of professional interest groups, etc.

I sat in on a session about "use and creation of portfolios for professional development" in academic libraries. Who knows? Such information may someday be useful to me. While waiting for the presentation to begin, I noticed that one of the tech people from Suburban Public Library was also sitting in the room. Was she contemplating a job switch into the academic world, I wondered? And what did she think about seeing me in the room? It turned out she was receiving an award from the group sponsoring the talk. Thinking quickly, I grabbed my digital camera out of my briefcase and snapped a picture. Then I sat through the rest of the talk, about how to organize a portfolio for tenure review and/or promotion in academic libraries, as if it were a boring but necessary adjunct to getting her photo.

Meeting people from both "Huron State" and Suburban Public Library throughout the conference was slightly awkward. It was as if I were trying to negotiate a social event while juggling two dates. (Which, for the record, I have never done, and never intend to do.) Fortunately, the Huron State folks made it rather easy for me by not inviting me to go to lunch with them or otherwise interact with them for much longer than the space of a brief hallway conversation or two. The SPL folks were more friendly, which isn't particularly surprising considering that SPL was willing to pay my way to the conference and Huron State wasn't. I was a bit annoyed when I found that the other SPL folks were staying at the ritzy conference hotel while I roughed it at a cheaper chain hotel five miles down the road. But I shouldn't complain about it. I could have insisted on staying at the conference hotel, even when the head of reference darkly hinted that, for a part-timer, low conference expenditures would be a good idea. (Really, I don't mind that they had in-room jacuzzis while I had a dank chain-hotel swimming pool with cloudy water. Or that they had dinner and drinks in a top-floor-of-the-skyscraper bar and restaurant overlooking the bay while I gnawed on bread and cheese and apples from a cardboard box, or that they had spectacular tenth-floor views of the autumn colors of the northern Michigan forests while I had a first-floor view of a parking lot. Really, I don't mind. Believe me. Not at all. Nope.)

Thursday afternoon, a presentation billed as Business for Beginners turned out to be an overview of small-business-startup resources available from a particular state agency and other sources, rather than the more general discussion of current, general business-reference resources that I'd hoped for. But I did get some useful lists of resources for the occasional library user who's contemplating starting a business.

The "best of the best" presentation about exemplary small-library programs and projects in the state featured the director of the library of my former residence in the U.P. and, among other things, the display of wedding gowns and other feminine stuff that she and the local historical society had put on at the library. After the talk, I inquired about the status of their unique and extensive archival collection on a very interesting Yooper railroad. Fortunately, it seems they are in the process of digitizing portions of it, and took my e'mail address to send me further information. Unfortunately, I haven't heard anything from them since.

Thursday night, having opted out of the $38-a-plate dinner with accompanying celebrity speech, I decided to walk from the El Cheapo Motel to the local downtown for dinner. Bad idea. Three miles later, I turned around and started walking back. In the rain. Cold rain. At least I slept well once I got back.

The Friday morning presentation on library weblogs didn't tell me much I didn't already know, but it did inspire me to think that SPL might benefit from public and/or staff weblogs, and that if I were to suggest and implement such a thing it might actually look like a technological "achievement". (Gotta think about that portfolio.)

The motivational speaker at the end of the conference didn't particularly appeal to me, but others seemed to like her. Spent the rest of the afternoon driving up the very narrow peninsula north of Traverse City, past beachfront property that I'll never be able to afford and many, many acres of cherry trees and vineyards, to the Old Mission Point Lighthouse, where I snapped a photo of granddad's Land Yacht posed in front of the lighthouse, under a sign announcing the 45th parallel, the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. I figured he might enjoy seeing how far north it's ventured. (The lighthouse, by the way, seems to be a private residence. It must be strange to live there, with tourists constantly walking by, gawking and taking pictures of your house from ten or twenty feet away.)

The Land Yacht performed flawlessly on the road, surging along the road like a battleship ponderously but effortlessly shouldering its way through the waves.

And so home, and so to bed.

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.