Libraries: spaces transform into what you need

After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit ‘Yes! We Have No Bananas.’

libraryOne of my blog followers suggested this: The Room of Requirement from This American Life. The title reference is to Harry Potter.

Act 1 is In Praise of Limbo by Zoe Chace. “There is a library that’s on the border of Canada and the United States — literally on the border, with part of the library in each country.”

Act 2 is Book Fishing In America by Sean Cole. Imagine “a library where regular people can come and drop off their own unpublished books. Nothing is turned away. The books live there forever. It’s the kind of place that would never work in real life. But someone decided to try it.”

“Libraries aren’t just for books. They’re often spaces that transform into what you need them to be: a classroom, a cyber café, a place to find answers, a quiet spot to be alone. It’s actually kind of magical. This week, we have stories of people who roam the stacks and find unexpected things that just happen to be exactly what they required.”

Are you a librarian, or do you work in a library? Do you now or have you ever owned a “Secret Librarians of Fandom” button?
You NEED to listen to this week’s This American Life, “Room of Requirement,” or AT LEAST Act Three, “Growing Shelf Awareness” by Stephanie Foo. “Lydia Sigwarth spent a lot of time in her public library growing up – all day, almost every day, for six months straight.”

Seriously, if you work in a library and have 15 minutes spare right now, just click through and listen to Act Three.


For the 1st Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter Public Domain

“That deluge of works includes not just ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,’ by Robert Frost, which appeared first in the New Republic in 1923, but hundreds of thousands of books, musical compositions, paintings, poems, photographs, and films.

After January 1, any record label can issue a dubstep version of the 1923 hit ‘Yes! We Have No Bananas,’ any middle school can produce Theodore Pratt’s stage adaptation of The Picture of Dorian Gray, and any historian can publish Winston Churchill’s The World Crisis with her own extensive annotations. Any artist can create and sell a feminist response to Marcel Duchamp’s seminal Dadaist piece, The Large Glass (The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even) and any filmmaker can remake Cecil B. DeMille’s original The Ten Commandments and post it on YouTube.

Duke Law has a full list of works released in the public domain this year.

Random 2018: Poisson Voronoi

It is the Poisson Voronoi, and I have no idea what that means.

At the beginning of each year, I select a post for each month of the previous year, using a random number generator, which may actually be random, or not, but is adequate for this exercise. I like to see how well it reflected that year just passed, or did not.

Statistically, I do one ABC Wednesday a week, at least one music piece each week, link summaries twice a month, maybe a couple dozen folks turning 70, pieces about my daughter once a month. So the frequency should be related to that, theoretically.

I’m fairly sure I got this meme from Gordon, who lives in Chicago and still remains the only non-local blogger I’ve ever met.

I love it because it’s quasi-mathematical, like doing the first level of these Brilliant quizzes that I get in my email and occasionally get right. “You have a one-day streak going.”

The graphic came from typing into Google the phrase random site:.gov and picking the first image containing the color green. It is the Poisson Voronoi, and I have no idea what that means. It came from meshing.lanl.gov, the Los Alamos National Lab.

January: “[Messina] also assembled The Kenny Loggins Band by summoning old friends..” -belated 70th birthday for Kenny Loggins
February:
“This means your visitors may see errors or be unable to access your website at all for brief periods of time.” – Technical difficulties with blogging.
March:
By 9th grade, I started carrying around my Bible to school. – Obit for evangelist Billy Graham

April: It is “a phrase popularized by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis… to describe how a ‘state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.'” – ABC Wednesday about the marijuana laws in the US
May:
“This two-record set was issued in 1971 by United Artists Records and features music which Winwood performed with The Spencer Davis Group, Powerhouse, Traffic and Blind Faith.” – Steve Winwood hit the big 7-0 on a Saturday
June:
It’s getting warmer and you may find yourself gazing out windows that you will once again have to fill with ugly old a/c units instead of the beautiful Kapsul you hoped for. – Another delayed Kickstarter I’ve supported

July: They must have determined I’m no longer a likely terrorist. – The infrequent airline passenger.
August:
PORN STARS, PLAYMATES, AND PRAYER CIRCLES – linkage, and the title, no less, of the post
September:
After BlacKkKlansman, which the three of us saw at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany, my daughter wanted to be held by her parents. – Movie review

October: The Rule of the Uber-Rich Means Tyranny or Revolution – linkage
November:
Neither victim was a publicly known person; they weren’t activists in their respective civil rights struggles. – I connected Matthew Shepard with Emmett Till
December: Those of you too young to remember the days of disco may not understand how truly reviled it was. – Another double play, with Donna Summer: music and she would have been 70

Interestingly no political ranks except in the links.

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