Ramblin' with Roger

American Library Assn’s “Unite Against Book Bans”

A patron, not a customer

A friend of mine who is on the board of trustees of the Albany Public Library told me about an action taken by the board at their November 8, 2022, meeting. The trustees signed on to the “Unite Against Book Bans” campaign of the American Library Association.

The document – I will email anyone the blank PDF form – begins, “We are organizations representing parents, educators and librarians, students and readers, authors and publishers, community and advocacy organizations, businesses and workers, nonprofits and faith groups, elected officials and civic leaders, and concerned citizens who are united against book bans.”

It shares a lot of cool stuff about reading as a “foundational skill.” “Books are tools for understanding complex issues” and “Individuals should be trusted to make their own decisions about what to read.”

“However, efforts to ban books, especially in schools and libraries, are occurring in unprecedented numbers across the country.” The number of books removed or restricted nearly tripled between 2019 and 2021.

“What is also shocking is the rise in state and local legislation which will make censorship easier, or even allow the criminal prosecution of librarians or teachers for simply doing their jobs– ensuring the public has access to a variety of ideas and perspectives. We fear that the centers of knowledge for families and communities are in jeopardy.”

Doctorow

Around the same time, Cory Doctorow wrote about “the American right-wing’s new focus on killing libraries.” It’s on Medium, and you might not be able to access it unless you’re a member. I’m going to provide some internal links, though. Let’s start with the pull quote. “Libraries are the last place in America where you are valued for your personhood rather than the contents of your wallet. At the library, you are a patron, not a customer.”

Doctorow writes: “Behind the anti-library movement is a demand for extraordinarily invasive government control over parenting.”

Here’s a “fantastic interview with incoming American Library Association president Emily Drabinski and it’s a must-listen masterclass in understanding what libraries mean and why wealthy right-wing media barons would want to destroy them.”

PEN America and, of course, the ALA also have much useful information. PEN America is the source of much of Alan Singer’s article about book bans in Missouri.

If you belong to an organization, I would like you to consider bringing the ALA campaign to the group. I will try to get my church on board since the trustee who brought the topic to my attention is also a church member.

When Kelly linked to the Doctorow article, he wrote, “You want to get me marching in the streets? Trying to kill my library might do it.” As the cliche goes, don’t mourn, organize!

Queen of memes: Sunday Stealing

Grocery shopping

This Sunday Stealing is from the Queen of Memes.

1. What do men really want in a woman?
4. What do women really want in a man?

If these are romantic questions – in which case, they are terribly heterocentric -then it depends: safety, security, sex, sanity, support, salvation, sacrifice, sincerity, sociability, silence, simplicity, and sparkle. Sometimes, in various and contradictory combinations.

Most of my friends are female, and it’s been true for most of my life. I’m still friends with some women I’ve gone out with.

2. Should marijuana be legalized?

It largely is, and I’m happy enough about it. The only time I ever purchased it, back when it was still illegal, was for a friend whose uncle was undergoing chemotherapy.

That said, marijuana has seldom been something I’ve enjoyed. It just puts me to sleep.

3. Why did the cow jump over the moon?

To show off.

5. When you are having a really good day, what usually makes it good?

I write a lot while listening to music. Then we see a movie or go to a play.

Actually, I had a good Friday evening at the art opening at the Pine Hills branch of the Albany (NY) Public Library. Several pieces were tied to the theme of redlining. The display is there until May 2023.

I introduced the new library director to a couple of Literary Legends. And I met someone willing to help me enact a scheme I’ve had in mind for several years to address certain rude drivers without keying their cars. (I would never actually DO that, BTW, but I THINK about it.)

Gone south

6. What can make your good day turn into a bad day?

Shockingly rude – racist, sexist, homophobic, and/or just entitled – people.

7. If you could “start from scratch” and turn back the clock for a re-do, what would you re-do?

Nothing. The more I think about this, the more I realize that if I had changed THIS, it would ALSO change THAT, and it would not end up better.

8. Do you make a list when you go grocery shopping?

It depends on whether I’m shopping for myself or someone else. For myself, it’s always the same things – fruit, veggies, cereal, and stuff in the dairy aisle. If my wife says, “Can you pick up X,” that’s fine. But if it’s more than three items, I have to write it down.

There was an episode of the 1990s sitcom Mad About You – I think it’s this one – when Jamie and Paul are talking about items for the Thanksgiving meal they are hosting. Intermittently, Jamie tells Paul to get another item. Paul recites the one, then two, then three items. When she requests a fourth, he says, “I’m writing this down.” So three is the maximum for the fictional Paul Buchman and the real me.

9. Do you buy more groceries when you’re hungry?

Not so much MORE as food that I probably ought not to consume calorically. So I make a point, almost always, NOT to shop hungry.

10. Coupons. Use ’em?

When I was in college, I used to all of the time, organized by category. Not so much in the 21st century, though if the receipt prints out a coupon for something I regularly buy, sure.

11. Have you ever complained to the manager of your grocery store?

Not to my recollection.

Sam Walton

12. Do you like to buy groceries at huge chain stores like Walmart? Or do you shop exclusively at food stores?

My wife goes to the Hannaford, and I go to Market 32/Price Chopper. Except when she was out of commission when I went to the Hannaford because she liked their selections better.

My problem with Walmart, as I noted here, is that it tended to drive other supermarkets, hardware stores, et al., from the market. Some people in the US can ONLY grocery shop at Walmart. That said, when my wife couldn’t get out of the house, members of our family ordered food to be delivered from Walmart. The service was quite adequate.

13. What do you typically have for lunch?

It depends. Eggs or sandwiches or leftovers.

14. If you work outside your home, do you pack your lunch?

When I was working, seldom. I was so distressed by work by the end that I didn’t even want to be in the building at lunchtime.

15. Tell us about your last lunch date and what made it special.

It was at a restaurant that my wife and I had gone to, but she wasn’t up to eating out. So my sister, visiting from California, and I went there in early October. She loved it, not just the food but the ambiance.

Despised Tunes of Christmas

older than I thought

despised songs I found The Most Hated Christmas Songs of All Time here and The 20 Worst Christmas Songs of All Time here. Some of them I don’t know, and you really need to know songs for them to be despised tunes, don’t you think?

Wonderful Christmastime – Paul McCartney. I’ve heard some very decent covers of this song. The song isn’t bad. This recording?

Do They Know It’s Christmas? – Band Aid. When Bob Geldof called it one of the “worst songs in history,” that says a lot. Pretentious and condescending, but its heart was in the right place.

The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don’t Be Late) – Alvin and the Chipmunks. When I was growing up, my parents had this single. It’s nostalgic for me.

I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus – The Jackson 5. It’s corny, especially when Michael says, “I’m going to tell my daddy!”

Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer – Elmo and Patsy. OK, I’ll admit it; I BOUGHT this single in the early 1980s. Not incidentally, the version that I heard on the radio was rerecorded.

All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth) – Spike Jones and His City Slickers. OK, so it’s annoying, but Spike Jones often is.

River horse

I Want A Hippopotamus for Christmas – Gayla Peevey. I never heard of this song until Mark Evanier posted it on Christmas Eve 2017. For a ten-year-old, she has impressive pipes.

Baby, It’s Cold Outside – She and Him. The critic finds this version “overwhelmingly twee,” whatever that means. Of course, the song generally has become controversial.

Back Door Santa – Bon Jovi. One of two songs on that original A Very Special Christmas (1987) I don’t particularly enjoy.

Here is another song I imagine some people will hate. Santa’s Too Fat For The Hula Hoop – The Pixies with Thurl Ravenscroft as Santa Claus (c 1958).

Now there is a track on both lists I hate SO much that I won’t even link to it. That would be Dominick the Donkey by Lou Monte. I thought it was a fairly recent song, but no. It was recorded in 1960. But I only heard it this century.

“The song was re-released onto Amazon on September 26, 2011, on Dexterity Records. The spelling of ‘Dominick’ was modified to ‘Dominic’… It was included in Volume 2 of the Ultimate Christmas Album series produced by Collectables Records and on the Christmas compilation album Merry Xmas 2011 by Cinquenta Musica.”

From politics to library science

carrying petitions

He blinded me with science! From politics to library science, that is.

Armen Boyajian is a pretty good jazz violinist. He graduated from Binghamton Central High School the same year that I did, but he’s better preserved. He left a lengthy comment on this post, only part of which I will quote here.

I didn’t know you were a Political Science major, Roger. I was also, first, an undergrad at U of Rochester… Then off to SUNY Binghamton for MA in Public Policy. Thought I was going to become a policy wonk at Urban Institute or somewhere like that – but wound up in the nonprofit world as a fundraiser and a jazz musician. I really had no desire to go into politics but was interested in the process… What prompted you to switch from politics to library science?

Armen, I was always interested in politics. I used to read the op/ed pages of the local newspapers by the time I was ten. Also, my father and many other people I knew were involved with the civil rights and/or antiwar movements.

I got involved in student government (General Organization) at BCHS and was president of G.O. The first political campaign I had anything to do with involved blowing up balloons for Bill Burns’ unsuccessful attempt to become mayor in 1969 (?); he lost to Al Libous.

New Paltz

I went to SUNY New Paltz as a poli sci major and joined the New Paltz Democratic Club. In 1974, Howard Robison (R-Owego) declined to run again in the vast Congressional District that ran from Ithaca to Binghamton to Woodstock and New Paltz. Three of the four candidates came to the NPDC and pitched us. Though most members backed the lawyer from Woodstock, a few of us supported the district attorney from Ithaca named Matt McHugh.

I carried petitions for him and got over 125 signatures. While McHugh lost the portion of Ulster County in the CD, he won New Paltz. Then he ran in the general election against Al Libous and won. I made some phone bank calls for McHugh and the Assembly candidate, Maurice Hinchey. They both won.

Some poli sci friends of mine got me to run for Student Government Association. In a crooked election, which I wrote about here, I won. But I dropped out of college for reasons.

The next year, there was a vacancy in the SGA, and I was appointed to that position. Unfortunately, though I was oblivious to it, there was much chicanery with the bookkeeping, with thousands of dollars missing. (In my area that year, which was Education, including WNPC and the Oracle newspaper, my audited books were off by 79 cents.)

Grad school #1

I went to SUNY Albany to get an MA in Public Administration in 1979. That didn’t work for me for some reasons, not the least of which is that the students there were ruthless. They would hide materials or even remove pages from books.

The kicker, though, was one course in which we were given a real-world problem to try to solve. Then the actual person who took on the issue came to class to explain how they resolved it. As often as not, there WAS no suitable resolution.

At the same time, I had an internship at the Albany Housing Authority. I did have some successes – notably recommending merging the janitorial services, which had been divided into ones funded by the state and federal, which worked more efficiently. Nevertheless, it was often disheartening.

So when I took a summer job at a comic book store, I stayed for 8.5 years. After an awful year at Empire Blue Cross and a stint as a Census enumerator, I went back to grad school kicking and screaming. But truth be told, I have always had the librarian inclination since I was a page at the Binghamton Public Library when I was in high school. Or, more likely, long before that. And these were cooperative, not competitive, students. Much more my vibe.

I did carry political petitions thrice in the 21st century, one for a Common Council candidate I liked and the others for a school board candidate and a judge, both of whom I knew personally, and they all won.

There it is: how I started off as a poli sci major and ended up as a librarian. BTW, the poli sci did come in handy as I was able to ascertain which agency I should contact to get certain information.

The rainbow door: great choice

patterns

A dozen years or more ago, we needed to get a new front door at our abode. The old one was letting in a tremendous draft, so our feet would be freezing even inside the house. My wife decided on this particular door, which she acknowledged was a bit more expensive than some others. I grudgingly agreed to the purchase. Little did I know it was a rainbow door.

Roughly 40 minutes after sunrise, the sun pierces through the door’s glass and creates a series of rainbows. They appear on the steps and down the hallway for about an hour and a half most days. This brings me joy.

Recently, I was looking more carefully at the patterns. If you look at the pattern from the kitchen down the hallway, the nearer patterns appear with colors, but the designs heading towards the door appear white. However, if you look up the hallway – being sure not to be in the way of the rainbow door’s array – it shows color all the way to the kitchen.

Some are boxy, while others are long and narrow, and they change over the morning. Watching these has become an interesting, if not obsessive, phenomenon. My cellphone photography does not do these patterns justice.

Beyond that, people passing by make comments about the beauty of the door itself. It’s distinctive enough that some people identify our house from the entryway.

Passages

About three months after we got the new door, someone came to our home seeking the OLD door. They had lived in the house years ago, before the people we bought the house from. We had given it to our contractor, and I don’t know what became of it after that.

Doors fascinate me. Loved the coffin doors at the Marriott Syracuse Downtown, where I stayed back in 2017.

I wrote a story about coming through the door at my first home here. It was a fascinating writing exercise.

Also…

I was also particularly thinking about rainbows today because this would have been the 46th birthday of Matthew Shepard. You might consider contributing to the foundation started in his name.

On November 20, my church participated in the Transgender Day of Remembrance. It was the morning after the mass shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs was attacked.

The Weekly Sift guy wondered, Is Club Q just the beginning? A story in the Los Angeles Times indicates that “There are few, if any, gay bars or other LGBTQ-friendly hangouts in [California’s] more rural counties, where queer people say they live with a growing sense of foreboding.”

Chuck Rozanski/Bettie Pages, the President of Mile High Comics, noted that the club was “not just any bar in my life, but one of the places where I have performed most often.” They had been served orange juice by Daniel Aston, one of the five who were killed only nine days earlier. In his follow-up post, they wrote about what they thought should happen next, which, in brief, is to fight back.

Arthur on The Respect for Marriage Act.