Tag: libraries

August rambling: America’s wombmate

NEW Rebecca Jade!

Credit: DNY59/gettyimages

Big Brother Moves to Become America’s Wombmate -government access to medical data threatens patient rights.

Here’s a Map of What FOTUS-GOP Destruction of US Hospitals Looks Like

America First is America alone. Power-crazed he may be, but he fails to grasp soft power.

This is what extreme heat is doing to us: Policies to Make the Planet Hotter

The North Rim of the Grand Canyon Burned: The NPS Burns Too

The Founders of This New Arkansas Development Say You Must Be White to Live There

How Ireland’s ‘Mediocre’ Milk Powder Made it Big in West Africa

U.S. Drinking Drops to New Low, Poll Finds

How to champion libraries in Congress: a free virtual event on Tuesday, September 9 at 5 PM ET / 4 PM CT / 2 PM PT, where ALA policy experts and special guests will share updates, inspiring stories, and how you can pitch in at the start of this school year.

Mike Lindell & MyStore: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Kelly’s 2X4

Matt Damon & Ken Jennings on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire

Marvel v. DC: The 25-Cent War from Tales From My Spinner Rack! by Gary Sassaman

Now I Know: The Dancing Plague and The Baseball Player With The Special ID, and He Bought His Freedom With Fake Money, and Why Some Movies Can’t Give it a Rest, and His Hometown Went to Pot? and Excel Has Bad Genes

ICE Raids and DC Occupation

Make democracy work part of ordinary life, not an add-on (ht/Paul Tonko). Lauren DesRosiers quoted Audre Lorde: “Every day of your lives is practice in becoming the person you want to be. No instantaneous miracle is suddenly going to occur and make you brave and courageous and true. And every day that you sit back silent, refusing to use your power, terrible things are being done in our name.”

DHS is using the Bible to promote ICE, claiming ‘righteous’ fight against immigrants. The agency refers to Scripture, including Micah 6:8, as it seeks to recruit agents.

 

New York State has seen a surge in ICE arrests, with totals four times the number seen during the same June-July period last year.

 

Don’t Let ICE’s Legal Abuses Stop You From Asserting Your Rights

 

‘Go Home, Fascists’: Protesters Jeer Federal Agents in Streets of DC

Federal agents face protests after Trump orders unprecedented takeover of DC police

Five Ways to Fight FOTUS Fascism by Robert Reich

Tonko and Fahy

My Congressperson, US Rep. Paul Tonko: “I traveled to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia… This visit was even more urgent given the results of a report from ICE’s Office of the Inspector General from an unannounced facility inspection earlier this summer. The report found the facility and ICE staff were not in compliance with federal law and used excessive, inappropriate force, including striking detainees and spraying them with pepper spray.

“Despite the pressing need for oversight and in violation of federal law that grants me and all Members of Congress access to these facilities, I was denied at the gate. The facility guards blocking my entry went so far as to confirm that they knew they were in violation of the law. If they are fine ignoring the legal rights of a Member of Congress, what does that mean for our own communities and individuals who are detained?”

You may or may not be able to read my state senator, Pat Fahy’s, newest op-ed in the Times Union, “about the paramilitary-type tactics taking over our streets. 

“No visible identification, no judicial warrants, no due process – these are setting a dangerous precedent for Americans and normalizing paramilitary secret police style tactics on our streets. That’s why I introduced legislation to prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks or face coverings during civil immigration enforcement in New York.

“Security and humanity can both exist, and instilling fear will not create the immigration reforms we need to enrich America and honor its legacy.”

Kudos to them both.

MUSIC

Not Me No Way – Rebecca Jade ℗ 2025 Ultimate Vibe Recordings, Released on: 2025-08-18

Join Ice – Jesse Welles

He Just Can’t Wait To Be King! – Randy Rainbow Song Parody

Coverville 1545: Cover Stories for Steve Martin and Modest Mouse and 1546: The Mamas & The Papas Cover Story

The Mamas & The Papas cover Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart songs: My Heart Stood Still (from One Dam’ Thing after Another, 1927); Glad To Be Unhappy (from On Your Toes, 1936); Sing For Your Supper (from The Boys from Syracuse, 1938). They sang those three songs and Here In My Heart (from Dearest Enemy, 1925) for Rodgers and Hart Today, a salute to the composers, which aired March 2, 1967, on ABC TV, then reworked it as  No Salt On Her Tail.

Symphony No. 1 in F minor by Dmitri Shostakovich

Gospel Plough – Robert Plant and Saving Grace

Lida Rose/Will I Ever Tell You from the movie The Music Man

You’ll Be Back – Primer

On The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe from the movie The Harvey Girls (1946),  with Judy Garland, Ray Bolger, and many others

Theme to the movie Emma by Rachel Portman

The Cast of Oliver with Davy Jones perform I’d Do Anything on The Ed Sullivan Show, Feb 9, 1964

Peter Sprague Plays Waters of March featuring Allison Adams Tucker

Run On -Elvis Presley

I Love You Period –  Dan Baird

Bernstein – Academic Festival Overture (Brahms)

Go Away, Little Girl – Donny Osmond

Beethoven “Moonlight Sonata” for Mongkol, the Old Bull Elephant (ht/aal)

The hairpin: The Most Misunderstood Symbol in Music (ft. Seymour Bernstein) by Ben Lade

“Librarians aren’t the flashiest people”

liars aiming to avoid accountability will become more believable

My friend Catbird wrote:

Hi Roger—

I just saw Carla Hayden on PBS NewsHour.  She made a remark (something to the effect of )“maybe maybe librarians aren’t the flashiest people, but they’re trusted,” that took  me right to “information without the bun.”
Information Without the Bun was the name of my blog on the Times Union website from 2008 to 2021.
I got excited to be reminded of you. 💕🫂😆… it was a happy surprise! 
I hope you are sufficiently happy in your life right now. 
And in case I forgot, happy Father’s Day.

This was very touching. I strive to provide accurate data on this blog diligently. On Facebook, I often post police reports of traffic jams and parking restrictions because it seems useful.

Librarians, by training and perhaps upbringing, want information disseminated. That’s why shutting down the Voice of America, PBS, NPR (Protect My Public Media!), Radio Free Europe, and gutting the Smithsonian breaks my heart.

Tactics designed to make us more stupid, such as book bans or getting rid of people, as well as departmental websites due to “DEI,”  etc., which happened to the former librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden, are extremely troubling to me.  Incidentally, I never met Dr. Hayden, but librarians I know in real life who have are monumentally impressed with her. 
However, it’s challenging, and it’s becoming increasingly complex always to get it right. The things I see on Facebook and other social media that are stated as fact but are wrong cause me some mental pain.

From WIRED: “When I read a tweet about four noted Silicon Valley executives being inducted into a special detachment of the United States Army Reserve, including Meta CTO Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, I questioned its veracity. It’s tough to discern truth from satire in 2025, in part because of social media sites owned by Bosworth’s company. But it indeed was true. According to an official press release, they’re in the Army now, specifically Detachment 201.”
Of COURSE, Steven Levy didn’t believe it. The concept seems absurd.
The liar’s dividend
John Oliver discussed AI Slop on Last Week Tonight. He explains “why you’ve been seeing more AI-generated content online [and] the harm it can do.” This leads to a more toxic spinoff: the liar’s dividend.

From Cambridge Core: “This study addresses the phenomenon of misinformation about misinformation, or politicians ‘crying wolf’ over fake news. Strategic and false claims that stories are fake news or deepfakes may benefit politicians by helping them maintain support after a scandal.

From the Brennan Center: Scholars “posit that liars aiming to avoid accountability will become more believable as the public becomes more educated about the threats posed by deepfakes. The theory is simple: when people learn that deepfakes are increasingly realistic, false claims that real content is AI-generated become more persuasive too… Deepfakes amplify uncertainty.”

And there are other AI informational flaws. From The New York Times: They Asked an AI Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling. “Generative A.I. chatbots are going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and endorsing wild, mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort reality.”

I try to double- or even triple-check items I post. But if I muff it once in a while, it’s not for lack of trying.

Libraries are bellwethers

Libraries are bellwethers. “The mission of the American Library Association is to provide leadership for the development, promotion, and improvement of library and information services and the profession of librarianship in order to enhance learning and ensure access to information for all.”

In the current issue of the ALA magazine, American Libraries, there is an interview with John Green, whose latest book is Everything Is Tuberculosis.

You’re also a staunch supporter of the freedom to read. What would you say to those who are concerned about the future of book challenges, especially in this political landscape?

“I’ve never been so worried about it. I’ve never experienced attacks on my work like the ones I’ve seen in the last couple of years, and that’s even more true for authors of color and LGBTQ authors. It is really upsetting to live in a world where the freedom to read is at such risk, where so many kids are denied access to the breadth of literature because of activist parents going and trying to get books removed from libraries.

Power

“I think it speaks to the power of literature. I think it speaks to the fact that these books are important. But the old saw that it’s good news when your book gets banned because it’ll sell more copies, that’s just not true. At least it’s not true now. What’s true now is that there has been a fair amount of success at removing books from the hands of kids who would otherwise read and be transformed by those books, and that worries me a lot.”

Here are the Banned and Challenged Books data from the ALA. Also, check out the FAQ: Executive Order Targeting IMLS. On Friday night, March 14, an Executive Order was issued to dismantle the only federal agency dedicated to funding library services, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), as well as six other agencies.

Albany Public Library
As previously noted, there are Two Open Seats on the APL Board. Albany voters will select two trustees for the Albany Public Library Board in the May 20 election. Both positions carry full five-year terms, which commence on July 1. 
Trustee nominating petitions, with at least 51 signatures, are due to the Clerk of the City School District of Albany by 5 pm on Wednesday, April 30. The library’s trustee election and budget vote are held in conjunction with the city school district. The library trustee candidates will be announced after the school district validates submitted nominating petitions.
I am aware of at least one trustee candidate whom I shall actively oppose. I won’t mention them here until after April 30, in case they choose not to run, although I’ve already seen their campaign literature, which appears to “oppose the property tax increase.” Nearly simultaneously, they’re also running for another public office, which I think is overly ambitious. 
I haven’t voted AGAINST a candidate in over a decade, when a neo-Nazi was on the ballot. To show how nervous I was, I considered running myself.  

The library is hosting the following public forum:

Meet the Trustee Candidates Forum and Library Budget Session

May 6 (Tue) | 6-7:30 pm | Washington Ave. Branch | 161 Washington Ave.

Talks!

Friends and Foundation of the Albany Public Library Author talks/book reviews in May, Tuesdays at 2 pm, 161 Washington Ave, large auditorium:

May 6 | Book Review | Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages by Gaston Dorren.  Reviewer:  David Brickman, longtime writer & editor, language lover, and FFAPL treasurer.

May 13 | Book Review | Why Nations Fail:  The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty by Daron Acemoglu & James Robinson.  Reviewer:  Frank S. Robinson, JD, philosopher, author, & blogger.

May 20 | Book Review | Platonic:  How the Science of Attachment Can Help You Make — and Keep — Friends by Marisa G. Franco, PhD.  Reviewer:  Hailey Hamias, FFAPL volunteer & community development professional.

May 27 | Book Review | Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer.  Reviewer:  Elaine Garrett, BFA, MA, STEM Outreach and Workforce Development, SUNY Research Foundation at NY Creates and the NYS Center of Excellence in Nanoelectronics and Nanotechnology, UAlbany.

March rambling: Dismantling

The Strange, Post-Partisan Popularity of the Unabomber

Used by permission of Clay Bennett, Editorial Cartoonist, Chattanooga Times Free Press

“We Are Watching the Deliberate Dismantling of American Democracy” – Heather Cox Richardson with Katie Couric

Mark Evanier has posted nearly daily a series of Fact Checks over the last month that suggest members of the regime LIE regularly, especially FOTUS.

The regime seeks to starve libraries and museums of funding. Fight back with ALA.

The executive order targeting the Smithsonian Institution will “eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the institute’s museums, centers, and the National Zoo in Washington.

Pete Hegseth Sent Secret War Plans to Journalist by Accident. Here Are the Texted War Plans That He Said ‘Nobody Was Texting’ on Signal. “A reminder that various administration officials lied under oath in the Senate.”

Millions face delays as administration ends Social Security phone verification. A new policy eliminating phone verification for Social Security benefits threatens to overwhelm field offices, cut off vulnerable recipients, and accelerate efforts to privatize the system.

 Executive Order on Voting Denounced as ‘Authoritarian Power Grab’

Pentagon restores some webpages honoring minority service members but defends DEI purge.

Rights, Privileges, and Mahmoud Khalil

Decades ago, Columbia refused to pay him $400 million. The university was looking to expand. It considered and rejected property owned by djt. He did not forget it.

People named in JFK assassination documents are not happy their personal information was released.

FOTUS has big dreams for the Kennedy Center but doesn’t seem to know what it does. His hostile takeover of the Washington, D.C., cultural institution will probably chase away the very people who like to attend shows there

Here’s What RFK Jr. Got Wrong About H5N1 Bird Flu— “This is Hollywood science, not real science,” one expert said

EPA Teases Evisceration of Scientific Research Office

FCC Chair Brendan Carr, FOTUS’ Media Pit Bull Is “Off the Leash”

Cory Doctorow: Twinkump Linkdump (22 Mar 2025)

How DOGE is making government almost comically inefficient

Musk tells his biggest lie yet: ‘I’ve never done anything harmful’

How Elon Musk’s DOGE Cuts Leave a Vacuum That China Can Fill: The Department of Government Efficiency is shuttering organizations that Beijing worried about most or actively sought to subvert.
IRS braces for $500bn drop in revenue as taxpayers skip filings in wake of DOGE cuts at the agency

From Catherine Rampell – WaPo:

At the IRS, employees spend Mondays queued up at shared computers to submit their DOGE-mandated “five things I did last week” emails. Meanwhile, taxpayer customer service calls go unanswered.

At the Bureau of Land Management, federal surveyors are no longer permitted to buy replacement equipment. So, when a shovel breaks at a field site, they can’t just drive to the nearest town or hardware store. Instead, work stops as employees track down one of the few managers nationwide authorized to file an official procurement form and order new parts.

At the Food and Drug Administration, leadership canceled the agency’s subscription to LexisNexis, an online reference tool that employees need to conduct regulatory research. However, some workers might not have noticed this loss yet because the agency’s incompetently planned return-to-office order this week left them too busy hunting for insufficient parking and toilet paper. (Multiple bathrooms have run out of bath tissue, employees report.)
More

The Strange, Post-Partisan Popularity of the Unabomber: When Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto appeared 30 years ago, the internet was brand-new. Now, his dark vision is finding fans who don’t remember life before the iPhone. Paragraph 173: “If the machines are permitted to make all their own decisions, we can’t make any conjectures as to the results, because it is impossible to guess how such machines might behave.”

Researchers find thriving, never-before-seen ecosystem under Antarctic ice shelf: “This is unprecedented”

Author John Green on why he wrote “Everything is Tuberculosis.”

Do Adults Need a Measles Booster? A single-dose inactivated measles vaccine used from 1963 to 1967 was later found to not be as effective or long-lasting as the currently used live-attenuated vaccine, experts said.

George Foreman, Boxing Champion and Grill Spokesperson, Dies at 76

Richard Chamberlain, King of the Melodramatic Miniseries, Dies at 90. One of my sisters had a massive crush when he played ‘Dr. Kildare’

 

Goodbye Park City: Sundance Film Festival Heading to Colorado

My Quest to Find the Owner of a Mysterious WWII Japanese Sword. “When I was a kid, I was fascinated by a traditional katana my grandfather had brought home from Japan in 1945. Years later, I decided it was time to find the heirloom’s rightful owner.”

Rita Braver will retire from ‘CBS Sunday Morning’ after 50 years at the network

The 51 Best Canadian Films of All Time

How Charles Dickens Shaped Our Vocabulary

Magnet fishing is supposed to be a wholesome hobby. Why all the beef?

In 2012, when NBC had the Super Bowl, they shot a little video to precede it and promote all their shows and stars.

In 1969, Jim Henson produced several commercials for a new potato crisp called Munchos.

Now I Know: The Supreme Court Told Me I Was Wrong and Forcing Beer into Star Wars and A Miner Revolt

MUSIC

Jesse Colin Young, Youngbloods’ Frontman, Dies at 83. Get Together was one of the very few singles I ever purchased.

Herb Alpert turns 90 today. He’s still performing. I had half of his early albums, including his first, The Lonely Bull. Here’s Herb and the Tijuana Brass on that title track. 

Signal Leak – Jesse Welles

You Were Not Supposed to Message It Through – Marsh Family Parody of the Bee Gees on #Signalgate

I Put Up Tariffs – Marsh Family adaptation of Bob Marley and the Wailers’ I Shot the Sheriff

Vivaldi’s Summer/Mozart’s Semplice/Mack The Knife

Get Away and three other songs – Jimi Somewhere

Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique

Please Please Please – Sabrina Carpenter,  feat. Dolly Parton

On A Clear Day, You Can See Forever – Voctave

The Song (Love Is All) – Sadie Sink from the movie O’DESSA

Two of Hearts – Stacey Q

Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology) – Marvin Gaye 

Scissors Cut – Art Garfunkel

Coverville 1526: Cover Stories for Black Eyed Peas and Twisted Sister and 1527: The Solomon Burke Cover Story

Under African Skies – Paul Simon

Can’t Fight This Feeling – REO Speedwagon

The Most ‘Beatles’ Beatle Song The Beatles Ever Beatled; btw, I disagree with the conclusion

Best Albums of 2025 (First Quarter)

ALA: record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023

joy in diversity

In March 2024, the American Library Association reported a record number of unique book titles challenged in 2023.

“The number of titles targeted for censorship surged 65 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, reaching the highest levels ever documented by the…ALA.” The numbers “show efforts to censor 4,240 unique book titles in schools and libraries. This tops the previous high from 2022 when 2,571 unique titles were targeted for censorship.”

My irritation with this trend should be no secret to anyone who knows me or has read this blog for a while. Public libraries are, and I’m going to use some highly technical language here, “really cool.”

The Binghamton (NY) Public Library embedded in Daniel S. Dickinson School in Binghamton, NY had, at some point, the Dylan poster by  Milton Glaser on the wall. So THAT’s how you spell Dylan!

That branch and the main library downtown each had librarians from my church, strong black women. I worked downtown for about seven months, learning about Psychology Today and Billboard magazines, which I DEVOURED before putting them away.

When I lived at my grandmother’s shack in 1975, listening to LPs at the downtown branch was my refuge. In 1977, my go-to places were my downtown library in Charlotte, NC, and then the New York Public Library.

At FantaCo, I would go to the Washington Avenue branch of the Albany Public Library and look up publishers in Books In Print, which is how we ended up selling a bunch of Creepshow graphic novels.

I’ve never worked as a librarian in a public library. However, I’ve been what someone calls an advocate, participating with the Friends of the Albany Public Library and then its successor, the FFAPL.

So libraries have long been my third place. “The only real requirement is that nobody is forcing you to show up.”

Censorship

The challenges to libraries, then, make me cranky publicly, and frankly livid in private. From the ALA:

“Key trends emerged from the data gathered from 2023 censorship reports:

  • Pressure groups in 2023 focused on public libraries in addition to targeting school libraries. The number of titles targeted for censorship at public libraries increased by 92 percent over the previous year; school libraries saw an 11 percent increase.
  • Groups and individuals demanding the censorship of multiple titles, often dozens or hundreds at a time, drove this surge.
  • Titles representing the voices and lived experiences of LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC individuals made up 47 percent of those targeted in censorship attempts.”

People in library districts have the right to pick for themselves what they choose not to read for themselves and their minor children. But some folks want to have OTHER PEOPLE climb under their rocks.

“Oh, no, black people are represented in books,” such as the Amanda Gorman inaugural poem.  “And homosexuals,” with the emphasis on the middle syllable. At the very moment, at least SOME of the nation is recognizing the joy of its diversity.

Libraries and librarians are free-speech heroes.

I recommend John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight segment on why public libraries are under attack, and where those challenges are coming from.

One commenter quotes a source I’m unfamiliar with, but it tracks as true. “When they start firing librarians and banning books, you’re in the beginning of a dictatorship. Librarians are the guardians of free speech and the first lines of defense against a dictator.”

Ramblin' with Roger
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