Read Along With Rutherford

 Hey everybody!  Popping my head up from my safe cozy Bookcharmer den to advocate for a few things.

First off all, protect your health.

Second, strap in for a crazy next couple of years to get through this time and make things better.

Humans are chaos.  Sometimes we can organize ourselves and bake bread, build cathedrals, write music and poems, and find cures for disease.

Sometimes we cower in fear and use it as a weapon to try to force others into ignorance and conformity by denying truth and authenticity, be it in the form of a person, a film, a scientific discovery, or a novel.

If the the fearful would simply sit and be fearful on their own and be content in their misery that would be one thing.  But when the fear leads people to be bitter and cruel and take the good things, like people's identities, films, novels, scientific progress, one must emerge from a cozy den and work to counter those arguments and acts.

We must all find our own wheelhouse for this, whether it is running for office, growing a garden, joining a resource sharing network, or standing up in protest.

As my wheelhouse is books, here I am. One of my brave colleagues in this fight has been diligently reporting on a bookban happening in Tennessee.  I amplify her voice with these remarks.

Books being "reviewed" by the Rutherford County School Board can be found in their board minutes, which I link to here to show that bookbanning is a current phenomenon:

https://www.rcschools.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=523332&type=d&pREC_ID=2540922

Local news source The Tennessee Firefly reports on this here:  https://www.tnfirefly.com/news/rutherford-county-school-board-moves-to-pull-more-titles-from-library-shelves 

One of the titles chosen to be removed is Catch 22 by Joseph Heller. I didn't encounter this book until college, but I clearly remember it as a transformative reading experience, in fact, it may have been my first "book hangover" that feeling when a completely engrossing book is finished that there will in fact never be another good book in your life.  Fortunately I've become conditioned to the book hangover syndrome and have several techniques for recovery, such as having a plethora of print and audio books around me at all times.

I think the saddest thing about this banning is that the high schools are not preparing their students for a successful, meaningful adulthood.  Yes I can say that about this one book.  Banning knowledge of a book that is required by the Advanced Placement curriculum is one way to set students up for academic struggle.  Teaching them that novels that protest violence and the military industrial complex are unsuitable even to read sets the model of avoiding conversation and empathy. 

So what do we do?  

First all, purchase a personal copy for yourself from your local bookstore or bookshop. I conveniently provide the Bookshop.org link here  https://bookshop.org/p/books/catch-22-joseph-heller/7060234?ean=9781451626650 you may choose the paper or hardback version. 

You already have a copy you say?  Fine, go get it and move it up to the top of your reading pile because guess what you are going to talk about it!  And share it with the other readers in your life and talk about it with them! 

Then you can put it in a little free library, offer it on your neighborhood Buy Nothing/freecycle, or otherwise release it to the wild.  

What else?  See if your local library has it, and if not, suggest it.  

But what about the other books you hear are being removed from schools?

Same as above!  Acquired, read, discuss, distribute, repeat.

Fight the bans with the only real power recognized, which is where you put your resources, your money and time. 

Until We Meet Again

Well fair reader, if you are still there, I'm sunsetting this little outpost on the internet.  It's a funny feeling to look back on it and reflect on when there was an expectation that social media would lead to more voices having more conversations, before hashtags were weaponized and/or commercialized.

I miss the free flowing days of early web 2.0, when I saw places all over the world on Flickr and polished my own skills as a photographer learning to use a digital camera.  I miss websites like Wonkette and Gawker and blogs like The Toast.  Twitter is permanently broken--at one time you could actually use it to find out news in real time but not anymore.

I'm a little sad about how fast the experiment went downhill, and how the battleground for free speech that is meaningful and thoughtful simply became a petrie dish of mayhem.  And guess what, in the "we've learned nothing" category all cautions that might have been observed are being tossed jubilantly out virtual windows as the idea that "artificial intelligence" is going to be The Next Big Thing.

Sure, the Internet isn't all bad.  Many publicly accessible databases, easy access to maps, still some free sites where creative people might plant a digital flag and have their work noticed.  I remember the days when searching another library's catalog was through a clunky green type on black screen telnet protocol.  Now I can search worldcat whenever I like.  (Yes, that's a lot, you can even search the BnF catalog and the Met's collection, etc).

But all good things must come to a close.  Even now, I'm going through the hundreds of photos in my first flickr account, deciding which ones will stay with me in a printed version in a little book I'm making for myself.  It has taken a while to even start going through this archive as the upload process back in the day prompted meta data and made it easy to create albums.  All the memories back to 2009, when I first fell in love with California farmers' markets, photos of my precious soul dog, Joe, and joyful pictures of marrying my love, Dan.  Memories of trips, photos of beautiful places...I'm lucky to have such a collection to review. 

I'm finding satisfaction in the curation now.  It is very easy in the part of the world I live in simply to amass and collect and never sort or organize, although given the number of how to books on organizing and palaces such as Container Store you'd we'd all have it together by now.

I guess that's my overall feeling about the internet--I thought we'd recover from the "move fast and break things" mentality that made a select set very wealthy.  Then again, I don't understand how institutions like Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo still exist after lengthy lawsuits against their practices, much less the growth of virulent racism and restrictions on women's freedom of reproductive autonomy. 

So, I'm closing up shop for now, and obviously writing myself the permission slip to do so.  I'll leave this little outpost up as a digital remnant 'til someone at the big G realizes there are still a lot of old blogs taking up file storage. 

If you need to cheer up a little, listen to Johnny Cash's version of We'll Meet Again.  Here's a verse to close out this entry, and possibly this blog:

"We'll meet again

Don't know where

Don't know when

But I know we'll meet again some sunny day"

Books

Wow, I last wrote in July and promised it wouldn't be another six months.  So, stretching the months thin I'm making that goal, right?  

The first day my library branch is open during the week is Tuesday, so there are few days worth of books to move around when we get started.  First, the outside book drop needs to be wheeled inside so we can collect and redistribute to book carts and bins what people returned over the week-end.  Same for the inside drop and automated bins.  Then, our essential and friendly delivery drivers from the city bring over bins of "holds" from other branches, and around noon our Link+ delivery driver arrives and two more large carts are filled.

Turns out there is an inner circulation person inside this reference librarian!  While I will always bow to others with greater knowledge of the inner workings/programming of our catalog, I have found a surprising amount of satisfaction in seeing the variety of titles that pass through the hands and minds of our voracious readers.  I also feel a little spark of happiness when I see titles/authors I know and think about those books also being enjoyed by people in community.

Here in this book oasis/paradise, I can't help but feel sorry for readers in communities where the fearful are launching book bans with terrifying success.  School libraries, public libraries, most of them in small towns where that library may be the only resource for free access to books, are under fire under campaigns of profound ignorance, meant to promote ignorance.  Pen America has responded to the book ban in Missouri, see this article with the headline Missouri has banned nearly 300 books in at least 11 school districts since August, PEN America said today and— joined by over 20 authors and illustrators, including prize winners and best-sellers like Margaret Atwood, Art Spiegelman, Lois Lowry and others— called on school districts to immediately reverse the bans and return all books to library shelves.

So how are these students in these school districts supposed to develop their literacy and critical thinking skills when books deemed dangerous are simply pulled from the shelves?  How will they know how big the world really is/can be?  

So as usual, I advise using all possible means to get as many books into as many hands as possible.  Fund your libraries, fund your schools, buy books from independent bookstores.  As the holiday season approaches, plan to put new and interesting books in the toy drives.  Support Donors Choose and make gifts in honor of loved ones who also value reading.

Here's the thing:  kids love reading.  I've spent several happy years now directing readers to the books they want and seen first hand the book hugs, the families staggering out with piles of books up to their chins, the person asking if I can override the 100 book limit for "just one more" title.  I've seen kids draped over the library furniture with a book in hand and a pile more on the table next to them.  Being part of this book oasis is such a joy.  You really haven't seen joy until you've seen a kid wriggling with glee at getting the latest Dog Man book.  

I'm not going to go so far as to say that reading will solve large societal problems, but NOT having access to books that address social problems sure isn't either.  

So what is your Bookcharmer reading these days?  I just finished We Measure the Earth with our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama and it is one of those incredible books that lingers your mind.  I recently read Fabric by Victoria Finlay and you should get it for the textile mavens in your life, including yourself. 

Wishing you a happy season of winter holidays and as much reading as possible.

Your Bookcharmer

Portraits and Footprints

 Wow, almost a year since I last posted here.  No wonder google made me answer a bunch of questions and texted codes to my phone.  The footprints I refer to in the title is the digital kind--my digital footprint is a bit of a mess right now, with this blog that is becoming more of a placeholder and two flickr accounts with ridiculous amounts of pictures of flowers.  Let's not even talk about the multiple email accounts...

But the main reason I'm writing is to tell you that Mr. Bookcharmer and I went into San Francisco today to see the Obama portraits at the De Young museum.  We haven't been to the De Young in well over two years due to covid.  It was a great day to visit the city--perfect weather and an uncrowded museum.  

I haven't written much the past year because the news has been just so awful.  The gun violence in this country is off the charts appalling.  Across the country the mass shootings have continued, seemingly each one worse than the last with innocents targeted including African American elders at a grocery store and children at an elementary school.  And while congress finally mustered legislation to strengthen requirements for gun purchase ( See https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/congress-sends-landmark-gun-violence-legislation-to-biden) the very flipping same week the Supreme Court went wild and reversed the decision on Roe v. Wade.

Throw in ongoing pandemic topped by public laxity about masking and vaccinations....well, it has been hard to stay upbeat. 

So these are the things I think about when I need to find momentum.  I think about the people that made change, despite enormous personal cost.  I think about Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I think about Congressman John Lewis.  It helps enormously that I am listening to the audiobook of Senator Maizie K. Hirono's memoir, Heart of Fire.  I recommend this book to anyone interested in modern politics and women's history.  She reads the memoir, and her warm voice and detailed recollections are wonderful guideposts for her journey, the first woman Senator from Hawaii, also the first immigrant, Asian American, and Buddhist in the Senate.  She has fought hard for all of her wins and she fights for people.  Her memories of childhood, great in love but scarce in material resources, show her to be a woman who did not let the experience of poverty embitter her, but to rise to the challenge for making things better for everyone. 

One of the reasons we went to the see the Obama portraits today was to see those wonderful faces again, the faces of these two people that lead the country while raising a family, who brought new energy and values of compassion to the White House.  The portraits are stunning and captivating and I like knowing that when they finally go to the National Portrait Gallery, so many people just like myself have been able to spend a little bit of time with them. 

Another reason we went was simply to spend some time around art.  To walk through quiet galleries and peek into diverse minds and spaces.  To see scenes of the past and possibilities of the future.  To spend time just looking and thinking. 

It doesn't hurt that I'm 3 days into a four day weekend and feeling rested is one of the most powerful ways to manage to just keep going.  Our culture of caffeine, freeways, and fast food is not one geared towards healthful contemplation.  But me, I've been to the farmers market, I'm eating plums from a friend's tree, and I'm going to have my feet back under me when I head back to the library.  

The frenzy of request for political donations is going to be off the charts this fall, and for all kinds of reasons.  And it is a shame that money is the cost of participation but there you have it.  So choose wisely, and make your donations early so that campaigns can roll into full strength way before the fall deadlines.  The group I donate to is Sister District, and they are fighting in the trenches where the impact of decisions fall hard, on state legislature races.  And in doing so, they are building the bench of Democrats who will have the experience to serve on the national level.  Take a look here:  https://sisterdistrict.com/

So that's all I have for now.  I'll try to write again before another six months goes by.  Stay well and peaceful and hopefully you have some fresh summer plums where you live, too.

Room for improvement

Well friends, it is time for a mid-late summer update.  July slid by with two delicious visits to my beloved California coast and some significant garden upgrades at Casa Bookcharmer that have me tending my yard with even more glee and appreciation for mulch.  In May, my feelings for summer were feelings of dread.  Would there be more terrible days of orange skies and heat?  We have been blessed on the peninsula of the Bay Area this summer, but for the people fighting/enduring the Dixie Fire please know that every morning I see a clear blue sky I am grateful and I pray for the firefighters and first responders working to put out this blaze.

I'm still trying to adjust to being on a Tuesday-Saturday work schedule, after bouncing from my usual Sunday-Thursday to the Covid Monday-Friday.  Mondays are a weird day have as a second week-end day as other people I know who I might lure into goofing off with me have to work, and the week-end feeling that might motivate me towards household activities is, well, absent.  So a blog update it is.

Things I've been thinking about:

What does public transportation have to do with gun control?  The Bay Area continues to struggle mightily with not only the theory but the practice of affordable public transportation.  You would not know that a great deal of the wealth of California came from railroads based on how we can't seem to organize ourselves now to implement them.  Beyond the mishmash of jurisdictions and systems and the wretched "disruptors" trying to bankrupt drivers with the pricing policies of cars on demand, a key part of what was happening with public transportation was shattered in late May of this year by a massacre at the Valley Transportation Authority.  The SJ Spotlight has a run down on this ghastly tragedy here: https://sanjosespotlight.com/vta-further-delays-return-of-san-jose-light-rail/ 

This shooting has all the now way to familiar landmarks of a mass gun tragedy in America:  disgruntled white man with access to weapons he should not have had, unleashing his rage and hate on people he worked with.  

What will it take to turn the tide, can this American sickness, this view of weapons of personal destruction as a constitutional right, can we ever leave it and the waves of tragedy and grief behind?  Don't think for a minute I have forgotten the Charleston Nine of the Mother Emanuel AME Church, this shooting that extinguished 9 bright stars.  And sadly, there have been so many other shootings, that honestly I am sure I have forgotten some of them, or not read about them because I can't bear the news of any more.  Can you remember how many there have been in the United States in the past ten years?  Think of a number.  Now check your memory against the data gathered by Everytown for Gun Safety.  https://everytownresearch.org/maps/mass-shootings-in-america-2009-2019/

To bring the point back to where I started, VTA announced today it is unable to bring back the light rail service yet so to compensate, buses will run along the light rail routes.  While it is possible that the freedom loving gun advocates are also possibly not enamored of public transportation, why is it fair for them to disable this resource for people who might need or prefer this resource?  

Let's expand that argument:  how does the 2nd amendment support "freedom" if it allows for the destruction of school populations, churches, and businesses?  

I'm thinking about this as the dissonance between Back to School advertisements are surfacing among reports of fears from parents and schoolworkers about returning to schools with an enormous amount of unvaccinated children on site.  At present, kids 12 and up can get the C19 vaccine, but that leaves of a lot of young'uns still not yet eligible to receive it.  

If we must still patch together a network of support for parents, students, and schoolworkers, let's do the best we can.  I return to the Donors Choose site and I see that teachers are requesting items ranging from books to soccer balls to cleaning supplies. 

Pick a classroom by going here: https://www.donorschoose.org/donors/search.html

and know that every little bit helps. Let's get better in the small ways so we can build the foundation for the big ways.  

Compassion

 Greetings,

I can't believe so much time has gone by since I last posted.  Since February, Mr. Bookcharmer and I have both been vaccinated, as have many friends and family.  The sense of relief took a while to sink in, for the possibly of "normal" to become palpable.  For some reason, taking my trusty little Subaru for a tune up at the dealer was what flipped the normalcy switch for me.  Although the indoor waiting room there is still closed, and I waited with the rest of the patrons in a nice outdoor seating area, all of us masked, the edgy caution and desire for a Silkwood style scrub down after interacting with the public was blessedly not present.  My oil is changed, my sense of it to be ok to be out in the community is changed too.

There is still a lot to be deeply concerned about, but I wanted to take the time to note how seeing an act of compassion has given me not just hope but the realization that acts of compassion are powerful.  I'm talking about the joyful Dr. Jill Biden, our current FLOTUS.  This good woman is out on a "vaccine tour", visiting places across the country where the vaccination rates are dangerously low.  And she is not just turning in a pro forma appearance, no.  The support and compassion she is bringing to individuals is truly heartening.

The image that first caught my eye is here:  https://twitter.com/nick_ramsey/status/1407507608496443400

Hopefully that twitter link will hold up over time.  But if it doesn't or you don't feel like clicking, I'll do my best here to describe it.  The photo is credited to Tom Brenner/reuters. Our FLOTUS, dressed to the nines as usual in a cute outfit, holds the hand of a black male teenager.  With her other hand, she protectively shields his sight from the vaccine syringe, her fingers gently placed on his temple.  The way she leans over to him, her hands simultaneously comforting and protecting, gives me tears of relief and pride.  The young man getting the vaccine has closed his eyes and holds her hand. People have been terrorized into fearing this vaccine, immoral news outlets and sick individuals barking fear and outright lies.  To see Dr. Jill Biden, fearless and fashionable, supporting individuals through their reluctance or concerns, fills my heart and gives me strength.  In the photos I've seen, she's not looking at the camera--she's looking at the person getting the vaccine, or her head is turned away from the camera so all you see is her signature blond hair as she focuses on who is in front of her.  

I'm crying again as I think about how many people needlessly died, or survived with serious lingering health problems, tears of anger about how many people have been lied to, unable to process scientific information and discern truth from bullshit because of our inadequate education system.  But also tears of relief that someone like Dr. Jill Biden can empower the rest of us with acts of kindness and love.  

Some days it is hard to believe in love.  Especially after four years of the country's leadership being hate speech and denials of truth, of film after film of people being killed in the streets by police.  Dr. FLOTUS Biden doesn't just say the words of love, or wear them on her back, she shows up and delivers it.  So thank you, dear FLOTUS Biden, for also comforting me and making me feel better, and reminding me that just being present for someone is a powerful act.

Onward.  There are library collections to tend and book requests to fulfill.  And since I haven't told you yet, seeing kids coming back into the library with their caregivers and everybody leaving with armloads, strollers, or wagons of books and movies, is truly marvelous.  I'm happy to tell you my library is open.  

Your vaccinated Bookcharmer

Putting a Price on History

 Greetings Reader!  Some time back I wrote about how a historic photo of Harriet Tubman was being auctioned by a major dealer.  Happily, the photo, along with other items in the album, was jointly purchased by the Smithsonian and the Library of Congress, you can read about it here https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/smithsonian-library-of-congress-rare-1860s-photo-harriet-tubman-180962818/. 

Can history be rescued again?  This time, it is a humble document--a ledger showing signatures of people who received a piece of mail while incarcerated.  Who's signature?  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Where and when?  The Birmingham Jail in 1963.  Yes, the place where Dr. King wrote "Letter from a Birmingham Jail."  You can read a draft of it and hear him read it here:  https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/letter-birmingham-jail

Fine Books magazine, which brought my attention to this sale, introduces it with the following statement "Black History Month, observed annually in February, recognizes the African-American struggle for freedom and key events that empowered the Civil Rights Movement. In honor of Black History Month and the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Hake’s will open its February 24-25 auction with a unique and highly important testament to the great civil rights leader’s courage and resolve. Never before seen publicly, the lot consists of four logbook pages from the Birmingham Jail, hand-signed 12 times by Dr. King during his 1963 incarceration."  Really?  Profiting from the record of incarceration of Dr. King is "in honor" of Black History Month.  These words are posted here:  https://www.finebooksmagazine.com/news/mlk-signed-birmingham-jail-logbook-offered-hakes-feb-24-25-auction

So let's look at the auctioneer's listing, which is here:  https://hakes.com/Auction/ItemDetail/244390/LETTER-FROM-A-BIRMINGHAM-JAIL-MARTIN-LUTHER-KING-MULTI-SIGNED-BIRMINGHAM-JAILHOUSE-LOGBOOK-PAGES

The auction link doesn't make a claim about this sale being "in honor" of anything so I'm not sure where Fine Books got that idea, of if there is a printed catalog I haven't seen linked stating this.  Auctioneer Hake's does provide the provenance of the ledger, stating "The oral history passed down through the consigning family states that these pages were salvaged by a jail employee who was instructed to destroy the ledger but had the foresight to preserve these pages, eventually passing them to the family's history buff patriarch where they have been held until now. This offering marks not only their first appearance in commerce but their first public display."

Foresight to preserve the pages...mmhmm.  And proffer them up for sale in the year 2021, in the immediate months after the protests over the killing of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor?

So Internet, let's do this.  These papers documenting how Dr. King was able to stay in touch and communicate with the Civil Rights movement must be preserved at a location that can make digital copies part of the available worldwide curriculum and preserve the physical copies in the highest archival state.

Heading over to social media to start making some noise about this.  Look for me @Bookcharmer on twitter and signal boost if you can. 

The angry archivist Bookcharmer