How do we Turn Symptoms into Words?

 Rachel Aviv, "How do we Turn Symptoms into Words?", New York Times, October 16, 2022, pSR4-5.

Ms. Gaines-Young ended up incarcerated for a crime she committed when she was psychotic, and she became close with a prison librarian with whom she discussed the books she was reading each week. She felt grounded by a deep connection to another person, and when she was sick, she trusted the librarian's assessment of her state of mind.  When, after going off psychotic drugs, the librarian told her, "I don't fully recognize you," Ms. Gaines-Young decided to start taking medications again.  "She knew me intellectually, philosophically, and even on some level spiritually," she said.  "She was a huge barometer to judge my wellness and non-wellness. Ms. Gaines-Young went on "She wasn't treating me like a problem to be fixed only with medication.  She understood the language I was speaking."

COMMENT

The non-judgmental practice of librarianship becomes a helpful approach for a woman with mental health problems.  The connection is established by talking about books and ideas, not focusing on a medical diagnosis. 

Factor Separation Into the Divorce Equation

 Emily O. Gravett, "Factor Separation Into the Divorce Equation," [Modern Love] New York Times,  Oct. 16, 2022 p. ST6. 

Monomaniacal in that way children can be, she knows all about polar bears, and now, I guess, so do I.  Over time, I have checked out every book from the library with a polar bear on the cover....
In the book we have checked out most recently, "The Ice Bear," a polar bear cub is separated from his mother, transformed onto a boy, and raised for many years by human parents.  The mother bear cries over the loss of her cub and the tears etch scars onto her face.  I almost can't read this part aloud. 

COMMENT

The public library is an endless source of reading for children's obsessions.   In this case, a particular children's picture book also provides a metaphor for a parent's pain of divorce.  

Forget the Book on Impractical Boundaries

 Sophia Ortega.  "Forget the Book on Impractical Boundaries"  (Modern Love], New York Times, October 2, 2022 p. ST6.

Around this time my therapist assigned my homework, a book with a mortifying title: "Boundary Boss." I placed a hold at the library and was relieved to learn there would be a six-week wait, giving me plenty of time to bask in romantic recklessness.

COMMENT

The author checks out the book, but never reads it.  This made me laugh.  I use the library the same way, to borrow books I'm not 100% sure I'm really interested in reading. 

The Disinformation Machine

 Nancy McLean. The Disinformation Machine. Orion Magazine, 2022.  https://orionmagazine.org/article/koch-network-climate-change-misinformation

In 2013, James Buchanan died at the age of 93, and I was able to gain access to his unprocessed archive at George Mason University (GMU), his last institutional home. In his records going back to the 1940s, I found my developing understanding of all this confirmed—in a way that had me again and again reminding myself to breathe. Just one example: in his private office, I found a pile of documents stacked on a chair that exposed how Charles Koch and some of his most trusted operatives—GMU economics faculty, the dean of the law school, the president and provost, and a politically appointed Board of Visitors presided over by Ed Meese III, Ronald Reagan’s long-time ally—had collaborated to establish a basecamp for a political project at a public university, just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C.

COMMENT

Uncataloged archival material provide evidence for how billionaires and right wing politicians created a political disinformation machine.  This well-funded torrent of science denial has become a serious problem for librarians.  It's alarming to realize just how much political power and money are stacked against our information literacy lectures. 

 

I Witnessed a Fatal Bike Crash. It Changed Me Forever.

Amelia Arvesen, "I  Witnessed a Fatal Bike Crash. It Changed Me Forever." Outside Online.  December 13, 2021. https://www.outsideonline.com/culture/essays-culture/fatal-bike-crash-flagstaff-bike-party-witness-trauma/

On May 28, 2021, I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. Ten months earlier, my husband, Steve, and I had relocated to Flagstaff, Arizona, in the middle of the pandemic so he could attend grad school at Northern Arizona University. We hardly knew anyone there and were growing lonely, so we were thrilled when a new friend invited us to an event one evening called the Flagstaff Bike Party, a monthly group ride in celebration of bikes and community. It was our first opportunity to gather with new people since our move. When we arrived at a park outside the city’s library, nearly 100 people were there, mounting fixies, mountain bikes, and commuters. A little blond girl giggled on the handlebars of her dad’s bike as he did figure eights in the grass. Some riders wore construction vests and strapped fluorescent orange traffic cones to their helmets to signify the night’s theme: safety.

COMMENT

The bike party meets in front of the city library? Why? Probably because everyone in town knows where that is.  I wonder if the library interacts with the bike party in any way?

Mamoudou Athie Loves the Library

 "Momoudou Athie Loves the Library" (Headliner, My Ten). New York Times,  February 27, 2022, p. AR8.

8. New York Public Library Theater on Film and Tape Archive
Suzanne Esper [one of Athie's acting teachers] would always talk about particular performances that have long since passed.  I was like, "I wish I could have seen that."  I feel like it was Suzanne that alerted me to the place, but I lived there.  And I've seen so many plays, so much Shakespeare, so many things that taught me so much from watching. 

The public library is the latest place to pick up a coronavirus test. Librarians are overwhelmed.

 

Julie Zauzmer Weil, " The public library is the latest place to pick up a coronavirus test. Librarians are overwhelmed", Washington Post, Jan 18, 2022. https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2022/01/18/librarians-coronavirus-tests-workers/

As public libraries in the District and across the nation have been pressed into service as coronavirus test distribution sites, librarians have become the latest front-line workers of the pandemic. Phones ring every few minutes with yet another call from someone asking about the library’s supply of free coronavirus tests, often asking medical questions library workers aren’t trained to answer. Patrons arrive in such large numbers to grab tests that the line sometimes backs up for blocks. And exhausted librarians also are getting sick with covid themselves.

“The library has always been a community center, a place where the public can get something they wouldn’t have otherwise, like free Internet,” another D.C. children’s librarian said. “But it feels like we’ve become too good at our jobs. It becomes, ‘Oh, the library can handle it.’ We’re getting more and more tasks and responsibilities that just feel overwhelming.”

COMMENT

While public libraries are an obvious location to distribute COVID tests, it's typical that nobody thought of sending over a few medical staff as well.  Librarians are in no way prepared to handle suddenly becoming a public health center.  yet where else is there?

Lots of People Want to Check Out this Library

 Kate Dwyer. "Lots of People Want to Check Out this Library", New York Times,  January 16, 2022, p. ST3. 

After Dr. Mackesy's death, a SWAT-team-like group of librarians and conseravtionists spent three weeks combing through his book-filled, 7,400-squre-foot house to select 35,000 volumes to add to the university's libraries. 

Surprise discoveries included an 18th century Rousseau text with charred covers (found in the kitchen), a "pristine" copy of a rare 1950s exphibition catalog showing Wassily Kandinsky's paintings, posters from the May 1968 protests when stuents in Paris occupies the Sorbonne, a hand-drawn Christmas card from the filmmaker John Waters and the orginial recordings of the thorists at that 1966 structuralism conference. 

"For years, everyone had said, 'There's got to be recordings of those lectures,'" said Liz Mengel, associate director of collections and acadmic serivices for the Sheridan Libraries at John Hopinks.  "Well, we finally foudnd the recordings of those lectures.  They were hidden in a cabinet behind a bookshelf behind a couch."  Several first editions by 20th-century poets and novelists sat on a shelf in the laundry room. 

After the librarians from Hopkins and nearby Loyola Notre Dame were finished selecting their donations, the remaining books were carted away by a dealer, so Dr. Macksey's son could prepare the house to be sold. 

COMMENT

When a professor who was known to be a book collector died, libraries got first crack at his collection which turned out to be a dragon's hoarde of hidden treasure.  It was especially generous of the heirs to let the librarians pick what they wanted since they could have just gone straight to the book dealers.  It was also perceptive of the librarians to take the offer since some librarians seem to think that it's not worth their time to accept and paruse the collections of retired or deceased faculty.   

Being Homeless Cost Me $54,000

 Lori Teresa Yearwood, "Being Homeless Cost Me $54,000", New York Times January 2, 2022, p. SR10.

By the beginning of 2015, I had become a woman forlornly clutching plastic garbage bags as she makes her way from food pantry to shelter to public library to park bench.  I had once been a writer who helped to cover the Dalai Lama's visit to Maiami.  I had traveled to Ireland to interview a famous self-help author.  By contrast, my homeless existance was limited to a two-mile radius.

...

He began appearing every morning at teh entrance of the shelter and he would follow me until I got to the public library.  One day he said he would give me a duffle bag to replace my garbae bags and told me I could keep some of my other belongings in a shtorage shed he owned.  When we arrived, he pushed me inside, where he sexually assaulted me. 

COMMENT

The library is a safe space, but also a dangerous space.  The predator follows a homeless woman to the library because he knows that's where she'll go, and makes a false offer of help to lure her into a bad situation.  Librarians are not social workers, and the library doesn't save this woman.  An actual social worker does that, taking her to lunch and helping her sort out impossible medical bills in order to help her get a place to live and resume working as a journalist.