American Dirt is Proof that the Publishing Industry is Broken

David Bowles, "American Dirt is Proof that the Publishing Industry is Broken, New York Times,  January 27, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/27/opinion/american-dirt-book.html

     The white saviorism is tough for me to swallow, and not just because I’m a Chicano writer critical of “American Dirt.” My hometown library was chosen in late 2019 to be part of a pilot partnership between Oprah’s Book Club, the American Library Association and local library book groups. The libraries would receive several boxes of books to use with patrons in their book club, as well as other discussion and promotional materials. 

     Last week I was in touch with Kate Horan, the director of the McAllen Public Library here, via phone and email. She told me she felt “excited and honored” by the news, “proud that our library on the border with Mexico was recognized and selected to be part of a new initiative.”

     No one at the library knew which book had been selected: Ms. Winfrey keeps titles a tightly guarded secret. But Ms. Horan was told that it would be “the most talked about book of the year.” Instructions were given: Upon arrival of the shipment, the library should film an “unboxing” video and submit it to Ms. Winfrey.

     The boxes arrived on Jan. 17. Upon opening them, Ms. Horan said, her “heart sank,” and she immediately recoiled at this “deliberate assumption that libraries on the border, who were selected to receive the books, would be automatic endorsers, given the subject matter.”

     She sent the unboxing video off, and after two agonizing days consulting with her predominantly Latinx staff and others, she decided to send the books back, and politely declined to participate in the pilot program.

COMMENT

   This is a sticky issue and not as simple as the op-ed writer wants it to be. Accusations of "cultural appropriation" seem to me to be a red herring.  The real problem with the "American Dirt"  seems to be that it has been heavily marketed as your next book club read yet according to to the critics (who all dutifully reviewed it), it's not actually very well researched or written.

    In many of the library stories I've collected on this blog, readers describe a transformative experience of finding people like themselves in the pages of library books.  It's a reasonable guess that people in the U.S. borderlands might enjoy reading a novel located there. At the same time, I remember hearing a librarian complain that when she gathered books for imprisoned black men people would donate "Black Like Me," which is actually an autobiography about a white man traveling through the South in blackface, albeit with an intention for the reader to develop empathy for "the other."   The publishers who promoted "American Dirt" similarly thought the novel might promote white empathy by focusing on a Mexican woman who is a lot like a middle class white American woman. The virulent anti-immigrant rhetoric coming from the Trump administration  suggests that now might be the right moment for such a novel.    Positive reviews on Amazon.com indicate that it might even be successful in generating empathy for migrants.  

     Should the librarian have sent the books back?  I assume that the library does offer "American Dirt" for anyone who wants to borrow it.  It's certainly not censorship to pick a different book for a book club.  I agree with the op-ed, though, that the misstep reveals a big problem with centralized book publishing and library acquisitions.  The publisher's marketing division, Oprah's Book Club and ALA missed the mark largely because nobody working there stopped to think that Latinx readers were never the target audience for this book. In fact, it seems unlikely that Oprah (a Black woman originally from Mississippi) is ever going to develop a reading list that is particularly sensitive to U.S. borderlands readers.  The reaction of Latinx library staff suggest that they would really love to have a book club that highlights their own region, featuring  people and situations that are more like their own experience instead of getting stereotyped by someone far away.  That's exactly why libraries need to pick their own books instead of outsourcing those decisions.

I've actually written an article about this:  "Re-Localizing the Library: Considerations for the Anthropocene. 
  

   

Bypassing Legislature

Norman Anderson III, "Bypassing Legislature," Salt Lake Tribune [Opinion, LTE], January 11, 2020, p. A10.

      There was a line of people at the Millcreek library for several days last week.  Just ordinary people waiting to sign the latest referendum petition, a referendum on the tax plan recently passed with little discussion by the Utah Legislature.  It is almost a certainty that there were lines at other petition signing locations, as well.

COMMENT

    The public library offers a place for citizens to sign a petition against an unpopular new law that raises taxes on food and services and seems likely to cut tax revenues for education. If enough signatures are gathered citizens will get a chance to vote on the law.  This letter to the editor says that people were lining up at the library to add their signature.  It's yet another way libraries can promote civic engagement, and maybe a few of those voters also went home with something to read.

N. Mexico Author Delivers Books to Migrants

Angela Kochera, "N. Mexico Author Delivers Books to Migrants," Salt Lake Tribune (original to Albuquerque Journal), January 7, 2020, p. A6.

     Along with giving books to migrant children and their families, the book drive helps a small library that serves children in Mexico living in Anapra.
     Chavez, Lenander and volunteers with the Border Servant Corps make monthly visits to the Biblioteca para la Vida to participate in Saturday morning storytelling sessions.
     "The kids will come in their pajamas and just put blankets and pillows all over the floor," Lenander said.
    In December, the children each got their own book bag with a book and toy and celebrated the season with a piñata shaped like a big book.  Chavez read from "Dragones y Tacos" during he Christmas party as the kids munched on tacos. 

COMMENT

    The article describes a project called Libros para el Viaje that collects books in English, Spanish and Portuguese for migrants at the U.S./Mexico border.  Part of the project is a children's library located in Mexico that offers story time, community, food, books to keep and a small sense of normalcy for migrant children.  The books help migrants pass the time,  and provide language practice, but most importantly they are a deeply humane gift.
    The Biblioteca para la Vida provides an opportunity for volunteers to hold story time.  The books and stories become a connection between people who might otherwise never meet each other.

Tax Credit for Children Leaves Neediest Behind

Jason DeParle, “Tax Credit for Children Leaves Neediest Behind,” New York Times, December 17, 2019 p. A1-

     Money helps children in part because of what it can buy— more goods (cheesy chicken spaghetti) and services (gymnastics classes or tutors).  Ms. Bradford, the teachers’s aide, is so eager to invest in her sons that she has used tax refunds to send them on Boy Scout trips to 42 states— even when a flood left them living in her car “I’m trying to instill in them that it’s education that gives you knowledge and power, not cars or clothes,” she said. Before traveling to Washington and visiting the Vietnam Memorial the boys — Tony 17, and Micah 13— wrote a report on a Monroe man killed in the war, which the public library added to its collection.  Finding the soldier’s name on the wall, Micah said, “felt like touching history.”

COMMENT

     The article is about people who are too poor to get the full amount of a child tax credit.  In this example, the extra money helps buy educational experiences that aren’t available at public school.  The library is part of an education plan that includes schools, extra-curricular clubs, field trips and independent research. 

     The student work was added to the local history collection.  This kind of hyperlocal collecting is important for community identity.  What’s more, the library collection is a way to validate the importance of student research.  Academic libraries typically require graduate students to deposit dissertations and theses, but many also allow professors to submit selected undergraduate work for the collection.  In public libraries, display space is available for K-12 students to show off artwork and projects to the larger community. Since people without kids seldom have reason to go into a school building, the library becomes a link between students and community 

Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It

Peter Wehner, “Christian Doomsayers Have Lost It” New York Times, December 8, 2019, p. SR3.

Sohrab Ahmari— a convert to Catholicism who is both the op-ed editor of The New York Post and a contributor to the religious magazine First Things— was so outraged that drag queens were reading stories to children at a library in Sacramento that he has relegated civility to a secondary virtue while turning against modernity and classical liberalism “To hell with liberal order,” as Mr. Ahmari put it. “Sometimes reactionary politics are the only salutary path.”

COMMENT

     Judging by the political behavior of Trumpist Christians, you’d think that enforcing stereotypical gender roles was a foundational principle of Christian religion. Mr. Wehner suggests that such prejudice is, in fact, contrary to a practice of spirituality, joy, gratitude, kindness and healing grace.

    As a target of self-appointed morality police the library takes on two roles that appear in other library stories: 1) a target of censorship 2)  a defender of free speech and diversity.

Amazon's Expansive, Creeping Influence in an American City

Scott Shane, "Amazon's Expansive, Creeping Influence in an American City," New York Times, December 1, 2019, p.1, 26-28.

Public libraries are stocked with digital audiobooks from Amazon's Audible, and browsers can check reviews on Amazon's Goodreads.

COMMENT

     In this article about the Kraken-like tentacles of Amazon.com libraries feature in the role of customers.  When libraries lend audio books, Amazon skims a little off the top.  Instead of turning to librarians for book recommendations, readers can plow through crowdsourced reviews on Goodreads (which are a lot less useful than you'd think with regard to finding something good to read).
     Libraries are a keystone of  literary culture.  They support books and reading by buying stuff, putting money back into writing and publishing. Yet in the world of librarianship there has not been much acknowledgement of this role. Instead, there is a tendency to prioritize efficiency and cheapness.  During the transition to online newspapers, librarians never asked the question of how journalists would get paid.  Likewise, librarians have cut down on purchasing books from university presses without ever asking how young professors will get tenure if there is no place for them to publish books.
     Librarians like to point to libraries as core institutions for community resilience and civic engagement.  Yet abandoning newspapers and academic presses for the sake of "cheapness" was not socially responsible.  It's probably not socially responsible for libraries to switch procurement to Amazon.com either, particularly since prioritizing convenience and cheapness are exactly what lured librarians to make bad decisions in the past.
     Somebody (ALA?) should take a hard look at library spending in order to understand exactly who and what it's supporting. The long and short is, Big Tech distributes information but does not create it.  Amazon.com is the new Wal*Mart, vacuuming up dollars and sucking the life out of communities.  Only now it's happening to cities and not vulnerable small towns.   The article ends with Emma Snyder, the owner of an independent bookstore who says that her customers will pay $10 more for a book just because they don't like the world Amazon is building:  "Part of what people don't like is that Amazon debases the value of things.  We're commercial spaces, but we fundamentally exist to feed and nurture people's souls."  What if libraries applied this idea to spending?  Is there a way to re-focus collection development on building strong communities, not just on getting cheaper best-sellers?

Can Marriage Counseling Save America?

Andrew Furgesun, "Can Marriage Counseling Save America?" Atlantic, December (2019), https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/better-angels-can-this-union-be-saved/600775/

     Yet there I was one bright summer Sunday, wreathed in skepticism, gathered with a dozen others in the community room of a suburban public library in Northern Virginia to test whether this nation, or any nation so fragmented and so polarized, can be united and saved by a workshop.
     This was not just any workshop, of course. I was at a “skills workshop” put on by a grassroots citizens’ group called Better Angels. The group got its start in the shell-shocked weeks right after the 2016 election, and it takes its name from Abraham Lincoln’s famous plea, in his first inaugural address, that his divided countrymen heed the “better angels of our nature.” (They didn’t.)
     Paid-up membership in Better Angels stands at a little over 8,000, but the group creates a commotion bigger than that of organizations many times its size. On any given day somebody somewhere in the United States is hosting an event like the one I attended. There are an average of eight to 10 such events a week. The mission everywhere is the same, explained by the inspirational mottoes on the posters the organizers had hung in the library. “Let’s depolarize America!” “Start a conversation, not a fight.”

COMMENT

     Librarians don't always need to re-invent the wheel.  Here is a citizen group dedicated to civic dialog that is using library space to host events.  The idea is simply to get conservative and liberal voters to talk to one another.

   This may or may not work. One problem is that for all they gripe bout civility, Republican voters seldom show up to such meetings. As the author puts it, "Now, there are two kinds of people in the world: those who will join hands and sway gently back and forth while singing “We Shall Overcome” with Peter Yarrow, and Republicans." This same problem occurred with respect to the transportation open houses mentioned in Better Busses, Better Cities--- the people who show up to such meetings are self-selecting and not representative of the whole community.

   

Better Buses Better Cities

Steven Higashide, Better Buses Better Cities: How to Plan, Run, and Win the Fight for Effective Transit (2019).

Agencies have to do better than "open houses" that draw eight people at the library and instead think seriously about how to get public input that equitably represents bus riders and activates allies throughout the planning process. They have to discard ponderous project development  processes that result in 5-year timelines for bus lane projects and try tactical approaches that change streets overnight instead.

COMMENT

Library open houses are portrayed here as an ineffective way to gather citizen input for transit improvements.  Many transit riders can't come either because such meetings conflict with work, of the bus stops running at night.   In order to get stakeholder input, it's essential to try to get a representative sample, not just respond to a few people who manage to show up in person. 

Here to Help

Tik Root, "Here to Help: One Thing You can do to Slay the Energy Vampires," New York Times, November 1, 2019, p. A3.

Another option is a Kill-a-Watt meter, which measures how much energy individual appliances are using.  they're available at most hardware stores and can sometimes be borrowed at public libraries.

COMMENT

   The library is not just for books any more! It's also a place where you could possibly borrow a  single-use tool in order to help cut energy consumption.

In the Land of Self Defeat

Monica Potts, "In the Land of Self Defeat,"  New York Times, October 4, 2019.

The fight over the pay for the new head librarian had a larger context: The library moved into a new building, with new services, in 2016. Construction began during the natural gas boom years, and ended after the bust, just as the county budget was being squeezed and services were being cut. During the boom, the new building had seemed necessary, but with the revenue decreases, the county knew it was going to have a hard time paying the 2.1 million still owed on it. (Disclosure: My mother was on the library board when some of the decisions about the new building were made.) The library made its own budget cuts, but the savings weren’t enough to cover the shortfall in paying for the building, and there was a real danger of the library closing, leaving its new, hulking brick building empty. The people who didn’t frequent the library argued that the community didn’t really need it anymore, anyway. After all, if you have internet, you can get whatever you want in a day. 

COMMENT

In this article the public library serves as a synecdoche for community that is undermined by anti-tax zealotry.  The author writes that anti-tax Trump voters "view anyone who is trying to increase government spending, especially to help other people, with disdain, even if it ultimately helps them, too."  She notes that people who would like to live in a place with better schools and good public libraries have already moved away leaving behind a group of people wedded to an ideology of self-defeat since without community services to fall back on all of them are much poorer.

The library building was built with boom-and-bust resource extraction money.  It's typical that a community would overspend, expecting the boom to go on forever.  It never does.  Politicians like to pretend that fossil fuel extraction is economic development.  In fact, extractive industries is a good way for rich people to make money specifically because it employs relatively few people and isn't permanent in a community and therefore doesn't have to worry about long-term community relationships.  They always go bust in the end and always seem to leave behind damage to the environment and economy.

Arts, Briefly

Arts, Briefly: Library Arts Program Has Big First Year, New York Times, August 17, 2019, p. C3

     It’s been one year since public library cardholders in New York’s five boroughs were given expanded — and free— access to the Arts through the city wide Culture Pass initiative.     Since the program’s beginning in July 2018, over 70,0000 people seem to have taken the libraries up on their offer and signed up for the pass, the city’s public libraries said Tuesday.

COMMENT

     This program allows library patrons to reserve free passes for participating museums and other cultural venues. It proved to be so popular that tickets ran out for MOMA, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim Museum, while some of the lesser-known museums had noticeable attendance growth.  

     One question about this kind of program is how to advertise and catalog it to make it sustainable in the long run.  The article notes that most people who signed up did so early on when the program was first announced.  That suggests that there may be a need for continuous promotion since an arts pass is not something people expect to find at a library. It’s an issue with any innovative  library service. It might start with a bang, but in the long term, how will patrons know it’s there?  For instance, I remember that my own public library had a program to check out a pass for State Parks.  It’s a great idea, but even though I'm a public library user I have no idea whether or not that program is still operating. 

There Should be a Public Option for Everything

Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne L. Alstrott, "There Should Be a Public Option for Everything," New York Times, July 7, 2019, p,. SR10.

Throughout our history, Americans have turned to public options as a way to promote equal opportunity and reconcile markets with democracy.  For example, public libraries allow anyone to read, check out books or surf the internet.  This expands educational opportunities and guarantees access to information to everyone, but it doesn't prevent people from buying books at the bookstore if they choose. 

 COMMENT

     The oped argues that if capitalism is going to survive we need to reverse trends towards privatization of public spaces and deliberately offer  public options, government supplied goods and services that coexist with the private marketplace and that are available to all. The public library is offered as an example. People are still free to buy books and pay an ISP, but they also have the library as an option. The authors argue that "We don't have to choose between competitive markets and equal opportunity.  Public options are a way to mitigate the damage that comes with the worst aspects of capitalism while creating a common fabric that ties us together."

     With Republicans in Congress forming an Anti-Socialism Caucus, it seems essential to push this point. Privatization of everything is not only bad for citizens, it's bad for capitalism. Public options compete in a free-market, but they don't stop entrepreneurs from offering fancier, better, more convenient services to rich people.  Public parks don't stop people from having yards,  public transit doesn't stop people from driving cars, and the Post Office isn't the only place that can deliver packages. Sociologists are beginning to pay more attention to civic infrastructure that holds communities together and much of it consists of public options.  Ironically, "anti-socialism" that attacks public options is probably anti-capitalism as well.

   




   
   

SLC Airport Wants Public Input On It's New Master Plan

SLC Airport Wants Public Input On Its New Master Plan (Local Briefs), Salt Lake Tribune, July 6, 2019, p. A10.

The new $3.6 billion re-build of Salt Lake City International Airport was envisioned 20 years ago in the Airport's current master plan.  Now, the city wants to know what residents think the airport should look like 20 years from now.
..
It invites all interested parties to share ideas at a meeting July 17 from 6 pm. to 7:30 pm at the Salt Lake City Public Library.

COMMENT

Refreshments, parking validation and live streaming on Facebook encourage the public to weigh in on community planning.  The public library provides space for the meeting.  The notice of the meeting is published in a local newspaper, and presumably (I didn't check) listed in library events.  In any case, it's hard to know how citizens would discover this opportunity for public comment without the newspaper and the library.

3 Million U.S. Students Don't have Home Internet

Michael Melia and Jeff Amy, “3 Million U.S. Students Don’t Have Home Internet,” Deseret News [Associated Press], June 11, 2019, p A3. 

     School districts, local governments and others have tried to help.  Districts installed wireless internet on buses and loaned out hot spots.  Many communities compiled lists of wi-fi-enabled restaurant and other businesses where children are welcome to linger and do schoolwork.  Others repurposed unused television frequencies to provide connectivity, a strategy that the Hartford [CT] Public Library plans to try next year in the north, end.      Some students study in the parking lots of schools, libraries or restaurants— wherever they can find a signal.…     In rural northern Mississippi, reliable home internet is not available for some at any price.      On many afternoons, Sharon Stidham corrals her four boys into the school library at East Webster High School, where her husband is assistant principal, so they can use the internet for schoolwork.  A cellphone tower is visible through the trees from their home on a hilltop near Maben, but the internet signal does not reach their house, even after they built a special antenna on top of a nearby family cabin.

COMMENT

         In this story the library is both a helpful internet hot-spot and a nuisance because it isn’t open long enough hours. The public library and school library are theoretically places where kids can use the internet, but in practice students are sitting out in the parking lot. Why haven’t any adults noticed this?  Couldn’t they open the buildings for internet-enabled study halls?  How come the assistant principal whose own children have no internet at home has never had a talk with teachers who casually tell students to learn math from YouTube videos?  The article reports that 1/3 of houses in their town have no computer and 1/2 have no internet.  It seems easy enough for teachers to poll their students to find out how many have home computers or home internet. 

     Frustratingly, the article quotes a teacher who refuses to hand out assignments on paper because, “I really need you to get familiar with the technology because it’s not going away.”  The cruel irony is, some students can’t “get familiar” with it unless they have time to do online work at school. Due to the digital divide, pushing internet use outside of school hours just becomes  a harsh and damaging lesson in social inequality. It’s not clear whether students with home internet get better grades because they learn things online (doubtful, considering how distracting it is to be online), or whether the “convenience” of requiring online  homework just creates an extra barrier that causes students to do worse without it just because it’s so hard to turn things in. 

     

    Regardless, it’s clear from this story that the digital divide is in part an artifact created by digital haves who refuse to accommodate the reality of digital have-nots. In fact, the most common computer that people have is a smartphone, which is close to useless for typing term papers. Teachers and librarians should try using the systems they are imposing on their students and patrons. They might find out that it’s not such an educational necessity after all to force students into battle with buggy, frustrating, poorly designed software just to turn in a multiple-choice worksheet.  If unrealistic expectations are undermining education for 16% - 18% of students, it seems like educators should put a lot more thought into whether their requirements for online homework are educational or arbitrary. 

Local Programs Fire Up Readers

Scott D. Pierce and Sheila McCann. Local Programs Fire Up Readers, Salt Lake Tribune, May 31, 2019, p. D1-

     Schools are wrapping up, the weather is warming up, and June is a day away.  Another clear sign of summer: Libraries, businesses and others are gearing up to engage and reward summer readers.…     The theme of this year’s challenge is “A Universe of Stories,” honoring the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.     Last year, almost 28,000 kids from infants to age 12 sing up along with 7,500 teens and more than 23,000 adults, said Liz Sollis, communications manager for the [Salt Lake] county library system. “We’ve actually seen a huge increase in adult participation over the last few years, “ she said.

…    

Four reading trackers for its summer reading program are available: Babies & Toddlers, Kids, Teens, and Adults, each with suggested activities.  The [Salt Lake City] system also suggests going paperless by using its Beanstack site online or by downloading the Beanstack app. 

COMMENT

This article is a local tie-in to one reprinted from the Washington Post.[1]  It lists summer reading programs at local libraries, businesses and other organizations that offer prizes and rewards for reading.  

   As an avid reader, I feel somewhat skeptical about the effectiveness of rewards.  I mean, to me getting time to sit and concentrate on reading already seems like a pretty big reward. However, it’s clear that the programs are popular and they serve a purpose if they make reading fun again. Museum and sports events tickets, free books, and food rewards might work for some people. Choosing what to read may also be the first step in developing self-directed lifelong learning skills that aren’t dependent on classroom teaching.

    The Salt Lake Public Library system is pushing a digital book subscription, which also seems questionable.  Unless kids are using a dedicated e-reader, anything on screens offers far too many distractions that interrupt reading.  Use of ebooks probably also means fewer trips to the library and consequently less immersion in the possibilities such as audio books or graphic novels.  In many library stories, a profound coming-of-age experience happens when kids first move from the juvenile section to the regular stacks.  That transition simply can’t happen online. 

   Digital reading seems even more dubious when it comes from an overtly commercial source.  Scholastic Read-a-Palooza, described in the article,  is an online summer reading program that logs the number of minutes kids read and unlocks digital rewards.  This is beginning to sound a lot less like pleasure and a lot more like the usual schoolwork drudgery, specially if parents can spy on reading minutes. Personally, I would not suggest going paperless. I’d suggest that the long, lazy days of summer are the perfect time to immerse oneself in the kind of absorbing deep reading experience that only print can offer.  The real purpose of summer reading, after all, is not to do better on standardized tests but to rediscover the joy of reading books that are not homework. 

[1] How to Draw ‘em In.

Rear

Public Pushback

Tay Wiles. Public Pushback: Arivaca, Arizona, Became a Magnet for Anti-Anti-Immigrant Activists Locals Wouldn’t Have It. High Country News, May 27, 2019, p. 12-17.

This time, the townspeople called in outside support: They invited Jess Campbell to the meeting. Campbell works for the nonprofit Rural Organizing Project in Oregon, which helps communities organize around issues ranging from defunded libraries to hate crimes and far right extremism.

COMMENT

     The border town of Arivaca is dealing with the nuisance of out-of-town, self-appointed anti-immigrant militias. The non-profit that is helping with the situation has a mission of advancing democracy, including preventing the loss of rural libraries.  

     Librarians themselves have not always understood that reductionist access to information is not the sole function of a library.  Sociologists have identified  libraries as part of a social infrastructure that creates strong, resilient communities. The activists know this and recognize libraries as community centers. They suggest that members can "partner with local schools, libraries or historical museums to reach your entire community."  This suggestion also suggests that there may not be another source of community information, possibly when small, rural communities may exist in a news desert. 

To Walk is Human

Antonia Makchik, "To Walk is Human: to Reflect, Divine," High Country News, May 13, 2019 p.42.

     What walking has given me can never be distilled onto a Fitbit or calorie counting app. Rather, I am far more aware now of how my senses help my brain filter and interpret the vast sea of information constantly shifting around me, allowing me too not just move through the world, but to understand my own place within it.  I've seen the same transformation in my son: At 10, he started walking to and from school by himself, and realized that he could also walk to after-school karate or wander to the library or a friend's house and then home again without his parents.  Many of his friends who were driven everywhere didn't know how to get from one side of town to the other; a 15- to 20- minute walk.

 COMMENT

    When children find freedom at that library it is often because they have the freedom to choose what to read. The books don't cost money to borrow so kids can try things they might not like. A kind of coming-of-age happens in the transition from the juvenile collection to the regular stacks.

   This neighborhood library offers another kind of freedom since a 10-year old can get there  himself on foot or bicycle.  Adults think of driving as a kind of coming-of-age because the driver's license frees children from being driven, but the library card coming-of-age can happen much earlier in life.  It will be six years before this kid can drive, but he's already gaining a sense of independence and self-determination.  I agree with his mom, that's a wonderful thing.

   The article specifies that the family moved from an exurban home to a walkable town. Adults forget (or maybe never knew) that car-dependent infrastructure is a serious obstacle for people who can't drive or can't afford to drive, and that means all children.  Libraries are especially accommodating to children with juvenile collections and children's librarians, but it's also an important aspect of libraries that, in the right kind of walkable environment,  kids can go there even if they don't go with their parents.

Why Your Neighborhood Can Determine Whether Your Child Thrives as an Adult

Matthew Brown, "Why Your Neighborhood can Determine Whether Your Child Thrives as an Adult," Deseret News, May 1, 2019, Online.

     Libraries, community centers, parks, houses of worship and other neighborhood gathering places can unlock opportunities for children to achieve the American Dream. That's what experts told a joint congressional committee Tuesday in Washington, asserting that rebuilding declining communities to foster social connections is key to closing the widening gap of economic inequality in America today. [1]
...
     Dr. Patrick Sharkey, a sociology professor at New York University, said government policies offering incentives to reversing a 50-year trend of families, businesses and social institutions fleeing economically hard-hit communities could address the disparities that Hendren's research revealed.
     "The most effective way to build stronger communities is to invest in core public institutions like schools and libraries, and public amenities like parks and playgrounds, that bring people together in shared spaces," he said.

COMMENT

      In his testimony, Dr. Sharkey cites a poll from the American Enterprise Institute that identifies schools and libraries as the top to elements that make communities successful. [2]   He goes on to say that there are three ways to build successful neighborhoods, 1) scale back policies that create geographic inequality 2) help families move to better neighborhoods and 3) community investment.  

     It's hard to say where the cause and effect lies. Future success  seems to depend largely on how much help kids get from their parents. And of course, rich people generally live in nicer neighborhoods. However, the U.S. Census Bureau says that children who grow up just a few miles apart in families with comparable incomes can have very different life outcomes. [3]  In fact, I do earn far less than my parents and I do live in a neighborhood with less social capital. It's not my preference. I would have loved to buy a house in the neighborhood where I grew up, but it's out of my price range.  I suppose my kids are doomed. At least we have a nice public library, although the neighborhood branch is currently closed for repairs due to flooding that was probably a result of climate change.
  


[1] U.S. Congress, Joint Economic Committee, Expanding Opportunity by Strengthening Families, Communities, and Civil Society [hearing] (April 29, 2019). 

[2] AEI Survey on Community and Society (February 2019).  

[3] The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Social Roots of Social Mobility (U.S. Census Bureau, October 2018).

What Life After Coal Looks Like in Romania

Kevin Faingnaert (photographs) and Keven Granville (text), “What Life After Coal Looks Like in Romania,”New York Times, April 18, 2019, B6-7.

     The mines, and the cities and the jobs, have faded.         Thriving communities were build around the mines during coal’s heyday.  Residents recall that the theater in Lupeni was packed during Romania’s Communist era. Many mine companies had their own libraries and clubs. 

COMMENT

     The lack of a library indicates how far the boom-and-bust fortunes of the Jiu Valley have fallen. In the age of climate change, using coal for fuel has become an existential threat. Coal made some communities prosperous for a while. The theater was supported by the former Communist government, but the article specifically says that the library was part of a company town. It is  inevitable that a single-industry extractive economy will eventually bust. With neither coal nor government to fund it, it seems there is no longer a library in the Jiu Valley at all. 

     The photos of the abandoned town are reminiscent of  the ravaged coal towns in Appalachia. In  Carbon Ideologies  William Vollman describes using small-town libraries in dying coal towns to  seek local history, do online research and find office space for writing while he was on the road.    Appalachian coal towns may not  be faring much better than the ones in Romania, but at least they still have libraries. 

Fighting for Life on Death Row

Lauren Gill, "Fighting for Life on Death Row," The Nation, April 22, 2019, pp.22-26.

     A couple of month after he arrived on death row at theWilliam C. Holman Correctional Facility, Drinkard met Darrell Grayson, who offered him coffee, cigarettes, and an invitation. Each Wednesday, Grayson and a group of other death-row inmates would meet in the prison's law library and work on a plan to raise awareness about  inequity in the criminal justice system.  Dubbed Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, it was -- and remains -- the nations's only anti-death-penalty organization run by death-row prisoners.

COMMENT

     This library serves some essential function of libraries, but in extremely constrained circumstances. The inmates are in the prison library hoping to become knowledgeable enough about the law in order to avoid getting executed. It's hard to imagine library research with higher stakes, Particularly since the men in Project Hope are trying to make up for the inadequate legal representation that landed them on death row in the first place. The article says that people rich enough to hire a lawyer were never sentenced to death no matter what crimes they were charged with;  impoverished  defendants with court-appointed lawyers were sentenced to death even though some of them were innocent.

     The prison library also serves as a meeting space.  The article says that the group, which has existed for 30 years, is allowed to meet so long as they do not discuss prison conditions.  There is a law class for Project Hope and members share information in a quarterly newsletter written on typewriters and printed by an outside board member who distributes 1,300 copies to subscribers.  Since the library has no digital networking or news databases, the board members also have to gather and share articles about the death penalty.