The Anti-Coup

 Andrew Morantz. The Anti-Coup. New Yorker, November 23, 2020, pp. 36-45.

     In 2011, at the Occupy Wall Street encampment, in New York, activists set up a community kitchen, a library, and a media hub to disseminate live steams generated by the movement-- all examples of what Sharp called "alternative social institutions."  If protests are expressions of what a movement is against,  then alternative institutions can be manifestations of what a movement is for, a glimpse of how the world might look one it has been transformed.

COMMENT

 A library is  part of a utopian community,  as is a functioning media system.  

Wisconsin Suburb Misjudged Housing Complex

 John Eligon. Wisconsin Suburb Misjudged Housing Complex: Affordable Unites Challenge Basis of Trump Pitch. New York Times, November 5, 2020, p. A13.

     The story of the fight over affordable housing in New Berlin, a deeply conservative suburb about 15 miles southwest of Milwaukee, challenges a key pitch made by President Trump to voters in the suburbs -- that "low-income" housing invites crime and hurts property values.

     The reality in New Berlin is that the mixed-income development, surrounded by a pond, a farmers' market and a library, is "really rather attractive" said Mayor Dave Ament, who is white and staunchly opposed the project as a alderman a decade ago. 

COMMENT

   Trump voters in a white suburb were terrified that "those people" would move into their neighborhood.  They believed that they had  "worked hard" to live in a segregated neighborhood and didn't want to offer a "handout" to Black people.  In reality, the new housing development was affordable for low-income working people, and it offered new amenities that improved the neighborhood including a library.  In fact, libraries contribute to education and economic opportunity for people who grow up near them.  Whether they know it or not, the proximity of a new library almost certainly improved future earnings for the children of the people who didn't want it built.

This Election, Mom Knows Best

 Bret Stephens. This Election, Mom Knows Best. New York Times.  Nov. 3, 2020. p.A31.

The culture that's been cheapened is the one she encountered in midcentury America.  She learned English by reading Archie and Jughead comics, then Nancy Drew mysteries at a New York public library.  In high school, Theodore Dreiser ("barely literate, but a great writer") awakened her to the power of socially engaged literature, as did John Steinbeck.  Her movie crushes were Gary Cooper in "High Noon" and Robert Taylor in "Quo Vadis."

COMMENT

She is the author's grandmother Xenia who immigrated from Russia in 1950 at age 10.  Children's literature at the  library became a way for her to adapt to her new home. Comics and Nancy Drew were a gateway for high school literature. 

Campaign 2020: Let's Never do this Again

 Matt Flegenheimer, "Campaign 2020: Let's Never Do this Again." New York Times. Nov. 1, 2020, p. A26-27.

     Outside Florida's South Dade Regional Library -- where those casting ballots last weekend were greeted with a steel drum band covering Bob Marley and several pop-up cafecito stations-- Dennis Valdes, 36, had constructed a tent intended to attract eve the leeriest voter with balloons, snacks and "patriotic punch," spiked for those of age.

COMMENT

The library has become a polling place with an associated carnival atmosphere.  

 

 

When 'Back to School' Means a Parking Lot and the Hunt for a WiFi Signal

Petula Dvorak, "When ‘back to school’ means a parking lot and the hunt for a WiFi signal". Washington Post, August 27, 2020. [online]

Kids are gathering in the parking lots outside schools, county libraries, McDonald’s and Starbucks.

From the hill and holler of rural America to urban cityscapes, this is the new back-to-school scene for some of about 12 million kids who don’t have the broadband Internet power to get to virtual class, now that the pandemic has shut down most in-person schools.

...

Schools are trying. North Carolina is fitting idle school buses with power hotspots and dispatching them to parking lots kids can get to. A doctor in Greenup, Ky., offered the parking lot outside her medical office to students who need broadband access. Libraries are inviting students to crib off their signals.

COMMENT

    Before the pandemic, articles portrayed  going to the library as a second-rate option for home internet.  With the pandemic, you can't even sit in the library-- you have to get the signal out in the parking lot.  The root of he problem is, instead of treating internet like a utility, it has been privatized.  All of a sudden, an unstable wifi hotspot that used to be good enough can't handle all-day zooming and kids can't go to school. 

   

 

In the Archives

Tess Taylor. "In the Archives: Susan Howe's New Poems Paste Together Collages from Old Letters, Manuscripts and Concordances." New York Times Book Review, August 2, 2020, p. 18

When do we risk happiness? When do we risk encounter? How can reading offer those things now?  Howe's books may accompany you in these questions.  They may also make you long for the smell of libraries, for the humming quiet of reading rooms, the gentle rustle of others turning pages, too.  Howe writes against a world that disappears too far away online, in which we lose the bodily perception of space, the tenderness of touch.  In this era of social distancing, I felt the prick of these poems: They urged me towards aliveness.

 COMMENT

Howe's collage poems evoke a sensory experience of the library as place.  "We need to see and touch objects and documents," Howe writes, and the reviewer agrees.

Readers Have Many Opinions on How to Cull Your Book Collection

Stephanie Merry. "Readers Have Many Opinions on How to Cull Your Book Collection and Also Why You Never Should." Washington Post. August 2, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/readers-have-many-opinions-on-how-to-cull-your-book-collection--and-also-why-you-never-should/2020/07/31/c5a6d044-d26f-11ea-8c55-61e7fa5e82ab_story.html

It’s a dilemma all collectors of books face at one time or another,” writes commenter RBSchultz. “When I last moved, I gave away to the local library my vast collection of World War II and Vietnam War books so that others might enjoy them. After I moved, I decided that my collection of photography books was too heavy and large in volume. These went to my local Friends of the San Francisco Library where the sale proceeds supported the library. My vast collection of polar and mountaineering books will ultimately go to auction.

...

When Jacques Caillault complained that the local library had no interest in a personal library, commenter gareilly offered some helpful alternatives:
“I don’t suppose you would be willing to ship your books here, to The Friends of the Temple Public Library, in Temple Texas. When our world isn’t falling apart, we have two sales a year of donated books. The money funds a book mobile (we are saving to buy a second one), kid and adult programs in the library and special needs, such as installing a “Free Little Library” at a local elementary school. If you aren’t willing to reward us with your stash, search online for a library group closer to home. Talk to them, not the main librarian, who probably has more on their plate than we know. A volunteer group would have the members to sort your stash. Once, we got thousands of books from a chess master who passed on. That donation, properly marketed brought our group thousands of dollars, but I am sure the head librarian would have turned it down if she’d seen the specialty chess books in the collection. Our group had the resources and time to make sure those books found good homes.”

COMMENT

     Libraries that accept donations and hold book sales perform an essential public service.  People who like to read inevitably acquire too many books.  The books have to go someplace. 

    With Friends of the Library providing volunteer help, book sales can help with funding. However, many librarians, overly focused on money, have failed to grasp the public service aspect of accepting book donations.  The librarian prejudice against book sales is so strong that one such volunteer suggests avoiding the librarians all together.