Wine from These Grapes by Edna St. Vincent Millay

I enjoy reading our really old books, many of which are on the poetry (811 and 821) and drama (812 and 822) shelves, where we are particularly lenient when weeding the collection. There I find a few books that may have been in the library when it first opened to the public in the 1930s. Among the poetry books are several by Edna St. Vincent Millay.

Our copy of Wine from These Grapes by Millay was published in 1934. The book is rebound in a forest green cover with the title and author stamped in white on the spine. The call numbers were added by hand. At the very bottom of the spine are the stamped white letters "T.F.M.L.," which I do not remember seeing on more than a handful of our books. Though there are some signs of wear along the edges, it looks pretty good for its age to me. Younger readers used to seeing plastic covered dust jackets may think it just looks ancient.

The title page printed in black and red is really classy. Each word of the title starts with one red letter, and a red emblem containing what appears to be an Olympic torch and Greek script sits in the center of the page. The date is in red Roman numerals at the bottom of the page.

My initial attraction to Edna St. Vincent Millay was her name. It sounded good when I said it aloud. It seemed like a good poet's name, and her reputation is still strong. I have enjoyed several of her collections.

Millay took the title Wine from These Grapes from one of her earlier poems "Buck in the Snow," which suggests we live stained by our experiences until death. There is a focus on death and grieving in the first part of this collection. Millay seems to be finding grief unbearable, for everywhere she looks she finds signs of her missing friend. Walking in the woods where she studies the plants eases the poet's pain, but the disease in her soul is never cured. She leaves us with the thought in "In the Grave No Flower" that the human corpse is not a seed. In this early section I particularly enjoyed "The Fledgling," a sonnet on a bird's first flight, and "Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies."

In the middle of the collection are several poems that foresee that World War I was not the war to end wars. "Apostrophe to Man" sees that bacterial warfare and bombing cities from planes will return. "Conscientious Objector" is a manifesto for personal peace, which begins "I shall die, but that is all I shall do for death." Millay does not foresee that she will support Allied forces in the next big war.

The final part of the collection is the 18 stanza "Epitaph for the Race of Man." It is more challenging reading to comprehend seventy years after it was written than the shorter poems in the first two thirds of the book. I did particularly like stanza 11 "Sweeter was loss than silver coins to spend."

At some point in the book (I have lost the spot), Millay states that written word continues to speak through the ages. It certainly does.

Millay, Edna St. Vincent. Wine from These Grapes. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1934.

Art Buchwald Lives

I cheered when I read "In Matter of Life and Death, the Joke is on Buchwald" by Stevenson Swanson in the Sunday, August 27 Chicago Tribune (section 1, page 4) because there is to be more written by Art Buchwald to read. He checked into a hospice to die in February, but he came out living. Of course, he wrote a book called Too Soon to Say Goodbye (ISBN 1400066271), which will be published in November and will include several of the eulogies that were prepared for his now-delayed funeral.

In the meantime, you can read some of his columns from the Washington Post - try Casey on the Hill. You can also find many of his books at public libraries. I especially enjoyed his novel Stella in Heaven, which he wrote after his wife's death.

Nonanon and the Right to Write a Negative Review

I enjoy reading the book reviews by the anonymous Nonanon, who suffers no fools. On her blog Nonfiction Readers Anonymous, she often finds popular nonfiction literature to be short on intelligence, honesty, and readability. She holds books up to high standards and finds that they sometimes fail. When a high percentage of book reviews on blogs and in journals are positive, it is thought-provoking to find a reviewer who has chosen a different path. Recently she found that path was challenged and wrote a defense of the negative review.

I must admit that most of my reviews are positive. I think this comes from reading books I want to read and am inclined to like, and I usually do not get far in a book I do not like. My main goal is getting good books to readers, so I usually do not dwell with the negative.

As a tip of the hat to Nonanon, I offer a short negative review.

I tried to listen to Walden by Henry David Thoreau read by Pete Bradbury, but only got into the third of nine compact discs. I had read Walden two or three times in the past before trying to listen to this audiobook, and I thought it was one of my philosophical foundations. Listening to Bradbury read, I starting thinking Thoreau sounded arrogant and unreasonable. He seemed to ridicule anyone who disagreed with his viewpoint, anyone who continued to participate in what he thought a mislead society. While I still found many good points in his arguments, I grew very tired of the tone of his presentation.

What had changed? Was I reacting negatively to the audiobook because of the Bradbury's interpretation, or have I changed? Am I now less inclined to accept Thoreau's methods? I am not sure.

For the time being, I am not scratching Thoreau from my influences, but I am not listening to that audiobook.

Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public by Helen Thomas

Helen Thomas has been a thorn in the side of the president (any president) for over forty years. She joined the White House press corps during the Kennedy administration and has asked many tough questions over the years as a senior correspondent for United Press International. She now writes a syndicated column for Hearst newspapers. As a reporter she has always sought the truth.

In Watchdog of Democracy?, Thomas turns her attention to her colleagues in print and broadcast journalism and critiques their timid post-9/11 performance. According to the author, the press has failed the American public by not asking the president and his administration difficult questions. They have too often accepted presidential pronouncements as stated, not probing the weak spots, not wanting to appear unpatriotic and lose access to their White House sources.

Thomas reviews media performance after the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. She claims that news reporting has been reined in by the corporations that now own the media, who are more interested in providing entertainment and profits to shareholders than reporting news. She points to the controversies over showing images of flag-draped coffins, the embedded reporters in Iraq, and the non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

In the early chapters, Thomas retells press history as she sees it, focusing on presidents, press secretaries, and White House correspondents. Baby boomers will recognize many forgotten names. She praises the work of her colleagues in releasing the Pentagon Papers and in exposing the Watergate Scandal; neither achievement would be possible today when pretty people have now taken the place of real reporters.

Helen Thomas was the closing speaker at the Public Library Association Conference in Phoenix in 2002. She is just as forthright in her books as she was live before librarians. Watchdogs of Democracy? should be in all libraries.

Thomas, Helen. Watchdogs of Democracy? The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public. New York: Scribner, 2006. ISBN 0743267818

A Use of Block Letter from Flickr

I first saw this effect at Maggie Reads. Thanks Maggie.

The web page that lets you do it is called Spell with Flickr. Just fill in the white box and click "spell" and you will get your own work of art, which you can modify. When you like the effect, copy the html and paste it on your blog or other webpage.

Kane County Cougars Game in Elfstrom Stadium

Fireworks Follow the Game
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

Bonnie and I enjoyed a baseball game and fireworks tonight in Elfstrom Stadium in Batavia, IL. Many good things happened:

The Cougars won 8-4 over the Burlington Bees.

We got a free purple Ozzie ball thrown into the stands by one of the Bees before the game started.

We saw a home run by Steve Kleen, who scored four of the Cougar runs.

We saw a great diving catch by the Bees left fielder Valentino Arce.

A preschooler beat Ozzie around the bases in a race. Ozzie always loses this race!

We saw a runner picked off first, runners thrown out at second and third on attempted steals, and a runner caught in a run down between third and home in a missed squeeze play. That is almost a base running blunder cycle.

After years of trying I finally got the YMCA right in the second chorus.

We got to sing a Sponge Bob Square Pants song.

We saw the Cougars score three runs in both the seventh and eighth innings.

We saw really good fireworks. Many colors and interesting shapes.

Our only disappointment was that Jake the Diamond Dog had to cancel because his trainer is recovering from an injusy he sustained in an auto accident.

The threatening storms held off. It was a beautiful evening.

Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo

With the news that the British government plans to pardon 306 soldiers executed for desertion or cowardice in World War I, it is a good time to read Private Peaceful by Michael Morpurgo. In this novel, which is often in young adult collections, fifteen year old Thomas Peaceful leaves a Scottish farm on which he has grown up to join his older brother Charlie in the trenches in Belgium. They are told the war will not last long.

Private Peaceful could be divided into two books. The first half tells about the poverty of tenant farmers in Scotland and their clashes with the landed gentry, while the second describes the experiences of young soldiers in the mud and the snow of the battlefield. The Peaceful brothers see the slaughter of "going up over the top" and the frightening yellow clouds of creeping mustard gas. Told as a first person account, the story is vivid and honest. There is no glory.

Morpurgo appends to his book information on the injustice of the executions of World War I soldiers, many who were suffering shell shock. Further information can be found at the website for the organization Shot at Dawn.

I listened to the book on compact discs, enjoying the performance of Jeff Woodman.

Morpurgo, Michael. Private Peaceful. New York: Scholastic Press, 2004. ISBN 0439636485

5 compact discs. Prince Frederick, MD: Recorded Books, 2005. ISBN 1419356143

Librarians as Freedom Fighters, Maybe Felons

Joseph Huff-Hannon has written an article "Librarians at the Gates," which mostly praises librarians as human rights heroes. It was posted on the The Nation's website on Tuesday. I found it through LISNews. I really like the first paragraph:

"Courage, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. And in an era of increasing controls on the gathering and dissemination of information, many Americans are unaware of the courageous stands librarians take every day."

The article goes on to tell several short stories about how librarians are standing up for the public right to information when others are not.

What jumped out at me in the article was the statement that if the Sensenbrenner bill on immigration H.R. 4437 becomes law as written, it will become "a felony for a librarian to issue a library card to an undocumented immigrant." What does this mean? We issue cards to people who are documented for residence. Does the statement mean public libraries will have to check card applicants for citizenship or a visa?

I have found nothing on this topic in a quick search across the Internet and in blogs. The summary of the bill linked above does not mention libraries. I have not read the text of the bill. Does anyone know anything about this possible library felony?

I have several thoughts. First, librarians do not usually issue the cards. Circulation clerks issue cards. Second, we do not keep track of who makes a library card for a client. Who would the federal government arrest? Would directors be held accountable because everyone in libraries is under their supervision?

How would the federal government enforce a no-library-card-to-illegal-immigrant law? Issue rules for documenting all library cards to a federal standard? Would all citizens be given citizenship cards so they could safely be given a library card?

Would the federal government forego regulations and instead rely on capturing illegal immigrants with library cards? Find a card and take a library to court?

I hope this felony idea is just a rumor. If not, it is another case of Congress totally out of touch with real life. (Think DOPA.) We may see another case for library courage. Ready to stand up for freedom again?

Espresso Tales by Alexander McCall Smith

The residents of 44 Scotland Street have returned. Alexander McCall Smith continues their Edinburgh stories in his new serial novel Espresso Tales, which he ran in The Scotsman newspaper in 2005. I considered reading the new book at a chapter a day pace to recreate the newspaper experience, but I would have been reading for 104 days. I finished in three, reading morning, noon, and night. I could not wait.

My favorite character is young Bertie, who is not quite six years old. Already he is a level seven saxophone player, speaks fluent Italian, and takes yoga. His mother Irene buys him crushed strawberry colored dungarees to wear to his new school, where he meets boys named Tofu, Merlin, and Hiawatha. He just wants to play with other boys, but his time is taken with psychoanalysis and after-school and Saturday lessons. His mother insists. He is her "Bertie Project." Bernie plans an escape.

Pat McGregor prepares to start Edinburgh University, works in an art gallery, contends with her conceited flatmate Bruce, and attends a nudist picnic. Bruce starts a wine shop without adequate capital. Ramsey Dunbarton reveals that he has written his memoirs. Bernie's parents can not remember where they last parked their car. Was it in Glasgow?

Reading Espresso Tales is a lot of fun. To get a sample, listen to some podcasts from The Scotsman. The next in the series will be Love Over Scotland.

McCall Smith, Alexander. Espresso Tales. New York: Anchor Books, 2005, first released in the U.S. in 2006. ISBN 0307275973

Sunflowers at the Arboretum

Sunflowers at the Arboretum
Originally uploaded by ricklibrarian.

It is a muggy, rainy day in the Chicago area. It seems that a picture of sunflowers might help the mood.

Actually, the rain will be good for the raspberry patch. We are going to have a good second crop.

For those of you looking for library information, I will add that the Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois has a great library. If you ever get a chance to take a library tour, do so. The director is very entertaining and the rare items are pretty stupendous.

Author Read-A-Likes at Downers Grove Public Library

The Downers Grove Public Library sends out a weekly email with lists of new materials, highlights of upcoming programs, and notes about library tools and services. In this week's email is a link to the library's collection of Author Read-A-Likes. DGPL's readers' advisory staff reads a lot of popular fiction and creates many lists to help connect its readers with books they will enjoy while they wait for the books they are requesting.

Currently the library has 48 read-a-like lists, including Nevada Barr, Helen Fielding, Jan Karon, and Carl Hiassen. For really popular authors, like Janet Evanovich and James Patterson, they have two lists.

I like that the staff has varied the headlines on the lists:

If You Enjoy Mary Higgins Clark's Novel's of Suspense, Try One of These ...

While You Are Waiting for the Latest Alexander McCall Smith Book ...

While You Are Waiting for Rosamunde Pilcher's Newest Novel ...

Any librarian can make good use of these lists while doing readers' advisory. Bookmark the web page or put the link into your del.icio.us account. Go to it when you have a reader requesting a book with a waiting list. Tell your reader that you don't want them to go home empty-handed and say "My friends at the Downers Grove Library think you would enjoy ..."

You can also use the lists for book selection. The DGPL Readers' Advisory staff have a good grasp on the current popular fiction market and can help you double-check that you have the authors the public wants.

Finally, subscribe to the DGPL email. I use the nonfiction list to identify new how-to books. You can also see all the new fiction going into the DGPL collection.

Downers Grove is putting out a lot of good information. You should use it.

Lowell Limpett and Two Stories by Ward Just

I have had Ward Just on my want-to-read list for sometime, and with a suggestion recently that we might choose one of his books for a discussion, I decided it was time to check out one of his books. In the interest of time, I took the slimmest one off the shelf, which turned out to be Lowell Limpett and Two Stories.

The title piece is a short play about an aging newspaper reporter at a crisis point in his career. It requires one actor and one set. The play begins with Lowell Limpett returning to his apartment from a funeral of a colleague. By chance he sat next to his boss on the flight home and realizes that the publisher wants him taken off his beat. He spends the play not answering his phone. The play is essentially a character study. If it were the only piece in the book, I would not be writing this review.

On both the cover and the title page "and Two Stories" is in smaller type than the title of the play, giving the impression that they are less significant. What a pity and poor editorial decision! The two stories are superb. Both are set in Washington, DC and deal with people on the edge of national affairs. Perhaps they were unfinished when Just published an entire book of Washington stories called The Congressman Who Loved Flaubert in 1973. In any case, they are rich, mature, and worth reading.

"Wasps" is the story of Melanie, a congressman's wife. As a child she went into a coma after a wasp bite, and her life has limited by the fear of another deadly sting. Her passion is reading and her husband orders stacks of books for her from the Library of Congress. Her current topic is the Spanish Civil War. Librarians might find the story particularly interesting because she defends reading for the joy of learning.

"Born in His Time" is the story of a young lawyer working for a quietly prestigious Washington firm who gets involved in congressional hearing to approve a presidential appointment. The process of politics over law disheartens him. He remembers his studies of particle physics, his desire to be a scientist, and longs for a more principled life.

Like the play, both stories are character studies, but they seem richer to me. As a whole, the book is very worth reading. Not many libraries own it, but you can request an interlibrary loan.

Just, Ward. Lowell Limpett and Two Stories. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. ISBN 1586480871

Love, Death, and the Ladies' Drill Team by Jessamyn West

The stories in Love, Death, and the Ladies' Drill Team were written by Jessamyn West between 1939 and 1955 and evoke a world that seems now very distant. Most are set in rural California among farmers and small town merchants when life was slow and the outside world was very far away. The most advanced technology was radio and the sound equipment that Leonard Hobart sets up at the baseball field in the small town of Tennant in the story "Public-Address System." The pressure of conformity from suburbia had not reached most of these people. Being eccentric was not only tolerated, it was almost expected.

No one has air conditioning. In the heat of the summer night, a person walking down a town street can see in every window, where many people seem to be playing cards, either in groups of four or alone. Traveling salesmen are still called drummers. Itinerant painters paint barns. Jilted lovers wait anxiously for letters, not email. The wealthy own homes with rooms just for dining with big tables covered by cloth, cabinets full of china, and ferns by the windows.

As a baby boomer who was born into this world at the point it was disappearing, I find the details fascinating. I also like West's writing. In the story "A Little Collar for the Monkey", she wrote the following:

"The floor boards were still warm from yesterday's heat, and the feel of that lingering warmth excited Mrs. Prosper. A small ripple shook her, as if she had been some variety of electrical mechanism suddenly enjoying the shock of a propulsive voltage."

Many of West's stories ran in the mid-centruy issues of the New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, and Saturday Evening Post. They belong on library shelves and on reading tables with stories by Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and other great short story writers of her time.

West, Jessamyn. Love, Death and the Ladies' Drill Team. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1955. No ISBN because they did not exist.

For more information on Jessamyn West go to Jessamyn West's page on Jessamyn West.

The Travel Book Bug Hits the Young

As I was walking past the new books display at the library tonight, I noticed a boy, perhaps ten years old, shifting from one foot to the other, staring at the books. I asked him whether I could help, and he replied, "No, I am just looking at the new travel books." At his height, his head was level with the fourth shelf up, where there were twenty or so new editions from Fodor, Frommer, Lonely Planet, and other publishers. "They are fun to look at," I said. He agreed. I asked whether he had seen the older books in back, and he said that he had. I walked away and let him browse.

Several minutes later I saw him pass carrying as many books as he could. I could not see all that he had, but on top were Eyewitness Travel Guides to Portugal, Holland, and Switzerland.

Before anyone says, "Of course, he took the books with the pictures," let me say that I like to start with those, too. I like colorful photos from foreign lands. I like beautiful and dramatic landscapes, portraits of the people, and pictures of buildings, statutes, and streetlife. He made good selections.

This boy with his dreams of far away places is one of our people. We are here for him.

I Updated My Google Pages

I am using free Google Pages to index this blog. I have now updated all the pages to include all my blog entries since the American Library Association Conference in New Orleans in June. The page that changed most is my conference index page which has links to all of my reports from several conferences.

The poetry, library life, fiction, history and biography, and movie pages also have links to new content.

Hangouts Feed Souls of Lonely by Kayce T. Ataiyero (A Chicago Tribune Article with Implications for Public Libraries)

The highlighted quote is "Where can you go to get a cheap cup of coffee that comes with a kiss? That's Kappy's." Hey, our library now has coffee for a free will offering. We may fall a little short on kisses, but we do have smiles.

"Hangouts Feed Souls of Lonely" by Kayce T. Ataiyero, which ran on page one of the Saturday, August 12 Chicago Tribune, focuses on a family restaurant in Morton Grove, Illinois called Kappy's Restaurant and Pancake House. The restaurant has a very loyal customer base of seniors who come for more than the food. Kappy's is their third place, according to Ataiyero. For many seniors who are retired, it is really a second place. The owner and staff are known to hug regulars, people who often come more than five times a week. Waitresses will even telephone people who are missing to see how they are.

"There was this 80-year-old woman who came in the other day, and I hugged her and she told me that it was the first hug she's had in three years. It broke my heart," (day manager Sharon) Vardalos said. "I told her, 'From now on you get two, one coming and one going.' "

Mark Rosenbaum, a marketing professor at Northwest University, noticed Kappy's. He said that the restaurant saved his widowed mother's life. He wrote why in "Exploring the Social Supportive Role of Third Places in Consumers' Lives," which recently ran in the Journal of Service Research, vol. 9, no. 1, pages 59-72 (2006). He goes on to say that places like Kappy's are vital to the emotional health of seniors, who frequent these places where they are known. The danger, however, is that these places, family-owned restaurants and taverns, are disappearing. There were 5000 taverns in the Chicago area in the 1980s. Fewer than 2000 remain today.

As a librarian, I find this lengthy article interesting. My library has regulars who definitely need more than books and answers to questions. Many, though not all, are seniors, some widowed. They sometimes stop at the circulation and reference desks to chat. Sometimes they take more books than they are really are going to read, though they do have plenty of time. Sometimes they ask what may seem frivolous questions. They need to lengthen the social exchange, get a few smiles and good wishes.

Not all of the lonely people who come to the library are easy to satisfy. A few make you wish you could hide when you see them coming. These are probably the people who most need our smiles and good wishes.

Movies often include grouchy seniors who turn out to be sweethearts once the main character of the film can find common ground with them. They are stock characters and often not totally believable, but there is a core of truth behind the convention. Many of our more challenging regulars can be calmed and pleased with a welcoming smile, patience, and a few kind words, as well as good library service and a cup of coffee. If I had the right personality, I could add hugs to the arsenal. Maybe some other librarians can.

I am not really the kind of person to hang out at restaurants or taverns, so when I am older and perhaps lonely, I hope there is a public library for me. I might need more than books.

9/11, Books, and Libraries: Five Years On

The fifth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. is quickly approaching. I am sure the news will be full of the anniversary soon. Two big 9/11 movies were released this summer, and everyone who visits an airport or crosses a border remembers the event every day. Reminders are almost everywhere, including in the books we read.

The last four books that I read can be called post-9/11 books. Blacklist by Sara Paretsky uses the pervading fear of terrorists as an explanation for the behavior and actions of the police and federal agents in the mystery. The dangers of the Patriot Act to civil rights are discussed by the by V. I. Warshawski through out the book and libraries are mentioned (and visited) several times.

Dead Beat by Marilyn Johnson discusses how newspapers carried obituaries of the common people and celebrities who died on September 11, 2001. Many of the newspapers changed their obituary policies to cover the story.

Even Digging to America by Anne Tyler has 9/11 content, as the families who are adopting children from Asia reflect on the different airport scenes before and after 2001.

Cast of Shadows by Kevin Guilfoile has no historical references that I recall, and no years are mentioned, but terrorism is a political tool of the anti-cloning forces. The book feels very post-9/11.

What books have not been changed by 9/11? Cooking? Knitting?

I have placed orders for a number of books that would never have been written or would be very different if not for 9/11. All will be published in September or October.

Conservative Soul: How We Lost It, How to Get It Back
Sullivan, Andrew. HarperCollins. ISBN-10: 0060188774.

Culture Warrior
O'Reilly, Bill. Broadway Bks (Random House). ISBN-10: 0767920929.

Dead Center: Behind the Scenes at the World's Largest Medical Examiner's Office
Ribowsky, Shiya & Shachtman, Tom. Regan Bks (HarperCollins). ISBN-10: 0061116246.

Enemies: How America' s Foes Steal Our Vital Secrets
Gertz, Bill. Crown (Random House). ISBN-10: 0307338053.

Faith and Politics: How the "Moral Values: A” Debate Divides America and How to Move Forward Together Danforth, John C. Viking (Penguin Group). ISBN-10: 0670037877.

Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq
Ricks, Thomas E. Penguin Pr (Penguin Group). ISBN-10: 159420103X.

Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
Isikoff, Michael & Corn, David. Crown (Random House). ISBN-10: 0307346811.

Inside Bush's White House, the Second Term
Woodward, Bob. Simon & Schuster. ISBN-10: 0743272234.

Love You, Mean It: A True Story
Carrington, Patricia, et al., with Eve Charles. Hyperion. ISBN-10: 1401302297.

Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice
Ashcroft, John. Warner Bks. ISBN-10: 1599956802.

Operation Homecoming: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Home Front, in the Words of U.S. Troops and Their Families National Endowment for the Arts. Ed by Andrew Carroll. Random House. ISBN-10: 1400065623.

Peace Mom: A Mother's Journey Through Heartache to Activism
Sheehan, Cindy. Atria Bks (Pocket Bks). ISBN-10: 0743297911.

Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York
Gopnik, Adam. Knopf (Random House). ISBN-10: 1400041813.

Wake-up Call: The Political Education of a 9/11 Widow
Breitweiser, Kristen. Warner Bks. ISBN-10: 0446579327.

These new books are going to crowd our shelves.

As I weed books it occurs to me that our collection is a mix of pre-9/11 and post-9/11 books. With the natural tendency to weed older books that are worn, out-of-date, and forgotten, the collection becomes more post-9/11 every day. To some extent, this can not be helped, but I think we need to be mindful to preserve a memory of what life was like before 2001. Some pre-9/11 books need to be kept and read. This will be easiest in the fiction collection where we have books transporting us to many times and places already, but I think it is also important to keep good books in the areas of psychology, sociology, politics, law, and history. These books may act like a seed bank. We may need some of our older ideas again.

There is more than 9/11 to remember.

Google Analytics, ricklibrarian, and the Long Tail

I have had a free Google Analytics account for three months now. If I had limitless time to analyze the traffic at this blog, I could look at all the GA data. As it is, I focus on the referring sources and content performance by titles. I basically want to know how people are finding my blog reviews and which reviews they read.

Referring Sources

The largest source from which traffic comes to my blog is Google keyword searches. That is no surprise. Yahoo and AOL searches trail far, far behind. Google as a referring source was running around 50 percent before the American Library Association picked up my Do I Still Use Reference Books? and put a link in its weekly AL Direct email. Then for a week or so in June, the dominate source was "direct", which includes readers who type the URL and links from email. Right after that I went to the ALA Conference in New Orleans, and a large number of visitors to the website came via the ALA Conference Wiki.

The biggest surprise is how much of the traffic comes from wikis. In the three month period the ALA Conference Wiki and the Library Success Wiki account for nearly ten percent of the traffic to ricklibrarian. They beat all the search engines other than Google.

Content Performance

When I looked on Blogger Tuesday, I had written 464 entries. I also had 19 monthly archives and the main URL, for a total of 484 URLs. According to GA, 448 had been visited in the three month period - over ninety percent.

This is where the idea of the long tail proves true. A few URLs, such as the main page and my report on the ALA presentation by Anderson Cooper were visited by many readers. Some other items, particularly my resource guide on Morton's neuroma, were continually visited. Then there was a long tail of reports and reviews that had been visited once, twice, or thrice. Some of the book reviews I wrote in the opening weeks of this blog are still being read!

What I Like About GA

One of the features I like about GA is that I can easily select the range of days to study. I can even look at the entire history. I can also study how a particular web page has done over time, even asking the visitors' cities.

I like the colorful pie charts, but they do not print unless I take a screen shot. I really use the data in the tables much more than the charts.

Do I really use the data? Not really. I have not changed anything about my blog based on the data. Maybe I write a little more. Basically, looking at the data makes me feel good. I think that's okay. Thank you, Google.

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

As long as you make money, no one will ask why.Alex Gibney, director of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

You might be tired of hearing the Enron story, as it has been plastered across the front pages of our newspapers for years now. It is, however, a very important story that says much about our capitalist culture. With the recent death of Kenneth Lay and the sentencing of Jeffrey Skilling in September, it is a good time to revisit the story. One of the easiest ways to do so is check out the DVD Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room from your library.

Though the DVD is now slightly dated, it still has the advantaged over the daily newspaper accounts of hindsight. As the story was breaking, no one knew how big the story really was and all the links it had to other stories. Perhaps I was not paying close enough attention (I sometimes get tired of the front pages stories, too), but I did not connected Enron to the power blackouts in California of 2000 and 2001 (maybe I forgot). The film includes audio from recordings kept by a utility company in state of Washington that shows the whole blackout crisis was created by Enron traders to enrich the company. Shut down a power plant on a whim. Sell power to other states and buy it back. Cheer wildfires that threaten power lines. It’s a pretty shocking story.

What the viewer learns in the film is that Enron’s corporate behavior was blatantly abnormal long before the company’s failure. Skilling was forthright in saying that ideas mattered more than product and that the creator of ideas should profit immediately upon having innovative thoughts. As a result, Enron claimed future assumed profits as current profits. The numbers never balanced, but bankers, stock analysts, and government official never asked why.

Do not stop at just seeing the film. There are numerous special features on the DVD that should not be missed. There are several great deleted scenes. The interviews with Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind who wrote the book from which film was adapted are really interesting, too. There is even a skit from Firesign Theatre. Look for Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room at your library. It should be particularly available in Texas and California where many of the victims of the corporate crimes live.

The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson

Upon the recommendation from Maggie of Maggie Reads, I read The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries by Marilyn Johnson, a journalist and obituary fanatic. I had not realized that there were people who subscribed to multiple newspapers just to read the obits and who clipped and collected their favorites, putting them into files or scrapbooks. It sounds morbid until you think it through. Obituaries can be minature biographies, and biographies are increasingly popular in the book market and in libraries.

The Dead Beat is less about the fans and more about the form, its history, and the journalists who write obituaries. Early in the book, the author takes us to Las Vegas, New Mexico where a "wake of obituarists" gathered for the Sixth Great Obituary Writers' International Conference to meet her friends, the journalists who sum up the lives of the famous and those who become newsworthy in death. She also spends an early chapter dismembering obituaries and naming the parts: the tombstone, the bad news, the song and dance, the reverse shift, the desperate chronology, the friars, the telegraph (and the stinging telegraph), and the lifeboat.

Perhaps I enjoyed The Dead Beat so much because it introduced so much I did not know or had not considered. I did not know about the obituary revolution beginning in 1982 when several obituarists, particularly Jim Nicholson of the Philadelphia Daily News, began writing about ordinary citizens instead of celebrities. They read the paid death notices looking for "Ordinary Joes" with extraordinary stories.

I had also not considered how willing many families would be to discuss the dead in the first hours after death. They often see a way of saving part of the story by telling it right away to a journalist who will write it up. In some cities the obbituarists have become almost beloved for their community service.

Johnson concludes The Dead Beat with a list of newspapers with websites for obituaries, though she notes that she does on occasion still enjoy going to large urban libraries with vast newspaper collections to read the obits in print.

Like Maggie before me, I recommend you read this book. Then go read some obits.

Johnson, Marilyn. The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries. New York: HarperCollins, 2006 ISBN 0060758759

Easy Rider

Though I know it may seem hard to believe, I just saw Easy Rider for the first time. When it came out in 1969, I was living in rural Texas without a way of seeing it, and I somehow had never gotten around to it before tonight. I wonder what I would have thought about it if I had seen it as a teen, when there was some belief that a youth-based cultural revolution would transform our country. I probably would have found it somewhat disturbing.

The film is still somewhat disturbing. It seems to suggest that our country will not tolerate a counter culture and will destroy anyone who tries to be different, but the film relies on countless stereotypes to make this point. The hippies are so weird, the police are very intolerant and unrestrained, and the rednecks are poised to kill anything that they dislike. In the world of Easy Rider, there seems to be no hope. Drugs and communes are the only vehicles for escape from the otherwise hopelessly cruelty.

The best part of the film is the cinematography. Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper get to ride their motorcycles through much of the best scenery of the western states. Their stated goal is New Orleans for Mardi Gras. They seem to be out in Arizona (maybe Colorado or New Mexico) and then suddenly they are in Louisiana. As a person who grew up in Texas, I noticed a big geographical gap.

The rural locations and small towns are interesting to see. With Wal-Mart and chain restaurants having driven out local business, Easy Rider provides a view of lost America. Gone also are the days when drifters can park their bikes in the woods, build a campfire, and sleep under the stars. Could that really be done in 1969?

What does Fonda mean when he tells Hopper near the end "We've blown it"? Is he referring to the stash of drug money being spent or is he referring to their decision to be bikers? Of course he does not explain. He is a character of few words.

Jack Nicholson is the chattiest of characters in the film. Are we supposed to take his words of wisdom seriously? He is a helpless alcoholic, yet he seems to be a thinking man. He seems to believe there is no hope and no reason to make an effort to lead a better life.

So much has changed that it is hard to understand the film. At the time of its making it was thought disrespectful to wear the flag, and I am sure younger viewers will not respond to Fonda's jacket in the way the filmmakers (Fonda, Hopper, and Terry Southern) intended. Older viewers have probably forgotten.

Current filmgoers will also be struck by how the music is in the foreground instead of in the background. When it plays, there is no dialogue. The music is a big part of the design of the soemwhat dated film that still merits some attention from students of the 1960s.

Meredith Farkas Reports from Wikimania

Before Meredith Farkas gives her own presentation at Wikimania, she has been attending other sessions and blogging detailed reports. She started with a report on a presentation by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia. Then she reported on presentations by Alex Halavais, Derek Lackaff, and Jim Giles. Meredith puts in her two cents when she disagrees. I found the reports interesting and intend to watch for further postings.

Yelp Reviews Libraries

Librarian in Black points out that the website Yelp (Real People, Real Reviews) reviews libraries, as well as restaurants, night spots, tourist attractions, and shopping for major metropolitan areas. I checked and found no reviews for Thomas Ford but there were three for Downers Grove Public Library, all of them very positive. One of the reviewers did turn out to be a former employee, but the other two appear to be happy clients. Way to go, Downers Grove!

Adrienne Rich: The Voice of the Poet

Thus wrote
a woman, partly brave and partly good,
who fought with what she partly understood.
Few men about her would or could do more,
hence she was labeled harpy, shrew and whore.

I have been listening to Adrienne Rich: The Voice of the Poet, a compact disc with book of the sometimes controversial poet reading selections from her work recorded between 1951 and 2000. The compact disc is part of series from Random House Audio (now on compact discs from Books on Tape) that also includes Allen Ginsberg, Anne Sexton, Langston Hughes, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Lowell.

Rich's voice is clear and sharp, easily understood while driving to work or doing household chores. I enjoyed listening to her challenging thoughts while preparing a bathroom for painting. She speaks about the daily experiences of a woman unsatisfied with her life. Her intent is feminist and political. She is mostly serious, discussing loneliness, love, disease, and death, but she can at moments also be very funny. In "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" she includes the following description:

she shaves her legs until they gleam
like petrified mammoth-tusk

Rich sometimes writes about famous women. "Power" tells about the cancer of Marie Curie. "Planetarium" celebrates the career of astronomer Caroline Herschel (1750-1848), who identified eight comets. She also writes about the dangerous environmental and political state of our world, as in "Incipience" and "North American Time."

Everything we write
will be used against us
or against those we love.
These are the terms
take them or leave them.
Poetry never stood a chance
of standing outside history.

The companion book includes the 19 poems on the compact disc, an essay about Rich by J. D. McClatchy, and a bibliography of works by and about Rich.

Literature students in high school and college will benefit from this series. This title and the entire series should be in more public libraries.

Adrienne Rich: The Voice of the Poet. Santa Ana, California: Books on Tape, 2005. ISBN 141592094x. 1 disc (64 minutes) and 1 book