Almost 5 years later...

Some would posit that I had been silenced for my renegade ways. Some would dare to claim I joined some crazy kola nut eating religious sect which is launching terrorist attacks via satellite intervention on the Internet.
Some know, however, I've been terribly distracted, and as Lady Gaga sings, "Speechless".

I'm drowning in blogs. Amused at how little many say and how many more are just Pushmobiles for the mainstream news/media.

I prefer to blow foam off the beer head and ponder the inanity of life. Without getting mad.

Fairness has always been our favorite of illusions.

Wooosh!!

I can't believe that 2005 went past without a post from us! I guess we have been busy engaging in our Radical Militant Librarian training!!!
Though understandably, we have been slowly going underground due to the announcement of far-reaching domestic surveillance by the U.S. Government...(oh honey, do you really need me to link you to a news byte about it??).
Pretty soon you Yeoman of the pedestrian class will have to learn a secret handshake in order to ask and check out the Encylopedia Britannica from your public library...assuming your public library has it....or is even open any longer.
These are strange times. We have also lost some of the freedom fighters from decades past. They were the guardians of the things we have become accustomed to and taken advantage of to the point we may have forgotten how important they really are....blogging like this is an example.
Nature abhors a vacuum, however and as I advised a dear friend of mine:

When our hero dies and leaves us behind, we have no choice but to rise up from the wellspring of sorrow and lift the torch that they carried; step onto the path they walked and begin to continue their march. We must not ever forget the sacrifices of those who fought for everything we take for granted now. We do have choices, but the logical one is to fight and not flee.

Rise up my sister. It is a cold and lonely dawn, but we will not be alone in body or spirit.

I hope you too, oh brothers and sisters of Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton and Franklin, find your path, lift your torch and enlighten the way before you.

shhhhh, NOT!

Somebody understands us! This is *so* my library.

Faster Pussycat!

Well it is the new year and things have started with a BANG!
That was the sound my car made when I got rear-ended after leaving a law librarian's brunch at the Southside Works. My reward, I suppose, for being the leader of this fun loving professional chapter of AALL called WPLLA
Then the workload increase. It is hard to say whether it's due to some macroeconomic flux of the economy boom we are supposedly in, OR
due to the fact a library clerk has been relocated to another department. It's sad when the attorneys mourn HIS absence in the library without realizing they have an attorney to help them at their beck and call, even, in the library. Perhaps I am just being PRICKly about it and it's just they are being creatures of habit....BUT
when they call and are advised of his departure, they ask, "Well, who can I ask to do research for me?"....I must refrain from telling them, "I don't know." I DO know. I have always known. I will continue to know.(most importantly)

Do you know (yet) to whom you can turn to get your research done???

Big news

Who cares who won The Apprentice, or that Pres. Bush will sign the new intelligence bill into law. The big news in the library world is that NISO has approved a new 13 digit ISBN number!

*chirps*

Yup, I thought you all would be excited. Perhaps all of our stereotype isn't unwarranted?

Librarians, the new Google?

Finally, someone get's it. Someone recognizes that the Internet is just one of many information tools, and all the Googles, Yahoos and AskJeeves in the world can't compete with the ulimate search engine - the librarian.

Over the summer an RN from the ED came to the library asking for information on a topic. He had spent over two hours trying to locate said information. I was able to locate exactly what he needed, print some of it off the computer, pull some of it off the shelf and copy it and run it back to the ED in 10 minutes. That day, he and his collegues had their epiphany. They are experts at caring for patients. Librarians are experts at locating and evaluating information. The library is now a formal member of the emergency hazmat team.

So, have you hugged your librarian today?

super-antihero?

Well, ok, it was campy. It was really campy....and to enhance its campiness, TNT ran it over and over and over. Seeing it once was enough, but it was entertaining and fun. It's always good to see a woman in a power-role, also.
Anyone who was thinking it was going to be super-serious would have been tragically disappointed.......but I'm thinking a tv series would be kinda cool. Like Batman was campy, this could be campy too. I think people might actually dig it. It'd be easy to follow and understand and it would reinforce alllllll those Myths we carry around in our subconscious about how the world works.....

Although, I must confess I was more fascinated by the Library realm (what ARE those books???) than anything else. CGI captured my imagination moreso than the plot.

Meanwhile, I have learned a few other things and "moved on" as they say in therapy.
1. My Steelers have clinched their division. So I'm going to go to a play-off game and freeze.

2. How fast I drive is directly correlated to what my mood is.

3. My spouse really can't and won't (more importantly) clean the house, especially if I'm not there.

But hey, it's
Tannenbaum season, and I should be (and AM) grateful for the things in my life that give it the depth and complexity of a precocious Cabernet. Topping that list and not co-chairing the number one spot with anything is my older brother's return from Iraq and his comparatively short stay there. I mourn for those whose return is uncertain or came while lying in state. I recognize your selfless determination and grit to fulfill a task that seems impossible and may very well be an exercise in futility.....indeed, Dwight D. Eisenhower said:
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

and he also wisely noted:

"I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

I am praying for peace most fiercely these days.....perhaps this should be considered a warning.

Namaste