Thinking about Dr. King

Tomorrow it will be 40 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King. 40 years! I know this as well as I know my own birthday because I was born on March 4th, 1968 and Dr. King was killed on April 4th 1968. This makes my birthday forever linked to his death. When I was little my mother always told me that this meant that working for social justice was central to my being. Nice mom, no pressure there. I am sure that I will never be able to live up to this central creed, but I do my best.

After Max was born we decided that he would have a baby naming instead of a bris. The bris is the traditional way a male child is brought into the covenant of Judaism (it is a ritual circumcision done 8 days after birth). This is an ancient ritual that goes back to Abraham. In contrast, up until recently, when a girl was born there was no covenant to bring her into the Jewish faith. In the past 20 or so years Jews(non-orthodox) have been doing baby naming ceremonies for girls to welcome them into the faith. This seems not to be as binding as the bris, which is also known as the 'covenant of blood'. However, I believe strongly that as our society grows more egalitarian, so our rituals should reflect that. Babies of both genders should be brought into the Jewish faith in the same way. And since I completely disagree with circumcision for girls, the only reasonable alternative is to forgo the brit (or bris) for boys and do baby naming ceremonies for all babies.

The reason I am providing this background is that it is an important part of Max's birth story, and tied to the memory of Dr. King. Lisa and I decided that instead of a bris we would do a baby naming for Max. We chose Martin Luther King weekend for this celebration. In preparation for this ceremony we chose to incorporate many quotes from Dr. King and welcomed Max into our family which is as tied to our belief in social justice and equality as we our to the bonds of Judaism. I hope that in this way our family will continue the tradition of being tied to the memory and beliefs of Dr. King. I hope that as I can not think of my birthday without thinking of Dr. King, Max will think of his ceremony of welcome as inextricably linked to social justice and a celebration of Dr. King.

Brookland

Yesterday. What a busy day. I finally finished Brookland by Emily Barton. It takes place in the late 18th and early 19th century in Brooklyn, New York. The primary characters are the daughters and owners of Winship Daughters Gin distillery. Although I did love the characters and felt very attached to them, their lifestyles, actions and conversations were hardly believable for young women in the late 1700s. The narrator is the eldest daughter, Prue, who is the main owner of the distillery and the behind-the-scenes architect of the first Brooklyn bridge. Throughout the novel she is at times writing her story as a letter to her eldest daughter who has moved away and is about to have her own first child. Despite the twin flaws of believability and plot points, it was a really nice book. As I said, I felt very drawn to the characters and there is a part in the beginning where the river has frozen over and Prue and her sister are escorted across the river for their first trip to Manhattan, by their father. I loved the image of a family in the 1780s making their way across the river from their little hamlet to a 'big' city filled with new and exciting adventures. It was wonderful to imagine this trip. All in all the novel had it's fatal flaws but was an enjoyable journey. And I learned more about the distilling of gin than I ever thought possible.

On my way home from my PVAAL meeting...

Oops. On my way home, I was so excited about library stuff that I ran a red light and got stopped by a cop. So, He asks me for my license and reg and asks me: "Where are you coming from?" And I say: "Do I really have to tell you, you're gonna laugh at me". And he says: "Well, no, not if you don't want to". And so I told him: "Well, I was at a meeting of Academic Librarians." and in fact he did laugh. So I proceed to tell him that I was so sorry for running the red light and I'm usually very careful, but I was so excited about some stuff that I heard at the meeting that I must have just missed seeing the light. And by this time he was laughing so hard at my honesty routine that he let me off with a warning.

Truthfully, I knew he'd let me off. Who would ticket a librarian driving home from a meeting?! It was pretty funny though.

PVAAL meeting

I am so psyched! I went to a PVAAL (Pioneer Valley Academic Librarians) meeting tonight and I feel so energized. I talked to a lot of librarians and got so many ideas. It was totally great. I think I haven't been so excited by new ideas in a while. G. told me about how he's using libguides to do instruction in his library. I heard a great talk about adjunct faculty, publishing and, generally, being excited about reference and stuff we do in libraries by one of my favorite professors from Library school. Here's a link to her talk

It was so nice to be around librarians who are excited about what they do and who come up with new ideas and thoughts about how to get our services to people. It was really refreshing and it made me realize that it's totally nice to get out in the world and talk to other librarians, not about the piddly politics in our libraries or how much work we have, but about what excites us about librarianship and how we can use new technologies to reach people...
not to mention, older 'technology' or no tech at all. I was talking to two librarians after the shindig and I mentioned that I created a del.icio.us account for one of my departments, and I emailed it to them with instructions on how to log in and add resources, etc. and they didn't respond to my email. And (duh) my librarian pals said (in much nicer terms): "get off your ass and go to them. Make a connection. Have lunch and discuss it". Now why didn't I think of that?!

Bookstores in W. Mass

Yesterday I took my mom bookstoring, one of my favorite activities, in honor of my 40th birthday (which was a few weeks ago). We followed the advice of an article in the New York Times titled: Well-Marked Trails for Bibliophiles. We visited Whately Antiquarian Books and The Meeting House in So. Deerfield. They have been on my list to visit for a while, but I hadn't gotten a chance to go before yesterday. So, Whately Antiquarian is home to 35 rare book dealers. I found a first ed. illustrated Rudyard Kipling for $25-- absolutely a beautiful book with a mix of color and b/w drawings. I can't wait to read it with Max. I also picked up a mint condition Pickwick Papers, with type large enough that I may actually be able to read it. What is the problem with some of these old Dickens editions from the 1920s and 30s? The type is so small and the kerning so tight I can never read for more than 5 minutes. But this one is totally readable. Now the trick is to read it!

I also bought a first edition of my favorite Vikram Seth book-- The Golden Gate and a Dave Eggers novel.

Arthur and the Forbidden City

Well, I didn't love this book, but I adored how fun it was to read aloud with Max. I have such fun discussing literature and reading to him. I will be sorry about the day when we don't read together. I have learned that I love reading out loud and I am pretty good at it.

But the other day we were reading and the line was: "Arthur looked at something like a pig might look at a remote control." and Max said: "That's not a very good description because I don't think I know how a pig looks at a remote control." and I thought: "He's right. It's a poor analogy because it doesn't really describe how Arthur is making sense of what he's seeing."

Literature and kids go together like ice cream and hot fudge! Maybe not all kids, but one can hope.

Vita Sackville-West

grew up in a house that had 52 staircases and 365 rooms. Think about that. How freaky!

I love how much...

my kid loves books. Yesterday we flew home from Florida. We had a stop-over in North Carolina from around 7:30-9:30. Max and I cuddled in a seat and read, read, read. We are currently reading Luc Besson's Arthur duet-- Arthur and the Minimoys and Arthur and the Forbidden City. Granted we were at an exciting part-- 100pgs. to the end of the book. But people stopped and listened; they smiled at us. One man said that I could read audiobooks for a living. Another said that he wished he could sit near us on the plane so that he could hear what happened in the story. Many people complemented Max on how well he listened. Max, Lisa and I discussed what was happening and a few times Max didn't understand a part and we went back and re-read it with some explanation.

I watched people in the airport with their children a lot this week and I did not see much (if any) reading aloud. Kids were playing video games, taking pictures with cell phones, watching dvds and playing on computers. Some older kids were reading to themselves. I did not see families reading to young children. However, I noticed when we did it people were delighted. They wanted to be a part of it. Many older women smiled at me and Max, as if remembering times when they read to their young children.

We are all really enjoying the story, despite a poor review in School Library Journal. And we had seen the movie, so that might have helped us see the action in our minds. But we read and read for hours to finish the first book in the duet. When we were done, Max asked me: Is there an epilogue or something to tell us what happens next? Well, I don't need to tell you that I kvelled! My kid knows what an epilogue is and he knows how it is used as a literary device. How much does he rock?!

So we finished Arthur and the Minimoys and started Arthur and the Forbidden City. I read ahead after Max fell asleep and it gets pretty romantic/kiss-y. I hope he'll still enjoy it, but I can't imagine that it will be as fun as the adventure/battle parts. I guess we'll find out.

Ragtime

E.L. Doctorow is coming this spring to the college where I work. Many are looking forward to this visit and so we are all reading his works. I have just finished re-reading Ragtime and remembering how much I enjoyed it for it's seamless weaving together of a strong, beautiful quilt of a story, and it's vivid imagery.

I loved seeing the lower east side through Evelyn's eyes: "...Hebrew letters looking to her eyes like arrangements of bones". And of course the very erotic scene between Evelyn and Emma Goldman. It was interesting that Mother's Younger Brother became a participant in this scene between two women instead of merely a voyeur. I believe had the book been written today he might have been the unseen watcher, of a tender yet highly charged encounter between Emma and Evelyn, but in the 1970s our dominant cultural imagination had to see the climax as the providence of a man. (see pgs 52-54 in Random House hardcover edition).

I also found the end chapters of Mother's Younger Brother's journey to Mexico to fight with Pancho Villa and our own Nation's foray into that same war as very pertinent to our situation today. Teddy Roosevelt accuses Woodrow Wilson of "finding war abhorrent". However, history shows us that after Wilson's practice war in Mexico and his entrance into WWI on our country's behalf, he apparently didn't find it so abhorrent as to avoid it. The sentence that makes it so personal for me is: "Neither Theodore Roosevelt's son Quentin, who was to die in a dogfight over France, nor the old Bull Moose himself who was to die in grief not long thereafter, would survive Wilson's abhorrence of war."

It makes you wonder how gung-ho our President would be to wage war if every time he did so his own daughters were enlisted to be on the front lines. War seems easy to wage if someone else's children are fighting it.

Anyway, I digress. It was a great read and I'm glad to have the opportunity to visit and re-visit with a writer of Doctorow's talent. I am looking forward to hosting him this spring. I am also looking forward to hosting Spring (I am soooo over winter).

Barker at the grounds at the Vermont state fair, Rutland (LOC)

Barker at the grounds at the Vermont state fair, Rutland (LOC)
Originally uploaded by The Library of Congress

From the Library of Congress flickr site. Barker at the grounds of the Vermont state fair, Rutland. 1941.

Deb on LC Flickr site...

On Jan. 18 the Library of Congress opened it's new pilot project on flickr. The LC has uploaded over 3000 photos from it's collection onto a flickr site called The Commons. I am looking forward to viewing them and hopefully adding tags when I get a chance.

Here is a link to The Commons.
Here is a link to the Library of Congress blogpost
AND
the NPR story about it.

Hugo Cabret Wins the Caldecott!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret was one of my favorite books this year. It is a combination of beautiful prose and breathtaking pencil drawings. Sometimes the prose takes the story and sometimes the pictures. Here's a link to the book's website. It's well worth a look!

The Invention of Hugo Cabret.

Here are some of the drawings. Magnificent!

Me at Blogging workshop

Me at Blogging workshop
Originally uploaded by deblev

Blogging Workshop

Shame on me. I taught a Blogging workshop for the Valley Press Club last Wednesday (almost a week ago), but I barely mentioned it here. Color me chagrinned because one of the things I taught in the class was timeliness of posts. sigh.
Well, it was my first blogging workshop to an audience larger than my college community. I think it went very well for a first try. See photos above.

Matrimony

Nope, not a treatise on marriage, gay or straight. It's a quick read I just finished. A friend from work encouraged me to break out of my monstrous book queue to read this instead. It grabbed me at the beginning because the main character started college the same year I did, 1986, and at an alternative college in Western Massachusetts, that could have been Hampshire, my alma mater. It was called Graymont and wasn't as much a portrait of Hampshire as it seemed initially.

I enjoyed the book due to it's Hampshire/not-Hampshire connection, but the situations were contrived and the characters were a little aloof. However, I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, I get a certain pleasure out of a book that I can read quickly (in under two weeks) and feel accomplished when I finish it. Silly, but I'm such a slow reader, it just makes me feel good.

Cheers to snow!

Charlotte's Web

Max, Lisa and I recently listened to George Plimpton read Charlotte's web. We listened to it on the way to NY. Max really loved it and I had forgotten how delightful it is. E.B White was a total word smith and so many of his images were delightful. What fun! I really love listening to books on the ipod on long trips. Almost as much as I love reading aloud. I hope Max will want to read Trumpet of the Swan.

Blogging workshop...

I'm about to teach my blogging workshop to professional communicators. I am a little nervous, but I think it will go ok. I hope I've prepared enough.

Hawksbill Sea Turtle

Hawksbill Sea Turtle
Originally uploaded by takau99

I am new to SCUBA diving, I just received my certification last summer. I love to look at underwater photography on the web, so I often look at flickr.com. I joined the SCUBA Diving group on flickr so I can see photos like this one!

Chabon v. Diaz

V.
No, it's not a welterweight match-up on ESPN. Michael Chabon, pulitzer prize winner for The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay and Junot Diaz author of the much-lauded The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao are two contemporary writers. Chabon writes from a place where his Judaism and that of his characters is very central. His recent novel, The Yiddish Policeman's Union, takes place in a slightly alternate universe where, after WWII, Jews lost the battle for Israel/Jerusalem to the Palestinians who lived there and were given a temporary homeland in Sitka, Alaska. The area is about to be reverted from a temporary home for the Jews back to Alaskan territory and everyone is having a little trouble with this.

Junot Diaz writes about Domincans in the Diaspora, namely New Jersey. His book is about a dungeons and dragons, nerd-y, sci-fi writing Dominican kid and his family in N.J. A lot of the book takes place in the Trujillo horrors of the island.

Why am I comparing these two? Well, they are very similar. Chabon writes a lot about the Jewish diaspora, peppers his writing with Yiddish-isms and Jewish asides that a non-Jewish reader wouldn't know and he makes no effort to translate or explain. Diaz writesa bout the Domincan diaspora, peppers his writing with Dominican-isms, Domincan/Spanish slang (I think it's Dominican slang because it was not at all similar to Mexican slang which I learned a lot of when I lived with a bunch of Oaxicans in San Francisco), and makes no effort to translate or explain.

The two books, read back-to-back, were very interesting for me because with the Chabon, I felt like the insider and wondered how people on the outside (ie: non-Jews) would relate to this book and with the Diaz, I felt completely on the outside, not in on the jokes or inside view at all and like I was missing a big part of the story. It was an interesting journey to read these so close together. In the end, I really loved both of them and thought they were both great books. However, I do feel like I connected with the Chabon on a gut level and I enjoyed the Diaz on an educational/peer-into-a-strangers-life sort of way. Two very different reactions and two very similarly styled writers. How cool.

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