The Romance of Biking Rails-To-Trails

As Cathy can tell you, I find the whole rails-to-trails movement--of converting old, unused rail lines into multi-use trails--wildly romantic.

The whole rails-to-trails thing is all about riding my bike. No walking, definitely no jogging and certainly no roller-blading. It's all about me and my bike, the wind in my face and a unknown trail full of potential stretching and winding out ahead of me. It's all about riding those old railway routes, now tastefully, respectfully re-purposed and paved with asphalt and limestone (though I always imagine a dirt road, which somehow feels more appropriately Rockwellian) and getting a chance to ride my bike through interesting spaces not burdened by cars. I like the serendipity of it, too. Of the natural beauty these trails promise. Of the little towns they take you through, perfect, I always imagine, for stopping and grabbing some lunch.

Browsing the smart and unfussy Rails-to-Trails Conservancy site tonight, I fell under the spell of their December 2006 Trail of the Month: Wisconsin's Military Ridge State Park Trail. My romantic notions of rails-to-trails doesn't have time for any pint-sized trails. Anything under 20 miles seems too dainty, too potentially abrupt. The Wisconsin Military Ridge State Park Trail is a little over 40 miles long, which isn't too shabby. Most of it runs along what was once, according to the accompanying description, "the old Chicago and Northwestern (CNW) railway corridor." (See picture above of the Challenger, a train that ran on the CNW.)

And there's this:

It (the trail) flows uninterrupted from Dodgeville to Fitchburg through scenic farmland, woods and wetlands. In between, it meanders west to east through the communities of Ridgeway, Barneveld, Blue Mounts, Mount Horeb, Riley, Klevenville, and Verona.

"Meanders." I like that. The trail meanders. That's nice. After this winter, I definitely need to meander. But really it was this stunning photograph below that sold me:

Its alluring caption reads, "Several long stretches of trees provide shade along the trail." And, wait, is that a dirt road I see?

Close To The Edit II

Over the last few weeks I've been editing some home video with iMovie. It's a powerful little tool (at least as handy as a good Swiss army knife) and I can't imagine there's a better introduction to basic film/video editing out there. It's consistently intuitive and comes packed with more then enough decent editing tools to give anybody the editing bug. I know I've got it.

Reading the Walter Murch book has been the perfect antidote to my tinkering with the purely technical aspects of iMovie. Murch, as I've said before (but it's worth repeating), is an utterly compelling advocate of film-editing. His answers almost always offer perfectly revealing anecdotes, a scene he edited in Godfather II or Apocalypse Now (where Martin Sheens hypnotically intimate voice-over narration--written by the amazing Michael Herr, whose Dispatches is one of the best, most vivid historical accounts of Vietnam I've had the luck to read--is a good part of the allure the film has for me) and how he came to respectively shape them in the editing room and the affects he hoped they'd have on the films -on Coppola and Puzo's and Milius, Coppola and Herr's-respective narratives.

Editing allows for this near endless opportunities for massaging whatever materials you're working with. The ability to sequence, add musical cues, titles, photographs, voice overs, sound design, animations, among other editing effects--can all be used in service to whatever narrative, whatever story, you're trying to tell.

The goal, then, is to make that narrative a compelling one. I'm still working on that one.

Coming To Chicago This Wednesday!

Hello, first 70-degree day. Of course, depending on which way the wind blows, those us by the lake may be experiencing the dreaded lake-cooling effect. I'm always a little jealous of those western suburbs this time of year.

Robbins Barstow's Disneyland Dream

I'm a fan of Internet Archive, a "non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library, with the purpose of offering permanent access for researchers, historians, and scholars to historical collections that exist in digital format."

Part of that noble mission includes Our Media, "an initiative devoted to creating and sharing works of personal media." That includes home movies, both old and new, good and bad. I've long been fascinated by video's contribution to family folklore and have come to cherish the Super-8's my Dad shot of my own family.

Corey Doctorow at the blog Boing Boing brought my attention to one of Our Media's gems, a 1956 home video made by Robbins Barstow, father and husband of one of the 25 lucky families to win the national Scotch Brand Disneyland contest--a week-long, expenses paid vacation to California and, of course, Disneyland.

The video's summary reads:

In July 1956, the five-member Barstow family of Wethersfield, Connecticut, won a free trip to newly-opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California, in a nationwide contest. This 30-minute amateur documentary film tells the fabulous story of their fun-filled, dream-come-true, family travel adventure, filmed on the scene at Walt Disney's "Magic Kingdom" by Robbins Barstow.

For a piece of amateur documentary filmmaking, it's beautifully crafted. Given that Barstow himself made it himself, it demonstrates a surprisingly canny understanding of narrative construction and editing on the fly. I suppose he could have spliced some of the footage together later (my Dad did some splicing about 15 years back on some of our own Super-8's), but I imagine much of it was simply shot linearly, the scenes filmed planned out by Barstow beforehand. And the amount of collaboration, especially at the beginning of the documentary when the family's neighbors gather round their car en mass, throwing confetti and seeing them off on their grand adventure, is pretty remarkable. And while Barstow, along with his wife Meg and his three children, is behind the camera for numerous scenes, there are just as many others where somebody else, one of those neighbors, a willing flight attendant, a Scotch Brand representative or a kind, willing stranger must have shot the footage, following Barstow's directions.

The recently added, enthusiastic narrative by Barstow himself (I'm not sure when, though a reference to the trip being "40-years ago" makes me think it must have been added sometime in the late 90's, if not 1996 itself), is perfect. Accompanying the visuals, Barstow lovingly retells the story of his family's Scotch Brand sponsored vacation. It's loving, corny, modest, completely lacking in irony and sprinkled with a gee-whiz vibe that's completely endearing.

Completely inspiring stuff.

Close To The Edit

I've been happily reading Michael Ondaatje's The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film. It's a series of nicely freewheeling conversations Ondaatje, an author of some repute (good or bad, I don't know), had with the respected film editor/sound designer and all around polymath, Walter Murch. Ondaateje, who wrote The English Patient, became friends with Murch during the making of the film adaptation of that book. Murch was the film's editor and played an active role in helping to shape its overall sound design.

The book is winningly casual and Murch is completely game, wise and answering Ondaatje's questions with those elegant, perfectly formed paragraphs that I find myself both jealous of and thrilling to. The gift of highly articulate, maddeningly interesting gab.

In one of their conversations, Murch explains the decision behind not playing any music during the infamous restaurant scene of The Godfather where Pacino's Michael Corleone murders the police Captain and Sollozzo.

In the hands of another filmmaker, there would be tension music percolating under the surface. But Francis wanted to save everything for those big chords after Michael's dropped the gun....It's a classic example for me of the correct use of music, which is as a collector and channeler of previously created emotion, rather than the device that creates the emotion.

To which I found myself nodding my head in vigorous affirmation. I can't tell you how many films I've seen that have made my teeth ache with an overload of musical frosting. These scores have all the bombast of an advertising jingle, their mission being to make the viewer feel something the narrative hasn't already managed to accomplish on its own. This is either because Michael Bay is directing or simply because the film should never have been rendered into existence in the first place.

My favorite films have musical cues that do just that--they collect and channel previously created emotion and they remind me of the breathtaking power of music and occasion. There's this great, magical music moment in one my favorite films from last year, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang's Ploy, where a hotel maid who's just had some very naughty relations with the hotel's bartender lays back on the bed she's just made, turns directly to the camera (the first and only time a character addresses the viewer) and lip-synche's a wonderfully languorous, post-coital Thai pop song. It's completely unexpected and yet a perfect, even giddy encapsulation of what's just come before it. The music acts as an exclamation mark. It's funny, touching, sexy and devastatingly charming.

Biting Fingers and Cultural Mimicry

I love it. There's a YouTube video called "Charlie bit my finger- again!" with over 16-million views and almost 21-thousand comments. And once you watch it you'll know why.



Maybe it's when he decides to tempt fate by putting his finger so brazenly in Charlie's mouth...again! Charlie, who can't be much more then one if even, is more then happy to chomp on that thing because it's what he does. He's chomping on everything he can get his little teething gums around. Charlie chomps on this big brothers finger, regretfully releases it before checking to make sure big brother is still of one piece and then, with an amazing sense of timing, waits a few perfect beats before busting out a big old mischievous finger-chomping laugh.

And of course there are remixes or remasters cropping up in its wake. The guy playing the big brother who gets his finger chomped in this one is particularly good , though nobody seems to be able to really nail Charlie.



I suppose if you want to get a peak into how teenagers are riffing on the user-generated content of others, especially those that become Internet cultural phenomenons like this one, you could do far worse then to spend a few minutes checking out some of the remixes, remakes and remasters that have appeared in the original Charlie video's wake, most of which have nicely managed to rack up thousands of their own views.

HBO's John Adams Bummer

I initially had high hopes for HBO's John Adams miniseries, an adaptation of David McCullough's excellent biography of the stout and certain little man who was to be our nation's second President. Sadly, the first couple episodes haven't exactly inspired me to want to bother with the final 5.

The first episode of the series, largely a demonstration of Adams' iron-willed commitment to the rule of law ("a government of laws, not of men," said he), isn't all bad. Paul Giamatti, the go-to for stout and portly roles, portrays Adams with competence if not much else. When appropriate, which the producers seem to have thought often, his eyes grow suitably misty at thoughts or speeches conveying justice, liberty and other self-evident truths.

Joining Giamatti in teary-eyed semblance is Laura Linney as Abigail Adams. A good deal of the success of McCullough's biography came from his powerful, expansive portrayal of Abigail Adams-- of her fierce intelligence and the political acumen of the council her husband (and Thomas Jefferson, among others) relied on--here, at least in the first couple episodes, she's regulated to uttering maxims and sharing her husbands bouts of lachrymosity. Linney, a better and more nuanced actor then Giamatti, does well with her cameos, but the series as a whole is devoted to our founding fathers. Linney's Abigail dispenses wisdom, scrubs floors and stares off into meaningful horizons while tending to the children and homestead.

Another check against the series comes from an abundance of fussy and downright goofy camera angles. The series' cinematographers (Danny Cohen and Tak Fujimoto, according to IMDb) fuss with the introductory framing of numerous scenes, placing the actors on oddly tilting floors, or as viewed through the spikes of a fence, the crease of a curtain or the partitions of a window, all of which has the jarring effect of calling attention to itself. "Look," it seems to say, "these were very topsy-turvy times, were they not? And, look, here we find ourselves catching a sneak of Abigail and John reading behind the curtains of their bed!" You might as well have had Linney reach up and grab the boom mic while they were at it. It's a pretty glaring intrusion on the narrative and any suspension of disbelief.

Still, Stephen Dillane's Thomas Jefferson is pretty great--both otherworldly and wise. And Sarah Polley arrives somewhere over the course of the remaining 5 episodes as the adult Abigail "Nabby" Adams, smallpox-inoculation-gone-terribly-astray-survivor and daughter of John and Abby. Neither, though, are probably enough to bring me back for any more servings.

Muxtape For Early Spring

You can listen to the 12-song mix in its entirety here. How long, I wonder, before this service gets the clampdown? And is it really necessary, or just the latest shiny audio streaming option? It is remarkably easy, I'll give it that--from registration to uploading takes only a few (simple!) steps. It's like the Flip Video of audio streaming--less is more.

In any case, here are my accompanying liner notes:

1. Mozambique Nightjar Singing in Sandy Scrub on Banks of Zambezi, Zimbabwe- Chris Watson (from the album, Outside the Circle of Fire): A couple dozen beautifully recorded environmental recordings from Chris Watson, a former member of the post-punk band, Cabaret Voltaire.

2. Keyla- Tabu Ley Rochereau (from the album, The Voice of Lightness): One day soon, despite this winter's stubborn refusal to gracefully bow out and make way for an Obama-like spring, Abby and I will open multiple windows so as to get a nice breeze soughing through the house. We're so looking forward to that. We'll make sure to have this song on when we do.

3. Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa- Vampire Weekend (from the album Vampire Weekend)- The whole album has a throwback feel, a nostalgic patina of early 80's post-punk and, as this song lovingly pays homage, Graceland/Rhythm of the Saints-era Paul Simon. There's even a shout-out to Peter Gabriel.

4. Expecting To Fly- Buffalo Springfield (from the album, Again): An early Neil Young production with a stunning bit of introductory orchestral/studio experimentation. Jack Nitzsche, who helped construct walls of sound as brilliant as anything Spector or Wilson were doing at the same time, produced. The whole album is worth your time.

5. Groovin' Time-The Chambers Brothers (from the album, Groovin' Time): Thank you monthly eMusic subscription.

6. Saturday Night Blowout- The John Buddy Williams Band (from the album Calypso Awakening from the Emory Cook Collection): And again we thank eMusic and its great collection of Smithsonian recordings. Though when is eMusic going to provide access to the often exhaustive liner-notes the physical copies of these albums almost always include? Not surprisingly, the Smithsonian site allows you to download a PDF copy of them. I just did. But it sure would be nice if eMusic just provided the link. Even better if eMusic embedded the liner notes in my download and iTunes provided a "liner-note" option that allowed me quick,easy access to them. In any case, recorded live in 1956, this tune is a smoking hybrid of jazz and calypso that knocked me out the first time I heard it. Like me, it's got warmer weather on its mind.

7. Hydragilm Exit-Osborne (from the Daylight 12"): This is near perfect House music. Deep and soulful with a sublime sense of the genres rhythmic dynamics. It's been enjoying some heavy treadmill rotation.

8. Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?- She & Him (from the album, Volume One): M. Ward's albums have always included a handful of rocking country/old-time Americana inspired gems. Working here with actress Zooey Deschanel, Ward's written a slice 70's sunshine pop, as effervescent and dagburn adorable as the woman herself.

9. For Emma- Bon Iver (from the album, For Emma, Forever Ago): Songs like this. What is it about them? The velvety horns? The gentle, building undertow of the guitar? The automatic wistfulness of the title?

10. Untitled Interlude-Chris Herbert (from the album, Mezzotint): I've been reading Michal Ondaatje's The Conversations: Walter Murch and the Art of Editing Film the last couple nights while listening to this album on my iPod. Herbert's haunting the same ground folks as Fennesz and Tim Hecker, an extension and expansion of Eno's On Land.

11. A Feeling of the All-Thing- Kelley Polar (from the album, I Need You To Hold On While the Sky if Falling): The first minute of this tracks nicely luxuriates in its vocoder before shimmering into a delicate, summery disco groove.

12. Kappsta 2- The Field (from the album, Pop Ambient 2008): Axel Willner has carved out a this wonderfully characteristic sound for himself, mixing straightforward 4/4 beats and smearing them with and highly textured micro-samples of pop songs. By slowly evolving these micro-samples over the course of the songs, by every so slightly lengthening one or slowly modulating a phase effect over another, Willner's songs come close to a gauzy kind of pop not unlike some of the best shoegazer of the early 90's--My Bloody Valentine, Ride, Slowdive especially, all come to mind.

Linger On Over Here...Got The Time?

This was one of a few dozen albums that helped to create and sustain my teenage personae. Laurie Anderson was and is one of my heroes, an elemental role model during some highly formative years and a powerfully inspirational one at that. She seemed to have a direct line tapping into something terrifically weird coupled with this uncanny ability to effortlessly craft something equally rich and strange out of it. The New York avant-garde had made it to the surburbs of Cleveland. I loved it.

I remember driving with my mom one winter evening in the mid-80's and playing O Superman for her, attempting but never entirely succeeding in conveying to her how much it stirred me. It's breathy, hypnotic repetitions- minimalism at its most poignant and haunting? The birds that come in a little after a minute only to disappear until the songs last? The first burst or cascading synthesized reeds at 2:41? The seductive sing-song of its vocoder vocals? The fat analogue bass at 6:03? (The whole album is filled with wonderfully gritty sine bass.) The seedy sax in the final 30 seconds? The apocalyptic lyrics? We parked in a parking lot and she listened until the end. I don't remember what she thought.

Listening to Big Science tonight, though, it's Let X=X that's rocking my world.

Tom Skilling, Perfectly Avuncular

Tom Skilling, our local weatherman on WGN-TV (Channel 9 if you're in the hood), one of the Tribune Company's several local TV affiliates, is the perfect avuncular meteorologist. Heavyset, balding and relentlessly pleasant, he commands the green screen along with its impressive array of graphics depicting low pressure systems, wind chills and time-elapsed shots of incoming stratus clouds with consummate professionalism and down-to earth charm. There's something folksy and genuine about him. A little nerdy, too.

TV weathermen love to draw from the record book. We've had one of the snowiest, cloudiest and coldest winters on record according to Skilling, and if you're not a passionate urban snow enthusiast, that means it's been a little on the dreary side. Just this afternoon at lunch Skilling broke it to Abby and I that it looks like this March won't be offering us a single 60-degree day. No teaser day! He reminded us that last year around this time we were enjoying a couple near 80 degree days.

I looked over at Abby and groaned. I turned off the TV and we continued eating our hummus.

The Cinema of Place

The Thai director, Apichatpong Weerasethaku, has made a handful of intensely enigmatic films over the last 8 years. And perhaps equally strange is how languorously beautiful and accessible each of them is. They have a dream logic that rides thrillingly close to the cusp of meaning. They've taken the cinema of place to a new level. His characters inhabit landscapes that are erotically teaming, ritualized, romanticized and about as close to cinematic transcendence as I've enjoyed in a long time. The landscape enjoys as much of the narrative thrust as anything said, or any gesture made.

All his films are split in two, with the first and second parts riffing off each other. The fourth and latest of Weerasethaku's films, Syndromes and a Century, viewed in my bathrobe early this morning while Cathy and Abby were at the grocery store, may be the best of the three, though each, I feel comfortable saying without overstating the case, are masterpieces. Seeing his last film, Tropical Malady, with Cathy during one of its showings at the 2005 Chicago Film Festival, was one of those melt into my seat moments. Syndromes and a Century feels like a culmination of what Weerasethaku's films have been so successfully prospecting. Something both captivated with a highly palpable and becalming sense of place and the stories, both urban and rural, real and folklore, quotidian and enraptured, that unfold there.

A.O. Scott wrote:

It is possible to feel, watching his earlier movies “Blissfully Yours” or “Tropical Malady,” that you just don’t get, on a conscious, cerebral level, what Mr. Weerasethakul is trying to do. Yet at the same time you find yourself moved, even enchanted, by the beautiful, oblique stories unfolding before your eyes.

And Micheal Sicinski really nailed it in the Fall 2007 issue of Cineaste when he wrote:

Apichatpong's films, frequently based on Thai folklore and an exploration of spatial relationships between urban areas and the hinterlands, are among the most formally radical narrative films of the last twenty years, partly because the director is able to display landscape and environment as haptic and experimental, serving to shape not only human consciousness but also the body itself--its social, political, and sexual potentials.

Embracing Your Emerging Eddie Munster

I sense increasingly that my hair is coming to resemble Eddie Munster and that I have to simply accept this, perhaps even embrace it.

At my current rate of hair loss and graying, I can reasonably expect to resemble a friar, ringed by an orbital tuft of hair, by age 55. The demographic flight of my hair from the interior of my head toward the exterior has been slow but impressive. Cathy likes to tell a story from several years back when were living on Paulina in Andersonville. She was driving up to our place when she spotted a man on the sidewalk. She wondered, "Who's the bald guy standing in front of the house?"

"Oh!" she realized. "It's my husband!"

Hair loss surprises us all. Sheesh. But there's no reason to not make it work for you. From now on, I swear, I'm embracing my emerging Eddie Munster.
Now that's creepy!

Please Tickle My Ivories

Our newest instrument arrived early Wednesday afternoon. Oh, my! (The picture does it so little justice!)

The piano movers had ramps for the front stoop stairs and everything. Nice guys, too. Cleared the door of the upstairs guest/recording room with a hair's girth to spare. No problems. It's home.

There's still some minor room re-arranging to do. (And I'm suddenly taking up a renewed interest in decorating the space on the walls of this room.) The piano is fresh form a warehouse in Crystal Lake and so slightly out-of-tune as new pianos will be. We're to wait a month, play it is much as we can, and let it acclimate to its new environment before bringing in the tuner.

I'm pretty tickled. There's perhaps nothing I find more relaxing, more meditative, more bullshit cleansing then playing a piano. While an undergraduate at Ohio State, I'd make a daily pit stop at Hughes Hall. On the 5th floor there were a couple dozen or more practice rooms, all harboring pianos. Some old weather-beaten grands, but the majority had sparkling new Yamaha uprights. I'd place my backpack and jacket on a nearby chair, open a window, and play away any blues I had.

This weekend, Abby's Great-Grandma showed me all her piano scores. Drawers full. If I ever wanted to borrow any of them, I should feel free. I told her I couldn't read notes and she offered me a worn brochure of piano cord secrets revealed.

I think of all the people I know, Abby's Great-Gradma may be the person who best understands the gravity and joy of having a piano on hand.

Pituitary Exuberance

Osborne's new Ruling 12", as joyous a slice of House as I've heard in a long, long time, ruled my treadmill yesterday. (See head-band wearing evidence soon.) It's pure cotton-candy house. Downtown, the second track, feels like a throwback to Midwest Raves '91-92. Dancing weekends at the Lift or Metropolis in the Flats of downtown Cleveland, or at after-hour parties above auto-body repair shops in Columbus. Something about the tracks thick, emotive chords and chunky rhythm are lovingly cut from Rave's template.

Have I mentioned this before? At roughly the 16 to 18 minute mark of what I feel safe calling a modestly rigorous 40-minute daily workout on the treadmill, there's a definite endorphin kick. I don't know much about even the most basic physiology, but I know it feels really good. Something of a biochemical nature has no doubt taken place, a pituitary exuberance. This is also when whatever happens to be playing on my iPod shuffle will strike me as being the most perfect thing I've ever heard.

Lately I've been making use of iTunes' Playlists feature to create on-the-fly "Work-out" mixes. I'll literally jump into some sweats, put my shoes on and throw together a mix. I pay particular attention to what track will fall at that golden 16 to 18 minute mark. This is also where any prior reservations I had to working out, any desires to cut the work-out a little short, give way to something bordering ecstatic. I must keep going. Maybe even a little faster.

I read recently that a man of 40 should be able to do 27 push-ups. That's consecutively and in "proper form." And given that I'm going to be 37 in May, I suddenly find myself determined to be able to do just this by my birthday. 27 push-ups. I can huff out about 10 now. I figure, with a little diligence, I'll be up it to 15 in a couple weeks, 20 in 2 to 3 weeks. 27 by my birthday. The whole thing reminds me of Jack LaLanne and Jack Palance.

I practice my push-ups at random. Sometimes Abby enthusiastically climbs up on my back , as though my push-ups were invitations to an amusement-park ride. And, of course, I'm always happy to oblige. With her on board, a 31 or 32 lbs. sack of potatoes, I can barely eek out more than a couple push-ups before collapsing.

Ballads and Blues 1972

I'm having one of those moments where I really want to listen to a specific mood-enhancing album (you know, one reflecting the mellow, cloud-infused mid-March Sunday morning thing we've got going on, though it looks like the sun might break out yet), but I have no idea what it might be. Too many options.

So I settled on George Winston's Ballads and Blues 1972, some of his earliest recordings and released on the late John Fahey's Takoma label. Maybe not entirely as consonant with my mood as I'd like, but I'm malleable.

I still have a huge soft spot for Winston's 70's and early 80's recordings. His season themed albums (Autumn, Winter Into Spring, December and Summer...the last of which came out in the early 90's but is just as good, if not better then the other 3) are all, in my mind, masterpieces of warm, folksy piano. Besides Harold Budd, nobody has better rapport with the sustain pedal. But where Budd wrings out drifting ghost chords, Winston's are full of wide-eyed Rockwellian charm and lightly worn, rustic melancholy. Maybe too benevolent, too mawkish (or, as I fear, too frequently discarded with a knee jerk into the New Age dustbin) for some, but it's been doing me right for over 20 years.

Now where did I put down that Laura Ashley catalog?

Stuffed Hound of Hades--Now At Macy's!

Abby and I met Cathy for lunch at Macy's last week. They have a surprisingly upscale food court on the 7th floor. After lunch we road the escalators, as Abby likes to do, stopping to hug mannequins between floors.

Eventually we found ourselves at FAO Schwartz on the 5th floor where we ran across the above Cerberus. What 2-year old isn't coveting a stuffed hound of Hades? I liked the idea of buying it and putting it in Abby's room, if only to gage the startled reaction of her grandmothers. "Oh, you know, until we get her a real dog, we thought she'd like a hellhound," we'd tell them with a shrug.

Cathy thought this was a very bad idea.

I Am The Third Revelation (And I'll Drink Your Milkshake!)

I've seen all of Paul Thomas Anderson's films, including his latest, There Will Be Blood, which I just saw tonight at the River East downtown with Joe and Cathy. And why not? Anderson's films are always technically amazing. The sound and set designs, the cinematography, the acting and the editing are all guaranteed to be superior to just about anything else playing at a cineplex, and often inspiring. They're more than just competent, they're polished with a commercial sheen that borders on the pornographic.

But There Will Be Blood is different. Maybe it's the leap back to a early 20th century setting or the venerated history of the Hollywood Western lurking about. It stretches out in its oil rich wasteland and Jonny Greenwoods score drops dollops of devilish bombast across the horizon. Daniel Day-Lewis drools, snarls and bludgeons and almost all of the time it works beautifully. But Anderson always gets in over his head. His scripts are overcome with grandeur and operatic histrionics. Something grandly sweeping, like Charlton Heston parting the Red Sea, gets in there and gums up the works. The only time this really worked for me was with Punch Drunk Love, where he almost lost the thread before giving in to a swooning, open-hearted ending. It worked. But in There Will Be Blood a sudden leap in time seems to lose the beat, its rhythm is way off. A late scene between Daniel Plainview (Day-Lewis) and his son HW (Stockton Taylor) is drenched in in the same kind of dressing Anderson slathered so much of Magnolia with. I'm not feeling it.

And yet...the ending is somehow so ripe, so goofily over the top, that I'm proud to be joining others with a shout of "I drink your milkshake!"

Audiovisual Librarianship: A Video Essay

Last summer I created a somewhat freewheeling curriculum for an independent study exploring audiovisual librarianship in public libraries. Like a lot of schools, Dominican's GSLIS program simply isn't able to fully cover the many diverse areas of librarianship worthy of study. (I wonder how distance learning, once it moves past its fumbling introductory stage-, might be able to alter this?) Sadly, for me at least, one of the areas chronically absent in course offerings is the giddy untapped potential that is audiovisual librarianship. Sure, there's a paragraph here and there, maybe even a chapter devoted in the introductory text for collection management, but for the most part the bibliocentric focus of LIS programs holds tight to the reigns. I like to think that's changing, with more schools beginning to offer courses, or seminars (or testing the waters with occasional special guest lectures) on gaming, virtual worlds and digital content creation and how they hold all sorts of promise for public libraries.

In any case, I did a cursory literature review, spending some really glorious sumer days in late May and early June, cicadas vibrating merrily away, reading and thinking about audiovisual librarianship in public libraries past, current and future.

Then I headed out to interview audiovisual librarians in person. I was incredibly lucky to find 6 amazing audiovisual librarians (in Northbrook, Skokie, Naperville, Chicago and Cleveland respectively), each dedicated and fully engaged in their profession, to meet with me and answer my questions. While on video. And I learned valuable lessons about room sound. I'll tell you about them later.

Here's what they had to say:

Riverwalk Radio

Cathy was on Smart City this morning, a nationally syndicated public radio program exploring various aspects of urban life. You can hear her talking about the very exciting Chicago Riverwalk project she's been helping to coordinate here. (If you want to get right to it, her segment begins a little past the halfway mark.)

Damn, my girl has got it going on!

Warm, Scary Air

Recently Abby has recently been affected with a deep and abiding fear of our air vents. There's one in our upstairs hallway, on the far right, and Abby will hug the left wall as she walks by it. Another air vent is suspiciously close to her bookshelf. She no longer feels safe venturing over to browse. I've taken to sitting on the vent and assuring her that the area in front of her books has now been secured. "See," I tell her, "Daddy's sitting on the air vent and it's not hurting him."

"The air vent is our friend," Abby will say, beating me to the punch.

"That's right, the air vent is our friend! It's giving us some warm, cozy air on this very cold day!"

She nods appreciatively and drags a few books over to the middle of the floor.

Feel Free To Delete These

My Mom seemed newly determined to make some room for the Web when Cathy, Abby and I visited her and my Dad a couple weeks ago at their winter getaway in Tarpon Springs. That old clamshell iBook is most definitely ailing, so Cathy and I encouraged her to look into buying a new computer. But first we took her through some Web basics and Cathy ditched Safari and replaced it with Firefox. We did some searches, pausing briefly on Joe's blog, Through The Wire. My Mom's known Joe since high school, so I thought showing his blog to her was a nice way to demonstrate some of the intimacy the Web allows.

Later, after we returned, my Mom forwarded along an email, itself forwarded along to her by one of her friends. It contained a poem "written by a terminally ill young girl
in a New York Hospital," with the plea that all receivers "pass this mail on to everyone you know - even to those you don't know!" so as to generate small donations to the American Cancer Society's efforts to assist in "her treatment and recovery plan."

And, of course it's a hoax, circulating saccharinely since 1997. The American Cancer Society has a press release disavowing any involvement in this terminal whimsy.

Suddenly I imagined my Mom fretting as she read another email informing her of suspicious activity on a credit card. I wrote her back with dutiful warnings of the Web's many identity thieving cretins prowling about. I reminded her that any email telling her to forward it along "to as many people you know (one gentlemen was so inspired, he even forwarded to over 500 of his friends and business associates!)" is almost always a hoax. "Feel free to delete these," I told her.

Repeat the Sounding Joy: Chris's Best Songs of 2007

With any luck, copies of this years mix will eventually make it into the hands and ears of the usual suspects. If you're reading this and would like a copy, feel free to let me know and I'll get you one.

The bulk of it is made up of songs released in 2007, though a healthy number draw from the last 50 years or so. I wasn't able to include everything I would have liked, but at over 9 hours long it's a pretty good representation of what my ears perked up to.

I've tried, too, for those who might want to listen linearly, to create an interesting mix. I kept away, as much as possible, from balkanizing genres in hopes of allowing for surprising merges and occasional collisions.

Here's what made the cut:

A Paw In My Face: The Field
Paris, Tokyo: Lupe Fiasco
Mercy, Mercy, Mercy: Cannonball Adderley Quintet
Orange Skies: Love
Just As You Are: Robert Wyatt
Da Aurora Até O Luar: Dadi
Dive For Your Memory: The Go-Betweens
Rainy Night In Georgia: David Ruffin
Flashing Lights (Ft. Dwele): Kanye West
My Favourite Book: Stars
Comodn Johnson: Los Amigos Invisibles
Doca: Trio Mocotó
Levante A Cabeça: Som Nosso
Ai E Que Ta: Burnier & Cartier
Read My Mind (Instrumental): Metro Area
Do It All Night: Prince
Chromophobia: Gui Boratto
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi: Radiohead
Is There a Ghost: Band Of Horses
Sleeping Lessons: The Shins
Looks Like Rain: The Postmarks
Bach (JS): Piano Concerto #4 In A, BMV 1055 - 1. Allegro: Glenn Gould
Winter: The Rolling Stones
Do I Have To Come Right Out And Say It: Buffalo Springfield
Through My Sails: Neil Young
Running to the Ghost: James Blackshaw
Too Much Between Us: Procol Harum
Scythian Empires: Andrew Bird
Indoor Fireworks: Elvis Costello
To Build A Home: The Cinematic Orchestra
Blues Run The Game: Jackson C. Frank
I Must Have Been Blind: Tim Buckley
...3: John Barry
Can I Say: The Rice Twins
Lohn & Brot: Efdemin
Before: Contriva
Af607105: Charlotte Gainsbourg
Mima: Eddie Harris
Elsa: Cannonball Adderley With Bill Evans
Some People Are Crazy: John Martyn
All I Ever Wanted: Meg Baird
A Picture Of Our Torn Up Praise: Phosphorescent
Innocent Bones: Iron & Wine
Johnny's Garden: Stephen Stills
Kalumba: Gambuzinos
Gente: Caetano Velosa
Don't Touch That Thing: Sylvia Hall
I Used To Be A King: Graham Nash
Middlenight: The Sea And Cake
(Ain't That) Good News: Sam Cooke
Feel Pm: Lindstrom And Prins Thomas
Über Wiesen: Thomas/Mayer
Steal Away (Version 2): Johnnie Taylor
MRA: Chris McGregor's Brotherhood Of Breath
You Can Have Her: Waylon Jennings
Sweet Wanomi: Bill Withers
Elementary Lover (DJ Koze Remix): Matthew Dear
N.I.T.A.: Young Marble Giants
Myriad Harbour: The New Pornographers
4,738 Regrets: Trans Am
Someone Great: LCD Soundsystem
New Jack: Justice
Hussel (feat. Afrikan Boy): M.I.A.
Kingston: Rod Modell
Night to Remember: Cassy
Lay Your Head Down: Keren Ann
So Sorry: Feist
Warm Canto: Mal Waldron
Title Music: Satyajit Ray
Masculino, Feminino: Erasmo Carlos
Goin' Away Party: Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys
O Caroline: Matching Mole
Port Authority: Opsvik & Jennings
What Me Worry?: St. Vincent
The Queen Of Seville: The Clientele
Think She Knows Me Now: Mike Cooper
Into Eternity: Jens Lekman
Slap The Back: Cobblestone Jazz
Main Squeeze: Nate Evans
Oh Christine: The Cave Singers
Fake Empire: The National
LDN: Lily Allen
Scenic World: Beirut
Sheria Yatukataza: Maulidi Juma
Silently: Blonde Redhead
Parallel Life: Baby Ford
Water Soul: Melchior Productions Ltd.
Archangel: Burial
Cicely: DJ Koze
Synthacon 9: The Tuss
Garden Parade (Dandy Jacks Senti-Metal Mix): Copacabannark
Walden 2: Pantha Du Prince
Rabbit Tube: Lawrence
Soziale Wärme: Thomas Fehlmann
Intruder: Susanna
Keeping You in Mind: Mary Margaret O'Hara
The Wheel: Jerry Garcia
Hazel St.: Deerhunter
Impossible Germany: Wilco
All La Glory: The Band
Little Girl: Billy Preston
(This Is For The) Better Days: The Bees
Guitar Blues: Chester Atkins
Lovesick Blues Boy: Paul Burch
Breezin': Cornelius
Terremoto: João Donato
Persian Love: Holger Czukay
Wennder Sudwind Weht: Roedelius
Samba pa Negra: Jay Hoggard
Diamond Heart: Marissa Nadler
Dinoa & Hora: Jacob Hoffman and Kendal's Orchestra
All Cats Are Grey: The Cure
Gogol: Gonzales
Waltz for Debby (Take 2): Bill Evans
Reflections: Thelonious Monk
Caught In The Middle: Lusine ICL
The Shade: Eno Moebius Roedelius
Tippy's Demise: Stars of the Lid
Evening Star: Fripp/Eno
for Jim Hall & Kurt Kirkwood: Klimek
Ascent: Arve Henriksen
oto: fennesz + sakamoto
Sun Against My Eyes: Colleen

Help, I'm Obsolete!

My formally trustworthy PowerBook, just a little over 2 years old, seems to have crashed on the shores of Little People. A well-loved Little People DVD we attempted to play at 30,000 feet en route to Tampa Bay International Airport seems to be the culprit. Struggling to read it (it was, to be blunt, scratched to hell), the PowerBook seems to have given up all together. When we turn it on now it gives us that ominous blinking folder with a question mark. It whispers, "you're screwed." We're hoping the original startup disk will revive it.

So we've had to revert to using my parents weathered clamshell iBook (see accompanying picture), which was once our own. It was new in 2000. It was blueberry shiny and awesome. Cathy wrote her thesis on it in Berkeley looking out at rose bushes and rosemary. We gave it to my parents a couple years ago so they could have a computer in Florida.

And I gotta tell you, it really sucks. It's like using an old elevator--it shudders under the weight, lurches, pauses awkwardly between floors before shuddering and slowly moving on. It's a telling example of how quickly technology becomes antiquidated.

Cool In The Pool

It's currently 75 and sunny in Tarpon Springs, Florida. We're heading out for a picnic lunch in a few minutes. My apologies to any friends and family being bruised and battered by winter.
We'll be rejoining you, the cold and the slush, with some regrets, Tuesday morning.

Light Pillar

A light pillar captured out the window of our car on Lake Shore Drive this morning. A nice, freaky little meteorological phenomena to buoy our bout of chilliness.

Coffee With Balzac

It's probably not the best way to take the measure of French literary tastes, but based purely on the amount of times Balzac is referenced in any number of French films I've seen (most recently in Julian Schnabel's French production, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly), it seems clear that he's still very much revered there. (I looked, but nobody has felt compelled to compile a list of all the Balzac references running through French cinema--or at least hasn't seen fit to make it available online.) I suppose a case could be be made that he's one of a handful of 19th century writers of fiction whose works are still widely read and respected. Even cherished. In France at least. Elsewhere, one imagines he can be found on the occasional syllabus, read because he must, any pleasure derived by the student merely a happy coincidence.

I have a copy of Balzac's Cousin Bette on my shelf. I'm looking forward to reading it, hoping to catch a glimpse of what makes him so revered and hoping, as I suppose most of us hope when picking up a work of fiction, to be delighted and transported. He was, according to the books introduction, a bit of a coffee fiend, drinking cup after hot, black cup as he wrote through the wee small hours of the night. 4 to 5 novels a year! Prolifically caffeinated.

Great-Grandma

Abby's Great-Grandma had a birthday party today. Her sons, of whom she had 4, threw it for her. She was born 85 years ago today in Chicago. There was a snowstorm that day. On the way to the hospitable her mom's car got stuck and she had to walk the rest of the way. Needless to say, she told us, she's never been all that fond of cold and snow.

She's a classy lady, Abby's Great-Grandma. We're so happy to have helped her celebrate today.

Oh, No, Frankie Valli!

Since finishing up school just before the holidays, I've had great luck choosing just the right book to fit my mood. Reader and books have been in perfect accord.

Over the last few weeks I read a gaggle of small books about big albums, a couple slices of fiction, back issues of Cineaste and Film Comment (which I finally organized) and one fat old biography of Abe Lincoln. I can't tell you how guiltily luxurious it's been to put some good reading music on, recline in the big brown chair, and read stuff entirely of my own choosing. In succession. No syllabus in need of attending, no paper to research, no group project coming up--just me and a book about honest Abe. Sometimes I've gone so far as to indulge my reading with a glass of wine.

And I learned something about Lincoln I didn't know. He was born in Kentucky. Really? Do most people know this? I assumed Illinois was the Land of Lincoln. I mean, surely such a claim naturally includes his place of birth. But it turns out those bragging rights belong to a log cabin on Sinking Spring Farm in Kentucky.

So I'm learning.

And when I'm done with Lincoln, I'm looking forward to moving on to LBJ--those three books by Robert A. Caro , the first of which has been flirting with me from the bookshelves, have been begging to be read for a few years now. The blurb on the back cover of Book One offers tantalizing hints of one man's "superhuman drive," of Hill Country Texas dustbowls, Congressional debuts, Senate races and pugnacious political genius. And that's just Book One. Eventually Vietnam brings him low, that much I know. Caro's still working on that one.

Who is going to write Robert A. Caro's biography? A biography of a biographer is the stuff of academic tenure. What does it mean to devote a significant portion to your life to diligantly chronicaling the life of another? Chapter 7: The Lydon Johnson Years. Such a chapter would include a moving account of Caro's exhaustive research methods, a lengthy summary of the books' rapturous critical reception along with the author's corresponding gratification, grants that made it all possible (including innumerable lonely lunches sorting through documents at the Johnson Library in Austin) and why Book One of The Years of Lyndon Johnson is dedicated to Ina.

Abby and I went puddle jumping yesterday. She helped me get her into her frog inspired rain gear (the matching green boots are a little big, so an extra pair of socks helps) and we headed outside. Cooler then the day before, but still freakishly warm. Abby pulled me toward the pothole puddles in the ally, tiny pools of snow melt, gravel and urban sludge. I wondered if maybe she shouldn't be jumping in them. Little flecks of mud clung to the bottom of her raincoat I imagined rare water born diseases.

We moved to less impressive sidewalk puddles. A cabbie rolled up to a stop sign, looked over at Abby attacking a puddle and hollered, "That's cool!" We walked to what we call the Old Park and ran in its circles of various sizes. "Little circle!" Abby yells. "Bigger circle....Biggest Circle!" Then we do it again.

Abby's favorite song right now is Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons' Big Girls Don't Cry. We've watched this YouTube video of it at least once a day for the last month. We both love Valli's giddy falsetto. Whenever he swoops up on "Cry" we look at each other in mock surprise and say, "Oh, no, Frankie Valli!"

Rain-Doh

All our Play-Doh is blended by little hands. No need to keep it white-gloved.

We love the smell, too.

Filagree and Snow

The snow that fell on New Years Eve and into the new year was wonderfully filigreed. All those wan, leafless trees were made stately, upholstered in a delicate cloth of snow. Even the cars took on an absurd opulence, their imperfections flattered by a few inches of fallen snow.

Later on, past 2 a.m, I read in our living room, pausing every now and again to listen as people walked past, their voices rounded off at the edges and muffled, swallowed up by the snow.

Birthday #2

Happy Birthday, kid! You are amazing.

Abby and the Magic Wurlitzer

We're home. Well, the house I grew up in at least. My parents have lived in the same home for almost 35 years now. They moved in when I was almost 2. It's a home steeped in family folklore and being in it conjures up all sorts of nostalgia and wistfulness. Something sad, too. Of time fleeting?

The blustery weather helps fuel this sadness. I woke up at 6:00 and listened to the sound of rain thrashing at the windows and the howling wind. When the sun came up, its light was diluted and made murky by a settlement of gray. This house, my parents house, is filled with my past. In the basement there are letters from friends dating back to grade school. I open random drawers and find pictures of my grandparents, of birthday parties in the backyard, of Christmas mornings from 30 years ago. I don't know what to do with all this. I wanted to make a documentary of it, try and make sense of all the emotions such artifacts stir up--but I feel overwhelmed and that, in turn, makes me feel listless. Or maybe it's all the cookies I've been eating and the sugar crash that always follows in their wake.

I'm at the library. It's quiet and they have internet access. It's another place where old ghosts linger but it doesn't impose its will so strongly.

Beyond the inchoate undertow of saudade, is Abby. Shes storms right through it, a little high octane engine of curiosity and demanding joy. My Dad's Wurlitzer, too. It wheezes and churns to life while its kick drum and trombones shake the entire house. Abby loves it and so do I.

LIS768 Summary

I agree with what others have already expressed--this course should be one of the fundamentals for any future librarian. I also agree with Michael that its title should be changed to "Emerging Technologies."

Library 2.0, no longer a nascent movement, is still in its evangelist phase. It's spreading the good word, surrounded by a relatively tight-knit, energized collective of academics, students and librarians. It's very good at introducing the uninitiated to emerging technologies but still finding its footing concerning the impacts, both good and bad, such technologies may have in a library setting. It's time for more Library 2.0 introspection. It's time, for example, for more case studies of what's worked and why. It's time for case studies of what hasn't worked and why. I wonder, for example, how the Library 2.0 movement might fruitfully draw from the field of Community Informatics, another relatively new discipline equally interested in community based information and communication technologies.

That said, I enjoyed the course but was sometimes frustrated by the introductory quality of it. That sounds somewhat condescending though I definitely don't mean it to. I was, however, already aware or avidly using almost all of technology we discussed. I wonder, once this course is more established, if it wouldn't be beneficial to offer a follow up that moves beyond the introductory and explores some areas that I feel need Library 2.0 needs to tackle. This includes:

1. Management. My LIS770 textbook, Management Basics for Information Professionals was over 500 pages long. Dull-as-dust, but plenty of Druckeresque meat to chew on. Idealistic graduates hoping to spread some of the good word concerning Library 2.0 are often leaving school and stepping into entrenched, change-resistant bureaucracies. So, introducing students to these new, potentially relevant new technologies is one thing but exploring ways for overcoming such resistance is another, equally important piece of the Library 2.0 equation. Additionally, what management models work best with Library 2.0? Perhaps we should be exploring or creating case studies for introducing emerging technologies in libraries and looking at how emerging technologies disrupt existing/popular management systems and how this might be successfully mitigated.

2. Evaluation. Earlier this year, the Americans For Libraries Council released a much needed report titled, Worth Their Weight: An Assessment of the Evolving Field of Library Valuation. It's well worth reading. Perhaps it's because the Library 2.0 field is so young, but I've seen distressing little talk amongst its proponents concerning how the technologies its advocating for are being evaluated. As the report makes clear, those of us advocating for libraries and the public financing and good-will needed to sustain them, must be able to, in quantitative terms, prove their worth. Increasingly, libraries are being asked to prove their social return on investment. This is a tricky, but evaluation methodologies are out there. While qualitative narratives/stories are important, funders trust and want numbers. We need to be studying these evaluation models.

3. Library Literacy. Libraries are still hopelessly bibliocentric. Ideas about what a library is (rather then what it could or should be) are firmly entrenched. They're about books. They're about reading. And, yes, reading is fundamental, but... I'd like to see a Library 2.0 follow up class that spent some time exploring a more expansive idea of what 21st literacy constitutes. Clearly some libraries are having success, making way for gaming, media labs and the like. There's a lot of great research going on in these areas and it would help fortify recent graduates moving into the public domain if they knew they had a lot of highly persuasive company working alongside them.

There's more, but Cathy is making cookies and a piece of cake beckons. I know this blog will continue to chug along. I hope others will allow their own to linger and will share, when inspired, their own thoughts.

Happy Holidays!

Del.icio.us and the Joys of Personalized Metadata

I've told this story before. Prior to Del.icio.us, I kept various file folders of interesting news clippings. I had a file for health related articles, one for foreign affairs, another for cultural news...roughly a dozen of these. Articles too good to lose forever. I'd cut or print them out, highlight some interesting sections, then file them away for later. I had grand plans.

The bookmarks on my computer were already sagging under their burden. Rows of bookmarks. Every so often I'd go through them and weed, separate the wheat from the chaff. Joshua Schachter, it seems, was having a similar problem, losing his way amongst the links. That findability thing. Del.icio.us doesn't need weeding--just feed it tasty links, tag 'em and move on. No more printing, no more file folders, no more overstuffed bookmarks.

I'm still refining my own folksomony, creating an organization system that will be as effectively retrievable as I want it to be. I get a little crazy with all those keywords. On the other hand, the process of tagging an article acts as a nice way to quickly run back through what I've just read, quickly summarizing what I found relevant. I become more attuned to a pieces themes, motifs and how it may be personally relevant. It allows for a dialog between myself and whatever it is I'm labeling. That others may be tagging with similar keywords, leading to articles or sites I overlooked, is like gravy-- a nice extravagance.

My Del.ico.us bookmarks are here. Everything bookmarked for LIS768 can be found here.

Group Project Rehash

For our group presentation we explored the idea of Library as place. I've been interested for a while now in how place effects our mental and physical well-being. Even more so in how little thought we often give to these effects, how unconscious we are of them. One of the best definitions of place we ran across came from the book, Library As Place, where Kathleen McCook defined what she called "Sense-of-Place" as "the sum total of all perceptions-aesthetic,emotional, historical,supernal--that a physical location, and the activities and emotional responses associated with that location, invoke in people."

Such subjective, highly emotional attachments to place fascinate me. Our group had originally flirted with the idea of making a video documentary exploring this in relation to libraries. I've long wanted somebody to more fully unpack that gem from the OCLC's "Perceptions of Libraries and Information Resources" report noting the intense nostalgia people feel for libraries, a nostalgia often associated with childhood. I wonder sometimes if the good-will most folks harbor for libraries draws from this deep well of nostalgia.

Making such a documentary, however, proved logistically difficult given our groups personal geography. Nicole and I lived on the North Side of Chicago, so we decided to team up and explore Harold Washington Library, the mothership of Chicago libraries and a building I've long had an adversarial relationship with. Nicole and I used PBwiki to brainstorm what we wanted to do.

The resulting video was perhaps a bit more freewheeling then I would have liked--but we had a lot of fun doing it and lot's of good discussion, some of which we were able to distill into the documentary.

Civic Life, Youth and Libraries

It figures this would happen the day I turn in my LIS768 paper! As mentioned, my paper focused on how libraries can take advantage of the massive amounts of online content creation being generated by today's youth by offering services and programming that seeks to channel the energy and creativity found there toward a more dynamic, relevant form of civic engagement. Yesterday, the MacArthur Foundation announced the "the launch of the new International Journal of Learning and Media, through which core issues facing young people in a digital age will be explored."

Doh! Do you know how great it would have been to have been able to read these a few weeks ago?

The first six titles are available online and probably worth a look for anybody whose interested in youth and their relationship with technology.

Abby is taking her nap, so I'm reading the first title, "Civic Life Online: Learning How Digital Media Can Engage Youth," which might as well have been the title of my own paper. In the first chapter, W. Lance Bennett has the chutzpah to bring up all sorts of things I conveniently left out of my own paper or failed to even consider. I hate him. But he points out that there are two "sharply differing views of what constitutes civic engagement and citizenship for young people both on and off line."

The engaged youth paradigm, as he calls it, holds that the so-called lack of civic participation amongst today's youth is due to a failure on the part of our government to recognize the "generation changes in social identity that have resulted in the growing importance of peer networks and online communities." Traditional forms of civic engagement are viewed by today's youth with skepticism, lacking authenticity. New forms of civic engagement, while nascent, are occurring online, a "new spectrum of civic actions," as Bennett calls them.

The disengaged youth paradigm, on the other hand, acknowledges the possibilities of this new spectrum of civic engagement emerging online, but focuses "on generational decline in connections to government (e.g., voting patterns) and general civic engagement (e.g., following public affairs in the news) as threats to the health of democracy itself."

These two paradigms don't seem so terribly far apart to me, though if forced to chose my sympathies would lie more with the engaged youth paradigm. Millions of youth are creating, remixing and disseminating content online. Some of it could be said to taking advantage of this new spectrum on civic engagement emerging online, but a huge majority of it, as the disengaged youth crowd believe, is focused on self-expression and consumer advocacy with some fortuitous civic spindrift. But we can't simply chastise youth for not debating the merits and drawbacks, 250 years on, of our founding fathers belief in a representative democracy as opposed to a direct one. What we need to do, and this is what I suggested in my paper, is work to channel these online creative endeavors toward, as Peter Levine suggests, building the "foundations of civil society in the twenty-first society." After all, maybe what youth are doing with this explosion of online content creation is opening up new, reinvigorated ways to be a citizen. Maybe the fact that they're disengaged from the more traditional forms of civic engagement is because, as Bennett points out, they're flawed. "Telling young people to participate in bad institutions," Bennett writes, "is mere propaganda."

The goal, then, is to bring these two paradigms together and leverage the creativity and enthusiasm that's occurring online to help create new, exciting and tangible ways for youth to effect community change, to become engaged citizens. Libraries, long viewed, perhaps romantically, as bulwarks of democracy, have an opportunity to step in and facilitate this. This is especially true when you consider that civic education in our nation's schools is either extinct or exceedingly dull. Bennett writes:

A massive International Education Association (IEA) survey of 90,000 fourteen-year-olds in twenty-eight nations suggested that civic education, where it is offered, remains largely a textbook experience, largely severed from the vibrant experiences of politics that might help young people engage with public life.

So, how do libraries work with the youth in their communities to create a more vibrant civic experience, more aligned with their creative online endeavors? The opportunities for building new civic and political communities in such an environment is ripe for the plucking. Again, libraries need to be in the thick of this!