Waiting For The 22

"How ya doin?"

Instinct, habit, without thinking though the warning bell had already been sounding from the moment I first noticed him approaching, the barely conscious registering of his queasy body language.

"Fine," I said.

He sat down next to me, on the hot black bench where I was waiting for the bus. He held a package of cigarettes in his hand, trying repeatedly to fish one out. Tapping repeatedly on his wrist. Needless repetition. He was thin, feverish and untethered. Completely off. Schizophrenic. A tyrannizer of the normal.

"Are you a good sport or a spoiled sport?"

Is there an answer? Best to look away. I'm not really here. I have a hard enough time engaging with the self-possessed. But empathy kicks in. I want, and I'm probably thinking this later, as the bus is pulling away and I'm looking at him still sitting on the bench, still talking to the me that is no longer there, to bring him back, as though he surely left it at some point, to sanity. A wave of my hand, a lift of the curse, a bestower of miracles. "Return to yourself," I'd say with a sorcerer's flourish and there he'd be, intact, bewildered by his new clarity...apologetic and a little embarrassed. "No worries," I'd say. Instead there's this.

"It's like....it's like your watch. Like the glass on your watch and when you walk you can smash right into it. Like the glass inside you."

At which point the bus arrives, curing me of my agitation, of my delusions, of the rubbing up against madness. It's only a few seconds, this absurd interaction. But it's part of the lingering accumulation of mental health disasters, of humanity still breathing but gone to husk, that nag and haunt me and our entire approach to mental health in the U.S. So I'm left with clumsy empathy wanting to offer a line, to pull him back, to bring him within proximity of right where I am now, where reason is, for now, firmly tethered, and where my agency meshes with those I love and is met, a million times, by their reassurance--their reinforcement.

Riverwalk

Check it out! The missus might tell you she flew a little by the seat of her pants to get this one off the ground, but I doubt she was ever without the reigns held firmly in hand, offering an occasional kick in the ass when necessary.

Show the Riverwalk some love the next time you're downtown this summer.

Roman Candle Lightning Lights Up the Sky

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are crated equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and pursuit of Happiness."

Those simple words are our starting point as Americans; they describe not only the foundation of our government but the substance of our common creed. Not every American may be able to recite them; few, if asked, could trace the genesis of the Declaration of Independence to its roots in eighteenth-century liberal and republican thought. But the essential idea behind the Declaration-- that we are born into this world free, all of us; that each of us arrives with a bundle of rights that can't be taken away by any person or any state without just cause; that through our own agency we can, and must, make our lives what we will-- is one that every American understands. It orients us, sets our course, each and every day.

Indeed, the value of individual freedom is so deeply ingrained in us that we tend to take it for granted. It is easy to forget that at the time of our nation's founding this idea was entirely radical in its implications, as radical as Martin Luther's posting on the church door. It is an idea that some portion of the world rejects- and for which an even larger portion of humanity finds scant evidence in their daily lives

-Barack Obama, from The Audacity of Hope

Early Bird, Before the Worm

Sometimes Abby gets up awfully early. Like 3:45 am early. That's what she gave me for Father's Day. I was able to get her to go back to sleep, but that usually means 15 minutes to a half hour if we're lucky. But at 4:15 I brought her into bed and she slept on my chest for another hour. I never fell back asleep, though I didn't want to anyway. I listened to her breathing, heard the first birds begin their chatter and felt overwhelmed. With gratitude, with joy, with wanting to hold on to the moment. "You're my kid," I kept thinking. "You're who makes me a Dad." I'm damn lucky.

Enough sap to make up for the maple shortage.

DVDs and (the Woeful Lack of) Accompanying Texts

In his latest Global Discoveries on DVD column for Cinema Scope magazine, Jonathan Rosenbaum discuses why he's never rented a DVD-- namely that they lack the accompanying booklets or special features that come with so many reissues. Criterion DVDs, for example, often includes lavish brochures or booklets with scholarly essays, photographs and other enlightening materials. And with box sets, as Rosenbaum points out, "the differences become more pronounced," with the sets including "larger booklets and even book in some of these packages."

Of course, for those of us who aren't film critics for a living but have insatiable appetites for film, to say nothing of salaries that don't exactly encourage the rampant buying of all that we'd like to see, renting DVDs is usually our only option. But what a bummer to not have those accompanying texts.

One of the many things I adore most about film, especially those works that challenge me, is to read what others, especially those with more time, resources and insight than myself, have to say about it. After watching Michael Haneke's masterful and devastating debut film, The Seventh Continent, a few weeks back, for example, I was lucky enough to find a couple highly astute essays that greatly enhanced my own muddled understanding of the film. It's one of the great joys in my life, and clearly I'm easily gladdened-- to luxuriate in a piece of film criticism that manages to direct all my inchoate thoughts (of which there are many) about what I just saw, that takes the raw emotional charge of the film as it's still reverberating through me, and begins to give it structure or, with the best criticism, adds depth and texture to my nascent understanding of the film. So obviously I miss those accompanying texts that Netflix removes (where do they go...in the trash?) in order to keep its overhead costs in check. But I'd be willing to pay a couple extra bucks a month to have them make quality scans of this material and make it accessible to members through their website.

Let Me Bind Your Governement Accountability Document

When I worked at the Northwestern Law Library one of my more pleasurable responsibilities was binding the latest Government Accountability Office reports that arrived as part of the Federal Depository Library Program. In a nutshell, the GAO is a nonpartisan "investigative arm of Congress" that "studies how the federal government spends taxpayer dollars." The reports are concise, well written and fascinating. For a policy wonk dabbler like myself, the relative brevity of the reports coupled with the fascinating range of issues they cover makes for worthwhile reading.

For my Internet Fundamentals class I read a May 2006 (GAO-06-426) report on broadband infrastructure and access in the U.S. Rural areas, for a variety of reasons, don't have nearly the broadband infrastructure that urban and suburban areas enjoy. But not because they'd rather be growing ethanol corn than surfing the Web. The biggest reason, unsurprisingly, is that providers of broadband don't think they'll make a profit. The three main reasons the broadband providers give for not deploying infrastructure in rural areas is population density (namely, the lack of it), terrain (mountains, lots of trees) and something known as backhaul. And the Amish.

Other recent GAO reports that I wish I had more time to peruse include electronic voting challenges, FEMA and The Department of Homeland Security's continued waste, abuse and fraud in regards to their ongoing response to Hurricane Katrina, and a look at the $420 million the U.S. provided to entities in the West Bank and Gaza over the course of 2005 and 2006 in hopes of reforming the Palestine Authority and supporting the piddling Middle East peace process.

Lefty Wholesomeness

There's a great cast in The Family Stone (not to be confused with Sly and his own Family Stone), one of those films that came and went over the holiday season of 2005 and will no doubt go on to find a snug place on December back-channel television lineups, sandwiched between Jingle All the Way, Love Actually and The Santa Clause 3. I caught it yesterday afternoon over the course of a couple Abby naps courtesy of HBO's On Demand movie fare.

The great cast is headed up by Diane Keaton and Craig T. Nelson who play the loving parents of the Stone family. But the great cast are slathered over 103 minutes of warmed over Hollywood liberalism and equally soft-hearted sentiment dolled out with an almost admirable sense of guilelessness.

There's a scene around the dinner table on Christmas Eve that plays like CNN's Crossfire as Keaton, playing the matriarch Stone, protects her beatific deaf and gay son (but no incurable disease for him!-- that honor goes to Keaton, who's cancer has returned thus allowing for a long parade of tears, hugs and gently falling snow) from the slings and arrows of Sarah Jessica Parker's Meredith Morton, an anxious, materialistic, illiberal type who may actually marry Mr. and Mrs. Stone's first son, played by a zombie-like Dermot Mulroney.

Parker's Morton repeatedly sticks her foot in her mouth, the end of which has her character awkwardly declaring that no reasonable parent would ever wish their child to be gay, life being difficult enough as it is. This is too much, of course. Such a dazzling check list of conservative homophobia is met with righteous indignation. And it isn't so much that I disagree with this indignation, a proper response to the strong currents of homosexual intolerance that run through so much of America, so much as the whole scene, like much of the movie as a whole, feigns innocence while serving us a primer in lefty wholesomeness every bit as white bread and stilted as Sam Brownback dancing to YMCA at a wedding.

A Spectacular Din of Tymbals

I stepped out of the car this morning in River Forest and was greeted by this awesome sound. Cicadas were everywhere. First I noted the thousands of former slumbering holes next to the bushes where I parked. Then I saw them on the bushes, curled and clinging. Some torpidly flew through the warm air while others, less fortunate, lay squashed on the sidewalk.

At lunch I sat outside to enjoy their collective sound which is like a police siren without any edges, one sustained note ripe with urgency. According to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (where the above sound sample was found):

The sound is made with structures known as tymbals which are located on the sides of the first abdominal segment, near the top just behind where the hindwings attach. Large muscles contract, causing the tymbal surface to bend inwards which produces a vibrating click. These vibrating clicking noises are enhanced by a large air chamber that extends well into the abdomen. Repeated contractions by thousands of cicadas can create a spectacular din.

After lunch I returned to the library where I sat to a curiously hearty crunch. One of the critters journeyed in on my posterior and had met its demise.

Memorial Day

Audiovisual and Public Libraries

While I wasn't expecting to find books with encouraging titles like Audiovisual Bonanza: A History of the Public Library's Alternative Media Niche or, even better, Audiovisual Departments, Public Libraries and the 21st Century (though I certainly would love to find books like that, especially if they included a comprehensive annotated bibliography), I am a little surprised by the utter paucity of titles available expressively concentrated on audiovisual materials in public libraries. Of course, it's now dawning on me that my search criteria has been entirely wrong...and that what I really need to be searching under is "Nonprint Media Services" or something similar.

In any case, I created my own independent study course through the GSLIS program I'm currently wading through at Dominican University in hopes of immersing myself in the history of and possible futures for audiovisual materials/departments in public libraries. While Dominican offers a healthy smattering of courses covering librarian fundamentals, its course catalog ventures little further. No course I've taken, no book or article assigned, has discussed or even mentioned, however fleetingly, matters pertaining to the audiovisual. Nor, for that matter, do many GSLIS schools. I spent a few hours roughly a month ago hungrily browsing through the ALA's list of Accredited Master's Programs in Library and Information Studies in hopes of finding a professor I could contact or a syllabus I could use as a template. In the end, I came across only one course that bluntly offered what I was looking for. The GSLIS program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign offered a class titled, simply enough, Audio Visual Services In Libraries which was, I'm sad to say, discovered in their Historical Course Catalog, which "includes courses no longer taught as well as all courses numbered under the system used through summer 2004." That dog don't hunt. The description for this now defunct class read:

Designed to acquaint students with the nonprint media responsibilities of libraries; includes the evaluation, selection, and acquisition of software and hardware, the utilization of media in various types of libraries (by individuals and groups, in formal and informal programs), and the administration of integrated media collections (films, recorded sound, video, and exhibits).

Nothing too sexy, but what I wouldn't give to have seen the reading list!

My own initial questions regarding audiovisual services in public libraries, as flimsy as they may be, are asked in hopes of finding a more promising path and ultimately gleaning something far more substantial:

-What's the history of audiovisual materials in public libraries?

-What public libraries are known for having great audiovisual departments/collections? What makes them great? How did they that way?

There are other questions, equally inadequate, but it's a start nonetheless.

Overcooked Suburban Malaise

Roughly the first 45 minutes of Little Children, Todd Field's film adaptation of Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name, is wonderful. Field has a real flair for capturing and depicting the languidly enchanted quality of suburbs in the summertime. His sound design work is also finely crafted, frequently taking diegetic sources and subtly manipulating them to reinforce the narrative. And one of Little Children's strokes of genius is having Will Lyman of PBS's Frontline provide voice over narration, his rich authoritative voice giving a surreal gravity to the characters inner lives. What starts with so much promise, however, ends in a heap of overwrought, hackneyed silliness.

One of the films conceits is that Kate Winslet's character,
Sarah, is a plain Jane type, maybe even a little homely. The filmmakers do their best to make her look frumpy by putting her in overalls and without makeup. But by trying to disguise Winslet's beauty they end up making it even more apparent.

Carousel Organ

Jan. 26, 1897

Dear Sir:--

The season for outdoor amusements is approaching. Business in this country is greatly improved. How are you fixed to harvest your share of the good things coming?

Your success depends on the music at your disposal. Your organ cannot produce good music unless it is in good repair, and to attract the crowd you need the latest popular tunes. Give the people the music they want and they will give you the nickles.

An excerpt from an 1897 letter written by Eugene deKleist, owner of the North Tonawanda Barrel Organ Factory from Ron Bopp's The American Carousel Organ: An Illustrated Encyclopedia.

Greater Darkness

I'm lifting this quote wholesale from a recent Economist obitiuary because I've never read the book, though I imagine if I ever get around to reading anything David Halberstam wrote it'll likely be The Best and the Brightest. This timely quote comes from the end of that book.

Time was on the side of the enemy, and we were in a position of not being able to win, not being able to get out...only being able to lash out...And so the war went on, tearing at this country; a sense of numbness seemed to replace an earlier anger. There was, Americans were finding out, no light at the end of the tunnel, only greater darkness.

I'm not entirely hopeful, but that sense of numbness Americans are experiencing anew over Iraq and the breathtaking military, political and diplomatic disaster it represents seemed, this past week especially, to be plucking the White House out of the dark recesses of its own asshole and sending it, however fleetingly, quivering into the light. That contentious, supposedly confidential and ultimately widely reported meeting between Bush and Republican moderates concerned about the war even managed a dismissive snarl from Cheney on his stomping grounds over at Fox:

"We didn't get elected to be popular. We didn't get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party. Our mission is to do everything we can to prevail on what is now, we believe, a global conflict, a fundamental test of the character of the American people, whether or not we're going to be able to prevail against one of the most evil opponents we've ever faced."

But the thing is, there are a lot of folks who are worried about the fate of the Republican Party and precisely how, under its leadership, the character of the American people has been precariously debased. It may be basely political for moderates in the Republican party to be clambering for change just as the '08 election cycle establishes itself but if that's what it takes to nudge the White House, so be it. In the end, I fear, Bush will be handing things off to the next administration and happily sauntering to Crawford to cut brush and crack fart jokes with Karl Rove. And even if the White House and Congress actually manage to work out some agreed upon system of benchmarks with consequences (namely, troop withdraws), the problem and consequences of Iraq will be dangerously reverberating on any number of levels, each more depressing then the next, for quite some time.

Who We Are At 5:30 In the Morning

The last couple mornings as I've been carrying the munchkin up the stairs, both of us still solemn with sleep, she's looked at me very determinedly, placed her hands on her chest and declared, "Abby." Having established that, she then places her hands on my own chest and assures me that I am, "Dada."

Little does Abby know that I've gone and replaced her Dad with an exact duplicate for several nights running now.

Second Life Paper

Thus my argument is not that you should care about the ogres and elves running around in cyberspace, but that you should care about the fact that there are ogres and elves, millions of them, running around in cyberspace. It’s the phenomenon that deserves interest, not its manifestations per se

Edward Castronova, an associate professor of telecommunications s at Indiana University and author of Synthetic Worlds: The Business and Culture of Online Games, from which the above quote was taken, has written extensively about the economics of massively multi-player online role-playing games or MMORPGS as the ogres call it. He's a gifted writer with a nice, subtle sense of humor who spends a good deal of time demonstrating to fellow researchers that MMORPGS and virtual worlds like Second Life are worthy of serious study. He also writes about some very sensible (and ridiculous- but I find I'm more then willing to listen even if I'm not entirely buying it) things along the way. The above quote is one of the more sensible. There really are millions of people running around in these synthetic worlds, spending a lot of time and energy embodying virtual ogres and elves. Or as animated versions of themselves.

The crummy screen shot is of myself and some of my classmates lounging at our bar on Entropy Island (restricted access for now) in Second Life after holding a book chat that briefly descended into a John Updike pileup. When folks can't get down with the Rabbit-man, he's like an itch you just gotta scratch and tell everybody about. Anyway, I'm at the bar, far left and dressed all in black. I have a Grizzly-Adams like beard and a long, flowing lock of a mohawk as my do. I'll post a better picture soon. Once, looking just like this, I spent 15 minutes dancing to Sleazy D's I've Lost Control (still the ultimate acid track) in some lame virtual club I teleported to. I ended up feeling terribly lame for dancing my free, prefabricated dance moves amongst fellow avatar's who had either spent some serious downtime modifying their movements or wheeling and dealing with some dance programming maestro to jack their groove. It was fun for about 15 minutes because of the novelty of hearing Sleazy D, then I got bored. There's potential in that there Second Life, but I think it's at the Atari 2600 stage of development. Some folks are definitely doing some amazing things in Second Life with "user-generated content," for sure, but most of what's been created there passes as an amusing novelty or is simply banal. I'm interested in its potential and will continue to check in but I think I'm okay with letting others advance it.

I'd Try It

More from Suketu Mehta's Maximum City:

You can order a masala Coke. This is the same old Coca-Cola you know, the same fizzy brown liquid, but with lemon, rock salt, pepper, and cumin added to it. When the Coke is poured into the glass, which has a couple of teaspoons of masala waiting to attack the liquid from the bottom up, the American drink froths up in astonished anger. The waiter stands at your booth, waiting till the froth dies down, then puts in a little more of the Coke, then waits a moment more, then pours in the rest. And, lo! it has become a Hindu Coke.

I wonder, though- do the insecticides throw off the taste?

Leslie Burger's On the Phone, She's Got A Copy of the Roaches Sophomore Album She'd Like to Donate to Your Library!

Nobody should have to spend 12 hours reading about collection development policies or replying to any scenario where Leslie Burger of the ALA purrs into the phone and asks you to forecast how recent electronic resource initiatives will impact the development and management of library collections over the next five years. And yet, this is is how my day went down. I'd say I was committed to my fate roughly 75% of the time. That other 25% was given over to reading but not comprehending, zoning out, eating tapioca (which I adore) and blowing my nose because Abby and I have been given the gift of phlegm for 8 days and counting.

My independent study for this summer is a go. By early July I'll know all there is to know about public library audio-visual departments. Or not. I'm especially keen to unravel the mystery of why so many public libraries seem to have an inordinate amount of CD's from the likes of The Roaches or Spyro Gyra.

Sunday Lunch By the Lake

Cathy, Abby and I enjoyed our lunch by the lake yesterday afternoon, grateful to be out and taking advantage of the first 80 degree temperature readings since early October. We (or rather, Cathy) packed a little picnic, put it and Abby in her wagon and walked/rolled our way on over. After eating her share of cheese, grapes and bread Abby felt compelled to give me a hug. My back was soon covered in affectionate crumbs.

Further Adventures in Very Bad Ideas

Have you heard about this?

American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods.

As Anthony Shadid's excellent Night Draws Near makes abundantly clear, for many Iraqis America's presence in their country evokes Israel's record in the Middle East, namely the incendiary issue of Palestine. Not surprising, Maliki ordered that the building of the wall to be stopped today. It reminded people, he said, of "other walls." As the Times article further articulates:

Mr. Maliki did not specify in his remarks what other walls he referred to. However, the separation barrier in the West Bank being erected by Israel, which Israel says is for protection but greatly angers Palestinians, is a particularly delicate issue among Arabs.

The American military isn't giving up hope yet. But honestly, the tactical stupidity, while following in the proud footsteps of over 4 years of tactical stupidity, is truly dumbfounding.

Symbols of Corruption and Greed

Did you know that Tom "The Hammer" Delay, the former House majority leader and author of the memoir No Retreat, No Surrender: One American's Fight (not to be confused with the 1986 Jean-Claude Van Damme film of the same name) has a blog? Neither did I. Recent entries rake the hot coals of the conservative rights odd Rosie hatred and ask the burning question "Who is holding Barbara Walters accountable for Rosie’s offenses?," chastise the recent Supreme Court ruling that the EPA can indeed regulate greenhouse gas emissions and where Tom lets us know that "as a biologist I have always felt that the science behind ‘global warming’ and man-made climate change was absolute hokum," and pelts the United Nations for its tepid response to the recent Iran kidnapping of British soldiers. No real surprises under this hood.

According to a recent Economist article, Delay reminds some Republicans of "the days when the party controlled Congress and the romped over their Democratic colleagues. But most Republicans are keeping their distance, and his book is selling very slowly." Which is to say, Tom isn't exactly being welcomed back into the fold.