On or shortly after May 1, 2003, we should know the election results for our fair organization. I am hopeful for a short list of candidates.
I've been using TinyURL to keep track of the ALA site for those pages that I need regularly.
Go to the ALA Governance page: http://tinyurl.com/aosz
Go to the Serials Standards Bibliography: http://tinyurl.com/aotl
http://www.pagesix.com/cindyadams/cindyadams.htm
TORONTO health authorities can burble all they want about how safe their city is, they're about to take a huge hit in terms of travelers.
They may not yet know, but I know that the thousands of scheduled attendees for their American Library Association convention, which begins June 24, are most likely not coming. Participants, exhibitors, etc., etc., are already dropping. The whole event is most likely to cancel.
Continue Reading Cindy Adams...
MORE CINDY
There are a bunch of innovative folks in Hong Kong. They have taken official and unofficial, but confirmed, data and created a website to help their community to better understand the SARS situation there. And the stats look good.
I got a chance to watch the series Sahara on Bravo that covers Michael Palin's latest adventures. I think that the editing work was probably near impossible. They cut back 98 days or so into 4 hours. Its pace, thus, is jumpy. But it was interesting none the less.
In light of that trek, I would like to remember the 29 (now 31) European tourists that are still missing in southern Algeria. May there be hope for them still. And from the BBC.
Life is good. Andrew and I drove northwards for the weekend. We went to Montpelier, which we both love, and then headed over to the big Ben & Jerry's for a tour and free icecream. Speaking of which it is Free Cone Day on Tuesday.
We also headed up to Newport. I have to make plans to go again this summer. The town is kinda touristy and too many cute shops, but I want to get to know the folks who live there. I was completely taken by Lake Memphremagog. That is where I want to visit again this summer. Nature is calling me.
I went to bed an hour early and thus I woke up an hour early (I still wake up about 5 minutes before my alarm clock goes off). So I decided to take the truck in to see if there was some maintenance work that could be done to help it out. Yep. A list of about $850 worth of stuff to do. I nixed about $300.
Going to Vermont tomorrow besides, so I have to get the thing back before 5:30 tonight.
The old red truck has been a faithful friend. In January 1998 I got hit by an 18-wheeler out somewhere in the vicinity of Big Springs. Right at the top of mesa along the interstate. Drove it home. Been devoted ever since. Well. I've been devoted since I bought it from Rebel, Inc. in Oxford, MS.
Today I got my new workstation: Dell Latitude D600. Sweet little baby. But faster than my previous. I have way too much misc. software. I'm about half the way through the list of things to do (move files, install software, etc.)
But it's a good thing.
This summer, the American Library Association Annual Conference will be held in Toronto. I'm on several organization discussion lists and the boards lit up today with the WHO recommendation to avoid unnecessary travel to Toronto. Yesterday, ALA had sent out these 'talking points' about the SARS situation. That caused reactions that ranged from 'okey dokey' to 'those calloused bastards.'
I'm just watching and waiting. I'm healthy and aware of my body. Rarely take meds for anything (sometimes an excedrin when I get a caffeine headache). SARS is freaky, though. I'm not interested in being exposed.
Links:
Toronto Public Health Site
Ontario Ministry of Health and Long-term Care
ALA [damned dynamic linking 'system']
As I work in a law library, I should post more often about what I run across and learn about on a daily basis. Today, I will provide some links:
Which four states have sodomy laws that single out same-sex coupling?
Yale Law School Blog: Lawmeme
Did you know that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes the right to object to work because of religious beliefs?
Request Filed for Over-the-Counter Emergency Contraception
Women's Capital Corporation, makers of the emergency contraceptive Plan B, submitted their request to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) today to make Plan B available over the counter. The FDA is expected to make a decision in about 10 months, according to the Washington Post. Link
Back in June 2002, The Feminist Majority Foundation, printed:
"in 2000 and 2001, China deported thousands of illegal North Korean migrants—many of whom were women working in prostitution or forced into marriage. Upon their return to North Korea, they were labeled as traitors and those impregnated by Chinese men were especially brutalized. One deportee recalled, “The guards would scream at us: ‘You are carrying Chinese sperm, from foreign countries. We Koreans are one people, how dare you bring this foreign sperm here.’”" Link
I have a confession. I have been a censor while working in a library. Over a dozen years ago, I was working in a library that couldn't retain a copy of the swimsuit issue from Sports Illustrated. My library director told me to try to think of ways to keep it around for our patrons without too much damage. My solution was to place tattle stickers strategically throughout the magazine. We still lost it to happy, young men after two days. Some of the tattle stickers remained, often with evidence of desperate tampering. To this day, I am obsessed with stories where staff decided to assert their opinion into the information flow and redirect the end result. Even with a sense of humor, which I definitely did feel at the time, I feel ashamed.
Do you have a story about library staff censorship? Send it my way.
...I should explain a bit: I worked for a seminary as a serials clerk and our patrons were wild and crazy guys for the most part. The place was one of those that teach the women should be quiet and let the men speak for god.
terrorists :: ready.gov
George W. :: His Mouth George the First :: Spooks
old lady terrorists :: another urban legend
The Enormity of the Problem :: Microsoft's Perspective
training manuals :: USDOJ shows you how Syria :: propaganda as the strategic plan
global aid :: doubt it
Great damn I'm a happy camper. Got the new Lucinda Williams and Elephant from our beloved White Stripes. Holly Golightly makes a great little diddy on the last track. All next week Conan says that the music will be made by them. These sounds can be so distracting.
Hitchens does have a latest entry worth repeating...on 'Give Peace a Chance.' If you're a book nut, check out his review from the April Atlantic.
I'm finishing up my work on an online survey on Library Staff Censorship. More on that later this week, I'm sure.
Back in the day when I made about half of what I do now and when I was generally more content with my life, I used to love tax day--tax night actually. Downtown bars filled with party people who decided that no matter what the money went to, they'd not worry for at least that night and drink their heart out with fellow pals, unknown friends, those patriots who obey and send in their forms, handing them to the faithful postal workers stationed throughout the city at midnight.
It has been a really glorious day. Temps in the 70s or nearly there. Spirits up all around. A day full of plans and ambition. I'm still at work at 7 p.m., but I'm gathering up the details of several projects and papers and bibliographies and inspirations in the form of notes I've written to myself to help get these many things done.
As I'm packing up for the end of day journey home, I realize that I haven't been working too hard on what they actually pay me for. I got me some spring fever.
and jeez louise, I love this new Elephant in my office.
Another call to ban the bomblets (clusterbombs)
- "TAKEN all in all, a "bomblet" doesn't sound so bad, does it? More like a bomb-ette, or a toy bomb, or a miniature replica of same.
And I have just watched a vivid demonstration, made for TV, of the effect of a cluster bomb when tested on no target at all somewhere in the California desert.
Like all such videos, it has a seductively beautiful and symmetrical feel to it. Here comes the plane, swooping in low and fast and smooth. There go the bombs, leaving the belly just on time and at a perfect angle.
Then they break up and separate in mid-air and then, seconds later, a huge curtain of fire and shrapnel rises along a precise line. To those underneath, it must appear like the wrath of the risen Christ (if such a "crusading" image is permissible)."
Can Hitchens make it into Iraq unembedded?
- "AS I BRIEFED HITCHENS on the difficulties and dangers of getting into Iraq as an unembedded reporter, his eyes betrayed a wild impatience. "I have to get to Iraq," he told me. "You and everybody else," I replied, adding that the line started around the block. No, he said, I didn't understand. Vanity Fair had paid his freight, and he only had a short time. If his boots did not touch Iraqi soil, the mission would be a failure. Luckily, my best Kuwaiti contact called. The Kuwait Red Crescent Society was going into southern Iraq on a humanitarian drop. "Can you be downtown at the Sheraton by 1:00 p.m.?" she asked. It was 12:55, and we were in my car before she hung up."
Onychectomy banned in West Hollywood
- "Although cat declawing is banned in several European nations, animal advocates said they know of no such restrictions in the United States."
List of Shia Libraries destroyed by the Iraqi Goverment