I cannot believe I just found this article, A Hipper Crowd of Shushers, especially since I troll the NYTimes every day like the liberal I am.

Anyway, when I finished my MA in women’s black, a lot of my classmates went onto library school and loved it.  It was (and is) something I’ve been considering for a long time.  Every time I go to the Brooklyn Central Library, I feel a calm peace within myself.  I know I’m weird.  Anyway,  I’m still hellbent on getting my PhD in American history (or studies), but I have to apply again and all that.  But my intense love of books and libraries makes me second guess myself.  It’s true if I do become a professor, I’ll be spending a whole lot of time in libraries and archives.  It’s not like the two don’t go together.

The odd thing about the article was that it spent a lot of time trying to prove that these librarians seem cool.

On a Saturday, after a day of panels, a group of librarians relaxed and danced at Selam Restaurant. Sarah Mercure nursed a blueberry vodka and cranberry juice and talked about deciding on her career after hearing a librarian who curated a zine collection speak. Pete Welsch, a D.J., spun records and talked about how his interest in social activism, film and music led him to library school.

The article mostly seemed to be concerned with how these people were cool not what they loved about their jobs.

What I did love about the article was dispelling the myth that because google exists, libraries and books aren’t needed.  So not true.  Librarians are so much more relevant today, as they help the patron map through all the information the Internet gives out. While google and wikipedia are great sites, we need help discerning what is “good” information and what is “bad” information.  Fact is getting mixed in with opinion way too much these days.

This page from UIUC’s site (which is the highest ranked information science program I believe) proves how cool Librarians are.  They all discuss their favorite books, libraries and if they dogear their pages.  Totally awesome!

And getting what she wants…

I found myself accepting his Friday invitation for a Saturday brunch date (against Rule 7) and his last-minute invitations for two more dates that same weekend (a clear violation of Rule 13). We split the bill every time (there goes Rule 4). I got into the habit of phoning him regularly (so much for Rule 5).

I even brought up the topic of marriage (bye-bye, Rule 17) after we had been together for close to a year. “I’m afraid to say the M word to you,” I said, spurred on by a friend’s recent engagement. “I’ve been taught that it’s supposed to come from the guy.”

He smiled sheepishly and said. “I’ve been trying to wait until your birthday to propose, which hasn’t been easy, but …”

From here. Go click before the NYTimes makes it TimesSelect…damn them!

It’s good to know that making fun of and a fool out of The Rules is still considered fun!

Fulfilled…

Lat month, I read some Rebecca Walker, the daughter of Alice Walker.  I have been meaning to pick up Black, White and Jewish for awhile.  As soon as I saw it in a Barnes and Noble, I wasn’t able to put it down.  Her prose jumped off the page at me in a GOOD way.  She’s a very lyrical but nonfluffy writer.  However, what I ultimately drew away from the book was at was in between the lines.  She describes her parents divorce so thoroughly well in her simple language, I could easily pick up on the nuances.  Walker’s experience with her parents was very similar to mine.  She was sent back and forth between the West and East coasts for much of her childhood, dealt with having stepparents and believing her parents had changed for the worst.  Thankfully, I never felt like my parents wanted me to fend for myself too early.  But I did go between the Midwest and East coast for holidays and summers.  I understood her feeling of impermanence so well.

Another aspect of the book I admired was the fact that Walker didn’t overtly politicize some of her decisions growing up.  She has an abortion when she was a teenager.  Instead of qualifying it with any sort of explanation.  Abortion is athing that happens. And it does not always need some sort of morality tale to go along with it.

Next, I read Baby Love written by an older, more mature Walker.  This book is written in diary style, often addressed to her unborn baby.   She offers a fresh and realistic perspective that is often left out of books about motherhood.  I read this in a day.

One idea that Walker broaches upon is the difference between love for a stepchild and biological child.  She contends that her pregnancy taught her that love for a biological child was stronger.  This made me a bit sad mostly because I wonder if there is any truth to that statement for other people.  I don’t think I’ll know until I have children of my own.  And that is a lonnng day off!

Walker struggles to reconcile her life as a woman with her life as a third wave feminist.  Not rejecting either identity but struggling to put both together as a daughter of the feminist movement.  She knows she has it easier than her mother and other women did, but she still knows there is a lot more to do.  Her work captures that struggle intensely well.  I look forward to reading some of her anthologies.

Let’s make this an examplary year for freedoms and liberties and all that good stuff.

I’ve just been busy with life.

more later…