Kirsten 2.0

Clean and Simple card 7

2012-01-28T23:00:00.000-08:00

This is another "mostly white" card. I've seen many people make beautiful cards in the class gallery with embossed white cardstock, so I wanted to try that.

I stamped the peacock panel a while ago, and never got around to doing anything with it. Then I remembered that I had a peacock print embossing folder in my collection, so that was that. When putting it together, though, I thought it needed some color, so I inked up the edges of the peacock panel. The panel is raised on pop-dots.

Here is another shot. I hope you can see the embossing better.

Well, maybe not. :( The class is over, but the forums and the gallery are still active for a few days, so I'm planning to try some other things. The next class is, One Stamp, Three Ways.

Clean and Simple Card 6

2012-01-18T22:57:00.000-08:00

For this card I tried to combine two lessons in one, "Simple Embellishments" and "Plain White Cards." There is a fancy, store-bought embellishment on this card -- a domed, glittered Sticko leaf sticker --but only one. That's simple, right?

And there is clearly plenty of empty white space. I stamped the other leaf and colored it in with alcohol markers -- Bic Marks-It. I can't bring myself to buy any Copic markers, they are just too god-damned expensive for what is basically a toy for me. People who teach papercrafting or are on design teams, sure, but for me this is just a hobby.

I can see how some people would be afraid of so much white space, but I like it. It is dramatic. However, it was really hard not to slap some crystal Stickles or Perfect Pearls over that second leaf. That would defeat the whole point of "simple embellishments," though. So I stopped myself.

The sentiment reads "Wish you were here," and the two leaves symbolize the two people whom the card giver wishes were together instead of apart. Here's another view:

Clean and Simple cards 4 and 5

2012-01-18T17:02:00.000-08:00

For my next projects from the "Clean and Simple" class I tried Jennifer McGuire's watercolor technique with Distress Inks. Here are the cards:

**Frowns** I must have chosen the wrong Distress Inks, as everyone else's look so much more vibrant than my own. You'd think it was my crap-ass photography, but no, they look like that in real life. Not thrilled with these cards.

I had bad luck with this card from the get-go. My clear embossing powder I used for the emboss resist had red specks in it. Don't know how that happened; I try to be careful about mixing powders. Should have used white. My paper trimmer kept chewing up the paper; I had to break down and swap out the blade. Now I look at it and see the left-hand spiral is not centered properly, and this was my second attempt. Sentiment off-center. Bah!

This card replicates Jennifer's chain of vertical circles, but with blocks. Saw another class member try this, and liked it. I used the "Hello" sentiment to echo the vertical expanse of the color blocks.

Not sure about the rhinestones but it's a done deal now. I didn't have any white pearls like Jennifer used, so I used what I had. Was surprised I had rhinestones to complement all of the colors. But how can I not have any white pearl embellishments? This will have to be remedied.

For the ink application, I used the felt pads for the Ranger blending tool instead of the foam ones. I liked their ragged edges more, although they do have a smaller footprint on the card. I also used my Heirloom Gold Perfect Pearls spray, instead of Pearl, just because. It gave a nice gold sheen to the color blocks -- you can't really see it here.

Well, that's that. This technique was pretty messy, ended up with ink all over my hands. Am looking forward to trying the "simple embellishments" and "plain white" cards now! :)

Card 3

2012-01-14T22:10:00.000-08:00

Here is a card using the tone-on-tone layering technique from day 3 of the class. I'm pretty pleased with it. It is simple and clean. I wanted to keep it low key, it's a card for a sick friend.

I silver heat-embossed the sentiment. Here are a couple tips I gleaned, if you haven't tried this technique yet:

Use color-core cardstock, or you'll mostly just see white on the sides of the layers.
Glue down the top layer last, so it doesn't get all gluey and dirty as you glue down layer after layer. Take it from me!

I am enjoying the class. I am learning that there is a whole world of card bloggers and cardmaking websites out there, with contests, giveaways and challenges that I never knew about. I'm glad that we have permanent access to the class materials, because all the techniques and projects are a lot to take in.

Card Class, Day 2

2012-01-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

Here is a project from day 2 of my card-making class. The lesson was to make One-Layer Cards -- ink and stamps only, no extra layers of paper, no embellishments. And to use a "triangle" layout that would guide the reader's eyes around the page.

The instructor's card was very dramatic, with large flowers, leading off the page. My stamps aren't as large, so I thought stamping off the edges would just make them look unbalanced. Was I right? Who can say? I can try it again that way, tomorrow. One-Layer Cards are easy to make.

I won't be able to keep this pace up for the duration of the class -- two weeks -- but for now it's fun, and uploading these pictures has been far easier than I expected. I bought my husband a good new camera for Christmas -- a Canon Powershot -- so that helps.

First Card

2012-01-10T19:41:00.001-08:00

I am so excited, here is the first card I made from the Clean & Simple class! The idea was, don't be afraid of empty space.

I am a terrible photographer, always have been. The sentiment says "Congratulations." In the end, I think the craft button embellishments are a little too big and overpower the sentiment somewhat. But I was afraid too big a sentiment would overpower the whole card. I guess I could have mocked it up beforehand, see what worked better, but I was too excited to make a card and upload it and got carried away. Something to keep in mind.

The card is ordinary white cardstock. The patterned paper os from the "Abrianna" series by K & Company. The sentiment stamp is by Studio G. The glitter craft buttons are from Dressitup.com.

Here in this shot you can see a little how the glitter in the paper echoes the glitter craft buttons:

The sketch, or basic layout, of the card features three circles to represent three embellishments or design elements in a row. When I saw them I thought of the glitter craft buttons I got last time I went to Michael's, and I really wanted to use them. So that's where this card started.

I think the color scheme at least came out really well.

Card 2

2012-01-10T17:55:00.000-08:00

Here is the most recent card I made before starting the class. It did not turn out as nicely as i hoped, but I had this layout in my head for a long time, and I'm glad to get it out and be able to move on to other things:

You can't see it really in this shot, but that flourish in the lower right is a punch-out, and on the inside I glued a strip of colored cardstock from the same paper as the flowers, to show through. Here is another shot, kind of crappy but you can see the paper strip:

By the way, the class is called "Clean and Simple cardmaking," taught at the website OnlineCardClasses.com , taught by Jennifer McGuire, Kristina Werner, and Julie Ebersole. It is only 25 dollars and you can still sign up, I think, if you are interested.

I have been papercrafting for about two years and I love it. It is something concrete and beautiful that I produce. I have to create something, even as small as a greeting card, or I feel my life is a waste.

2012-01-10T17:31:00.000-08:00

I haven't used this blog for a while. But I'm taking this online class on papercrafting, and they want us to upload images of our work, and I already have K2.0 in place, so why not use it? So here is one of the cards I have made:

The card is ordinary cream, Recollections cardstock from Michael's, and I believe the other colored paper is from DCVW -- a Neutrals square Mat Stack. The stamps are from Hero Arts, and the textured panel in the middle is made with hot glue, stamped into with Peeled Paint Distress Ink and finished with copper Perfect Pearls once it dried. Oh, when the hot glue was dry it was an irregular circle, of course, and I trimmed it down into a nice square and then used the Perfect Pearls.

So that is my card. I have never taken a photo of my cards before, nor uploaded a photo to the Internet, except from my phone, so we will see how this goes.

The Marsh Fire Gets Worse

2011-08-30T09:26:00.000-07:00

Standing on Girod Street in the CBD, in front of the library, we can't see the office buildings on Poydras Street. I've never seen anythng like this. The NOFD needs to get off its ass and put out this fire.

Remember

2011-08-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yes, OK, I know what day it is. I'm just trying not to think about it. The last week has been very hard, not sleeping, black moods. I was disgusted by the faux cable news hysteria about Hurricane Irene. They were positively slavering at the thought of another Katrina, and when it didn't materialize, they pretended like it had anyway. Revolting.

I go on vacation in two days. Right now doesn't feel like I can hold on that long.

Things We Lost in the Flood

2011-08-10T13:39:00.000-07:00

It has been almost six years now since Katrina, but I still keep remembering things I once owned and loved, that I lost to Katrina. My house was totally flooded and destroyed. It is a bit of a shock to realize, over and over again, Oh yes, I once lost everything I ever owned. Or to think, Hey, where's that thing I ... oh yeah. Katrina. Sometimes I forget for a while, and then I remmber again. That is unpleasant.

Still, I count myself lucky -- damned lucky -- that all I lost were things. Well, and my job. But I got that back.

But so I don't keep forgetting things and then remembering things I lost again, like a senile old person, I'm going to start keeping a list here of the Things We Lost to the Flood. So I can check it and then maybe I won't keep remember/forgetting.

All the letters my friend Rebecca sent me while we were in college. We had a rather unusual epistolatory friendship. Those might once have been important historical documents. Completely destroyed.

A small flat stone my Dad gave me from the bank of the River Thames last time we visited London. It was juts a stone, but my Dad gave it to me, and I kept it from the time I was twelve until I was forty. Washed away.

The Dear Jane letter my college semi-boyfriend wrote me when I was in the process of crashing and burning out of New College. Twenty pages, front and pack, of narcissistic self-justification. Still, I can't blame him, it was a wildly dysfunctional relationship. I still think of him fondly. That's why I kept it. No paper survived of course.

The gray flannel cape my Mom had custom-made for me for my twenty-first birthday. Trying to salvage any of the clothes that had sat in that water was unthinkable.

A wedding ring quilt that my grandmother had made. She is long dead so there won't be anymore quilts.

These are the kinds of things whose loss really hurts, not the random books and DVDs and furniture. Things which were one of a kind, which were particular to me and my life. Irrepalacble things. I have plenty of things now, but I don't have many irreplacable things, things which take a lifetime to accumulate, and twenty-four hours to be completely obliterated. There are many others. I'll add to the list as I remember them.

Some People Love Libraries

2011-05-13T11:15:00.001-07:00

A couple great things about how wonderful public libraries are, have popped up on the Net recently. This is is a nice change, as what usually pops up is some ignorant rant about how libraries are obsolete and they should all be closed.

First is an article by Laura Miller, the Books column wroter on Salon, called Why Libarries Still Matter . (You have to click through an ad.) It's about all the things libraries do for a community besides house physical books.

The second is a graphic piece by Wendy McNaughton from the San Francisco website TheRumpus.net called Meanwhile, the San Francisco Public Library. I am moved by how this one takes a strong stand for how the public library is a refuge for everyone -- everyone. Reminds me very much of my own library.

I'm a GoodRead!

2011-04-11T22:30:00.000-07:00

Hey look, I'n on GoodReads:

http://www.goodreads.com/author/list/2914295.Kirsten_M_Corby

For one of the three short stories I ever published, in the fantasy anthology Sword & Sorceress X, edited by the late great Marion Zimmer Bradley.

That's cool. See, you actaully learn things by Googling yourself! **smirk**

Why did the chicken cross the streetcar tracks?

2011-04-11T10:35:00.000-07:00

I think this story from the Times-Picayune is rather charming, but I wouldn't want one of those darn roosters squawking in a tree by my bedroom at 5 in the morning, no way.

I wonder if feral chickens are good to eat?

But I suspect the Uptown Coyote will take care of this chicken situation before too long.

New Orleans is a rougher-edged place since Katrina, for sure.

Re-Blogging

2011-03-25T20:57:00.000-07:00

Well, I look at my blog and see I have not updated it in almost a year. I daresay most people who had me on their blogroll have since removed me. In fact I'm a little surprised Blogger hasn't deleted it. But here I am, back agin.

As I look over my later entries, I'm not sure why I stopped blogging, beyond my usual dilettantish trick of haring off after some new and different project. But it may have something to do with the fact that I was back in town, and no longer needed to connect with my friends and family in New Orleans. Nor did I need to record my graduate school experience anymore as I had, in fact, graduated. (Work, actual work, was not nearly so exciting or challenging as grad school.) Nor did I feel such a pressing need to make sense of the aftermath of Katrina. Once I was back at work at my old employer, and had purchased a house to replace the one I had lost, I could fairly say I was "recovered," and the recovery as a whole was not so pressing an issue for me. Which is not very nice, considering all the people who cannot yet say that, but there it is.

I also, I'm sad to say, drifted away from the nolablogosphere as a whole. I rarely even read Jeffrey's blog anymore. I have yet to attend Rising Tide. I don't read The Lens NOLA or Humid City or even The Blog of New Orleans. I moved on to other things.

But now I want to get back to it. Blogging. Since I started in about 2000, blogging has always been a relatively painless and enjoyable way for me to practice my writing skills and express myself. It is part of my more general thrust to start writing creatively again, after a long period of quiescence which started before Hurricane Katrina, and which was hardly helped by that catastrophe, after which for a long time the vast majority of mine and my family's energies were taken by just trying to recover, with all that this entails. But that is done now, and I feel the need, to write again. So I enrolled in an online class on "How to Blog" and I am dipping my toe in the water of blogging and writing again. I'm hoping that some success in this form, which I have used successfully before, will strengthen me for the daunting task of facing fiction writing again.

When I quit writing before, I was very burnt out and angry. So why would I want to subject myself to that torment again? Well, I have my reasons -- but that requires a whole 'nother post.

Is this Kirsten 3.0, then? No, that would occasion a whole entire reordering of my life like Katrina -- perish the thought! I wouldn't even say this is Kirsten 2.2. Let's just call it K2.0, the reboot. That in itself is going to be challenging enough.

The Horror

2010-05-26T16:29:00.001-07:00

I cannot encompass the horror of the BP oil spill. The devastation is so vast -- when I try to think about it my mind gibbers and flees in terror. I can't even conceptualize it. I mean the wetlands are dead. They're dead. What is going to happen to the people, the culture, the whole ecosystem down on the coast? What is going to happen to NOLA the next time a large hurricane comes along. It is a holocaust. A holocaust of the Gulf. I am at a loss. What is going to happen now?

2010-02-28T18:09:00.000-08:00

EHah, I'm updatong my blog from my new smartphone. I hold the Internet. in my hand!

I Believe

2010-01-26T12:13:00.000-08:00

Well I never thought this would happen. Hell has frozen over. The impossible has been made real. It's like putting a man on the Moon.

I don't even care if they win. Just getting there is enough.

Anniversary

2009-08-29T20:04:00.000-07:00

I was aware of it, of course, but I didn't really feel it, until I walked into Barnes & Noble after work, and in a pile on the very front table were dozens of copies of that book, that graphic novel A.D. New Orleans after the Deluge by Josh Neufeld. And I suddenly realized, really realized, Oh, my god, this is it. This is the anniversary of Katrina. Four years ago today.

I hadn't really wanted to think about it. I certainly hadn't planned on memorializing it. Now here it was smacking me in the face.

I picked up the book -- it fell open to a page where a woman, a survivor, finds her cat crying with a broken leg after the storm. I absolutely cannot stand to read or see about animals being hurt or suffering. Certainly not in that context.

The gates of memory opened. The anguish and the horror flooded over me. I remembered what it felt like in baton rouge those days.

Goddamn it! I planned to get through this day without crying. That's why I had tuned it all out. i had to go hide in the bathroom for a while.

I bought the book -- but i don't know if I'll ever be able to read it. I haven't read any of the Katrina books, except 1 Dead in Attic -- I was able to read it because I had already read many of the columns online or in the paper, and it was salted witha liberal dose of gallows humor. But the rest are just ... too ... upsetting.

I've written about this before, how useless I think it is to drag up all that grief and rage that will never be resolved. But sometimes you don't drag it up. It drags you down. Like today.

Busy Day in the Life

2009-07-29T09:05:00.000-07:00

Well it is time for Library Day in the Life again. Something I always enjoy, but I am really too busy this week to devote a lot of time to a long blog entry, so I refer you back to my previous entries. Maybe I can put somethign together some evening later this week.

Click on the "Librarydayinthelife" tag below to see all my posts. Thanks for stopping by!

Day in the life -- Wednesday (?)

2009-02-03T07:56:00.000-08:00

Well yesterday was a busy day. A lot of different things came up, which I understand is normal for a supervisor.

The day started off as usual, having to do the morning caretaking things we have to do to ready the library for opening -- getting and stamping the newspapers, pulling the morning holds list. There are only two of us here in the morning, me and my assisstant librarian, so I have to pitch in and help with these routine tasks. Upon opening, I work my one hour a day on the reference desk. I like to be there at opening and kind of take the pulse of the day as the morning crowd comes in -- the computer users, the regular newspaper readers. But I have too much "behind the scenes" stuff to do to to work more than an hour a day at the desk. I had to ask my assisstant librarian to cut back my hous on the desk -- I was running around like a chicken with no head and not getting done what I needed to do.

After my hour on the desk I spoke to some vendors and got quotes for some audiovisual supplies that we need. The City of New Orleans purchasing process is quite Byzantine. You have to get quotes for everything. It's the people's money after all. Once I got the quotes I submitted the paperwork for everything up the chain of command.

Then I worked on shifting the periodicals. I felt like I had to take a hand in this and not just dump it on the staff. One must lead by example, I think.

Then lunch.

In the afternoon I met with a fellow division head and a sales rep from Gale Cengage Learning, a major publisher of reference works and online databases. She was trying to sell us on databases. We were saying, our patrons are not computer-literate. We need paper sources.

Then working on the inventory project on the periodicals backfiles in the basement.

Library Week - Tuesday

2009-01-27T19:53:00.000-08:00

Well a lot has changed since the last time I did this. I have accepted a promotion, and am now head of a department at the main library downtown. Of my old division I worked in pre-Katrina in fact, the Periodicals, Arts, & Recreation division.

I have a lot on my plate. I was brought in to stabilize the division -- it has seen a crazy amount of staff turnover this year -- and to prepare it for being shut down and turned into a new Teen Center for the main library. So I have to oversee the regular duties of the division, train new staff who were brought in, and start weeding, clearing out and deaccessioning the old materials to make way for the new. Things keep coming at me, and sometimes I get a little confused about what exactly I'm doing. My staff, who know I was brought in to rescue them to a certain extent, get upset if I can't answer their questions right off. But hey, I've never been a supervisor before, I'm figuring it out too. I know a lot about how the division is supposed to be run, but not everything. I last worked here as an associate after all.

Right now we are shifting the back issues of the magazines. This is done at the new year. Some of 2007's we have to keep, and they go down to the basement, and some we can discard. The records about which goes where, however, are not up to date, so I am having to make Solomonic decisions about what stays and what goes on a daily basis.

On top of that, I am currebtly also writing the annual report for last year. I need to take an HR training course on evaluating staff, which I have to do next month - annual evaluations. I am training a new paraprofessional. I need to get started on weeding the old PAR reference collection -- a lot of thaT\t stuff needs to go. We are in the middle of shifting our circulating books to the Information division. It's a lot to keep in the air at once.

So that's what I'm doing this week.

A Library Week in the Life

2009-01-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

Well it is time for another round of the Library Day in the Life wiki. I hope this is actually doing some people some good, that library students areactually looking at it and learning something.

unfortunately, I wasn't well today and took a sick day, so I don't have anything to report on the work front. except, I guess, the fact that librarians get sick too. We may be pretty awesome,but we're not superheroes. :)

Inauguration

2009-01-20T06:58:00.000-08:00

People are looking forward to this Inauguration far more than any I can remember in my lifetime. People are taking off work, travelling to Washington, and not just black people, either. Not everyone -- there are still plenty of Obama haters out there -- but more than I ever remember. One of my employees is reconfiguring one of our computers so staff and patrons can watch the swearing-in.

This isn't just a simple transfer of power. It has the air of a ritual of purgation, of re-conscecration. I think it must have felt somethign like this back in Bronze Age times, at the installation of a new sacred king. After they alaughter the old one. (Assuming such a thing ever really happened, outside the fever dreams of Robert Graves.)

Well, I guess we have advanced somewhat, the human race, in that we don't have to slaughter "43" to get rid of him, and we observe a peaceful transfer of power with the full cooperation of the old regime. But it definitely feels like a new day in America. I keep thinking, Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we're free at last!

OK, now THIS is corruption:

2008-12-09T08:40:00.002-08:00

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081209/ap_on_re_us/blagojevich_corruption_probe

Wow, are we sure this guy isn't from Louisiana?

Well, no, Chicago pols are no slouches indeed when it comes to corruption. Mayor Richard Daley was alleged to have stolen the 1960 Preisdential Election from Richard Nixon for JFK by vigorous ballot stuffing in Chicago precincts. That election was one of the closest in history. The Daley poltical machine was one of the most notorious ever. But still -- selling a US Senate seat to the highest bidder? That is BRAZEN!

UPSET!

2008-12-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

Wow!

Associated Press: Anh 'Joseph' Cao has beaten Rep. William Jefferson in 2nd Congressional District

So the wretched Dollar Bill has FINALLY been dethroned. I'm listening to his sour-grapes non-concession concession speech right now. Halle-freakin-lieujah!

I have never, ever voted for a Republican before, nor could I ever imagine voting for one. But I voted for Cao. I really think, in a newly bipartisan Obama Washington, even a newbie Republican Congressman has a beter chance of representing NOLA than Dollar Bill, even if he's never convicted of anything. I'm also happy to see the Vietnamese community take more of a part in local politics. Maybe it can help break the toxic racial deadlock that posions every poliyical discussion in New Orleans.

Go Cao!

2008-12-03T20:37:00.000-08:00

OK, people have been nagging me to get back to my blog, and here's Arianna Huffington on Jon Stewart rhapsodizing about blogging. so here I am. Hoo freakin ray.

I didn't blog because I felt very shut down after Gustav. I didn't know how to feel about this hurricane redux -- should I feel angry that it happened, relieved to have been spared another Katrina, proud of the evacuation, scared, giddy, what? I didn't know what to feel, so I didn't feel anything at all. Not conducive to blogging -- no feely, no bloggy.

Later, when I was feeling better, I dunno, I just wasn't into it. I had gotten out of the habit.

Then, I got a new job, so I have been very very busy the last month or so. I've been promoted to head of the "Periodicals, Arts & Recreation" division of the Main Library downtown -- my old division where I worked as an associate before Katrina. You know, Kirsten 1.0? I am sitting at my old supervisor's desk. I have her phone extension. I'm signing people's timesheets. It's pretty weird.

And pretty hectic. I'm running around like a chicken with no head, in part because the division is severely understaffed and there is more than enough everyday grunt work for everyone, and in part because I am just trying to figure out what is going on. and make decisions about some of the stuff that has piled up since the division was without a head librarian. Busy busy busy. There aren't enough hours in the day -- every day, I'm like, damn, it's five o'clock already?

So that is what I have been up to lately. If you work downtown, come by the second floor of the Main library and see me. I'll be there.

This is what it looks like ....

2008-08-28T20:06:00.000-07:00

... when a library prepares for a hurricane.

We take items off the lower shelves and shift them up as high as we can. This was in the back room, so there's no risk of windows breaking, so we don't need to cover these shelves with visqueen. We unplug and lift up the computers too.

We were busy today, people coming in to turn in their materials, and pick up some entertainment for the evacuation. Everyone wanted to talk about it. People are incredulous, a little angry that this is happening again, AGAIN, now, so soon -- but also ready to man up and do what needs to be done, whether that means evacuating or bunkering down for the duration.

Myself, I'm not so steely. Mostly I just feel numb, stunned that this can be happening again. But I had a really hard time concentrating on my tasks all days, so I think it's getting to me more than I'd like to admit.

All NOPL libraries are closed saturday through monday. My husband and I are evacuating to Baton Rouge like we did last time.

Whether you decide to go or stay, GOOD LUCK.

Katrina Dreams

2008-08-06T19:54:00.000-07:00

My brother and his wife just recently relocated back to NOLA from Raleigh-Durham, NC. I mean just recently, like a week ago. Last night we went out with them for coffee. We talked for a long time about the whole NOAh scandal, the pace of recovery, the staus of my old neighborhood, Gentilly, and suchlike. NOLA recovery stuff.

Well, I guess it really got to me, because last night I dreamed that my whole family -- my husband and I, my mom and dad, brother and his wife -- were living in one room in some wracked-out apartment building by the Interstate in Central City somewhere. The wehole front wall of the buidling was torn off somehow. missing, staring out into empty space. We had gotten some visqueen and stapled it over the studs of the missing wall. So any- and everyone could stare straight into our home, but we counted ourselves lucky that the roof and the other three walls were intact. We spent the bulk of our days going downtown and arguing with the Feds to try to get out of there.

Jesus Christ. May it not be so! But it's inside me. Katrina is still inside me. It'll alwaya be part of me. Of us.

I wonder if people who weren't here hten, who came later, like my brother, feel left out?

Latter Library is Not Closed!

2008-08-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

There's a rumor going around town that Latter Library Uptown is closed permanently. This is not true! I have an idea about how this rumor got started -- somebody misread the library Master Plan, which is on the website, noticed Latter was closed, put two and two together and got 5.

The deal is, Latter's AC is broken and has to be completely replaced. The branch will re-open when it is -- hopefully next week sometime.

According to the Master Plan, Latter is scheduled to be scaled back as a circulating library, and serve as administarive offices and programming space for special events. But this is not for years. And it will probably always have a small DVD and Pop Reading collection, and be a place where you can pick up holds. That's my guess anyway.

To reiterate -- Latter Library is temporarily closed for repairs. So quit panicking!

Library Day in the Life: July 22, 2008

2008-07-22T15:24:00.000-07:00

Today I am at Nix branch, the second branch of two that my manager manages. Some of the staff circulate around, some stay put. I circulate.

Supposedly I am being groomed to take over my own branch, one of the Gates modulars. I look forward to this. No more circulating.

8:30: Get dropped off by my husband at a coffeebar close to the branch. We carpool into work together. I need my iced coffee and pastry or I can't function.

8:45: My branch manager stops by for his coffee too.

9:00: Get into work and start doing the usual pre-opening things: the holds report, pulling the expired holds, general cleaning and tidying up.

10:00: Open up the library. The usual Internet crowd arrives and starts signing up for the computers.

10:30: The branch run arrives and we start checking in the delivered items, tagging them up for holds or shelving them as required.

11:15: I get a call from one of the branch managers. Her Summer Reading performer never showed up -- oh no! One of my particular nightmares these days. If you have a full house of patrons and no performer, it can be very embarrassing. I start calling and emailing the performer, trying to figure out what's going on.

Continue serving patrons while working the phones. It's a little chaotic -- the queue display for the Internet computers is down for some mysertious reason, so the "Innanet" crowd keeps clamoring at the desk for their times. We have to yell out the names as they come up -- not the most serene atmosphere for a library.

12:00: No luck on finding the errant performer. Luckily only one family showed up for the program, so it could have been a lot worse. I call the branch head and let her know the latest, and then flee to lunch.

1:00: I look through my old email correspondence, and begin to get a glimmer that this scheduling error with the performer may be my fault. Damnit! I swear I TRIPLE-CHECKED that programming schedule! Well, these things happen. No point in rescheduling it now, so close to the end of Summer Reading.

2:00: More hassles! I get a call from one of my summer reading committee members, telling me that the PR flyer announcing the Summer Reading Wrap Party has a major typo in it. The times are wrong. This is bad. I inform all the branch heads and committee members right away. Hopefully we can get some new ones printed up.

2:30: I go through and manually correct all my Wrap Party flyers. My branch manger laughs at me for this, but I hate wasting all that paper. It's hard to live green in an organization that chews through as much excess paper as a public library.

3:00: Man, I'm tired. All the rest of the Uptown branches have been unusually busy since Latter branch has been closed. Latter was by far the busiest branch since the hurricane, the second busiest site after Main Library. We are getting their spillover.

It's getting hotter and hotter at the branch as the old air conditioner wheezes under the full assault of a New Orleans summer. Come on, five o'clock.

We're making a lot of new library cards. Still amazing to me that people are moving *into* New Orleans, what with all the dysfunctions. A lot of them are people moving home after being displaced. That is a triumph. I am very happy when I make one of those cards.

4:30: Pre-closing announcement. People are still lining up to you use the computers, even though they'll only get ten minutes.

4:45: PCs automatically log themselves off for the night. Nice change from having to coax patrons off and physically lock up the computers at Mid-City.

4:58: We stare and stare at the one patron, still on the Wi-Fi on her laptop, who refuses to leave. Are we going to have to frogmarch her out of here?

4:59: She finally leaves. The staring worked.

5:00: Lockup and set the alarm.

5:05: Workon this blog post while I wait for my husband to come pick me up.

A Library Day in the Life

2008-07-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

Now this I can do:

A Library Day in the Life

Describe my day as a librarian for LIS students and those strange others who might be interested.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

8:40 AM. Get to work at Mid-City Branch. Start making coffee. Lock myself outof the library when I go to the back hallway for water from the drinking fountain. SWELL. Going to be THAT kind of day.

8:50: Get the landlord to let me in.

9:00: Sort out some of the passes to the local Zoo which are one of our Summer Reading Club prizes, to go to the different branches. I am chair of the Summer Reading Program Committee this year. My co-workers arrive.

9:15: Coffee's done. Eat my breakfast.

9:20: Take out and set up the library's laptop PAC computers. Mid-City is a temporary library under the Gates Foundation/Solinet Gulf Coast Libraries Grant for post-Katrina recovery. A lot of our equipment is small and portable.

Branch run arrives: books returning home to us, or requested by our patrons. Today's run also includes a shipment of new DVDs and music CDs from Cataloging. We will check these in later. Send the Zoo passes out in the outgoing run.

9:30: Pull the morning's Holds Request list -- books requested by patrons around the system, to be held here or sent to the branches.

10:00: Open the library. People start linig up to use the computers.

10:15: Call one of our Summer Reading performers, a magician, and cancel the performance for next Monday at Latter Branch. The branch is closed since it's air conditioning is broken. We have been unsuccessful at finding alternate locations for library programming so far.

10:30: Call a local vendor and secure a donation of ice cream for the Summer Reading Finale Party on August 2.

10:45: Work on checking in the branch run materials while assisting patrons at the circulation desk. Field a call from my intern, who is late and anxious. No problem; she is doing outreach and riding public transportation. She'll get here when she gets here.

11:00: Check email; answer some emails about planning/programming for Summer Reading. Continue to assist patrons with circulation, reference and computer questions.

12:00: Shift off the desk for a co-worker. Shelve some books. Straighten up the materials for purchase on the Book Sale table.

1:00: Lunch. Intern has not arrived. I'm a little anxious now.

2:00: Back on the Circ desk. Between patrons, write up the minutes of the last Summer Reading Committee meeting. Remind my branch manager via email of my next committee meeting, and of the Summer Reading Finale Party, which I must attend.

3:00: Intern arrives. She ate lunch first. I set her to labeling up and checking in the new CDs that arrived.

The Circ desk becomes extremely busy, with many checkouts/ins and new patrons requesting library cards. I am not at a Circ computer, but help as I can, signing people up for computers and answering general ref questions.

When the rush ends, I have my bad momoent. This happens every Wednesday. Wednesday is the only night we are open late, and I work an 11-hour day. On most days, three o'clock equals two hours til quitting time! On Wednesdays -- five hours! Gah!

4:00: Fuss around and surf the biblioblogosphere while riding the Circ desk. Set my intern to updating the computerized statictics for the Summer Reading participants at the branch. Answer some more emails about Summer Reading, the next committee meeting, and the Finale Party. Two kids come in and redeem their Summer Reading logs.

5:00 -- 5:15: Take a break before the bulk of the staff leaves at six.

5:15: Things get much slower after five. Chat with my coworkers. Winnow out my email inbox. Find the day in the life project and start typing.

6:15 Have to rein in a kid who's tearing books off the shelves like the Tsmanian Devil. My coworkers are men and leave me to deal with the kids, although I am no more a kid person than these bachelors are. Not too cool.

7:30: Make the "half hour til closing" announcement.

7:45: Take down the PAC laptops and lock them up for the night. Well, actually one of my coworkers does this while I "supervise." :-)

8:00: Run the last one or two diehards out and the library is closed!

NOLA bloggers think hard on names - NOLA.com

2008-07-14T13:28:00.000-07:00

OK, I have got to get my blog on. I am not even mentioned in this article!

NOLA bloggers think hard on names - Living/Lagniappe - Times-Picayune - NOLA.com

Of course neither is Oyster or Loki or Jeff, so I guess I can live with it.

Ralph Nader is an Idiot

2008-06-25T10:41:00.000-07:00

Check this out:

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/06/25/nader-obama-talking-white/

Damn, what an ignorant thing to say. He is destroying his good legacy with all his latter-day crazy talk. I’m sorry I voted for the fool now.

New Orleans Regional Transit Authority : Advisories

2008-06-23T11:37:00.000-07:00

Well, this brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. Almost three years, it's been. "You don't know what this means to us," I told my intern C. as she stared at me wide-eyed.

Dice Jockies

2008-05-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Check out the debut of thie new web series by my good pal Charlie Brown:

These are my boys. Well, Charlie and Bill are. This is what we do. Don't LAUGH! It's art, damnit!!!

Actually I love it. I hope Charlie lets me write an episode soon. I could write about Bill's ... dice envy. Yeah. Bill would love that.

The website is www.dicejockies.com, where there are character bios and a FAQ, where you can perhaps learn the answer to the most pressing question -- why???

Tidings Sad and Better

2008-04-12T12:44:00.000-07:00

Summer Reading Club has been all-consuming for me and I have been neglecting the blogosphere. Thus, too late was I horrified to hear of the death of staunch Nolablogger Ashley Morris. I didn't know Ashley, but he was well known around town and us Nolabloggers have to stick together, so his death will be keenly felt. He was only 44, and left behind a wife and three small children. There's really nothing I can say that his real friends haven't already said, except he will be missed. PLease donate to his family's memorial fund if you can: Remember Ashley Morris.

In happier news, my library was visited Thursday by one Tom Javoroski from Indiana, who is one of the founders of a charity group called Gamers for Humanity. As in computer gamers, board gamers, RPG gamers, dare I say it even LARPers? ... The group is down here doing rebuilding work with Phoenix of New Orleans. Tom also donated some used books to our library, gifted us with some nice Gen-Con swag, met my husband and gifted him with some RPG rulebooks, as if he needed any more, my god. It was cool to meet him and great to hear about the work his group is doing. They are planning to come back next year, too, so surf by their site and give them some love: www.gamersforhumanity.org. Tom took some digital pics and I'm hoping he'll let me borrow one to paste here.

People around the country are still helping. America has not given up on New Orleans yet, and that's good to know. I think Ashley Morris would be pleased.

Elephant Paints Self Portrait - AOL Video

2008-04-05T21:18:00.000-07:00

You have to watch this video, it's incredible:

Elephant Paints Self Portrait - AOL Video: ""

I suppose this elephant could have been trained to do this without understanding it, but it doesn't look like it, does it?

Also read this article from the New York Times Magazine. Amazing and sad.

Did you know that elephants bury their dead? The only other lifeform to do so. They also bury human remains when they come across them. What does this mean? It means elephants are sentient beings. Doesn't it? I was always taught in my history and anthropology classes that the first glimmerings of true sevtience in humans were evidenced by the habit of Neaderthals burying their dead, which meant care for the dead one beyond life, understadning of a consciousness and a possibility of an afterlife. It has to be the same for other lifeforms too, then, right?

What can we do to save these elephants before they are all gone?

2008-03-19T17:54:00.000-07:00

Well we took the cat for a checkup yesterday and she is doing remarkably well. A much greater improvement in heart function than was expected. The pill dosing is going better as well. I just decided to stop stressing out so much about it – if the cat is available, I give her her pill, and when she’s not, I don’t. She is more relaxed about it too. She must have been picking up on my anxiety. Between us the hubster, the cat, and I have worked out a system that works pretty well. Hubby holds her in his arms and I use the pill gun to dose her. She still doesn’t like it, but she’s not so determined to avoid it anymore. She even seems to come in sometimes specifically to get her pill. (We could be anthropomorphizing.) But I do think that somehow she knows she has to take it. Or at least, she knows we want her to do this thing, so she complies.

OK. Enough cat blogging. The other big news in my life lately is that I have been appointed chair of the library’s Summer Reading Program, which is keeping me *very* busy. Summer Reading Club is our major programming event during the year and it is a BIG DEAL. It reminds me of nothing so much as planning my wedding – I have to secure food, book entertainers, order all kinds of special customized items, meet numerous deadlines, print invitations, etc, and harness all these people and channel them in one direction to a specific purpose. Except I have three months to plan it, rather than a year.

I have never served on Summer Reading Committee before, nor even attended any of the programs, nor have I chaired a committee before. So I really feel like I am making it all up as I go along. When I cry out for help, my more experienced colleagues do help me, but there is often a “ha-ha, now it’s your turn!” vibe to it. Which I’ve been told, happens to every committee chair every year.

It takes up all my time and attention. Seriously, I dream about it.

But I have a good committee – all volunteers – who are doing good work and not dropping the balls. It is more fun now that I have people to delegate to instead of trying to do everything on my own. Actually I am enjoying the challenge. I didn’t think I would, but I am. I wanted my work to become more challenging, so now it has.

Right now we are booking programs to draw kids and their parents into the library. So if you are a performer who charges a reasonable (ie, inexpensive) fee, or an educator who has an outreach program or WHATEVER, email me!

2008-03-06T13:49:00.001-08:00

Well it has been a rough couple of weeks. Every time I decide to concentrate on developing my blogging, some crisis comes along and torpedoes it.

Weekend before last we had to take one of our cats to the emergency vet at one o’clock in the morning. She was having trouble breathing. Turns out, she has congestive heart failure. Her heart wasn’t pumping strongly enough and her lungs were filling with fluid.

It was scary. She had to be kept for observation for a while. We dropped a thousand dollars on her care, easy. We were in total shock – sticker shock too. She had seemed perfectly fine the day before! But the vet actually thanked us for allowing her to treat the cat, and not just letting it die. God, do people actually do that?

We had to follow up with a regular vet too. If you live Uptown and need a vet, go see Dr. Biondolillo at Prytania Veterinary. She is amazing. She let us see the cat’s ultrasounds, and even drew us a little picture of the chambers of the cat’s heart and how they were not working. And she called us at home in the evenings to follow up!

Well the cat is on medication now and feeling fine, back to her old self. But she has heart pills, diuretics and mini baby aspirin for blood thinning, and sometimes has to take up to four pills a day.

This is easier said than done.

Giving the cat her medicine has become a Bugs Bunny-like contest of wills. My husband holds her, and I pry her mouth open and use a syringe-like thing called a “pill gun” to shoot them down her gullet. This does not fly. She avoids me, I trick her, she slips through my grasp. I tried to fool her by hiding the pills inside a special hollow kitty treat. This worked exactly once. That evening she was chewing the treats to shear off the “meat” and spitting out the pills. She’s no dummy. She knows exactly what’s going on. I think she even knows she has to take the meds on some level – occasionally she will meekly submit – but she is like a little kid who doesn’t want to take her cough syrup cause it tastes bad.

Oh dear. I am blogging about my cat. I’ve been told, that way lies madness. But it’s stressing me out, man! The cat, too. And the cat is supposed to avoid stress.

I had a fight with my husband about it. “You’re obsessing too much!” he said. “What about her quality of life?”

“If she doesn’t take her PILLS she’ll have NO life AT ALL!”

We have appealed to the vet, who is going to try to figure out some alternate formulation for the heart meds so she doesn’t have to be dosed so much.

It is upsetting. The cat is only six years old. I had three cats when I was a child who lived to be 18, 21, and 24 years old, going out whenever they wanted and eating Friskies cat food their entire lives. Why are the cats of my adulthood dying at six and seven years? I try to be a good cat parent – they are fixed, they get their shots, flea meds … it’s not fair. I can’t take all these dying cats.

Bad news from CNN.com

2008-01-24T14:00:00.000-08:00

New Orleans' record on rebuilding firehouses: 0-22 - CNN.com

This is an article about how the City of New Orleans has not yet rebuilt a single firehouse, two years after Katrina. Now this I did not know. It was forwarded to me by my husband, who used to work briefly for the Fire Dept. It turns out Dennis Leary, the actor and comedian, has rebuilt more fire stations with his foundation that the City of New Orleans.

Shit! That is deplorable! It makes me ashamed to be a New Orleans civil servant. Even I cannot agree that it is better to have rebuilt the libraries than the police and fire stations.

(I mean, it's not a zero-sum game, they should all be rebuilt -- but damn!)

In the article Dr. Ed Flakely, our Magic Recovery Crane Fairy, once again exposes his ignorance and mendacity.

In the article, Dennis Leary is quoted as saying, "it's a sad commentary on society when actors and musicians become the key players in helping a city rebound." In one sense, yes, where is the government? But in another sense, it's great. Who better to rebuild NOLA than artists and musicians?

But again, it's not a zero-sum game. Bureaucrats and artists both are required. We shouldn't have to pick between them.

Blog this on, please, people. It's a disgrace and people ought to know how New Orleans' Bravest are being treated by the City.

NOLA Invictus

2008-01-02T13:52:00.000-08:00

As a Pagan, insteads of Christmas I celebrate the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, when the Wheel turns, winter begins to end, and the new sun is reborn from the womb of the darkest night. My favorite name for the Solstice is the one the Romans used, Sol Invictus, which is Latin for The Unconquered Sun. I love that image -- The Unconquered Sun! It brings me such hope. At the point of his greatest weakness, when defeat seems inevitable, the darkest night of winter, the Sun returns reborn, renewed, unconquered.

Looking back, I have to say 2007 was a good year for me and mine. I finished school, graduating at the top of my class. I came home and reunited with my husband. I went right back to work. I reconnected with old friends, my old life. We sold our house and it wasn’t even demolished, but renovated and expanded, and there is already someone new living there, in deepest Gentilly.

2007 was also a good year for New Orleans Public Library. We continued to expand and rebuild our services – 10 of 13 pre-Katrina locations now have at least some level of service a few days a week. We hired a new director, after being without one for almost two years. We opened the first 3 of our Gates Foundation/SOLINET temporary branches, including my own branch, Mid-City. (The other two are housed in the Martin Luther King and Einstein Charter schools, in the Ninth and NO East, respectively.)

For the city, too, I feel like things got better in the last half of the year. After an endless parade of one fuckup after another, there finally seemed to be some signs of the recovery making progress. Eddie Jordan resigned, hallelujah. The Road Home finally started to cough up some cash. The St. Charles streetcar rebuild is running ahead of schedule. Congress passed the much-delayed water resources bill. C Ray was mercifully absent most of the time and kept the crazy proclamations to a minimum.

Some things are still bad. Race relations are terrible, and crime is completely out of control. And yet I feel weirdly hopeful about this year, for myself and for the city. Somehow things seem to have turned some kind of corner to me. (This may have something to do with the fact that I am back now, and can actually see and feel what is going on.) Or maybe not. Maybe things really are better. At least, we have the hope of them being better, where for a long time, the whole first year post-K, there was very little hope. Almost no hope. But from that period of darkness we rise, renewed, unconquered like the sun.

Benazir Bhutto

2007-12-28T14:37:00.000-08:00

Looking back on her life, though she may have been corrupt and power-hungry, one thing you have to say for Benazir Bhutto is that she had incredible courage. I have been reading up on her life. Pakistan, imagine it, is a dangerous place. During her time as am member of Parliament in the Nineties, her fellow parliamentarians, party members, and even her own staff were constantly being jailed, tortured, kidnapped, beaten and disappeared. But she kept on keeping on.

Consider her life. Her father was hanged by General Zia, the military dictator who deposed him as Prime Minister. Both her brothers died under "suspicious circumstances." She herself spent time in prison, as did her husband. Given all that, she could have spent her life in comfy exile in Europe or New York, writing books, raking in money on the lecture circuit. But she chose to go back, to risk death on a daily basis to try and reform her country.

She may have been self-aggrandizing, she may have had feet of clay. But even so, she put her life on the line for her beliefs. And sacrificed it. Her sheer physical courage was so great she may not have been careful enough of her life in that dangerous place, these dangerous times. Even with inadequate security she insisted on meeting the public face to face at these giant rallies, magnets for suicide bombers. She would not back down.

I'm not cognizant enough of the situation to know the full implications of her death for Pakistan, but I know they will be bad. Real bad. Her death edges that nuclear country one step closer to chaos.

Fire on the Bayou?

2007-12-11T12:39:00.000-08:00

<br/>
I really don't know how to feel about the housing projects crisis. I'm sure you've seen the awful poster on nola.com, if not around town. Like Jeffrey, said, it's a shame it's had to come to that point. But really, I tend to agree with most of the Nolabloggers that the poster was probably created by some whitey trustafarian, in town working with some long-haired relief group. Native New Orleanians are too easygoing to go around burning other people's houses down. New Orleanians don't riot. I mean we just don't. This is not Seattle.

Anyway, the poster is unfortunate because it is so inflamatory (no pun intended) that it will -- has -- dried up sympathy for the cause. Which cause I'm not so sure is worthy. Yes, there is a housing crisis. Yes, the working poor are being crushed out of existence in this city post-K. But -- the projects? The projects??? The thought of people clamoring to get back into the notoriously hellish, crime- and drug-infested New Orleans projects quite boggles me. It seems to me there are better battles to fight. Force the Road Home to cough up some payouts for renters. Light a fire under the state's Katrina Cottage program. Something. Isn't this an opportunity to make things better, instead of falling back into old, dysfunctional patterns?

I do agree that just knocking down the projects and handing them over to developers with no guarantees is not just, nor a good use of the city's resources. There is so much rhetoric flying back and forth, however, that it's hard to know what's really the truth on the ground. Will there be one-to-one replacement of housing units in the new developments? Should there be, with the city's smaller population? How many units in the new developments will be low-income/subsidized, how many middle-income? Is it really more cost-effective to knock the old buildings down and build new, or not? Are "the bricks" really that well-built, as their advocates claim? I have to say, that's the first time I've ever heard that claim about the projects.

It occurs to me that the Times-Picayune has done a piss-poor job on this issue, providing no context, no facts to provide ubderstanding of this heated debate. I think what we need is some solid facts about the situation. How many people lived in these projects before katrina? How many want to move back in now? How many of those people were/are working poor, how many on the dole, which is what seems to so arise the ire of the "man on the street" (to go by the nola.com comments threads). It's been two years -- where and how have these people been livingin the meantime? And on the developers' side, what exactly is going to be done with this land? How many units are you going to build? At what cost? What will they sell or rent for? Will former renters get first priority? Are there any kind of guarantees that you will do what you say, or is this just a land grab, Iraq war-style?

What I would like to see is some kind of middle way emerge, wherein the projects are demolished, but some other kind of new, clean low-income housing is built in its place. Little villages of Katrina Cottages, perhaps, with room to expand, and an option to buy, with subsidies, if the occupants have the wherewithal. Back in my FEMA trailer days, I would have been freakin' delighted to have a Katrina Cottage. Or a very aggressive program for the city to reclaim and renovate blighted housing for the homeless. (Which would not be easy, clearing titles and such, I know.)

I doubt this middle way will materialize, however. HUD controls the projects now, and if the Feds want them to come down, they are going to come down. Keeping the working poor from getting kicked out in the cold will take a very concerted resistance effort. And, given that we only ever see the same two or three people show up at these housing protests, I don't think the political will is there.

2007-12-04T13:28:00.000-08:00

No blogging last week, because work was sheer hell. My branch library receives abrupt jumps in its circulation and attendance from time to time, as word of our advent spreads in the neighborhood, I suppose. Last week was one of those times. But we were short-handed all week, as one of our peeps was transferred to fill in at another branch. Plus, the interbranch delivery had not been done the whole week of Thanksgiving,so we were getting two weeks' worth of books and supplies in one, which all had to be processed. So we were kept hopping. By closing time I just had enough left to go home every day and sag on the sofa in front of the TV, while my husband tried to sustain me by slipping bits of food between my teeth. Coherent thought was not possible.

Yesterday another patron told me she reads my blog. Freaky! My experience has always been that being a public librarian is like being a kind of minor celebrity. Everywhere I go -- the movies, the mall, Mardi Gras parades, the doctor's office -- people know me. "There's Miss Kirsten! It's the Library Lady!" Maybe blogging is not such a good idea. Overexposure. But she told me she surfed over from Wet Bank Guide, that Mark had put me in his blogroll. Which is very cool. Mark Folse is a hero to me.

So I guess I'll keep truckin.

Master Plan

2007-11-13T11:23:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, Irwin Mayfield, who is the Chairman of the New Orleans Public Library Board, gave a presentation to the staff about the NOPL Master Plan, the library's long-term blueprint for recovery. Mostly he talked about "branding" the library, about NOPL core values that we can present and enact, like "preservation" and "celebration" (of New Orleans culture).

I liked his idea of the library as "information first responders" in times of crisis -- which is certainly true, as we saw during the Katrina evacuation and diaspora -- people went to the public libraries wherever they were to find information, contact FEMA, and email friends and family. And when people returned, the library was one of the first places they turned to -- for information, for diversion, for community.

But generally, I was hoping for something a little more concrete, like, "we are rebuilding this branch in 2008, that one in 2009, we have secured funding from these sources." Maybe they haven't gotten to that point in the masterplanning process.

I do think Irwin is a good ambassador for the library, as he is an internationally famous jazz musician, and he clearly takes the job seriously.

The library is holding a public forum on the Master Plan this coming Monday -- read more about it here. You can also take a survey or email the library with your suggestions.

If you have any interest in the library at all, I encourage you to take part in this process. The library is supposed to serve the community, after all. To serve, we need to know what you need.

I Become Visible

2007-11-10T12:22:00.000-08:00

My recent experience with my Mystery Patron Reader has inspired me to pay more attention to my presence in the blogosphere. Jeffrey told me to add a Sitemeter counter to my blog so I can see who's linking to me, and here I am joining Technorati:

Technorati Profile

-- which I still don't really understand, but hope now to learn.

Release the spiders, yo!

OK, so what does Technorati say about me?

Oh, I have 0 fans, how sad. No surprise, though, since I don't actually post that often.

My "authority" seems to be 2, which I believe means how often people have linked to my posts. OMG, that is pitiful -- and both times were my dear friend and co-worker Jeffrey. Link to me, people, I implore you!

My Technorati rank is 2,910,025. Dismal! Atrios, I'm not. I really should post more often. Maybe now I will.

I am abashed. I have had several other blogs/journals online, and I thought I knew a lot about this stuff. But it seems, not nearly as much as I thought I did.

Any other suggestions for embiggening myself in the blogosphere? Send 'em along!

2007-11-08T15:22:00.000-08:00

Guess what! The other day a patron stopped by the reference desk and told me, "I like your blog."

My neck craned up like a startled chicken's. "What? You read my blog?!"

"Yes. I knew it was you by your picture." (On the left there.)

I knew this woman only as a patron, didn't even know her name. I was flabbergasted. Hardly anyone reads the blog, as far as I can tell -- even my hubby doesn't read it. "How did you find it?" I asked, mystifed.

"Well, you know, I read blogs by some other New Orleans bloggers, and they link to other bloggers, so you follow the links, that's how. I liked your post about K-Ville. It's bad."

(I wonder who's linking to me? Jeffrey, of course. Adastros? Editor B? I doubt it.)

"Uh, thanks!" I said. "Leve a comment some time!"

So, heck. Imagine that! People are actually reading this thing. While we were having this conversation, another patron wanted to know my blog address and read it too, so I gave it to her. Wow! Networking!

So, welcome, Mystery Patron Readers! Leave a comment and say hello! I'd love to know who else is out there!

And I guess I should take this opportunity to state that this blog contains only my own thoughts and opinions, and IN NO WAY represents the opinions or policies of the New Orleans Public Library or the City of New Orleans.

K-Ville goes Bye-Bye

2007-11-08T11:31:00.000-08:00

From the Picayune:

K-Ville Shuts Down Production

A victim of the writer's strike. Although the word is the strike is really just an excuse to tank a non-performing show.

I know I've ragged on K-ville, but still I think it's too bad. The show wasn't as egregiously awful as it could have been. It might have gotten better. And you know, we've got to keep the brand out there, right?

Playing the Disaster Dozens

2007-10-24T07:52:00.000-07:00

First off, let me say unequivocally that I have great sympathy for the people around San Diego who have been displaced and are losing their homes to the wildfires. I'm sure everyone in New Orleans does. We know what it is to flee, to be a refugee, to lose everything. But I just hate how it is being compared in the media to Katrina, some kind of crazy game of one-upmanship -- my disaster affecting affluent white people is worse than your disaster that drowned poor blacks. What kind of way is that to think? Aren't we all Americans?

I'm also angry about the way the evacuation and relief efforts are being handled. Quite well in fact. Why couldn't it have been like that down here? Why did people have to starve and die at the Dome, the Convention Cenetr?

I saw this article from the AP yesterday -- here's the lead:

SAN DIEGO (AP) - Like Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years earlier in New Orleans, thousands of people rousted by natural disaster fled to the NFL stadium here, waiting out the calamity and worrying about their homes.

The similarities ended there, as an almost festive atmosphere reigned at Qualcomm Stadium.

Bands belted out rock 'n' roll, lavish buffets served gourmet entrees, and massage therapists helped relieve the stress for those forced to flee their homes because of wildfires.

When I first read this article it made me so angry, just blind with rage. Massage therapy? Catered food?! What the HELL?! The people at the Convention Center would have been delighted with bottled water and MREs!!! Why do the people of San Diego deserve any better?

But then I read it again, more rationally. It may not be quite as blatant as it looks. First, the article is obviously calculated to inflame, being couched that way, comparing Katrina and the wildfires. The article could have been written without mentioning Katrina at all, or adding the comparison at the end, instead of leading with it.

Second, upon second reading it seems that all the nicer amenities provided at Qualcomm stadium were not government largesse, but volunteer efforts. The massage therapist was there on her own initiative, volunteering to help out. Local hotels donated the catered meals. The "rock bands" may have been volunteers too. Which is nice, actually. Maybe this means people learned somethign from Katrina. That we are all in this together. That this kind of disaster could happen to anyone, so we all need to be ready. That evacuees should not be left to suffer and thirst, alone, without community support. I certainly hope so.

Thirdly, in terms of water and medical supplies being ready and bountiful -- one can hardly be surprised that the govt. of california is better equipped to handle an evacuation than that of Louisiana. I mean, it's California -- wealthier, successful, just much more functional in general. Isn'tthe state of California alone the world's tenth largest economy or something like that? Plus, they know this kind of thing -- the wildfires -- could happen any year with the Santa Ana winds, and often do, so they have had every reason to be prepared.

In the aftermath of Katrina, most of my rage was aimed not at FEMA but at Mayor Nagin, the City Council and the entire city government of New Orleans. We, too, knew the Big One could hit any year. More, much more, should have been done to prepare. Citizens should not have been left to languish and starve at the Superdome. So I can hardly hate on San Diego for being prepared.

Thirdly, althouigh the evacuation is massive, rememebr that Souhthern California is much more heavily populated that South Louisiana, and although the burned areas have been devastated, they are in a relatively confined area. The rest of the region is still functional. Evacuees, indeed, are moving into the city of San Diego proper, where there are hotels to cater to them and emergency services are still intact. Completely the opposite of Katrina/Rita, where practically the whole of Souhth Louisiana was evacuated. There was no infrastructure anymore, no one left to speak of cater any meals to the Convention Center refugees. Emergency services were overwhelmed by a regional disaster.

Still, my feelings are complex. I doubt the Dome refugees would have been served capered chickens in cream sauce if anyone had brought them food. The racial disparities seem blantant.

I also don't like the way ther MSM is trumping this up as, if to best Katrina, as if to say, oh, thisis so much worse, we can forget about New orleans now. Last night on the nightly news Brian Williams said thst the SoCal evacuation were the largest since World War II -- which is manifestly untrue. 900,000 people have been evacuated for the wildfires: 1.2 million evacuated for Katrina, and over 2 million in South LA and Texas for Rita. The one-upmanship is just crazy and sick. I felt personally betrayed when I heard that. I thought Brian Williams was on our side.

Not that there should be any sides! Comparing disasters is pointless, and yet we can't seem to help it. The similarities ,and the differences, are so marked.

Pandagon has much to say on this same topic, and also refrences the AP article.

let me close with another quote from that article:

Hundreds sat in the stands watching the [television] sets, transfixed as news programs broadcast images of destruction. Among them was Bruce Fowler, whose home in the Scripps Ranch neighborhood had survived fires in 2003. ...

"Every couple of years, you don't want to go through this worry," Fowler said, sipping a root beer. "I never thought I'd be in a place like this, getting handouts."

Nobody does, brother, nobody does. And yet, it could happen to us all. We just need to remember that, and try and have compassion, for us and for them.

I'd like anyone who reads this post to comment and share your thought with me. This was a hard post to write. I don't really know how to feel. How do YOU feel?

A Case of the Stormy Mondays

2007-10-22T12:25:00.000-07:00

Today is a bad day. I am completely disgusted and affronted that I have to come into work today. That I have to deal with my coworkers. To put covers on books. Check my email. That I have to go home and cook dinner from scratch, because my husband got so spoiled living with my folks while I was in graduate school that he can't even boil water anymore. That I have to clean up, because people are coming over tomorrow night. That I have to feed the cats, brush my teeth, do anything at all. A day like today is only worth crawling back into bed and spending the day dozing, reading, and occasionally drinking tea -- which someone brings me. Getting up to go to work while it's pouring rain and the sky is still black as night is just torture. It's just not right.

A patron just asked me if we were closing early because of the bad weather. I wish.

UPDATE: I see on WWLTV.com reports of major street flooding at Carrollton and Banks St., which is only a few blocks from my library branch. And schools around town are closing, including I see, Tulane and Loyola. So, maybe.

Blog Action Day for the Environment

2007-10-15T09:32:00.000-07:00

So I just read on Blogger Buzz that today is Global Blog Action Day, and this year's theme is the environment. So ... yay ... love the environment!!!

Seriously, though, we in New Orleans have a had a foretaste of what's to come all around the world if and when global warming melts the polar ice caps and raise the seas. If we leverage our expereince and our hard-learned lessons, New Orleans could be a world leader in coastal restoration and mitigation technologies -- sure to be a growth industry, sadly.

Here's a link to America's Wetlands, the foundation dedicated to restoring Louisiana's coastal wetlands -- a vital link in the chain protection that will help prevent another Katrina.

In other news, I've disabled the captcha in my comments sectins, so it's easy to drop a note. If you're reading, leave a comment -- I'd like to know who's out there.

If no one comments, I will be SAD. :-(

Lights Out is Scary

2007-10-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

This morning, Weekend Edition ran a story about a guy who wants to make an energy-saving gesture by convincing his hometown, San Francisco, to turn out the lights for one night: Lights Out San Francisco.

Pre-K, I used to be all for this kind of thing, but now, this idea makes me tense. Fires up my POKSS (Post-Katrina Stress Syndrome). I was here in the early days after the re-opening, when three-quarters of the city was still dark, and it was frickin SCARY. In the devastated neighborhoods. I'm talking pitch black, can't see your hand in front of your face DARK. Dark like the most howling wilderness, in the heart of the city. This is when there was no electricity at all, so no porch lights, no street lights, no traffic lights, no storefront signs, NOTHING. And quiet. No air condotioners, no radios, no cars, no buzzing streetlights. No crickets chirping, even, cause they were all dead.

Man! I don't care to repeat that experience! Next year the guy's trying to take this idea national. I think this will be a fun time for intact cities. But I don't think New Orleans will embrace it.

K-Ville Nitpick Patrol

2007-10-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight's episode:

The voodoo paraphenalia: Cigars and rum are offered to Legba, not Ogun. Also, most average people in NOLA would not know this. Most people are scared of voodoo, or vodoun as it should be called.

Keeping kosher: Marlon said he once tried to keep kosher to impress a girl, until she caught him with a "pulled pork poor-boy." WTF? A cuban sandwich, man, a cuban sandwich!

I'm sure there were more errors, but those were the two that jumped out at me.

I have no say, the show is not as bad as I expected. It does not come near to the eye-gouging Big Easy level of badness. But I still don't think the show is going to survive. Not beacuse of its faux-Nola dorkiness, but because that mess is packaged in a very lame, cliched, buddy-cop-show format. Haven't we seen that a million times? It's stale, man, stale! Law & Order, anyone?

I don't object, in theory, to a show about post-K New Orleans. By no means. Bu I think the stale buddy-cop drama is just about the lamest, least interesting way to do it. I don't think America at large is going to be interested enough in picking over the corpse of post-K New Orleans enough to stick with the lameness.

Big Boxes of Books

2007-10-04T09:10:00.000-07:00

Unlike Jeffrey, I am thrilled at the advent of a Borders bookstore in the former Bultman funeral home at the corner of St. Charles and Louisiana. I mean, think of it, would you rather have a huge, rotting, unused building on a major intersection, or a thriving business? To see a major national chain willig to invest in inner-city NOLA right now is a positive development, I thnk. That intersection has gotten positivwely decrepit post-K (and wasn't too hot before) and really needs a facelift. A large, successful anchor store could revivify the whole area. And now those of us without automobile transport to Metarie or the Westbank can enjoy a big box bookstore/cafe.

I'm confident our independent bookstores will be able to weather the change. Remember, Starbuck's didn't drive PJs or Rue de La Course out of business when it landed. Same deal here. People who will shop at the Borders are probably not the people who shopped at Octavia or Garden District Books anyway. And now, some of those people will be keeping their tax revenue in the city proper instead of sending it out to Jeff Parish.

So I think, it's all good. Personally I can't wait!

Hurricane Whatberto?

2007-09-13T09:23:00.000-07:00

Damn, I almost fell off my chair yesterday evening when I saw on CNN.com that there was a tropical storm off ther coast of Texas! WTF? Where did that come from?

Now, today,it's a Cat 1! It formed, spun up to hurricane strength and made landfall, all in 24 hours. Glad it didn't come over this way, we would have been caught completely flat-footed.

It is heading this way, but over land now. It is pitch-black and raning right now in Mid-City already. One of our patrons just talked to her cousin in Lafayette, where it is torrentially raining and street-flooding.

"OK, stop," I told her. "You're scaring me now."

It's not just pets and little kids who freak out around here when the weather gets bad. Everyone does it. Flashing back.

9/11 again

2007-09-12T08:43:00.001-07:00

Yesterday was the sixth anniversary of 9/11. Six years. 9/11 was so huge and shocking, so terrible, that in the weeks and months after I used to wonder what it would feel like to mark the anniversary in the future, five years out, ten years out. I yearmed for the balm of time to heal all wounds. But I couldn't imagine not feeling enraged and terrified on that day.

Well, that was then. When I was thinking about the future then I never dreamed that by the sixth anniversary I would have had my own epochal disaster to suffer and recover from. Katrina has pretty much eclipsed Ground Zero in my personal hellscape. How could it not?

Also when I think of 9/11 now, it just reminds me of the tragic road to ruin in Iraq, and the indelible blight upon the United States' name and honor. The pure sorrow is tainted with anger and bitterness.

So, 9/11 + 6. Somehow, I'm just not feeling it.

Hurriane Katrina News

2007-08-28T16:27:00.000-07:00

Hurricane Katrina News

This looks ike a good clearinghouse site for recovery news, launched in time for the anniversary. It's put together by Joshua Clark, author of the Katrina memoir Heart Like Water -- who incidentally is giving a talk about his book at Author's Night at Hubbell Library tonight.

Katrina Index, Special Anniversary Edition

2007-08-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

Well, this is interesting. It specifically mentions the library.

I wonder what it says about murders?

Happy Talk in the Ruins

2007-08-07T15:02:00.000-07:00

I've noticed lately, since I've been back, that a lot of the Nolablogers that I read regularly are angry. Really angry. They have just had it with the crime, the incompetence, with the pumps that don't work, with the Corpse, the Road ~~Home~~ to Nowhere, Hizzoner C. Ray, Gov. Maw Maw, Dr. Flakely, the Recovery School District, the lameitude of the Picayune, just the whole stinking pile of hot bayou mess that is "the recovery."

And who can blame them? It is a mess. These things are bad. It is not going as well as it should. I don't blame them.

But for myself, I am coming from a different place. I just got back to town after two years away. And I feel good.

My husband and I are very happy. We are living together again, in our old stomping ground, the uptown Magazine Street corridor, where I have lived since high school. We are happy to have our old jobs back, more or less. I feel quite fortunate to have had gradaute school to keep my mind and spirit busy in the painful post-K years, and then to have the job I have, helping the recovery with a library in the flooded neighborhoods. My husband sings in the car on the way to work.

And speaking as someone who has spent the better part of the time away, who only came home to gut my house or visit family, I can say, things are better. Things are way better. Hey, the streetlights are working! The water is running! (In most places.) Magazine Street is open! Many beloved businesses are operating again. Vegetation is blooming. Rebuilding and recovery is all but complete in some neighborhoods, booming in others. In Mid-City, where my library branch is, it seems like every house is being renovated. People are even rebuilding in the Lower Nine. The search tags are painted over.

I've been away, so I see it with fresh eyes. But for those who have been here for the last two years, I know how hard it seems, how far there is to go. It just grinds you down, living in the recovery, the constant parade of bad news. I've seen it in my own family. Last year I had to have my Mom come and spend part of August in Baton Rouge, just to get away, because the one-year anniversary had brought her so low.

I'm sure I'll get there myself at some point.

But thst's the nature of the beast. Recovery. A long, grueling process. I remember hearing around the anniversary last year that people were still living in tent cities in Kobe, Japan five years after the big earthquake there.

It's a long grueling process. So if some people are angry and burned out, it's OK to step away for a while. I want to say to any of my fellow bloggers and citizens, that if you need to stop blogging for a while, or take a less demanding, more lucrative job, or go on vacation, or move to the Northshore, it's OK. I'm here. Other newbs are here. We can take up the fight. New people are moving into the city all the time -- I see it every day at my library. College students, Teach for America teachers, young professionals. I've heard several stories of volunteers who came down to help with cleanup, and loved New Orleans so much, they moved here. An amazing development. New people who are optimistic and ready to put their shoulders to the wheel.

This long haul is a relay race. No one has to do it alone. And I'm ready for my leg.

The Other Side of the Camera

2007-08-01T21:25:00.000-07:00

I feel so strange watching the news coverage of this bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Because I know what it's like now, to be on the other side of that news camera. To be in the midst of a huge disaster. The confusion, the terror, the despair.

In the first couple days after Katrina, the aftermath, I couldn't stand the thought of people in the rest of the country just sitting on their couches, watching CNN, thinking, Wow, huge disaster. Like it was just a TV show. It made me sick.

And now here I am, sitting on my couch, thinking, Wow, huge disaster. I feel so guilty.

Hard Day's Day

2007-07-31T15:03:00.000-07:00

Well I just had a hell of a day at work. Now I remember what's sucky about public library service -- crazy patrons and crazy coworkers. Put them together and you have an explosive combination.

Upon graduation, one of my professors told me I would not find the public library "challlenging enough." Well, it may not be intellectually challenging, but it is certainly emotionally challenging. There were several times today when there were four or more people at the desk, all clamoring for my attention, the phone ringing, and I was just going, What? What? You want what from me?? Ahhgh, overstimulation! Couple that with riding constant herd on an erratic new employee and you have the makings of a very long and tiring day.

I need a drink!

Observations ....

2007-07-24T20:13:00.000-07:00

... upon returning to New Orleans:

Wow, people dress freaky down here. I'd forgotten. You couldn't get away with that in Baton Rouge.

Ugh, giant roaches. My apartment in BR was incredibly buggy -- spiders, ants, and wasps -- but at least I didn't have to any of those damn things. No No Kitty, don't bring it in the house! Damn!

Hispanic laborers hanging out in front of a Home Depot. Heard of that, never seen it before. They wave to me now when I walk to work.

We made like six brand new library cards at our branch last week. For people who had never had a New Orleans Public Library card before -- people wh's driver's licenses said "California" or "Michigan." People are moving to New Orleans -- from away! This, I never imagined. Why do they? What jobs are they doing? What do they hope to find? Not that I begrudge them. But I'm very curious. What brings them to this hellhole now? It boggles me.

Working

2007-07-23T15:06:00.000-07:00

I am sitting at my new library branch, typing this after hours. It has been a heckuva two weeks. I've already been on TV to represent the library, talking about the summer reading club.

So far, I like working at a branch. It is a very different feel from working at the main library. Cozier. More families, less crazy street people. It's nice. I have learned things I never knew at Main -- how to check books in and out, how to collect fines, make new library cards. Our new branch has its Grand Opening this week.

Weekend before last we moved our household down to NOLA, in the pouring rain. It was brutal. But it's done. Our new apartment is significantly smaller than the one in BR, so the DH and I are having some ... discussions about what to do with the excess stuff. I was truly amazed, nay, appalled! at the amount of stuff we have accumulated, a mere two years after losing everything to Katrina.

So. Here we are. Hubby and I in the same house again, living together, no more commuting. We turned in the keys to our Baton Rouge apartment. It's done.

In New Orleans. Part of me is really happy. Part of me is thinking, What the hell am I doing here?

We'll have to see.

Back to Work!

2007-07-05T23:05:00.001-07:00

Well I have finally landed a job, and it is with my old employer, the New Orleans Public Library. But the thing is, I have to start Monday! Yikes!

But it's OK. We were able to push up, the move-in date on our new apartment, so we will move ourselves, the cats, and some necessities down and kind of "camp out" in the new place until we can effect the full-scale move the next weekend.

I will start at the new Mid-City Branch and train in Branch Operations, and as the other new temporary libraries created by a huge SOLINET/Gates Foundation grant, I will be put in charge of one.

In my previous career I spent all my time at the Mian Library, so I am now ready to experience the branch side of things, and take my place as a full-fledged LIBRARIAN!

I am ready to get back to work. I've been bored just sitting at home.

Taqueria Trucks

2007-06-28T17:27:00.000-07:00

This article from the Times-Picayune is about Jefferson Parish banning the operation of mobile taqueria trucks that serve hot lunches to the huge population of construction workers still rebuilding the region. The taco trucks followed the vast migrartion of Hispanic workers who flooded in post-K to commence the rebuilding.

The comments on the story mostly go back and forth about whether the ban is racist or not, whether the taco trucks are enabling illegal immigration.

Not being on the ground, I can't comment on the true purpoise of the ban, but I have nothing against teh taqueria trucks. This was, in fact, the only major thought I had about the influx of Hispanic workers during the rebuilding:

Better Mexican food.

Some of these people will like the New orleans region, and stay, and some of them will open up restaurants, melding their cuisine with the local cuisine, using fresh local ingedients. Jamabalaya with chorizo! Crawfish-stuffed chile rejillenos! Yay!

This is what New Orleans does. It is syncretistic. It takes people in, absorbs them -- eats them if you will, subsumes them, and they become part of the delicious melange, the gumbo of New Orleans. If New Orleans culture could survive the annexing by the United States, it can certainly survive this, and will be the richer for it. Remember, this was a Spanish city once, after all. We already have Vietnamese Pho houses and Salvadoran papusarias. So why not taco trucks?

It's all good. When I get home I look forward to eating my first meal from a taqueria truck.

news @ nature.com - Plants can tell who's who - It's not just animals that can tell siblings from strangers.

2007-06-14T22:55:00.000-07:00

Now this is coll. This is the kind of cool thing you can find on the Net:

news @ nature.com - Plants can tell who's who - It's not just animals that can tell siblings from strangers.

Plants -- plants! -- can recognize their own relatives. In experiments, they grow and compete for nutrients more agressively when they are potted with non-relatives than when with theie leafy kin.

Awesome! It is a mystery how they do this. Perhaps some kind of chemical signature? Plant pheromones?

Plants are far more aware of their environments than is generally known. They can infer the presence and the abundance of neighboring plants by their own experience of nutrient and water levels in their soil, and act accordingly. I like what one of the scientists in the story said, "plants have a secret social life."

I took Botany for my life science as an undergrad, and I'm really glad I did, because it have me a different view of life, of the nature and processes of life. I learned the basics of biology -- mitosis/miosis, genetics, cellular metabolism, the Krebs cycle. But from a different viewpoint, vegetative instead of animalistic.

Plants are for more complex organisms than people generally realize. A flowering angiosperm like a rose bush or an apple tree is a highly complex lifeform, as complex in its way as a mammal, but we think it less because it is so different from us. Vegetative. They seem less alive to us because they don't move and react like animals. Well, actually, they do, but we can't see it because it is on a slower scale -- hours and days instead of moments.

And now we see that they are more aware, more alive, yet.

This is one of the things I love about libraianship -- the ability, the need, to always learn new things.

My Facebook

2007-06-08T21:39:00.000-07:00

So my former classmates (wow, it feels weird to say that) keep telling me to get onto Facebook so that we can stay in touch. So, I did. Here's my profile:

http://www.facebook.com/p/Kirsten_M_Corby/548301382

I can see how people get obsessed with this, adding pictures, tracking their friends, writing on walls. But personally I prefer blogging.

Kudos for Me :-)

2007-06-06T13:53:00.001-07:00

Hey, check it out, Jeffrey over at Library Chronicles gives me some love.

WE have had our differences, but he is still a fellow NOPL staffer and therefore one of my peeps. Awright!

Bad Mojo

2007-06-01T18:33:00.000-07:00

The first resume I send out comes back marked "Undeliverable."

Mike the Tiger dies on Commencement Day.

First day of hurricane season, there's a storm in the Gulf.

The bad omens keep piling up. I'm getting kind of freaked.

Now this ...

2007-05-25T15:00:00.000-07:00

I did not know. Wild boars have infested City Park.

Wow! It's a whole new world down there!

Heads-up to Jeffrey as uaual for the link.

Wahoo!

2007-05-18T18:48:00.000-07:00

I graduated today! I'm done with school! I have a master's degree! I never thought I would do that!

It's quite amazing to me. When I got my BA I never thought I would ever go back to school. I had some issues about going back -- my track record with higher education is ... not the best. I was quite anxious a lot of the time.

Yet here I am, with my hood and everything:

AWESOME!

Greensburg

2007-05-08T09:22:00.000-07:00

I really feel for those people in Greensburg, Kansas. I know exactly what they are going through. To have your town, your home, your livelihood wiped away in an instant. To not know if your house is intact or destroyed. If your friends and neighbors are living or dead.

FEMA trailers. Insurance adjusters crawling around. The Red Cross. Meals Ready to Eat.

Welcome to the Long Road Home, Greensburg.

Finito!

2007-05-07T22:31:00.000-07:00

12:28 AM. I just uploaded my final project for my final class to BlackBoard. I give a presentation tomorrow, and then I am DONE! Done with school! It feels unreal. It's been a long year. I never thought this day would come.

"It is Hypnotic to be part of this Lunacy"

2007-05-04T16:26:00.000-07:00

Read this. It is amazing. It is about working on contract in Iraq.

Not safe if you are a loyal Bushie.

Here's a quote:

So many people know how to correct the world, and they feel like they
contributed when the office pooled $2,000 for the Tsunami. They feel like they are humanitarians, and that their hearts are so big. Yet even the relief campaigns and the Red Cross are constantly embroiled in scams and rip-off plans. While twenty-one-year-old soldiers from Hanksack, Nebraska are dying. And children are losing their legs. So the real question is: when are we going to get some motherfucking Starbucks up in here?

What Comes After

2007-05-02T19:32:00.000-07:00

I can't believe in less than two weeks I will be done with all this.

I got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom last night, and on the way back saw my empty bed, my empty lonely bed, and the thought came to my mind, I'm almost done with this, and I think that was the first time that I realized, really realized, that school is all but over and this phase of my life will soon be done.

Part of me is sad, sad that my grad school experience is almost over, sad to leave the campus and lose access to the resources of a major research university. But the larger part of me, drained by the soul-crushing load of homework in the last third of this semester, just really, really wants to be done with it.

Even so, next Wednesday, when the last of my classes and projects is behind me, I think I will plunge into an abyss of despair the likes of which I have seldom known. I won't even know what to do with myself. I have been so focussed on school, on getting through this, on buckling down and dealing, post-Katrina, learning to live more or less on my own, which I've never done -- so focussed on the day to day that I haven't given a thought to what comes after.

What the hell do I do then?

Get a job, everyone says. Well, yes. But what kind of job? Where? Here? There? Elsewhere? I have yet to confront what any of those choices would mean. Moving -- packing -- I shudder to contemplate it, even what little we have. 4 moves in 2 years, courtesy of Hurricane Katrina. That's not even bad for Katrina fugees, but still. It's tiring.

I'm just confused and startled at the end of it all. I've been so focussed on getting the degree, I never thought about what I would do with it once I had it.

2007-04-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

I'm working the closing shift at the library. The GAs always have to work it, becuase obviously nobody else wants to.

I was hoping to finish two last articles for my literature review in Human-Computer Interation class, but they are putting me to sleep! If I keep reading I'm going to fall out of my chair.

OK, so, to make that last post less ... worthless ... let me reiterate that every library patron has the right to request that materiials be removed from the collection as inappropriate. Those materials won't often be removed, because the Library Bill of Rights holds that libraries collects materials representing thr full range of experiences and viewpoints, but the right to review is there.

In fact I covered this on my Comps exam. One of the questions was to "discuss an ethical challenge," and so I wrote about challenged materials in the public library. I wish I had the essay to show you, but they won't let us have them back. In fact I believe they have been destroyed. Anyway, the proper way to handle this is to have a formal "Challenged materials" form for the aggreived patron to fill out, and a formal review process for the book in question. Which it seems the library in question has done. So it's all good.

I still think it's funny, though.

I'll just BET there were!

2007-04-27T11:36:00.000-07:00

Take a look at this from AL Direct:

The father of two teenage boys has asked city officials to fine the
Bentonville (Ark.) Public Library for keeping The Whole Lesbian Sex
Book by Felice Newman on the open shelves where his sons could find it. Earl Adams said his 14- and 16-year-old sons discovered the book in January while browsing for literature on military academies and were “greatly disturbed,” causing “many sleepless nights in our house.”
BWA-HA-HA-HAHA!!!! You think??? Sleepless nights when two teenage boys get their sweaty hands on a lesbian sex manual??? You think???
**Gasp!!!** I'm sorry, I shouldn't be so heartless. Obviously this guy is upset, and certainly he has every right to monitor what his kids read. It was just the unfortunate phrasing of the orignal AL Online post that had me laughing out loud at the reference desk.

Well So Much for That!

2007-04-26T11:45:00.000-07:00

So much for Thirty in Thirty! I definitely dropped off a cliff there after taking Comps. Or into a black hole, as it were. Comps themselves were not actually that hard, intellectually, yet I still found them emotionally exhausting. Because they have been drumming into us CopmsCompsComps since before we even got here. SLIS tries so hard to make it seem like this big rite of passage, which it is in a way, but as an actual academic exercise it's not actually that grueling.

The soul-crushing load of homework I have had since then has not helped. I thought this, my final semester, would be a cakewalk. But it has turned out to be my hardest by far.

Hey, if I post ... 26 posts in the next ten hours, I could still make 30 in 30! Heh! Likely? Not.

I may have to go back and add some things, backdated, make myself seem less lame. So if you see me rewriting history, remember, history is written by the victors. And it's my blog, so that means me. :-)

When Will It End?

2007-04-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

It just tore me up to see the memorial ceremonies attending the resumption of classes at Virginia Tech yesterday. It just all seems so tragic and -- and futile. These things, these school and workplace shootings just keep happening and happening, and no one seems to learn anything. Nothing changes. How long is America going to be willing to bear this cost? The cost of all this gun violence? What is it going to take?

There's another thing, too -- a thing I hate to mention because it seems so cold. But it has to be said. Last week, while we were stunned and grieving VT, suicide and other bombings in Iraq killed 183 people! That's like a Virginia Tech massacre every day! I read in Newsweek a while back that over 3,000 civilians in Iraq are killed every month. That's as many as were killed in 9/11! How many 9/11s have happened in Iraq since "Mission Accomplished?"

I don't begrudge anyone's mourning over VT -- far from it. It is only human nature to be more concerned about your own people, your own country, than strangers far away. But if we can't grieve for the Iraqis that way, let us at least be mindful. Be mindful of the death and the destruction, which we began. We have to ask, how long are we willing to bear that cost, too? What's it going to take?

Yay!

2007-04-16T17:22:00.000-07:00

The Dean of my library school called me herself today, to let me know that I passed my comprehensive exams with distinction! Yaaaayyy! She said it was unanimous, too -- that all three faculty members on my review committee agreed that my responses were of superior quality.

Oh, I was the only one who passed with distinction, too. The first one in several semesters, apparently, so it's a really big deal. Wow!

(Actually, that feels a little weird. Being the only one. I wish someone else had made it, too. I enjoy being one of a select few. But being singled out like that, being primus inter pares if you will, makes me a little uncomfortable. It fires up my shyness.)

I don't think most people are interested in gaining distinction. "I just want to pass," my classmates say.

But distinction was something I wanted to do. I thought it was within my grasp, so I went for it, and got it. I wanted to prove to myself that I have mastered the material. And so I have.

I don't think "Graduating with Distinction" shows up on my diploma -- but by gosh it's going on my resume!

Whew!

2007-03-31T16:48:00.000-07:00

I did it!!!! Yesterday! Comps are OVER!!!

What a relief!

Actually, they weren't that bad -- although I could still barely drag myself out of bed today. Academically, the test was not that hard. But I still feel emotionally exhausted, because they make such a big deal out of it. They have been hammering it into us -- CompsCompsComps -- since before school even started, since Orientation.

They make it a bigger deal than it actually is. They want it to be a rite of passage, which I guess it is anyway -- something to make us feel we've actually earned that degree, our "union card," as my old boss called it.

Well, it's better than writing a thesis. I would have had serious doubts about attending this program if that had been required. I don't like the thesis. I had a bad experience.

One of my coworkers at Middleton told me that her final project at her library school (which I think was San Jose State) was to create an online portfolio. THis was a few years ago, when having a Website was still a big deal. That's big project -- but it's one you can actually put to use when you're done.

Anyway, the test was four hours long -- two hours in the morning, and two in the afternoon. There were two questions to answer in the morning, and our choice of two out of three in the afternoon.

The first question was about Internet filtering. I was actuallyon the Filtering Committee at NOPL, so that one was a cakewalk for me. I figure, if you mentioned the Children's Internet Protection Act by name, you were OK.

The second question required us to describe an ethical challenge, and our response to it. So I described challenged books in the public library. Again, not hard.

In the afternoon, the first question was about free-text searching versus a controlled vocabulary, as in a periodical database like ERIC. I didn't answer that question, because I liked --

-- the second question better, which was "What is metadata?" And we were specifically constrained from giving the fifty-cent answer, "data about data." But since I am currently taking a class called "XML, Markup, & Metadata," I was all over that. I wrote about administrative, sctructural, and descriptive metadata.

The final question required us to describe how we would market our library -- any library of our choice, real or theoretical. Also to discuss whether libraries should be marketed at all, and why or why not. I wrote about NOPL and how I would market it as a resource and cultural center for the citizenry of New Orleans during the recovery process.

I really liked that answer. I wish I could have a copy of it. But we aren't allowed to see our tests again. In fact I have been told they will be destroyed after grading.

But anyway, it's done now, and man I'm glad. Major hurdle surmounted. Myhusband took me to The Melting Pot, the fondue restaurant, last night to celebrate. With champagne. Another reason, I guess, I'm so tired. But a tiredness well earned.

We're on a Road to Nowhere ...

2007-03-27T22:40:00.000-07:00

Just as I remember I have to update the blog, I find this on Slate.com:

Road to Nowhere

Another installment of Blake Bailey's post-K misadventures! This time dealing with the godawful "Road Home" program, which I have dissed elsewhere.

I feel great kinship with this guy, who lived in my old neighborhood, Gentilly. And who, the poor bastard, had only lived in his new house for about a month before the storm.

The DH and I have not even applied for the Road Home, figuring it was a pretty sure bet that, given our situation, we would get no money at all, and figuring it was hardly worth it to endure those endless bureaucratic hassles to get ... nothing. But a lot of other people have been hanging on in their FEMA trailers, hoping for that award money, and they are getting pretty desperate.

Last week Governor Blanco finally realized that most of South Louisiana personally blames her for the slow-motion trainwreck of the Road Home (she did insist on putting her name on it after all) and wisely bowed out of the upcoming gubernatorial race. No way on God's earth she could win. But I don't think falling on her sword will make all those trailer denizens feel any better.

Ten Small Things I Love for No Reason

2007-03-26T20:43:00.000-07:00

A meme I got from blogger Dianne Sylvan. What a nice way to fill out my thirty days.

1. Iced coffee.

2. The way my little cat C. leans against me when she visits me in bed.

3. The sound and feel of the word "Decatur" in my mouth.

4. The smell of sweet olive.

5. Sleeping late.

6. Del.icio.us

7. The smell and feel of the paper of a new book.

8. Barnes & Noble (In real life, not online).

9. My office chair, which my husband gave me for Christmas. I finally have a decent office chair.

10. A new gel pen to write with.

Bad

2007-03-25T23:00:00.000-07:00

I had bad dreams, and I woke up this morning with such a feeling of foreboding. I dreamt we lost our little cat C., at a Mardi Gras parade, and no one would help me look for her. I was furious and inconsolable. Horrible dream.

I know I dreamt this because one of my friend's cats went missing recently, so it was in my head, but it still felt awful. Dreams are not just about their surface content after all.

And now, I have to say goodbye to my husband. Hos new job in NOLA starts much earlier in the AM, so he really needs to go down Sunday night -- the traffic is just too awful in peak travel time on Monday mornings. Wow, it is so much worse to have to say goodbye to him at night instead of in the morning. In the morning, I too am busy, getting ready to go to school and work. I have a full day ahead of me. At night, I just sit here ... all alone.

I am so ready for this separation to be over and for us to be together again. I am eager to get finished with school, move back in with my husband, and get back to work and a normal life again.

I take my comprehensive exams this week. I feel good about them; in fact I had to ask my husband to stop asking me if I was studying for them, because he was making more nervous than I had to be. (I am, of course, but as the profs keep telling us, we would have to be brain-dead not to understand this stuff by now.)

But I'll be glad when they're over. A major hurdle crossed on the way to the end of all this.

Idiocracy

2007-03-24T21:35:00.000-07:00

The DH and I just watched the Mike Judge movie Idiocracy on DVD -- a movie that, upon completion, was buried by its own distribution company because of its inflammatory content.

I'm no fan of censorship, of course, but I can see why the corporate suits chickened out on this flick. An unabashed screed for eugenics, it imagines a future United States where the intelligent don't breed enough and the unwashed do, and we end up with a country where the President is an ex-professional wrestler named Hector Mountain Dew Camacho, everyone walks around wearing clothing plastered with corporate logos, and they water the crops with Gatorade.

It's no Office Space, for sure, but it does have some funny gags -- like the cliched establishing shot of Washington, DC, the Washington Monument towering over its reflecting pool -- but the Monument is lopsided and the pool is full of morons on Jet skis.

It's out on DVD now, even though it got no theatrical release -- so if you want a chance to stick it to The Man, do like I did and go buy this flick. The future may thank you!

Tragic

2007-03-23T21:12:00.000-07:00

Today read in the LSU paper, the Daily Reveille about the sad case of my fellow graduate student, Ann Gregory, who is battling a rare and virulent form of leukemia, and also her insurance agency, which won't pay for the bone marrow transplant that is the only chance of saving her life. It's awful; one day she was fine, and the next, they're telling her she has less than a year to live.

You can go to her blog, here: anngregory.blogspot.com, and donate toward her transplant surgery. Her family is trying to raise the money themselves, since the insurance won't pay.

What is even sadder, when you go to the donation site, you find that there are hundreds of other people trying to raise money for their cancer treatments, organ transplants, and other heroic surgeries. Just tragic to see. It shouldn't be like that in the US.

I believe in socialized medicine. I realize, of course, that a one-payer system means that there has to be triage, and many people would never receive these kinds of high-tech surgeries. But if everyone had access to a doctor, and there was more emphasis one wellness and preventive care, maybe some of these conditions could have been nipped in the bud.

The Librarian: Quest for the Degree

2007-03-22T19:30:00.000-07:00

Today two undergraduates told me they had never come into the library before because they were "afraid of it."

Don't be afraid of the library!" I exclaimed. They just stared at me with big googly eyes, shaking their heads. "It's so big!" one of them whispered.

I don't think I was very successful at assuaging their fears. I just couldn't relate. I loved the library as an undergraduate; I would hang out there for fun. I would randomly search the OPAC, which back then was called LISA or maybe ALIS, looking up forbidden terms like "drugs" and "magic," just to see what I would get. (What I got was a book on the shamanistic use of the psilocybe mexicana mushroom in Central America, which I used to write a paper for Botany class.) I would look up notorious books like Mein Kampf and Tropic of Cancer, and then go look at them on the shelves, just to see them. I browsed the shelves on history, science and religion, marvelling at the wealth of books that had never been available to me before -- serious books, rare books -- grown-up books.

And yet if was almost ten years after I graduated that I finally ended up in a library, and found work I loved to do. In retrospect, maybe I should have realized my destiny sooner.

I daresay those undergraduates aren't going to grow up to become librarians. Poor things.

Thirty in Thirty

2007-03-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

I need to be more assiduous about updating this blog, so to jumpstart that, I am following the lead of some of my fellow bloggers, and committing to thirty posts in thirty days. Thirty in Thirty. Thank you, Bloggers Anonymous.

So, for my first post, I find this at Nola.com: Nagin calls diaspora racial plot.

Nice! I can't speak to the racial makeup of NOLA right now, as I am not there to see for myself, and all of the post-K published statistics are highly dubious. But I will say this:

Nagin is the mayor. If the recovery is slow, it is his fault. It is his waffling, his conflict avoidance, his absenteeism -- his lack of leadership that has allowed the city to languish as it has. Not all his fault -- its not his fault the Road Home is such a mess, for example. But he has certainly not gone to bat for the people on that issue. It is mostly his fault.

The Mayor of New Orleans has a great deal of power under the city charter, far more than in other cities. Nagin has squandered that with his inaction and his foolish speechifying.

Nagin is a disaster. He needs to be recalled.

In the news today ...

2007-03-14T10:25:00.000-07:00

Unbelievable!

New Orleans got defective flood pumps - U.S. Life - MSNBC.com

The piece says the suspect pumps have not bee used yet, so they don't even know how bad it's going to be.

I'm supposed to come back to this?

New Blogger - whuzzat?

2007-02-16T15:04:00.000-08:00

I have updated my GA journal. They keep me pretty busy.

So Blogger finally forced me to upgrade to the new interface, with a Google account. What's up with that? Google scares me a little. They are the Borg of the Internet -- they will assimilate anything, just on the off chance that it might "add to their perfection." Well, we'll see.

Hey, does anybody know how to get rid of those spam comments from the Blogger dashboard? I don't want to have to start moderating comments -- I'd rather just delete the spam once I see it. Any ideas? Anybody?

Oh, and by the way ...

2007-01-25T16:35:00.000-08:00

... I have to say, Jeffrey responded much more graciously to my crime march-related slamming of him the other day that he really had to. He responds at length to the criticism of his position in his blog, and while I still don't agree, he defends himself well.

Library 2.0 -- it's on!!!

2007-01-25T15:52:00.000-08:00

Just as I was talking about social software in libraries and the "next generation catalog," here comes SOPAC, the "Social OPAC," created by John Blyberg at the Ann Arbor District Library, which has all the very things I was talking about -- reviews, comments, tagging, customization, the works. Fabulous!

AADL is very cutting-edge on the 2.0 front -- their website has been blog-driven for a while, using blogs to advertise events, publicize new acquisitions and let the director talk to the citizens. It is a very supple, natural, yet dynamic website. And I daresay it was neither terribly expensive or difficult to create -- if you know some Web programming. These tools are designed to be easy, to be used and tweaked by ordinary users. This is not out of the reach of even modest libraries, if someone is willing to put the time in to learn the skillls. Or if the library is open to harnessing the native skills of its younger, more tech-savvy workers.

The SOPAC, of course, is more complicated, but it is built, as I understand it, with a set of customizable modules overlaying the catalog, and interacting with it to retrieve and display bib records. They did it themselves, by the way -- it is not a product of their automation vendor.

Another neat, very 2.0 thing about it is that you don't have to be an AADL cardholder to have a SOPAC account and add content. Anyone can register. So you can play aroud with it! Add tags! Write reviews!

That's what 2.0 is all about -- collaboration.

It's just super-cool. Watch the movie, too -- it's neat and very informative.

A nice Library 2.0 list for Public Libraries

2007-01-24T17:53:00.000-08:00

My Top-ten Library 2.0 “No-brainers” for Public Libraries « The Other Librarian

This is a nice, easy list of simple -- mostly free -- things libraries can do to be more responsive and collaborative. Very simple things like having a blog with an RSS feed, allowing social software like YouTube to run on public access PCs, and adding the Del.icio.us plug-in to browsers, so patrons can tag on the fly.

I am all for this. As a minor webhead myself, I am all about Library 2.0. Why? Because it expands the capabilities of the library. Because, as patrons use and create with collaborative software, at their library, they become more engaged with the library itself, and become stakeholders, concerned and involved with the future of the library itself as an institution. That's the hope, anyway. Besides, it's just offering better service. And why not do that? It's free, it's easy, and it provides a useful servicefor patrons. What's not to like.

I look forward to going out into libraryland with my degree and being a "change agent," bringing these L 2.0 techniques to whatever library I end up in. It pleases me to think of returning to NOPL as a branch manager, and creating my own little Branch 2.0, doing gaming programming, and having regular patrons read my "branch manager blog." It pleaes me greatly. It is the only reason I might consider going back -- assuming that is possible.

March on!

2007-01-11T23:21:00.000-08:00

Somewhat out of the loop up here in Baton Rouge, I was enormously heartened to hear about the anti-crime march on City Hall. I think it will really have an effect. Angry people marching in the streets is really the only thing that inspires fat-cat politicos to action; it scares them, as it damn well should. And I absolutely LOVE the fact that Nagin was not permitted to speak at the rally!

And on a related topic, I feel I have to express my complete disgust at the anti-march stance taken by my former co-worker Jeffrey over at Library Chronicles. Jeffrey, I am appalled. You accuse the marchers of being Yuppies, of being crypto-fascists implicity endorsing the advent of a police state, of being racially insensitive because they are upset that it was a a white woman and mother, Helen Hill, who was murdered. But it is her family and friends who organized the march -- how should they not be upset? They are trying to do something, trying to effect change, address the issue. How can you censure them for that? At least they are trying something -- whereas you consistently sit back, criticize, belittle, and offer absolutely nothing in the way of constructive alternatives or options.

That is no longer good enough. Bitching and brick-throwing no longer cut it. Jeffrey, I used to read you every day, but as of today I am removing you from my blogroll. You are too negative. I feel you are now part of the problem, not the solution. You're certainly entitled to your opinion. But I don't have to read it.

2007-01-11T09:44:00.000-08:00

Various fundies, wingnuts, and TV talking heads have been squawking about freshman Congressman Keith Ellison, a Muslim, taking his oath of office on a copy of the Quran, but for myself, this makes me proud to be an American.

Do you get it? Thomas Jefferson had a copy of the Quaran! Isn't that what America is all about, being open to the offerings of other cultures, taking the best of them and energizing them with America spirit and optimism? If TJ was open to studying the books of other religions, we can do no less.

I feel very happy for Keith Ellison that he had such a rare and precious volume to swear upon. The people who are upset and frightened by this are fools. They should be glad instead.

Bloggitty Bloggitty Blog

2006-12-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

Haven't had much time for blogging lately, as it is final exams time and I have been quite busy with homework.. I was stressing so over my research paper for Cataloging class that I actually made myself a little ill. I have really struggled in that class; I knew it would be hard, but I didn't think I would hate it so very, very much.

I crept onto campus to deliver my paper and beg off of the final class; it's a night class, and I didn't think I would last until 9 PM, and the wretched ride home after on the night bus.

"Oh, too bad," my Catalog prof said. "You would enjoy this class."

"What is it?"

"Cataloging of non-book materials."

"Oh. No, I wouldn't enjoy that. Let Ulrik have it; he's taking Advanced Cataloging."

"Yes, he is. And so should you."

I gaped at her. "Are you kidding? I'm hanging on in this class by the skin of my teeth!"

She waved her hands. "Oh, you're fine." (Well, I'm OK, once she delivered a giant heap of extra credit for us to do.)

"I don't know what your career path is ..." she continued.

"Public libraries."

"Oh, you should definitely take it then. You'll need it."

"Please don't say that ... you're scaring me."

"I'm telling you ..."

"But I hate it."

"Yes, you'll always hate descriptive cataloging. But that's OK. I hate it too."

You wouldn't know this from some of the, ahem, discussions we got into in class. I was quite sure she would be delighted to see the back of me.

"I feel faint," I said.

Sh brandished my research paper. "But you did your paper on Colon Classification. I mean you actually read it!"

"I have to go," I said, and I did.

Fear the proselytizing Catalogers! (Although, I have to say, my heart softened toward her after she made a fizzbin reference in class one day. I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in class who got it, too.)

"It’s hard as hell to fight it, don’t buy it!"

2006-11-24T15:56:00.000-08:00

On the way home from Thanksgiving dinner at my folk's we went by the CompUSA to see if we could pick up a Playstation 2 cheap. The store was open from 9 to midnight for early Christmas sales.

Well, when we got there the parking lot was full, giant SUVs parked on the curbs, and the line to get in ran down the building and aroud the corner. They were letting peoplein ten at a time or something.

No Playstation for us. Fine. No problem. But getting back on the expressway, we saw that the parking lot at Best Buy was also jammed full, even thought he store was closed. And then we saw them, the people, crouched under blankets, huddlingin line -- waiting at ten oclock at night for the store to open at 6 AM.

Now look, people, this is going too far! Eight hours in the dark and cold to buy some cheap swag? This is not right! It is sick, sick, sick! NO video game or HD TV or Bluetooth-enabled cellphone/MP3 player is worth this level of obsession. You're not doing this because you love your family and want to give them the best -- you're doing it becuase you want to pull one over on other people and buy cheap swag! It's FUCKED UP, people! Enough already!

Buy Nothing Day. Check it out!

2006-11-09T23:11:00.000-08:00

OK, so who is this asshole Alan Richman who peforms a virtual second Katrina on the restauarants of New Orleans in the current GQ? It's Online here:

YES, WE’RE OPEN

He mercilessly disses everyone from Galatoire's to Jaque-Imo's, and casts doubt on the whole idea of rebuilding the city at all, even while surveying the devastation of Gentilly as he eats a po-boy from Zimmer's Seafood. Unbelievable! He also characterizes pre-Katrina New Orleans as a joyless theme park, while making the usual inaccurate outsider's errors, such as assuming the people stumbling still-drunk and blinking from the Bourbon Street bars in the morning are locals, not touristas (or contractors as the case may be now.)

It is just a horrible, horrible culinary poison-pen hatchet job. A sample:

I think people either take to the city or they do not. They buy into the romance, or they abhor the decadence. I know where I stand.
New Orleans was always a three-day stubble of a city, and now, courtesy of Katrina, it’s more like ﬁve. The situation is worse, of course, in the devastated areas, where the floodwaters and the winds did their work. I know we are supposed to salvage what’s left of the city, but what exactly is it that we’re trying to cherish and preserve? I hope it’s not the French Quarter, which has evolved into a illogical mix of characterless housing, elegant antiques stores, and scuzzy bars, a destination for tourists seeking the worst possible experience. The entertainment values are only marginally superior to those of Tijuana, Mexico.

What's so infuriating about it is that this Richman is obviously the kind of smug East Coast hipster who ought to get New Orleans, but he doesn't. Doesn't have a freakin' clue. Thinks he does, but man, does he not.

New Orleans, unique among Soujthern cities, was never much for mealy-mouthed nicey-niceness, but for once I have to follow the moonlight-and-magnolias line: If you can't say something nice, then don't say anything at all.

Thanks to the AV Club's Hater for the heads-up.

Sucks to Be You , Rummy

2006-11-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

I can't say I care for Donald Rumsfeld's intimation during his farewell press conference that the American public is too dumb to understand what's going on in Iraq:

The great respect that I have for your leadership, Mr. President, in this little understood, unfamiliar war, the first war of the 21st century -- it is not well-known, it was not well-understood, it is complex for people to comprehend. And I know, with certainty, that over time the contributions you've made will be recorded by history.

WhatEVER. You're still history, buddy.