December 2008 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Librarian chic

A friend of a friend of mine asked:

Please tell me what life is like for a research librarian. I’m IT support for several different libraries. I work closely with the librarians on a daily basis. Many of them are my age or older and not at all worried about age discrimination as they cross into their 60s and b beyond. The say that this type of problem is just not that important for librarians. I cannot say the same for the IT business. They tell me that it is a very good industry to?look at if I’m thinking about changing careers as I get older. Can you give me some idea of what your level of job satisfaction is? Thank you in advance.

Librarians have been told for years that they will become extinct as more and more information is made available on the Internet. We have not found this to be so. For one thing, someone has to be the gatekeeper as to what is good and what is crap. For another, there will always be specialized databases that you’ll need someone to access and search.

I think there is a librarian ethos of cooperation with each other. I don’t think it’s sexist to say that it may be a more collegial business at least in part because it tends to be a female-dominated business.

When I was in grad school in public administration in 1979-80, it was very competitive, with students actually hiding resources from each other. In library school in 1990-92, students were more helpful to each other.

There can also be a teaching component. We’re trying to get our folks to use blogs, to use Twitter and other newer technologies. This means WE need to know what that stuff and Facebook and other services mean, whether they make sense for us and for our customers, who are business advisors and by extension, the small businesses they serve. Occasionally the learning curve, plus doing what we’re hired to do (reference) is hard to fit in, but we usually manage.

If you have the sense of curiosity necessary to be a good librarian, you’ll do well. If you want something stagnant, probably not so much.
***
“Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control the knowledge. Don’t piss them off.”

– Spider Robinson, science fiction author, from The Callahan Touch
ROG

U is for the United States

visited 30 states (60%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or try another Douwe Osinga project

As you can see from the map above, I’ve been to 30 of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia.

The pictures interspersed in this piece are from my trip to my 30th state by some measure, Illinois, specifically Chicago, different shots from my piece on Chicago here. By other measurements, though, I’d already been there, since I’d been through Chicago’s O’Hare Airport 20 years ago. In any case, the descriptions below do not include airline layovers, and there now no states for which being at the airport is the only connection.

I started thinking: what were the circumstances of the first trip to each state I visited?

Born: New York

Day trip to adjacent state: Connecticut, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Vermont.
When I was growing up, my friend Carol’s family had a cottage south of Binghamton, just inside the PA border.

State visited en route to another place: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, West Virginia.
I feel guilty actually counting Delaware, since it was on a trip to DC. But I did eat there; the rest of them I’ve actually slept in.

Vacation: Georgia, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Ohio, Rhode Island
Is visiting your family actually a “vacation”?

Work-related, FantaCo: California, Wisconsin
California was a twofer. FantaCo flew me out to San Diego in 1987 for the Comic Con and I stayed with my sister, who had moved there a year or two earlier.

Work-related, SBDC: Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas, Utah
In fact the ONLY time (or in the case of FL, times) I’ve been to those states.

Finally, in 1969 or 1970, a bunch of us from high school traveled to Tennessee to help the folks in a very poor rural county. At some point, we were out wandering around without our adult supervision when we came to a sign: Now entering Mississippi. We walked about a half mile before we thought better of the idea of a bunch of northern high school kids of mixed races wandering around in rural Mississippi and returned back to the Tennessee farm we were visiting.

Pictures (C) 2008, Mary Hoffman. Used by permission.
ROG

Horror films? Not for me

One of the overriding problems I had in my later years at FantaCo in the late 1980s was that we were putting out product that I was selling that I did not enjoy. It wasn’t just the Freddy Kruger masks and the Freddy Kruger gloves (plastic, not real) and the Jason Voorhis masks that bothered me. It was all the Herschell Gordon Lewis related material that ewe published that I didn’t read and yet from which I was actually beginning to make a reasonably decent wage that ultimately caused me to quit. It’s not that I had a moral objection to them; it was that I just didn’t enjoy a lot of gruesomeness. I’ve never seen a Sam Peckinpah film, for example. And after seeing A Clockwork Orange, The Godfather and Catch-22 in a short time period, I pretty much swore off movies rated R for violence for nearly a decade. So it’s a miracle that I’ve seen ANY of the movies of the top horror movies. A number of people did this, but I first saw it at Tom the Dog’s.

1.The Exorcist. William Friedkin (1973) – certainly I’ve seen large chunks of this movie at home on TV. Oy.
2.The Shining. Stanley Kubrick (1980) – this movie I actually saw in the movies. And I HATED it, NOT because it was gruesome but because Jack Nicholson’s character seemed to be going crazy when he and Shelly Duval are having their first meeting with Barry Nelson. So I believe NONE of what follows from Nicholson, especially the cutesy “Here’s Johnny!” It felt like Jack doing Jack and I disliked it on that point. Actually thought the excessive amount of blood was laughable, not scary or gory.
3.Alien. Ridley Scott (1979) – saw this in the theater and LIKED it
4.The Silence of the Lambs. Jonathan Demme (1991) – was at my parents’ house and one or both of my sisters was watching it on HBO; I bailed fairly early
5.Saw. James Wan (2004) – now here’s a movie I just will never see
6.Halloween. John Carpenter (1978) – did see large parts of this on TV
7.A Nightmare on Elm Street. Wes Craven (1984) – only small parts of this
8.Ring (Ringu). Hideo Nakata (1998) – neither version
9.The Wicker Man. Robin Hardy (1973) -no
10.The Omen. Richard Donner (1976) -no, still in my no R rated period

11.The Birds. Alfred Hitchcock (1963) – this I saw at some revival theater, and it STILL scares me
12.The Thing. John Carpenter (1982) – no
13.Lost Boys. Joel Schumacher (1987) – don’t think I avoided it, just didn’t see
14.Dawn of the Dead. George A Romero (1978) – always intended to see this, actually
15.The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Tobe Hooper (1974) – oddly enough, this as well. Someday.
16.Jaws. Steven Spielberg (1975) – no, and I feel culturally deprived.
17.The Blair Witch Project. Daniel Myrick & Eduardo Sanchez (1999) – no. might.
18.An American Werewolf in London. John Landis (1981) – no, but still might.
19.Se7en. David Fincher (1995) – probably won’t.
20.Poltergeist. Tobe Hooper (1982) – may someday.
21.The Amityville Horror. Stuart Rosenberg (1979) – probably won’t.
22.Candyman. Bernard Rose (1992) no
23.Scream. Wes Craven (1996) no
24.Carrie. Brian De Palma (1976) probably will someday.
25.Friday the 13th. Sean S Cunningham (1980) certainly I’ve seen parts of it.
26.Final Destination. James Wong (2000) – nope
27.The Evil Dead. Sam Raimi (1981) – probably not
28.Hellraiser. Clive Barker (1987) – nope
29.Hostel. Eli Roth (2005) – heck, no, any more than I’d see Saw I to infinity. This played three blocks from my house and I had zero interest.
30.Salem’s Lot. Mikael Salomon (2004) – maybe some day.
31.The Descent. Neil Marshall (2005) – don’t know this
32.The Hills Have Eyes. Wes Craven (1977) – maybe some day.
33.Wolf Creek. Greg McLean (2005) – don’t know this. Tom got bored.
34.Misery. Rob Reiner (1991) – this movie I actually saw in the movie theater and liked, because it feels so normal on the surface. Around this time, someone told me that they were my biggest fan, not having seen the movie or read the book, and it freaked me out!
35.Rosemary’s Baby. Roman Polanski (1968) – saw this in New Paltz, NY in 1971. Happy memories. Oh, it was the date I was on.
36.Child’s Play. Tom Holland (1989) – don’t know
37.The Orphanage. Juan Antonio Bayona (2008) -don’t know, but I’m guessing not.
38.The Entity. Sidney J Furie (1981) – no, but I might
39.Nosferatu. FW Murnau (1922) – seen segments, not the whole thing
40.Night of the Living Dead. George A. Romero (1968) – feel as though I SHOULD see it
41.House on Haunted Hill. William Malone (2000) – don’t know
42.The Haunting. Robert Wise (1963) – no, but not of any real avoidance.
43.It. Tommy Lee Wallace (1990) – no, and it just didn’t look that good in the previews.
44.Audition. Takashi Miike (1999) – don’t know.
45.The Changeling. Peter Medak (1980) -heard of, but don’t really know
46.The Mist. Frank Darabont (2008) – probably won’t
47.Suspiria. Dario Argento (1977) – probably won’t
48.The Vanishing. George Sluizer (1993) – probably won’t
49.Shutter. Masayuki Ochiai (2008) – don’t know
50.Planet Terror. Robert Rodriguez (2007) – now this I did actually avoid when it was part of Grindhouse

So, I’d say I REALLY saw four, all with one word titles, excluding articles: Shining, Birds, Alien, Misery. I should probably add Exorcist. Five out of 50. Probably will double someday.

ROG

Remembering the living

Today is the anniversary of the death of John Lennon. I realize that, while I always mark his birth (October 9, 1940), I don’t always note his death (December 8, 1980), not just because the death was so tragic and senseless, but because I’d been operating on the assumption that it was somehow disrespectful to focus on death. One should focus on life! Though I do remember calling my friend since kindergarten Karen at 2 a.m. that night Also working at FantaCo the Sunday after, we closed the store for ten minutes in the middle of the afternoon for a time of silence, with some of the customers still inside (at their request).

Then I pondered: am I’m being unrealistic? Public figures, especially, come into one’s life generally after one is born. I remember November 22, 1963 but do I even KNOW John F. Kennedy’s birthday. Well, yes, it’s May 29, 1917, but only because I once blogged about it. (Aren’t blogs educational?)

Likewise, I’m convinced that the push for a Martin Luther King holiday was born, in part, by people who didn’t want April 4, 1968 to be his legacy but January 15, 1929, a/k/a the third Monday in January.

So, I suppose, instead of overthinking this, I should, in the words of one of Mr. Lennon’s colleagues, “let it be.”

THE Lennon song I think about today
The nice video
LINK
The not-so-nice video
LINK.

Odetta died last week. I have a grand double album of her music on something you kids may not recall, vinyl. This was one of my father’s true musical heroes, and her passing, in some way, makes his passing eight years ago, more real.
LINK

LINK

Forry Ackerman, who died a few days ago, was a huge part of my life at FantaCo, for we sold oodles of copies of the magazine he founded, Famous Monsters of Filmland. The earlier issues were classics, but the latter ones, most of which came out after he’d left the publication, were often reprints of previously published material.

It was so significant a publication to publisher Tom Skulan that three years after I left, FantaCo published the Famous Monsters Chronicles. Though a book rather than a magazine, Tom always considered it the last of the Chronicles series that started with the X-Men Chronicles a decade earlier. It’s out of print and apparently in demand based on the Mile High price listing.

I went to see the AIDS quilt last Wednesday. Not so incidentally, the program was cut from five days to four because of budget cuts. For the last three years, I had requested that the section featuring my old friend Vito Mastrogiovanni come to Albany. This year, it made it. There it was, a much more simple design than some of the others. There it was.

Seeing it, I thought I’d get emotional, but I did not. There it is. Until I started talking to one of the guides, a task I had done in previous years, talking about how we were in high school together, how we tried to end the Viet Nam war together, how we partied together. There it is. And then I did get just a little verklempt. There it is – Vito Mastrogiovanni 1951-1991. May 15, 1991, same good friend Karen, who was his best friend, noted when I called her that evening.

There it is.

ROG

Rousseau lost out

A couple months ago, I went to the Albany Public Library to listen to Dr. Ron Bassman, former psychiatric patient and current psychologist, talk about how the mental health profession tends to warehouse mental patients, giving them a “one size fits all” treatment. One of the things he mentioned was the societal pressure for conformity and an intolerance of much variation. That certainly seems true in terms of the uncivil discourse of politics in the United States. It seems even more true, as Dr. Bassman alluded, to the fact that there are more people imprisoned in this country than any other country that people would consider “civilized”. Are Americans more prone to criminal behavior? If not, why do we have so many locked up,when perhaps alternative sentencing may be a more viable option?

Ron told me to go to the Rousseau post in the Wikipedia and check out the highlighted quotation under the discussion of Theory of Natural Man:
“The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this imposter; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.”
— Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 1754

My first thought: I wonder if Woody Guthrie studied Rousseau. My second thought: I wish I knew philosophy better than whatever I studied in one freshman college course over 35 years ago.
***
There is a project aimed to collect limericks for every meaning of every word in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are over 49,000 approved limericks in the Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form and they’re only up to Dd so far.

See, e.g., the 26 entries for aardvark, one of which is:
This really could be quite a lark,
Limericizing aardvark.
Though the rhyme is infernal,
The mammal’s nocturnal.
(It only comes out after dark.)

There are 17 limericks for the Beatles, most of them British album specific, though not this one:
A beetle’s a hardcover bug,
With an arthropod face for a mug,
While the Beatles were all
(John, George, Ringo, and Paul),
Liverpudlians I’d love to hug.

ROG