The Curved Path

This isn't the Newbery project (which I'll be doing with my sister, I think) - just an experiment with my iSight camera. Yup, I toted my laptop to the beach.

Posted by kebojo at 4:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let's say you have recently, as in three days ago, completed your masters degree in library science after one-point-five fast-paced yet laborious years.

And let's say you are about to become the children's librarian at a well-loved, well-funded urban neighborhood library.

And let us also imagine that you are realizing how little you actually know about children's literature, even though you like it in general. (Let us say, in fact, that you are far more well-versed in teenage vampire fiction than is healthy for any person, but especially for someone who needs to recommend books to people under four feet tall.)

Meanwhile, let's imagine that you have always wanted to read all the Newbery Medal-winning books for children, dating back to 1922, fully realizing that some of them might be dull.

And let's say you have recently been obsessed with Jezebel.com's trip down memory lane into juvenile fiction of the 1980s.

Also, you are addicted to serial YouTube collaborations by nerdy literate people.

Let's say you're considering joining their ranks and vlogging through the Newberys, two at a time, one from the recent past, one from the distant past. There would be field trips to your library's incredible Children's Literature collection, and possibly interviews with children you have wrangled into reading these books with you. Not to mention humor.

Would you be crazy?

Would you have collaborators, and who would they be?

And what would you call such an endeavor?

(FYI, Newbery Project is already taken. Newbery Experiment is a bit too clinical. Newbery Pie is too cutesy, although I am not averse to puns. I mean, YOU are not averse to puns. All hypothetical.)

Posted by kebojo at 7:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Dr. King gave this speech the night before he was assassinated forty years ago on April 4th, 1968. It is eerily prescient, and its message is still powerfully relevant today, when the luminous promises of the Civil Rights Movement still have not been delivered in full to black people in America. Legal integration has been a reality for decades, but systemic racism is still at large. The dream is not yet reality.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to interview Bakari Kitwana, a standout figure in what has been called the hip-hop generation. He had some astounding insights into today's complex racial climate that, without discrediting the work of Civil Rights leaders, made it clear that it's not enough to rest on Dr. King's laurels. From my article:

...The hip-hop generation has grown up in a world that found a completely new way to marginalize young blacks. They are the first to enjoy the fruits of the civil rights movement, living in a society where rights aren’t explicitly denied based on race. But this also means, Kitwana says, young black people are living in "an American dream that doesn’t fit anymore." Because they grew up without legal constraints, this generation of black citizens were led to believe that they were full and equal partners in American society. But though legal restrictions have been abolished, institutionalized racism and de facto discrimination remain, producing a jarring mix of apathy and anger in those affected.

According to Kitwana, the hip-hop generation needs to be given the authority to address these challenges. "Although the ideas at the core of the civil rights era are still relevant to today’s political landscape (equality, inclusion, and the like)," he wrote in The Hip Hop Generation, "the manner in which they are now being articulated does not translate meaningfully into the ways these issues are manifest among the younger generation."

These statements don’t indicate disrespect or ingratitude toward civil rights leaders. Rather, Kitwana simply encourages them to pass the torch to the next generation. He cites There is a River, by civil rights historian Vincent Harding, as the inspiration for this idea. The "river" in the title is a metaphor for the forward march of African Americans, kept flowing by those willing to jump in. But the book only documents the river’s movement through the civil rights era. Kitwana says it can’t end there: It’s time for hip-hoppers to get wet. "It’s our generation’s turn to jump into the river of struggle to keep it moving."

Dr. King had been to the mountaintop, but the victories he foresaw didn't end with the abolition of segregation. The struggle today is as crucial as the one pioneered by our Civil Rights heroes. In some ways, it is also more difficult, simply because it is more complex. Why do many black people continue to live in a poverty bigger than their own choices? Why do the public schools in my city neighborhood, which are 99% black, continue to show devastatingly low test scores and bristle with violence? When I got mugged last year, why did the police detain a young kid, just minding his own business, even after I insisted that he was not the criminal? Why did the look on that kid's face tell me that he had been there before and knew he would be there again? These questions - and their answers - are deeply woven into our society's fabric, but they also seem inscrutable.

I don't know what Dr. King would think about those questions and their answers. Sometimes I feel he must be very disappointed. But good work is being done by anti-racist groups like Crossroads, whose immersion seminars could rock the world of anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear. And Dr. King would surely be proud of Barack Obama and the shift in society that allows him to be electable.

Even so, we must do more. It is not enough to point to triumphs like Obama and say, "See? We're not racist." The media flap over Obama's "inflammatory" former pastor demonstrates that quite clearly. In this day and age, Dr. King's legacy is that our work is never done. We will always have more to struggle for, more to do, because the poor will always be with us, as King himself preached:

"It's all right to talk about long white robes over yonder, in all of its symbolism. But ultimately people want some suits and dresses and shoes to wear down here! It's all right to talk about streets flowing with milk and honey, but God has commanded us to be concerned about the slums down here, and his children who can't eat three square meals a day. It's all right to talk about the new Jerusalem, but one day, God's preacher must talk about the new New York, the new Atlanta, the new Philadelphia, the new Los Angeles, the new Memphis, Tennessee. This is what we have to do."

More on a certain kind of fire:
> Barack Obama's speech on race
> Dr. King's son takes up the cause against poverty
> A closer look at black liberation theology from NPR
> Adam Taylor on reclaiming MLK's radical vision

Posted by kebojo at 11:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In honor of National Poetry Month, and in honor of spring planting and spring meals, and in honor of friends scattered to the winds:

welcome

my generosity is not steaming
on the table and waiting
for you before you
even know you want it

come to my house friend you
will find my offering still simmering
i have not yet figured out what
you need and your tastes are mystery
still to me

i will wait for you to enter
my kitchen and once here
you can let me know what you like
sweet and slow
pepper and stirred

then we can share in this gift together
both of us giving
both of us receiving
open handed
open hearted

- Suheir Hammad (lifted from Organic Soul, where you can also get an amazing sangria recipe in quantities "enough to get you tore up")

1436 Harvard St

Friends
There are days
Office days and photocopy days
Collapsing into night time

And together we slump
With sighs and whispers leaning
Heavy elbows
Against a wobbly table

Tipping it this way
And then the other way
Back again sipping water
And passing

Forever passing potatoes
From my hand
To your hand
I will hold in prayer

In passing your hands are important
To me and as mismatched
As chairs and napkins
And your dreams

I will hold close
As if delicate
As if breakable
As if my own

- Joshua MacIvor-Andersen (my former Sojo housemate whose musings on living in Mexico can be read at National Geographic's Glimpse blog)

More thoughts on urban food and tables:
> Weavers Way Co-op Farm, cultivated by my neighbor, affectionately known as Farmer Dave
> Straight from the Farm recipe index, maintained by one of the Weavers Way farmhands
> Recipes from Greensgrow, another city farm and CSA in Philadelphia

More favorite poems:
> "Litany" - Billy Collins
> "The Burning of Paper Instead of Children" - Adrienne Rich
> "The Only Animal" - Franz Wright
> "Manifesto: Mad Farmer Liberation Front" - Wendell Berry (and many more)
> Celebrate Poem in Your Pocket Day on April 17. All you have to do is put a poem in your pocket.

Posted by kebojo at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Today I am inventorying, weeding, and re-purchasing books in our juvenile series collection. Some observations:

The Kitten Friends series kind of makes me want to puke rainbows anyway, but I can't get over the cover tagline on Felix the Fluffy Kitten: "Is Felix just too fluffy?" Seriously? This is a question? I am compelled to read the back of the book to determine why, exactly, the cat is "too fluffy." Turns out Jodie's mom is pissed about the fur matting her furniture and clogging the drains. Sixty pages of this, folks.

My husband totally has the exact same white-collared red and blue striped polo shirt Encyclopedia is wearing on the cover of Encyclopedia Brown Gets His Man. Also, on the new covers issued circa 2002, Bugs Meany isn't wearing his Jughead hat. A tragic loss to children's literature.

It really annoys me when kid whodunits have titles like The Case of the Mummy Mystery or The Case of the Cheerleading Camp Mystery. It's redundant. Either you have The Case of the Something Something, or you have The Something Mystery. Maybe The Mystery of the Something Something. But not all of the above in one statement. Mary-Kate and Ashley are repeat offenders in this department.

If I were nine years old again, I'd definitely read a book called Tell a Lie and Your Butt Will Grow. Wouldn't you? No wonder the binding is falling apart. Great-Grandpa's in the Litter Box is also popular.

Posted by kebojo at 3:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

In libraries, adult reference work is very different from services to children. I generally prefer the latter, because the clientele is cuter and more huggable. But I've discovered that grown-ups are just as likely as kids to provide me with some memorable, entertaining dialogue.

Here are a few of my favorites since I've begun working at my current library (very different from the one I chronicled in Day in the Life):

> From my gaggle of harmless but nevertheless creepy stalkers, mostly white, male senior citizens who wander over from the McDonalds next door after breakfast: "Where do you go to school? ... Oh, that's the bad girls school." Also, "What do you think of Britney Spears? You're about her age, right?"

> On an author whom the patron had seen interviewed on television: "I can't remember his name. He's from San Francisco and he's gay. He didn't look gay, though. He just looked like a regular person."

> When I presented a very proper woman in her 80s with yesterday's newspaper, which we didn't have and which I'd run down the street to purchase: "Oh my! Such service! I feel like Mrs. Clinton!"

Posted by kebojo at 4:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

[Note: I started writing this entry in dribs and drabs a few weeks ago, jotting down small moments and bits of dialogue as they occurred. At the time, I was working at a library a few blocks from my house. I was transferred to another library in a different neighborhood very suddenly, so the following no longer reflects the reality of my daily routine. But it was an important period that I'd like to remember, especially career-wise, so that's why I'm posting it even though it's outdated. I plan to follow up with some information about my new job in a few days.]

It's been said about blogging that nobody cares what you had for lunch, but I'm not always sure that's true. I'm out of touch with so many of you, and I'm in a place and career so different from what I've done in the past, that I feel like I owe it to you to catch you up. I mean, I have a cat, for God's sake.

It's not that my life is terribly interesting. The routine rarely varies, restricted as it is by my school responsibilities and the fact that, the older I get, the more I crave small rituals. I do wish I had more time to be spontaneous with friends, to explore my neighborhood without an agenda, to work on a sewing project that I haven't touched in a year, or to go see a movie with my husband and not worry about unfinished homework.

But we do all right. Things have improved vastly now that we have actual friends, people who live a few blocks away, who we can call on relatively short notice to make dinner or go to the pub or take a hike. Since we moved to Philadelphia, and especially since we bought our house, we have a constant stream of out of town visitors and overnight guests, which we love. It forces us to get out into the city, to alter our routine in a way that's healthy. (Incidentally, if you haven't come to stay with us yet, you should.)

But usually, here's what it looks like. A handful of impressions from my daily routine. And for those of you curious what children's librarians actually do ... this is it.

7:30am - Alarm goes off. My husband gets out of bed. The cat resettles next to my head, purring like a machine. We both fall back to sleep.

7:50am - Nathan sits down on the bed to put on his socks and shoes, jostling me and the cat. Then he leans over till he's laying across the bed and into my face. Kisses. Goodbye. Be careful. I love you.

8am - I manage to put my feet on the floor, then shower, dress, primp half-assedly, and find something portable to eat. Most days, I wear jeans, a colorful top, and interesting earrings. I am partial to Nutri-Grain bars.

8:30am - I walk down the street, greeting neighbors who haven't yet departed for work. At the corner, I turn left to get a coffee at the Urban Cafe, a local joint renowned for its gruff but kind owner Tom and its made-to-order menu. Recently, the cafe had a bad electrical fire, so until they rebuild, I'm stuck with the Dunkin' Donuts further up the block.

8:45am - After a five minute walk east, I'm at work. I will probably never have a commute this easy again, so I try to be thankful for it every morning. As I round the corner to the library's back entrance, an older guy who hangs out by the bus stop greets me. We have this exchange almost every day. He tells me that I dropped a piece of his heart, I roll my eyes, and we both smile.

Inside the building, I say hi to the ladies in the circulation department. My favorite security guard waves and spouts his usual greeting, "Hey, it's Cool Kate!" He asks if I remembered to see about jobs at my husband's social service agency for his friend. I forgot, of course, and apologize.

9am - My co-workers in the children's department have trickled in, and we assemble in the basement workroom. We shoot the shit for awhile, neighborhood gossip and television shows. My supervisor describes the dressing-down she gave a woman in another branch who spoke rudely to her, intimating that she knows this woman used to do cocaine and could ruin her. I decide once again never to get on her bad side.

Down to business: we look at the schedule to see which day cares and school groups are coming in for storytimes. Usually there are three storytimes for a variety of age groups. We each take one, but some are more desirable than others. Certain elementary school classes are better behaved, while some of the day care kids can't keep their eyes open or act like they've never sung "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider" before. Maybe they haven't.

9:30am - I get the 11 o'clock group, so I take my time checking my email. Then I look at my collection of picture books and try to match up a relevant theme with the age group. This morning I have 3-5 year olds, my favorites. They're old enough to be comfortable doing group activities, but still young enough to be game for anything. I decide on Crazy Pets, a storytime I could do in my sleep by now.

I have time, so I start looking for other books, songs, and rhymes to do with a kindergarten group later in the week. Slowly a theme emerges: Crazy Food. I guess I'm into Crazy lately. I'm excited because I'll get to teach the kids one of my favorite camp songs, "Fried Ham."

11:10am - The day care kids file down the stairs in their brightly colored and hilariously bulky winter attire. The teachers wave, and the kids greet me too. Somewhere along the way they have gotten the idea that my name is Miss Cake. Kate is foreign to them, but cake is a known quantity. I like to think of Miss Cake as my fabulous children's librarian alter ego.

11:20am - After I finish reading Please, Puppy, Please by Spike Lee and Tonya Lewis Lee, which has great illustrations and a catchy rhythm, half a dozen kids shriek, "READ IT AGAIN!" This is the highlight of my day.

11:40am - We sing our last song, "Down By the Bay," and then I read Going on a Bear Hunt by Michael Rosen, which the kids can participate in. They all scream in mock horror and total delight when we find the bear in the cave. Sometimes I feel guilty because I am getting paid good money to do something so fun.

11:45am - The kids are out on the library floor, sitting at knee-high tables and flipping through books. Most of these children can't read yet, but that doesn't stop them from making up the story as they go along (an important pre-literacy skill).

Today a little girl with braids and plastic barrettes that go clack-clack-clack wants to "read" to me. She licks her finger carefully before turning every page. This is how I know she's being read to at home, because the affectation is clearly an imitation of someone else, her grandmother, maybe. I see another kid sitting in the corner, holding up a picture book the way I do during storytime, reading to a collection of bedraggled stuffed animals she has seated on a bench. This is the other best part of my day.

12pm - I walk home for lunch. I wash my hands twice before I prepare my food; kid germs are killer, and my hands always feel coated by this time of the day. The cat sits on my lap while I eat reheated red beans and rice and surf mindlessly on Facebook or read a book for class.

1pm - I retrieve our newly processed books from the shelf in circ and roll them downstairs on a cart. They're all shiny and tight in their cellophane covers, but the children will destroy them soon enough, as they should. I'm glad to see that we finally got a new book on AIDS. Some kid asked for stuff last week and the two books we had were from the eighties.

I settle at the front desk with my cart and start applying genre labels to the new book spines - fantasy, historical fiction, African American. I'm interrupted every few minutes by the phone, a question from a co-worker, the arrival of a group of students for our late-afternoon storytime, a request for a book with science experiments from a parent.

Queen, a teenager from the homeless shelter around the corner, drops in to see if she can use the piano in the meeting room. Word has spread that we let kids fiddle around on it when nobody's using the room. I don't know why piano is suddenly all the rage, but we get at least three teenagers a day who want to pound the keys. Queen puts on headphones while she plays by ear, and we're treated to a very serviceable medley of Alicia Keys and "Heart and Soul."

3:30pm - School's out, and the children's room is in full swing. Our after-school assistants help kids with their homework and do the general wrangling required to keep 50 kids under the age of 12 from causing total destruction. In the meantime, I answer reference questions and enjoy their company.

My Rastababy, a six-year-old with dreds stuffed into a hat, hovers around the desk. He needs ideas on how he can raise two dollars to replace the library card he's lost for the millionth time. He is smacking his gum loudly, and my supervisor tells him it's disgusting, that it looks like he's chewing a monkey's head. He looks deeply offended and says that he's a vegetarian. Then he swallows the gum and bounces away doing Soulja Boy moves.

Miles, inspired by a classroom assignment about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., asks me what religion I am. I pause, unsure how to answer, and tell him I'm unaffiliated. That seems to satisfy him, even though I doubt he knows what the word means. I spend the rest of the afternoon wondering why I didn't say I was a Christian.

A middle-aged women with a New York accent asks me if I've seen her son, "the white kid." I point. He's the only one down here.

A shy boy I haven't seen before is looking for science fiction, "the outer space kind." He's read everything I hand him. Finally I retrieve a dog-eared paperback copy of Ender's Game from the teen department. He looks awed when I hand it to him. "Oh, I've heard about this," he whispers reverently. I crack up internally. Future nerdfighter.

Tiffany comes in, looking bored and too sophisticated for a fifth-grader, her lips shiny with pink gloss. She has to do a report on which presidential candidate she would vote in 2008, but she doesn't know anything about them. "And I don't care," she announces. "This stuff dumb." I can't say I disagree, Tiff. I start looking for a kid-friendly guide that lays out all the positions by candidate, but have no luck, so I ask Tiffany a few questions about election issues. When we get to the war, she suddenly lights up like I've brought up a new Hannah Montana episode. "That war CRAZY," she proclaims, working her neck. "I will vote for someone who can do something about that war." She eventually settles on Barack Obama. I am secretly pleased.

5pm - Closing time. I say goodbye to everybody and walk home in the gathering twilight. The Jones kids, who are at the library everyday after school, yell to me from the corner where they're waiting for their mom to pick them up. "See you tomorrow, Miss Cake!"

Nathan is already home when I arrive, working on a project in the basement. Today it's racking his latest batch of wine (cabernet sauvignon), tomorrow it might be installing a utility sink or soldering something just for kicks. All of these things improve his happiness quotient by about a bazillion.

I hang out with him downstairs for awhile, then sit down in the living room with my laptop and surf mindlessly for a few minutes. Finally I can put it off no longer, and get to work on a paper that's due for my management class. Procrastination is less of an option now that I'm working full time and taking three classes.

7pm - We have a standing dinner date with our friends Matt and Lisa once a week. We trade off weeks hosting and cooking, then watch LOST together after we eat and chat. Tonight we pick up a bottle of wine at the state store and head down to their place for the most amazing butternut squash risotto I've ever tasted.

9pm - LOST is actually pretty good this season. We drink tea and gasp at all the right places and speculate during the commercial breaks. Lisa guesses correctly about the revelation in the episode's last moments. Props, girl, because I did not see that coming.

10:30pm - I'm in bed, reading myself to sleep with my latest book club pick. The cat is curled up on my feet and Nathan is brushing his teeth in the bathroom, doing his usual humorous Tourette's-like nonsense-squawking routine.

It's a little life, but it's mine.

Posted by kebojo at 12:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

In the process of updating the links that appear in the right-hand sidebar of this blog, I came across the following information, products, recipes, videos, and other assorted delights:

>> "I want to Barack your world" valentines from an Etsy.com seller. Topical!

>> Butternut squash macaroni and cheese recipe. I can't emphasize enough how much you won't regret this.

>> Watch this Philadelphia lady make her awesome block print shirts on MARTHA! If you're having a baby you're getting one of these.

>> Five Awesome Girls is an offshoot of my favorite YouTube project of 2008, Brotherhood 2.0. Harry Potter references abound (and go over my head), but these are the kind of teenagers you're relieved to find out exist.

>> "When you look at the enormous communal plate you feel you the luckiest motherfucker of all time." Let Mindy Kaling - better known as Kelly Kapoor on NBC's The Office - take you on a tour of everything you should buy even if you can't afford it, including the Ethiopian food she's describing in the above quote.

While I'm at it, I also have to give kudos to Facebook. Never have I loved a social networking website so deeply for its ability to connect me with people I like on an informal, low-pressure basis. I mean, I just became friends with my dad's former boss-slash-mentor's wife, who is at least 60 years old, and who used to send me awesome Mac-based computer game prototypes on floppy disk when I was just a wee baby geek in grade school. This is so cool, is it not?

Posted by kebojo at 9:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Over the past few years, the Harry Potter phenomenon has made it kosher for responsible adults to carry around literature intended for kids. And not only to be seen reading children’s books in public—to obsess over them. Grown people don’t hesitate to discuss the finer points of quidditch on electronic discussion boards, compose songs about wizardry as an intelligent career move, or dress up as teenaged sorcerers in anticipation of each new book’s release.

All this is quite a relief to me, personally. Although I read a lot of fiction intended for adults, I have failed to abandon—and, in fact, often prefer—the types of books I read in high school. These days I have a bonafide professional reason for it: I’m four credits away from becoming a public librarian, and public librarians need to know What The Kids Are Into. But that aside, I don’t think I could give up the world of young adult fiction anyway. It’s too fun, too morbidly humiliating and exhilarating, too emotionally complex—and, these days, too well-written...

>> Read more about my Top Ten Young Adult Books for Grown-Ups at catapult magazine.

>> Revisit your favorite teen lit of yore - including the witch-tastic Summer of Fear by Lois Duncan - at Jezebel's Fine Lines reviews.

Posted by kebojo at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Living vicariously through my dear friend and international relief superstar Sarah M. is an old pastime of mine. Most recently, she realized my ultimate fantasy of appearing on a public radio program.

Far better her than me, though - only Sarah could speak so eloquently about the issue at hand on PRI's The World, namely gender-based violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo. She is the GBV coordinator for a large aid organization there, where she works with women whose bodies are used as pawns in violent conflict.

>> Listen to Sarah on PRI's The World, or read the full transcript of the interview.

A month ago, I sat in a funky Brookline hair salon with Sarah, catching up at the beginning of her holiday leave. She was still jet-lagged and culture-shocked, and the first order of business (after breakfast) was a cut and color. I ended up asking her about the women she knows in DRC, and why the hell so many of them are getting raped, and what the hell anybody could do about it.

(I can only guess what the stylist, coating Sarah's hair with dye and folding it carefully into aluminum foil squares, thought about this conversation. Possibly "God, lighten up and read Marie Claire, already.")

Sarah's stories, and her partly sad, partly angry, completely fatigued statement that "I'm really tired of rape," haven't left me since. Neither has her reply to a question I asked the previous evening, almost hypothetically, during a discussion about Philip Pullman's Golden Compass series. I was blathering about the tension between free will and determinism in the books, explaining how a dictatorial church would stop at nothing to prevent the heroine from causing a second fall. I think I asked something like, "If you had the chance to prevent the fall, even if it meant taking away free will, would you? I wouldn't."

I wasn't even sure Sarah was still awake at that point, a glass of wine tilting precariously in her hand, the jet lag taking over. "I would," she said, suddenly looking at me, smiling her Sarah half-smile. I saw a lot of things in her sleepy eyes just then.

She says she's tired of rape. She's more cosmopolitan, a true expatriate, than the last time I saw her; more detached from her work in a necessary, healthy way than she has been in the past. One must be blase after a certain point, or else live in a non-stop hell of emotions, fear, hatred, hope, despair.

But here is a woman who has seen what people can do to each other, and who says she would stop it all if she could. It left me feeling conflicted, and gladder than ever to call her my friend.

More about DRC gender-based violence:
> NYT: Rape Epidemic Raises Trauma of Congo War (with excellent slideshow)
> Eve Ensler reports in Glamour
> Anderson Cooper on the DRC conflict

(Hi, by the way. I am unceremoniously back.)

Posted by kebojo at 8:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)