NEWS FROM KENT:
Well, it would seem that people our age (50-somethings) are beginning to drop like flies. I see more obituaries for people in my approximate age group, suggesting that perhaps our generation's lifespan is somehow being prematurely foreshortened by....who knows what? Lifestyle? Stress? Lack of proper medical attention due to escalating costs of health care? Sure wish I knew why it is that 14 of my friends my age or younger have died in the past year and a half or so of mostly preventable things like heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer and other things. Times were, I went to my friends parents funerals; now it's my friends who are dying, and at far too young ages. If they don't manage to die off, they are being felled by heart attacks and other things that can be prevented by proper medical screenings.
The latest casualties in Kent are Councilman-at-Large Bill Schultz, 53, who died January 3rd of renal failure. Admittedly, I thought that this sort of thing was treatable via dialysis and eventual organ transplant, but in Bill's case, I guess the only thing that they could do for him was dialysis, and even that, after a while, failed to keep him healthy. Of course, things were complicated by the fact that he had been a quadriplegic since a lunchroom accident at school when he was 14, so having spent nearly the past 40 years completely immobilized didn't help matters any. Still, given his physical limitations, he sure led a full life and left a legacy to Portage County that has benefited thousands of people. And the other casualty is Roger DiPaolo, 52, editor of the Record-Courier, who suffered a severe heart attack last week but survived it and has had quadruple bypass surgery and is currently recuperating from it. At least Roger survived his heart attack and is probably going to face a long recovery as well as a major lifestyle change that is the result of any kind of heart surgery. He at least has never, as long as I have known him and that's a pretty darn long time, been overweight. I suspect his problem was caused by hereditary cholesterol issues that he never got screened for. Well, this should serve as one hell of a wake-up call for him to start paying attention to his body.
BOOK RAMBLINGS:
I just read two not very long but very good, and very different, books. The first one was a hilarious memoir of the working life in a large urban library, much like where I work, called "Free-For-All: Oddballs, Geeks and Gangstas in the Public Library" by former Cleveland native Don Borchert. I laughed so hard through each chapter, recognizing the kinds of episodes we've either encountered first hand on the job, or heard about from people in other departments around the library. Such things as unmentionable things going on in the restrooms, patrons registering for multiple library cards under mysteriously changed names and then ripping the library blind for "lost" materials, gangs of rowdy teens invading the quiet of the library after school, patrons viewing questionable things on the computer screens, people who seem not to know the meaning of "personal hygiene", wacked out homeless people scaring innocent patrons, obscene, obnoxious and rude, demanding patrons breathing down circulation staff's necks...the list goes on and on, but libraries are no longer the quiet havens for studious intellectuals. Rather, they have become an almost tax supported Blockbuster store, with more DVD's going out than books or other written materials.
Believe me, they never tell you this about the library when you hire into the staff. You have to play multiple roles, from teacher to security guard to computer specialist to movie expert to parent to....well, you name it, we do it. And it can be downright exhausting and stressful after a day of dealing with society's detritus and the other yahoos that frequent the library hell bent on being a royal pain in the neck to the staff. This ain't your granddaddy's library anymore, kids. Rather, it's a frequently noisy and bustling multi-entertainment complex staffed by shy librarians who want nothing more than to be left alone to read a good book and answer the occasional reference question. Well, the Internet has changed all that. Now, we have to be 'Net savvy computer geeks in order to function as library staff. Many of my colleagues barely know where the "on" button is, let alone being able to troubleshoot Windows XP software problems. Of course, that's why we have an IT Department, to run to them when things go awry - if we can reach them and not just their voice mail, that is. So....you get the picture. It's gotten away from being the quiet haven of shushing librarians and instead is an entertainment complex that is trying to be all things to all people....and at times, doesn't manage to quite succeed, but hey, we're trying!
The other book I want to mention is a paean to the southern redneck, called "Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War" by Joe Bageant. What attracted me to this book is that it's set in Winchester, Virginia, a beautiful town that I have visited. But it's also in the reddest part of the reddest state in America, home to a permanent underclass of people that the Republican Party has done their best to keep down the economic ladder, and yet, these selfsame people vote Republican against their very own self interest due to suspicion of the latté sipping, Volvo driving, highly educated coastal liberals who could save them from their self imposed misery, due largely in part to their tenacious clinging to Calvinist theology that teaches them that they aren't worth a damn. Bageant rails against the ignorance that keeps these people down and also rails against the liberal coastal establishment for looking down their collective highly educated noses at what they perceive to be an ignorant lot not worth their time to speak to. And yet he cries out that these are the very people that the liberals ought to be reaching out to because they've been so badly oppressed by those in the party they seem to maintain their unswerving loyalty to. This is a sad, funny, profane, maddening book that will open your eyes to the permanent underclass so courted by the Religious Right for their purposes. I just wish that our side would go out and try to sway those folks to our side of the aisle, but it's going to take getting off of their oh-so-educated high horses and talking to those folks who could better benefit from liberal policies. We'll see what happens and whether Hillary or Obama bothers to go campaigning in places like these. If you want my opinion, I rather doubt it. But all I can say is that I hope that I am wrong about this and that they do. Time will tell. Stay tuned.......
Well, it would seem that people our age (50-somethings) are beginning to drop like flies. I see more obituaries for people in my approximate age group, suggesting that perhaps our generation's lifespan is somehow being prematurely foreshortened by....who knows what? Lifestyle? Stress? Lack of proper medical attention due to escalating costs of health care? Sure wish I knew why it is that 14 of my friends my age or younger have died in the past year and a half or so of mostly preventable things like heart attacks, strokes, diabetes, cancer and other things. Times were, I went to my friends parents funerals; now it's my friends who are dying, and at far too young ages. If they don't manage to die off, they are being felled by heart attacks and other things that can be prevented by proper medical screenings.
The latest casualties in Kent are Councilman-at-Large Bill Schultz, 53, who died January 3rd of renal failure. Admittedly, I thought that this sort of thing was treatable via dialysis and eventual organ transplant, but in Bill's case, I guess the only thing that they could do for him was dialysis, and even that, after a while, failed to keep him healthy. Of course, things were complicated by the fact that he had been a quadriplegic since a lunchroom accident at school when he was 14, so having spent nearly the past 40 years completely immobilized didn't help matters any. Still, given his physical limitations, he sure led a full life and left a legacy to Portage County that has benefited thousands of people. And the other casualty is Roger DiPaolo, 52, editor of the Record-Courier, who suffered a severe heart attack last week but survived it and has had quadruple bypass surgery and is currently recuperating from it. At least Roger survived his heart attack and is probably going to face a long recovery as well as a major lifestyle change that is the result of any kind of heart surgery. He at least has never, as long as I have known him and that's a pretty darn long time, been overweight. I suspect his problem was caused by hereditary cholesterol issues that he never got screened for. Well, this should serve as one hell of a wake-up call for him to start paying attention to his body.
BOOK RAMBLINGS:I just read two not very long but very good, and very different, books. The first one was a hilarious memoir of the working life in a large urban library, much like where I work, called "Free-For-All: Oddballs, Geeks and Gangstas in the Public Library" by former Cleveland native Don Borchert. I laughed so hard through each chapter, recognizing the kinds of episodes we've either encountered first hand on the job, or heard about from people in other departments around the library. Such things as unmentionable things going on in the restrooms, patrons registering for multiple library cards under mysteriously changed names and then ripping the library blind for "lost" materials, gangs of rowdy teens invading the quiet of the library after school, patrons viewing questionable things on the computer screens, people who seem not to know the meaning of "personal hygiene", wacked out homeless people scaring innocent patrons, obscene, obnoxious and rude, demanding patrons breathing down circulation staff's necks...the list goes on and on, but libraries are no longer the quiet havens for studious intellectuals. Rather, they have become an almost tax supported Blockbuster store, with more DVD's going out than books or other written materials.
Believe me, they never tell you this about the library when you hire into the staff. You have to play multiple roles, from teacher to security guard to computer specialist to movie expert to parent to....well, you name it, we do it. And it can be downright exhausting and stressful after a day of dealing with society's detritus and the other yahoos that frequent the library hell bent on being a royal pain in the neck to the staff. This ain't your granddaddy's library anymore, kids. Rather, it's a frequently noisy and bustling multi-entertainment complex staffed by shy librarians who want nothing more than to be left alone to read a good book and answer the occasional reference question. Well, the Internet has changed all that. Now, we have to be 'Net savvy computer geeks in order to function as library staff. Many of my colleagues barely know where the "on" button is, let alone being able to troubleshoot Windows XP software problems. Of course, that's why we have an IT Department, to run to them when things go awry - if we can reach them and not just their voice mail, that is. So....you get the picture. It's gotten away from being the quiet haven of shushing librarians and instead is an entertainment complex that is trying to be all things to all people....and at times, doesn't manage to quite succeed, but hey, we're trying!
The other book I want to mention is a paean to the southern redneck, called "Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War" by Joe Bageant. What attracted me to this book is that it's set in Winchester, Virginia, a beautiful town that I have visited. But it's also in the reddest part of the reddest state in America, home to a permanent underclass of people that the Republican Party has done their best to keep down the economic ladder, and yet, these selfsame people vote Republican against their very own self interest due to suspicion of the latté sipping, Volvo driving, highly educated coastal liberals who could save them from their self imposed misery, due largely in part to their tenacious clinging to Calvinist theology that teaches them that they aren't worth a damn. Bageant rails against the ignorance that keeps these people down and also rails against the liberal coastal establishment for looking down their collective highly educated noses at what they perceive to be an ignorant lot not worth their time to speak to. And yet he cries out that these are the very people that the liberals ought to be reaching out to because they've been so badly oppressed by those in the party they seem to maintain their unswerving loyalty to. This is a sad, funny, profane, maddening book that will open your eyes to the permanent underclass so courted by the Religious Right for their purposes. I just wish that our side would go out and try to sway those folks to our side of the aisle, but it's going to take getting off of their oh-so-educated high horses and talking to those folks who could better benefit from liberal policies. We'll see what happens and whether Hillary or Obama bothers to go campaigning in places like these. If you want my opinion, I rather doubt it. But all I can say is that I hope that I am wrong about this and that they do. Time will tell. Stay tuned.......
1 comment:
One person has got angry that I have posted on blogs about my own book (also a humor memoir on libraries), so I won't mention it here, but you can see it on my own blog.
I will say that there is another book far better then Free for All; it's called "Library: An Unquiet History." It takes place in a college library, and isn't funny, but is quite fascinating...if you want to know what your job is about then check it out! Also, check out "Revolting Librarians Redux: Radical Librarians Speak Out"...another great book about the profession.
Free for All had it's moments (although honestly I've heard far better from other librarians), but I have a personal grudge against the guy because of some nasty comments he made about librarians in USA Today...FYI, this is what he said: librarians tend "not to be overly ambitious people. Not extroverts. It's a way for some people to hide. But that doesn't mean they're not good people."
Obviously, I'm not going to nag the guy too much, because he is bringing some need attention to a profession that certainly needs it, but I think he's painted a picture of libraries that is, at times, not entirely accurate.
Scott
www.scottdouglas.org
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