Snowy Days and Libraries

looking out our front window a few minutes ago

New York City and points north, west, and south have "blizzard-like conditions" today.  I almost always like these days, because, hey, I'm a professor (at Fordham University in the Bronx) and we like the schools being closed every bit as much as do the students.  And with the Web, you have all the connectivity you need to the world, without going out of your house.   But it wasn't always that way ...

Back in the mid-1960s, I lived in the Bronx, was a student at CCNY around 137th Street in Manhattan, and I worked as a clerk at the George Bruce Branch Library on 125th Street in Harlem.  That was a trip in itself.  I often got lunch at a Chinese restaurant on Broadway, where 25 cents bought a big plate of chou mien, with tea, and an orange slice for dessert.  One of the librarians at the library was Ruth Delany.  When she discovered my love of science fiction - which I read every time I was on any kind of break - she told me about her son, Sam Delany, who was just starting out as a science fiction author.  Little did I know then he would be named Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 2013, and I would have the privilege of participating in his selection, since I was a former President of SFWA (1998-2001).

But back to the snow.  More than one blizzard hit the city in the mid-1960s, one of them on a day I was supposed to work at the George Bruce Branch.   CCNY was closed, but the trains were running on a limited schedule, and the library was open.  It had to be.  In those days, although we all had radio and television, a blizzard meant no newspaper delivery, and nothing to read unless it was already in your home.  I called the George Bruce Branch.  Mrs. Delany wasn't in, but the librarian I spoke to told me to go to my local branch - the New York Public Library had intelligently decided that the best way to keep all its branches up and running in the blizzard was have its personnel - librarians (ran the library), clerks (checked out books), and pages (shelved books) - report to work at whatever branch they could walk to.  That, for me, would be the Allerton Branch, about a 10-minute walk from where we lived on Bronx Park East, right around the corner from my Grandma Sarah (who had moved to our neighborhood after decades on the Grand Concourse), and around other corners from my friends Jordie Axelrad and Paul Gorman (Gorman was in several of my rock 'n' roll singing groups back then - here's a home recording of one of our groups, The Transits (which I named after the New York Transit Authority, which ran the trains in those days), singing I Only Want You).

I knew the Allerton Branch well, and loved it.  I used to take every book they had on dinosaurs out for as long as I could.  And when Mrs. Dayson, the librarian at my Junior High School 135, banned me from the school library because all I ever read was science fiction (more details about this here, I should also mention that I dedicated the Kindle edition of The Consciousness Plague to Mrs. Dayson), I brought my wonderful reading obsession to the Allerton Library, and read every science fiction book they had on their shelves.   Indeed, it was there that I first encountered Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy, to this day still my favorite science fiction on the page.  (I wrote to him with my analysis of the trilogy, and he sent me this postcard with his response.)

So I was more than happy to go back to the Allerton Branch Library in that blizzard in the 1960s.  Looking back on that time now, it's clear that society had a sensitivity, or at least the New York Public Library did, that may no longer be with us.  The idea of having workers report to the local branches during the blizzard was brilliant - it kept the libraries open to the public on a day when they were especially needed, and they allowed people who worked at the library not to miss a work day and the pay that it brought.

Here's a toast across time to whoever came up with that plan.  And for everyone else - enjoy the snow, whatever you may be reading, and wherever you may be reading it.

Game of Thrones 7.1: Library Redux

Game of Thrones as everyone knows was back tonight with the start of its seventh season.  It was an altogether excellent episode, satisfying in that every major character was given some time, but one thread I especially liked was Sam in the library.

Libraries have played decisive roles in science fiction, ever since Asimov gave the Library of Trantor such a pivotal role in the search for the Second Foundation in the Foundation trilogy.  This in turn and to some extent was based on the real Library of Alexandria, whose destruction in at least three stages over centuries has been counted as one of the greatest blows, if not the greatest attack, on intellectual history.  Only less than half of Aristotle's works have survived, mainly because unique copies were consumed in the flames that burned Alexandria.

So it was good to see the Library playing such an important role on GoT tonight.  It has a manuscript that shows a place where a huge amount of a resource crucial in the battles ahead is waiting.  And as a nice touch, Jim Broadbent is playing a Maester Librarian.

Speaking of acting, it was also good to see Pilou Asbæk from Borgen playing Euron Greyjoy - nothing to do with the Library, but he looks a lot like Joshua Jackson and his proposal to Cersei was daring and another good scene in 7.1.

And speaking hidden treasures, the closing sequence of  Daenerys coming back to her homeland was a fine short movie in itself.   In previous seasons, these little gems were often so far apart as to leave other parts of the story disadvantaged.  But they all seemed to be moving together tonight, like icebergs and lava on a slow, galactic collision course, with every surviving Stark and all of their enemies and enemies of enemies in some state of play, and the next six episodes should be quite a ride.


See also Game of Thrones 6.1: Where Are the Dragons ... Game of Thrones 6.2: The Waking ... Game of Thrones 6.5: Origin of a Name ... Game of Thrones 6.6: The Exhortation ... Game of Thrones 6.7: Giveth and Taketh ... Game of Thrones 6.8: Strategic Advantage ... Game of Thrones 6.9: A Night for the Light ... Game of Thrones Season 6 Finale: That Library

And see also Game of Thrones 5.1: Unsetting the Table ... Game of Thrones 5.8: The Power of Frigid Death ... Game of Thrones 5.9: Dragon in Action; Sickening Scene with Stannis ... Game of Thrones Season 5 Finale: Punishment

And see also Games of Thrones Season 4 Premiere: Salient Points ... Game of Thrones 4.2: Whodunnit? ... Game of Thrones 4.3: Who Will Save Tyrion ...Game of Thrones 4.4: Glimpse of the Ultimate Battle ... Game of Thrones 4.6: Tyrion on Trial ... Game of Thrones 4.8: Beetles and Battle ...Game of Thrones 4.9: The Fight for Castle Black ... Games of Thrones Season 4 Finale: Woven Threads

And see also  Game of Thrones Season 3 Premiere ... Game of Thrones 3.3: The Heart of Jaime Lannister ... Game of Thrones 3.6: Extraordinary Cinematography ...Game of Thrones 3.7: Heroic Jaime ...  Game of Thrones 3.9: A Critique 

And see also Game of Thrones Back in Play for Season 2 ... Game of Thrones 2.2: Cersei vs. Tyrion

And see also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel ... Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO ... Game of Thrones 1.2: Prince, Wolf, Bastard, Dwarf ... Games of Thrones 1.3: Genuine Demons ... Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things  ... Game of Thrones 1.5: Ned Under Seige ... Game of Thrones 1.6: Molten Ever After ... Games of Thrones 1.7: Swiveling Pieces ... Game of Thrones 1.8: Star Wars of the Realms ... Game of Thrones 1.9: Is Ned Really Dead? ... Game of Thrones 1.10 Meets True Blood

And here's a Spanish article in Semana, the leading news magazine in Colombia, in which I'm quoted about explicit sex on television, including on Game of Thrones.

And see "'Game of Thrones': Why the Buzz is So Big" article in The Christian Science Monitor, 8 April 2014, with my quotes.

Also: CNN article, "How 'Game of Thrones' Is Like America," with quote from me



"I was here, in Carthage, three months from now ..."

Palin Fired the Librarian

Public lending libraries are one of the bedrocks of American freedom. Benjamin Franklin founded the first one in this country. They invite everyone to read what they want, to explore and sample views that may be new to them, at no charge. We may not like some books in any library, but that's actually part of the point. Maybe we'll understand a political opponent a little better, find something of interest in a boring subject, when a book we weren't looking forward crops up on a shelf.

Rumors are all over the Internet about Sarah Palin banning books in the Wasilla library. The rumors are not true.

But what Palin did as Mayor is in some ways much worse than banning a book. She fired the librarian, after several conversations with the librarian about tastes in books.

The New York Times tells the story:

Shortly after becoming mayor, former city officials and Wasilla residents said, Ms. Palin approached the town librarian about the possibility of banning some books, though she never followed through and it was unclear which books or passages were in question.

Anne Kilkenny, a Democrat who said she attended every City Council meeting in Ms. Palin’s first year in office, said Ms. Palin brought up the idea of banning some books at one meeting. “They were somehow morally or socially objectionable to her,” Ms. Kilkenny said.

The librarian, Mary Ellen Emmons, pledged to “resist all efforts at censorship,” Ms. Kilkenny recalled. Ms. Palin fired Ms. Emmons shortly after taking office but changed course after residents made a strong show of support. Ms. Emmons, who left her job and Wasilla a couple of years later, declined to comment for this article.

A town librarian fired by the Mayor because the Mayor found some books "morally or socially objectionable".

I want to ask any Republican readers I have, or anyone at all thinking of voting for McCain/Palin - are you not at least a little bothered by this? That someone who will be just one step away from the Presidency has such a benighted view of democracy, of the role of books in our lives and culture, that she would stoop to firing a librarian over the moral content of books? Honestly, can you live with that?

It seems to me that this goes way beyond lack of experience, or differences on foreign or domestic policy. It goes to the heart of our American experiment in democracy, literacy, and freedom. It's no coincidence at all that the first public library in America was founded by one of our greatest Founding Fathers.

I know the Obama campaign is thinking let's stop talking about Palin, and focus on McCain. But this firing of a librarian by Sarah Palin was aimed at one of the very foundations of America, and should not be forgotten.