Last Catch

So here's the last entry, filled with well-deserved praise for Linda's syllabus and class discussions. Well done, everyone. I have said it in class, but maybe not assertively enough, I absolutely loved the blog aspect of this course.

We had obligatory webct postings in other classes, but somehow those were onerous, and this was delightful. I loved how reading all the posts before the next class would sort of organize our discussions;let us all get a jump-start on what we wanted to discuss. Three hours once a week isn't much, this really stretched it out, kept the class alive through the week.

Like all good classes, I have become infused with new insights and information that have changed me. I'll become a different librarian-- a better one -- I think because of the way my outlook has been tweaked by this course content. I think the elegant thing about this class was how one simple idea, one so obvious that I think it would have been overlooked for ages without this class changed my attitude about library books for young people. We all know what it is:
Just ask. Ask kids what it is they want to read. Then give it to them. Ta Da!

There are many details and codicils to this simple revelation, but ultimately, that's how good library service starts everytime: asking, then listening.

Thanks, everyone. I'm glad we still have a few classes left.

Three Faces of E

Reading the identity articles this week reminded me of an earlier dialogue our class had about our function and identity as librarians. It was the week we discussed V for Vendetta. Myself and a few other students were appalled by the violence and questioned the book’s suitability for teen readers. Keri-Ann and I realized we felt especially repulsed because we are parents of young children. I can only paraphrase what Linda said at the time, but it was something along the lines of: “It shouldn’t matter that you are a parent when providing library services to teens. At that point you are a librarian.” And I can see this comment in the context of the all the multiple identities that we all have throughout the day as described in the "Face in the Mirror, the Person on the Page"piece:

“When I turn from a conversation with a faculty colleague and open the door of my classroom, I reconstruct my identity as a teacher. (The people in the classroom are, in turn, performing for me their identities as my students.) Consequently, I have not a single identity but multiple shifting identities determined by culture and context, and they are sometimes in conflict with one another.”

I like so much in this passage. The first two sentences comfort me, because I realize that being a librarian, having that identity will be in part shaped by the patrons I interact with. Me, the parent/wife/mayor of happy town (my three main identities) will shift into the librarian identity and create a wholly new persona/subset of myself.

I’ve been troubled by thinking I need to marginalize or negate parts of who I am in order to be a good librarian. I cannot change the parts of myself that do not seem to correspond to being a librarian. Reading the last sentence in this passage, realizing that identities will conflict comforts me. It’s better to have them conflict than be forced to disappear – because I don’t think that’s possible.

White Liberal Guilt Alarm Goes Off

While taking a break from the collection development assignment, I trolled over to the YALSA blog. I saw Linda’s post about Freedom Writers. I’m just as excited as ever to see the film, to wallow in the glory of a big-budget bio-pic about someone beating the system. Yeah!

But then a commenter posted this. Huh. I was a little chagrined that I didn’t pick up on this myself. Back in my UCSC days (in the late 1980s) I would have been all over the White Rescuer meme. I recall seeing Mississippi Burning back then and walking out of the theater thinking: only Hollywood could make a movie about Klan terrorism and tell it from the perspective of two white men. And like the blog post title, sometimes I think these movies attempt to assuage what me and my friend’s back at UCSC called white liberal guilt. “See, the underserved are really not so very underserved, right? Someone’s helping them, right? Can I go back to reading my Baudrillard now? Okay, great.” I'll probably never lose my ability to identify that.

But Linda’s point was valid for our class—that adults can make a difference to teens. I plan to watch this movie and be inspired on that level. I’m also grateful for having read the Deldado essay before seeing Freedom Writers. I worry constantly about losing all kinds of perspective, and that this in turn will make me a lousy librarian. I’ll just be some overly idealistic (c’mon, you know with me it’s a definite threat!), unconnected librarian who is not able to analyze the content of all kinds of media and make good choices for my patrons.

I realize this is a blog post comment in the guise of an actual blog post, but I know most of us seemed excited to see the movie, so I thought I would blog here in case anyone missed Linda’s post.

Collective Identity

“Identity” could be my favorite Developmental Asset. I’ve certainly enjoyed focusing on it this week. I could make an argument that it’s the most universal. Depending on one’s socio-economic status, a teen will have -- or need -- varying degrees of experience and support with some of the other assets. But most likely, every teen will explore the issue of personal identity during the entire span of teen years.

Born to Rock provided a smorgasbord of identity issues, and not very subtle ones, either. Goths! Republicans! Gay Teens! I appreciated that. (I kind of struggled the week we discussed Lord Loss as a constructive use of time.) I realize, since this issue is so huge, that perhaps it’s like shooting fish in a barrel, finding teen books with identity themes. But really, Born to Rock was a poster child of sorts for identity issues. I realized that another book I mentioned earlier in the semester, Black Swan Green would also support this asset. Linda opined that she would not necessarily recommend it to a teen, but I never got a chance to check back with why. I was discussing it last night with my husband, because he just finished it. We were talking about the character Jason and how much he struggled in the book. Again, because I am awash in all things identity this week, I realized there are many great examples of teens attempting to hang on to, form, or get rid of their identities. Jason alone has three: poet, cool/popular kid, class whipping post. But when I mentioned to Bob that my instructor would not recommend the book, he suggested that maybe it’s because the book takes awhile to get going…like Anasi Boys, I realized. So maybe that’s why?

I think it was last week that I mentioned my experiences in the South Carolina High School- how there was self-segregation in the cafeteria, and just in general throughout the school community. I honestly felt sure, just based on some vague notion about how I feel our society now reacts to racism, that this scenario would be radically different today. Well, not only was that notion not confirmed by Linda’s observation, this story on cnn.com today illustrates that society changes more slowly than I thought. But it does change.

Which brings me to my blog entry’s title. Reading a story about an integrated prom made me realize that teens – as well as adults—in society, are also working on changing our collective identity. What a radical shift for this community, to see themselves as one group. Well, at least some of them do. Notice the so-called White Prom did take place, under the very weak excuse that it was “already planned”. Still, this is a radical shift for this school’s community. Maybe next year there really will be just one –collective – prom.

Just So Inspired, O Best Beloved

Did anyone else notice the heavy overtones of Kipling’s writing style from the Just So stories? I went to the acknowledgments as soon as I finished reading chapter seven “In Which Fat Charlie Goes a Long Way”, expecting to find a nod to the storyteller, but alas. But then I realized, hey, Kipling was probably just rehashing oral tradition folktales. But still. Gaiman’s in print and so’s Kipling, he should have given him a nod. But then again, writers are usually heavy readers, and it’s likely he just absorbed that style, possibly from just having have those stories read to him as a child.
Check out this passage from Just So Stories:

In the High and Far-Off Times the Elephant, O Best Beloved, had no trunk. He had only a blackish, bulgy nose, as big as a boot, that he could wriggle about from side to side; but he couldn't pick up things with it. But there was one Elephant—a new Elephant—an Elephant's Child—who was full of 'satiable curiosity, and that means he asked ever so many questions…
One fine morning in the middle of the Precession of the Equinoxes this 'satiable Elephant's Child asked a new fine question that he had never asked before. He asked, "What does the crocodile have for dinner?" Then everybody said, "Hush!" in a loud and dretful tone, and they spanked him immediately and directly, without stopping, for a long time.
By and by, when that was finished, he came upon Kolokolo Bird sitting in the middle of a wait-a-bit thornbush, and he said, "My father has spanked me, and my mother has spanked me; all my aunts and uncles have spanked me for my 'satiable curtiosity; and still I want to know what the Crocodile has for dinner!"
The Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, "Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out."

All of the Just So stories take place “when the world was new”, which is the same “land” that Charlie traveled back to. That’s a direct lift from RK. I know all of this probably raises a kind of “eh” reaction, especially if presented in the “WELL! I am just shocked at Mr.Gaiman’s temerity!” kind of way. Let’s face it, there’s not much of an upside to defending Kipling. However, guided readings/book talks would be wise to point out the parallels for those good old curriculum connections to English and history classes.

Actually, I think it would just be good to point out to high school readers as an opportunity to learn more about Kipling!

T.V. Turn-off Week: A Constructive Use of Time?

I thought our on-going discussion about CUOT could use a new wrinkle. Here it is: What does TV turnoff Week mean now that television has so much competition for those teen eyeballs, hearts, and minds from social networking sites? TV Turn-off Week promoters advocate a one week cessation of television in order for TV viewers to possibly develop, or rekindle, other activities that involve more social interaction or physicality. There is no one clearing house of TV Turn-off week information (it was started by Adbusters in 1995). In all the sites I perused, I did not come across much comment about online screen time. But I can tell the paradigm is shifting, because although the URL for one site may be tvturnoff.org, the site title reads: The Center for Screen-Time Awareness. My thoughts on this: Just give them time. Within a few years, The Center for Screen-Time Awareness will perhaps have a new name for this week-long experiment, something like Screen-Time Turn-off Week.

I noticed that all TV Turn-off sites mostly present research promoting the decision to read over television viewing more than other non-TV activities. Yet they also all have information about how TV is a passive activity, and makes you fat.

Sadly, I don’t burn a lot of calories reading. Do you? I’ll tell you what makes you fat, education. Undergrad years give you the freshman fifteen, and don’t get me started on what graduate school has done to my derriere. So much sitting around and reading…but this is a cheap shot and I know it. Even worse, it’s a digression, not a good idea for the blog format. I’m stopping now, promise. But I couldn’t help notice the TV Turn-off advocates were kind of contradicting themselves somewhat with their advice for non-TV watching activities.

I am also wondering about TV Turn-off’s relevance in light of a book I ‘ve been reading, Everything Bad is Good for You by Steven Johnson. In his book Johnson discusses how recent TV shows have more complicated story threads to follow, and are therefore more challenging. (Obviously there’s more to it, but this isn’t a book review.) Johnson presents a through argument that watching TV today is no longer the waste of time it once was, say, 15 years ago when TV Turn off Week first launched. Does the latest addition of computer activity give new life to a phenomenon that was in danger of becoming obsolete in the face of increasingly enriching television offerings?

Which leads to another subject, our TV viewing assignment. I chose the Gilmore Girls. I used to watch the show in the late ‘90s. My friend owns all the episodes, so I must say this colored my choice more than anything. (I mentioned in class about my GG fan friend. Here’s a link to an essay he wrote for all fans. Anyway, Gilmore Girls caught my ear while channel-surfing one night. I paused on the show long enough to hear Lorelei say some funny line like “Yeah, it’s a nice house if you like Edith Wharton as a decorator.” I was surprised— did I just hear a WB show make an Edith Wharton joke? Indeed I did. I started watching from then on. Johnson describes this type of TV show as an intelligent show, rather than a show that makes you intelligent: “The intelligence arrives fully formed in the words and actions of the actors onscreen. They say witty things to each other, and avoid lapsing into tired sitcom clichés, and we smile along in our living room, enjoying the company of these smart people.”

To me, shows like this are an example, underscored by similar comments in Steven Johnson’s book, that our culture has been experiencing an overall improvement in the quality of many goods and services. TV is just one among many. I think what I call the “sink or swim” mentality(as opposed to the lowest common denominator mentality) really started with The Simpsons. Each episode was loaded with often obscure cultural references. The show did, and does, nothing to help you figure out the origin of these references—figure it out yourself, or just enjoy the yucks on the surface, which isn’t that bad an alternative.

My personal example of the new quality standard is Starbucks. Say what you will about the ubiquitous nature of the chain, I find it amazing that a decent cup of coffee only became available to us all so late in the last century. I’ve heard lots of complaints about Starbucks coffee, but people, we are splitting hairs here! Complaining about Starbucks is just another example of the new quality in our everyday lives. Starbucks has nothing on Peets or Torafazione, two other chains on every corner in San Francisco. But before Starbucks, you maybe had a good local, corner café, but other than it, was Denny’s or the 7-11 for the rest of us saps. Now a five dollar cup of coffee is everymans right!