Is it just a coincidence that I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly a few days before I read about the death of author, Christopher Nolan?  Maybe, but I love the serendipity of discovering two unrelated things.  Must be why I’m a librarian.

Both the subject of the movie, Jean-Dominique Bauby, and the author, Nolan,  published books under extremely difficult conditions.  Bauby, at age 43, became totally paralyzed except for his left eyelid and Nolan, from birth, was mute and a quadriplegic. 

If anyone needs uplift and reminders that, current world news notwithstanding, life is much richer than we can imagine, these two men certainly provide them.  Nolan’s poetry is word-dazzling and his autobiography, Under the Eye of the Clock, was a best-seller here and in the UK and won the Whitbread Prize.  Bauby had been editor-in-chief of Elle when he suffered a cerebro-vascular incident and went from living la bonne vie to living only in his mind.

Bauby’s memoir, titled the same as the movie, is more concerned with space and freedom (or the lack of it) and memory.  He dictated it to his therapist by blinking his eye when she said the correct letter. Nolan’s book is more concerned with time than space and is as inventive as his poetry.  He “wrote” it using a stick attached to his head with which he hit the keys of a typewriter.

Bauby died two days after his book was published; Nolan died twenty-two years after his autobiography came out.

I thought  Maine had so very little funding for public library renovation and construction until a colleague from Illinois emailed me that his state distributed just barely more.  While Illinois has a progressive public library system structure that Maine does not have,  that state suffers from the same Death Valley of construction funding as Maine and other states.

The mechanism to get federal dollars for library construction to local libraries exists.  The Library Services and Technology Act, a grants program administered by the Institute of Museums and Library Services, is the kind of program which passes federal money to state libraries.  It used to be called the Library Services and Construction Act, how about that?  Of course, that act was plagued by far too many arguments over which programs to support or not and the value of those programs.  What was important to Nebraska might not have much impact in Rhode Island.

Why can’t a new LSCA or a Library Construction Act be created to solely address federal funding of public library construction?  State library agencies would create an evaluation team to score project submissions from the fields.  The Maine State Library is already doing  exactly this with its New Century Grants for renovation and construction.  New Century is a bond issue voted on by Maine voters that dedicates money for state cultural agencies.  Alas, the amount that the Maine State Library awarded to 16 libraries was just shy of $500,000.  Can’t buy many bricks or much mortar with that kind of money. 

Is anyone in Washington listening?

I’ve spent parts of the past 30 days with upper respiratory distress.  It wasn’t as good as snorkeling but it was close.

OK, what to make of the Stimulus Package as far as libraries are concerned?  There has been much gnashing of teeth and lighting of torches on PUBLIBS over a perceived lack of lobbying by ALA for public library construction money. 

Since schools and universities are on the list for construction, and their libraries I would assume, what the hell happened to public libraries?  Public universities and schools already receive money from their states for construction.  And maybe that’s it in a nutshell.  The mechanism for getting money to schools and universities is already in place.  There is doodly in place for public libraries and don’t try that LSTA thing on me.  There isn’t any LSTA money in Maine for renovation or construction and there isn’t any in many states.

It is time for ALA to push for federal money for public library construction now that the first stimulus bill has been passed by Congress.  In a state as poor as Maine, all public and school libraries already have broadband Internet access.  I know that isn’t the case for other states especially those with large rural areas.  However, when the LSCA federal funding disappeared for public libraries, the burden fell to local populations to bond for construction funding.  Renewed federal funding for this purpose would go a long way to levelling the playing field and meeting a desperate need.

There are far too many libraries that don’t have the physical space to add computer workstations a la Gates grant projects; that don’t have the staff or the space for recession programming; that don’t have the staff to train and supervise hiring older workers.  Just where is the beef?

Jhumpa Lahiri’s Unaccustomed Earth is my new favorite book of 2008.  I had previously held Richard Price’s Lush Life as my favorite and it is a terrific novel.  Lahiri’s stories are powerful and there are times when you feel that she’s punched you in the stomach when following the emotional twists and turns that her characters take.  These are not contrived or puppet string-pulling on her part.  They are believable and gut-wrenching.

What I was thoroughly impressed with was the author’s ability to write about attachment and loss.  You not only feel how attachment and loss play a part in the characters’ development but also in yourself.  Lahiri writes about Indian immigrants and the cultures they came from and the cultures they recreate or create here in the U.S.  These cultures are crucial to the characters and to your own understanding of the stories.  But, like the old ad once stated, “you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s rye bread.”  All immigrant groups have experienced or are experiencing the loss of attachments that make them who they are.  I would even include those who emigrate to different parts of the same country in this same category. 

How do immigrants  make homes here in America?  How can immigrant parents relate to their rapidly westernizing children?  What will those children remember most about their parents?  Jhumpa Lahiri explores these questions some times gently, some times probingly.  Hearts are broken and, at other times, crushed.  The stories in Unaccustomed Earth are powerful and provide a revealing look inside all of us who are from someplace else.

National news stories from all over are commenting on increases in circulation at libraries all over the country.  Many are reporting increases of 10 to 12%.

Here in Maine, a look at public library circulation for the month of January 2009 shows increases of 16-18% with some libraries reporting 20% increases.  These are above the reported national figures but there may well be libraries with circulation increases far above 20%.

What this indicates is that library use is going through the roof and not only because people can save money by not buying books.  As an aside, I’ll be very interested to see what the publishing industry’s sales figures look like for the first quarter of 2009 to see if they’ve decreased and by how much.

Libraries didn’t just start offering materials for loan,  programs to attend, computers to use, reference and research assistance and spaces for meetings in 2008.  They’ve been doing this for decades.  What’s become more noticeable is that libraries are adapting to the recent wave of layoffs and hard economic times by tailoring programs to the unemployed, assisting people with job hunting and career development, offering high speed Internet service and inviting small business development specialists to libraries for business start-up programs.

Actually, none of these are brand new either.  Libraries did this in the late 1970s, the late 1980s and the early 1990s.  It is a pity that library budgets are being cut just when their services are needed most.  I hope that this economic recession has at least one silver lining – the importance of well-supported public libraries as a community’s lifeline not only in hard times but for all times.

Where’re those shoes at, anyhow?  I need a boxful ofthese so I can fire them at the latest bunch of booboisees who advocate for more tax cuts.  Tax cuts?  Are you kidding me?  Tax cuts are one of the reasons  we have a hole so deep that we can’t get out of. 

Haven’t the wealthy had enough time at the trough?  Approximately 25% of the Recovery Act passed by the House is dedicated to tax cuts.  This time, most of the cutting is benefiting the poor and middle class but some also benefits families making $150,000.  Now, I know that in Maine this figure would put you in the Prince of Monaco category but not so in New York, Illinois, Florida or California – or, practically anywhere else, now that I think about it.  Nonetheless, this tax cut business was a bone thrown to the Republicans and none of them voted for the Recovery Act anyway.

I hope the Senate strips out some of the tax cuts but that’s as close to happening as Rod Blagojevich being canonized……wait, wait, it could happen!

Why aren’t public libraries represented in the Recovery Act?  School libraries, universities (and, I assume university libraries) and rural libraries are specifically mentioned.  What are public libraries – chopped liver?  Although programming funding would be a decent idea for large public libraries, the greatest good for the greatest number of public libraries is renovation and expansion funds.  These funds are either nonexistent, as in Maine and many other states, or have been cut drastically, as in Massachusetts. 

I’m going to beat this drum until I see smoke.

This is news from 2 weeks ago, which is eons in blogdom, but I just couldn’t let it go.  Remember Neale Donald Walsch?  If you’re a librarian or bookseller, you can’t forget him.  His Conversations with God spent years on the best-seller lists.

Well, it appears that Walsch’s conversations with the deity were really someone else’s and he just THINKS they were his.  He supposedly unintentionally copied the work of another writer.  He has suddenly been stricken with “cryptomnesia” wherein people believe they are remembering events that never happened to them.  Yeah, that’s the ticket!

How many times has this occurred to the divine Walsch?  Just this once or is he infected with the virus of deceit?  What is truly amazing is the reaction of his many fans on his blog on Beliefnet (heavy accent on the “belief” part).

Oh, it’s just a silly mistake and stuff like this happens to us all the time!  We need you Neale!  The desperation is right there for all to see.  Cognitive dissonance is the ability to hold 2 contradictory ideas simultaneously.  For example, Neale Walsch is an amazing man and gifted writer who cheats by stealing the words of other writers.  Oh-oh…..I’m in denial!  My ego defense mechanisms are in disarray!  I’m having a bum voyage!

People who claim to be religious are sometimes not moral.  Is that too difficult to hold in your mind at the same time?

OK, now all of a sudden, after 25 years of declines in reading , more Americans are reading fiction?  I’m supposed to not only believe this but also believe in the data since 1982.

I’ve always suspected the data collection about reading.  I’ve worked in public libraries since 1969 and wonder just how many people who visit libraries were surveyed about their  reading habits. 

The National Endowment for the Arts  looked for those who had read one novel, short story, poem or play (i.e., literature) in the previous 12 months.  I would be very surprised if a meaningful segment of those surveyed were teens.  The boom in graphic novels along with the marketing of YA fiction as a profitable area in publishing have kids reading as never before.  It was often a corollary in public and school libraries that teens dropped off the radar screen of reading.  That has no longer been the case.

Something else I’ve thought about – how has the last 8 years effected levels of reading? The Bush administration prided itself on being anti-intellectual even though Bush and Rove  were supposedly  involved in some contest to see who could read more books.  In addition, Laura Bush often  promoted reading and literacy.

Did national anti-intellectualism tamp down reading?  Or, did this characteristic actually drive people to read more to escape having to deal with the Bush administration?  Fiction reading is often equated with escapism but, while that may sometimes be the case, it is most often associated with trying to understand the world around us, learning about people from a different land or time period, and getting inside the head of characters who face situations that we hope never to experience.

It is very weird that the fiction of the past 8 years did not reflect the great antagonism of Americans toward the Bush administration.  Unlike the late Sixties and early Seventies, we produced very little satirical or political fiction since the turn of the 21st Century.  The drama of this period was noticeably more satirical or political than its literature (which made Phillip Roth’s The Plot Against America all the more noteworthy).

On the other hand, Oprah’s Book Club has been huge even though she’s picked some authors who faked their books.  Thousands of towns and cities in the country have a community reads or one book, one community programs.  Some libraries have been awarded Big Read grants from the NEA which focuses on one book, usually literature, to restore reading its place in American culture.

In the end, I guess I don’t get it.  Have we really been reading less or have we always been reading but we’ve been too busy doing so to be surveyed?