Doomsday Book, by Connie Willis

I've just finished this beautiful long historical sci-fi novel from 1992 by Connie Willis, about a grad student in medieval history who time-travels back to the 1300s and is accidentally stranded in 1348, the black plague. There is lots of history, but the novel really turns on a portrayal of the fierce love the student comes to feel for the child Agnes. Willis is so amazingly assured in drawing the dialogue between the two, as the plague descends on the village, that it cannot be other than real, and yet it is a novel. Breathtaking, to me.

Gladwell reviews "information wants to be free"

An interesting review, but all I can say is, "I love libraries."

Just thought I would share...

A lovely essay by my sister, Bridget Kevane, in Brain, Child!

On Saturday, June 16, 2007, I was charged with endangering the welfare of my children, a criminal charge that, in the city where I live, Bozeman, Montana, can lead to imprisonment in the county jail. The Montana Code 46-16-130(3) states that a parent can be charged with this offense if she “knowingly endangers the child’s welfare by violating a duty of care, protection, or support.”

Typically, prosecution is pursued when an adult supplies a child younger than eighteen with drugs, prostitutes the child, abandons the child’s home, or engages in sexual conduct with the child. A violation of duty of care is described as cruel treatment, abuse, infliction of unnecessary and cruel punishment, abandonment, neglect, lack of proper medical care, clothing, shelter, and food, and evidence of bodily injury.

I was charged with this crime because I dropped my three children and their two friends off at the Bozeman Gallatin Valley Mall.

Read the full essay here...

Why doesn't FAVL...

In Burkina Faso...
Have all the librarians wear snazzy polo shirts, cleaned and pressed everyday, and upload the statistics from each days checkouts, visitors, events into a cell phone that uploads to a website, interfacing with an MIS system where library "friends" could then suggest books to young readers, and even get some feedback from them,... "I liked it! What else should I read?" and also make the library super modern and super clean, with formica countertops and air conditioning all solar powered and glass windows and bottled water in a little refrigerator.

Why instead, are the librarians from the village, usually pretty nervous about doing anything in public (like reading a storybook), more likely to scowl than to smile when a "client" enters the library (very typical Burkinabè "affect") and the library is made out of mud bricks and tin roof with a thatch paillote outside, and the record-keeping is in old notebooks and somewhat imperfect?

a) We don't have enough money to make it all "modern".
b) We hate the thought of a library "franchise" where we train the librarians, after having them go through rigorous selection process so that the smartest most motivated villagers are selected, to shout 'Welcome to the library, HOW MAY I HELP YOU" to every person who walks in the door.
c) We honestly never thought of making the library a kind of branded modern franchise thingy.
d) We knew if we went that route the board would never agree on whether the polo shirts should be red or yellow.
e) We thought villagers would make fun of the librarians behind their backs.
f) The villages don't have glass, refrigerators, bottled water, electricity, web access through their cellphones, etc.

Those of you who have traveled extensively in Africa know what I mean...