Went to Village Books last night and listened to Krist Novoselic read from his new book Of Grunge & Government: Let's Fix this Broken Democracy! It was a SRO crowd - I've never been to a reading there that was so packed. Krist had some good things to say about democracy and the political process. It was also cool to see so many young people there, way below voting age, high school and junior high, very enthusiastic. Funny to think that Krist is still a rock n roll celebrity. Some good questions from the crowd about many different aspects of the political process: Instant Run-Off Voting, Marijuana Legalization, youth mobilization, etc.

He is really tall, was wearing a suit, and is balding on top, with just some wisps of hair covering up the bald part. I noted that the cover of his book cuts off the top of his head so that you can't see that he's balding....

I tried to talk with him a little about Radical Reference and how librarians can be part of the fix, but it was pretty loud at the signing, there were a lot of people in line behind me, and he seemed pretty distracted by it all. He also appeared sort of bemused by the young, junior high age hanger-ons. He kept glancing at them with a nervous sort of half smile, his face very pale and sweaty.

I'm hoping I can get hold of him somehow (email/phone/letter) to talk more about RadRef - it would be great to get him to promote our group and librarianship in general as a force for reform and democratization.

Got a call and email from someone named Andrew Hedden who is the coordinator of the Peace Resource Center here at WWU. Jeff Purdue gave him my name for an event the PRC is putting on that will have people talking about their experiences at the RNC protests in NY. I told him I'd be willing to do it - this will help me fulfill my goal of doing a presentation of some kind. It should be interesting to talk about the RadRef experience.

Still haven't blogged my written journal of the RNC events - got to do that soon!