Monday, September 27, 2004

Fall Quarter 2004 has begun! I'm in LIS510 (Information Behavior) and LIS568 (Information Literacy for Teaching and Learning). These are both fairly challenging classes with a couple group projects (in 510) and a ton of reading (in 568). Had a good residency in Seattle and had fun hanging out with Jim, drinking good Belgian beers and watching Anime.

Now I've got to get back into the school schedule - used my lunch hour to read today and should be doing more reading right now (instead of working on this blog). I also have to get cracking on the first assignment (conducting some interviews) which is due next Wednesday.

Been feeling very tired lately, hard to be "happy" with the family. Bummed about that. It'll probably pass, though.

Helped Chad, Thom and Jon put up the Dissent is Patriotic display at the library today. The background is my big 48 star US flag, upside down. A t-shirt I bought at the NY protests is in there too. They have lots of quotes and pictures from various dissent actions in US history in the display. Looks good and it's very timely.

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

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!

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

Have been back from NY since Friday 9/2/04. It was great to see the family again, and weird to come back to work. Realized I had to tell a lot of people about the trip, and have to think about what kind of "presentation/talk" I want to do about it.

Wrote a lot in my journal while on the road - will try to add those to this blog in the near future.

Only two weeks till Fall quarter starts again. On that note, got in to LIS568 today after being told it was full up when I tried to register for it several weeks ago. Now I have to get my financial aid and tuition billing all adjusted....