Simply Siddartha or Buddha Lovingly Explained

Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra


My rating: 5 of 5 stars
Excellent "dramatization" of important crossroads in Siddhartha's young life up to his achieving enlightenment. Great as an introductory text to the man. Chopra includes an Epilogue and a "Practical Guide to Buddhism" that serves well as an introduction to the religion. If you're interested in Buddhism, start here and continue at http://www.buddhanet.net

View all my reviews >>

Mr. Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show

Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show by Orson Scott Card


My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Fans of Orson Scott Card will greatly enjoy this collection of short stories, not only because the master himself has entered four shorts of his own, but he fills the anthology with authors he, himself, appreciates. Card adds a few Ender Universe stories as well, for those fans of the very popular series.

Enjoyable and thought-provoking. Check out the website at http://www.oscIGMS.com for even more.

View all my reviews >>

Altruistic Aliens?

Kethani by Eric Brown


My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Excellent first-contact story set in rural village England. The aliens are never directly involved, but do have the historic impact you'd expect.

And this is the joy of this novel: the multiple tensions Eric Brown plucks and then lets hum through out the novel. Mortality and Immortality, isolationist and galaxy traveller, friendly aliens or world conquerors, life over death over life. I don't want to say more and spoil the pleasure of discovering Brown's story on your own, but suffice it to say this is a refreshing telling of the first contact plot. Are you a fan of (the original) The Day the Earth Stood Still?

View all my reviews >>

48

A round number, fulsome, easily divisible, yet beautiful in the whole.

Forgiving our Fathers (fragment)

maybe for leaving us too often or
forever when we were little maybe
for scaring us with unexpected rage
or making us nervous because there seemed
never to be any rage there at all

for marrying or not marrying our mothers
for divorcing or not divorcing our mothers
and shall we forgive them for their excesses
of warmth or coldness shall we forgive them

for pushing or leaning for shutting doors
for speaking only through layers of cloth
or never speaking or never being silent

in our age or in theirs or in their deaths
saying it to them or not saying it -
if we forgive our fathers what is left

--David Lourie

Librarian's Life In Philly

Spent yesterday morning at a small block party hosted by New Bethany Church near Germantown and Tioga, yesterday afternoon at the Germantown Poetry Festival, yesterday evening strolling along Germantown Avenue in Chestnut Hill and today at the Great Day on The Great Road festival.

Food, Verse, Community, and Sunshine: Ah, the Life of a Librarian in Philadelphia.

Library as the Heart of the Community

Not a new idea, but I was catching up on reading the PLA Blog and two of the top seven posts revolving around this idea caught my attention. Below are excerpts from the blog, but to synthesis and summarize, the public library (and library staff) need to move from caretakers and collectors of published information to becoming curators of content and sometimes even creators of content.

The public library's reputation in the community relies on its history as a place of knowledge and that is a fine and wonderful truth. But as the internet becomes so pervasive in so many ways on so many levels (online databases, online catalogs, webpages, blogs, flickr, facebook, twitter, hulu, blackberries and the internet on your phone)that value as a repository of printed and audio-visual materials will lessen and become less relevant.

Of increasing value is the librarian's excellent skills at collecting, collating, and making available information. Taking these skills one step further would be the creation of information based on the needs and wishes of the patrons and community at large. In a way we do that already, when a patron wants research on a topic, we pull some good books off the shelf, point out a relevant database, show the patron a DVD from PBS or Discovery on the topic. The Librarian knows what the community likes to read and what are important concerns to the community at large and works at having popular and relevant material available.

In the 21st century, for the Millenium Generation, all those "old school" steps are becoming quaint. What is more expected is the Librarian who will pull info off blogs and other social networking sites, know the experts in the community who can speak on the issue at hand, will arrange a meeting at the library for neighbors to gather and discuss the topic and come to a consensus, create and then make available photos, video, and transcripts of the minutes of the meeting for future reference.

See http://plablog.org/2009/03/the-changing-role-of-your-public-library.html:

"I suggested that the public library relies far too much on its reputation, provenance, and historical book-circulating model for its clout in the community. The information that the attendees of the meeting needed to move forward with their projects of growing vegetables on their rooftops, organizing a food coop, organizing a CSA, becoming a part of their community garden, or even starting one themselves all exists online and simply needs to be organized, categorized, and centralized for their access. They all know that the information is out there, but they wanted to come together, share experiences and best practices, and create some kind of centralized well of information that they can all drink from.

Here’s where things get troublesome. The library’s reputation as a center for book-based knowledge is what made the venue feel appropriate for this meeting. But the action item resulting from the meeting is really something more along the lines of creating a wiki: identifying information resources available on the internet, organizing them, and promoting them to the audience. With success, the result of that will be the creation of NEW information content. People will blog their stories of successes and failures and a new ‘volume’ will be formed. So how long can we count on the library’s old information reputation to draw people in for the new information services they need?

I’ve just described a program that does EXACTLY what Schmidt is talking about. There is zero content provision, instead library service is all in reorganizing, remixing, redistributing, and recreating free resources. When the content that library users need is all available on the internet, our role as librarians shifts to a curatorial role. Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not a purist of this idea that libraries might not provide content in the future, but I do think it is a decreasingly key role. I’m also aware that I’m not really addressing the issue of downloadable media either. However, I am saying that clinging to materials circulation as our core mission is clinging to the very thing that makes us pose that annoying question time and time again: how can libraries remain relevant? Librarians have the skills to engage their community by designing the information resources they need. Librarians also have the skills to train their patrons to make their own information resources. We should be psyched about this…. not freaking out."

See, also, http://plablog.org/2009/03/threats-to-newspapers-are-opportunities-for-libraries.html for a more specific issue involving the changing nature of the Librarian's Role in the Community.

Ode to the Potato

by Barbara Hamby

"They eat a lot of French fries here," my mother
announces after a week in Paris, and she's right,
not only about les pommes frites but the celestial tuber
in all its forms: rotie, purée, not to mention
au gratin or boiled and oiled in la salade niçoise.
Batata edulis discovered by gold-mad conquistadors
in the West Indies, and only a 100 years later
in The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff cries,
"Let the skie raine Potatoes," for what would we be
without you—lost in a sea of fried turnips,
mashed beets, roasted parsnips? Mi corazón, mon coeur,
my core is not the heart but the stomach, tuber
of the body, its hollow stem the throat and esophagus,
leafing out to the nose and eyes and mouth. Hail
the conquering spud, all its names marvelous: Solanum
tuberosum, Igname, Caribe, Russian Banana, Yukon Gold.
When you turned black, Ireland mourned. O Mr. Potato Head,
how many deals can a man make before he stops being
small potatoes? How many men can a woman drop
like a hot potato? Eat it cooked or raw like an apple
with salt of the earth, apple of the earth, pomme de terre.
Tuber, tuber burning bright in a kingdom without light,
deep within the earth where the Incan potato gods rule,
forging their golden orbs for the world's ravening gorge.

"Ode to the Potato" by Barbara Hamby, from Babel. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004. Reprinted with permission.

Mystified in Philly

Here's what's been going on at the Free Library of Philadelphia since November, in a nutshell. Notice no where during this process has the Director of the Free Library had any say-so in the matter...

By Alfred Lubrano
Inquirer Staff Writer

In an apparent attempt to retain strong mayoral authority, the Nutter administration will file a motion today to dismiss the original lawsuit that stopped the city from closing 11 libraries.

It's an effort by an administration that is fighting to keep mayoral prerogative - allowing Mayor Nutter to close any facility he chooses, such as a library, without being compelled to consult City Council.

The administration has thus placed itself in the unusual position of asking a judge to dismiss a lawsuit after she has already ruled against the administration in that same suit.

The complex legal fight breaks down this way:

Late last year, the administration decided to close 11 libraries to tighten a budget gap for fiscal year 2009.

A group of residents and three City Council members sued the administration to halt the closures. At the heart of their suit was a city ordinance written 20 years ago that states in part, "No city-owned facility shall be closed . . . without specific approval" from City Council.

City Solicitor Shelley Smith argued that the ordinance is invalid because it runs contrary to the City Charter. Smith said the charter gives the mayor authority to close libraries if he deems it necessary. Council overstepped its charter-granted powers 20 years ago simply by writing the ordinance, Smith argued.

Common Pleas Court Judge Idee C. Fox disagreed. In strong language, the judge ruled that the mayor must be guided by the ordinance and has to ask Council's approval to close city buildings. The 11 libraries, she said, must remain open.

The city appealed. Then, in the midst of the appeals process, the city announced that it would not close any libraries through June 30, the end of the fiscal year.

On Tuesday, the administration withdrew its appeal of the ruling, saying it was a moot point.

"To have an appeal, you have to have two parties in conflict," Nutter spokesman Doug Oliver said last night. Since the city has decided to keep open all libraries until June 30, no conflict exists, Oliver said.

But even with the appeal withdrawn, an issue remained for the administration.

"What does the mayor have the authority to do? Only a motion to dismiss the case would address this issue embedded in the lawsuit. That is why we are filing," Oliver said.

He added that with potential library closures looming in the 2010 budget, the mayor is concerned with "the all-important issue of the City Charter, what it allows, and how it delineates authority between the Council and the mayor."

Bill Green, one of the three Council members who sued the administration over the library closures, said yesterday that he was puzzled.

"I really don't understand how the administration can take an action like the motion to dismiss," he said. "It disrespects the judicial system. I can't begin to guess what their rationale is. The judge already ruled that the ordinance was valid."

Regarding a statement Tuesday by Smith in which she indicated that the city would not be precluded from closing libraries in fiscal 2010, Green said last night, "She is entirely incorrect."

Oliver said he disagreed and added that the city was not disrespecting the system but working within it.

Amy Dougherty, executive director of the Friends of the Free Library, said last night that she would not comment on legal issues.

Similarly, Irv Ackelsberg, the lawyer who brought the original suit in December, would not address the administration's latest move.

Asked to render an opinion on the city's motion to dismiss, an attorney close to the case who requested anonymity simply said last night, "I am mystified."

Optimism by Jane Hirshfield

More and more I have come to admire resilience.
Not the simple resistance of a pillow, whose foam returns over and
over to the same shape, but the sinuous tenacity of a tree: finding the
light newly blocked on one side,
it turns in another.
A blind intelligence, true.
But out of such persistence arose turtles, rivers, mitochondria, figs—
all this resinous, unretractable earth.

"Optimism" by Jane Hirshfield, from Given Sugar, Given Salt. © Harper Collins, 2002.