the pod bay door

¦¦ I’m tiring of posting negative stuff lately, but this is just too weird to pass up. I was reading Jen’s blog this morning, and came upon this entry from April 14 (her archives aren’t working, so I can’t link to the exact post):

Just as I was leaving for work today, I caught the first half of “The Today Show” interview between Matt Lauer and Tim Robbins, who came on the show to discuss his affiliation with the Baseball Hall of Fame. Predictably, the discussion turned to politics. Lauer and Robbins debated back and forth for a few minutes until it was obvious the censors were going to unleash their cruel powers. Just as Robbins started, “And what about the war in Afghanistan? Did we all forget about that?” the bad theme music interjected and the program segued into commercial.

Robbins has already made the news recently when Dale Petroskey, president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and a former Reagan aide, cancelled a 15th anniversary celebration of the movie “Bull Durham“, scheduled for 26-27 April. The reason for cancelling, according to Petroskey, was that the Hall is not a place for pro- or anti-war statements, and that given Robbin’s and Susan Sarandon’s track record of criticizing the Bush administration, the Hall didn’t want the take the chance that one or both of them might actually say something in an anti-war vein. (Robbins responded, noting that he was looking forward to “a weekend away from politics and war.” Also, baseball writer Roger Kahn cancelled an appearance at the Hall in protest of Petroskey’s actions.)

But getting back to the Today show incident, here’s the weird part: try searching for reports on this incident – there’s nothing out there. I searched Google News, Poynter/Jim Romenesko, I Want Media, AlterNet.org, CNN, Reuters, AP, Drudge, NYTimes, etc etc etc., to no avail. Are news reporting agencies self-censoring this story? Is there collusion? When is it going to warm up in Edmonton?

The day after he was censored while being interviewed on live television, Robbins spoke to the National Press Club in DC.

¦¦ Props to Heavy G for his extended entry on RSS (Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary – where RDF means Resource Description Framework). Head hurting already? Well, mine has been for some time, as I try to stay on the information superhighway, rather than in the ditch, changing a virtual flat tire.

Geoff cuts through the quagmire of RSS, RDF, XML with a few timely tips and lucid explanations. (Am I lucky that his office is right next to mine? Duh.) Take the time to read his posting and you’ll see a reference to an experiment I tried a few days ago. Suffice it to say that it hasn’t worked, but it was worth the try. I realized afterwards that trying to move an extended discussion spanning five listservs at once, over to a blog set up to collate the responses, isn’t going to work unless you convince the participants to join you, in advance. That said, the idea of creating a subject-specific library blog for, say, engineering librarians, continues to intrigue me.

I am working through Geoff’s entry in an attempt to learn more about this subject and its applications. If you are interested as well, take the time and learn from an up-and-coming master.

¦¦ In other exciting news, I met with the sports physician today re: my continuing tennis elbow condition in my left arm. While it could take months to heal, I can play guitar and mandolin without too much difficulty, while at the same time abandoning free and machine weight exercises involving those muscles for the time being. I will return for a shot of cortisone in May, which given the area of injection, is predicted by the doctor to be very painful. Am I having fun yet?

The good news is that after six weeks of Stott Pilates classes, I’m already noticing an improvement in the form of the absence of lower back pain and stronger muscles in the abs region.

¦¦ The sickening, unfortunate news from Iraq continues unabated. In addition to 170,000 artifacts in the National Museum having been looted or destroyed, the Iraq National Library was in flames as well on April 13. The building was so thoroughly torched that heat still radiated 50 paces from the front door. From the April 13 NYTimes:

By tonight, virtually nothing was left of the library and its tens of thousands of old manuscripts and books, and of archives like Iraqi newspapers tracing the country’s turbulent history from the era of Ottoman rule through to Mr. Hussein. Reading rooms and the stacks where the collections were stored were reduced to smoking vistas of blackened rubble

The US Administration has finally acknowledged the seriousness of the destruction and looting, and has pledged to recover and repair antiquities. One wonders if this will happen.

The destruction of libraries continued with the Islamic Library of Qur’ans set ablaze. Here is an account from the Arab News. I hope all librarians around the world will gather together to help Iraq rebuild its history.

¦¦ I’ve already mentioned my concerns about the looting of the library at the Basra Polytechnic College. The gutting and pillaging of the Iraq Museum of Antiquities has me seething. It took ten years to reopen the museum after the Gulf War in 1991, and now, two years later, it lies in ruins. When you read a little about what the museum held, you realize that what has happened rivals the destruction of the library at Alexandria. An estimated 170,000 items were destroyed or stolen! Where were the American troops (see next paragraph)? The responsibility for this sits squarely on their shoulders. The observation of this Al-Jazeera reporter says it best: “When mobs in Baghdad entered the Iraqi national museum and destroyed the artifacts, little did they know that they were wiping out large traces of history. Not just of Iraq, but that of the entire world.”
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¦¦ Last Tuesday, while driving home after work, and later while on the cross-trainer at the Y, I was thinking about having lived in Edmonton since Dec 1978, and considered that I’ve spent half my life in Winnipeg, and half in Edmonton. From Sept 1976-April 1977, and Sept 1977-April 1978, I lived in residence at the U of A while attending library school, but never really considered that “living” in Edmonton. While still living in Winnipeg in the 70s, I had an aquarium in my bedroom. When I moved here permanently in the fall of 1978, I decided not to set up another aquarium, thinking I wouldn’t necessarily be here for a long time. I’m still here, and haven’t set up another aquarium.

What’s odd is that Edmonton still doesn’t feel like home. Winnipeg will always be my home town, that can’t change. I’m not sure why Edmonton has never felt like “home”; I’m no longer sure, if ever, what the word means anymore. Perhaps I’ve never known the meaning.
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¦¦ The war in Iraq has brought death to many innocents and soldiers, a shortage of supplies, food and water, and the serious need for humanitarian aid of all kinds. Unfortunately, anarchy continues to spread in the larger cities, including Basra.

There have been many photo galleries available with astonishing images of the events as they have unfolded in Iraq in the past three weeks.

Today in the Globe and Mail, I spotted this picture (© 2003, LA Times, taken by Don Bartletti of the Los Angeles Times, and winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Journalism: Feature Photography). I was saddened by what I saw: a looter damaging part of a library at the Basra Polytechnic College in order to steal bookshelves. The photo also reveals a gaping hole in the roof, damaged perhaps by mortar or debris after an explosion or bombing.

For a librarian, this is perhaps the most disturbing image of all: a thoughtless assault on what belongs to everyone: information, knowledge, data, all that is contained on the shelves and via the computers of a library. Who knows what was going through this man’s mind as he relentlessly threw the books to the floor of an already badly damaged and abandoned library. I wonder about the students, staff and faculty, there to teach, study and learn, their lives and work interrupted by war. For those fortunate enough to return to this college, it will be a long and arduous time of rebuilding and recovery.

In the past, librarians in first world countries have rallied to help librarians and libraries in less fortunate countries to salvage their collections when serious damage has happened to them, be it the result of fire, flooding, or in this case, war and anarchy. I hope that our larger library community is able to learn, in a short time, more about the extent of damage and loss faced by the library at Basra Polytechnic College, and other libraries in Iraq that may be suffering the same fate. Hopefully we can then respond with help to restore books to their shelves and dignity to their lives.