Changes, Changes

After more than eleven years of living on Long Island and working in Connecticut at Quinnipiac University, the time has come. I have just been hired by the New York Law School as their Assistant Director of Technical Services for Library Systems. My last day at Quinnipiac will be January 23rd. This means, among other things, that I will be in my Long Island home 7 nights a week. When the weather is nice, I will be able to pack a sandwich and eat lunch, watching boats drift by the Statue of Liberty. Two hour drives to work will be replaced with train and subway rides.
In the transition period between interviewing and being asked to accept the position, I enrolled for another session of teaching library science to new students at the Southern Connecticut State University. My new library director, Camille Broussard is working out a way for me to work half days on Tuesdays to facilitate this. This will mean that I can also make a brief appearance at the Side Street Cafe in Hamden where my four friends, the Wing Nuts, have been gathering on Tuesday nights for all of this century.
When I started changing my details in MySpace and Facebook, it started to occur to me that Facebook has become a viable community for me while MySpace has not. Every time I log in to MySpace I see ads that tell me that young women in my town are looking for older men. Sure thing. Most recently, I have a new "Friend." I never okayed this friend who has filled my page with pictures of hot young party girls from the next town. Even though I have MySpace friends that I actually like such as Steve Earle and Barack Obama, it looks like time to shut down that account.
Eleven years is the second longest tenure I've had at a job. My first library job was at the Phoenix Public Library, where I served 24 years and seemed to be on track for a gold watch. Instead, I got my MLS and have had an amazing career. I don't intend to slow down now. Like Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long, I'm ready to keep climbing to the next branch to see what I can see.
Finally, take a look at this clip from Lindsay Anderson's 1973 niche classic "O lucky man!" -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXjeJSsjcxw&feature=PlayList&p=7A11713A8B423961&playnext=1&index=60

Deja Vu all over again

The economy is collapsing and the government keeps affirming their commitment to free trade - "Sure it hurts, but we'll let the market decide." Then things get even worse. Families have to decide to eat or pay the rent. Even so, massive evictions are set up sending families into the cold. Their world is collapsing around them, and yet the government agencies address the problems in the language of normal times. They hold regular meetings and take careful notes as the problems mount. Massive public works programs are set up, but the problems just keep getting worse. People start to suspect that the government doesn't really know what to do. The newspapers are filled with stories of mounting crimes by desperate people. Welcome to Ireland in 1848.
I have to make a disclaimer here - I am not a scholarly expert on the Irish Famine. However, since 2000, I have been living with a collection compiled by Quinnipiac University concerning that time. Since 2003 I have been working with the Kerry County Library in Tralee on a project to digitize their source materials about the Famine years and publish them online. Last May, I was in Ireland pursuing that project and visiting mass grave sites in Kenmare and Listowel. Also in the Spring, the library added a collection of Parliamentary papers concerning Ireland in the 19th century. As far as we can tell, we are the first library in North America to own a collection of original documents like this. In the Fall, we hosted a Southern Connecticut State University library school student for an internship. She was given the task of reading some of the government reports and abstracting them for our CONTENTdm site at http://cdm266702.cdmhost.com/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=%2Fp266702coll6 . After a few weeks of this, she told me that she was getting angry at the attitude of the government officials. Working with this material always leads to an emotional response.
In the events of the last few months, I began to get the feeling that I've been here before. All of the assumptions that we lived with are now invalid. As in 1845, the mechanisms that have worked for us before are piling up in a massive train wreck. Once again, we see the final results of Laissez Faire economics - the philosophy that allowing the rich and powerful to do whatever they please will result in happy times for everyone. Even though that theory has been tried to disastrous effect time and again, it remains hugely popular with the rich and powerful. Like in the 19th century where the landlord bore no malice to the people they were evicting (the better ones even helped pay passage to America or Australia to the dispossessed), our banks don't like the process of throwing people out of their homes, but they are caught in the middle of a system that is suffering a massive chain reaction.
I'm not sure what to suggest. Eventually, the Irish Famine played itself out and people rebuilt. The people of Ireland eventually shook off an occupying government that did not always hold their best interests at heart. Robert Hunter, the lyricist for the Grateful Dead once wrote "Keep an eye to the future, an ear to the past, but after thinking things over notice nothing much lasts."
However, perhaps the last word on this should be given to the great Irish playwrite George Bernhard Shaw who said "We learn from history that we've learned nothing from history."