Librarian's Rant

Thanks, Tracey, for pointing me to this wonderful post on All the Nebula Award Winners in Haiku. I'm particularly fond of her Flowers for Algernon haiku. Also thank you for introducing me to the parent site, Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels. Great site!

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has released its annual report on access to food. Basically, it shows the level of hunger in America. But in one of this administration's more Orwellian moves, hunger is now "very low food security".




Whatever. Hunger is hunger, and the United States has entirely too much of it for a nation as wealthy as ours.

Want to do something about it? Give to your local food bank (link is to Second Harvest's zip code directory).

Thanks to the suggestion of the talented Jeph Jacques over at Questionable Content, I gave last year for the first time to an imaginative new charity called Child's Play which encourages gamers of all stripes to donate toys, games and books and cash to children's hospitals around the world "to help make life a little brighter for a sick child".

As someone who spent more time in hospital's as a child than she would have liked, I have found this a worthy charity. And easy! Each hospital has created a wish list at Amazon.com, so it's just a matter of ordering through them. The hospital acknowledges your gift. You can also donate cash via PayPal. Easy!

I can't stop watching the CNN election results online. I'm like an election junkie.

And I'm supposed to be working! Well, to be fair, I'm working the ref desk on an election Tuesday night, as I've done for 11 years, which means I'm mostly looking up patrons' polling places. I can do that AND keep one eye on CNN.

On the theory that 'all politics is local', here's what I'm watching: Right now the Missouri Senate race is neck and neck. As a near neighbor (Iowa) this is of interest to me. They don't yet have info on our Iowa gubernatorial race, which is of even greater interest to me. Ohio is looking good, which pleases me (my family is in Cleveland).

Oh wait, I hit Refresh! Now...the McCaskill has pulled ahead in Missouri (yay!), but this means nothing--polls are open for another hour here in the Heartland.

Refresh again. Still nothing on the Iowa gubernatorial. Bah! And Missouri is back to neck and neck. Bah!

It looks like Santorum had his ass handed to him on a plate--CNN's calling it for Casey, even with almost no precincts reporting (based on polling, I assume). Well, that's encouraging. Santorum makes my teeth itch.

Virginia is neck and neck, but I find I don't like either candidate, so I can't get very excited there.

Of course all of this is ridiculous, as almost no precincts, even on the East coast, are fully reported. And we may have another Ohio or Florida to contend with. Come on, who's up for it? Montana? A Dakota? Guam?

Ultimately, I will wait for Jon Stewart to tell me what's what. Yes, that's right, I've decided that my late night election coverage will ultimately come from...Comedy Central's The Daily Show.

What?! I may be CNN's whore, but I'm married to Stewart's Daily Show

Cheers, everybody. Don't forget to vote.

...have you voted?

Have you?

I hope so. It really does matter. Especially to libraries.

This election cycle, MoveOn.org is trying a new voter turnout calling system, Call for Change



It's a step in the right direction, I think, to energize progressive voters. I hope it works. I get the feeling that a number of elections today will be decided by just a few votes per precinct. I did some calling this morning through my state party's GOTV project (I'm a precinct captain, so this made more sense for me), and was pleased by the response. Less apathy, more definite "yes, I have voted" or "yes, I'm on my way to vote!" than in previous years.

It really does matter, folks. I believe that. I have to. Otherwise, what are we all doing here?

Cuz this s**t makes me insane:

Clinics ask how O'Reilly got abortion records

TOPEKA, Kansas (AP) -- Two abortion clinics asked the state's highest court Monday to investigate Attorney General Phill Kline and Fox television's Bill O'Reilly over O'Reilly's statements that he had information from Kansas abortion records.

...Kline received edited versions of the records from a district judge on October 24 after arguing he wanted to review the records for evidence of possible crimes including rape and illegal abortions.

The attorneys asked the court to appoint a special prosecutor to determine if O'Reilly's information came from the records turned over to Kline.

O'Reilly said Friday on his show "The O'Reilly Factor" that an inside source gave him information that a doctor at one of the clinics, George Tiller, had performed late-term abortions because patients were depressed. O'Reilly deemed it "executing babies."

Kline spokeswoman Sherriene Jones has said the attorney general doesn't know how O'Reilly obtained the information.

Uh-huh. Right.

I found this interesting:

On Wednesday, former Attorney General Bob Stephan, a Republican like Kline, asked the state Governmental Ethics Commission to examine Kline's fundraising and activities involving churches.

I'd completely forgotten that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) is upon us, until reminded by today's Unshelved strip (thanks, guys!). What is NaNoWriMo? So glad you asked...

National Novel Writing Month is a fun, seat-of-your-pants approach to novel writing. Participants begin writing November 1. The goal is to write a 175-page (50,000-word) novel by midnight, November 30.

Valuing enthusiasm and perseverance over painstaking craft, NaNoWriMo is a novel-writing program for everyone who has thought fleetingly about writing a novel but has been scared away by the time and effort involved.

Because of the limited writing window, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It's all about quantity, not quality. The kamikaze approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly.

Make no mistake: You will be writing a lot of crap. And that's a good thing. By forcing yourself to write so intensely, you are giving yourself permission to make mistakes. To forgo the endless tweaking and editing and just create. To build without tearing down.

My favorite DSM Register columnist wrote this great article in support of my favorite candidate this entire election cycle--Denise O'Brien, the Dem running for Iowa Secy of Agriculture. She's an organic farmer (!) and tough as nails. The Register stupidly, and rather half-assedly, endorsed her opponent, and they've been regretting it ever since. A flurry of letters to the editor plus Rekha's column have made them look foolish.

The Democrat from Atlantic isn't just the better candidate for Iowa agriculture secretary, she's one of the most exciting candidates for any office in next week's elections. Even if agriculture isn't your issue, she's talking about our identity and quality of life as a state.