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There is one week each year when it is completely acceptable to fawn over libraries and librarians and all that they do for communities, institutions, and the world in general. Of course, you may find yourself doing that every week of the year, anyway, but we have great news for library fans -- it’s National Library Week in the US.

The post Technology, project management, and coffee yogurt: a day in the life of a librarian appeared first on OUPblog.

Small child straddling two barstools, running toy cars up and down the high counter. Another child sprawled on floor, drawing a picture. A third hovering by the cedar chest at the far end of the sofa, at loose ends. A leggy teenager spidering sideways in the comfy armchair. A perfectly typical scene of mild morning chaos.

I curl up in my rocking chair with House at Pooh Corner. The younger set hasn’t heard it yet, in that way that shocks me. They are six, almost nine, and eleven, for Pete’s sake! How could such a thing have happened? Answer: SO. MANY. BOOKS. With no fanfare, I open it and start reading.

The child on the floor flashes a starry grin and scoots closer, her pencils rolling under my feet. The child at loose ends looks up, ears perked. The small one zooming his cars around seems not to notice, but all the engines appear to have undergone sudden tuneups: their roars diminish to silky purrs.

It takes me a minute to find Pooh’s voice. It’s been a few years, after all. Piglet is easy and Eeyore—this revelation would no doubt astonish him—is a delight. It’s snowing, tiddley pom, but at least there hasn’t been an earthquake.

The cars have abandoned the counter and are crossing a bridge of air toward the Hundred Acre Wood. The teenager’s limbs have been transferred to the sofa. The no-longer-hovering child has claimed ownership of the big brown armchair. Nobody knows, tiddley pom, how cold my toes are growing. The postman rattles the lid of the mailbox, delivering the day’s contingent of recyclables. Pooh’s voice has settled down, and the wind must have blown Eeyore’s house over the wood because there it is, just as good as ever, and better in places.

It’s a beautiful house, tiddley pom.

It’s important to preface any examination of a ‘typical day’ as a Police Community Support Officer (PCSO) with the reminder that the role responsibilities are remarkably varied. The role is interpreted, empowered, and utilised in different ways across each individual constabulary, which is reflected in a number of ways, from the different powers invested with PCSOs by a Chief Constable, to the uniforms that they wear during the course of duty. For example, some PCSOs carry handcuffs and others do not. Communities will have individual needs that you will need to tailor yourself to – a normal day for a town based officer will be noticeably different from that of a rural based officer. This necessity to adapt to ever-changing situations, demands, and challenges is one of the most rewarding elements of the role.

Equally, there are some key core functions that will always be a constant for any officer. The primary function of a PCSO that transcends all policing borders is the localised contact and familiar police presence that they provide on a daily basis. This channel of communication between the police and the local community is often achieved through high visibility patrolling (normally on foot or bicycle), engaging with residents and businesses about emerging issues or concerns, and attendance at key community groups. Other central aspects of the role can include development of community-based projects, the provision of crime prevention and safety advice, and also the employment of problem-solving techniques to resolve low-level incidents that have been referred to you from within the extended policing family.Being a PCSO gives officers continued contact with a particular geographical area so they will often be the first to identify trends in social issues, crime, and anti-social behaviour, as well as more vulnerable members of the community that may require additional support.

As a specialist in a particular community, you are expected to gain vital intelligence that will support the wider policing function, and you will be required to liaise extensively with residents, businesses, and other partner agencies to gain detailed information. The knowledge that you obtain from speaking with people as a PCSO could be crucial in detecting or preventing an offence. Equally your presence may prevent an offence from occurring and offers a considerable amount of public reassurance. All of these activities outlined above can comprise the basis for a typical day as a PCSO, but you may also be presented with something totally unexpected that you have never previously encountered.

There are many elements to the PCSO role that make it a truly outstanding career to pursue. The team ethos within the policing environment is exceptional and the limitless support from colleagues is a true testament to the people that work within the police service, whatever their position. Having personal ownership for a particular community is my favourite aspect of the role as it allows you to develop strong associations with local residents and businesses. You will often be the recognised face of policing for many residents and they will appreciate your presence and assistance: you have a unique opportunity with the role to break down barriers between the police and communities. There is also the potential to develop entirely new ideas and imaginative solutions to problems. Witnessing these self-generated ideas develop and flourish into long term community projects is incredibly rewarding, and you certainly finish each shift knowing that you have made a difference to your particular community.

Personally, I viewed the PCSO role as an excellent opportunity to engage with a diverse range of people, contribute to the development and growth of local communities, whilst also working to address problems that were affecting people from a policing perspective. Having always been passionate about a career within the police service, I felt it could offer unique experiences and challenges, allow me to help others, whilst also being immensely rewarding and stimulating.

I also found the theoretical side of policing and criminal justice extremely interesting and I relished the chance to gain practical experience in the policing field. My career as a PCSO has delivered all of these things and immeasurably more.

The post What’s it like to be a PCSO? appeared first on OUPblog.

        

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The weekend: Jane headed back to college, the rest of the kids succumbed one by one to a fairly-short-lived-but-obnoxious-in-the-short-term cold, and I cleaned house all day Saturday to avoid finishing my taxes. And then gardened all day Sunday to avoid same. Did not read much, in part because sitting still and doing something besides taxes was harder to justify than, say, scrubbing floors or mowing the lawn. I mean, I can’t possibly be faulted for procrastinating going through expense receipts when I’m washing walls, can I? You guys, I was even washing walls. My ability to be intensely industrious at all the wrong tasks is unparalleled.

Monday: all but one of the kids have kicked their cold. We’re still in high tide, have got a very groovy groove going, in fact. Rose, Beanie, and I are all enjoying the books we’re reading together, and Latin has been really fun lately. Also, it happened that the episode of Cosmos everyone watched the night before Jane left was all about Sir Isaac Newton, about whom we’ve been reading in The Story of Science. Extremely considerate of the show to time things so conveniently.

I’ve been getting some questions about scheduling lately, both from real-life friends and blog readers, and since I’ve completely dropped the ball on my separate homeschooling blog (if you’ve asked for the login info and I haven’t replied, it isn’t that you’re not welcome; it’s simply that I’ve dropped that ball too, and I haven’t posted there in weeks anyway so you aren’t missing a thing…but feel free to ping me again for the info!) maybe I can give a quick sketch here of a “typical day”—of course we all know there isn’t any such thing, really; they’re all a little different. But we do keep the same rough structure four days a week. The fifth day, which falls in the middle, is for piano lessons and errands and (for Beanie) volunteering at Wonderboy’s school.

6:30ish—the boys wake up, Scott turns on a show for them to watch.

7am—Scott and I get up (sometimes he’s up already). He fixes breakfast for the boys and cocoa for me, and I take my laptop to the couch where the lads are watching their show. Email, etc while I come alive.

7:35—supposed to be 7:30 but I always push it as long as possible. I get up to get dressed, put my contacts in, pack Wonderboy’s lunch. By now he has already gotten dressed and getting ready for school.

8am—I’m in my bathroom brushing my hair and I hear the first bell ring on the other side of our back fence. I jump into my shoes and walk WB around the corner just in time for school.

8:15 (is this too granular? LOL)—I’m back home and now Scott and I leave for our walk. Beanie and Rilla are by now up and dressed (well, Beanie’s dressed), finished with breakfast most likely, and the TV is off. Rose waits for us to leave before dragging herself out of bed. Usually someone is playing piano when we leave and someone else is playing when we get back.

8:45ish—the teens have done their morning chores, Scott and I are back home after our walk (we call it our daily staff meeting), and I grab a yogurt and Scott makes a cup of coffee and we drift to our separate computers to eat/drink/read.

9am sharp—Scott starts work, back in the boys’ bedroom, which doubles as his office during the day. Rilla will likely spend the next hour puttering through her morning chores, which are few and simple but easily interruptible, it seems. Huck is dressed and running around. Mostly he’s counting down the minutes until 9:30, when (after two rounds of breakfast) he gets a snack. Rose and Bean join me in the living room for our lesson time. Now, the sequence of the next 3 hours varies day by day, but here was today’s. 9:00, we started with Poetry. First Poetry 180, two poems today because after we’d read Roethke’s “The Bat” they saw what came next and remembered especially liking that one when we did a chunk of this series with Jane, a couple of years ago: Tom Wayman’s “Did I Miss Anything.” Then John Donne, Meditation XVII (No man is an island…), in our continuing exploration of the metaphysical poets.

9:30? more or less?—Story of Science, the Newton chapters continued. I read aloud, we discuss. 1666, “The Year of Wonders” (Dryden’s Annus Mirabilis designation for the year of the Great Fire, which later came to be applied by scientists to that same year when Newton developed his theory of gravitation, oh and invented calculus, oh and figured out about color and light—that little old year), is a perfect choice for one of our history cards. Have I talked about this here, or only on Facebook? It’s pretty much the most successful idea I’ve ever had, history-wise. We used to keep a giant timeline on one wall, but in this house there’s no perfect spot for it; it was up too high; we never added anything new. A couple of months (?) ago, on a whim, I grabbed index cards and started writing down events or people we’d been reading about, in all our various books. Science stuff, history, literature, music, art, anything I could think of that we’d recently discussed. Person or event on the front, the year on the back. We have had such fun with these cards! Once or twice a week we play a game with them—Rose likes the competition—where I hold up a card and the girls take turns calling out the date and arranging them in sequence. We’ve all nailed down a great many dates that were quite fuzzy even for me before. My original goal was simply to have them be able to identify events in rough sequence, and there were only a few major dates I said they had to absolutely memorize. But the game has hammered  nearly all the dates into our heads, mine included. And the cards themselves provide an excellent record of what we’ve studied, and how the different eras we’ve read about this year (19th century American history, Renaissance science, Elizabethan literature) fit together. We’ll be able to keep on adding to the stack: a game without end. Rose was pretty lukewarm on history before, and now she says she wants to minor in it at college.

Anyway, no cards today, I just got onto the subject because we remarked upon 1666 as an important year to make a card for.

All right, so now it’s around 10am, I think?—or a little before? I think next we did math. Beanie watched a MUS video and since Rose didn’t remember that bit, she watched too. By now Rilla and Huck are outside playing, having consumed their snack. Rose likes me to go over the new lessons with her, so we did that. She’s only got two more in this book (geometry), hurrah! (We made cards for geometry last week, too, since she has found them so useful for history. Wrote out all the postulates and properties, with matching cards containing examples. And one very cool thing was that after she’d spread them all out and matched them up, we realized she’d just done all of geometry right there. I mean, all of it that’s covered in this book. The last few lessons are a preview of trig. It was gratifying for her to see the scope of her accomplishment.)

Beanie didn’t need help with her math, so once Rose got on to working her problems, I went out to mow the front lawn. Beanie finished and practiced piano.

10:30—Rilla and Huck went in to get their half-hour on the iPad. I usually reserve this for when I’m reading with the older girls, but today I was still finishing the yard. Rose finished math and did some Memrise.

11am—littles are off iPad, back to playing. Rose downloaded a metronome she needs for a song she’s learning in 5/4 time, but I don’t think she had much time to practice before I called her for the next thing. (She plays for a good bit most afternoons while I’m working, though.) Beanie did 15 minutes of freewriting while I read through a lesson with Rose in an essay-writing book we’re going through. Then Rose went to do the exercise for that chapter while I looked over Beanie’s freewrite.

11:30.—Latin with all three girls. We’ve been using a different book for new vocab but right now we’re using the rather old Latin Book One for some real reading and translation practice. We’re all really enjoying this.

12pm.—Lunch. Huck begged to watch Ponyo. Generally we don’t do any TV or videos at this time of day, but he’s been on a real Ponyo kick lately and was still getting over that cold, so I said yes. He ate his lunch and then fell asleep on the couch, watching the movie. I sat on the front stoop with Rilla, doing a subtraction lesson. Then she went in to eat, and Rose was eating, and Beanie had already finished. Bean and I went into the backyard and dug out a dead plant, and talked about Romeo and Juliet, which she was about to begin reading.

12:30ish?—Somewhere in there, I ate my own lunch. Then Rose and I started Gulliver’s Travels. I gave a bit of background and we read the first chunk together. She’ll continue on her own, but she really likes doing things in tandem. Beanie was reading R&J by this time, and Rilla was doing magical Rilla things.

1:15pm—Rilla’s turn. She was itching to garden, because Mary Lennox. We weeded the front-yard flowerbed and found a snail. After about a half hour, we were both hot and thirsty. Went in for a drink and then read two chapters. Met Dickon! The roses are wick!

2:30—time to pick up Wonderboy. Rilla walked with me, Huck was just waking up. Got home, unpacked, Beanie was doing her afternoon tidy and Rose had the dishes ready. I wash, she rinses. Wonderboy and I chatted, and then he turned on Word Girl.

3pm—Scott came out, and it was time for me to go to work.

Things unusual about this day:

• the Ponyo viewing and Huck’s nap, which meant I didn’t read to him at all!

• gardening with Rilla and reading an extra chapter of Secret Garden meant I didn’t do any of my own reading, which I usually try to squeeze in during the last half hour before Wonderboy gets home. But then I never read as much in spring, do I?

• Most mornings, Rilla sets up camp at the kitchen table with all her drawing supplies while I’m reading to her sisters. She absorbs quite a lot of history and lit that way. But today she was very busy with Huck all morning.

• No German for Beanie, and barely any piano time for Rose. Usually Rose is pounding away every time I turn around. She likes short bursts of practice throughout the day, whereas Beanie will sit down for one long concentrated session.

I imagine any day I picked for this exercise would have about the same number of (totally different) “things that are different about this day.” An orthodontist appointment, a Journey North meeting, a muddy little boy in need of a bath.

Let's call today's day in the life post, Day in the Life of a Youth Services Manager. As a manager, I'm always attending meetings. It just so happens that one day out of the month, several of my meetings all fall on the same day and it makes for a very long and exhausting day! Here's what my meeting day looked like last Thursday:

7:50 AM-Leave for work earlier than usual since I need to be driving out to a county branch for my first meeting.

8:20 AM-Arrive at county branch for meeting. Before meeting check out book the branch had set aside for me for tomorrows storytime (my copy got checked out by a young patron and luckily this branch had another copy!), deliver a box of ARCs for our teen review board, and bring in a stash of big books to exchange with other branches.

8:30 AM-Meeting starts! This is our monthly youth services meeting for all of our youth services managers, full time youth services staff, and young adult librarians. We spent our meeting talking about our upcoming summer reading program, gave overviews of training staff had attended, and talked about ways to market librarians as experts to our patrons and how we can better serve our communities.

10:00 AM-Short break and exchange of big books between branches. Each branch has a storytime collection of large books and we wanted to rotate some around to refresh our collections.

10:20 AM-Next meeting is up! This time it's for our early literacy committee. We talked about our new summer reading program for little ones, what we can do to refresh our storytime tub collections (our ready to go storytime resource collections), and talked about how we're doing with reaching patrons with our early literacy initiative.

11:50-Meeting is over. Now time to head back to my library branch. The longer drive means more time to listen to my audiobook which is a plus! I also decide that since I won't have much time for lunch, I'll stop on my way back to work and grab something to eat. Good thing too, since I found out our meeting time got changed!

12:40-1:00-Arrive back at work, eat a quick lunch.

1:00-Third meeting for the day. This time it's our biweekly supervisor's meeting. All of our branch supervisor's get together with our branch manager to talk about what is happening at the branch, news we need to know from the administrative staff meetings, and give updates on our departments.

2:30-Now it's time for me to meet with my branch manager. I meet with her after our youth services meetings to update her on the going ons of the youth services departments and what we talked about at our meeting. This is also my chance to get her feedback on any issues I have in my department-we talked about furniture and creating reading spaces because I had just attended a training on early literary spaces and we recently had a department remodel. I'm very lucky to have a great rapport with my branch manager and we always end up having fun brainstorming new (and sometimes grand) ideas for youth services. We're both big dreamers and we work well together to make those dreams happen. It's a lot of fun!

3:40-Done with meetings for the day! Back to my desk for the first time that day. I greet staff and catch them up on the notes from the earlier meetings of the day. I also find out what has been happening with them, how the department has been for the day.

4:00-Open email and feel a bit overwhelmed at the amount of messages waiting for me in my inbox! Respond to the messages I need to reply to and sort through the rest of the messages (I love email folders-this makes my life so much easier!)

4:30-We recevied some books for our teen review board as well as some book requests, so I add the new books to the database, respond to the book requests, and mail off books to the various branches so the teens who requested them can read them.

5:00-Clean up desk and go home!

 Here's a look into what it's like to be a librarian!

6:45 AM – Arrive at school. Realize that with all of yesterday’s meetings, I never prepped for the class coming in for first block. Frantically create a book list in the OPAC, but fail to pull books onto a physical cart.

7:30 AM – First class arrives. Deliver instruction on using the catalog, using call numbers, a brief introduction to web indices and databases, and try to convince students not to print every article they find. Spend about half the class helping students find and check out books, and the other half adding titles to a future Follett order when I realize we have no books on some subjects.

8:47 AM – Run to the main office, where the secretary is paging seniors who are missing yearbook items. About half the students paged arrive. Get into a shouting match with a senior who is trying to convince a classmate that he shouldn’t turn anything in to the yearbook at all. Feel stupid for getting in a shouting match.

8:51 AM – Second English class arrives. Quickly realize that far fewer of these students even know how to get to the library website. Also realize none of these students posted their thesis to the class blog, so none of their topics are included in the book list. Spend half the period explaining to students that someone already checked out the book they want.

10:00 AM – Students from a history class also in the library caught photocopying faces on the library copier. Decide not to get in the middle of an argument about whether or not this merits detention. Sigh wistfully and wish students would stop copying body parts.

10:12 AM – Directed Study Block. Check in almost 50 students who have library passes. Attempt to keep students without passes from entering while simultaneously trying to keep students with passes from leaving. More seniors paged to the main office come to discuss missing yearbook items. Bump several students from prohibited websites and applications using monitoring software, which is the only thing keeping me from stapling myself repeatedly during DSB.

10:53 AM – DSB ends, mercifully. Run back to main office to page more students. Become convinced that certain seniors do not exist.

10:57 AM – First lunch begins. Attempt to locate source of rustling sound, which almost certainly means a student is eating at a computer (verboten).

11:08 AM – Check in backlog of returned books. Realize that several are the books students from second block wanted. Have students paged to library.

12:00 PM – Eat lunch at desk.

12:30 PM – Look up possible parking near concert venue for the evening. Fret.

1:05 PM – Continue adding titles to a book order. Worry that this order won’t have a high enough manga ratio.

2:01 PM – Check out books before students head to the bus.

2:15 PM – Technically teachers can leave the building. Imagine what that must be like.

2:17 PM – Unblock Age of Empires for after school gaming crowd. Wish Glitch weren’t blocked by the school’s filter.

2:30 PM – Work with yearbook editors on senior spread. Once again lament lack of baby pictures.

3:30 PM – Start shutting down unused computers. Pick up recyclable paper and water bottles. Wish lollipops and gum didn’t exist.

4:00 PM – Miraculously, library is empty. Leave early. Giddy.

Last week Eric tagged me to do the "Day in the Life" meme that's been going around. Now that I think about it, an average day around here doesn't sound that exciting, except that working as a writer or illustrator you spend a lot of time in your head, so it kind of is! (Sheesh, I hope that doesn't sound psychotic.) So here goes:

- Up around 4:45, sometimes earlier, with coffee in hand. I know it's early. I can't help it. I usually read. Or catch up on blogging and projects if I have a lot of work.

- Then it's routine household stuff, making kid's lunches, getting them off to school.

- Exercise. Jog or walk or weights or the dreadmill (yes, that's what I call it...) if it's cold outside. At least 5 days a week. Otherwise I feel as if I haven't brushed my teeth.

- Then from early morning through the afternoon I'm in my room:















I'm thinking it looks bigger in pictures than it is in real life. (Neater, too.) It's actually tiny. But it's all mine, ha ha! (She says, laughing demonically!)

There's usually at least one cat in the window when the weather is warm, or a dog sprawled out on the spot of sun that hits the floor in the winter. It looks as if my car looms right outside, but I have a little part of my garden right outside the window that is filled with flowers and herbs in the summer.















I'll take small breaks throughout the day to check emails or read a blog or two. Sometimes I'll sit somewhere else in the house or outside with a notepad or my nifty drawing board (really just a panel of lightweight wood)-- just for a change of scenery.

When the kids get home it's more of the same, or we go out, or I play Mom-Taxi. Then when hubby gets home we catch up, cook dinner, go outside-- that part varies. If I'm really busy he'll start dinner-- he's great that way.

Afterwards we all read or watch a movie or a bit of TV. I rarely watch television, but the last few nights my son and I have been watching Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern on the travel channel. (My son loves to cook... though mostly things involving sugar and butter...)

Oh! I forgot the part about jetting off to Paris! But I'll save that for another day...

Here are some other typical days in beautiful and exotic locations... Elizabeth, Alicia, Frank, Eric. (I have to chuckle, since everyone says their own life seems so boring. For an outsider looking in they are so not!)

I tag whoever else wants to share... Read the rest of this post

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury depicts firemen burning books. It is what they do. In a story that is disconcerting for those of us who believe in the right of freedom to read, MSNBC reports that firefighters are being trained by Homeland Security in the USA in a test program. They are being trained to look for illegal materials and report people who may be "hostile, uncooperative or expressing hate or discontent with the United States."

While law enforcement officials have stringent rules that control their access to private property, fire fighters have access in order to make inspections for the purposes of preventing fires. The ACLU is concerned about the implications of this program with regard to first amendment issues.

According to New York City Fire Chief Salvatore Cassano, information related to terrorism has been passed on from firefighters to law enforcement since the program began three years ago.

It would be interesting to see what kind of information officials are collecting that they believe relates to terrorism and to what degree one needs to be "discontent" before one is reported to the government.

This would be great fodder for a dystopian novel. Oh, wait....

MTV Movies Blog reports that Tom Hanks is showing great interest in starring as Guy Montag, the “fireman” in Fahrenheit 451.

That doesn't mean they're not there.

Today artsJournal directed me to a great article, Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted. I've never read Fahrenheit 451. I saw the movie, of which I remember very little except that Oskar Werner was in it.

So I didn't get too shook up when I read that Bradbury says his book is often considered to be about government censorship when it is really about "how television destroys interest in reading literature." I mean, it's not as if it's some beloved book for me and now I'm finding out I never understood it at all.

I was very interested, though, because in my, admittedly limited, reading of '50s and '60s scifi (of which Fahrenheit 451 is a part), it seems as if I recall a great deal of anti-television sentiment. Doesn't Philip K. Dick, for instance, have some creepy things to say about TV in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the only one of his books I've read?

I've been thinking of those dire TV predictions lately in relation to the virtual world Second Life. My understanding of Second Life is weak, but I wonder if some of those mid-twentieth century scifi writers would see such worlds as the logical extension of their predictions about television. First it numbs your mind. Then you become tighter with the unreal TV world than your own. Then you enter an unreal world altogether.

While I've been thinking about Second Life, I've also been thinking of a book called Circuit of Heaven by Dennis Danvers, in which "all but a tiny minority of the earth’s population have chosen to forsake their bodies and electronically upload their personalities into ‘’the Bin,'’ a virtual paradise where life is indistinguishable from real life except that there is no hunger or crime and no one ever dies." I enjoyed Circuit of Heaven when I read it a few years ago, and it might be a title those older teen/college student readers would like, since the main character is 21 years old and could be described as rebelling against the status quo and determing what kind of person he's going to be.

So, seriously, I thought all this stuff was connected.

And now it's time for me to watch TV.

Colleen at Chasing Ray reports that Ray Bradbury won a Pulitzer Prize, or at least a special citation from the Pulitzer people.

Reading that was one of those bizarre moments (of which I have so very, very many) because I'd been thinking of Bradbury recently. I was wondering what became of his new book Farewell Summer. It got a little buzz last fall just before and after it was published but then seemed to drop off the radar. I've been thinking that I really want to stumble upon that book somewhere so I can read it.

Last week I was feeling really out of things because Kurt Vonnegut wasn't a major figure from my youth. I tried reading him in college, but I didn't actually "get" him. I missed the Vonnegut experience.

Just now I realized that that's okay because I had Ray Bradbury.

Slaughterhouse-Five is now on my "must read" list for the "Banned Book Challenge." I was not that familiar with Vonnegut, other than the fact that he is almost the spitting image of a friend of mine. I am fascinated by what I have read about him and how his life inspired his writing. I like his punchy, satiric style. Check out his writing below.

I Love You, Madame Librarian by Kurt Vonnegut

I, like probably most of you, have seen Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11. Its title is a parody of the title of Ray Bradbury’s great science fiction novel, Fahrenheit 451. This temperature 451° Fahrenheit, is the combustion point, incidentally, of paper, of which books are composed. The hero of Bradbury’s novel is a municipal worker whose job is burning books.

And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.

So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.

And still on the subject of books: Our daily sources of news, papers and TV, are now so craven, so unvigilant on behalf of the American people, so uninformative, that only in books can we find out what is really going on. I will cite an example: House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger, published near the start of this humiliating, shameful blood-soaked year.

In case you haven’t noticed, and as a result of a shamelessly rigged election in Florida, in which thousands of African Americans were arbitrarily disenfranchised, we now present ourselves to the rest of the world as proud, grinning, jut-jawed, pitiless war lovers, with appallingly powerful weaponry and unopposed.

In case you haven’t noticed, we are now almost as feared and hated all over the world as the Nazis were.

With good reason.

In case you haven’t noticed, our unelected leaders have dehumanized millions and millions of human beings simply because of their religion and race. We wound and kill ’em and torture ’em and imprison ’em all we want.

Piece of cake.

In case you haven’t noticed, we also dehumanize our own soldiers, not because of their religion or race, but because of their low social class.

Send ’em anywhere. Make ’em do anything.

Piece of cake.

The O’Reilly Factor.

So I am a man without a country, except for the librarians and the Chicago-based magazine you are reading, In These Times.

Before we attacked Iraq, the majestic New York Times guaranteed that there were weapons of mass destruction there.

Albert Einstein and Mark Twain gave up on the human race at the end of their lives, even though Twain hadn’t even seen World War I. War is now a form of TV entertainment. And what made WWI so particularly entertaining were two American inventions, barbed wire and the machine gun. Shrapnel was invented by an Englishman of the same name. Don’t you wish you could have something named after you?

Like my distinct betters Einstein and Twain, I now am tempted to give up on people too. And, as some of you may know, this is not the first time I have surrendered to a pitiless war machine.

My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”

Napalm came from Harvard. Veritas!

Our president is a Christian? So was Adolf Hitler.

What can be said to our young people, now that psychopathic personalities, which is to say persons without consciences, without a sense of pity or shame, have taken all the money in the treasuries of our government and corporations and made it all their own?

The Signal: News for Santa Clarita Valley has an opinion editorial that deals with a number of censorship issues in the US. The article by Willy E. Gutman is entitled "Only in America: From the Bizarre to the Absurd."

The author points out a number of situations which in his opinion reflect,

White House-led efforts to muzzle the press, stifle artistic expression and subvert free thought while stepping up its own deceitful propaganda is being daily turned up a notch with a series of seemingly isolated but intimately linked initiatives that reflect the Bush administration's obsession with controlling information - and the minds of Americans.

Sci Fi Weekly features an interview with author Ray Bradbury. Bradbury is the author of 35 books and numerous short stories, including Fahrenheit 451. At the age of 86, he is about to release his next book Match to Flame: The Fictional Paths to Fahrenheit 451.

...Match to Flame, will be all about my unconsciously leading the way to Fahrenheit 451, which I wrote in the autumn of 1950. I wrote it in nine days at the library of UCLA. Down in the basement, I found a typing room where I could rent a typewriter for 10 cents a half-hour. I moved in with a bag of dimes and I spent $9.80, and nine days later I finished Fahrenheit 451 in its first version, which is 25,000 words....Two years later, Ballantine Books came to me and said, "We love your story The Firemen [the original title]. If you find a new title for it and add words to it, we'll publish it." So I sat down, wrote an additional 25,000 words and changed the title from The Firemen to Fahrenheit 451.

According to an article in the Daily Press & Argus, Erin Gruwell, author of the controversial The Freedom Writers Diary made a stop in Howell, MI, where her book has been targeted by a group of parents opposed to allowing its real-life language be allowed in the schools. I would encourage you to read the whole article.

Meanwhile, Monroe County, MI has chosen Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury for their Big Read as has Anchorage Alaska. Anchorage Daily news reports that RAY BRADBURY, 87, author of Fahrenheit 451, will participate in an interactive simulcast at 3 p.m. March 23 in the Assembly Chambers at Loussac Library. Participants are encouraged to submit questions in advance.

The CBC has taken their share of criticism for not allowing award-winning author Yann Martel to read from Mein Kampf on a radio broadcast made in celebration of Freedom to Read Week.

Bookslut interviews Maryrose Wood, who is the author of Sex Kittens and Horn Dawgs Fall in Love and is one of the authors who is taking the "Banned Book Challenge."

Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher became the second book in less than a year to be removed from Carroll School District, Iowa. It was removed from the English class after a local pastor complained about its explicit language but has since been returned. Peter Hedges' What's Eating Gilbert Grape was returned after a superintendent removed the book without following the official policy. Crutcher's official view of censorship is, "The truth screams to be told in its native tongue." He maintains a page on his site that deals with censorship issues about his and other authors' books.

In a 2005 article for the Princeton Perspective, best-selling author Jodi Picoult explains why she writes banned books.

The truth is, I don’t write easy books. I cover issues such as domestic and sexual abuse, rape, euthanasia, infidelity — topics that are unsettling. My objective as a novelist is to take you for a breathless ride, and to make you rethink what you believe, and why. What is eye-opening to one person is offensive to the next, and it is nearly impossible to draw that line, or determine who has the right to draw it....I don’t write about controversial issues because I like to be edgy. I write about them because, like my readers, I don’t have all the answers. When a moral or ethical question roots itself in my mind, I find myself thinking about what I’d do in that situation. I force myself to turn over every stone, consider the issue from every perspective. I find myself walking down roads that are often uncomfortable....