Category: Uncategorized

  • Many names means many access points.

    A personal anecdote before we get to the meat of this post – At home we’re teaching the kid about names and how you can call people different things and all of them are correct. Like I am Kendra and mommy. Or they are Eddie or Edmund (despite their fierce protests). It’s a hard concept…

  • Helping the next generation stand your shoulders: Pay it forward for the profession

    Tor197, Cragside School, Heaton, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1969 flickr photo by Newcastle Libraries shared into the public domain using Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0) I’ve been feeling old lately. I have a kid. Things from my youth are cool again, but in an ironic nostalgia kind of way. I find myself listening to jazz…

  • Acknowledging the wear of uncertainty.

    This week’s midterm elections were a rollercoaster for the US. There was a ballot proposition in California that was was really close to home for my library: Proposition 6, which if pass would have repealed the recently enacted gas tax (SB1). The $5.1 billion raised from the the higher gas tax will go to repair…

  • Putting the U in unions: The power in a union is people.

    I started this post when I was in a membership meeting for my union local. I’ve been thinking unions a lot since there’s been a lot of energy in the air: The recent AFSCME/UPTE strike across UC, which received support from several other unions. I helped organize a demonstration for my union, which included a…

  • Radical Librarians Revisited: What’s next?

    [crass] flickr photo by RHiNO NEAL shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) license Back in 2015 I wrote about being radical through our actions, not just or words. This week I was reminded of that post when somebody in a union setting referenced “radical” R. David Lankes and I quipped, “I guess crossing a picket line…