Election thoughts -- I was so excited...

Last election, the 2008 race, I was so excited.

I'm going to let you know up front that I'm not terribly political... I believe in having my voice heard and I write my representatives on various levels on my opinion over many different issues that are important to me. I think that's an important part of being an American in a democracy--that our voices are heard. That's why I vote and that's why I tell my reps what I think is important. But I really hate polarization in politics. It's really not too important to me whether someone is a Republican, Democrat, Libertarian or whatever; I just want them to act responsibly, tell the truth (as much as possible!) and listen to constituents. I do have my own leanings, which I'm sure you could guess at, but that's neither here nor there nor what I really want to write about today.

I wanted to write about how excited I felt last election. I remember driving home and listening to debates on the radio between the candidates and I couldn't believe that in my lifetime, a woman and a black man were serious candidates for a ticket. That meant a lot to me. I'm a mom, and my children are bi-racial. I made sure to talk to them about what was going on. When Hillary Clinton was a serious candidate for the Democratic ticket, I was thrilled. When I found out about Obama, I was also thrilled: he was just like my children who are half black, half white. I thought, what a great time for them to be alive and see that America is truly a place where anyone can succeed--no matter their race or gender. I've always wanted to see a woman as a President, too--and I hope I live to see that also.

One thing I've noticed during Obama's presidency is how proud my daughter is of him. She really does feel he is "just like her." Her remarks are often something like "he has skin like me" or "his parents were like mine." Pretty cool for a little girl to identify with the President. One of my daughter's favorite books is Grace for President by Kelly DiPuchhio and illustrated by LeUyen Pham. In the book, Grace discovers to her dismay that there has never been a woman US President and she runs for class president. It really captures the kind of excitement an election can bring.

I'm sorry the excitement is gone from this election. I miss it terribly. Last election, it felt like history was being made and this year it feels like "business as usual."

BRLA Fall 2012 Convention

Today I attended the Border Regional Library Association (BRLA) Convention at the Rio Grand EPCC campus. BRLA is an organization founded in 1966 for the promotion of library services in the El Paso, Las Cruces, NM and Cd. Juarez area. It was also co-sponsored by REFORMA and TxLA. The conference was short, lasting only until after lunch, but was enjoyable. I saw many people that I have worked with in the past that I hadn't seen for a while and a few newer faces, too.

I attended two workshops, a District 6 meeting of the Texas Library Association (TxLA) and had a great lunch with an inspiring keynote speaker.

My first workshop was about bullying, especially how it related specifically to young people who are LGBT and Latino. This was interesting and presented some information about different resources that I wasn't aware of already. A few things that I learned that I thought were interesting were that bullies and the bullied are both more likely to have problems later in life. It seems obvious that those who are bullied would have problems, but those who are the bullies have problems, too. They're different problems, but no less serious. I was also surprised to find out how many Hispanic families are accepting of LGBT-identified people. There is also a resource for Christians who identify as LGBT that is accepting of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. This is a good resource for anyone who lives in a traditional or religious community.

Here is a list of the resources I learned about today from the first workshop:

• Trevor Project: Suicide prevention and help for LGBT youth. Includes chat feature for young people who aren't comfortable calling someone on the phone for help. Also has a youth-friendly social media space.
• It Gets Better: Videos and testimonials from adults reminding young people that things do get better, especially when you are out of high school!
• Believe Out Loud: Christian web site embracing LGBT people.

For a full list, open this PDF from the presentation.

The next part of the conference for me was the District 6 meeting. El Paso, TX is part of District 6 in TxLA. The President-Elect, Dr. Yvonne Chandler was at the meeting and it was Cheryl Feldman's last meeting as District 6 president. Dr. Chandler talked about upcoming TxLA plans and Cheryl encouraged us all to keep promoting libraries. We voted on various positions, and I'm now an alternate representative! 

My next workshop was about UTEP's special collection's department archive project. UTEP has been restoring and making their many archival images available online. The process that each photo and negative goes through is painstaking and sensitive work. The staff estimate that if each photo from the collection was lined up end to end they would reach the moon and back! The image collections can be found online here.

We were served a great lunch and then listened to the keynote speaker, Luis Herrera, who recently won Librarian of the Year from Library Journal and was appointed to the National Museum and Library

Services Board by President Obama. In his speech, he discussed how libraries should have a digital vision of the future and that librarians need to become experts in using new technologies. He said that libraries provide a needed access to eLearning that some people would not have access to otherwise. Herrera also discussed how libraries and librarians are digital "culture keepers" in our society in the sense that we archive and save information for future generations. He said librarians are "problem solvers" and at the end, he challenged each  of us to share our library "story." Luis Herrera shared his: one of his worst summers was when he and his brothers lost their library books. During this time, there used to be library "police" who would come to your house and try to get the lost books back. He says he lived in terror every time he heard a knock on the door!

Great conference!

Night at the library

Construction sheets and nighttime light at the library.

Privacy vs. Non-privacy...

Privacy and the right to privacy are important. And while I always want to have the right to privacy, sometimes, I'm more than glad to share who I am and what I like.

The reasons I want to share what I like, my shopping habits, etc. is that I'm not your typical person. My partner is a transwoman. Our kids are biracial. Showing who I am and the fact that I exist in this world is important to me. I'm a consumer, a voter and I matter. My opinion matters and companies that want to keep my business should recognize that!

So I'm glad to let the world track my footprint from time to time.

Books For Teens

I know it's been about forever that I've posted on my blog. I'm going to work on that. Really I am.

In the spirit of Christmas, I want to share a "cause" with you! It's Books for Teens which is sponsored by the Young Adult Library Services Association (YALSA). The mission is to provide high quality books to teens that really need them. Books can change a young person's life. They can help someone in a bad situation see that they are not alone and that there are solutions to problems that they face every day. Check out the site and give! It's the season!

Detroit Metal City

Detroit Metal City by Kiminori Wakasugi

This parody manga is very funny and you really can't take it at face-value. On the surface, DMC seems nasty and mean-spirited, but it's really a send-up of death-metal music, cruel and opportunistic people and the idea of coolness.

The first manga doesn't really tell much of a story--it's episodic with glimpses into Soichi's life. We know that sweet, mama's boy Soichi moved to Tokyo to play nice Swedish Pop Music. We also know that didn't happen--instead he somehow ended up in the death metal band, Detroit Metal City (DMC). Soichi, as the lead singer, Krauser II, is worshiped by death-metal fans everywhere, even while he's very uncomfortable with his status as an underground music phenomena. It's good that his alter ego, Krauser II, wears makeup and a wig on stage, otherwise Soichi's mother might learn what he's up to. Krauser supposedly killed his parents and has raped his way across Japan. He's not the image Soichi wants to project, especially to his nice love-interest who thinks Krauser is a jerk and DMC is a terrible band.

I have to say that I've never read a manga that used the word "rape," "sows" or "f*ck" as much as DMC does. It's good to remember that this is a parody! In one DMC song, Soichi as Krauser out-sings a rival death-metal singer by screaming the word "f*ck" more times without taking a breath. The humor is often crude, but that's part of what's being made fun of. Nothing is taken seriously and I laughed quite a bit.

I enjoyed the art, too. It's not beautiful art, but it has a sort of a sweet vulnerability--a nice contrast for the subject matter and not unlike Soichi himself.

There is an anime and a live-action movie version. I think this manga is worth checking out, but it's not for everyone!


Check out the official website for more insanity. This video mashup from the live action movie also captures much of the spirit of the manga:

Black Holes, Information and Parallel Universes

No, this isn't a review of A Brief History of Time by Stephen Hawking. Although, everyone should read that book. It's important to understand current scientific theory, especially one as ground breaking as the Big-Bang.

Hawking's biggest contribution to physics hasn't been the Big Bang, though. Instead, it seems to involve black holes, information and a big paradox.

I love physics, but I'm not mathematically minded. I enjoy specials on the Science Channel and that's what jump started this post. The special, The Hawking Paradox, was about the "information paradox" and was produced by the BBC. Hawking's theories about black holes all come to the same conclusion: information is lost (destroyed) in a black hole. When this happens, nothing in the universe is certain. If we are missing information in our universe, it is impossible to make predictions. We all know that we can't make a good prediction on anything, even horse racing, without a little bit of information. Having all the information allows physics to work. If information is destroyed, then cause and effect is ruled out and our own memories are suspect.

This seems a little dramatic, because, after all, black holes are very far away... right? According to the show, there are even mini-black holes everywhere. They can even be inside your brain. Scary!

As the show plays out, we find out that Hawking has a rival in Leonard Susskind, another physicist. Susskind believes that information is not lost inside a black hole: it just seems like it's lost. Instead, the information gets spread across the outside of the black hole and we can read this information and see what's going on "inside" the hole.

Hawking disagrees. Hawking's solution is that yes, information is lost in black holes. But there are parallel universes to our own that don't have black holes and therefore they cancel out the lost information.

Somehow, that's really unsatisfying! Does that mean that our universe is somehow defective? There are universes that don't lose information, but ours does. Why would that happen? Are we inside a rotting, dying universe? Can we visit the parallel universes? How do we know they are really there and if they exist, are they much better than our swiss-cheese, lossy universe?

I want the answers to these questions and am looking forward to the next BBC physics special! Hope they answer a few!