a little rant

Sometimes I read things like this and I just have to rant. And since no one is around to rant to, my dear readers will bear the brunt of the rant. In case you aren't an NYT "member," the gist is that a reduced calorie diet (eating 30% less than the usual amount of daily calories) will prolong our lives considerably and reduce the occurrence of some old-age diseases.

My rant is this: what exactly is the point of living 140 years (as one scientist projects) if I have to eat 30% fewer calories than I currently am? I honestly don't think that I really consume that many calories as it is. Probably if I actually added it all up I would be getting less than 2000 a day. Fewer? Please. And it's not like this is the fountain of youth where no one will ever die. We'll still die. And we'll have eaten way more lettuce and way less cheese . And what is the point of that? I wish we could focus more on making the end of our lives more pleasant rather than trying to prolong the inevitable. How about more people become geriatric specialists (most medical students don't want to be geriatric specialists because it doesn't pay very well and isn't glamorous) and fewer people feed monkeys very small amounts of food for 27 years? I honestly think that would make a bigger difference in people's lives.

not everyone named lynne is my friend

I was reading this article about Lynne Cheney's old and not very well-written sounding novel Sisters. I distinctly remember reading about this before, I guess probably in 2004. Apparently the book is selling for astronomical sums and, of course, this led me to wonder if one could find it for free in the library. Well, I did a little search on WorldCat and found out that only 11 libraries in the entire world even own the book. Clearly it is neither popular, nor a masterpiece. Of those 11, 7 were searchable through WorldCat (and thus would share their treasure with the rest of us). Not surprisingly, 4 of these libraries were in Wyoming, home territory of the Cheneys. So if any of you are desperate to read a copy of this fine novel, I suggest a little interlibrary loan request. There is a least one copy available from the Laramie County Library System right now, so get it while the getting's good!

for your enjoyment

le futon
Originally uploaded by kitty.pants.

I have finally uploaded new pictures of my apartment onto flickr. It still needs some wall decoration, but it's pretty cozy at this point. Yay!

juvenile hall

Nidorf Juvenile Hall, what can I say? My suspicion about different issues between Clark County and Los Angeles County juvenile offenders was right. Almost all of the kids in Clark County Juvenile Detention were white, and it was my impression that they were mostly there due to drug or drug related offenses (I think a lot had to do with meth). Nidorf Juvenile Hall primarily has Latino and African American kids who I think were mostly in there for gang related things. They make them all walk around with their hands behind their backs and one of the volunteers said she had heard it was so they couldn't flash gang signs to each other. On my volunteer forms it also recommends that you do not wear red or blue to any of the juvenile detention centers or camps (although I don't think my fellow volunteers were following this, but we probably aren't seen as rival gang members anyway).

Nidorf actually has a library, as opposed to the classroom libraries that Clark County had. This is probably due to the fact that Clark County only had three classrooms of kids (that I saw), whereas Nidorf has a huge number. Clark County Juvenile Detention is all in one building in downtown Vancouver, a fairly new and well maintained building. Nidorf is like a run down college campus. In the middle of the complex, surrounded by a huge cyclone fence, is the housing for the "unfits." These are the kids who are going to be tried as adults. The rest of the kids are either in regular units or in the "Special Handling Unit." The "SHU" is for kids who are either getting harrassed in the regular units or who have special needs for some reason or another.

In Clark County, I just sort of sauntered in with the librarian. At Nidorf you have to have your bag x-rayed, go through a metal detector, surrender your id, and wear a visitor's badge. We also didn't have much contact with the kids, at least today. We sorted through a bunch of donated books (sidenote: apparently people think that crappy self-published books or incredibly old and damaged books are perfectly good fare for kids in juvenile detention--they are not), and took them to the various units. I think in Clark County the kids could take books into their rooms--they would borrow them from the classroom library and then (maybe) bring them back. At Nidorf they are not allowed to hold onto books from the library. I'm not quite sure how it works out with the books that we brought to the actual living units. Something tells me that they don't do the summer reading program and hand out Barnes and Noble gift cards in Nidorf either.

Most of the differences have to do with size, I think. There just aren't that many kids in Clark County Juvenile Detention. I think they also have to do with the fact that Nidorf deals with a lot of serious gang violence within the detention center. I got the impression that kids got into trouble on a more individual basis in Clark County Juvenile Detention.

Overall it seemed pretty familiar. Some of the same books that were popular in Clark County are popular here (the Dave Pelzer "A Child Called It" series). It has the same highly sad and depressing feeling. You have the same mix of people who really want to help the kids out versus the people who just make it a bureaucratic nightmare. Oh yes! that is the other thing I wanted to mention. The place is so bureaucratic and decentralized, people who worked right next to each other had no idea what the other did or who they even were. People in the school had never even been to certain areas of Nidorf and didn't know where they were.

So yes, sad and depressing, but you also have the little bit of hope when you see how excited they are to read. That is another similarity between the two facilities--when you have nothing else to do, reading becomes cool and exciting. I think that is the saddest part to me; you see that the kids are excited to read, ask for new books, discuss books with you, and yet here they are, in juvenile detention. I think that we, as library volunteers, have to keep trying to make a difference and hope that we affect their lives in a positive way.

i hate this class

Yes, hate is a very strong word, so perhaps I should say that I strongly dislike one of my classes. Sometimes it's sort of all right, but usually...well, let me give you a taste of the title of one of my readings for tomorrow: "Messy Assemblages, Emergent Protocols, and Emergent Knowledges: Complex Adaptive Systems and the Possibilities of Sustaining Multiple Ontologies and the Cultural Commons in New Ways of Assembling and Creating Knowledge.
(Alternative Titles: Emergent Mapping: Assemblage and Movement, Multiplicity and Connection: Complex Adaptive Systems as Models for Emergent Databasing.
Strategies of Connection, Emergent Knowledges and Complex Adaptive Systems: Processes, Performances, Protocols and Narratives, in Working with Multiple Ontologies and Incommensurability.)" Just to be a good librarian and student, I will inform you that this is a conference paper from the 4S Conference, Pasadena, October, 2005 and was written by David Turnbull.

This paper, and my other readings for my class tomorrow, are so full of academic jargon (ontology being the most benign) and references to Derrida and Foucault and, yes, even Freud, that I kind of want to throw up. The whole point of all of these articles is that we shouldn't use an overarching standardized system of classification for knowledge, particularly knowledge from indigenous people. They don't actually offer any solution but are interested in Wikipedia, tags, blogs, Flickr, etc. I guess we all just needed to prove that we were smarty pantses who knew who Derrida was, instead of just coming out and saying what we meant. This is why I am becoming a children's librarian.

off to juvey

Yep, the law finally caught up with me. Har har. I'm off to one of Los Angeles's three (3!) juvenile detention facilities tomorrow morning to check out the program UCLA's student YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association) does there. I have to admit, I'm a little nervous. First of all, there's the whole driving to a new and unfamiliar place nervousness. I'm still not totally sure about the various bad times to drive, although the woman I've been emailing assures me I'm driving at a fairly low traffic time. I do have class to get back to in the afternoon, and I don't want to miss it since I barely understand what we're talking about as it is.

Then there's the going to juvenile detention nervousness. I accompanied the YA coordinator of my libary district to Clark County Juvenile Detention when I was interning there, but it has recently occurred to me that juvenile delinquents in Clark County and juvenile delinquents in Los Angeles County might have different issues. I don't know, maybe that's just a stereotype. I will be interested to see how and if it's different. I did have a brief moment of panic that I was going to the same place that Mark Salzman writes about in one of my all time favorite books, True Notebooks, but apparently he was at Central Juvenile Hall where they put the kids who commit the worst crimes.

I also feel like a bad person for being nervous about it at all and I did volunteer, so it's not like anyone is forcing me to do it. I think it should be really good once I get over the initial worries. I will let you all know how it goes!

beyond google

I think we all know how much I love Googling something to find the answer, but I was supposed to ask a reference librarian a question for one of my classes. Of course in my busy weekend, I completely forgot to do it until tonight. Luckily the Los Angeles Public Library has a 24/7 online reference service. I don't know if you have to be a card holder to use the service, but they never had me type in my number so I don't think so. The librarian was quite helpful in answering my rather silly question (I asked about the phenomenon of the "harvest moon"). Yes, it really was an actual person answering my question. I highly recommend the service if you want a reliable answer to a question! Okay, maybe I could have found the harvest moon thing on Google, but that's what librarians are for too!

internet!!

I finally have le internet chez moi (it's really amazing how much French I remember, isn't it?). I'm recovering from a wild weekend back at Wellesley, as you all know. It was weird to be back, but I ended up having a really good time with my fellow officers. I have been waiting since Saturday to be able to inform you of an incident which we are looking upon as a bonding experience. Amita received an email asking us if we could do a reading during the Multifaith Service on Saturday. We all agreed, only to find out it was a reading that had been chosen by none other than Michelle Lepore. For those of you who don't know our Assistant Dean of Students, let me just say: big denim shirts, poufy hair, clothes that very likely came from Chico's. She had done this responsive reading at Flower Sunday and no doubt had absolutely no problem getting through it. We, on the other hand? Well, just imagine trying to read lines like "The Stars got poured into the sky/ Out of a magician's hat last night" or "Our spirits leap like dancing suns and moons" or "playful gangs of young angels mounted on emerald spears" or, our personal favorite, "Forest animals hear me laughing/And surrender their deepest instincts and fears/they come charging into meadons/To lick my hands and face." Let me repeat: To lick my hands and face. We had to speak those words in the chapel. We barely made it through it without fully collapsing into laughter.

back at ye olde wellesley

I am too old to be in college. I just graduated in June but it feels like a totally different place. Who are all these people? And why did they not have sandwiches in the campus center last year?

Yes indeed, I am at Wellesley for "Alumnae Leadership Council" where they will train me in the ways of the class treasurer. I'm spending tonight with my sister in Munger (which she prefers to pronounce with a French accent, as in Moon-jay) and then tomorrow and Saturday night I will be Kate's roommate in the Marriott Newton. Woo!

As I left my apartment this morning at 4:45am I thought, it looks so cozy, I don't want to leave. And now I'm back here and it doesn't feel like home at all. It just makes me kind of sad and nostalgic. I probably feel how people must feel when they drive past their old houses; someone else lives here now and it's not mine. But it is fun to see my little sissy and look! she has the internet right in her room!

ta da!

Here I am in Westwood! I am currently waiting for my dresser to be delivered so that I can stop employing the "clothes in suitcases on the floor" method of organization. But what I really want to talk about is the West Hollywood Target. I think it's pretty much why one does and does not like Los Angeles. First the bad part: it has underground parking and people will actually pass you in the parking garage if you're not going fast enough (Lauren has witnessed this first hand). It is also rather hard to push a huge shopping cart or two to your car in a parking garage.

On the other hand, given the fact that it is in West Hollywood, there is a great cross section of humanity. Of course we have the gays.* West Hollywood has rainbow flags up on poles next to the American flag in the little green spaces in the middle of the road. The Target is also near Fairfax, thus we also have the Orthodox Jews, the women with covered heads and long skirts and such, the men with their traditional clothing. Then we have your usual mix of other people that are in every Target. So basically it's kind of a pain in the ass, but once you're actually in the Target it's kind of cool.

A few other things that have been going on: I witnessed an a cappella performance yesterday, along with a student protest (yay college!), I went to IKEA for the first time, and I went to class (I guess that's the real reason I'm here). I don't officially have internet in my apartment yet but I seem to sporadically get my neighbor's (thanks neighbors!). Once I'm more up and running I will do some apartment photography and flickr posting.

*Please note my ironic "I went to Wellesley" use of this word.