Category: Personal

So I’m quoted in this truly excellent post over on Across Divided Networks by Andromeda Yelton (a pretty apt blog title, given the content of the post). As she notes, we were discussing this post on unpaid labor and open source software, which isn’t so much about that as it is the myth of meritocracy and the gender bias of open source.

I appreciate that she considers me a feminist, and it is very true that I work hard to listen and be aware of gender issues in librarianship and academia. One of my wife’s specialties is gender issues in Latin American literature, and we’ve spent much of our lives together talking about gender issues and feminist and queer literature. I have, all too often, been in a position of running interference for a female friend at a conference when an asshole didn’t take the hint that she wasn’t interested in talking/interacting/being the same space. It’s hard to even write that, since it has the capacity to come across as “oh look, the white academic technology guy to the rescue”…I assure you, that’s not the point. My point is that even with all this, even with years, decades of being aware and watchful and trying desperately to understand and affect the world to make it better for my friends and colleagues…I still didn’t realize. And that scares me, badly.

It scares me because, while I’ve self-identified as a feminist for decades, and tried to ensure that my actions reflected this, it wasn’t until 6 years ago that I got a dose of reality that shakes me daily.

It’s trite, but having a daughter changed everything. It changed how I looked at things, moved my attentions from “concerns about equals” (eg, my friends and colleagues) to trying to figure out how to reshape the world that revolves around someone who cannot affect it herself. Eliza is still a child, and while she’s pretty sure that she’s Very Grown Up by now, I know that the world is out there, waiting to push against her delight at technology. That there are boys who even now are in her class that tell her girls don’t build robots and I want to find a way to change that future. It wasn’t until Eliza that I realized that this particular fight wasn’t for the people I know, it’s not for my friends, much as I love all of you. It’s for her.

And that’s why I was so upset at not seeing. Because if it’s true, and that there are gaps in the world that are paradigm-chasms, that I can’t see across because I don’t have the right tools or because I don’t stand in the right place, then I don’t know if I’m seeing the things I need to change for her…if I’m helping to make the world a place that she can inhabit without fear. And all I can do is keep listening, and keep watching, and try like hell to support those that ARE capable of seeing and doing and changing, and I have to hope that it’s enough.

So please don’t give up, Andromeda and Rosy and Bess and Rachel and Jenica and Sarah and Cindi and Becky and Boyhun and Dorothea and all of the other incredible people who can see, and hear, and are fighting, fighting. Thank you, from me, but mostly for Eliza.

At about 1:50pm today, the Nine Inch Nails twitter account tweeted this:

Tennessee: We dropped a signed poster at the coordinates of this tweet. White tube behind the dumpsters. pic.twitter.com/nA7gXpNH21

— nine inch nails (@nineinchnails) October 23, 2013

I was browsing Twitter via Tweetbot on my phone while waiting for a document to load on my main computer when the tweet caught my eye. My first thought was “I didn’t know they were playing in TN” and then I noticed the geolocation stamp on the tweet: East Ridge, TN. That’s 10 minutes from my library, just up the road next to I-75.

!!!!!!!

My first thoughts were all about how to track down the location via technology. getting the latitude and longitude from the tweet and mapping it. Then I realized that you could very faintly see a sign in the background of the photo, but it was unreadable. But the photo looked like a motel, so a quick google search for “East Ridge, TN motel” got me a list of them…and the Waverly Motel was the winner. Easy to see the letters once you have a pattern to match them to.

Turns out, simple research work beats fancy tech solutions in this case, because…after quick drive out, a little bit of visual navigation to identify the dumpster location, and…

I’m now the proud owner of a Hesitation Marks poster signed by what looks to be every member of Nine Inch Nails. OMFG.

So, as I write this, I am about 15 minutes from speaking in front of the Franklin County, TN School Board on the topic of prayer. The story leading up to this is here.

Below is the text of my statement. I can only hope that it does some good.

*****
Thank you to the School Board for giving me the time to speak. As a librarian, I value the open sharing of information, and as a parent the ability to share my thoughts with you is truly invaluable.

I do want to start with my closing statement, which is that I hope that the North Lake PTO, and any organization affiliated with public education, can see the issues that are involved in the insistence of an opening prayer, and choose to end the practice. There are two reasons that I believe this is the proper course of action, and in brief, they are:

First, that the insistence of having a prayer prior to a meeting of an organization that has such close ties to our public education system steps much too close to the legal line between church and state. There is a clear legal line that has been drawn repeatedly over the years through case law, as it relates to the protection of a central tenet of our Constitution, that the prejudicing of a single religion in affairs of the State is simply not allowed. While there has yet to be clear case law on the status of a PTO as it relates to the Freedom of Religion clause, anyone with familiarity with the law (and indeed the County’s own legal counsel) would advise that if there were a suit, it is likely that the PTO and the School Board associated with it, would lose.

We don’t have to like this fact, but not liking it doesn’t change the status of a fact…that’s what makes them facts.

Given that losing such a court case could potentially cost Franklin County hundreds of thousands of dollars that I, for one, would prefer be given to our amazing teachers, I would like to avoid the risk altogether. This is the first reason that I think that organizations that are affiliated with public schools shouldn’t endorse any particular religious view.

The second reason is that not only do I think it’s the practical thing to do, but it’s also the right thing. The priority of everyone associated with the educational system, whether formally or informally, should be to make the best use of the resources we have to ensure the excellence of the education of our children. Opening organizational meetings with a prayer is, by its nature, exclusionary to any Franklin County taxpayer of any differing faith. As we are a multi-denominational society, continuing on the existing path simply ensures a lack of multiple voices, as it indicates to those of differing faiths that their beliefs are not considered or respected. A multiplicity of voices is necessary in order to fully grasp an issue, to talk through and see all sides of a problem, and to ensure that the most effective and efficient solutions are pursued. As they say, none of us is as smart as all of us.

I have followed this discussion as it has evolved prior to today, and watched the brief film of the meeting from last Monday that appeared online, wherein several of the community members remarked that “Majority rules”. The majority of people in this room right now almost certainly see no problem with prayer before a meeting. But in this case, I say that it isn’t about what the majority is comfortable with, it’s about protecting the the voices and opinions of the minority. If you’ll allow me to quote Paul, from Romans 15:1 in the King James Version: “We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.” Or in more modern language, from the New Living Translation “We who are strong must be considerate of those who are sensitive about things like this. We must not just please ourselves.”

In closing: I hope that the North Lake PTO, and any organization affiliated with public education, can see the issues that are involved in the insistence of an opening prayer, and choose to end the practice.

Thank you for listening, and I look forward to continuing this conversation, and hearing from Minister Tipps.

There have been very, very few months in the 10+ year history of this blog where I didn’t post at all during a month, but July 2013 turned out to be one of those months. August nearly so, as it’s almost September now. There are lots of reasons, but it’s mostly because I’ve been doing huge amounts of Doing Things That Aren’t Writing, and even when I was writing I wasn’t writing for this site.  The rest of the Fall may be similarly sparse. Let’s rewind and catch up to everything that’s happened since last I posted:

• The Kickstarter campaign for LibraryBox v2.0 raised 1100% of it’s funding goal, which is the best sort of problem to have. But even so, it’s still a series of increasingly complex problems that require serious time commitment.
• As a result of suddenly being responsible for fulfillment of said popular Kickstarter, I started a company: Evenly Distributed LLC. You’ll hear more about that as the months go by.
• I wrote a chapter for a book! In the grand tradition of print material, it will be approximately 2384734 years before anyone sees it, and it will be out of date already, but there you go. My chapter is about why Makerspaces in Libraries are more important for libraries than they are for patrons.
• Over the next 4 months, I’ll be presenting at the Kentucky Library Association Conference, the State Library of New South Wales eResources meeting, doing a talk for the National Digital Stewardship Alliance Outreach Working Group of the Library of Congress, manning a table at the Atlanta Mini Maker Faire, presenting at LITA Forum, and then taking a vacation.
• And somewhere in all this, I will set up a workshop and crank out 180 or so LibraryBoxen to ship to Backers all around the world.

This is a weird life, this professional thing I’ve carved out for myself. But I love everything about it, which makes all the difference.