The Next Dark Age
We're in it Now
Save Illinois Libraries
(reprinted from Friends of the Glenview Library’s Used Book Store site of Facebook)
The Director at the Library’s Used Book Store pointed me to this article in the TribLocal – the community section of the Chicago Tribune. In summary, it seems that the Illinois Library Systems have not received program funds promised by the State of Illinois that support services like interlibrary loans, job search assistance and homework help for students. The North Suburban Library System has had to take out a loan to keep the program going.
A campaign called “Save Illinois Libraries” was launched in October with a focus on reaching out to members of the Illinois General Assembly. You can read more about their efforts at:
http://www.saveillinoislibraries.com/
The State of Illinois Should be Ashamed
I’m not talking about the corruption, patronage and cronyisn. I am talking about the apathy.
One year ago, our governor (a Democrat) was impeached and removed from office. Because the month before, he was indicted for attempting to sell the seat in the Senate vacated by President Obama.
You all might remember that his predecessor (a Republican) is right this second serving time for abuse of office.
Yesterday was the primary election in the State of Illinois. Our first opportunity to start turning this mess around. The state budget deficit is among the worst in the country. The sales tax in the City of Chicago is the highest in the nation. We have a fill-in Senator and a fill-in governor – neither was elected to the office he holds. And don’t get me started on the fill-in County Board President (I think he was technically elected, but only because his father very kindly won the primary for him before he died). If ever there were a time to show up, it was yesterday.
Our voter turnout?
Wait for it…..
25%.
I know it is “just” a mid-term election. But please consider:
We all do so much griping about how we don’t like any of the candidates when we (theoretically) head to the polls in November. But only 25% of us show up on the day of the primary? And for a Democrat in Cook County- Primary Day is Election Day.
Impeached governor? I’m over it. This turnout? I am embarrassed.
Lost Groundhog Election
I was driving home from work to vote in the primary. Somewhere on Willow Road, I was cut off by my mother. She turned to head home and I figured that she had either voted that morning or wanted to let the dog out first.
When I arrived at the polling center at 4:30, I found that I was only the 70th voter in my precinct. Pretty pathetic. So I asked the lady if my mother had been in yet. The answer was no, and could I send her over?
Sure, I said. She just cut me off on Willow Road and I am sure she just home went to go let the dog out.
When I arrived at home, I found her camped out on the couch watching the preliminary reports. I ordered her out the door. Told her that the lady was expecting her and I promised she’d go.
“Did you tell her that I cut you off on Willow Road?”
“No, I didn’t…wait. Yes, I did.”
And now I have told the entire Internet.
So she went. She was voter #73 and there were three people behind her. Still pretty pathetic. You know what else is pathetic? The news reports are more interested in the Pennsylvania Groundhog than in telling me any important thing at all. Although one station was kind enough to mention that the Brookfield Zoo did not see his shadow, so Chicagoland is off the hook.
Now I am watching Lost and clicking Refresh on the County Clerk’s page. They are equally confusing.
Dead Until Dark, by Charlaine Harris
Book 3True Blood, the TV series, is nasty. In a graphic-sex-beyond-my-imagination way. The blood was cool, though. The novel isn’t quite that nasty, but one of the reasons is that the novel is told in the first person, and Sookie would have no way of knowing about Jason and that blond girl in the parking lot of Merlotte’s, or about his ending up in the emergency room after drinking that vial of vampire blood. So one the one hand, the TV show is cooler because it follows the other characters around – they are more developed and very interesting. The book is more intimate with the heroine. Because she is the heroine. On the other hand. Jason is nasty.
The other way the TV show is cool is that in the portrayal of Sookie’s gift (or curse, depending on your point of view). She can read minds. The director or whomever did a really good job of showing how loud and awkward freaking crazy that would make you if you couldn’t turn it off at will.
But I was talking about the book. And the TV show is not entirely faithful to the text. For example, (slight spoilers here) when Long Shadow is killed, the TV show is very clear that Bill did it. The novel is not. It has Sookie blacking out and thinking that Eric did it. Now, perhaps that is simply what she thinks, and another truth will come out later. But it still a pretty big departure.
The character of Tara doesn’t even exist in the novel. I love Tara.
Anyway, if you like the show and would like to a) get further into Sookie’s head or b) have a whole bunch of brain candy to get you through to the next DVD release, this is a good pick.
Score Two For Kindle
I had watched several episodes of True Blood before I took a look at the novels on which it was based. The Sookie Stackhouse series is on Book 9 or 10. When I decided that I like it, I figured I might as well read the books. Or at least the first one.
I went to Borders.com, to see if I couldn’t burn through the rest of that gift card. Too expensive. Amazon, B&N, I don’t want to pay retail, I don’t want to pay shipping blahblahblah. Then I went back to Amazon to check out the options for the Kindle.
Books 1-8 in one box set download for $28.80.
I started mulling this over. 30/8 = less than four dollars per book. Certainly within the realm of reason, assuming that I like them and read them all. As if I need to read some more trashy vampire novels. As if I didn’t blow past that quota in the 10th grade. And then I look at my bookcase and do the need vs. want debate in my head. Then I tell myself that I should use the Kindle more because it will make my brother happy. Back and forth, back and forth. So I go to my mother.
“I need you to talk me out of spending money stupidly,” I say. And tell her my lame little dilemma.
She tells me to buy the books. Then she says, “Didn’t we determine there is a $50 minimum on having these debates?”
This, Ladies and Gentlemen, is why I cannot stop spending money.
So I buy them, and I start reading.
Here’s the good part. Just as Utter Scoundrel was talking about people being pretentious with the books they read (or pretend to) in public, I was discovering that if you read your trashy vampire novels on the Kindle…no one knows. No one knows!
(until I blog about it.)
What Women Pay
I read this article on MSN Money when I was out of town – Seattle, I think – so I didn’t write about it. But MP Dunleavy (with the help of Consumer Reports) dug up a whole bunch of scenarios where women are charged more than men for essentially the same service. Of course, this is not exactly news. And while I have noticed such things before, I think I had rationalized them to “women have more hair, so a haircut costs more” or “there are extra fragrances added that lotion” or “men push harder in negotiations/bargaining”.
Then there was mention of a lawsuit. Two ladies sued Saks for charging them for alterations on their evening gowns when alterations on men’s tuxedos are done for free. It sounds like wealthy women with too much time on their hands, but I guess the battles must be fought by those who have the means. It becomes scarier as Dunleavy notes the differences in mortgage and insurance rates and then the bottom line:
“When you look at each product or service individually, the affront doesn’t appear so egregious. But it all adds up: a few bucks for alterations, a percentage point or two in mortgage interest, higher health care co-pays. Then consider that, on average, a woman still earns about 78 cents to a man’s dollar (or $78,000 compared with $100,000 paid to a male colleague with the same level of experience).”
The moral of the story is that while there are larger battles to be fought here, the average women can make her statement by being a more educated consumer. Vote with your wallet!
Goddam Salinger
Chicago blogger Erin Shea wrote a piece about JD Salinger yesterday. She had been listening to the NPR report with an English teacher. ““This is the book they keep,” he said. “This is the one they never give away.””
Shea continued:
“I never have either. Yellow, worn and frayed, I have never let go of my original copy, the one my parents bought me for Christmas when I was in 7th grade. I’m looking at it right now, searching for underlined words, my name scrawled in the margins, dog-eared pages. Do you ever open a book and find something inside like that? As though these books you’ve been carrying around with you for years and years suspend time for you somehow by keeping those things for you?”
Oh, hell. So I went to into my library to look for it. It took awhile because it was still wrapped up – in a book cover way, with the actual English assignment – “supposing that our district was facing the prospect of having Catcher in the Rye banned…” There appear to be Diet Coke stains on the piece of paper – which also have my name and the title of the book written in purple ink in handwriting that was once mine and the word “pesadia” on the back in pink ink, in handwriting that I don’t quite recognize. Kris used to write in pink, though. What does “pesadia” mean, anyway? Cursory Google search gave me nothing.
Also in the pages was a little card that came with the candy cane – my school did a fundraiser every holiday where you could send treats to your friends – from Matt my sophomore year. I won’t even tell you what he wrote, but it was vulgar. I do not have dog-eared pages, underlining or notes in the margins.
I couldn’t say that this book changed my life on any conscious level. But around that time – the half-way point of my sophomore year – was when I started to like being in a classroom again. When I stopped hating the world and started to get over myself. If I had to be there I might as well learn something, right? How many teenagers do you know whose rebellion was substantially over before they even turned 16?
Anyway. I ought to toss that old, damaged thing in the trash and get a nice new copy, but I won’t.
Crazy as 10 Plastic Surgeries
As much as I enjoy the spa, I have always loathed paying money for a manicure. Two reasons:
- I can mostly do it myself. I even have a bloody paraffin bath!
- I will never have really nice nails again, so why the heck would I spend money to have them groomed?
However, now that I am old and my skin is dry…
For the last couple of years, my fingernails have been peeling. Not breaking, not splitting. Peeling off in layers. I have tried many products and nothing is helping. It is definitely worse in the winter. I have been told by the professionals, over and over, that if I would get regular manicures, it would get better. That has always sounded like a sales job to me.
However, you may have noticed that there are deals everywhere on the mani-pedis. (I hate that term.) Apparently the reasonable people have determined that if we are all going to try to save more money, blahblahblah. So I went in.
The nail technician (as I believe they prefer to be called) told me that the issue is taking care of the cuticles. Makes sense. How? Rub baby oil into them every day.
Baby oil? I can’t run around my house with baby oil on my hands! How would I even touch the computer?!
Gloves, she says.
Well, I only have one pair of moisturizing gloves, I would have to wash them much more regularly than I do and anyway, I don’t think they would hold up to actual baby oil.
Wear latex gloves, she says. It sounds weird, but you get used to them.
Would you believe I actually went to CVS and bought a box?
Five Cent Bags
I heard a lot of grumbling about this last week and I was going to wait a bit to watch the (r)evolution before commenting, but the AP just ran an article on Washington DC’s new tax on disposable bags. Every time you buy something in DC, the cashier will ask if you want a bag (or how many). You are then charged 5 cents per bag. The article talks about people avoiding it by shopping in Virginia – where other taxes are higher – or imperiling their purchases.
Apparently, the tax is an attempt to clean up the Anacostia River by reducing litter. My plastic bags almost never end up in the garbage. In fact, I let up on using the reusables a bit because we kept running out of plastic bags to hold our recycling. And the smaller ones I brought to the library for use at the Used Book Store.
Here is my favorite part of the piece:
“This is like a behavioral economist’s dream,” Dan Ariely, an economics professor at Duke University and author of “Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions,” told the Washington Post. “Here we will see people go to extreme lengths to save very little money.”
It seems that since its January 1 effective date, the estimate is that plastic bag use has been reduced by 50%. I expect there will be some sort of counter-revolution.
Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell
Book 2It is absolutely no surprise to me that 23 days into January I have only finished two books. I can’t get off the Internet long enough to watch TV, let alone read a book. Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, by Malcolm Gladwell, has been on my shelf for about ever. I pulled it down because some friends chose it for a Book Club pick.
It is a study of the split-second decisions we make. Conscious or unconscious, good or bad and how they happen. There are several case studies, including that of Amadou Diallo, the immigrant from Guinea who was shot to death by police in New York in 1999. Gladwell does an excellent job of breaking down how such a horrible, horrible thing could happen, and how it might be prevented in the future.
Interestingly, several chapters included things I have learned in school over the last couple of years. One was about a company that set up testing that tries to determine unconscious prejudices. I remember going online and trying it, and I could swear that I wrote about it, but I can’t find the entry. Another was about New Coke.
I don’t want to do much more analyzing before the Book Club discussion, but suffice it to say that I liked this one.
And now I shall go to Paradise Lost. But only because I can be reading that along with the Internet.
The Next Dark Age 