March 1, 2007

Public Support for the Library

Filed under: Books,Culture of the Book,Democrat and Chronicle,politics,Rochester,Rochester NY,writing — seth @ 3:16 pm

Fahrenheit 451  Necessary Illusions: Thought Control in Democratic Societies Censored 2007: The Top 25 Censored Stories (Censored) Executive Leadership and Legislative Assemblies (The Library of Legislative Studies) The New Thought Police: Inside the Left\'s Assault on Free Speech and Free Minds Information War: American Propaganda, Free Speech, and Opinion Control Since 9/11 

I wrote the County Executive.  I e-mailed the library.  After today’s announcement, I want to address this one more time.  Sometimes we have to protect things with which we disagree in order to protect ourselves.  The Rochester Library will spend the next sixty days looking over its internet policy because Maggie Brooks and News 10 want to scare us into believing that if something isn’t done, the Central Branch will turn into a modern version of a pre-Disney Times Square.  In spite of Brooks statements to the contrary, this is a free speech issue, and public access to information is on the line.

We know that County Executive Brooks is predicting a $100 million budget gap over the next two years.  Today’s Democrat and Chronicle article makes it clear that Brooks is asking the library to put itself in violation of a Supreme Court ruling or face loosing 6.6 million in county funding.  This should be a decision for our legislature, of course, but since there is a Republican majority, Brooks’ threats are probably all too real.  So is Brooks really looking to de-fund the library to cut the budget gap by $12 million over two years, and use the ACLU and the Supreme Court as scapegoats?

The politics beneath this are ugly, and Brooks is acting like a bully and a thug.  This is a fabricated crisis of which she is taking full political advantage.  If the library fights her, she gains some state and national exposure in the ensuing media coverage, adds to her “conservative” credentials, and narrows the coming budget gap.  If the library submits to her will, she wins a political fight and makes it harder for her next political target.

Either course this takes hurts the residents of Monroe County, especially the urban poor, many of whom rely on the library for vital information about government, health issues, education, and other subjects.  The citizens of Rochester and Monroe County face a choice of loosing the library altogether (the D&C article says it is “a cut that would likely force it to close”) or retain a library where the County Executive is allowed to decide what constitutes “appropriate” information.

I urge County residents to contact their legislators, regardless of whether you agree with me or not.

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March 27, 2006

Wrogging

Filed under: Blogging,Democrat and Chronicle — seth @ 1:51 pm

 William James : Writings 1902-1910 : The Varieties of Religious Experience / Pragmatism / A Pluralistic Universe / The Meaning of Truth / Some Problems of Philosophy / Essays (Library of America) The Sound and the Fury (Vintage International) The Catcher in the Rye Howl and Other Poems : (City Lights Pocket Poets Series) In Cold Blood Stream of Consciousness in the Modern Novel The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition

Michael Saffran, of RIT, had a Speaking Out essay in the D&C today.  I worry that his viewpoint, taken to an extreme would tend to limit the diversity of blogging.  Saffron writes that he is “perplexed when some blogging is equated with writing – because the two are frequently very different.”   Not so.  Blogging is always writing.  One may disagree that blogging is good or that it is bad, but it is still writing.  One can put ”brain dump” or “or stream of consciousness” (terms that Saffran does not believe to be writing) on a notebook page in crayon or type it on a webpage, but it doesn’t change what it is.  The line of reasoning in this piece is troubling because blogs are treated as different from other writing technologies in terms of the relationships between the writer, the reader, and the text.  Mr. Saffran has a problem with the quality of many blogs.  So do I.  But the way he frames his argument suggests that there is something inherently flawed in the technology that causes bad writing.  I would argue that the flaw exists in the writer, not the technology.

In the end I think Saffran’s argument is the same argument made about non-traditional writing styles before computers and the internet.  Many works (Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, and Ginsburg’s Howl to name a few) were labeled by some as “not writing” when they were published.

On a side note, Saffran’s article mentions one of the D&C’s new community blogs.  I think the community blogs are an excellent idea allowing for some real local color.  While some of the bloggers are better than others, overall I enjoyed some of the posts.  They may lose the interest of some readers as the disclaimer at the top lets you know that controversy will be guarded against.  The only problem is that sanitizing to avoid offense usually leads to a washing away of much truth as well.  On a related note, I do not like that one must sign up with Blogger.com in order to post a comment.  I wanted to comment on the Pittsford blog about something I am writing for this blog later in the week, but didn’t as I don’t want another online entity sending me junk mail and selling my address.

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