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Revolutionary thought of the day: Liberty can be made into a powerful force of domination. Free election of masters does not abolish the masters or the slave -- free choice among a wide variety of goods and services does not signify freedom if those good and services sustain social controls over a life of toil and fear. Herbert Marcuse , 1898-1979

I have an abiding interest in prison librarianship, and try to learn about it wherever I can. Whenever the OLA Superconference features a session on prison libraries, I attend. I'm always pleased to see how popular and well attended these sessions are. Perhaps that should not surprise. In a sense, prison libraries epitomize librarian values -- the inherent value of reading, the power of self-education, the importance of finding the right reading material, the solace and companionship that reading can offer, the democratizing and liberating power of the library. And perhaps above all, the desire to bring resources to people who are marginalized and under-served. Whether I'll ever work as a prison librarian or volunteer in a prison library remains to be seen. Prison libraries have been decimated by austerity budgets, and few people advocate for them. In recent years a few narrative nonfiction books about prison libraries have been published. This is the first of a series of revie...

The deadline to join the NDP and vote for Niki Ashton is August 17 . Last night I saw something that shocked me, and today I did something I've never done before: I joined a political party. And I did it so I can cast my vote for Niki Ashton for leader of the federal NDP. * * * * I worked on Saturday, and was very busy, with zero time to check headlines or social media. After work, I was watching the Red Sox trounce the Yankees and idly tapping on my tablet, when I was stopped cold. Heather Heyer was killed when a Nazi rioter drove a car into the crowd. I am not easily shocked. Perhaps I think I am shock-proof. But the spectacle of an angry mob carrying torches and Nazi banners, openly attacking a group of peaceful protesters, hit me like a gut punch. I've been writing about the collapse of the US empire, the US becoming a third world country, the fascist shift, and so on, for a long time. It's not like the rise of the white supremacists came out of nowhere. And it's no...

I've been scanning some old photos -- some of Allan and me through the years, others with my siblings at various ages -- and have been posting them on Facebook. This experience has led to two insights. The thoughts themselves aren't new, but this walk on memory lane has recalled and reinforced them. Insight number one: my self-image was extremely distorted throughout my life.  I thought I was fat and ugly. Yet there is evidence that that was not the case. I am now overweight, but that's a different story. This was a girl well within a normal, healthy weight and size range, thinking she was seriously overweight. It was no surprise that many of my female Facebook friends related to this. We came up with the following list of reasons. The reasons are not ranked in order of importance; it's a big mix, a preponderance of evidence, as the legal phrasing goes. 1. Media. We are constantly barraged with images of what is supposed to be beauty perfection; most are completely unre...

I finished City on Fire , Garth Risk Hallberg's astonishing debut novel, a few days ago, but stories from the book are still playing in mind. I initially didn't want to commit to reading a 900-page tome, but as I savoured the last scene, I was sorry to put it down. City on Fire  brings you to 1976-77 New York City, the summer of The Blackout, when the City famously went dark and infamously gave way to rioting and looting. It's the New York City of graffiti-covered subway cars, of brutal service cuts, unemployment, and street crime. It's also the New York City of the punk rock revolution, the birth of hip-hop, an exploding social scene of sex, drugs, and disco, of early gay liberation, of artistic flourishing. It's the New York City that lured young people who didn't conform to their small town's small-minded standards to stuff their belongings in a duffel bag and buy a one-way ticket on Greyhound. And it is -- as it always has been and always will be -- the ...

Loblaw Companies Limited 1 President's Choice Circle Brampton, Ontario, L6Y 5S5 Attention: LCL Customer Relations Centre Dear Loblaw Ltd.: I am a Loblaw customer and I was extremely disappointed by recent public statements made by Loblaw CEO Galen Weston, Jr., regarding the proposed raise of the minimum wage in Ontario. Mr. Weston claimed that the proposed wage hikes will result in higher prices and more self-checkout aisles, and speaks about labour costs "ballooning" by $190 million.* Mr. Weston clearly values Loblaw's shareholders more than it cares about its customers. When I spend my hard-earned money, I don't think it's too much to ask the store to provide check-out and bagging, and for there to be adequate staff on-hand to minimize time spent waiting in line. Instead, Mr. Weston implies that if the minimum wage is increased, I will be forced to provide his very profitable company with free labour by doing my own checkout. When a company posts $990 mill...

I have a TIHATL double-header today, plus a bonus round. A customer asked for something by Omar Tyree. We had only one copy of one title, and that was in a different branch. I asked if I could get her something with a similar vibe, and she was up for it. Turns out she has read all of Tyree's work -- she loves it and wanted to re-read. So yes, more authors like that would be good. I had never heard of Tyree, but Google told me he is considered an urban griot. (I see by the author's website that he is much more than that, but I was specifically looking at his fiction.) "Urban griot" made me think of Junot Diaz , and with a bit more searching I also found Akhil Sharma . She took one book by each author -- so I've already struck gold -- and then I thought of Walter Mosley . I asked, "Do you like mysteries?" She said, sure, why not, I'm always looking for good things to read. "Have you read Walter Mosely?" Nope, she doesn't know him. As we...