Shame Quartet

"Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present."
Cunningham, Foley, DeLay and Ney.

Hanging out with Elmo will not absolve you, Mrs. Laura Bush.

"It's just a nice cover for the killing." observe RUSSELL MOKHIBER and ROBERT WEISSMAN at Counterpunch in an essay about the National Book Festival on Saturday.

Mokhiber and Weissman ask:

Will Dr. Helen Caldicott appear to read from her new book -- Nuclear Power is Not the Answer?
No.

Will Noam Chomsky appear to read from his bestseller -- Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Domination?

No.

Will Amy and David Goodman appear to read from their new book -- Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders, and the People Who Fight Back?
No.

Find out who else won't be there.

[Thanks K.M.}

Florida Book Awards-NEW!

The Florida Book Awards, coordinated by the Florida State University Program in American & Florida Studies -- and co-sponsored by the

Florida Center for the Book,
The State Library and Archives of Florida,
The Florida Historical Society,
The Florida Humanities Council,
The Florida Literary Arts Coalition,
The Florida Library Association,
“Just Read, Florida!,” the Governor’s Family Literacy Initiative,
Florida Association for Media in Education,
Florida Center for the Literary Arts,
Friends of the Florida State University Libraries, and
The Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America

--

An annual awards program that recognizes, honors, and celebrates the best Florida literature published in the previous year.

Definition of Categories for the Competition

Except for category 7, all submissions must be in the English language

1. General Fiction, including short story collections (minimum 40,000 words)
2. Young Adult Literature (for ages 12-19), including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction books (with or without illustrations)
3. Children’s Literature (through age 11), including poetry, fiction, and nonfiction books (with or without illustrations)
4. Florida Nonfiction, including Florida history, biography, autobiography, or memoir (authors need not be current Florida residents; book’s content must primarily focus on Florida)
5. Poetry (including chapbooks over twenty pages; submissions must be by a single author)
6. Popular Fiction (including mystery, fantasy, romance, horror, science fiction, westerns, and adventure)
7. Spanish Language Book (including non-fiction, novels, young adult literature, children’s literature, and poetry for all ages).

2006 Winners of the Jane Addams Children's Book Awards

The 2006 Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards will be presented Friday, October 20th in New York City. Details about the award event and about securing winner and honor book seals are available from the Jane Addams Peace Association.

Delivering Justice: W. W. Law and the Fight for Civil Rights, written by Jim Haskins and illustrated by Benny Andrews, and published by Candlewick Press, is the winner in the Books for Younger Children category.

Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX, the Law that Changed the Future of Girls in America, by Karen Blumenthal and published by Atheneum Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster is the winner in the Books for Older Children category.

Poems to Dream Together=Poemas Para Soñar Juntos, written by Francisco X. Alarcón, illustrated by Paula Barragán, and published by Lee and Low Books, Inc., has been named an honor book in the Books for Younger Children category.

The Crazy Man, by Pamela Porter, published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press.

Sweetgrass Basket, by Marlene Carvell, published by Dutton Children’s Books/a Division of Penguin Young Readers Group

The Jane Addams Children's Book Awards are given annually to the children's books published the preceding year that effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, world community, and the equality of the sexes and all races as well as meeting conventional standards for excellence.

The Jane Addams Children's Book Awards have been presented annually since 1953 by the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Jane Addams Peace Association. Beginning in 1993, a Picture Book category was created. Honor books may be chosen in each category.

Authors and artists of award-winning and honor books each receive a certificate and a cash award. Seals designating each recognition are available for purchase by publishers, libraries, schools and others wanting them from the Jane Addams Peace Association.

Between 1963 and 2002, announcement of the awards was made each fall on the September anniversary of Jane Addams' birth date. Beginning in 2003, the award winners are announced on April 28, the anniversary of the founding of WILPF. An awards presentation, open to all, is held each year on the third Friday of October.

P'oe Tsáwä Blue Water Esther Martinez

Los Angeles Times. September 24, 2006.
At a government-run boarding school for Indians in the 1920s, Esther Martinez was not allowed to speak Tewa, her native language. Nor could she listen to the kinds of traditional tales her grandfather told her.

The goal of the school was to assimilate Native Americans, and that meant leaving the past — the stories and language — behind. But Martinez never did.
The language and stories remained a part of her life. As an adult she became a teacher of the language and compiled a dictionary to help others learn it. And she became a storyteller, keeping alive the stories her grandfather passed down to her and creating her own.

"Esther has been a keeper of the language central to Pueblo expression and identity as well as a storyteller whose traditional tales both enlighten and entertain," said Dana Gioia, chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, which on Sept. 14 honored Martinez as a 2006 National Heritage Fellow, the highest recognition in the folk and traditional arts.

Two days later Martinez was killed in a car accident caused by a driver suspected of being drunk. The accident occurred in Espanola, N.M., as she and her family returned home from the NEA ceremony, said Det. Sgt. Christian Lopez of the Espanola Police Department. She was 94.

You can hear her telling stories.

White House Reading Czar Calls Curriculum Developers "Dirtbags" if they Are Not Insiders

“Beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in a way that will stand up to any level of legal and [whole language] apologist scrutiny. Hit them over and over with definitive evidence that they are not SBRR, never have been and never will be. They are trying to crash our party and we need to beat the [expletive deleted] out of them in front of all the other would-be party crashers who are standing on the front lawn waiting to see how we welcome these dirtbags.”— [p.24]. Chris Doherty, White House Reading Czar.
============
See "Bush Reading Program Rife with Fraud."

John Adams Unbound

John Adams Unbound marks the first public exhibition of the complete personal library of founding father and lifelong book collector, John Adams. This landmark event is the culmination of a three-year project by the Boston Public Library to catalog, preserve, digitize and provide access to the extraordinary personal library of America’s second president.

From his personal copy of the first printing of the US Constitution to the first Koran printed in the United States, the books show the staggering scope of Adams's intellectual interests and his impact on the nation's democratic experiment. The notes from Adams's pen are vivid evidence of that mind at work.
--Brian MacQuarrie, Boston Globe

On Laura Bush and Libraries

Library Juice has a comprehensive report on the discussion among librarians about government fellowshiops named after Laura Bush.
Here are a few highlights from the ALA discussion lists.

----Original Message Follows----
From: Al Kagan
Reply-To: alaworld@ala.org
To: ALA International Relations Round Table

I was trying to stay out of this discussion, but it has gotten to the point where I think I need to weigh in. Whether one agrees or not with Mark and the way he makes his points, this is certainly an important topic of debate. There are many librarians who opposed ALA's attempt to be nice to the Bush Administration. Tellingly the large auditorium were our so-called First Lady spoke looked quite empty. It seems that the folks in charge of scheduling the venue thought that thousands would go to her program. They were wrong. I was one of the few who rose to the hastily called task of distributing flyers outside the door. By the way, the conference security left us alone for awhile but just before the beginning of her talk tried to intimidate us from distributing flyers. We held our ground and they eventually relented. In fact, one person in the group challenged them to arrest her for expressing her free speech.
When I was arguing for opposing the entire USA Patriot Act, not just the section related to library records, I said that getting an exemption for libraries was a poor tactic. If we succeed in protecting libraries while the rest of the country descends into a new kind of McCarthyism, we will have totally failed our task. This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is the Bush Administration that is destroying our civil rights at home and laying waste to whole countries overseas. The latest news is that the Pentagon has established a new group to plan the coming war on Iran.
Laura Bush is part of this plan. She is cleverly trying to win us over to silence us on the larger questions. We can't let that happen.
Those who think Laura Bush is doing something independent of a larger strategy are mistaken. They should rethink what is going on. Any short term gain for librarians by playing Laura's game can easily turn into a long term disaster for our country and the whole world.
Al Kagan
=======
On Sep 21, 2006, at 7:06 PM, Mark C. Rosenzweig wrote:
If Laura Bush is going to be canonized in the US library world despite >her connections to this administration --or because of them --and in >complete capitulation to the administration's tactics of using her and>her activities to put a "smiley face" on the detestable policies they >pursue, it is a legitimate topic of discussion on this or any library list.>
>Politics, supposedly so anathema to librarianship, has been introduced >here not by me but by the decision to go along with the PR machine of >thje Administration in creating a cult of Laura Bush, "librarian and >teacher".>
>On this list devoted to international aspects of librarianship, I feel >it perfectly legitimate to suggest that in the eyes of the world (even >ALAWORLD) anything which connects US librarianship to this >administration --with its global policies of war, torture and occupation -- is open to question, debate and criticism.>
>I strongly urge you all to read the two documents whose URLs I forwarded previously and ask yoiurself, if we giving awards and naming programs >after her, what Laura Bush really stands for in relation to the big >issues which surround her everyday.>
>And, frankly, I don't care what Nacy Bolt tells me about where I should >take this, or what Mr. Cooperman says. I am a member of ALA and a >Councilor. I feel perfectly entitled to post on this list and will >continue to do so as I wish.>
>Mark C. Rosenzweig,ALA Councilor at large.
========
>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Nancy Bolt
>>Sent: Sep 22, 2006 5:20 AM
>>To: ALA International Relations Round Table
>>Subject: [ALAWORLD:1854] RE: Laura Bush: A fourth rate Eva Peron and
>>partisan patron saint of libraries
>>
>>Mark, not on this mailing list. Please take these comments to ALA
>>council and complain there.>>
>>Nancy
>>Nancy Bolt & Associates

>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: owner-alaworld@ala.org [mailto:owner-alaworld@ala.org] On Behalf
>>Of Mark C. Rosenzweig Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 8:07 PM To:
>>ALA International Relations Round Table Subject: [ALAWORLD:1849] RE:
>>Laura Bush: A fourth rate Eva Peron and partisan patron saint of
>>librariesYes, and as a SEPARATE PERSON she is a responsible moral agent.She is free to determine whether she wants to be publicly (or , for that matter, privately) associated with -- and help advance the interests of -- the political administration of a person, her huisband,whose policies and pronouncements show such contempt for our constitutional order, for international law and for human rights and
>>whose manner and mentality exhibit such a lack of intellectual development, of reasoning, of civility and of culture, and such rrogant disregard for the norms of international political discoursethat he has made his country at once the most hated and most ridiculous in the world.>>
>>As a SEPARATE PERSON, Laura Bush could break from th eAdministration,disassociate herself from it, refuse to serve in any official capacity under its auspices and speak out against it.Is conventional wifely "duty" stronger than the demands of moral
>>autonomy and responsibility? Apparently, for some here-- the same who keep yelling that she is an individual in her own right -- it goeswithout saying that it is.>>
>>-----Original Message-----
>>
>>>From: Nancy Bolt
>>>Sent: Sep 21, 2006 8:10 AM
>>>To: ALA International Relations Round Table
>>>Subject: [ALAWORLD:1848] RE: Laura Bush: A fourth rate Eva Peron and
>>partisan patron saint of libraries
>>>
>>>I will say yet once more. SHE IS A SEPARATE PERSON and she has done a
>>> lot for libraries.
>>>
>>>From: owner-alaworld@ala.org [mailto:owner-alaworld@ala.org] On Behalf
>>> Of Mark Rosenzweig Sent: Wednesday, September 20, 2006 6:27 AM To: ALA
>>>International Relations Round Table Subject: [ALAWORLD:1844] Laura
>>>Bush: A fourth rate Eva Peron and partisan patron saint of libraries
>>>Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program???????????>
>>>
>>>That's how the IMLS has renamed a long-standing grant program in sickening adoration of the President's wife -- and as an act of fealty to our illiterate President.>>
How about: "Seemingly Clueless Wife of International War Criminal 21st
Century Librarian Program" ?>>
>>>
>>>
>>>If you think the Bush family/Administration should enter posterity with its name attached, in an act of oblivious obsequiousness, to an ALREADY EXISTING grant program, formerly unnamed for anyone, connecting Bush et cie. with the promotion of -- of all things -- culture, then I suggest you read this final report of an international tribunal accusing the man Mrs.Bushshares her life with -- and owes her notoriety to-- of being gulity of war crimes and crimes against humanity...>>>
>>>http://www.bushcommission.org/Findings/Final%20Verdict.pdf>>
>>>Also, if you lost count... read this report of how many prisoners are
>>>in Bush's gulag. 14, 000 and still growing. Perhaps we should ask
>>>Laura Bush if she's read anything about this in her extensive readings
>>>and what she thinks of it ....
>>>http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060918/ap_on_re_mi_ea/
>>>in_american_hands_16

=
Library Juice has a comprehensive report on the discussion among librarians about government fellowshiops named after Laura Bush.

Scrutiny Continues to Mount re BUDDY JOHNSON(R) Hillsborough,FL Elections Chief

Scrutiny Continues to Mount re BUDDY JOHNSON(R) Hillsborough,FL Elections Chief

Scrutiny Continues to Mount re BUDDY JOHNSON(R) Hillsborough,FL Elections Chief
As documented in a number of stories by Times staff writer Jeff Testerman, Johnson has drawn criticism for several reasons: contracting out legal services instead of using the county attorney's office; making a childhood friend one of the highest-paid employees in his office; and giving a former employee a $24,000 gag deal.

Hugo Chavez & Chomsky's "Hegemony" at the U.N.

UNITED NATIONS -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his verbal battle with the United States to the floor of the UN General Assembly on Wednesday, calling U.S. President George W. Bush “the devil.”

“The devil came here yesterday,” Chavez said, referring to Bush’s address on Tuesday and making a sign of the cross. “He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world.”

The leftist leader, who has joined Iran and Cuba in opposing U.S. influence, accused Washington of “domination, exploitation and pillage of peoples of the world.”

Speaking through an interpreter, Chavez called on nations to rise up against what he called America's hegemony. He even had some recommended reading for his colleagues: Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival: America's Quest for Global Dominance.

"It's an excellent book to help us understand what's been happening in the world throughout the 20th century," Chavez said, "and what's happening now."

The "Oulipian" conception of literature

Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle which became: b) an abbreviation: OU.LI.PO.
c) then a proper name: OULIPO, at last becoming d) a true noun in its own right, that is, a substantive admitting of an adjective (oulipien) and of transferences and transformations in other tongues, American English having created the noun "Oulipism" (if I say American English it is because England has thus far proved recalcitrant to the Oulipo), German the adjective oulipisch, and Italian a derivative group, the Oplepo, the original name being here reduced to an etymological origin of what needs to be glossed only in order to explain its genesis) -

In conclusion, what is the Oulipo's general aesthetic policy? Certainly Pythagorean, as is shown by the invention of "Queneau's numbers", a most up-to-date version of the golden mean. But I shall say no more on this point. In the words of the operetta, "some secrets you don't give away".

Translation by Harry Mathews

THE OULIPO COMPENDIUM
is the first book in any language to offer a complete survey of the activities of the Oulipo, a literary group that many consider the most original, productive, and provocative to appear since the second World War. Edited by Harry Matthews and Alastair Brotchie.

The Oulipo - in full, the Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, or Workshop for Potential Literature - was founded in France in 1960 by the French author Raymond Queneau and the mathematical historian François Le Lionnais. Made up of mathematicians as well as writers, the group assigned itself the task of exploring how mathematical structures might be used in literary creation. The idea of mathematical structure was soon broadened to include all highly restrictive methods, like the palindrome and the sestina, that are strict enough to play a decisive role in determining what their users write. The most notorious example of this approach is Georges Perec's novel, A Void, written without a single appearance of the letter e.


The Believer looks at the (living) masters of Oulipo, recounted in part using the linguistic restraints for which they’re famous.



Ramon Llull (1232-1316).

1st International Russian Book Festival participants visit Baku Slavic University

1st International Russian Book Festival participants visit Baku Slavic University.
The festival brought together about 150 writers, poets, publishers, publicists and state figures, who have contributed much to the contemporary Russian book.

The world-famous Chingiz Aytmatov, Oljas Suleymanov, Verokina Dolina, Tatyana Ustinova, Eduard Uspenski, Vera Pavlova, David Markish, Aleksandr Ebonidze and several other prominent writers are among the festival participants.

First, the guests visited the tomb of the then President Heydar Aliyev and Martyrs' Alley.

Culture and Tourism Minister Abulfas Garayev made an opening speech. He talked about the importance of the Festival within the Russian Federation's Year in Azerbaijan in 2006.

"The Festival organized by the Russian Federal Agency of Mass Communications, Russian Information Telegraph Agency-ITAR-TASS and Azerbaijani Culture and Tourism Ministry will have a positive impact on the Azerbaijani literature. It is a great pleasure for hosting such an international event. Our readers are happy that their lovely writers are in the country," the Minister said.

Mr.Garayev read the letter of congratulation by President Ilham Aliyev to the visitors and festival participants.

ITAR-TASS director general Vitali Ignatenko said the festival is important for Azerbaijan. Prominent Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aytamatov said it is a great pleasure for him to meet with Baku readers.
Kazakh writer Oljas Suleymanov, head of Azerbaijan Writers' Union Anar and several others shared their impressions on the festival.

"A roundtable- Eastern and Western poets, Pushkin and Nizami traditions" will be held at the Azerbaijan Writers' Union, and poetry night in the Azerbaijan State Philharmonic Society today.

Azerbaijani singers will give a concert for the visitors and city residents on 16 September.

Russian writers and publishers will visit the Baku Slavic University and also visit several regions of the country. Over 15,000 books brought from Russia will be delivered to Azerbaijani libraries free of charge after the festival ends.

Lynn Edwards Angell-Librarian Who Died on 9-11 Will be Honored

Librarian, Lynn Edwards Angell, who died on American flight 11 will be honored by Hannah of The Olson Files as part of 2,996: A Tribute to the Victims of 9/11. Those to be memorialized were randomly assigned to volunteering bloggers.

The 2,996 Project: idea is simple, but powerful: have a special tribute for each victim of 9/11, with each tribute being created by a different blogger.

LIBRARIAN bloggers honoring others who died:

Martin DeMeo- Librarian
Lt. Cmdr. Robert Randolph Elseth - Shhh! Librarian-in-Training!
Howard Lee Kane-Impromptu Librarian