07.07.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 8:38 am by anand
I found this note to myself on my morning-job legal pad, dated 5/25/10:
” ‘Typing’ (as on a keyboard) is really a graphing exercise: mapping abstract ideas into words, and words into representational characters in ink or digital surrogate (though for digital natives, the digital word is not a copy or substitute or a simulacrum, it is the primary face itself)–what I tend to forget is that the meaning comes from a resolution of cognitive and affective conflict that arises from realizing a discontinuity. Anyway, there are a lot of translations and conversations between mind an written word — lots of approximations, which yields great potential for distortion.”
Thoughts?
To be honest, I’m not 100% sure what the hell I meant by “realizing a discontinuity”. The meaning of a word comes from resolving tension in thought-feeling flow? What? I didn’t realize that the struggle to understand myself could be so… literal.
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05.04.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:14 pm by anand
Can you please stop complaining about the weather, except for natural disasters?
Spring has finally arrived in Michigan. 75 degrees, mild-to-moderate humidity (that’s when you can feel the water in the air, you know, like how it feels at the beach on a “cold”, sunny afternoon).
Know why Southern Californians are so relaxed and happy all the time, except for when they feel the slightest bit of disruption? You can get used to paradise. When paradise is home, you grow accustomed to its peaks, but only if you see them as backdrop.
Bad Hollywood “films” reduce the depth of life inquiry. Bad literature does the same thing (n.b. “cheesey” and “sappy” are not the same thing as “emotionally honest”).
Your setting is not a green screen. Pay attention.
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02.15.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 3:13 pm by anand
Resist harm.
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02.04.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:58 am by anand
I’m now in my 6th month as the library intern at the UM Spectrum Center, and I’m embarking on my first major weeding adventure! This means I get to see the collection up close and personal, as I examine each and every book and determine whether we should keep it where it is, reclassify it, or send it out to pasture.
We have some awesome shit, you guys. Consider this: Becky Bohan’s Fertile Betrayal (Madwoman press, 1995).
I LOVE THAT THIS BOOK EXISTS.
From the blurb on the back cover: “Veterinarian Nedra Wells has moved to a small town in Minnesota to open her own mixed-animal practice. For years she has envisioned being a country vet like her father, and after meeting and falling in love with school teacher Annie Callahan, Nedra was sure she could have it all… Against a backdrop of a possible fracture in her relationship, Nedra’s practice confronts her with a deadly health crisis in a local cattle heard [sic]. … Nedra’s inquiry leades her into a broader investigation and ultimately, to the solution of a very human problem.”
The folks at Awful Library Books might disagree, I say this one is a KEEPER for sure.
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01.16.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 5:46 pm by anand
If I had a pot of money to sit on and give to people who are trying to answer important social questions*, I would say, “Hey! Does anybody have the time and resources to answer this question? I wanna know to what degree facebook users consciously project (un)desirable self-images onto their online representations through their profiles, and in particular through status updates. To what degrees do the status updates present more “positive” and “negative” self-evaluations? Can status updates, being a channel of rapid multidirectional communication, be reliably used as indicators of self-image? And can they be used effectively by peers and school nurses for early-detection of mental health problems among school-age kids? And what are the ethical considerations of a school nurse monitoring students’ facebook statuses (including: to what degree are students really aware of facebook privacy settings and how to use them?)?
See, that’s a perfect book based on 5 years of research I’ll never do! Or could be part of a great graduate-level class I’d love to take (or teach, if I had some of the answers)!
*Isn’t the idea of a research grant cool, when you break it down to basics? Too bad the organized Right has so much money poured into producing biased social research with poor methodology. Research is 15% what questions you ask, 25% why you ask them, and 60% how.
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01.14.10
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:26 pm by anand
Over the holidays, I ventured East (but mostly South, actually) to rendezvous with my sister and her partner in Pennsylvania at said partner’s parents’ house, where we pickled pepper plants patiently. Meantime, my other sister, her new husband, and my papa flew to Mexico City to visit husband’s family. My ma stayed in LA and partied with her friends.
Whew!
Today, my facebook live feed popped up a short conversation between my papa and Heidi’s mom.
Oh, brave new world, that has web features in it! Seriously, though, how cool is that? Social media promoting a channel of communication that I’ve only ever seen, well, not work out so well: parent-in-law* to parent-in-law. If this catches on, a lot of women could be a lot safer in their marriages: more contact yields more investment in relationship yields increased accountability. Sure, there’s probably a particular subset of all parents-in-law who are more likely to use facebook regularly and add content, but it’s not necessarily the ones who’re already talkers–the interwebs have always been a boon to the introverted, the shy, and the awkward. More voices, more shared information, more better.
*Okay, well it ain’t the law everywhere yet.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:50 pm by anand
Dear Audre Lorde,
Today I went to a psychiatrist for the second time in my life. I like this guy– he’s not a drug pusher like the last one.
In the course of our conversation, I showed him a graph I drew in my diary in December Aught Nine. The graph charts my composite stress level from September ’06 nearly through the end of last year. The doc pointed to the beginning of the graph. “There’s a lot of area under the curve there.” I like this guy.
When we got up to last semester, I noticed how high the line on the graph soared, and I was surprised. See, I had a really good holiday break, and the semester has started unseasonably well. How well? 14th-good-day-in-a-row-and-the-previous-record-was-3 well. So I guess I forgot already how hard the fall term was for me.
Last summer featured a host of major changes in my personal life. It kicked off with never-relaxing-always-emotionally-intense top surgery, and let me just say that that set the tone for the rest of the season. By the time school started, I was plumb worn out.
But alas, graduate school is not a time for relaxing. Instead, I was pulled back right under the water by the daily stress of school even as I was adjusting to the results of the summer’s changes.
As it turns out, school stress + personal/family stress + social stress + oh right, I still have PTSD -> unstable mental health.
It was really the social stress that put me over the edge, and unfortunately, it also came from school.
See, I’m brown, and I know I’m brown, and I’m a queer, and I know I’m queer, and I’m trans and a man and I know that, too, and I also know that I come from a newly American middle class background, and I’m extremely able-bodied (except for a neck problem, but that only persists because I don’t have sufficient access to the healthcare I need) and I know that. A lot of my classmates don’t know shit about themselves, and, as a corollary, know even less about me.
When 77% (23 out of 30) students in one class are straight, white, and solidly middle or upper-middle class, this is a major problem.
When I’m taking the one class in my program in which “race just seems to come up a lot”, it’s a mind-draining problem.
I heard more gross generalizations, denials of difference, assumptions of hegemonic experience, and otherwise ignorant garbage in one semester than I think I have in the 5 years preceding it combined.
At the end of it, I made this* for a final project. I was really proud of myself for being able to turn my fury into something productive and helpful, and my instructor really got and liked it. Win/win! But, my Lorde, it took a lot out of me.
The new semester started in earnest for me this week, and the work is already piling up. The good news is that my personal/family stress is way, way down from where it was just a few months ago, and that class is over and the courses I’m taking now have more room for oppressed people to be present, so the social stress is lower than it was, too–though not altogether vanished.
This semester, there are more people of color in 2 of my 3 classes. Significantly, both of these are outside the School of Information. In the class hosted by the English department, 42% students of color, and in Social Work, 25%. Both of these classes also have a reasonable number of people in them– 17 and 20, respectively. My lone SI class this semester has 42, and of us, only 5 are people of color.
How did you make it through library school in the 1960s? I could use your advice.
Yours in love and respect,
Anand
——————–
*I know lavender on lavender is terrible for folks with color blindness and that flash is bad for screen readers! I’ll be changing the color scheme as soon as I can. Sorry! Happy to provide text to anyone interested in the mean time.
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12.18.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:36 pm by anand
I would make a hobby-project out of preserving digital Star Trek fan fiction. So much of it is from the mid/late nineties, on those old pop hosting services like AOL Hometown and Geocities, which today look rather like I imagine Rome did after the barbarians swept through.
Geek history needs to be preserved so that my children’s children’s children may revel in this website, which is dedicated entirely to stories about a prehensile plant that appeared in one episode of Voyager. Sadly, many of the links no longer work. But this one has pretty good surrogate records, so we may at least enjoy the image of what might have been behind a summary–which now floats above the ethereal nothingness of the story like an epigraph on a tombstone– that said only, “The Plant gets to have some fun, while Tuvok is… otherwise indisposed.”
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12.07.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:58 pm by anand
“This great victory will reverberate up and down America, putting the fear of God — and the American voter — into the hearts of weak-kneed and weak-willed politicians everywhere.” — National Organization for Marriage executive director Brian Brown [1].
A couple of points, Brian.
1. It was a defensive victory… you know, like how we “win” by stopping you guys from getting what you want, which is to make us disappear, or at least not make so much noise comin’ out of that velour rainbow wardrobe in the corner of your bedroom.
2. “weak-kneed and “weak-willed”? You mean, like people who can’t resist being queer? Don’t be such a Puritan, Brian. You wouldn’t have to put nearly as much will into being a ‘mo as you seem to put into not being one. Don’t worry, it’s pretty nice over here. There’s unicorns and time-traveling lesbians and football players everything, just like you promise in your TV ads.
xo
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11.15.09
Posted in community informatics, information, librarianship, social change at 10:08 am by anand
I wrote this instead of the paper I was supposed to write for my information literacy class. It, uh, it could use some editing (and a lot more support from outside my own head), and I know it’s a bit long to be a blog post. But I want to know what you think! Please comment freely.
Information literacy is a set of metaskills that involves recognizing information needs, finding and accessing appropriate information to meet the needs, evaluating the sources and content of the found information, and putting the evaluated information to use (ALA 1989, p. 1). Shifting the perspective from an external examination of information behavior to an internal one, we can see that information literacy is profoundly a process of self-awareness and critical consciousness: recognizing an information need requires an awareness of the limits of one’s own knowledge–coming to the realization that one needs more information about a topic requires identifying a gap in contained knowledge. We can similarly discuss the other component processes of information literacy. In sum, information literacy boils down to an understanding of the field of information at hand–that is, interaction and familiarity with its context. So, to teach with information literacy in mind, we must teach context as a key component of content.
Information literacy is a gateway to self-awareness and empowerment. We can consider it a meta-skill set. Usually, we compare information literacy to “basic” literacy (reading words and sentences), without defining what “basic” literacy means. I offer the following definition: a set of skills used to understand the meaning of thoughts, as expressed through words. Information literacy, then, is a set of skills used to understand the meaning of information, as expressed through any format. However, in practice, IL is most often limited in a functional use to the understanding of words (thoughts), and, to a lesser extent, images and data. These are far from the full range of formats information takes. One area of study that is particularly overlooked is the realm of emotions, which I argue are yet another type of information. They cannot be experienced or understood using the methods of “basic” (word) literacy, and yet experiencing and understanding emotions are important parts of being alive. Emotional literacy, then, is necessary for health and life: recognizing (identifying) expressions of emotions in oneself and others, patterns of emotional expression, effects and consequences, stimuli and triggers; understanding their meaning; being able to engage and work with them–altogether a parallel, if not wholly analogous, set of skills one finds in “basic” and information literacy.
In the world today, many people are oppressed through physical, psychological, and economic means, and along axes of many identities (race, ethnicity, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, class, physical and cognitive ability, body shape and size, age, etc.). This oppression is systemic and is the fault of no one individual; however, the system persists because it privileges some groups over others (thereby giving incentives to participate instead of reject its rules), and relies on the fractures it creates among groups of people to sustain itself (see: Freire 1970, Lorde 1984, Foucault 1979, Castillo 1994, Moraga & Anzaldúa 1983).
The impact on the psyche of oppressed people is no small matter–living in a society that devalues you, discriminates against you in the very laws of the land, makes you and your pain invisible, builds barriers to your health and financial stability, and then blames you for it causes an array of skewed thoughts that can obscure emotional clarity. Knowing that systemic oppression is at the heart of persistent emotional distress is a key first step in healing and beginning to overcome. For an oppressed person, understanding the meaning, significance, context of persistent feelings of worthlessness hinges on information: that other people feel the same way, but not everyone (and so there are groups of us, and I am part of a group, and so I am part of a group that feels individually isolated, so there are big forces that must act on us if so many of a large group of people feels alone!); that the feelings are what’s inhibiting ‘other’ aspects of our lives (that “success” in this society is designed for people who are specifically not people like me, that I struggle in ways some other people don’t have to, and the extra work I do to be successful is not recognized).
To know that is to recognize one’s own social location in relation to other (contradictory) information about it that an oppressive society insists on perpetuating, and insists on compelling oppressed people to believe about themselves; in other words, to develop a critical social consciousness (Freire 1970). Recognizing that the system lies is necessary for survival–a paramount information need. And, once again, we recognize information needs if we are information literate, or if we are beginning to be. Information literacy is vital to consciousness, to self-awareness, to empowerment. If survivors of oppression didn’t have to figure out the lies painfully and slowly and excruciatingly and alone (i.e., as disconnected individuals), we could heal faster and more effectively, and change the system much more rapidly than we are already.
But they don’t teach emotional literacy in schools. Critical thinking about power relations and oppression are far from the curriculum in America’s educational system. In one key case study, Hollingworth noted that even when teachers attempt to address oppression–most often taking racism against African American people as the substrate–their methods backfire: “often the conversations in the classroom normalized Whiteness in ways that shut down student explorations of racial diversity, power, and oppression, especially as they figure in contemporary American life” (2009, p. 31). She continues: “When 90% of the teaching force is White, as it is in the United States today, it is not surprising that White teachers are largely not willing to discuss race in the classroom” (p. 35). While a growing number of educational researchers have called for a “curriculum that examines power, privilege, and race” (Hollingworth 2009, p. 36), the vast majority of classrooms are simply failing to do so, and thus perpetuating systemic racism by not challenging oppressive ideology that dominates public and academic discourse.
Yet oppressed people continue to survive, continue to break through and thrive–so where do we learn about ourselves? Wherever and whenever we interact with each other: in bars, on the street, in bed, in literature and art and music, on picket lines. For those of us with access to colleges and universities and the money flowing through them, through student affairs programming and staff, in therapy, through conferences. And in dreams, in lessons learned, in broken bones (step 1: don’t walk alone at night if you can help it), in the kind of introspection that is neither casual nor leisure, but necessary to keep living–or to start.
So, we have recognized both that information literacy (especially, but not exclusively, as applied to emotions) is vital to thriving in an oppressive environment and subverting oppressive regimes, and that educational institutions do not engage critical discussions of oppression nor do they teach students to read emotions beyond a basic level. It seems clear, then, that (barring a massive overhaul of the educational system) schools are not the best forum for engaging oppressed people around their psychological and emotional experiences/reactions to predesigned adversity. Instead, we must find a way to teach coping skills–chief among them information literacy–where learning is already occurring: in the realms of community space, as listed above. But those who seek out those spaces will have already come to at least some understanding of their “difference”–not those in whom the voices of internalized oppression are so strong that they cannot hear their inner fact-checker pointing out faulty logic in the language of the system that taught it. “[I]t is necessary to scrutinize not only the truth of what we speak, but the language by which we speak it” (Lorde 1984, p. 43), so when a voice rings hollow because it is inauthentic–i.e., it has been planted in one’s head and fertilized by one’s own complicity in submission–we must examine the source.
Of course, this is another key element of information literacy, and an expression of critical thinking. But again: if people are taught to think critically only insofar as their academics (and not in the context of their own lives) and do not have a framework for emotional and mental health, we will continue to struggle needlessly, and continue to feel battle fatigue after such routine events as going to school or work, or the grocery store, or riding the bus.
To promote health on a community level, we must find ways of intervening earlier to interrupt and disengage harm before it is laid too thickly. In order to teach information literacy in these contexts, we must be present in them. In order to be credible when present, we must ourselves be critically socially aware. Yet as cyclical as this seems, there are concrete things that can be done. Curriculum in library schools can–and should– be inflected with social justice education; courses may be conducted jointly with community groups in a service context to promote multidirectional learning. Such courses would also expose library students to a wider spectrum of humanity and to expose served communities to librarianship as a profession–and therefore a possibility for community members themselves. Increasing the numbers of socially conscious librarians from all backgrounds increases the most valuable resource a community has: people who know how they can help.
It is imperative that librarians–as experts and instructors on the topic–be present for and available to and be themselves members of oppressed groups, and in environments where there are oppressed people who have not tipped over that first threshold of awakening–who have not recognized their need for information about themselves. If not, we will continue to be killed–whether it is the quick, brutal death of a hate crime or the slow, drawn-out anguish of spouse abuse or chemical leaching into poor neighborhoods. And we will continue to lose our loved ones to suicide and prison. Information literacy is not a luxury, it is a necessity– a critical tool we can use to teach our people how to exist, survive, thrive, and transcend while still here on Earth.
References: Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline and punish. New York: Vintage Books.; Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.; Hollingworth, L. (2009). Complicated Conversations: Exploring Race and Ideology in an Elementary Classroom. Urban Education, 44(1), 30-58.; Lorde, A. (1984). Sister Outsider. Trumansburg, New York: Crossing Press.; Moraga, C., & Anzaldúa, G. (1981). This Bridge Called My Back. New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press.; Presidential Committee on Information Literacy. (1989). Final Report . Chicago: American Library Association. Retrieved from http:/www.lita.org/ala/mgr
ps/divs/acrl/publications/whitepapers/presidential.cfm on July 17, 2009.
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