Month: March 2022

It is March Madness time again. That annual bacchanal of basketball that never fails to provide moments of emotion and exhilaration, interspersed with boring blowouts and continuous commercials. It is a madness best enjoyed with others, as well as a ready supply of beer, so as to enhance the tense moments, and give you something to do during the inevitable, interminable, interludes of inactivity. 

This year’s Madness is proceeding as expected. The first two days saw eleven games won by twenty points or more, eight games decided by five points or less and nine upsets (a higher seed beating a lower seed). None of the upsets was more exciting and unexpected than the 85-79 overtime win by the St. Peter’s Peacocks over the perennial powerhouse Kentucky Wildcats. 

The moment that most caught my attention in the St. Peter’s game was not any miraculous shot, or clutch free-throw, but what happened immediately after the game. It was a moment that will not show up on any highlight reel, and was bypassed by the announcers, but which had more impact on me than the game itself. 

The game was not decided until the last 30 seconds. It was only then that the outcome was assured. As the clock ticked down, the St. Peter’s players understandably were ready to explode, but their coach, Shaheen Holloway, would have none of it. As soon as the final horn sounded, he rushed onto the court, with a no-nonsense look on his face, to corral his players and get them in line for the post-game handshake. 

I don’t know what was going through Holloway’s head at that moment. Maybe the NCAA had warned coaches about excessive on-court celebrations. Maybe he was concerned that his players would enact an old-fashioned pig pile and someone would get hurt. However, it looked to me like in this moment of triumph he wanted to make sure that his players did not rub salt, even unintentionally, in the understandably gaping wounds of the Kentucky players. It was a moment of class that warmed the cynical cockles of my heart.  

This would usually be where I unleash my inner cranky old man and complain about a lack of sportsmanship generally, where every play, no matter how mundane, seems like an excuse to preen. Or, I could conflate sportsmanship with the toxic nature of social media. Better yet, I could use bad sportsmanship as a metaphor for the degraded nature of what passes for political discourse. But to do any of that would undermine Holloway’s gesture. 

The problem is that positive news, or acts of kindness, do not grab us like the sordid and audacious. I am just as guilty as anyone in this. I spent the better part of four years indulging in every stupid, nasty, idiotic utterance of a certain politician, who shall remain nameless, until I realized that it was a soul sapping indulgence that led nowhere, and only fed the ego I was trying to belittle. Even after that realization hit me, I had trouble looking away.  

The fact is that Holloway’s sportsmanship was not an isolated incident. For every insulting time out in a game already decided, there is a Nikki Hamblin and Abbey D’Agostino helping each other across the finish line after colliding during a race at the 2016 Olympics. For every doping scandal, there is the Florida Southern pitcher carrying an injured opponent around the bases after she hit a game winning home run against her. For every juvenile tantrum, there’s Paolo di Canio catching a pass during overtime of a Premier League soccer match to stop play and allow the opposing goalkeeper to receive treatment for a knee injury.   

The truth of the matter is that these acts of kindness go on all the time, but are generally glossed over. Leave it to David Bryne to recognize this and do something about it. Bryne started “Reasons to Be Cheerful” (admittedly not a great name), which publicizes stories of progressive governmental action, positive activism, and grassroots problem-solving, through a website, social media posts and other, larger projects. This venture seeks to “balance a sense of healthy optimism with journalistic rigor, and find cause for hope”.  

Reasons to be Cheerful is not a chimerical enterprise. It doesn’t shy away from the issues we face, or the divisions we all perceive. It just seeks to make sure that we know there is more to the story. We are not going to get that from the media, social or otherwise, unless it’s shoehorned in between narratives of violence and chicanery. It’s a balance that we badly need just to maintain our sanity in an insane world.  

Some of the recent Reasons posts include a report on an Oregon county using human waste to generate renewable green energy, restaurants in Kentucky forming a co-op to avoid delivery service mark-ups, and the institution of “Umuganda” in Rwanda (yes, that Rwanda), whereby on the last Saturday of every month thousands of Rwandans undertake community improvement projects. None of these, or the other stories Reasons publishes, are earth shattering, but they help to dispel the notion that the world is irredeemably rotten.  

Allowing the positive to filter through does not mean that we should ignore the depth of the world’s problems, or the impediments to meaningful change. But a failure to acknowledge that people and institutions are looking for solutions, even if they are local and limited, or taking into account the feelings of others, as Coach Holloway did, avoids the despair which a steady diet of mainstream media can engender. There still is hope in this world, if we are willing to recognize it.        

*Barry Hannah (full quote “Bursts of Kindness in improbable times; the warm in dire straits”)  

I just finished The Library Book, by Susan Orlean. The author uses the devastating 1986 fire at the Los Angeles Central Library (400,000 books destroyed, 700,000 damaged) as a jumping off point to create an homage to libraries generally. Orlean is a breezy, straight-forward writer, and a pleasure to read. Since I am a library geek myself, this book resonated with me.  

I have four libraries within 10 minutes of my house. Although these libraries are not stately tributes to books, like the Los Angeles Central Library or the Philadelphia Free Library, they all have that hushed buzz that makes me want to linger in the stacks, even if I know what I want to check out. If my local libraries don’t have a copy of the book I am looking for, I can get it sent from one of the other 17 libraries in the County system. It is exceedingly rare that I cannot borrow a book that I want to read. How lucky can one man get?  

Two recent news stories highlight the importance libraries play in our communities. There has been significant coverage about the decision by a School Board in McMinn County Tennessee to remove the Holocaust graphic novel “Maus” from its school’s libraries. According to the School Board, this was not because of the book’s Holocaust theme, but because of “concerns about profanity and an image of female nudity in its depiction of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust”. Many are skeptical of this explanation.  

The Maus decision is part of a larger effort nationwide to cull books from schools that parents find objectionable. The American Library Association has documented a “dramatic uptick” in challenges to books in libraries’ collections. The Association goes on to say that the most frequently targeted books deal, not surprisingly, with race, gender and/or sexuality. 

While these efforts have focused on school libraries, this movement will inevitably spillover to public libraries. Those looking to to limit access to books they find offensive will seek appointment to Library Boards in order to influence those collections as well. Politicians will jump on this bandwagon, since politicos like nothing better than to feign misplaced outrage.    

Like seemingly every controversy we confront today, this one is more nuanced than media reports make it out. It is legitimate to question what books should be held in school libraries. I would be uncomfortable if my kid’s school stocked “The Turner Diaries” by William Pierce, leader of the Neo-Nazi National Alliance or “QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening”. Librarians have to make judgments on which books are properly geared to youth, and which are not. 

The trouble, of course, is that a judgment call is always evaluated from the eye of the beholder. Parents defending the current bans will argue that a school should not be promoting alternative views of sexuality by carrying books that embrace those views, just as I would argue than schools should not promote extremist political perspectives. I pity the poor librarian caught in that crossfire.       

One thing is clear. The standard for library contents cannot be, as one Texas Legislator suggested, the banning of books that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress because of their race or sex”. Not only is such a standard pathetically vague, discomfort is part of the learning process. Students need to be challenged by new ideas to determine their own beliefs.  

This ridiculous standard also ignores the many children who need to explore issues of race, gender and sexuality. A library is one of the few resource centers that lets kids look into what concerns them without judgment. The ability to connect with the world on a broader basis is essential to kids, as is the knowledge that their concerns are not theirs alone.   

It is why, ultimately, we need to leave it to trained librarians to evaluate books and find the right balance between the challenging and the offensive. Librarians are not perfect, and many will have their own agendas, but they are best positioned to know the needs of the patrons they serve. It is far better than leaving those decisions to the parents that can scream the loudest.  

On a more positive note, NPR has reported that libraries in the Ukraine have been incredibly busy during the Russian atrocity. Embracing the broad role that libraries play in communities, Ukranian libraries serve as bomb shelters, refugee reception points, and even as a place to weave camouflage netting. Books are being sent to neighboring countries that receive Ukrainian refugees and psychologists are hosted to provide counseling.  

Ukranian librarians also issued a notice “postponing” an international library conference scheduled for early March. According to NPR, the notice concluded by saying that “We will reschedule just as soon as we have finished vanquishing our invaders.” Needless to say, this announcement engendered broad international praise.  

The way in which Ukranian librarians have stepped up should wipe out any notion that librarians are weak spinsters (see It’s a Wonderful Life), or that libraries are outdated book depositories. Librarians have embraced modern technology, and reconceived libraries as community centers offering a wide range of resources. They are as important now, as modern life gets more complex, as they ever have been.   

Unfortunately, many libraries in the Ukraine have already been destroyed in this war, and undoubtedly many more will as the Russians continue to advance. You can also bet that if Putin takes control of the country, one of the first things he will do is make sure that the remaining libraries cull books that contradict the skewed version of history he has been promulgating. But not to worry. I am sure he just wants to make sure that no one encounters books that make them feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any form of psychological distress”.   

 *Desiderius Erasmus