Bridges Out of Poverty-- Workshop

Today, I was sent to participate in a workshop, Bridges Out of Poverty at the Hudson River Museum. The program ran from 9 A.M. to 4 P.M. it was presented by a lady named Terie Dreussi Smith. I got there in time to have a section of muffin, half a croissant, and a cup of coffee. Several of my colleagues also went. I often see these events as a chance to gab with colleagues and find out a little bit about libraries in different places. A lot of these events exist for networking.

As a presentation it was kind of interesting. The presenter suggested several books as she was doing her talk. Many of them are classics on poverty issues. I am going to list a few of them. Jonathan Kozol, Savage Inequalities, Rick Bragg All Over But The Shouting, and Paolo Freire Pedagogy of the Oppressed. She also talked about a book which creates a better framework for explaining poverty than the ones beings used now; The Persistence of Poverty: Why the Economics of the Well-Off Can't Help the Poor (Hardcover)
by Charles H. Karelis.

We watched a few video clips as part of the presentation. One which was particularly entertaining was a clip on a movie on social class in the United Staes, People Like Us



I think the talk was aimed at administrators who were going to create policies or pick up programs to help poor people in their agencies. The focus of the program was not how to turn poor people into middle class people, but to help poor people improve their economic stability. I am really not sure how effective this would be.

We got a lot of statistics. One of the most striking is that 49% of poor people spend more than half their income on housing. Also poverty is increasing inside the United States. As more globalization and deindustrialization occurs there are less and less middle class jobs in the United States. Jobs are moving overseas.

Something else which she said was the need for sometimes extreme entertainment for poor people. Because so many people who are living on the edge are so close to losing the roofs over their heads, not having enough to eat, and they can't afford to buy a lot of things, they often turn to public sources of entertainment.

The public library gets a lot of people who are very poor. Some people will come in who appear to be on public assistance or disability, are retired and living on a fixed income. They often borrow four or five different dvds every single day and return them the next day.

I really am not sure what I will do with the information I received from the program. I am hoping that we will get back our GED program, the afterschool tutoring program for little kids and maybe some more programss on helping people get jobs. Hopefully the recent work on improving the Job Information Center might help.

Things are getting harder lately. Gas and food prices are rising. The middle class is struggling in the United States right now. For people who are already poor it is probably really rough.

There is a websites for the seminars. The seminars apparently were done at Brooklyn Public Library, New York Public Library, and Queensboro Public Library.
http://www.ahaprocess.com/

I have noticed that a lot of consultants have been moving into the nonprofit sector recently. Recently we did a film program with Healthfirst a Medicaid Part D provider.

Morning Thoughts

American Treasure Room, U.S. Library of Congress. I visited here when I was at library school. There is an original Gutenberg Bible under glass.

I decided I needed a break from nonfiction. On the train home last night, I read The Collected Works of Tony Millionaire's Sock Monkey, Volume Three and Four. It was lightweight and funny. Something which made me laugh and smile a bit. It didn't take me that long to finish. As usual Uncle Gabby the Sock Monkey, and Drinky Crow, the stuffed Crow were up to mischief. This time they were playing with a victorian hunters taxidermy exhibit with various stuffed critters deer, birds, and insects. Afterwards they went on a hunting exhibit with a butterfly net to collect some small lizards, beetles, and ladybugs.

After finishing Sock Monkey, I started on a new collection of science fiction short stories, Pump Six and Other Stories by Paolo Bacigalupi. The writing is quite interesting. It is focused on the environment and biology. The characters come from a variety of different walks of life. For example in the short story, The Fluted Girl, it seems to be set somewhere in Eastern Europe. A girl and her sister have been transformed into living instruments with fragile hollow bones by their owner. It is a tragic story. It is also one of the free sample stories avaialable on Paolo Bacigalupi's web site. http://windupstories.com/pumpsix/the-fluted-girl/ . There is some mature content in this story. It looks like quite an interesting site.

I plan on reading some more of the short stories on the train. I work late tonight, so I am off this morning. It is rather odd, having to work very late one night, then very early the next day. I really should not complain. I have a job in an American economy that could possibly be heading south very soon.

Tomorrow, I go to a seminar on poverty alleviation. I wonder how libraries can alleviate poverty. My boss asked me to go. I hope, I at least get to keep a name tag as a memento. The next day after that is the New York Comic Con so I should have a very interesting week.

I was thinking about muckraking stories this morning. One problem I have with them is that they solve nothing. They just point out problems which are often obvious. You get to read how terrible things are. I am beginning sometimes it is more constructive to read about how to invest in renewable energy than to read about how terrible the oil, gas, and coal companies are. Companies are made of people. Some are terrible and some aren't. Muckraking in some cases seems to distract people from creating solutions.

I found an interesting article in Library Journal this morning. It is Venezuelan saber rattling against the U.S. Library of Congress. I found it to be profoundly entertaining in a way. I have actually been to the Library of Congress. You can't go inside the actual building if you are a visitor, but you can look down into the reading room from above.

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6551558.html

Here I am in the afternoon. Two books or should I say graphic novels came in for me. They are The Rabbi's Cat and The Rabbi's Cat 2. Dine-O-Meter Deb said she was reading The Rabbi's Cat as part of the Graphic Novel Challenge. I wanted to see what it was about so I requested it to be sent to my library.

I also took a minute to look through the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller List and put Earth The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy And Stop Global Warming by Fred Krupp who is the President of the Environmental Defense Fund.

I think right now, I have more than enough to read. Books are starting to pile up and I now have three small stacks of books to read.