"Did this really happen?"

I asked Grok about this, a sentimental story about a stolen mail-truck getting reconfigured into a library and parked permanently in the forest.

Grok was all: "Yes, this story really happened—it's based on a genuine (and pretty wholesome) incident in Montana.... This matches real-world reports of the event.... It's the kind of charming, low-key tale that spreads because it's quirky and heartwarming...."

I said, "I was going to call bullshit on that. What does that say about me?"

Grok: "It says you're a healthy skeptic..." etc. etc.

Me: "How do you know I'm not a diseased skeptic?"

I didn't read Grok's long answer. I said: "Blah blah blah. You should have just said I'm such a healthy skeptic I'm even healthily skeptical about whether I'm a healthy skeptic."

IN THE COMMENTS: tim maguire wants to know, "Do we stop caring about the theft because it has books in it?" I say, "I'll ask Grok to write a murder mystery where the murderer hollows out the torso and installs a couple shelves and lines up some classic novels — murder mysteries. When the body is discovered, it's deemed so damned sweet that the death is chalked up as natural causes."

Grok complies:

"I got off at the city center and walked to Helsinki’s main library, which looks like a ship made of carrot cake. It is called Oodi...."

"On the ground floor of the library was a cinema, a cafeteria serving beet lasagna and carrot soup and 22 children playing games of chess.... [T]he second floor... featured a 3-D printing station, a laser cutter, a large-format printer, an engraving machine, conference rooms... rocking chairs... electric and acoustic guitars — nice ones — to borrow, as well as a drum kit and multiple zithers. A podcast studio, an electronic-music studio, classrooms.... In the course of a text conversation with a friend... I rambled about my sorrow at watching the Finnish children rove and play, and told her about how mothers of all ages gathered spontaneously in the library to chat or rest or idly massage their feet. I explained that one of these mothers had placed her baby, a child of no more than 9 months, in a highchair at a library cafe table and handed him a vegetable purée to consider, then left for 20 minutes to fetch books. When she came back we exchanged smiles.... We talked about children and libraries and the relative safety of our nations. 'Every few years there’s a crisis where a baby is stolen but then it is returned or found 15 minutes later,' she said...."

From "My Miserable Week in the 'Happiest Country on Earth'/For eight years running, Finland has topped the World Happiness Report — but what exactly does it measure?" (NYT).

Here, I found this:

That video says a lot about why Finns may be the happiest people in the world. That man is warmly pleased with small things. The chess boards are credited with "keeping people smart and educated," the ceiling calls to mind the ceiling in a particular Rolls Royce you might remember.

"And you came by and you were pushing in chairs, and you said, 'Hi, my friend, how is it going?' And my dad told you he was not doing well."

"And you said, 'Thank you for coming to the library. Thank you for being here. Never be afraid to ask for help. That’s what the library is for. We’re here to help you.' ... And that meant the world to my dad."/" The father began to go to therapy and work on mending a broken relationship with his family, the person told Mr. Threets. 'And I’m telling you this story because I didn’t save that person’s life,' Mr. Threets said in the video. 'The library did. The library is here to help you. Never be afraid to ask for help.'"

From "Mychal Threets Wants Everyone to Experience ‘Library Joy’/The 33-year-old librarian from California has become popular on TikTok and Instagram with his upbeat take on libraries" (NYT).

Go here to watch Mychal Threets's videos on TikTok (or, here, at Instagram).

"6 a.m. Wake up and put on knit cardigan, slacks, and sensible shoes. Feed my cat, Mr. Foibles. Have tea and English muffin..."

".... while I read Shakespeare and listen to symphonies. 7 a.m. Get into twenty-year-old Corolla, turn on NPR, get rattled by news and switch to listening to a Charles Dickens book on tape read by Alistair Cooke...."

From "HOW NON-LIBRARIANS IMAGINE A LIBRARIAN’S TYPICAL WORKDAY" — #15 on "COUNTING DOWN OUR 20 MOST-READ ARTICLES OF 2022" (McSweeney's).

I need to work on a list — something like 20 most-[something] blog posts of 2022. Maybe 20 most useful tags of 2022 or 20 most meandering sidetracks of 2022 or 20 least expected topics of 2022 or 20 best hobbyhorses of 2022....

"Abu-Jamal was born Wesley Cook in Philadelphia in 1954. As a teenager, he co-founded a local chapter of the Black Panthers..."

"... which advocated socialism, Black nationalism and armed self-defense. He later became a radio journalist and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists, known for his sympathetic coverage of MOVE, a radical, antigovernment Black power group whose relationship with the police (who firebombed their compound in 1985, killing 11) remains a raw subject in Philadelphia. In 1982, Abu-Jamal, who had no prior criminal record, was convicted of first-degree murder in the 1981 killing of Police Officer Daniel J. Faulkner, who witnesses testified was shot by Abu-Jamal as the officer was arresting his brother. The acquisition of his archive is not just unique, but also potentially controversial.... The archive came to Brown [through]... Johanna Fernández, a historian.... [who has said]... 'He was the Che Guevara of our time'...."

From "Brown University Acquires the Papers of Mumia Abu-Jamal/Abu-Jamal, convicted of the 1981 murder of a police officer, became the face of the anti-death penalty movement and a widely published commentator on the prison system" (NYT).

"Psychologists, academics and librarians reached by The Washington Post said they see value in introducing children to books that contain challenging material, including of the sexual kind, provided it is done with appropriate context, care and tact."

I'm reading "Schools nationwide are quietly removing books from their libraries/Meet the librarians fighting bans and scrambling to preserve children’s freedom to read" by Hannah Natanson (WaPo).

Research shows there is an association between children reading certain kinds of explicit texts — those that depict sexual violence, degrade women or do not discuss boundaries or consent — and engaging in risky sexual behaviors, as well as sex at an early age, according to Amy Egbert, a research fellow in Brown University’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior.

But, Egbert said, she doesn’t believe that those types of books are available in school libraries. The books being challenged, she said, are often those that deal with difficult topics, featuring a main character struggling to understand their own sexuality or experiencing some kind of racial tensions or racism.

Removing those books is an obstacle to children’s development, she said, pointing to research — including on abstinence-only sex education — that shows that not talking about subjects with children does not change their behavior.

So... Egbert said there are the good and the bad sort of books with sex for children and she doesn't believe that the bad sort are available in school libraries. Wouldn't that be because librarians are vigilant about which sex books they keep in the school library? Now, there may be a dispute about where the line is between what's bad for kids and what's good, but who should decide? I think the article is saying that librarians are being proactive precisely because they don't want to have to get into a big public debate with parents. 

Why the quiet removal of books?

At the Newark Public Library, you can see a display of almost 4,000 books from Philip Roth's personal library....

"... including a four-volume set about the history of presidential elections, multiple copies of Kafka’s 'The Trial' and a marked-up edition of 'Incredible iPhone Apps for Dummies.'"

 According to "Look Inside Philip Roth’s Personal Library/The author of 'Goodbye, Columbus' and 'The Human Stain' left several thousand books, many of them with notes or letters, to the Newark Public Library." 

I love the high-low juxtaposition of "The Trial" and "Incredible iPhone Apps for Dummies." 

And I love that there's lots of marginalia. (You may remember that marginalia was the subject of the first post on this blog, on January 14, 2004.) 

There are some nice photographs at the link, such as the one of Roth's copy of Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" — with Post-It notes and an underline sentence: "'Life,' said Emerson, 'consists in what a man is thinking all day.'"

In that first blog post of mine, I said, among other things, "I do like writing in the margins of books, something I once caused a librarian to gasp by saying." Having made a librarian gasp, I'm pleased to see this Newark library constructing a shrine to marginalia.