Links to Click: October 13, 2023
Life as a 13-year-old girl, $7 coffee, plus some mushroom photos.
I am back, and I won’t lie: I missed writing here, both in the more basic link sharing and in the lengthier pieces. I’ve had a heavy series of thoughts on my mind lately, and sitting down to bang them out for Sunday felt like a relief.
I began to draft this roundup on World Mental Health Day, which feels appropriate. My mental health has been up and down, sometimes really good one hour, then really bad the next. I’ve also been white knuckling it with my meds. I have found that sometimes the one I take gives me wicked heartburn, and I do not have the energy nor time to experiment with something new. After taking something long enough and knowing the ins and outs of my own mental and emotional well-being, I know when I need to prioritize the mind and just get real cozy with TUMS.
The list of my writing is long because of the break, while the roundup of other interesting links is shorter…because of the break. I hope you find something interesting in either or both.
My Work These Last Weeks
This week’s talks about one of the cross tabs in the just-released results of the Book Riot/EveryLibrary parental survey on perceptions of the public library. That cross tab is the group who agreed with the idea librarians should be prosecuted for the books in the collection–what else do they believe or not believe? This is kind of mind-boggling stuff. (The roundup is lengthy as hell, too because while some were “celebrating” banned books others were just banning them).
An update on BookmarkED, the app meant to “help” schools and parents in navigating book bans. I wrote about them in August, but now know that one founder advocated for one of Texas’s book ban legislative bills and the other is a school district superintendent in Keim Independent School District.
A suspect has been arrested in connection to several Chicagoland bomb threats, including two at public libraries.
I was invited to do a podcast with Libro.fm for Banned Books Week. I was super bummed Leah and I could not get our schedules to gel to do it together, but you’ll get to hear from both of us. This was a really enjoyable and thoughtful conversation.
Find roundups of all the fall 2023 YA releases, as well as the fall 2023 YA paperback releases.
There is a Carnegie Library for sale in Middletown, Ohio. It’s cheap…and needs work. Y’all the artsy photos here are A+++.
On a totally different note, how about some BOOkish Halloween sweatshirts? If I did not already own a Golden Ghouls sweatshirt, I’d be buying some of these.
Work By Others These Last Weeks
Mike Hixenbaugh is one of the few reporters in the mainstream doing good work on the censorship/education/book ban front. This work with his colleague Antonia Hylton looks at how one English teacher in Grapevine, Texas, became the target of one mother’s ire over gender and books. You should know the mother’s kid is trans and disrespects her pronouns throughout.
One more book banning related link, and it’s one that passes for good these days. A Kenosha, Wisconsin, church collected over 200 books for a forthcoming LGBTQ+ youth center in the community; the books will work as a “traveling library” through the community in the mean time. Kenosha has a very active Moms group, and it is also not a small town.
Have you driven the loneliest road in your state? I’m sad I have not done Illinois’s–yet. Kampsville is where we usually take the ferry after visiting Calhoun County, so we go in the opposite direction of the lonely route. I do think I’ve done Wisconsin’s though. Relatedly, if you fall down the Illinois rabbit hole, you’ll be aware that the lonely road is part of Forgottonia.
Why your $7 coffee is $7. This one is from the “no kidding /sarcasm” files, but it’s also a thing that gets so much damn focus as to why people of my generation can’t afford anything. I don’t make apologies for finding the 3-4/x weekly trip for a $7 latte one of the things that makes life worth living in our capitalist hellscape. I also tip my baristas 20%.
I love this look at what it is like to be a 13-year-old girl today [gift link].
See you all Sunday.