Real Pirates

Ahoy, there! T'is been three months at sea, and I thought ye'd like to know where I'd been gadding.

(Among other places.)

I counted me coins, quit me job, and sailed off for Chicago - that land o' riches - to hang out with a bunch of cutthroats and brigands. (Well, this is from last year, but I liked it.)

Then, turning me ship to the uncharted waters (well, totally charted), I boarded - single-handed! - the Museum of Science and Industry, the Adler Planetarium, and the Field Museum.

Among me spoils are a suitcase full of vendor literature and several fabulous meals.

Friendly ports for a starved and partched pirate:
Eleven City Diner
Italian Village
Cafe Society
Lockwood Restaurant and Bar
Chinatown

I had lobster for the first time, sauteed in ginger with noodles, arrrg!

But seriously, mates...

After visiting the "Real Pirates" exhibition at the Field, I have a renewed respect for these men. Not that they were boy scouts - they were violent and often bloodthirsty to be sure, but this was a time when a man could be kidnapped and forced to serve on a ship, which offered miserable toil with little or no pay, mistreatment, even beatings, and starvation rations. Going "on the account," that is, joining the pirates, offered a man - any man, and in two cases, women - a leisurely distribution of work (because so many people joined up) and an equal share in the loot, as well as the freedom to sail the world, and drink a lot of rum.

Many pirates were black, escaped or liberated slaves (the pirates boarded many slave ships and converted them to pirate ships), or free men of color unable to ply an honest trade in a prejudiced world. Even a regular, free black seaman could at any time be kidnapped and sold into slavery whenever his ship was in port! Why not, then, join the pirates? Two pirate ships had an all-black crew. Any man, regardless of the color of his skin, could ascend to any position as long as he was qualified for it. Most pirates were in fact experienced sailors. African warriors were especially respected for their fighting skills and alarming presence.

Any pirate, black, white, or native american, was treated as an equal and respected for his skills and courage. This is what is meant by a "motley crew" - it was multicultural. The loyalty among shipmates was strong.

The pirates elected their captain, who had no real power except in battle. In an unjustly hierarchical world at the height of the slave trade, this was a democracy.

Pirates did not kidnap women and tie them to the mainmast - they considered women aboard their ships to be bad luck. Some raped, but most paid prostitutes while put in at a safe harbor. Whole towns came to depend on the economy of piracy to employ their blacksmiths, their innkeepers, their cobblers, and their ladies of the evening - and for protection from raiding ships (often with Her Majesty's blessing). Some, like the tragic pirate legend Sam Bellamy, who as captain of the former slave ship Whydah (which he boarded) is profiled in the exhibit, fell in love with a respectable lady and, being a poor sailor, turned pirate in order to make enough gold to impress her family.

They did not bury their treasure - they spent and gambled it.

They did not batter and burn ships unless the crew put up a struggle, because the pirates wanted the ships. Marauding pirates would fire a warning shot, after which most captains simply surrendered. Once the ship was boarded, some men were forced to go "on the account," but many crew members willingly joined the pirates.

The pirates, after capturing a ship, would ask the crew its opinion of its captain. If he had been a cruel man, he was flogged and even killed. (No walking the plank; they just tied you up and threw you overboard.) But if he had been a kind leader, he was spared and even given a little gold. The former captain of the Whydah was allowed by Bellamy to sail away on another ship with the men who chose to remain loyal to him.

The course of a pirate ship was voted upon by its crew. The crew would also collectively repair the ship after putting in at a safe harbor. To fool passing ships, the pirates would hide and pretend that their huge crew was smaller than it was; some of them even dressed as women. Many of them dressed as dandies, in clothes that they had looted or had won from their shipmates through gambling. Others preferred a simpler garb.

At first, pirates attacked the ships of enemy nations; later, pirates recognized no allegiance to their home nation or any other country. As such, the bounty on them was high, and justice was swift and merciless. They were often hung, but sometimes lashed to the side of the rising Thames until they slowly drowned.

After the end of the "Golden Age of Piracy," slavery would remain legal until 1865, around another 140 years.

Did pirate Sam Bellamy reunite with his true love? Did he finally impress her family with his piles of loot? Legend has it that after his successful raids he was on his way to Cape Cod to meet with her again. Most pirates came to an early, violent end. The only real buried pirate treasure are the ships that went down into the sea. The recovery of the wreck of the Whydah, 300 years after it sank (you'll have to find out on your own what happened to Sam and his friends) began in a library.

A shiver me shimmies to Learning to Ride in the Bluegrass

UPDATED: Scotius brought up Sir Francis Drake, one of those blessed by Her Majesty to go out and act like a pirate on Her Behalf. It reminded me of this charming song, from the only muppet movie that I can stand to watch (mostly because of that snarky knave, Tim Curry, who is a hawt scoundrel in this scene).

I Believe She Was Actually Called Glenda

The good news is that COSAD, the organization that my Collection Development class is partnering with to help build a library in Bukoba, Tanzania, has raised all the funds needed to ship the container of 22,000 books.

They want to build a collection concentrating on agriculture, health, children's books, business, and education, with particular emphasis on HIV-AIDS information and small business entrepreneurship. However, working with what gets donated to Books for Africa (a directory of Humanities faculty at some college filed under "Humanities," The Vitamin Bible filed under "religion," children's books with racial epitaphs written in the margins, etc.), I made an effort to find some good art books with a global emphasis and quality color reproductions, books on world history and other social sciences, reading and writing skills, teacher's guides, and basic sciences.

The bad news is, that means we need to get this project finished, or somewhere near finished, very soon, and we only have two pallets of books selected so far.

So I'll be busy tomorrow, at the Books for Africa warehouse and at the Textile Center, working on my other final project for Archival Services class, and this weekend, writing up my final presentations and papers, before going back to another busy work week.

Yes, I'm busy. But I'm sure people have noticed that despite my being tired and fighting an illness the last two months, I the "Wicked Witch of the North" as someone calls me (and I just noticed that tonight), don't get "too tired" to give you my honest opinion to a question, whether it be on common descent or whatnot. So feel free to drop in. Bye now!
---
Well, it's a good think I'm not the wicked witch, because I would have melted. I enjoyed selecting books for the library but it was also a very frustrating experience. It's a big responsibility made all the more difficult because it's not a public library in the U.S., but a library aimed at educating people in Africa. At times I was so overwhelmed, and even frightened a little, by this responsibility that I was almost in tears.

I think that it's very important to give library patrons the opportunity to browse a library's collection in a nonstructured manner, so that they can discover their interests and talents. This community wants medical, business, and agricultural texts and childrens' book so that they can train in careers that are important to them, but I want to round out the collection with art and humanities, literature and the social sciences. It's important for people to have an education, not just training, and in selecting books I remembered my own experiences of browsing the library and coming upon authors and subjects for which I would not have consciously searched, but which turned out to be crucial for the cultural literacy that gives context and depth to one's chosen career path.

So there I was in the literature section (remember, my degree is in English Literature), agonizing over whether or not there were sufficient cultural common ground between me and our intended audience for me to include books such as Moby Dick, The Canterbury Tales (a lovely translation into modern standard English), Profiles in Courage, and Dante's Paradiso, while contemplating a table nearly full of Sydney Sheldon, V.C. Andrews, Michael Crichton, and Robin Cook.

Don't get me wrong - I love Dean Koontz, had a good schmaltzy cry at V.C. Andrews' Flowers in the Attic series in my senior year in high school, and devoured many an Agatha Christie book. But I also didn't include excellent works by Ursula Le Guin, Arthur C. Clarke, and Norah Labiner because I didn't think people in Bukoba who didn't have electricity would appreciate science fiction or an experimental style. (So many Norah Labiner books, too, obviously just unloaded. I was saddened. She's a local writer that I reviewed - really a great talent.)

But is that arrogant of me, to assume that people in Bukoba won't like science fiction, say? Or romance novels? I don't know. If this were, as I said, a public library in the States I wouldn't be worrying so. Should I have included what I included? We have made an effort to include world children's literature, picture books with African-American faces, not just whites - and I do think it's terribly important for people to be exposed to the classical canon, however elitist and western-oriented it is.

But should I have chosen Paradiso when there was no copy of Inferno to be found? Does it make sense to include Dante and Chaucer when I didn't find any Milton or Shakespeare? I don't know. Moreover, it is okay that I included a book on space flight (large, full color photos, very attractive) and adventure stories (conquering Everest and Antarctica) and tornadoes? I'm not sure.

Another frustration was that the book's physical condition also drove my selection: I would have included The Scarlet Letter had it not been so trashed. Many of the books are in rotten condition, because people obviously just emptied their attics and cellars, and I dug for gems in this pile with the sinking feeling that while I was dissatisfied with the spotty literary collection I was building, the people on the receiving end will probably be grateful for whatever we gave them. They deserve better.

All I can say is, when I was young I read all these stories from Africa, Asia, and South America - folk tales, myths, adventures, tales of exploration, encyclopedia entries - as well as American stories, and I became fascinated with the world. I want to give someone else the chance to have that experience. It's important to learn how to work, but it's also important to learn to dream and to enjoy, and to develop intellectual curiosity about a subject not only because it is practical, but because it is a pleasure, like fine wine or cuisine - and because the overwhelming coincidence of where you happen to be born shouldn't prevent you from accessing the world's knowledge and discovering your talents and dreams.

Gossip About Obama (and McCain)

I can't even believe I'm writing this, but either certain Americans are more gullible than P.T. Barnum imagined, or there's a concerted effort by McCain supporters to plant stories of "Clinton supporters now voting Republican" because they think Barak Obama is an Arab/Muslim/from the Middle East. (Being cynical, I tend to think both could be true.)

[UPDATED: McCain has just pulled ads from allegedly pro-Hillary sites that compare Barak Obama to - you guessed it - Adolf Hitler. I remain skeptical about the reports of these "sour grapes" Hillary supporters, although from what I've seen of them they could very well be as crazy as the "agents of intolerance" McCain is now saddled with, and who he used to denounce. Andy Warhol had it partly right - in the future, everyone will have 15 minutes of fame being compared to Adolf Hitler.]

The fact that these alleged "sour grapes" voters make equations between the three astonishes me. What does being an Arab have to do with being a Muslim? Arabs are an ethnicity; Islam is a religion. As a matter of fact, most Arabs in the United States are Christian, and most Muslims in the world are Asian. And don't make simple equations between these and the Middle East, either. They are three different sets that can, but don't always, overlap. (Did people know that there are Jews in Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey? Do people know that Arab-speaking Christians and Jews also pray to "Allah," which is simply the Arabic word for "God"? Do they know that there is no religious test for the Presidency? I hope so.)

When I hear (or read) questions like, "How are we supposed to know what's true?" I just cringe and remember all those passed notes on the schoolbus ("So-and-so in such'n'such state was ARRESTED for PRAYING IN SCHOOL!!!") and everything that people repeated mindlessly from television ("Pedophiles are SACRIFICING BABIES to Satan!" or "Bottled water causes CANCER!"). I remember clearly the day that I had a "snake pit" moment amidst all the false drama that people in a small town invent to have something to do, and realized, "If I listen to these people, I'll never get anywhere."

This is a fine time for a 70-year-old Citizen Joe to ask how we are supposed to know what's true. You should have learned that long ago. This is why we need sound science education in our public schools! Critical thinking is not a "choice" between rumor and fact, any more than it a "debate" between science and pseudoscience. Whatever happened to the adage, "Don't believe anything you hear, and only half of what you see?" But unfortunately, our education system has become so politicized by special interest groups like creationists and abstinence-only wingnuts that people can be easily swayed by even the most outrageous rumor (in fact, the more outrageous the rumor, the more likely that it will be believed), while simultaneously believing that they are the ones digging deeper at some hidden truth. It's the same with Obama.

So where do I begin?

1. Start by becoming curious; climb out of that shell, switch off the idiot box, and start living. Meet people; do things. As a result Citizen Joe/Jane will feel less insignificant and helpless, and the world will be a much less scary place, factors that are probably the greatest contributors to gossip.

2. Talk to your librarian, check some books out of the library - for example, Obama's autobiographies (or McCain's) - look at a few maps and read about the history of Islam, Arabs, the Middle East, and Africa. You live in a country that allows you the freedom to inform yourself about the world. Take advantage of it! Consider travel, too - another freedom that much of the world doesn't enjoy.

3. Ignore all the rumors you hear at the water cooler, the barber shop, in church, on radio or television, and in those fucking forwarded e-mail hoaxes - and be prepared to experience in response a massive amount of peer pressure, exhortations to be a "part of the group," which should confirm that what you're hearing is a crock. (The pressure to gossip is overwhelming, in part because if you don't succumb you will likely become the next target. I know.) The best response is to delay any action. Even if what you're hearing turns out to be true, in all likelihood there's nothing you can do about it that cannot wait until you've confirmed it from a credible source. (In all likelihood there's nothing you can do about it anyway.)

4. Be suspicious of any statement that plays to your emotions, especially fear and vanity - be aware that these rumors always have a "hook, a threat, and a promise," which alternately scares the target and flatters him/her with the power to "save the world," usually by forwarding an e-mail to "all of your family and friends," or by signing some "petition" (what a great phishing scam!) or, in this case, by not voting for Obama.

5. Ask for specifics - for example, where in "Africa" was Obama supposedly born? Africa is a huge continent, after all. Who was his doctor/midwife? Where is his birth certificate? Where is the birth certificate of McCain's "love child"? (To which I must ask, "Who cares?" I tend to feel relieved when people, Republicans especially, show a bit of tarnish. There is a puritanicism that lurks beneath all of this talk.) Where specifically are people getting their information? Ask for the original author of the information - and if no one can name a name other than their neighbor who passed it on, or some e-mail or talk show host, it's a rumor and should be dismissed immediately. (Likewise for this crap about McCain "not being a U.S. citizen" or being "too old" to run for President. Spare me.)

6. Learn to recognize logical fallacies, and dismiss any argument that uses them. Start seeing the contradictions that will arise, inevitably, from gossip. (Isn't it strange that Obama can both be "from the Middle East" and "from Africa", or both "have that awful pastor" and be a "Muslim"?) Get into the habit of assessing websites for accuracy and objectivity.

7. When in doubt, check out Snopes.

Don't get caught up in the "drama" of spreading the rumor - which is what this phenomenon is really about, if the participants were to be honest with themselves. Gossip is Nobody's Friend:

My name is Gossip.
I have no respect for justice.
I maim without killing.
I break hearts and ruin lives.
I am cunning and malicious and gather strength with age.
The more I am quoted the more I am believed.
My victims are helpess. They cannot prove themselves against me because I have no name and no face.
To track me down is impossible. The harder you try, to more elusive I become.
I am nobody's friend.
Once I tarnish a reputation, it is never the same.
I topple governments and wreck marriages.
I ruin careers and cause sleepless nights, heartaches and indigestion. I make innocent people cry in their pillows.
Even my name hisses. I am Gossip.
I make headlines and headaches.
Before you repeat a story, ask yourself:
Is it true?
Is it harmless?
Is it necessary?
If it isn't, don't repeat it.

P.S. Do belly dancers also have "Arab tendencies"? Call the Department of Homeland Security! Stop me before I dance again! I think I just invented a slogan for a t-shirt.

Harvard Votes for the Open Access Policy

Harvard University faculty in the art and the sciences voted on February 12 to approve the Open Access Policy, which will give the general public free online access to the university's scholarly articles. Harvard's library will act as a repository for the material through its new Office of Scholarly Communication. Faculty will retain copyright, and can for special cases request waivers of the free license.

This is a major triumph for the advocates of free, open, and permanent access of peer-reviewed and scholarly information for the public. I heartily applaud Harvard's decision.

How can the public trust peer-reviewed, scholarly information if it doesn't have access to it, and/or doesn't know what it is? (Peer-reviewed, for example, does not mean that a friend of yours writes a good review of your article to help you out - as is the case with creationist "scientific" articles.)

The cost of journals has skyrocketed in recent years, to the point that some libraries are forced to cancel their subscriptions, further restricting access. I do not agree with the Association of American Publishers Vice President for Legal and Governmental Affairs, Allan Adler, when he says that this and the congressional mandate that publicly funded scholarship (PubMed) be made freely available to the public, will damage the peer-review process. If anything, the mandate and free access will help make the peer-review process more transparent and comprehensible to the public.

Attention, Creationists!

You're driving me nuts! All over the internet you are confusing Information Science with Information Theory, and using the two interchangeably. Hello, these are two completely different areas of research and study. Do you think you have a right to confuse yellow with purple? Would you please stop it?

This is my future field, Information Science. (It is not William Dembski's field. It is mine.)

And this is Information Theory. (And though he claims to be an expert in it, this is not William Dembski's field, either. Selling William Dembski's books to people taken in by William Dembski is William Dembski's field.)

Okay? Can we at least get our definitions straight?

If you want a really good introduction to Information Theory, check out Mark Chu-Carroll's post on the matter. As he concludes, the argument of the "impossibility" of the creation of new information becomes transparently fallacious.

So - what happens if I take a string in very non-compressed format (like, say, an uncompressed digitized voice) and send it over a noisy phone line? Am I gaining information, or losing information?

The answer is: gaining information. Introducing randomness into the string is adding information.

"AAAABBBB" contains less information than "AAAABxBB".

The way this is used to refute bozos who claim things like "You can't create information" should be obvious.

Shimmies to Good Math, Bad Math

So-Called "Museums" and "Libraries"

Now comes the news that the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library cannot account for 80,000 items, or 80% of its collection.

(Okay, let's get the Alzheimer jokes and the giggling over with.)

Most thefts from libraries and archives (and presidential libraries really are archives rather than libraries) are the result of an inside job, unfortunately. Lax security, understaffing, and poor recordkeeping procedures are usually the culprits, as they seem to be in this case. And certainly, bad cataloging practices can plague any library (as it does the Goddard Space Flight Center library, which misshelved the original film footage of the moon landing).

However, much as I wanted to avoid puerile snickering, I could not help but remember this comment on the AOL News website from “olsen1000” (11:28:02 AM Nov 08 2007):

Who cares?

The concept of presidential libraries probably originated in the days when there were men of education and culture running the country. Reagan? Bushes? What are they going to put in their libraries? Comic books? Or, in the case of GWB, the straw he snorted coke with?

Be damn reasonable for Christ's sake. Reagan's head was empty for a large part of his presidency, and so is his library.

(“Look on Ebay,” sneers another commenter, “OJ has them!” crows another, along with the requisite “Liberals hate freedom” and a debate on Reagan's legacy as President - and the inevitable Alzheimer jokes.)

I must say I find the concept of the presidential library a silly holdover from a time when there were few public or academic libraries or historical societies. I would rather that we invest in those. (And yes, I say the same about the Clinton Library and any other devoted to a Democrat.)

But I leave you with that thought and move on to the article in the current Museum News on Ken Ham’s Creation Museum.

The institution’s status as a museum is, by itself, likely to aid its cause. A national study published by AAM (American Association of Museums) in 2001 found that “Almost 9 our of 10 Americans (87%) find museums to be one of the most trustworthy or a trustworthy source of information among a wide range of choices.” (I shall try to provide a link to this study.) Books were a distant second at 61 percent, and a majority found print and broadcast media and the Internet not to be trustworthy. Schools were viewed as the most important educational source for children, but museums and libraries were next in line. The International Council of Museums (ICOM), for example, identifies a museum simply as “A non-profit-making, permanent institution in the service of society and of its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits, for purposes of study, education and enjoyment, material evidence of people and their environment." The museum profession has not formally addressed the issue of what a museum exhibits.

“What would we do if someone built a museum syaing the Holocaust didn't happen?' asked Gene Kritsky (professor of biology at the College of Mount St. Joseph), ‘that slavery was a right of the early colonists?’”

…The Creation museum is not alone in its mission: The website www.creationism.org lists 12 other “creation centers and museum” in the United States (as well as one in Alberta, Canada), and the 2007 Official Museum Directory adds four more.

I definitely see Ken Ham’s “museum” and the creation of others like it as a grab for credibility and legitimacy in building this parody of a legitimate institution (which is an ongoing attempt to build a parallel Christian society, with “universities” like Regent and Liberty, and Christianized “degree programs"). However, credibility and legitimacy have to be earned—through time, through contribution to the profession via legitimate and demonstrable research, through publishing in refereed journals. (Of course there are a slew of creationist “journals” lauding "research.”) I doubt that Ham is an AAM member; I doubt he even knows what that organization is.

And of course, any museum must sustain its staff, and building, and its collection through valid processes, such as cataloging and conservation. Ken Ham’s Creation Museum has had a good year, with 400,000 visitors so far. But only time will tell its true success – and (being that they seems to always have so little of it, between a 6,000 year old earth and an immanent Rapture) time has never been on the side of the creationists.

Library Faculty: "Heated, Often Personal Debates"

I just had a run-in online (don't ask) and got accused of reacting "emotionally" to being identified with a YEC IDist. Well, I'm not a scientist, but that was really unfair, and scientists never get emotional when their ideas are shot down, of course. (Ever gone to a convention? I did back in college - mercifully for only a few hours. The proceedings are almost inert, but break into small groups and start debating - eeeaauuughh! I'm sorry to say that it turned me off, because now I realize that probably every conference in every field is the same.)

Now I'm trying to get back to work and for my paper (yes, I really have a paper to write) I'm reading about the question of whether or not librarians in academic institutions deserve faculty status.

Few issues inspire such heated debate among academic librarians as the issue of faculty status. A recent example is Blaise Cronin's article, "The Mother of All Myths," in which Cronin calls library faculty status a "mockery of the professorate" and generally asserts that librarians have no place in "the academic calling." This article met with numerous letters to the editor in subsequent issues of Library Journal. Mark Herring agreed with Cronin, saying that tenure turns librarians' minds to "muddle." Others felt that Cronin was relegating librarians to the status of "contented handmaidens" and "'the help' on campus." Stephen Karetzky wrote that Cronin's definition of faculty status implied that Cronin himself should abdicate his professorship. Lisa Dunn wrote that Cronin's assessment was "overgeneralized and politically naïve." Even Robert Eno, a colleague of Cronin (both are professors at Indiana University, Bloomington) and president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, wrote to disagree with Cronin. The debates are heated and often personal [emphasis mine].
--D.B. Hoggan. (2003). Faculty status for librarians in higher education. Portal: Libraries and the Academy, 3(3), 431-445.

No kidding!

We don't relinquish any legitimacy in our arguments because we get hot under the collar for being called a name. (In my case, a particularly insulting name.) It seems that librarians get called names, too - with the requisite assumptions, about how you are individually because you happen to be a woman, thrown in. Oh, goodie.

Many librarians believe that faculty status provides a higher level of stature and recognition within the university community than does staff status. Librarians who do research are thought to have better relationships with other faculty on campus. Thus, faculty-status librarians may find it easier to win the respect of faculty in other departments. A good rapport with the faculty is important because the effective teaching of information literacy skills is facilitated by collaboration between librarians and professors.

Ironically, while many librarians view faculty status as an asset to the professional's reputation, others feel that it detracts from the librarian's image. Blaise Cronin writes that faculty status seems "petty and vainglorious" to outsiders and that the justifications for faculty status are "downright embarrassing." However, the majority of published opinions support the idea that faculty status improves the stature and image of academic librarians.

God damn it. The stereotype of the elderly spinster who ended up as a librarian because she (it's always a she) couldn't get a man is childish. When are we going to revise this ridiculous misconception? I'm thinking of going into technical services and/or online system development and/or digital archiving and/or science reference librarianship. These fields have largely been dominated by men.

(Grad school is one of the few places where I end up in a room with a bunch of women. I was at an orientation, and one speaker made reference to "Dr." Phil. "And we all love Dr. Phil, don't we?" The students yelled, "Yes!" I yelled, "No!" I mean, what is that? Can't I even escape from so-called female pop culture at grad school?)

I'm looking forward to my first ALA conference! :-D

It's Called Stealing

Prudish twit reads [probably an achievement in itself] library book, is scandalized, checks out both copies and refuses to return them. Jo Ann, get your Karkass back to the library pronto and pay your fines! Or maybe I'll check out a whole bunch of bibles and sit on them. Yeah, let's all start censoring now. Great.


UPDATED: Jo Ann won't stop censoring. So it has come to this.


Damn right.

Twin Cities Leads Nation in Volunteerism

Wow.

Midwesterners are more likely to volunteer their time than are people elsewhere in the United States, according to a government study being released Monday. The highest rates were in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, where more than four in 10 adults volunteered.

“It’s really about Minneapolis’ commitment to the quality of life,” said Michael Weber, president and chief executive of Volunteers of America of Minnesota.

Yesterday I spoke to a woman who's librarian sister had recently gone to Germany. "You Americans are so involved with your libraries," a woman had told this librarian, whereas there was only one library in the region, with a populace of 100,000 people. I was surprised by this.

I encourage everyone to get involved in one issue or program that they believe in. And naturally, I encourage everyone to support their local library!

What I Wrote on April 14, 2003

UPDATED: It's interesting, in contrast, to read what our buddy Bruce Chapman of the Discovery Institute wrote on March 14, 2004 regarding Iraq.

I was not working for the museum at the time, but for a private consulting firm, one of the clients for city government, for which I had previously worked. It is strange to look at this piece now, over four years since I wrote it.

What made me think of and post this is, I blatted my brains out off-topic at someone else's blog about Iraq and unfortunately, since my blood was up, got into all the harassment that I went through in 1999 (long story) culminating in my call to the FBI. Another commenter called me a liar, essentially. Well, I did my duty as a citizen and there's a record of my call out there somewhere at the FBI. I put two-and-two together about a past bombing and notified the FBI in early 2001. [UPDATED: The Ritz Theatre today is a thriving dance theatre.] No connection, as it turns out, to Moussaui or the KKK (there was a note with "KKK" left at the scene) or anything like that - and no resolution to the case of the bombing of a then-Asian cinema - but the people behind the harassment of me and other city employees and officials have left the neighborhood, and at least one of them has been charged with another crime (extorting sex from his female renters).

UPDATE: The Justice Department announced a settlement in this case. More background on the case. I wish to stress that I am not one of these plaintiffs. I am a homeowner who was harassed by the group that this man supported. To this day I do not know if they were involved in the bombing but I have my suspicions. Also, it was ironic that about the time of my phone call to the FBI the KKK rallied at the State Capitol, and I invited Senator Paul Wellstone speak at a counter-event sponsored by the YWCA the night before. (I spoke to Tom Lapic, who also died in the crash that killed Wellstone.)

Painful memories, really, painful and scary memories of this time. But I stood up. I did something. I accomplished something, even if it was little in the ultimate scheme of things. This is what I was doing in the months before September 11 turned my workplace, located right next to the Federal Reserve Bank. into an obstacle course of chain-link fences and men with submachine guns. I must say my family has been much more fortunate than the families of other military personnel.

Iraq was the wrong war. Afghanistan was a country that we neglected all through the 1990s, the country that I had fervently wished the United States to engage militarily during the civil war, and we are losing the crucial war there now. And we will pay for both mistakes.

REMEMBER THIS DAY IN HISTORY, FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS WILL

No, I am not talking about the supposed end of the reign of Saddam Hussein. Though I have no love for Saddam, I am not cheering the interior decorating that we have accomplished in Iraq.

This is why: Since 1982 I have opposed and protested America’s support for Saddam Hussein. I stood up in class at North High and denounced our President—then Ronald Reagan—for giving money and weapons to a man who invaded Iran, stifled dissent, and slaughtered his own people. When I said that if we shipped chemicals to Iraq Saddam would gas the Kurds, my classmates thought I meant cheese curds. They taunted me for caring about people so far away. (Many of these kids subsequently joined the military, and some may even be in Iraq at this moment.)

In 1988, after using chemical warfare against Iran, Saddam did gas the Kurds. I wrote yet another letter to President Reagan urging him to finally punish this brutal dictator. In the Senate, Jesse Helms and Al Gore sponsored a bill to strip Saddam of his favored status. It passed the Senate in one day, and I was heartened. But the Reagan Administration worked with Republicans and conservative Democrats to defeat the bill, and America continued to give Saddam $700 million a year. It wasn’t until 1991, after Saddam invaded Kuwait, that America went to war with Saddam Hussein.

I will remember this day in history because it is the day—after the tragedy of Iraq’s Museum of Antiquities being looted—that the Iraqi National Library, one of the greatest libraries in the world, burned to the ground.

I am a writer who works for historic preservationists. You may not know that I have been studying Arabic and Islamic cultures on my own since I was fourteen. It’s more than just taking belly dancing lessons! It means learning an elaborate system of honor and tradition. It means learning the many contributions that Arabia gave to Medieval Europe, enabling the Renaissance. It means understanding that Mesopotamia was the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of the West.

Secretary of State Colin Powell certainly knows that one can’t just go to Wal-Mart to replace Assyrian or Babylonian artefacts. But his promise to “repair” the damage done, while well meant, is naïve. Any preservationist knows how difficult, time-consuming, and costly it is just to maintain ancient works due to normal wear and tear, let alone repair them due to vandalism. To repair smashed artefacts will be impossible. Some things simply cannot be restored.

It is worse with the Iraqi National Library. That is completely gone. Archives from the Ottoman Empire; written correspondence of the 16th Century Royal Court; military diaries, photographs, microfiche of Arab newspapers dating back to the 1900s—they are gone forever. Hand-written notes from King Hussein of Mecca were rescued by Robert Fisk, a British reporter currently in Baghdad. Scraps were all that he could preserve—tantalizing snippets relating to a British soldier whom I consider to be a kindred spirit, T. E. Lawrence, otherwise known as Lawrence of Arabia.

Think of trying to “recover and repair” the treasures of a sacked Vatican. Think of Oxford or the Library of Congress burning to the ground. Think of losing the entire collection of Michelangelo’s or da Vinci’s works. Some things are irreplaceable.

One could say that the looting and the destruction are just the unfortunate side effects of war, but the vastly more difficult task of securing oil fields has been accomplished by the Coalition with a minimum of destruction. Likewise, while hospitals are overrun by armed gangs, Baghdad’s Oil Ministry is untouched because it has U.S. soldiers guarding it. In addition, observers in Baghdad report that accelerant was used on the library, and that the stealing of larger pieces from the museum bespeaks of a professional job. That said, it should be remembered that historians and archaeologists repeatedly pleaded with the Pentagon to follow international procedures for safeguarding these institutions.

As for me, I certainly can’t blame ordinary Iraqis for raiding palaces and government buildings. But I cannot believe that they would take up arms in order to raid hospital maternity wards, or the museum, or the library. The artefacts in the museum were stolen not from their display cases but from the locked vaults in which they were placed to protect them from the bombing—which, ironically, they survived.* The gangs involved in the library burning were armed and particularly violent, destroying copies of the world’s oldest Quar’ans as well as inventories and records.

I personally suspect—and this is my own theory—that Saddam Hussein himself could be behind the destruction, that he exhorted his men to destroy the hospitals and cultural sites. Saddam warned of “an inferno,” after all—and he knew that this administration, in its zeal, would not listen.

I know all the stated reasons for this war, and I do not accept them—not after I lobbied for so long for the United States to quit supporting the same brutal dictator we now claim to have toppled. Saddam Hussein’s regime in 2003 was on its last legs, no threat to the U.S., and the relative ease of the Coalition’s rout is evidence of that. That the Iraqi people are grateful to be pawns in our hypocrisy sours any pleasure I have at seeing the statues of Saddam pulled down amongst cheering crowds. It was the looters who cheered—now, although one must tune in the BBC to learn this, thousands are protesting the occupying soldiers for not protecting their cultural heritage. No weapons of mass destruction have been found, and if they are so mobile as to have easily been spirited into Syria, they can be taken anywhere, rendering a futile a geographical-based war. None of the September 11th terrorists were from Iraq. (Indeed, most of them were from Saudi Arabia, a similarly brutal regime whose ruling family, along with the family of Osama Bin Laden, enjoys close ties to George W. Bush.)

After the completion of my first novel I was developing several new writing projects: one on the life of Edgar Allen Poe, and one on the destruction of the Library at Alexandria. The accidental burning of that library by the Romans during a war between Julius Caesar and his rival Pompey robbed the world of many works by Aristotle, Socrates, Aristarchus, and countless other great thinkers from Greece, Rome, and the Orient. It was a disaster from which the world has never recovered, despite the efforts of Jewish and Islamic scholars who preserved and translated the few scrolls that survived two subsequent destructions. So is the loss of the Iraqi National Library a disaster from which the world won’t—can’t—recover.

In the words of Donny George**, the Director of Antiquities at the museum and an Assyrian Christian, “We waited there for about four hours until we met a colonel. And that day, he promised that he would send armored cars to protect what’s left of the museum. That was three days ago. But until now, nobody came…. It’s too late, it’s too late, it’s no use.”

You may disagree with my opinions about the U.S.-lead war against Iraq. You may not consider this destruction much of a loss compared to the U.S. having (hopefully) deposed a vicious and elusive dictator. One could make the argument that torture and death is worse than the loss of art and knowledge. But one could also argue that countless writers, historians, journalists, and scholars have endured torture and death to defend the survival of art and knowledge, of human thought and human endeavor, because it is the writers, historians, journalists, and scholars who believe that life is much more than mere survival.

But whatever you believe, this is my prediction for the future: As few people now remember the battle between Caesar and Pompey whereas many people remember the destruction of the Library of Alexandria, few in the future will remember the demise of Saddam Hussein whereas many will remember the world’s great loss of this unique and vital repository. History transcends battles and leaders and governments, even religions and ideologies and accepted truths. We have witnessed an immense violation of humanity’s soul, comparable to the sacking of Rome or the loss of the Alexandrian Library. Remember this day in history, for future generations even unto millennia are unlikely to forget or forgive it.

*Some artefacts were removed by museum personnel and subsequently returned. Though the destruction was not as bad as initially reported, it is still very serious, and the search for antiquities looted from Iraq goes on.

**My hero Donny George left his post in 2006 due to threats to himself and his family. He fled Iraq altogether. The fate of the museum remains precarious.