Showing posts with label Libraries. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Libraries. Show all posts

Sunday, May 10, 2020

Random Notes from a Crank

An interesting article in The Washington Post relates that some GOP advisors are worried about losing the Senate: "Republicans Grow Nervous about Losing the Senate Amid Worries of Trump's Handling of the Coronavirus."

I've been watching the polling in Senate races for a while now because I am hopeful of the GOP losing a number of those races. The four most talked about are in North Carolina, Maine, Colorado, and Arizona. I am worried about Jones losing in Alabama because, well, it's Alabama. 

I hadn't heard much about the Kansas race (as the article details a bit), but that factor makes sense since the 2016 flipping of Kansas in a number of elections. As a native Iowan, I would love for Ernst to be booted out of office. And I would be extremely happy if Lindsey Graham and Moscow Mitch have to hit the bricks. But those are long shots.  

I've watched a number of Amazon series during the lockdown. 

The Expanse has been a scary, suspense-filled treat. In a lot of these sci-fi novels and television shows though they depict the world as being run by the United Nations, such as in The Expanse and Altered Carbon, which is a bit odd because in our current reality the UN is fairly ineffectual. Regardless, The Expanse has a number of interesting visual representations of the world after climate change. 

I recently finished Beyond the Loop, which is an eerie yet poignant TV series. 

Here are factoids and stats from May's "Harper's Index," which were compiled as of March 2020:
  • Percentage of Americans who operate doors and sinks in public restrooms with paper towels to avoid germs: 65
  • Who flush with their feet: 44
  • Who hover over the toilet seat: 29
  • Number of countries that are carbon-negative: 2
  • Estimated number of Americans who spend at least three hours commuting each day: $4,300,000
  • Percentage of Democrats who believe that their personal finances will improve over the next year: 60
  • Of Republicans who do: 83
  • Portion of Trump's 2019 tweets that were live responses to Fox New or Fox Business programs: 1/10
  • Factor by which Americans go to the library more often than they go to the movies: 2
  • Estimated number of dead-end streets in the world: 17,680,000
  • Portion of those dead ends that are in the United States: 1/4

Wednesday, March 11, 2015

Stay Positive: The Bookmobile

I belong to a group on FB called "You Might Be From Waterloo/Cedar Falls If You Remember." Today someone had a post about remembering the library's Bookmobile. 



That photo is an older one, but I fondly remember the Bookmobile. One day a week it would park at a strip mall a block from my house, and my mom or dad would take me to it. 

I thought it was so great -- a bus full of books that traveled around the city delivering knowledge. From my perspective now, I really admire how my mom got me hooked on reading at an early age and supported me. Not enough kids have parents who do that kind of work. 

And I'm trying to pass on my mom's practices to my kids.