The Green Kangaroo

In Ottawa for the Canadian Library Association, doing meetings, sessions and networking -- all the things one does at a conference -- on the one hand, and finishing work for ALA Annual on the other... It makes for a full life.

CLA president Barbara Clubb (Ottawa Public Library) reminded us that we come together in conference to "gather courage and energy." A good way to think about it. Ian Wilson, Library and Archives Canada, talked about libraries as part of the "intellectual infrastructure of our communities," and a member of the Canadian Parliament focused on the importance of the "documentary evidence of who we are as a society" built and preserved by libraries.

After the opening session greetings,association and governmental,in English and in French, CLA opened with a really fine father-son presentation by Stephen and Avi Lewis. Stephen Lewis is currently the UN Secretary-General's Special Envoy for HIV in Africa. In 2005 he was on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. His son, Avi Lewis, is a documentary filmmaker and broadcaster -- particularly in music journalism. Led by Avi, their opening session was an unscripted conversation about generational differences in activism and strategies for social change. My note-taking suffered somewhat from my absorption in the conversation.

They started off with Stephen's observation -- in response to Avi's question about why he stayed engaged with institutions -- that he had grown up with the tradition of "engaging with an institution to try to save it from itself" and that to really support an institution or organization you have to have a critical relationship with it. Avi noted his decision, on completing university, that it might be more "subversive" to work within the media than within politics.

From there they ranged widely over global politics and economics before settling into the question of why and how activism and the "impulse to try to save the world" come to be handed down from parent to child. Avi noted he grew up surrounded by a "Don Quixote ethic." They discussed the importance of reading aloud and both agreed that books and reading "reformatted our minds," and gave them a different sense of the "possibility of change." Stephen talked about William Steig's books as a "testament to appropriate human behavior." Avi noted that the books his father read him "dignified the act of empathy." This legacy of activism, these values had to be "fashioned into a narrative." "There's a shape to what we do," and we learn and transmit knowledge in stories.

Pushing to identify a "most important" issue, both father and son pointed to global weather change -- noting Jared Diamond's book (Collapse), AL Gore's new film and The Weather Makers. (Stephen Lewis had a "can't remember the author" moment on the latter -- I'm sympathetic. It may possibly be Tim Flannery's The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Cllimate and What It Means for Life on Earth.)

As the conversation drew to a close, Avi asked his father "why do you keep fighting when things are getting worse?" Stephen's response was that he saw no real choice, that "futility leads nowhere."

It was a fascinating and engaging conversation -- even well past dinnertime at the end of a long day. From the perspective of a conference planner, this was a high-risk format for an opening session -- and it was exactly right, with real heart and intellect. Congratulations, CLA.

At a recent retreat, I met Dave Smith, executive director of Mobilizing America's Youth. Naturally, the "why libraries now" discussion arose. That gave me an opportunity to share a lot of library stories -- about Teen Advisory Groups, gaming nights, rock music in the library and lots of other really exciting stuff going on in libraries. Thanks to all you storytellers -- and please don't stop.

So, this week a message came from Dave asking if I could pass along what his group is doing to combat efforts to limit social networking through tools like Facebook, MySpace, Essembly, Yahoo360, etc. Many of you made your voices heard already, but I am passing along the connection. Check out their site. While you're there, check out Dave's essay on "Youth Civic Engagement."

I knew that something relevant to this had crossed by line of vision recently. So, I pulled the March/April 2006 issue of Knowledge Quest, the Journal of the American Association of School Librarians out of my stack and looked up the feature article on "Encouraging Civic Virtues: A Collaborative Model Developed by a Teacher-Librarian and a Classroom Teacher." For those of you interested in libraries and civic engagement or in engaging youth on vital contemporary issues, look it up. Knowledge Quest archives are on the web -- though I think not this issue, yet.

Finally, it was a big day. (OK, some days it doesn't take much.) ALA Publishing folks took my picture to use to demo their "READ" poster software. So, I took advantage of the case to hold a copy of, what else, Judy Blume's The One is the Middle Is the Green Kangaroo. I suspect the book cover was the more photogenic of us -- bright green, naturally.