Rats, Dog Poop, and One Great Sign

There are two categories of dog walkers: those who usually clean up after their dog, and those who usually don’t.

Signs appealing to dog owners’ good will aren’t likely to change the behavior of those in the second group. Signs threatening fines probably won’t — unless there is imminent danger of an enforceable citation.  How about a thorough explanation of the pollution of groundwater sources or parasite-borne disease? I don’t think so.

Situation hopeless? Not quite. Here’s a sign that might just work. I saw it a few weeks back in a lovely residential area north of Lincoln Park in Chicago.

Yeah, there’s the threat of a fine, but that isn’t what gets your attention. No, it’s the mental image of rats feasting on dog poop coupled with the sign’s illustration of a pair of these fat poop-fed rats dogging the heels of someone just like you.

They’re bold fat rats, aren’t they, following you and your dog on your walk, just waiting for you to let your dog leave them a treat. Man and dog are both oblivious, but these rats, with their big bellies and little feet and curly tails, are wiggling their snouts and whiskers, waiting to feast on the next pile of poop. They’ve no need to bother with scrounging in the dumpsters. They get their meals delivered at least once a day. By you.

Now I don’t know if rats really eat dog waste, but it wouldn’t surprise me; after all, dogs sometimes eat dog waste (and cat waste as well). The chance they might would be enough for me. I don’t want rats in my neighborhood, and I especially don’t want poop-fattened ones following me around.

I wonder if this campaign will work. Surely somewhere in Chicago there’s a sociology or public health or some kind of student in need of a thesis topic. So here’s an idea. Canvas several neighborhoods without these signs for piles of poop, persuade the city to add the signs, and go back for recounts. My hypothesis is as the signs appear, the piles will disappear.

Of Flu and Football in Tuscaloosa and Beyond

I found some encouraging information about the prevalence of H1N1 or swine flu on the campus of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa:

– FLU IN REMISSION: The flu virus circulating through the University of Alabama campus in recent weeks appears to finally be on the decline.

“It seems much, much better,” John Maxwell, director of the UA student health center, said Wednesday. “We randomly have checked some during the day just to see if we’re still seeing it. I think (Tuesday) and (Wednesday), we haven’t seen any positives. That is good news.”

Where did I find it? State news, local news, education news? Dream on. It was buried several inches deep in the Friday, Sept. 18,  on-line edition of  the sports pages of the Mobile Register.

It seems sometimes, if it weren’t for sports reporting, we’d no news at all from our Alabama campuses.

Even the NPR affiliate in Birmingham, AL, WBHM found H1N1 among college students in Alabama only worth a mention in the context of game days.   Andrew Yeager’s September 18, 2009, report,  Tide Flu, noted that

Sports Economist Andrew Zimbalist says canceling a game at a small, division three school such as Stillman is less problematic than at a division one program. There’s more at stake for big universities.

“For the schools themselves they can generate in ticket sales millions of dollars in each game. And then they have television contracts. They have television contracts that can also generate millions of dollars or the equivalent of that per game.”

Beyond that, Zimbalist points out if a season is interrupted by cancellations, it could affect perceptions of teams making it to post-season play.

“That becomes tainted if one of the contending teams misses a game or two because of a swine flu epidemic.”

What’s Stillman?

Stillman College, founded in 1876,  is a small (~1050)  four-year liberal arts college affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, and is, like the main campus of the University of Alabama, located in Tuscaloosa.

When 37 of its players and several coaches had flu symptoms in the days leading up to its opening game, the College cancelled the game and the SAIC marked the game up as a  forfeit to Stillman’s opponent, Clark Atlanta.

The team’s coach, L. C. Cole,  told Tuscaloosa News sportswriter Andrew Carroll,

We had to make a decision in the best interest of our athletes. We didn’t want to do any further harm. The college did the best thing as a precaution for our team and our student body too.

This is Cole’s first year at Stillman. Responsibility and integrity: not just talk from this coach.

Meanwhile, down at the University of Florida, we have this from Florida Gators Head Coach Urban Meyer:

“It is a panic level of proportion I’ve never seen before,” Meyer said Sunday, a day after his team’s 23-13 victory over Tennessee. “You hear about, I think, Wisconsin had 40 players. Ole Miss had 20 players. My wife, with her great insight, said, ‘Do you realize the swine flu and everything is hitting the Florida campus last week.’ My gosh.. . .

“We’re trying the best we can, but it’s real,” Meyer said. “We go to the extremes. They get a separate dorm room for them. They get a separate hotel room for them. They put them right on whatever the flu stuff is. Our guys, our team doctors, they’re on it as fast as you can get on it.”

And the Gators have all now had seasonal flu shots. The Associated Press’s Mark Long reported:

The regular flu shots were the latest course of action. They came about a week after one school official predicted that as many as 40 percent of students could catch swine flu.

Uh, what exactly is the connection between those two sentences? The shots available now are the seasonal flu shots. They aren’t going to keep the Gators safe from H1N1.

The AP report goes on to note that only 3 Gators were sick with flu during last Saturday’s game against Tennessee.

[Jeff] Demps, [Jermaine] Cunningham and [Aaron] Hernandez all played against Tennessee on Saturday, but none of them seemed up to par. Demps, who had a 101-degree temperature, ran four times for 31 yards and a touchdown. Hernandez caught four passes for 26 yards. And Cunningham finished with one tackle. “They were beat up pretty good,” Meyer said.

Playing a guy in a contact sport who is running a “101-degree temperature”? That might be how they “go to the extremes” in Florida, but I’d rather have my kid playing for Coach L.C. Cole (the Stillman coach, remember?).

the “unverified crud” in the “dramatic diatribe” of an “unread elitist”

“An Independent” didn’t  care for my last post, “Obama’s Back-to-School Address: All Responsibilities and No Rights,” writing:

 DON’T tell people to treat teachers as some kind of perverse violent evil force, out to get my kids (which is what you ARE saying, whether you think so or not).

Fine, I won’t. And I didn’t. I don’t suppose it will do much good for me to say that I wasn’t writing about teachers, since “An Independent” presumes to know what I’m thinking, even if I don’t, but for the record, the word teachers appears just once in my “dramatic diatribe,” couched between parents and principals. And not that it matters, but I believe that teachers are grossly underpaid for doing perhaps the most important job going. I should know. Both my parents were public school teachers. But that’s just my opinion.

Moreover, teachers don’t make policy. Maybe they should, but they don’t: not at the school level, or the district, or the state, or the national.

What I take exception to is “An Independent’s” suggestion that my argument is riddled with “unverified crud” that I’m “using as sources.” My respondent writes,

 Throw away all those self-published pieces of crud, written by childless, barren-wombed “scholars” who have never actually TAUGHT children, and start quoting some people with REAL LIFE experience.

Are Department of Education reports and Supreme Court verdicts “self-published pieces of crud, written by childless, barren-wombed ’scholars’ who have never actually TAUGHT children”?

That’s one way of describing them, I guess.

I’m not sure what would satisfy “An Independent” as verified crud, but here goes.

“self-published pieces of crud” aka My Sources

• Supreme Court 1977. Ingraham vs. Wright

You can read the Supreme Court ruling Ingraham v Wright at FindLaw.

INGRAHAM v. WRIGHT, 430 U.S. 651 (1977). 430 U.S. 651. INGRAHAM ET AL. v. WRIGHT ET AL. CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT. No. 75-6527. Argued November 2-3, 1976. Decided April 19, 1977

This case presents questions concerning the use of corporal punishment in public schools: First, whether the paddling of students as a means of maintaining school discipline constitutes cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment; and, second, to the extent that paddling is constitutionally permissible, whether the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment requires prior notice and an opportunity to be heard. . . .

Petitioners cannot prevail on either of the theories before us in this case. The Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment is inapplicable to school paddlings, and the Fourteenth Amendment’s requirement of procedural due process is satisfied by Florida’s preservation of common-law constraints and remedies. We therefore agree with the Court of Appeals that petitioners’ evidence affords no basis for injunctive relief, and that petitioners cannot recover damages on the basis of any Eighth Amendment or procedural due process violation.

• Corporal punishment and students with disabilities

Visit the Department of Education, Table 9 – Incidents of Disciplinary Action for Students with Disabilities.

• Public High School Graduation Rates by State

Visit the Department of Education, Indicator 19, Elementary/Secondary Persistence and Progress.

• Race and corporal punishment

Department of Education press release. “Anniversary of Title VI Marks Progress and Reminds us that Every Child has the Right to an Education.” July 1, 2009

• The Global Initiative to End All Corporal Punishment lists its primary sources and supporters here.

A Note about Incidents of Disciplinary Action for Students with Disabilities

The US Department of Education’s website reports the numbers of special ed students receiving corporal (2006 figures [most recent]) by district  not by state, so don’t be surprised when you open the page and you see a chart where every value is 0. Once you click on a particular state, then you’ll see each district — city, county, or borough — and its reported figures.

In Alabama, for example, there are 108 systems reporting. Of those, 26 reported no use of corporal punishement on students who fall under IDEA [Individuals with Disabilities Education Act], and 12 reported over 100 disabled students who at least once were subject to corporal punishment in 2006. Marshall County reported the highest number (300). Next most numerous were two other rural counties Morgan and Blount, with 215 each. That is a big gap.

For perspective, the 2006 population for Jefferson County, Alabama’s most populous, was 659,403. Marshall’s was 86,247. Jefferson had 125 incidents of corporal punishment involving special ed kids.

These are 2006 facts. Marshall vs. Jefferson county population: 86,247 vs. 659,403. Disabled kids receiving corporal punishment in Marshall vs. Jefferson counties’ public schools: 300 vs. 125.

“They live every day in fear of their students–NOT the other way around!”

“An Independent” suggests I have things backwards:

I know LOTS of teachers. They live every day in fear of their students–NOT the other way around! These days, they have to worry about MUCH more than just kids bringing frogs to school, or smoking in the bathrooms. They have to worry about guns, drugs, gangs, sexting, and offending BOTH sides of the street of political ideologues.

and tells me:

Go out into the real world. Meet lots of real people. Ask the REAL EXPERTS– the TEACHERS– what they think about abuse and discipline in schools, and start quoting REAL cases — IF you can find any!– where abuse happened. (And no, the provoked YouTube videos– with teachers defending themselves against violence, which are posted by kids who edit out the assaults on the teachers– these are NOT kids being abused, these are TEACHERS being abused!)

Sorry, but I don’t spend time over at YouTube (or MSNBC for that matter), but I thought I’d look for some crud about assaults on teachers in the 20 states with corporal punishment and in the 30 without.

Over at the US Department of Education, I found an interesting National Center for Education Statisitcs table, Percentage and number of public school teachers who reported that they were physically attacked by a student from school during the previous 12 months, by state: 1993–94, 1999–2000, and 2003–04.

In 2003-04, 120,000 US teachers reported they were physically attacked by a student from school during the previous 12 months. The number of reports from the 20 states who still allow corporal punishment was 48,500.

The proportion of states that have corporal punishment (20) is two-fifths of US states. In 2003-2004, 48,500/120,000, or roughly two-fifths of attacks against teachers occurred in these same states.

My “snotty commentary”: there is no reason to believe that teachers are safer in schools that use corporal punishment than in ones that don’t.  Nor is there any reason to believe they are less safe.

 

Obama’s Back-to-School Address: All Responsibilities and No Rights

President Obama’s speech last week to America’s students disappointed me. I wish he had given the bushleaguer Fox-frequenters something to squawk about. I wish his talk about responsibilities had included a promise to America’s minors that he would work to extend to them the same rights under the law that their parents, teachers, and principals have.

Obama used the same rhetoric for this audience as he would have if he were addressing full citizens of the US: “if you quit on school – you’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.” And while it’s hard to argue with the message “I expect you to put your best effort into everything you do,” I find it unsettling to hear kids once again being told that “Here in America, you write your own destiny” when the truth of the matter is that in 20 states, school kids of all age, for all kinds of reasons, are subject to corporal punishment.

Children, unlike adults, including convicted murderers, have no protection from “cruel and unusual punishment,” nor are they guaranteed due process, or so said the Supreme Court in its 1977 ruling on Ingraham vs. Wright, which challenged the State of Florida’s corporal punishment policies as unconstitutional, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments. See.

Twenty years have passed since the UN General Assembly adopted the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which says that children should share in basic human rights, like protection from violence, and still the US has not ratified it, a distinction we share only with the great nation of Somalia. During his campaign, Obama said, “It is embarrassing to find ourselves in the company of Somalia, a lawless land.”  His administration has at least begun thinking about the problem; in June 2009 the US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, said officials are looking at “when and how it might be possible to join.” But it isn’t his decision alone.

The same mouths who had to protect their precious children’s delicate ears from being bruised by Obama’s innocuous speech will fight this tooth and nail. They’ll buy into the argument of Steven Groves, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, as reported on Fox: “To the extent that an outside body. . . have a say over how children in America should be raised, educated and disciplined — that is an erosion of American sovereignty.”

They’ll fear losing the legal right to terrorize with threats of violence and to physically assault those who are smaller than they are. They’ll claim it’s a matter of religious freedom, spare the rod and spoil the child. But even the stern Calvinists of Scotland stopped beating kids in public schools 29 years ago: “Corporal punishment is prohibited in state schools and for publicly funded pupils in independent schools in Scotland under Section 48A of the Education (Scotland) Act 1980.”

What other countries haven’t prohibited corporal punishment in public schools? Uganda, Turkey, Myanmar, Liberia, Cuba, and other illustrious nations. See.

Is it surprising that states that hit kids the most — whether by counting the number hit at least once during the course of the year or the percentage of the student body beaten — have some of the lowest graduation rates in the nation?

Or that in the ten most violent states, in nine cases , special ed students are paddled at a higher rate than kids in the general population (and in the tenth, they are paddled at the same rate)? 

Or that disproportionately more minority students, especially blacks, are hit and hit more often? In 2006-2007, 36% of kids struck at school were black (interestingly, in 1976, the percentage of blacks hit was 29%). Look at the map of where corporal punishment is allowed in schools, and think plantation discipline.

Obama used the words responsibility or responsibilities nine times in his address to school children. The word rights appears just once,  in a list of historical achievements of the American people, suggesting that the fight for civil rights is as much a done deed as putting a man on the moon.

Mr. President, you can do better than this.

I’ve an assignment for you.

In a year’s time, return to the schoolroom TV monitors and address this question: If rights come with responsibilities, do responsibilities come with rights?

 Resources

Corporal Punishment : Legalities, Realities, & Implications. Patricia H. Hinchey. Clearing House, Jan./Feb. 2003

Corporal Punishment of Students with Disabilities in US Public Schools. Alice Farmer. Human Rights Watch

Global table of corporal punishment: home, school, penal system. at www.endcorporalpunishment.org

Corporal Punishment by State and Race. Center for Effective Discipline.

 

What’s up with PayPal and eBay? Or, Beware eBay Gift Certificate Redemption Policies

Can somebody explain to me what I’m missing here?

Daughter is always finding something she wants on eBay that she can’t get elsewhere, so last year when her thoughtful uncle asked for a birthday present idea, I was ready: an eBay gift certificate.

It seemed  simple and straightforward enough. Wrong.

First, since Daughter didn’t have an eBay account of her own, we used mine. But when we tried  entering the redemption number for the $25.00 certificate  at checkout, because the email to which the certificate was sent (Daughter’s) didn’t match the eBay account holder’s (mine), it was rejected.

So we set Daughter up with an eBay account. No sweat.

Then she wanted something that cost more than $25.00. I tried to pay the difference from my PayPal, but that wouldn’t work. The Paypal had to be in her name. So I set up a PayPal account with her name and email, and from my PayPal sent her $35. Total purchase price including shipping and handling was $54, so that means that there would be $6.00 more in Paypal than required.

No luck. Now PayPal wants a credit or debit card account information, and to use the eBay gift certificate, a PayPal account is required. Daughter doesn’t have a credit card.

Yes, I tried Customer Service at both sites. PayPal never responded. Ebay did, but didn’t address the problem, and when I took up their offer to contact them again if I had additional problems, I received no response.

Okay, so let’s try something else.

This time Daughter chooses a pair of stockings which, including shipping and handling, comes to about $5.00.

Remember, she has her own eBay account, an eBay certificate worth $25, her own PayPal account, and a PayPal balance of $35.

In other words, between the two of them, eBay and PayPal have $60 of her money, so they ought to let her use $5 of it without a hassle.

Wrong again.

PayPal still wants credit or debit info for “verification purposes.”

Okay, I give up. I gave PayPal the credit card info for an account we keep solely for internet purchases since last year we had to deactivate our ordinary credit card twice due to information leakages, likely on the internet.

Bingo! Daughter got to spend $5 of her money!

Now here’s the curious part: The credit card info that proved her ticket to success wasn’t, of course, for a card in her name. So what, I wonder, was PayPal able to verify by grabbing hold of that info it didn’t need?

You may say I should have looked into eBay’s policies before thinking a gift certificate was such a great idea.

Here’s what eBay says:

To use a gift certificate, gift card, or coupon for a purchase:

• The seller needs to accept PayPal as a payment method.
• You need to use PayPal to purchase the item within 10 days of the end of the listing.

You can use more than one gift certificate or gift card per purchase. However, you can use only one coupon per purchase.

Redeeming a gift certificate, gift card, or coupon

To redeem a gift certificate, gift card, or coupon, you’ll need to log into your PayPal account when you purchase the item. If you don’t have one, you’ll be given an opportunity to sign up.

Looking at the PayPal site’s Help Center, under Using PayPal with eBay: Gift Certificates, we find this:

Question: Why do I need to add a credit card or bank account in order to use my gift certificate?

Answer: For security purposes, you may be required to add a credit card or bank account to your PayPal account before you can redeem your gift certificate.

I’ve two problems with this answer.

• In the context of my situation, how was PayPal or I made more secure by PayPal demanding personal financial information to release money I and my brother had given to them? Why do corporations, governments, etc. etc. think that those two words, “security purposes” justify all?
• Why say “you may be required to add a credit card or bank account” when the truth is you will be required? Remember, there was $55 more than needed to cover the purchase available in the PayPal/eBay account. Tell me, if this situation didn’t fall into the category of no credit card or bank account required, what would?

Something stinks here.

Swine Flu at University of Alabama is Back in the News!

Surprise, surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say.

Now it looks like 58, or 59, or maybe 64, UA students at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa have or have had Novel H1N1 [swine] flu.

After eight days of no new news on the swine flu outbreak at UA  (reported to have affected 54 students), I did my daily simple Google News search for flu+Tuscaloosa and found 14 results newly posted in the past 18 hours (28 Aug. 12 pm CST)!!!

What has changed?  What’s happening?

Guess.

Four or 5, or maybe 10, Crimson Tide footballer players may have this flu.

That is news.

H1N1 [Swine Flu] at University of Alabama: First There Was News. Then There Was None.

What is happening on the Tuscaloosa campus of the University of Alabama?

Let’s review the week of August 18 to 25, 2009.

Tuesday night, August 18, 2009: University of Alabama sends out emails to campus community and parents that there are 21 suspected and 6 confirmed cases of H1N1 (swine flu) on the Tuscaloosa campus.

Wednesday, August 19, 5:20 pm. Birmingham News reports: “University of Alabama officials have confirmed at least 50 cases of influenza on campus, most of them likely the swine flu.”

Friday, August 21, 6:00 am: Tuscaloosa News online:

At least 54 people have tested positive for the flu this week, said John Maxwell, director of the Student Health Center at UA. That number has grown since Tuesday, when there were 21 known cases of flu, but it’s not certain whether the cases are the H1N1 swine flu strain.

And then there was no news.

Trying to find out what is going on 150 miles away at UA, I searched “flu Alabama,” “flu Tuscaloosa,” “H1N1 Alabama” and “H1N1 Tuscaloosa” on Google News:

Saturday, August 22:nothing new about UA and H1N1 in the media.

Sunday, August 23:nothing new about UA and H1N1 in the media.

Monday, August 24:nothing new about UA and H1N1 in the media.

What conclusion am I to draw? 

1. First there were 6, then 21, then 54. And then no new cases of flu. Amazing! If that is the case, what is UA doing right? Send in WHO, send in the CDC, let them tell their success story. OR
2. The highly contagious H1N1 flu has continued to spread rapidly and by now there are several hundred cases. But this isn’t newsworthy.

Two things I know for sure: 

1. You can add one more to that figure of 54: my son was diagnosed Thursday night at 7:00.
2. He had to go as far as Northport, a community about 5 miles from campus, to purchase a single course of Tamiflu for $120 since the pharmacies closer to campus were sold out.

Several things I’m thankful for: He 

1. isn’t a freshman or a transfer student who knows no one on campus
2. knows where Student Health is
3. had a way to get to a pharmacy
4. had $120 in his bank account.

But what if. . . what if he didn’t know anyone? The idea of “flu buddies” who will look out for one another is very sweet but more than a tad naïve: how many people are going to put themselves at risk to help a stranger? How are these freshmen and transfers getting food, let alone to the doctor and pharmacy?

And what of those who can’t afford the Tamiflu?

One more thing I know for sure:

In 12 days, some 90,000 people will be crowding into Bryant stadium for the Alabama-Virginia Tech game. They will be shouting and the water vapor-borne viral contagions will be flying. They’ll be holding onto handrails climbing to their seats. They’ll be eating with their hands. A lot of money will be involved.

Could there just maybe, just possibly, be a connection between this scenario and the blackout of updates on H1N1 on the UA campus?

The Impenetrable Bessemer Public Libray

Thwarted again!

I thought I’d have a little talk with the director of the Bessemer Public Library regarding the ban on citizens under 18 who are not accompanied by a parent or guardian (you realize this policy is stricter than that for an R movie…).

So I dialed the number on the Bessemer PL website, 205-428-7882.

Phone was answered by a recording asking me to enter the extension of the party I wished to speak to, or zero for an operator.

Entered zero and was told that was an invalid entry.

No way in.

So I called the Jefferson County Library Cooperative, of which Bessemer is a member. Got connected with a human who said she would send an email to the Bessemer director to tell her the number on the website doesn’t work.

Stay tuned.

Bessemer, AL Public Library: If You Are 17, Bring a Guardian

Today I paid my first and what I hope will be my last visit to the town of Bessemer, Alabama, 12  miles southwest of Birmingham. I visited its public library and was appalled before I walked through the door. Oh, it’s a lovely site, perhaps the nicest in town. The 1908  building dates from the town’s era of  prosperity, long before its iron ore deposits were depleted and its steel mills closed. Inside and out, the Bessemer Public Library looks fully restored and refurbished, inviting, and yes, even prosperous, in a near-dead downtown bordered on every side by dilapidation and grime.

On the library’s pristine door is a stern announcement.

No one under the age of 18 is admitted without a guardian. No exceptions.

Can you imagine? I’ve seen other library policies asking that children under say 10 not be left alone routinely for extended periods at the library, or that pre-schoolers be accompanied by a parent or guardian.

But this is quite different, isn’t it?

Every summer afternoon when I was 12 I went to the library, alone, and shelved books for a couple of hours, and when I was a teen, my parents often dropped me at the library’s door on Saturday mornings. I don’t remember either ever coming in with me. Nothing unusual about that. Of course, I wasn’t living in Bessemer in 2009.

Why do people put up with this? Can this be legal?

Let’s have a look at Bessemer for the answers.

This is what City-Data.com tells us (2007):

Median household income below state average. [And keep in mind that Alabama came in 47th in the nation for median income.]

Median house value significantly below state average.

Black race population percentage significantly above state average.

Hispanic race population percentage significantly below state average.

Foreign-born population percentage significantly below state average.

Institutionalized population percentage above state average.

Percentage of population with a bachelor’s degree or higher significantly below state average.

Unemployment in June 2009 was 15.5%; the local paper estimates that 30% may truly be out of an income, if those whose benefits have run out, or who are underemployed are taken into account.

A couple of comments come to mind:

• Who wants to bet that you would never see this policy in a predominantly white community with an income at or above state average?
• And while such a policy would be wrong any place, is it not especially reprehensible and outrageous that it exists in the only public library within an impoverished town? The next closest library is 4.4 miles away.
• What does the — who? — city council? mayor? library trustees? library administration? — think that the under 18s are going to do to their library? Mind you, there is a security guard at the door. Why? To make sure that a 17-year-old doesn’t sneak in? He watches the entrance door, it seems to me, not the interior of the library.

I wanted to see if I could find any references to the Bessemer policy online. No luck, but I did learn:

• that its director was fired this last month
• that the front page of  the July 22, 2009 Western Tribune (the local paper) featured a photo of  a man sprawled asleep in a chair under the headline, “Bessemer Library’s Problems Continue. Troubled director goes AWOL as basement floods;  top staff member sleeps on the job”
• that in 2007 a part-time bookkeeper was charged with embezzling $400,000 from the library but died before the case went to trial.

I live more than a 100 miles from Bessemer, and I am not a resident of Jefferson County, so I’m not in a position to badger its board live and in person. But that doesn’t mean I’m finished with this talk.

Who Was Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother?

While I plan to post henceforth on public domain images on Public Domain Images Online, I’m posting a bit of this one here since it follows up on a havealittletalk post from this spring.

 In an earlier post I noted that one of the most famous American photographs of the twentieth century is in the public domain in the United States since it was taken by Dorothea Lange when she was employed by the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression. What came to be known as “Migrant Mother” was one of six images shot by Lange on March 9, 1936 near Nipomo, California, where migrant workers were in a dire situation since the crops they had come to harvest had been destroyed by freezing rains.

On the following day,  according to Geoffrey Dunn’s essay for New Times: San Luis Obispo, “Photographic License,” the San Francisco News published this picture:

Read more here.