Library woes and library foes

From 10 am until 1 pm, I stood outside the Central Branch of the Seattle Public Library, and solicited signatures to send to the Seattle City Council.  I did this, because the entire library system for the city of Seattle has been shut down.  You can't even drop books to be returned, though no fines will be collected, either.  While the economy isn't getting any worse, it's not getting any better at the moment, and budgetary problems are a continuing concern.  The same, exact thing -- closure for a week -- may happen again next year, if the Seattle City Council decides that more budgetary constraints have to be put in place, which is a distinct possibility. 

 

This is a  truly appalling situation.  I don't blog often about libraries, though they are very important to me, as a writer.  However, I did blog blog earlier this year about what was happening with the Seattle Library System. And it doesn't look as if anything much has changed.  This is very bad, since the way libraries are used has changed greatly in the past few years, especially with the recently-completed building project which as expanded the library system, built some new libraries in places that didn't have them, and remodeled a number of older ones so they have more patron capacity and greater ability to keep books and other resources that people need.

 

In this economic situation, this is especially important, since a lot of people are looking for jobs, and the Seattle Public Library System has one of the best collections of job search resources in the region.  Furthermore, there are a lot of people -- I talked to one of them today -- who don't have their own computers, though they have e-mail addresses.  They rely on our system for access to computers, just to "keep in touch".  As the Seattle City Librarian mentioned today at a rally in front of the Central Library mentioned,  the library system serves everyone from Bill Gates to the homeless.  I should mention that some of these homeless people use the library, not only for shelter against the elements, but to find jobs themselves, so they won't be homeless any more.  And there's more, much more. The Gentle Reader can learn a great deal more about the difficulties people are having now that the library is closed for a week.

 

I realize "things are tough everywhere" and that everyone will  probably have to "take a cut".  However, it seems to me to be a very consistent pattern, that when economic times are hard, the first thing local and national governments always seem to want to do, is cut funds for education and for essential services like hospitals, health care, children's welfare, and so on, so that agencies and systems concerned with these things have to fight over very small pieces of a budgetary pie.  This is exactly what has happened in Seattle.  I was at the City Council meeting where the Council decided to cut the library budget by about 60%, which is the reason that the library system is now closed for a week. I am also aware that this is not only a problem in Seattle.  If it was, I probably wouldn't be blogging about it.  It is a problem on a national, and perhaps even an international scale -- I  also talked to a very chatty librarian from Sweden, who was absolutely appalled that the library was closed for a week.  I have a feeling they don't do things like that in Sweden, whatever else they might do.  My purpose here is to raise awareness. not only locally, but perhaps worldwide; libraries, as I said earlier, are important to the health of any community, however defined, and they should not be made to scramble for a tiny piece of the budgetary pie, even or especially in hard times like these, when so many people need the kind of services they increasingly provide.   Libraries are an important part of a generalized "education system" available to anyone in a community, and should remain fully funded at all times.

 

End of rant,

Anne G

Literary snobbery strikes again!

In a piece on her blog, The Disorganised Author, Anita Davison writes about an article she read in a British newspaper about historical fiction.  Perhaps, before I get into comments about anything here, I should state that although my Invaders trilogy is set in historical time, it's not strictly "historical  fiction".  I say this, despite the fact that I've always wanted to write a novel set in medieval England, so that's what I ended up doing.  And I've tried to make the history as accurate as possible, given there's not much "on the ground" in the period I'm writing about.  Still, I feel some obligation to at least try to get the basics right. 

 

I should also remind readers that I've written several blog posts criticizing what I thin as excessive attention to "historical accuracy", and claims about generalized "mindsets" for given historical periods.  I just don't think  there is any such thing as an overarching "mindset" for any given historical period, nor do I think, as some authors appear to, that you can accurately reproduce actual conversations of actual historical personages, unless these were written down somewhere, and I doubt very many of them were.  I  also have my opinions about the techniques some writers use to gain this supposed accuracy, but that's a story I won't go into here. 

 

However, my complaint is really about the article in the Guardian newspaper.  You see, it didn't take me very long to realize that Anthony Beevor, the author of the article, is basically another one of the, in my opinion, excessively large tribe of literary snobs who feel that people "really" shouldn't be reading anything but "fine" literature of the type they profess to prefer.  Beevor apparently thinks writers of historical fiction are doing historical periods and characters some sort of disservice by writing fictionally about them, simply because they are writing fiction.  Wow!  It also didn't take the article very long to clue me in on this; the moment he suggested that if writers of historical fiction wanted to write about a real person, instead of writing about the actual person, they should write a "roman a clef"!  Another wow!  This is just literary-speak for "write a tell-all set in historical time, but don't use anybody's real name.  And the arrogance of suggesting such a thing pretty much floors me.

 

I have suggested elsewhere in my blog, some reasons why I, myself, won't be writing any biographical fiction.  I find a lot of rather "episodic" and basically not too interesting. But that's just me, I suppose, and I've read some exceptions.  And I certainly wouldn't try to stop anybody from writing biographical fiction about some historical character, provided they do reasonable research into the period, and the life of the person they write about.  Most readers probably will read such a novel primarily for entertainment, as Beevor pointed out(and so did several comments on Ms. Davison's blog).  They won't be "fact checking".  Even if some readers get very interested in whatever period or person the writer is writing about, these readers themselves are perfectly capable of making the distinction between fiction and "historical fact".  But Beevor seems to think people are so stupid that they just can't do this.  Maybe some people can't, and there are some authors who apparently don't care what they put into their historical novels, regardless of whether it's accurate or not.  And here, I'm talking about really basic stuff, not just minor details.  This is something that really irritates me about Beevor's diatribe.  He brings up Shakespeare's plays, for example.  Many, though not all, people know that Shakespeare's "history" plays aren't historical, certainly not in the modern sense.  Shakespeare was primarily out to entertain the public, and he did a darn good job of it.  Besides which, the standards brought to bear on historical writing, as it was understood in his day, were not quite the same as ours, for a variety of reasons.  So what is this guy griping about?  If Shakespeare's plays aren't history, and half the audience knows they aren't history, how is this different from someone who picks up a book about, say Elizabeth I or Richard III(both fairly popular subjects for historical novels), which is marketed as fiction, any different?  Surely the reader knows, on some level, that what he or she is reading, is fiction.  Doesn't Beevor understand this?  And if so, why not?

 

I also have a feeling that, in terms of what he thinks people "ought" to read, he is not very far removed from that snobbish tribe of reviewers who trashed the Harry Potter series.  J.K.Rowling didn't pretend to be writing a "great" set of novels, nor, obviously, was she writing anything "historical".  But her literary crime was to appeal to a vast number of people of all ages, who became very engaged with Harry Potter's story, but whose writing wasn't "beautiful" enough to satisfy some critics, and whose plotline was too "ordinary" or not "realistic" enough to satisfy such people.  I think Beevor is basically in the same class, though he aims largely at writers of historical fiction.  Well, I'm sorry, Mr. Beevor, but if you don't "like" historical fiction, for whatever reason, if you think most readers are just too dumb to know the difference(or discover the difference for themselves) between fiction and fact,  you have another very  long think coming.   Given the opportunity, most people can, and sometimes do.  I'm one of them.  I'm sort of a "fact checker" myself, and I've read nonfiction biographies of a number of historical figures, and I've read nonfiction on any historical period that happens to catch my fancy.  I may not be a "common sort" this way, but I've done it.  And, apparently, so have a number of writers of historical fiction.  How dare you try to discourage some potential reader of a work of historical fiction, from doing the same thing?  People have minds, you know, and some of us actually use them!  Personally, I feel that, although I'm not, strictly speaking, writing "historical fiction", if I hadn't done this, I probably wouldn't be writing what I'm writing. 

 

I think Beevor's advice will probably end up being generally ignored.  People will read what they want.  Some authors will continue to be "compulsively accurate" and some readers will demand this of writers.  Others won't care, but read whatever historical fiction they read, primarily for its entertainment value.  Some readers(and writers) may decide they like the kind of "serious" fiction that Beevor himself apparently prefers.  Others will not.  The important point here is, readers and writers come to any book they read, or write, from any number of different places, and they're all good, in my opinion.  The Beevors of the world will pronounce and pronounce on proper "standards", but most people will probably continue to do what they always have when reading fiction:  get enjoyment out of whatever they are reading.

Anne G

I'm giving the wolves a rest for a while

Okay.  Enough already.  I'm not going to blog about wolves again for a while.  At least not until at least Monday. That's when a federal judge will or won't issue an injunction against this wolf hunt.  Maybe I won't comment even then, depending on how I feel.  However, if any "lupine news" comes my way, you'll  all be sure to be informed!

Anne G

Disgusting slaughter, Part 2

Since I posted my last blog regarding the upcoming wolf hunt in Idaho and Montana, I've been getting a number of comments.  In fact, I've gotten one of the highest numbers of comments on this, that I've gotten on anything since I started this blog two years ago.  At that time, I wasn't even thinking about blogging on the subject of wolves, their ecology, and reintroduction efforts.  And my blog is still, mainly a "writing" blog, with what might be called subfields related to my books.  So mostly it will be about writing, medieval times, Neandertals, and related subjects.  But since wolves have trotted themselves back into Washington State(and in some future Great Science Fiction Masterpieces, wolves are going to play their part, whatever that is, I feel it incumbent upon me to blog about them. 

 

As I said, most of the comment I've been getting in regard to my previous blog has accused me of "not researching", getting my facts wrong, etc., etc.  I am not denying that I didn't put a lot of "facts on the ground" into my blogging efforts; however, since I often get information from other sources that prompts a blog, I linked back to the relevant blog(which anyone can see if they look at the previous post), which summarizes facts and figures here.  Unfortunately, some people who read my blog comments didn't like the way I blogged, and wrote rather vituperative comments, both in the comment section, and on Ralph Maughan's Wildlife Report(scroll through the comments section, and you will see what I mean).  I find this rather distressing, but on the other hand, I will not be intimidated by them.  Furthermore, it has always been my policy to respond to anyone who comments, at least on this blog, whether or not I agree with them.  I feel this is only fair and courteous.  The only exceptions are obvious spam, which is the only reason I've instituted comment moderation. 

 

I can understand the feelings of those who feel wolves are a threat to their livelihood.  Farmers and ranchers face a lot of economic problems, and in the Intermountain West, where this wolf hunt is supposed to take place(Idaho and Montana, there is at present, and always has been, a lot of anti-predator sentiment.  This, of course, includes wolves.  A lot of people in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming, opposed the reintroduction of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, though the vast majority of all people who voiced any sentiments at all on this subject, were in favor of this idea.  I know this, because I visited Yellowstone at the time, and signed an informal poll.  It turned out later, that 90% of the people who signed on to that poll, favored wolf reintroduction.  But on the other hand, there were heated "town meeting" type debates, both in Montana and Idaho, and in some cases, the "antis" tried to pack the halls.  I know this also, because when such a meeting was held in Seattle, the city thought it prudent to send a couple of police officers to the scene.  Fortunately,  the police officers had nothing much to do; the vast majority of people there(and the place was packed), again, favored wolf reintroduction

 

Still, there is a noisy group of people, such as the Governor of Idaho(no, I didn't think to link to the YouTube video at the time I saw it, unfortunately(, who are ready and eager to start shooting wolves.  I am pretty sure that most of these noisy would be wolf hunters, have farming or ranching interests of some kind, and the fact that wolves have been taken off the Endangered Species List(though they are still listed as Threatened), has only egged these people on.  One of the people on that video actually advocated pretty much shooting every last wolf, not just the 220 wolves that are "officially" being allowed to be shot.  And he also advocated aerial hunting, as is unfortunately done in Alaska, thanks to the former governor of that state.  I have been told this won't be happening in Idaho, but still. . . .

 

Which brings me back to the negative commenters.  It seems to me that these people have their "own" agendas.  That is fine.  They are welcome to disagree with me.  But some of them don't seem to be any longer on facts than they accused me of being.  So if one is going to argue a counter position on this, or anything else, I would like to see their "facts on the ground"  Someone else "slammed" me anonymously.  I am no longer going to accept "anonymous" comments; they will be treated as spam.  I don't care whether or not your "handle" is your real name or not.  But you have to have one. 

 

Finally, as I said earlier, I have no intention of being intimidated by this, nor do I have any intention of being chased of Ralph Maughan's, or anybody else's site.  I will strive to be polite and courteous at all times, to anyone who passes through here.  And, needless to say, I will continue to blog about the state of wolves in North America and elsewhere, when that seems needful.  A blog, after all, is not an article in a scientific or academic journal(and yes, in the course of my research, I've read any number of those).  It is at bottom a place to express opinions.  They should be based on "the facts", whatever they may be, but they should not necessarily be bound by them.  So expect more "lupine opinion pieces" in the future.

 

I will leave this for now,

Anne G

A disgusting slaughter is about to begin

On September !, the State of Idaho will officially sanction the killing of 255 wolves in that state, and on September 15, Montana will do the same thing(though I don't know the number of wolves they're going to try to shoot there).    As some of you who read my blog may know, I'm "into" wolves.  As some of you may also know, wolves were reintroduced to the Rocky Mountain West via Yellowstone Park, in 1995.  They had been absent from that park since the 1930's.  In the meantime, their smaller cousins, the coyotes(Canis latrans), took over some of the functions wolves had previously performed, such as dining on elk.

 

Unfortunately, elk are rather large, and coyotes are smaller than wolves, so the "coyote contribution" wasn't adequate to keep elk herds under control, and the ecology of Yellowstone and some surrounding areas changed, not always for the better.  In 1995, wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone, and they thrived.  They were also introduced to parts of Idaho.  They thrived there, too.  And the ecology of Yellowstone, at least, was partly restored.

 

The wolves thrived so well that they spread in Idaho, and moved out of Yellowstone into other parts of Wyoming.  At this time, they were still on the Endangered Species List, and therefore protected from hunting.  And they continued to thrive.   They thrived so well, that, despite protests from various conservation groups, arguing, correctly, I think, that in  most parts of the US outside Minnesota and Alaska, there were not enough wolves in the places where they have been reintroduced, to justify delisting, and therefore "unprotecting" them.  The full details can be found at Ralph Maughan's Wildlife Report, where a far more detailed proposal of this "plan" can be found.

 

Many people in Montana and Idaho oppose this wolf hunting.  For one thing, it would, if successful, wipe out nearly one-third of all the wolves that now live in these two states.  That, it seems to me, is not what is required here.  It is true a lot of farmers and ranchers approve of these proposed hunts, and they seem to be enthusiastic about wanting to join in.  This is understandable in places where people invest their money in livestock, and predators are traditionally considered worrisome.  However, wolves have to learn to dine on sheep and cows; their natural food is deer and elk, but, like all members of the dog family, will eat just about anything biodegradable if they have to.  They can be "discouraged" from eating cows and sheep in various ways; this has been tried in Minnesota with a fair degree of success.

 

Even worse, these proposed wolf hunts will probably be conducted aerially, not unlike the ones the former governor of Alaska has so enthusiastically promoted in the past.  These wolf "hunts" are unfair and disgusting, and they work by running the target wolf down, exhausting it, then shooting it dead, dead, dead.  There's no particular reason to kill them, even if ranchers and farmers worry about livestock, because "wolf damage" just isn't that great.  Ironically the deer that wolves traditionally eat, may cause a lot more damage to crops, at least; I once saw a herd of them attack some growing wheat just outside of Bozeman, Montana.  Wolf predation would go some way to solving problems like this. 

 

So what is my bottom line here?  These hunts, if you want to call them that, are unnecessary.  They will not accomplish much of anything, except, in the long run, I think, to drive wolves back onto the Endangered Species List, where they will again begin to thrive.  Furthermore, in Montana and Idaho, although there are plenty of people who welcome the idea of possibly exterminating all wolves in their states, there are plenty of people who oppose these hunts.  Even in Alaska, which is full of wolves, most people there oppose wolf hunting.  Besides which, farmers and ranchers are no longer exactly the "majority" of the population in those states.  There are a great many people from "outside", who would like to see wolves and wildlife thrive.  So I, for one, would like to see this hunt halted, hopefully by some sort of court injunction, if at all possible, and immediately.  I urge everyone to think about this, and, if possible, go to Facebook, where Defenders of Wildlife has a presence, sign their petition, and give them as much support as possible so that this effort to stop what is essentially a disgusting and unnecessary hunt, will stop.

Anne G

I don't know a good title for this blog. . . . .

I  really don't.  I didn't even know I was going to blog it.  But Liam Guilar, a  poet with his own blog, Lady Godiva and Me(I've read the poems), wants to know if any good films have been made of any medieval epics.  I sure can't think of any.  He mentions two films made from Beowulf, which he reviews here, unfavorably.  He didn't, except in passing, mention The Thirteenth Warrior, which I saw a few years back, and it was good fun, I guess, and rather vaguely based on Beowulf, but more so on Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead.  This was written before Crichton went bat---- about environmentalists, and when I read it last, it was mainly for the "Neandertal" connection.  I read Beowulf a lot longer ago than that, in  a college course devoted to the study of epic literature, from Gilgamesh onward.  I should mention here that Guilar didn't like these two Beowulf films.  I never saw them, but those who did, would agree with him, from what I've heard.  Well, that's Hollywood for you. 

 

He then asks if the Irish Tain  cycle, or the Song o9 Roland(another epic I read in that epics course), have ever been made into films. I don't think so.  Fortunately.  If what the film industry has done to Beowulf is any indication, they should stay away, stay away, stay away from medieval epics!  Because the film makers butcher them!  I'm not eve sure either of these epics would  work very well for modern tastes, except for that core of (mostly male) moviegoers who like lots of action, blood, and gore.  And as far as the Song of Roland goes, there would be additional problems that I don't think any film maker would be prepared to handle.  The first lines of that epic have the "infidels"(actually Muslims who inhabited Spain at the time), worshiping statues of the Prophet Muhammad, as well as statues of the Greek god Apollo, neither of which any good Muslim would be caught dead doing.  And modern Muslims would, I think, be awfully quick to point this out, while "opposite numbers" would then start screaming "PC!  PC! PC!"

 

Other "medieval-themed" films are what might be called "good fun", but they're not epics.  The various versions of the Arthurian cycle come to mind, as do the innumerable versions of the Robin Hood legends, but I don't think this is what Guilar had in mind here.  The Robin Hood films tend to reflect modern social problems of one sort and another, though they all draw on the same basic legends.  But a real medieval epic?  As I said, I don't know.  Any more than I know what to title this bloog.

Anne G

I am sooooo thrilled!

A soon to be published author has invited bloggers to let her drop into their blogs.  Her name is Michelle Cameron, and her book, The Fruit of her Hands, is a bout a rabbi's wife dealing with antisemitism in 13th century Europe.  It sounds really interesting, and I have a million questions I'd like to ask her.  I would like to do an interview with her, online, by blog or something, but I don't quite know how to do it.  I've never done such a thing before.  It will happen on September 21, and I'm more than happy to help her publicize her effort, which will see publication on September 8.  I will, naturally, add her to my Honorable Blogroll, so I really hope people will drop by and take a look!  I try to encourage all authors, whether published or not, on their writing journeys.

 

Good luck to you, Ms. Cameron,

Anne G