Nancy Pearl was on NPR this morning, recommending older political novels to serve as an antidote to all of those scary partisan election-year non-fiction diatribe-tomes on sale at your favorite bookstore. (Some of her recommendations: Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men, Ward Just’s A Dangerous Friend, and Henry Adams’ Democracy).

She’s got a really appealing presence, she has a sense of humor, she’s charming, she knows her books, and she makes looking for new stuff to read sound fun.

She’s also got a great gig. Librarian, book reviewer, writer, and semi-Oprah rolled into one: how much fun must that be? Plus, she’s fantastic PR for the profession and for the library itself. More power to her.

My only (minor, minor, minor) quibble: Why was the story taped in a bookstore (in this case, Washington DC’s Politics and Prose) rather than inside a library?

No offense—I’m sure P&P is an awesome bookstore—but I’m sure there would have been plenty of libraries willing to open their doors and let Steve Inskeep and Nancy Pearl tape a segment about libraries and summer reading inside their premises. [NPR link courtesy LISNews.]

We’re having regular thunderstorms and thunderstorm forecasts this time of year. Having never experienced thunderstorm season in the Midwest, I find it fascinating. Last night, for example, a fairly rambunctious storm rumbled through at about 11. Tonight, on the other hand, while I was at work, there was a brief burst of rain and thunder, making me kick myself for having not brought an umbrella. It lasted about 10 minutes, then nothing; in fact, the sky cleared up. I’m used to rain and storms being a days-long, miserable, unpleasant event, as they are in the Bay Area during the intermittent rain seasons they have there. The thunderstorms here are actually (thus far, anyway) a pleasant interlude. I’m sure, as with most of my weather expectations, something will eventually come along to change my outlook, but so far I’m enjoying the rain, fleeting though its presence may be.

It amuses me, I’m not sure why, that there are more articles on the upcoming cicada infestation in the Washington Post (a search of the Post website shows 17 separate articles on cicadas in the last week alone) than I’ve seen in the local papers, although I suppose the Post’s cicada watch amounts almost to a case of hysteria. There’s this from a May 6 article, a brief mention of the Kensington Park Library in Kensington, MD, and its cicada plans:

To help preschoolers deal with the invasion, children’s librarian Linda Swanson has scheduled an earlier program featuring insects as positive creatures. Come picnic day, “we’ll take a look around at 10 in the morning and see how these cicadas are doing. If there are five of them per square inch, we really don’t have a choice. It’s hard to eat a sandwich if a cicada’s sitting on it.”

My god I didn’t think it was possible, but it’s true; the Boy Emperor is incable of learning from his mistakes and « is beginning the march of war on Syria »:

’[The Boy Emperor] will order economic sanctions against Syria this week for supporting terrorism and not doing enough to prevent militant fighters from entering neighboring Iraq, congressional and administration sources said Monday. The sanctions, which the White House will impose as early as Tuesday, are being ordered because the administration believes Syria has aggravated tensions in the Middle East by supporting militant groups. “We have talked previously about our concerns when it comes to Syria’s continued development of weapons of mass destruction, when it comes to their support for terrorism and when it comes to their failure to adequately police its border with Iraq,” [Imperial Minister of Agit-Prop] Scott McClellan said.’
—SFGate.com

We’ll leave aside, for the moment, the laugh- and vomit-inducing arrogant and clueless accusation that Syria is aggravating tensions in the Middle East. I think Abu Ghraib and the West Bank have more to do with that than Damascus.

But if this hollowed-out and moral derelict man is re-coronated next January, look for the wingnuts to be screaming about WMDs in the spring, followed by cheering bloodlustily as the Big Red One enters Damascus triumphantly.

We have just one opportunity in November to attempt to restore sanity to the government. After that, well, it’s not gonna be pretty around here.

« Delta Air Lines says pay cuts or bankruptcy »; in other words, pilots should screw themselves out of a third of their paychecks or we’ll take our marbles and go home:

‘Delta Air Lines said Monday that it may have to file for bankruptcy if its pilots union doesn’t agree to significant wage cuts, the first time the struggling carrier has publicly linked the two issues in a regulatory filing. The nation’s third-largest airline has been cautious about discussing the possibility of bankruptcy. But Delta said Monday in a quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it might pursue Chapter 11 unless it achieves a “competitive cost structure” for pilot wages. A spokesman for Delta acknowledged that it’s the first time such language has been used in a public filing. “It’s an option,” the spokesman, Anthony Black, said of bankruptcy. “It’s not anything we see in the foreseeable future, but it’s out there.”’
—SFGate.com

An Atlanta Journal-Constitution article reports the airline had over $2 billion in liquid cash at the end of the first quarter, but it’s bond rating is ‘deep in the junk range,’ it’s borrowed to the hilt and facing a billion in debt payments in the next year, and so on.

But the real meat of the matter is, as The Chronicle noted, USAirways and United used Chapter 11 to secure deep pay cuts from employees, and American used the threat of Chapter 11 to the same effect.

And that’s what it’s really about … while the executives badly mismanage their airlines, they take home millions and millions of dollars in cash and bonuses and stock. That mismanagement and greed puts the airline into an unwinnable financial situation and the same executives then blame it on the workers salaries and threaten to send the company into Chapter 11 or ground the planes forever if the workers don’t pony up. It’s not that difficult to figure it all out.

I noticed that no one in any of these Chapter 11 articles questioned these executives about the financially stupid venture that is Delta’s ‘low-fare airline within an airline,’ ‘Song,’ or United’s equally stupid ‘Ted,’ or compared their management with that of perenially profitable Southwest. And when the comparison is made, they focus exclusively on worker salaries. Typical crappy and clueless journalism.

Seems a little lazier, a little more mellow here than last week (well, except for the freeways, but that’s another story). There were a few people sitting on porches along State Street Row, but less in a party posture than a relaxation posture. Campus was alive and breathing, but not all that hectic: a few classes in summer circles on the lawn, a few Frisbee tossers, a lot of students in shorts and flip-flops. The heat was on: it got up to the mid-80s and it felt hotter and more humid than I can recall it feeling all year. I was grateful for the air-conditioned library today, that’s for sure.