• 5 years to the day that the trip to Brooklyn began. Listening a lot lately (and resting my over-typing left arm)--to Sissy Spacek, stories told live & without notes, and the music of the express train.

• Been reading a little Foucault and also some Laura Ingalls Wilder. Little House on the Prarie is great bedtime reading because it reminds me of being little in a manner I never think about now, and it reminds me of a certain sense of trust that's impossible to have as an adult. And it's also amazing to read about all the prairie skills those folks had. However, it's also completely historically problematic in a way that keeps me from adoring it wholeheartedly.

• I'm skimming the last 100 pages of The Broom of the System, the same way we once watched the end of that one movie that I now like, "just to see if it gets better at the end." I appreciate the ingeniousness of this book, but it has completely unmotivated me to read it carefully.
• Radford, G., Radford, M., & Lingel, J. (2012). Alternative libraries as discursive formations: Reclaiming the voice of the deaccessioned book. Journal of Documentation, 68(2), 254 - 267.
• Bell, SJ. (2012). "Coming in the Back Door: Leveraging Open Textbooks To Promote Scholarly Communications on Campus." Journal of Librarianship and Scholarly Communication 1(1):eP1040. Published under an Attribution 3.0 license
• Fister, B. "Open Access and the Future of Academic Scholarship," Library Issues 32.5 (May 2012): 1-4.
  

• I have used this reading log as a record of what I've been reading, but today I read the most amazing piece by a Brooklyn College student that I may have, in some tiny, small way, been a part of inspiring, and in this case it feels like a marker of something bigger, the start of something to come.

• Finished The Hobbit. Was surprised by how touching I found the end to be. And am I right that there wasn't a single female character in this book?
• This post is totally what I'm working on today, as homework, but also I think applies to so many projects when you are starting out. Can you progress if you can't see the shape of the end goals? Maybe I'm thinking too visually, and about process-as-product. But that might always be true.
  

10 years. RIP.

• Wasn't reading a whole lot earlier this year, was kind of fried, but now I'm reading all kinds of things that aren't necessarily what I should be prioritizing. Bechdel's Are You My Mother? was gulped down last night and into this morning and it was worth putting other things aside.

Some documentation of what I've been up to:

"Open Access Beyond Academia," Maura Smale's post about our work at the Free University
&
Brooklyn Zine Fest Video by Jessica Durkin (click through for embedded video)

• After days on antibiotics, I started The Hobbit, mostly because I wished I was out of the house on an adventure, but I've been enjoying it still while I'm back in the land of the living.

• Finished The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Hope that the Henrietta Lacks Foundation is functioning as well as it's portrayed in this article.

Thinking about Wisconsin today

• Started The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks yesterday, BC's common reading for next fall

• The Big Sleep on the train
• Lots of issues of Doris and Brainscan last night. Here's another great bit from Doris #28:
  "I couldn't figure out what she was asking until I said "well, you grab your gluestick..." and the librarian gasped. Yes. Gluestick + scissors + learn to use the photocopier. Make a few copies. It doesn't have to be a big deal. It doesn't have to be all wrapped up in ego or self-hate. It's not the end of the world. A little bit scary. A little bit exciting and fun."
• Also, whenever I read Doris now I think about how a student in a zine visit class described how she literally could not stop reading it or put it down, even to participate in the conversation about the zine she was reading and to tell everyone how amazing what she was finding what she was reading. Yes.
  

• Been too sick and busy and uninspired to keep up the reading log lately. Read Watchmen yesterday, and some zines today, including Doris #28:
  "I want to make this place a resource as well as a sanctuary. I want to open it up, but not so open that I can't come home and close my eyes. I want to learn how to give without giving too much. I want to teach what I know, and for someone to teach me. To keep learning so I don't give up. to keep thinking so I don't grow bitter."

• Finished reading Brave New World, just in time for May Day

This May Day, a coalition of students and faculty from Brooklyn College, Columbia University, the CUNY Graduate Center, Eugene Lang College, Hunter College, New School for Social Research, New York University, the Occupy University, and Princeton University are collaborating to produce a “collective educational experiment” to be held on Tuesday, May 1st from 10am to 3pm. The action is in solidarity with Occupy Wall Street’s call for a General Strike and a day without the 99%.