3 Years Since Library Bye-Bye

Oh, well ... [link]

Yuck, Glad I Left Early

Article in yesterday's Sun-times:

DePaul University Lays Off 114 Staff Members:
"The Lincoln Park-based school [i.e. Depaul] said it’s facing financial headwinds due to a significant drop in enrollment among international graduate students, an increased demand for financial aid and the rising costs of benefits."
Chicago Sun-times (12/15/2025)

Employment Opportunity :-(

Job Board forwarded me a position for 'High School Math Teachers'. Me? Math Teacher? Are they nuts?

Last Day Library

Reasons Why:

• Left due to inappropriate, nasty, mean-spirited treatment by library mgmt ...
• Ensuring a student who comes to us for research help -- ensuring that student from the ill-informed and disruptive behavior of a student worker is a professional responsibility...
• Because I was reprimanded (and put on probation) for having explained the system of how the library organizes its books (so the student could look the thing up herself next-time) instead of simply looking it up & giving her the call-number...
• When you're treated like shit, it's best to get out of the toilet...

It's called (on my part), 'Professional Responsibility', 'Teachable Moment', and 'Higher Education' ...

Tough Times for Baby Boomers

I have a confession to make: I'm what you call a 'baby-boomer'. That's what you are if you were born between the end of WWII and 1964. Of course there are different categories -- I personally am what's called a 'late boomer' but apparently assumptions are made for all of us. That said, WP has an interesting (and I would say distressing) piece titled "Millions of Baby Boomers are Getting Caught in the Country’s Broken Retirement System" (link).

Basically it relates problems that -- what I would call 'early' -- boomers are having surviving financially. The 401k accounts haven't worked out. People are losing their jobs and are being forced to cash out on their savings, etc. They’re taking Social Security early resultIng in far lower monthly payments. The key take-away is that things are hardly sugar-coated and if anything, they don't look like they'll be getting any better.

First Seven Jobs

Okay, since everyone's doing it:

1. Sales Assistant (Radio Shack, Chicago) - 16 yrs old.
2. Print Shop / Mimeograph Machine (Small indy business selling mailing lists on magnetic tape*, Playboy Tower, Chicago) - High School.
3. Customer Service, Credit Dept. (Carson, Pirie, Scott, Downtown Chicago) - College.
4. English Teacher (Year Abroad Program, Paris) - Post-College.
5. Manager, Hot Dog Stand (Fullerton Ave. Beach, Chicago).
6. English Teacher (Rome, later West Berlin).
7. Construction/Rehab Worker (West Berlin).

*Computer storage 70s style [source]:

Oy, What a Day

• 8:30a UIC Digital Accessibility Expo (UIC Forum)
• 10:45a Prospective student tour (UIC SCE) - take pictures
• 12:00p Lunch and see 2nd Keynote at UIC DAE (UIC Forum)
• 2:00p Visit the folks at Partnership READ about video
• 3:00p Back at the OAR Office to check pictures of tour
• 5:30p Reference at DePaul
• 9:00p You can go home now...

Arrogance of the White Collar

Robert Reich has a problem with manufacturing. At least he does when it's practiced in the U.S. For some reason, he thinks that actually making things has gone the way of the horse buggy and 45rpm record player.

It's not a new argument. We heard it all the time during the Clinton Administration. The problem is, the people promoting it could never come up with an alternative that wasn't some form of temporary bubble.

America still needs its washing machines and flat panel displays and we can't pay for them with CDO's and IPO's.

Reich seems to think that increases in productivity and greater automation are something new. This is America. We invented the assembly line. We've always had innovation -- only until now we never used it as an excuse to move our operations off-shore.

He talks about "Technophobes, neo-Luddites and anti-globalist" and warns against being on the 'wrong side of history'.

We've been living on his side of history for twenty years or more and all we have to show for it are vast areas of devastation as entire industries move off-shore.

I'll Give You the Eighties & Nineties If You Give Me the Fifties & Sixties

Conservative historian Niall Ferguson looks at the growing cry to (re-)regulate financial markets and for some reason only thinks of the Seventies:

My concern is that we're going to get the 1970s for fear of the 1930s.

Naturally he's cherry-picking here. In fact, the same regulations also operated in the Fifties and Sixties -- or in other words, the greatest period of economic expansion the country ever knew.

No Outside Influence in Hiring of Branch Library Managers

Columnist Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune has raised a fracas because CPL Commissioner Mary Demsey wasn't nice enough to him when he suggested a possible hire for Branch Library Manager.

He quotes on his blog the offending email from Demsey:

You suggest that outside individuals should be allowed to influence the city's hiring processes. You are wrong.

...

Your suggestions that outside influences such as community mobilization or aldermanic input should be involved in the particular situation about which you write are absolutely inappropriate.

Zorn of all people should realize how sensitive an issue this is. Opening up hiring decisions of people supposed to run branch libraries to outside pressure groups _is_ inappropriate.

You can imagine what a can of worms this would open up -- here in the city of Chicago.

It's not surprising then that Commissioner Demsey is so adamant in her reply. She's got 50 aldermen and a mayor who'd love to do the same thing (and that's just the elected officials).

UPDATE: Note, this might be the dumbest hiring decision ever made but if that's your 'beef' then argue it as such.

The notion that you're going to have outside pressure groups involved in the hiring of library branch managers is an administrative nightmare.

Carson's to Close Its Store in Downtown Chicago

This is sad: Carson Pirie Scott will be closing its downtown Chicago store as of March 2007. I used to work there in the Credit Department while going to college. I guess we won't be hearing 'You Get a Charge from a Carson Pirie Scott Charge Card' anytime soon. I remember when they tore down the horrifying 50's or 60's cement facade revealing the original Sullivan finery underneath -- that was at some point in the 70's. They once had a "Roman Day" sale where they repainted the whole sidewalk to look like a Roman Villa together with busts of Roman Citizens on pedestals alongside every shop window. It was pretty wild.