The gifts that keeping on giving - the annual reposting

Christmas 1961 (or there about)

My last package of Christmas gifts was delivered by Amazon yesterday. Stocking stuffers. As my children, and now grandchildren, are all adults, the physical gifts I give them tend to be sentimental reminders of Christmases past rather than big purchases that demand wrapping paper and knowing the right size. Their small gift bags will contain candy, socks (of course), and Lego sets for the grandsons along with a couple other small items.

My descendants are better at choosing their own gifts than I am at choosing for them. I have absolutely no idea what 20-somethings need anymore than what my now middle-aged children want. So I will give them money. Via Venmo. In what I hope they see is a generous amount. 

By doing so, my hope is that they see this as “found money” - an unexpected windfall that they can spend on a want rather than a need - games, books, sports equipment, technology, theater tickets - who knows? Sometimes the thank you notes I get back let me know what they used the money for. “Thanks, Dad, I got that purse I really wanted.” But most of the time I really don’t know. Nor do I really need to know. I’ve always felt a gift once given belongs solely to the recipient. 

I do miss the days of filling the shopping cart at Target with toys and t-shirts and games. I cherish those memories. Even more than thinking back on my own childhood Christmas gifts of train sets, sleeping bags, and Lincoln Logs. Perhaps good memories are the best Christmas gifts of all.

And find below one of my favorite posts that I like to share at this time each year…

Gifts that keep on giving 

Grandchildren are God's reward for not killing your own children.

Christmas morning. The house is quiet. Something that smells of cinnamon is in the oven. The tree is lit. The snow outside is very white and very deep. The children and grandchildren will be invading next week for a few happy days.

I will admit that I can't wrap a package to save my soul, so hours were spent yesterday getting the robots and bicycles and LEGOs and underwear and books and computer games and noisy baby toys ready to be un-wrapped in seconds. You really have to be a grandparent before the old saw, "it's better to give than to receive," genuinely rings true. I don't believe my grandsons are any more or less greedy than other children, but they do love presents - and their excitement is a gift to this grandpa returned many times over.

Material gifts for these boys are easy. A list from their mom, one's cash card, and the local Target store are all that's needed. I have no illusions that 90% of what the boys receive will be lost, broken, or forgotten within weeks. A few things might stick - a book that becomes cherished, a computer game that will engage, a special toy that will become "alive" and so escape the garage sales. But as I sweep the lost StarWars figure up from under the couch next week, I'll have to remember that material gifts are just this grandpa's shallow means of making his affection visible.

Were I able, I'd wrap these gifts up for each of my grandsons with these cards attached...

• Health. While about 95% of your health is due to genetics, for good or bad, the other 5% that you can control is important. Strike a balance between risk paranoia and complete disregard for your bod. Eat a candy bar now and then, but have the good sense to walk it off.  I hope you like the color and the size of this gift. To a large degree, the shape will be up to you.
• Passion. The luckiest people are those who find something that really interests and motivates them. What that something is makes little difference  - computers or hockey or inorganic chemistry or etymology or entomology or library science or whatever.  Wear this every day.
• Compassion. OK, this one is a little odd, but it's important, boys. The capacity to feel for others will give your life meaning and purpose. People who are best at handling the occasional blues do so by finding others to help. This one is polar fleece for the soul.
• Adventure. Here is the courage to take a risk now and then. Eat a new food. Travel to a different country. Accept a challenge to your physical strength and stamina and comfort. Read something by someone you don't agree with. Do at least one thing every year that none of your friends has ever done. Take pictures. The people with the best stories, not the most money, are life's winners. Wear this hat even when it seems a little scary.
• Appreciation. Never forget how truly lucky you are to be born to loving parents who can afford to feed you, clothe you, and take you to the doctor. Remember that you live in a country that has negligible political violence and gives you both freedom and protection. Be thankful that you can get an education that will let you become just about anything you want to be. Even when things may not seem to be going your way, wear these glasses and you will recognize that you are still more fortunate than 99% of the rest of the world.
• Problems. Yes, I am giving you lots of problems as a gift. You may be an old man like me before you come to appreciate this package, but it may be the most valuable one you receive. Problems engage our minds. Problems make us creative. Problems (and finding solutions to them) give you self-worth. Problems keep life from getting boring. Problems can make life fun - really! When you put these in your pocket, they may feel like a burden, but they are boosters.

 My writing these advice-filled “wishes” I suspect will be ignored by my grandchildren and any great grandchildren who may one day stumble upon them. But I am confident they will come to understand the importance of these gifts all by themselves.

When sci-fi bumps into reality

I am currently reading Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2020 novel The Ministry for the Future. The book is set in a hypothetical near future Earth dealing with severe climate change problems. The Ministry in the title is an international organization charged with implementing potential means of reducing the factors creating the dangerous climatic conditions. These include stabilizing ice melt in Antarctica, seeding the atmosphere with chemicals to reduce sunlight, and creating an international monetary system that rewards carbon sequestration. 

But the startling method (not at this point in the book used by The Ministry) is the violent targeting of both technology that uses fossil fuels and technology/carbon moguls. Drones bring down commercial aircraft and private jets burning fossil fuels. “Elites” are brought into re-education camps to be informed about climate change. And the worst fossil fuel advocates/profiteers are assassinated. 

Pro-environmentalists as assassins? The thought never occurred to me before reading this novel. But is this about to happen?

The murder of United Health Care CEO Brian Thompson by an individual who was angered at insurance company policies and actions echoed Robinson’s speculation of unpopular/misguided/profit-over-good individuals being targets of social or political movements or philosophies. The shooting of Thompson was targeted and for a specific purpose it seems.

The Ministry for the Future is in the “hard” science fiction genre, much of the speculation it contains solidly based in current research and reality. And it opens the question “just how far should we go to reduce the existential threat of climate change?”

Reactions to the death of Thompson also make many of us ask “just how far should we go to reduce the health threats of the profit-based health care insurance system*?” 

Personally, I would never advocate any violent solution to any problem, no matter how serious. But perhaps having a loved one suffer or die or go homeless due to a denial of service by their insurance or cost of treatment does make one think.

Anyway, I do love it when science fiction predicts with some degree of accuracy. Or maybe I should just be frightened.

* Are there some systems that should never be profit-based, but only run for the common good? If so, I would put both health care and education at the top of that list. 

Are school librarians responsible for the re-election of Trump?

‘Brain rot’ is defined as “the supposed deterioration of a person’s mental or intellectual state, especially viewed as the result of overconsumption of material (now particularly online content) considered to be trivial or unchallenging. Oxford University Press, Dec 2, 2024 Oxford Dictionary 2024 Word of the Year

Librarians of my generation were trained to function in a world of print information sources - old fashion things like books, magazines, newspapers, and vertical files. A large part of our professional training involved learning how to select quality resources for our collections and how to weed out those which had become dated.

Our students (and teachers) had little need for information evaluation skills themselves when I started teaching in the 1970s. We librarians made sure they only had access to the good stuff. Maybe not a heck of a lot of it, but what we had in functioning libraries could be trusted.

Of course our students and staff (and ourselves) started getting access to the Internet (Internet was capitalized in those days) in the early 1980s and the horse was out of the barn when it came to information reliability. One of the earlier and more controversial websites was Wikipedia.  "Just anyone could write or edit an encyclopedia entry? The horrors!" A professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato designed a fake Mankato City webpage as a tool to teach people not to take Internet information at face value. (Mankato actually had tourists visit expecting to see its Great Pyramid.) Many of my articles and columns examined the need for increased information literacy. (See “Survival Skills for the Information Jungle,” Creative Classroom, Sept 2001 for example.)

Information professionals also warned early about something we called "ego-casting.” With a large selection of information sources, one could pick and choose only those in which one was interested or with which one agreed. It was an early view of what social media and cable news now makes so easy - and popular.

But such warnings went unheeded. Despite advocating for good information literacy skills, it seems that a large percentage of the US population still does not critically analyze the information they find online and gives credibility to only those sources to which they are politically aligned, leading many voters to choose candidates whose policies may not be in their economic or social best interests.

So, does the 2024 election prove that we as school libraries did not do our job - or not do it well enough? After 30 years of Internet access, have we still not gotten the message across to our students, to our teachers, to the public they need to be critical information consumers? If so, I feel great responsibility, having been considered a leader (or should I now say influencer) in the field for many years.

I can only hope the next generation of librarians is more effective than we were.