Limen: Thoughts from a threshold

Much thanks to Cat over at MetaPagan for including me on her list of favorites! The way this goes is:

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Link to the person from whom you received the award.
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs.
4. Put links to those blogs on yours.
5. Leave a message on the blogs nominated.

I read a number of blogs. Several of those I’d otherwise include on this list - Pandora’s Bazaar, The Wild Hunt, and of course, MetaPagan itself - have already been tapped by this. So, here, a few others (in no particular order but my whim and the order I pulled tabs up.)

1) Dianne Sylvan’s Dancing Down the Moon. I’ve known Sylvan online for years now, and always love reading her stuff, no matter what she’s talking about. Her posts range from a current series on runes, to the struggles of life, to all sorts of other topics.

2) Sia over at Full Circle News does a great roundup of information and topics currently of interest to the Pagan community - I look forward to her thoughtful comments in my RSS reader.

3) Donald Engstrom’s It’s the Journey, not the Destination. Many people know Donald through his work as a teacher in Reclaiming, but I got to know him through his relationship (and now marriage) to one of my tradmates. I adore talking to him: even though there are things we don’t always agree on, I always come away having learned something, or seeing something differently. Also, I adore conversations with people who are passionate about what they’re doing - and Donald definitely qualifies!

4) Lupa’s Pagan Book Reviews provide great thoughts (and details) about the good and bad of Pagan books. (I like her other writings, too). She’s starting grad school, so her time to post may drop off a bit, but they’re worthwhile gems.

5) Dw3t-Hthr’s Letters from Gehenna: The World on a Slant . This blog, from a friend since college, always makes me think. She’s also hooked into different parts of the blogosphere (and from different angles) than I am, which I find very healthy for my perspective. As she says: “I do all my weird normally and all my normal strangely. My blog is a repository of a variety of pontifications, on a variety of subjects including, but not limited to, religion, sex, BDSM, gender, sociopolitical neepery, the hell is wrong with people nowadays, and the art of living in the world one wants to bring into being while acknowledging that we’re not there yet.” Good description.

6) PostSecret is pretty widely known, but I didn’t start reading it until around this time last year. PostSecret is an art project wherein people send in postcards with a secret on them - which are then posted in the blog (and sometimes included in the printed books.) I read every Sunday, because there’s such a huge range of perspectives and stories out there, even when some of them are very painful.

7) Finally, for a professional note, The Feel Good Librarian is a rarely updated blog these days, but well worth the archives. It’s written by a librarian at a public library - and she talks about why we do what we do, and what kind of difference it makes for people. I reread it to remind myself why my job is a good thing, and also that what I think is a single, simple act can have a huge effect on someone else.

There is no year of my life that has not, at some fundamental level, been wrapped up in the academic calendar.

My father was a university professor: our family vacations ran on his schedule.

Then there were my years of pre-school, elementary school, junior high, high school, and boarding school (a new and different schedule, that, but still, in principle the same.) College.

Working for my college for the year after graduation. I had very little to do with students, in general (I was doing web and project design for faculty), but you could still feel the ebb and flow of the school no matter what else happened.

I moved to Minnesota, for one year *not* working for a school - but in graduate school myself part time.

And then I began my current job, where I’ve been since fall of 2000, working in an independent day school. There are many things I love about it.

One of them is how often I get to pause and reflect on how much I love it. Every year, the last week teachers are around, there’s a parade of special lunches, ceremonies, in between the meetings. Some of the process gets a little tedious - but many of them help me remember just how fantastic the people I work with are, how neat the kids are, why I enjoy getting up almost every morning. (Almost. I *am* human, after all.)

And then there’s the part we’re in right now. The beginning of the year.

It’s unusually exciting this year. We’ve moved my desk (in the hopes being in the office will make noise-distractable me a) less stressed and b) more productive). We’ve negotiated some new duties that make my salary manageable, but that give me some significant challenges. And we have new carpet (the original, from the early 70s addition, was in place until last week) and a little new paint.

We come back a week before the faculty (who will be here next week.) They’re already trickling back to look at rooms and have initial meetings with colleagues, and it’s hard to go an hour without someone stopping by to chat about their summer (always too short!) and what they have in mind.

I’ve been sorting magazines (we get about 50), a process that always brings the news of the summer back in rush. Later this week, I get to start updating our patron database (something that has to be done manually.) And next week, we’re back to meetings and faculty gatherings. The week after that, students.

All of them remind me of cycles and new beginnings, and new possibilities. I love that.

But it’s also sometimes a little weird: it’s obviously (and for some historical reasons) off kilter from the traditional agricultural busy points. Just when my religious life is telling me to go be introspective and reflective, my work life is getting hectic with major projects. Just when my religious life is telling me to work hard on goals and projects, my schedule drops out from beneath me, and I often find myself somewhat adrift as summer vacation hits.

Now, there are advantages to some of this: four of the eight Sabbats fall in my vacations generally, so it can be easier for me to prepare in an unhurried way for ritual. I get a natural sense of ebb and flow to my schedule: things build and then diminish. I’m constantly turning from project to project as cycles shift and different things become easier to work on. I’m never bored.

But at the same time, it does give me a strange perspective on the Wheel of the Year. And one I think I’m never going to quite shake, even if I eventually end up working somewhere that isn’t a school.

A post on a local list about a library filter blocking the Covenant of the Goddess website got me making a lengthy post about the issues of freedom of information access, libraries, and filters: I thought I should duplicate my comments over here.

My background:

First, a quick note on my background. As I mention elsewhere, I’m a relatively recent Master’s in Library and Information Science graduate (I finished around this time last summer!) with a strong interest in online interaction, freedom of information access, and in particular, how libraries can better support minority communities (and in particular, minority religious communities) despite limited resources.

I don’t link my common usename (Jenett) online with legally identifying details, but if anyone’s actually in need of verifiable details for some reason, I’m glad to provide them privately. (’some reason’ is basically anything beyond curiousity: if you’d like to re-use some of my comments here for a discussion elsewhere, for example. Or if someone reading this would like me to come talk to other librarians about this issue, or something like that.)

Among other things, my work in these areas has included

- Classes in Public Library History and Theory (with a particular focus on how the Library Bill of Rights affects information access issues) and on Information Policy (including how we design information policy to protect access to information and deal with censorship requests)

- Projects in grad school about providing library resources of interest to Pagans, and a project I’d like to get back to on how Pagans actually use library systems, and how libraries could do better with this. (I have a lot of theories to test, but am stuck at the ‘figuring out how to do data collection’ stage.)

- Presentations to three different classes at other schools (and two as part of school projects) about providing fair and equivalent information access to minority religious members, and how to find resources that represent the community, not from outside the community. In all three cases, I got a lot of “This is fascinating and important!” feedback - everyone in those discussions was very supportive of the need to provide service to everyone, not just majority religions. I love my profession, sometimes.

My current workplace (an independent non-religious school) has a firm policy about filtering: we don’t. Period. (We do log where both students and staff go on the web, but these logs are only checked if there’s an actual problem. Quite honestly, who has the time to read through every teenager’s Facebook and MySpace URL? Also, I think schools are a somewhat different issue than public libraries: we also occasionally use these logins to block access for students who abuse online access or use it for harassment/etc.)

What are filters, and why are they there?

Many public libraries and schools have filtering software installed on their systems. Why, since the American Library Association thinks they’re firmly against the Library Bill of Rights?

Simply, Congress passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This act was intended to give libraries and schools some financial help and relief in bringing technology (computers and internet access) into these spaces.

Nice idea, but one of the requirements of the related Children’s Internet Protection Act (passed in early 2000) was that all systems that took advantage of the Internet Access or Internal Connections e-rate funds (or some specific grant money) had to make use of filters.

Many libraries and schools have turned down these two areas of funding, in order to keep control over their own systems. Some places, though, are working on severely limited budgets, struggling to keep afloat, and simply can’t afford to turn down (fairly significant) funding options that will bring a lot of good to people.

12 years later, we are, however, still stuck with some issues. There’s currently a decent Wikipedia article on content-control software (their term of choice) that highlights some of the other issues and concerns and history. (As always with Wikipedia, apply grain of salt and keep reading beyond the site.)

What’s the problem with filters?

1) They don’t work.

Really. They don’t. Every filter out there misses some stuff it really should catch, and catches stuff that is totally legimate. There is no way to do this kind of filtering manually (especially now, with the number of blogs, free hosting sites, and other resources out there.) All of the filters use various methods - keyword matching, searches of text or images on the page, etc.

Plus - and this is the one I note at work when talking to parents - an intelligent teenager can find ways around at least 90% of the pure technology solutions. Sometimes that’s as simple as using the computer at a friend’s house.

When I was in college, a then-teenager named Bennett Hasleton started an organization called Peacefire specifically to focus on freedom of access issues for the Internet among teens. While I’m not sure how active the organization is currently, they did do a tremendous amount to get the basic issues recognised (including testifying as an expert in Congressional hearings), and their site highlights some of the basic issues with filters.

I particularly like this quote from the CIPA FAQ I already linked to: “It is important to note that the law states that filters must protect against visual depictions outlawed by the legislation. The filter does not have to prevent access to all such depictions. (No filter is 100% effective in preventing all such access.) In developing the CIPA regulations, the FCC declined to further define the filter requirements or to adopt any type of definition or certification on how effective a filter must be, beyond the very general protect language of the law. Thus, there is no such thing as an FCC certified CIPA compliant filter.” (a little less than 2/3rds of the way down the page)

2) On many - probably most - filters, you don’t get to see the specific sites filtered.

In some cases, you can choose categories. Pagan sites, for example, often fall into either the Occult/Esoteric category, or sometimes into others. On these filters, a library or school could decide to enable the entire category.

But on some filters, there’s no category control, no individual administrator override, or a process that only removes specific challenged URLs from the filter. The problem with the last one, of course, is that it doesn’t do anything about similar sites blocked by the same filter.

3) Whose values are we talking about?

One other problem is that a number of the filtering companies - not all, but enough - come from specific backgrounds that often feel it’s appropriate to limit some kinds of information (which has included sites about non-Christian religions, sexual health material, political groups they don’t agree with, etc.)

These choices are not required by the clauses in CIPA (which is pretty much only concerned with minors seeing obscene content within some definitions) but if you don’t know what’s in the filter, how can you tell what’s getting blocked?

What to do?

1) Individual disabling:

In most cases - as is true for the particular library that got me talking about this - the library policy will mention that the filter can be disabled on request for any adult. (Sometimes computers in the children’s or teen’s area are filtered all the time.)

I’ve had this done in the past - LiveJournal caught the filter at the St. Paul public library a few years ago when I wanted to print some stored information off my journal there: I couldn’t log into the site until I got someone to disable the filter.

This works great for an immediate answer, though it doesn’t answer either the issues of ‘what about people who feel intimidated/don’t know they can ask’ and the issue of what happens to teens who are looking for legitimate info (teen-appropriate sexual health content, religious content, etc.) who don’t have the option to have it disabled.

2) Look at the library’s policies.

In this case (and again, not mentioning the library directly), they did in fact have a quite complete set of library policies linked from the library front page. Many parts of it would have been held up as excellent policy examples in many of my classes: it’s clearly that library staff have given a lot of thought to dealing with censorship concerns, and have put policies into place to minimise problems for their patrons.

But it was also clear from skimming it that it’s a library struggling with financial stresses, whose physical collection was less than they wanted it to be, and who were probably dealing with both cost-of-provision issues, and quite possibly staffing issues. (How can I tell? That’s a question for another post, if anyone’s interested.)

3) Talk to the library:

Why do your research first? Because if you come in saying “I really care about this access, and it’s clear from your policies that you take freedom of information issues seriously.” you’re going to have a much more pleasant conversation than if you start with “You’re censoring me!”

I’ve done my time answering really upset people about policy issues (mostly in a non-library setting: I was on the Abuse/Terms of Service team for LiveJournal for about 18 months). The people you’re talking to are human, with a bunch of stuff on their minds. As humans, they’ll do better if they don’t start on the defensive. And they’ll probably be willing to give you a lot more useful information that can help both you and them, if you’re pleasant to deal with (even if you end up disagreeing.)

(I could go into a long theory of how this also plays into the magical concept of ‘act as-if’, but due to length, am just going to handwave at it here. Will expand on request.)

Also, on a purely practical level, it is probably not the reference librarian who set the policy. It’s almost certainly not the circulation desk person. It may not even have been the library director (who may have been overruled by their board on some point, though at least they have more input.) Getting mad at people who can’t actually change something doesn’t usually help, on a purely practical level.

4) Be aware there may be invisible practical concerns:

• As already mentioned, the filter chosen may not allow the library to turn off specific categories or unblock specific sites.
• Many filters work on a yearly subscription model: the library may not have funds to change filtering services until the next budget cycle.
• It may take a couple of days to get the right combination of people in the same place to talk about a longer-term fix for an issue, especially if the library has multiple branches. (Librarians also have vacations, sick days, and varying schedules to contend with.)

5) What’s your actual request?

Consider volunteering a little time to help: it’s obviously going to be a larger amount of a problem if a filter blocks a wide range of sites (a wide range of religions, not just Pagan ones, political candidate websites, health websites, etc.) than if the blocks are few and far between.

Your local library is probably understaffed. Consider seeing if you can volunteer to run some further tests for them on what’s blocked and what isn’t, or asking what else you might be able to do to help them make a better case for different options for their filters.

Part of this might also be asking what their policy is for book donations: libraries have different policies about this for a wide range of practical reasons, but one way to get more material from a wide range of viewpoints available is to donate it! Arranging a book donation drive of books on less common religions might be a great way to help out a lot of people in the community at once.

Some final notes:

I know there *are* religiously biased librarians out there - but honestly, I have yet to run into one. Everyone I’ve talked to about Pagan materials in libraries has been thoughtful, engaged, and interested in the practical issues, regardless of their own religious beliefs.

However, it is important to note something many people don’t realise. There’s a difference in the profession between those people who have a Master’s degree (generally considered the ‘entry level’ degree for professional jobs) and those who don’t. The two common degrees are a Master’s of Library Science or a Master’s of Library/Information Science.

The MLS/MLIS degree includes information on professional ethics, freedom of information issues, providing library service to diverse communities, and other topics related to privacy of information and freedom of access. People with the degree generally have responsibility for collection development (what items are included in the library), setting policy, and managing the collection and staff.

In a public library setting:

• The library director probably has a Master’s.
• Ideally, so do the reference staff - though due to budget issues, this is not true in all libraries.
• Circulation staff, shelvers, and pagers may have extensive experience with the library, but they probably haven’t gotten the professional ethics training described above.

Small libraries (especially in very small communities) often hire a librarian who does not have a MLIS: this is largely a financial decision (though, honestly, it’s not like jobs with the MLIS necessarily pay all that much more.)

Especially in small isolated systems (not a branch of a larger system) it can happen that the library and librarian forgets about smaller parts of the community, or they get a lot of pressure to go along with the majority view on some issues. Unfortunate but true, but something I file in the “humans are humans” category: libraries are supposed to respond to their communities, and the line between appropriate response and going too far is sometimes a little hard to tell when you’re in the middle of it without direct professional support.

My summer seems to have gotten away from me again: in a week, I’m back at work for the school year, with some new responsibilities, so I’m in “Argh, get life in order now!” mode.

I spent Friday at our local IKEA, picking up various items to help with that, which leads to my post today.

Background:

One of the things my covenmate asked me, back when I sent her the Role of the HPS post, what I thought the role was in regard to the covenstead: is it automatically the place where the HPS lives. I have some philosophical thoughts about that I’m still trying to sort out into words other people might understand, but I do know the practical thing it kicked off for me: a desire for my home to be a place where I can say “Sure, come right over, I’ll be here.” A place I can host (small) group ritual in. A place I can teach in. A place I can have friends - or group members - over and be hospitable.

There’s just one trick.

I live in a tiny little house - 400 square feet, the size of a studio apartment, though it’s divided a little differently. There are many things I like about it.

• It’s the amount of space I actually need for me and the cat.
• I can clean it thoroughly in about 2 hours, if I have to.
• It’s far more private than an apartment - there’s at least 15-20 feet between me and the next building.
• It requires me to think very carefully about how I live, and what I bring into my home.
• It fits my budget, and a larger space wouldn’t right now.

But there are also challenges. Now that I’ve lived here for a year, I have a much better sense of what they are, and which ones I really care about dealing with.

Some of them are just about the space: the tiny house dates from the mid-50s, and has at various times had tenants who did not take as good care of it as might be hoped. Plus, there’s an elderly gas stove and heater (they work fine, but they are not elegant or shiny or new.) There’s some cosmetic damage to the kitchen floor, a few places where the front room floor is splintering slightly (easy to throw a rug over), and so on. My landlady is aimable about fix-up work I want to do, like painting the bathroom, but money is a limit (on both sides!)

There’s also some limits for group work. My front room is about 8×11 feet, and has 3 bookshelves in it. It will fit 6-8 people, we think, if people are friendly about it (it requires a little moving around during circle casting, etc.) which is around the limit of what we want for the group anyway.

However, to do this, everything in there except the shelves have to be moveable. And yet, I need to make sure there’s enough seating that 6-8 people could potentially sit around and chat and eat after ritual. there’s still a question of seating.

(I should note here: L and I are rotating who hosts ritual: she has somewhat more space, and substantially more outside space. On the other hand, doing things at her place means affecting her partner’s schedule. He’s very amiable about it, but at the same time, we want to keep things balanced.)

Some solutions:

As of this weekend, I have two hard kitchen chairs, a computer chair, and a stepstool that people can sit on. The idea is that these would be easy to move around, but more comfortable seating for conversations and teaching. I also have plans for more floor pillows (something the cat approves of.)

The last thing I want is one or two ottoman footstools (padded, but square and portable) that can be used for seating, and otherwise live in the corner. I’m also considering 2-3 TV trays that can be used for portable tables (or quarter altar space) but I’m still considering where I’d store them.

So, what happens for ritual?

• The harp is moved into the bedroom alcove, along with any other furniture we’re not planning on using.
• The computer gets moved from the desk (in the front room) to my dresser (in the alcove). It’s an iMac, so this is fortunately pretty easy.
• The low bookshelf in the west (usually my personal altar space) is cleared, and used as the west quarter altar.
• I just got a set of narrow shelves that live by the computer desk (used for the east altar)
• A flat-bottomed chair and a stool get used for north and south altars, respectively.
• The desk can also be used to eat around after ritual, with a little planning.

The only part of this that is particularly tedious is moving the computer (and even that is only about a 5 minute process).

There is one other thing I’m considering, which is creating fabric drapes to go over the tall bookshelves, so that people do not need to look at my book selections during ritual. (I’m thinking that light but opaque fabric held on with strips of velcro would do nicely, and other people have suggested that this should work, but I have not yet gone fabric shopping or put them together.)

Inside my head:

But there’s also what it means for my own habits: it means training myself to put things back neatly on visible shelves. On keeping the books down to what *can* be shelved. On keeping on top of dishes and other such things (so that not only are they not distracting, but we have dishes to eat out of afterwards!) The rest of my week is getting devoted to doing a chunk of this and getting things lined up so that I can maintain them when I go back to work.

I grew up with a mother who was very particular about house-cleaning - and I was *not* naturally neat as a child. Naturally organised, yes: I knew where in a pile of stuff things were. But not tidy.

I’ve been learning tidy as an adult (and am currently in a weird place where I strongly prefer things to be tidy, but don’t quite have the habits ingrained to keep them that way even when I’m tired/out late/got lots of other demands. I’m working on it.) I intend to talk somewhat more about this at some point, but some of it is complicated by chronic medical foo (asthma can affect cleaning for me, and as of yesterday, we appear to be having late-summer pollen allergies kicking in: traditionally my worst season. This means I’ve got less energy to spare, and it takes me longer to get moving in the morning.)