[Publib] More Writing

[Robert Balliot]

Merle Haggard wrote the Oklahoma loyalty oath :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UZUJQ5i8gk

On Tue, Aug 25, 2009 at 1:32 PM, Kristie Boucher <
kristie_boucher at hotmail.com> wrote:

> On the topic of loyalty oaths. I'm not an old-timer yet, at least I don't
> think so. 31. During library school, I had an internship at the Oklahoma
> Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped...great place by the way. I
> also worked there for a month after I finished my master's. This library was
> ran by a state department, maybe health and human services? I can't
> remember, but it wasn't under the state library...anyway, I was required to
> swear a loyalty oath. This would have been in 2004. It made me a tad
> uncomfortable, not because I'm not loyal per se, it just seemed a tad
> dictatorship like to me.
>
> And our system does not have this book.
>
> Kristie :)
>
> *Kristie Boucher, MLIS
> Associate Director
> Crawford County Library System
> 111 North Twelfth Street
> Van Buren, AR 72956
> 479-471-3226*
> *http://www.crawfordcountylib.org/*
>
>
>
>
>   [image: i'm] EMAILING FOR THE GREATER GOOD
> Join me<http://im.live.com/Messenger/IM/Home/?source=EML_WLHM_GreaterGood>
>
> ------------------------------
> To: publib at webjunction.org
> Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2009 12:30:19 -0400
> From: backwage at aol.com
> Subject: [Publib] More Writing
>
>
> The author of that NY Times piece, Stanley Fish, has a book out called *Save
> the world on you own time*, which is an argument against the alleged
> left-leaning politics of teachers and professors.
>
> [think there's no connection to the public library in this post?  Does your
> library carry this book?  Go see and get back to us.]
>
> Fish is right about this, but what he doesn't reveal is that the liberalism
> of the past two or three decades is merely a swing in the other direction.
>
> When I was a kid, the school library and public libraries were
> chock-brimming-full of inspirational patriotic fare whose main message was
> that America was a perfect land and that we here didn't do anything wrong,
> not ever.  We had a class called Chorus in which we would be led in stirring
> tunes about our land.  I don't suppose you ever thought that God Bless
> America was a conservative tune?  Well, it is.  Singing the National Anthem
> over and over?  That was us.  And when we sang This Land is Your Land, they
> omitted two verses that Woody Guthrie wrote:
>
> *As I went walking I saw a sign there* *And on the sign it said "No
> Trespassing."* *But on the other side it didn't say nothing,* *That side
> was made for you and me.*
> *In the squares of the city, In the shadow of a steeple;* *By the relief
> office, I'd seen my people.* *As they stood there hungry, I stood there
> asking,* *Is this land made for you and me?*
> On Monday mornings we had Assembly, which consisted of a flag ceremony.
> There would be an invited speaker--usually some guy from the American Legion
> (formed to combat trade unionism and suppress left-wingers).  We often
> listened to a Korean War vet tell us that we would all have to fight to beat
> Communism one day.  A great start to a week, but every morning we had "drop"
> drills in which we simulated being attacked by the Russians, who we were
> always told were Atheists.  Since most of us kids went to church, this made
> an impression--most of us wanted to be Atheists after hearing that.  We
> wondered what Russian kids did with all that spare time.  Maybe they devised
> ways of destroying our cherished freedoms?
>
> Our junior high library had no books describing the manner in which we
> seized various foreign lands from their original owners.  We did have a lot
> of anti-Nazi and anti-Communist literature.  Lots of books about how we won
> World War II.  Which of course, we didn't, but then, who could have survived
> in that era proclaiming that Russia had beat the Germans?
>
> During the Vietnam "conflict" it was difficult to find library books
> opposing the war.  I know--I looked for them.  In college I had a professor
> who would bring in newspapers with headlines about various disasters--train
> wrecks, hurricanes--all of which he incredibly blamed on the Soviet Union.
> In short, I had two decades-plus of flag-waving lectures combined with some
> rather severely edited history--the conservative way is not to deny but to
> omit--and then the tide turned.
>
> What the conservatives call liberalism is merely low standards.  Their own
> propaganda was ridiculous; the new stuff hasn't even enough structure to
> form a coherent theory.  America used to be always right, where now it is
> always sometimes usually bad, but we aren't supposed to judge because
> everything is relative and after all, there's global warming to consider.
>
> Mind you, nobody listened to the conservatives.  No intelligent student
> listens to their "liberal" counterparts without questioning.  But I like the
> conservatives far more--very much more.  And I'm a socialist.  Why?  I like
> them because the old right-wingers could spell and write decently.  My first
> essay competition was on the subject "What America Means to Me."  These days
> it would be about the suffering and moral victory of Cesar Chavez--and
> nobody would correct the spelling.
>
> Does anybody remember when public libraries all had the American Flag
> displayed, and/or had the Documents of Freedom supplied by the American
> Legion, usually in the foyer?  Ah, we were a proud and victorious race
> then.  Any old timers here who had to take loyalty oaths?
>
> M. McGrorty
> nostalgic for the future
>
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