Bill Moyers Retires

Bill Moyers is one of my heroes, as he is for his many viewers across the country.  And he’s retiring at the end of this month.  He has examined important issues affecting American life, including many that others have declined to examine, for 40 years on his Journal (since 1971).

Moyers himself explains his decision to retire in his blog — a decision all his own, not PBS’s (who, he says, begged him to stay on) nor one from any funding source.

Journalist Eric Alterman tells us why Moyers is the top figure in American journalism since Edward R. Murrow — and may have had even more of an impact.

My personal hope is that PBS will decide to keep in stock all of Moyers’s work on DVD.  The Bill Moyers Shop on the PBS site shows DVDs of his Bill Moyers Journal available (146 items) at list price.

There’s also an online archive on the PBS site where you can watch videos of each of the programs free, get a transcript of it, or link to the PBS store to buy the DVD.

A Modicum of Recognition

A friend just sent me a link to a piece titled Why You Should Fall to Your Knees and Worship a Librarian.

Check out the all-too-apt drawing by Terry Moore.

Many professions are underpaid and under-recognized, despite the few that aren’t.  (Those that aren’t often don’t want the penurious others to be called professions at all, despite the requisite years of professional education and practice.)

But librarianship falls into a class of its own when it comes to being undervalued.  So drink from this small and only slightly bitter cup of wisdom.

Here it is from another location, in case you weren’t paying attention the first time.

I am retired — but not retired from my library degrees or years of experience, nor from my admiration for this great profession and its mission.  Librarians do not only preserve, protect and defend the intellectual and cultural heritage we (ought to?) prize — in all the media we know, including the internet — they make it available directly to you… free.

While the internet is a terrific and huge source, it’s not all there is, by a long chalk.

So if you haven’t visited your nearby library lately, do yourself a favor: turn off the TV (maybe even just recycle it; you probably can use the space, as well as the peace and quiet) and go use the library.  Find out what’s there by talking with one of the librarians.  And most have wifi, so bring your laptop or iPad to work on your project.

You might even find you like it there.

Saving Daylight, War Time and Shifted Times

I was glad to see this article yesterday evening, because it reminded me that I would need to adjust the clocks.

But in the excerpt from the linked Washington Post story, Marc Fisher writes that during WWII,  ‘FDR called daylight time “war time.” ‘

Not quite.  War Time was two hours ahead of Standard Time, and prevailed for the duration, all year round. In other words, it was the Double DST mentioned in the article. How do I know?  I was born during Eastern War Time and, as I grew up, wanted to know all about when I was born. My informant? My Mom, who lived through it all and who loved facts and figures corroborated by the adults around us, who had also lived through it.

One more note:  despite the often-seen phrase “Daylight Savings Time,” the proper usage is Daylight Saving Time (no ‘s’ after ‘Saving’).  Think of it as a way of saving daylight — a daylight-saving effort.  

And, of course, no daylight is actually saved.  Rather, clock times are shifted to match the times when people most need daylight with what daylight there is.  Look here for more information on that point.

Freely Accessible Information? Priceless!

If you’ve used the Wikipedia today, you’ve seen a headline box near the top urging you to read a letter from Jimmy Wales, founder of the nonpriofit Wikimedia Foundation.  According to this letter, Wikipedia is one of the world’s five most popular web properties, and it provides free access to advertising-free information in hundreds of languages to users all over the world, input by a global community of more than 150,000 volunteers in literally hundreds of languages.

Please read Jimmy Wales’s letter.

But Wikipedia is more than a website. We share a common cause: Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s our commitment.

As one who has spent her life in a field dedicated to the free provision of information to scholars and to the public, in the form of collections larger than any one person usually could or does amass, I urge you to consider making a year-end donation to the Wikimedia Foundation; there’s a handy button on the linked page.  

 I realize that times are hard, but if you can, and especially if you use the Wikipedia — or your kids do — I urge you to consider a donation, even a small one, now. We are beginning to learn, all over again, the value of even small actions from a great many citizens that can pay off for all of us.  Here’s one action you can take today that helps guarantee the continuation and growth of something of great value, no matter if your contribution today has to be small.