There Are Some Great Pizzerias In The Bronx

Actually, I don't get to the good old Bronx (Yankee Stadium, H. W. Wilson Co., the Grand Concourse, the refurbished Bronx Zoo...which gives its inhabitants plenty of natural space to roam, Fordham Road, the Mott Haven art scene and its wonderful, new Cultural Trolley,
and beautiful City Island, etc.) very often these days.

Well, I decided I'd give blogging a try. One motivating factor has been the recent rash of Israel-bashing, and outright anti-Semitic bigotry on LISnews. I guess I'm extra sensitive about that. I'm a Sephardic Jew. It is about time that there was some justice for the one million Jews who were either expelled or forced to flee horrendous persecutions in the Arab League nations they were born in, and I'm not even including in that count the descendents of those Sephardic-Jewish refugees. But as this is just the beginning of BBL, maybe I should not digress until I have more experience in blogging, so let me get back to what took place on LISnews.

The Heretical Librarian quite correctly called it A CANARD, and the target of that falsehood was a reputable, tax-exempt organization: Librarians for Fairness. LfF is a group that is pro-Israeli and also supports the independent Cuban librarians who have been arrested by the secret police of Castro's Communist dictatorship. Daniel, the LISnews poster who foolishly accused Librarians for Fairness of being a front group for an advertising agency (he based that charge only on his probing into the origin of its website, and failed to comprehend that the site's registrant was the graphic arts firm commissioned to design and set it up), has now withdrawn his absurd allegation and apologized to LISnews readers. More appropriately, he should have apologized to us members of Librarians for Fairness. Yes, I'm an LfF member...I joined over a year ago.

There is a pressing need for diversity in the profession and LfF and the anti-Castro group, Friends of Cuban Libraries, are filling that need. Surely, there must be some alternatives to the self-righteous, far-leftist, usually blockheaded agenda of the ALA's SRRT. The American Library Association is fond of pronouncing that it "speaks with one voice." It should rather be speaking with and promoting many different voices, instead of group think! Diversity of opinion is very much a plus. And that is especially so in librarianship!

I hope to sound off about a lot of things, but I intend to write much about the world of libraries.

It is a fascinating world!