Better Living Through Technology!

Of course, you know jonmc and quonsar wrote all those articles, right?

On counseling issues affecting children of gay parents? Man, those guys really are experts in everything!

It's amazing what a fish in one's pants can do.

One of my favorite graduate school moments has been the day that someone let slip to my very erudite but technologically naive advisor that the entire corpus of Jewish sacred texts was available on CD-Rom and could be searched with text strings.

He got a stricken look on his face and said: "But..my students...do they use these things?"

Poor guy had been convinced for the better part of a decade that his students were savants who had the rabbis memorized.

Of course, the nice thing about the library is that it doesn't, presumably, have upstairs neighbors listening to rumble-voiced crazy men at full volume. It sounds like Don King and James Brown are screaming at each other up there, and it's making it hard to think. (Partly because I keep wondering what the hell it is.)

Sigh. Guess I'm off to the library anyway.

Okay, but while you're out, please invvest in a pair of ear plugs; I hate to see someone get out of their pajamas (and into real clothes) when they don't have to.

I actually think I'm going to go to the public library (which is within walking distance) rather than the university library (which is not), and since the main users of the public library seem to be homeless people, I'm not sure anyone would notice if I did wander in in my pajamas.

But it's probably good for me to wear real-people clothes occasionally, though I do appreciate your concern.

Let me know if you need some library card numbers to access databases at some other library. We all have a network and trade them.

Thanks, jessamyn. It's a short paper, and the SF Public Library has a not-surprisingly large collection on gay parenting, and I know enough gay parents that I'm feeling reasonably knowledgable enough to fill in the gaps, so I think I'm set for now. But I may bother you next semester. :-)

occhi, I sympathize. I went to the local U with a bunch of museum professionals, and our hosting faculty showed us around what you can do online. JSTOR? Omilord. These kids today, they don't know how easy they got it. Colonial newspapers -- transcribed -- indexed -- searchable? It just ain't right. How are they supposed to build character without wasting hours combing through primary texts with bleary eyes, or toting around volumes of the Index to Periodical Literature?

*grumbles away into the dark stacks*

I remember when I actually had to physically browse the library for something to get interested in for a day or three. Now I can do that six times a day on Wikipedia!

I am waiting for my daughter to get her card at the Boston Public Library so I will have access to the Evans-Shoemaker series of colonial newspapers online. It shall be like heaven.

Of course, you know jonmc and quonsar wrote all those articles, right?

On counseling issues affecting children of gay parents? Man, those guys really are experts in everything!

Well, the gay parent counseling was right after our stint as stealth ninjas in the Quebecois Underground and just before we became florists. It's an oft-overlooked epoch.