MARILYN JOHNSON

In the midst of all the day's news, the killings and conflicts and pepper sprays, I like to check on the health of the Occupy Wall St. library. The real books, and the real librarians who help organize and distribute them, are solid, tattered, and threatened. The OWS library also exists and endures in digital space, where almost 6000 items have been cataloged on LibraryThing. And this library is the precious symbol at the heart of the movement, a natural expression of self-determination and intellectual freedom.

Its survival gives me hope. Its champions inspire me And then I go and visit one of my public libraries and notice that it too is solid, tattered, and threatened. What a shame our libraries are being cut and closed, just when we need them the most. Libraries are for everybody. Who would be against that?

We have some problems.We're falling behind educationally. Too many of us are out of work. And for a nation that fostered so much technical innovation, there sure are a lot of clueless people walking around. We have children who can't or don't read, adults who can't navigate a computer, businesses that can't afford (more…)

I was sitting in a soulless hotel room, scrolling through my Twitter feed, when I saw that Michael S. Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, had died. What the hell? I immediately sent him an email. You died?!!! I didn't know what else to do. We were digital correspondents, co-travelers in cyberspace, that impulsive zone (more…)

I dined out for years on Elizabeth Taylor's endurance. She was part of a pack of aging, ill celebrities whose precautionary obituaries I'd written, only to have them, to a soul, defy the odds and outlive the magazines that might have published them. The grim reaper finally caught up with Katharine Hepburn and Marlon (more…)

Patronize This: a blog by Marilyn Johnson