SLICE OF PIE: LIBRARY PASSPORT Leads To Surviving the Information Apocalypse!!!

On October 7, 2007, I started this blog. Eighteen years later, I am revising and doing some different things. My wife and I are now retired senior citizens, our kids are both married, we have a bonus daughter and her wife and we have three grandchildren, (with a fourth on-the-way!) the oldest of which will soon finish his first year in high school, one smack in the center of Middle School; the third almost done with kindergarten. I have forty-five professional publications, plus countless other publications as a slushpile reader, and sometime essay contributor to Stupefying Stories https://stupefyingstories.blogspot.com/.

These days, I write whenever I want to – or when I’m not busy exploring the world with my wife or kids or grandkids. I write and read constantly. Then I discovered that I was writing longer and longer pieces. My new focus is to write shorter; and to write HUMOR. On purpose.

To that end, I thought I’d share the startling flow of ideas I gleaned from the results of my birthday present.

A few days ago, my son and his family presented me with a novel artifact: a HENNEPIN COUNTY LIBRARY PASSPORT. Everyone has a library card, right?

Or is that just a naïve assumption made by an old man (68 a few days ago) and foisted off on the world of the first quarter of the 21st Century.

Here are some numbers: “Some 61% of Americans ages 16 and older say they have a library card for a public library. These card holders are more likely to be female, white, under the age of 65, and suburban and urban residents, and are also more likely to have higher levels of education or live in higher income households. About 21% of library card holders did not visit the library in the past 12 months, and 17% of those who have used a public library in the past year say they do not have a library card.”

“According to the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, there are around 2.8 million libraries worldwide. Most of those (2.2 million) are school libraries, over 410,000 are public libraries, and a whopping 85,623 are academic libraries, like those found here at High Point University.”

OK – NOT everyone has one. BUT, it’s possible for everyone (pretty much) to GET one. So what happened on our first trip to eight different libraries listed on the passport?

First, something funny.

After walking through the library to our areas of differing interests, my granddaughter asked the librarian, “What’s with all the chickens on the columns?” Posted on every column was a picture of some breed of chicken – even the most outlandish: watch this YouTube for the silliest ones (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daQ7-hi54_E)

The librarian replied, “Well, it’s CHICKEN month!”
My son asked, “What was last month?”
With a totally straight face, she replied, “Financial Literacy Month.”

I couldn’t help it. I busted out laughing, TOTALLY not expecting something so totally opposite from Chicken Month…”

Another fact: one of the Hennepin County Libraries was built out of a couple of buildings that they converted out of the Grain Belt Brewery building. THAT place has a rich history. The librarian and I got into a long discussion because she remembered how UNdeveloped the portion of the Twin Cities that she moved to was. I entered the discourse by telling her that not only was it undeveloped when SHE moved there, I remember when the city she now lives in was INCORPORATED and that there was nothing but potato fields and cows out that way! She tried to one-up-me by acting like she knew more about the northwestern suburbs of Minneapolis than I did…and being who I am, I one-upped-HER…

Which does NOT lead to this following tidbit. She noted that there were, in fact catacombs underneath the old Grain Belt Brewery… (actually, “The Grain Belt name first appeared in 1893 as the "Golden Grain Belt Old Lager," then brewed by the Minneapolis Brewing Company. The Minneapolis Brewing Company was a conglomerate of four other Minneapolis-based breweries, formed in 1890 by the consolidation of the F.D. Noerenberg Brewery, John Orth Brewing Company, Heinrich Brewing Association, and Germania Brewing Association. It was one of the largest breweries in the United States at that time.”)

“CATACOMBS?” I exclaimed.

She leaned forward and said softly, “And they’re still there.”

THAT statement led to this idea: I have a very science fictional mind, and I thought, “Wouldn’t that be a fascinating place for a group to survive the Information Apocalypse?” (“The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has ignited a debate about its effects on the mis- and disinformation landscape. Some scholars foresee doomsday scenarios of epistemic and information apocalypse (Fallis, 2021; Schick, 2020), AI being used as a “weapon of mass disruption” (Bremmer & Kupchan, 2023), or a complete blurring of boundaries between true and false (Metz, 2023).”

And there, you go. Have fun with your imagination!

Inspiration: https://www.highpoint.edu/library/2023/06/12/16252/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20International%20Federation,here%20at%20High%20Point%20University.
Links: https://libguides.ala.org/librarystatistics/largest-public-libs, https://www.highpoint.edu/library/2023/06/12/16252/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20International%20Federation,here%20at%20High%20Point%20University. ,
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/2013/12/11/section-1-an-overview-of-americans-public-library-use/#:~:text=their%20family%20does.-,Library%20card%20holders,not%20have%20a%20library%20card. , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_Belt_(beer) , https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/polp.12617#:~:text=While%20an%20%E2%80%9Cinformation%20apocalypse%E2%80%9D%20has,Vaccari%20&%20Chadwick%2C%202020). 

Image: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/eXjZE9XyfnM/hq720.jpg?sqp=-oaymwEhCK4FEIIDSFryq4qpAxMIARUAAAAAGAElAADIQj0AgKJD&rs=AOn4CLD9BOGeXBu6-9FfdYmRzmKgq0iwJg