Still Looking for an Audience in SCLS

Link to December 14 New York Times article, "The Novel That Predicted Portland".

Excerpt:
Sometimes a book, or an idea, can be obscure and widely influential at the same time. That’s the case with “Ecotopia,” a 1970s cult novel, originally self-published by its author, Ernest Callenbach, that has seeped into the American groundwater without becoming well known.

The novel, now being rediscovered, speaks to our ecological present: in the flush of a financial crisis, the Pacific Northwest secedes from the United States, and its citizens establish a sustainable economy, a cross between Scandinavian socialism and Northern California back-to-the-landism, with the custom — years before the environmental writer Michael Pollan began his campaign — to eat local.

The rediscovery of this book seems to be slow in coming to Wisconsin. Current status in LINKcat: 3 copies, of which 1 is checked out, 1 is damaged, 1 is "in library", perhaps waiting to be placed in delivery for the 1 hold that's been placed on it.

Too Many Tamales: the Stage Version

Link to December 14 New York Times article, "The Tamale, a Window on Cultures and Custom".

Now in its 12th year!

Libraries Share an "Article of Faith"

"Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries."

Link to December 13 New York Times article, "Bad Times Draw Bigger Crowds to Churches".
(The main headline in the print edition: "An Evangelical Article of Faith".)

Excerpts:
The sudden crush of worshipers packing the small evangelical Shelter Rock Church in Manhasset, N.Y. — a Long Island hamlet of yacht clubs and hedge fund managers — forced the pastor to set up an overflow room with closed-circuit TV and 100 folding chairs, which have been filled for six Sundays straight.

In Seattle, the Mars Hill Church, one of the fastest-growing evangelical churches in the country, grew to 7,000 members this fall, up 1,000 in a year. At the Life Christian Church in West Orange, N.J., prayer requests have doubled — almost all of them aimed at getting or keeping jobs.


Part of the evangelicals’ new excitement is rooted in a communal belief that the big Christian revivals of the 19th century, known as the second and third Great Awakenings, were touched off by economic panics. Historians of religion do not buy it, but the notion “has always lived in the lore of evangelism,” said Tony Carnes, a sociologist who studies religion.

A study last year may lend some credence to the legend. In “Praying for Recession: The Business Cycle and Protestant Religiosity in the United States,” David Beckworth, an assistant professor of economics at Texas State University, looked at long-established trend lines showing the growth of evangelical congregations and the decline of mainline churches and found a more telling detail: During each recession cycle between 1968 and 2004, the rate of growth in evangelical churches jumped by 50 percent. By comparison, mainline Protestant churches continued their decline during recessions, though a bit more slowly.

(Here's a cautionary reaction to the Times article from blogger Bruce Smith.)