Twilight Librarian--Jim Rettig's ruminations on libraries, librarianship, the infosphere, and more

Last post at this site--on the move [Permalink]

Thu Sep 13 18:01:10 EDT 2007

This is my last post to Twilight Librarian at http://keillor.richmond.edu/blojsom/blog/jrettig/. I am moving it to WordPress. See Twilight Librarian in its new location at http://jimrettig.org/blog. All posts have come over to the new location; regrettably, however, there was not a simple way to export/import comments. For the time being the old blog will remain up, but this is my last post to it. The new WordPress version needs some additional design work. That will come along soon.

While you are at it, please explore my new Web site at http://jimrettig.org. It has been created as a communication vehicle with ALA members and others during my term as the American Library Association's president-elect this year and my term as ALA's 2008-09 president.

Family matters [Permalink]

Wed Jul 11 09:17:04 EDT 2007

Family matters sometimes matter to the virtual exclusion of other matters.

I did not post anything here between late May and July 10. The last post in May discussed the RIAA's use of colleges and universities as their copyright enforcers. I wrote that post in a hospital room as my wife slept after being admitted in the early afternoon. More than ever she needed an advocate as I witnessed errors by the nursing staff, errors with her and also with another patient. These things mattered a great deal. Dealing with bureaucratic bungling kept me at the hospital till midnight one night; I was unwilling to leave until I knew the staff had corrected the problem. Family mattered a great deal for the nine days she was in the hospital.

Eight days after coming home, she was back in the hospital. Two days later she had some serious surgery, an option that had been held as a last resort since mid-March. Family mattered then, too. Our son and his girlfriend were with my wife and me when she went into surgery and when she came out of recovery. We are very optimistic, even on the brink of being confident, that she has finally turned the corner in this long illness that has sapped her of her strength, necessitated daily injections, and been very scary at times. Family mattered five days after she had surgery and our older daughter came to care for her mother. We had we made plans weeks earlier for her to be with her mom for a week so I could go to the American Library Association conference in Washington. Little did we know that part of that time she would be attending her mother in the hospital once again.

My wife's short-term recovery from the surgery was unexpectedly and blessedly swift, a real turning point. Family mattered the next week when she and our daughter joined me in Washington for a day just so they could come to the ALA inaugural banquet. She rallied her strength and walked in at my side when I was introduced as president-elect. I am sure that more than half of the applause that greeted us was for her.

I have been very touched by the concern that many of my colleagues have expressed for my wife's health in recent months. I don't accept family as a suitable metaphor for the members of any institution or organization other than a family. Family matters too much to dilute it in that way. But the applause in Washington that night demonstrated what I have long known--that colleagues matter, too. Thank you, colleagues near and far, for your support for my family! It has mattered and meant a lot to us.