My friend Kris sent a link to an article in the New York Times Style Section she thought might interest me. Indeed it did, and I sent the Times a letter about it.
 
Dear Fashion editor:
 
A librarian is quoted in your article, "A Hipper Crowd of Shushers," saying “When I was in library school in the early ’80s, the students weren’t as interesting [as now].” Maybe that's because it was the eighties, not because they were library school students. Maybe you have to go back a bit for interesting times.
 
There's a reason the book Kara Jesella refers to is called Revolting Librarians Redux. There was a Revolting Librarians, published in 1972. It was edited by my friend Celeste West. One of its themes was that "...the work is no longer just about books but also about organizing and connecting people with information, including music and movies..." as your article says. Beginning in the sixties (way before Craig's list) we compiled databases of local resources, we expanded music collections, we wore miniskirts, we fought censorship, we danced to The Grateful Dead, we published alternative magazines, we smoked pot, we had library contingents in peace marches and pride marches. The stereotypes have always been with us too. When the American Library Association had a conference in Dallas, the local liquor stores ran out of stock because they thought librarians didn't drink. 
 
My generation of librarians was as "with" our times as these kids are with theirs, and more power to them.
 
Nancy Schimmel
Berkeley California  
 
I graduated from library school in 1965. Since I wanted to be either a children’s or school librarian, I took a storytelling class. I wanted to start with something easy, so I chose “The Little Red Hen.” But the versions I found didn’t seem right. They ended with the little red hen sharing the food with her chicks, which was not the way I remembered it from my childhood. It was as though a female did not have a right to keep all the fruits of her labors unless it was for her family. The women’s movement wasn’t in full swing yet, but I got that part.
 
So I went over to my mom’s and asked her to tell me the story and of course she told it right. Then she got to thinking about the story and wrote her own version, as a song. You can see hear her singing it on YouTube, a clip from an old Rainbow Quest program with Pete Seeger and Ramblin’ Jack Elliot. It’s also on the Smithsonian compilation CD, Malvina Reynolds: Ear to the Ground. (I thought up the album subtitle, by the way. They had proposed something rather dry.)
 
I did student librarianing to get a school library certificate, first at Cornell Elementary in Albany, then at McClymonds High in Oakland. I told stories to one of the classes. They were very dubious at first, but afterwards one of the questions was, “Do you have a manager?” When I told my mom about it, she said, “McClymonds? That’s where I did my student teaching!” The school was in a new building by the time I got there, and the student body was 95% black, 5% other, which it wouldn’t have been when Malvina was in graduate school at Cal. I had heard her talk about it before, but hadn’t remembered the name. She was supposed to teach poetic structure to reluctant students, so she used the lyrics to popular songs as texts.
 
She never did get a teaching job. She wanted to teach college, but by the time she earned her Ph. D., the Depression had come, and who needed English professors?Besides, she was radical, Jewish and female, all bigger handicaps then than now.
 
 
In other news: I’m looking for photographer Harry Nygard, or, if he is no longer with us, his heirs. He took some good color shots of Malvina on a beach in British Columbia that we’d like to use, but we can’t find him to get permission.
 
 
© 2007 by Nancy Schimmel
 
 
 
Here’s the Little Red Hen drawn b y Jodi Robbin for the cover of Malvina’s second songbook (now out of print) The Muse of Parker Street. You can still find used copies of it and her other Oak songbook, Little Boxes and Other Handmade Songs on the internet sometimes.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
“A HIPPER CROWD OF SHUSHERS”