So I’m in New Orleans for the librarians’ conference. We were last here in 2006 – the first big conference to come in after Katrina.<\/p>\n
The opening general session started with inspirational videos, like a high school age girl singing “I need my library”. I suppose I should’ve been more inspired, but it’s hard not to be cynical when one of the kids in the vid said he needed his library because high school’s such a noisy fast place.<\/p>\n
The real keynoter was Dan Savage<\/a>. I’ve read him for years – when the ALA prez was intro-ing him and talking about all his good works, I kept thinking, “yes, great, but let him come out and talk – we want to hear him ‘cuz he’s funny”. His current project is it gets better<\/a> – again really good stuff, helping gay teens, preventing suicide. Even on such heavy stuff, Savage was<\/em> funny. I noticed that he’s kinda pumped up now – big biceps – but all through his book The Kid<\/a>, he says that he wanted to have a kid, be in a committed relationship, so he could get fat. Let himself go, not have to workout.<\/p>\n I didn’t bring my real camera. Mark loaned me his little one, since maybe we’ll get one of these new little Canons<\/a>. Mark says it’s got a really big CCD for a point & shoot. And I could get an SD card for it that has wifi for getting the pictures out of the camera. The theory is that this would give me a way to shoot food while traveling and blog the pix that would look a bit better than iPhone pictures.<\/p>\n I dunno – I tried using the little Canon last night to take pix at the Gumbo Shop<\/a>, and felt like a dork.<\/p>\n