and that means that just an honor and jason cutler are here in the studio good morning to you both good morning and you have a guest on the phone we are going to just get right into this year as our listeners are probably aware  this past august enough ferguson missouri police shot and killed an unarmed black teen named mike brown for those of us who are far away from ferguson most of what we've seen in the media like social media or traditional media has been a lot of turmoil of demonstrations police and things like that but that is totally not all there is to the community and one of the big positive stories that's come out of this big news event of twenty fourteen is how the community public library responded in a time of crisis and help people have been responding back to it so today in the first of our around the library world segments jason is going to be talking to the director of the ferguson public library scott boner ok so jason take it away scott welcome to librarians on the radio thank you i have to say that the more rid of you in the ferguson library the more guilty i feel for taking any of your time so we don't want to waste today but also by way of trying to make you a little more comfortable our show today and maybe trying to bond with you a little bit that justin and i are in fact canadian bearded librarian and and the reference there for our listeners is that on the reddit ask me anything session you had one of many questions that sort of got off topic that drove me nuts last night when i was doing some research on you his comments about american bearded librarians that are you and talked about minority in the united states and your answer was awesome you said you're actually a much talked about minority in your profession so i love that and i thought i would maybe open with that so it's got to get into it here for the listeners that aren't familiar with what has been happening  could you please give us a quick rundown of events starting with when you started in your position as director and just leading up to the the grand jury's decision in november twenty fourth was it so if you want to just run it through just the basics for listeners thanks sure as far as from my point of view i started in july the first where a small library and the only full time employee there when else was part time but twelve people and so we were you know i grabbed on to the library has director and said ok we need to be very community focused and i was in the middle of going out and meeting people into the out emails introduce myself whenever mike brown was shot and that changed the way that pretty much everything was being approached because one of the things is tough for a director to do kind of the core of the job is figure what the community needs and the hard part is going on and figure those things out and you know asking those questions be in the right people identifying what to do and then suddenly we had needs coming from all sides and so it was very clear what to do and it defined our mission and we have been all about doing everything we can for people ferguson ever since we have been open the first thing we've done is just be open right to provide a safe place for people to go so i stay up until we hours every night and i watch the news and they live streams and try to determine whether i saved open library and if it is then we're open and we do everything we can and so far we've only had to be closed one day august eleventh and that's because it was just so unclear what was going to happen on that day and then we had a half day on november twenty fifth because we knew that there was go trouble that night we have done a number of different programs whenever the schools announced they were going to close for a week straight to surprise everyone one of the teachers came into library on the monday morning while i was sitting here trying to figure out what to do about it and said if we give you some teachers can give us some tables and i said oh yeah let's go bigger than that and offered her and so we built madhav library which turned out to be a really big program that you know spilled over into another building into a nearby first baptist church when the governor declared that  it was a fifth exact wording or something along the lines of an economic emergency zone for a couple of weeks here in the library we've done a number of programs by a half dozen different programs that are all about from being damaged in various ways  and we've done just everything i can think of are spaced for them to work out of that kind of thing and so it it has defined our mission and clarified our mission in a way that that i think if you all embrace had the opportunity have something you know the story about the library came up and it was the first time but i had heard about what you and your staff were doing but i also know that the media ferguson is a war zone and i know that i read somewhere that you've said that that's not the reality on the ground but that doesn't take anything away from the fact that the community has been in turmoil what that crisis looks like on a daily basis i'm thinking i mean i don't know how many businesses were damaged by looting and fires but also the psychological damage done to the community well it's been first off a lot more complicated a lot more nuanced and a lot more different players play faction ing in the present it's not like a war zone if you were in a neighborhood where the police were drawing lines and shooting tear gas and firing rubber bullets and clashing with protesters in the middle of the night if you're in that bad things happen and people came out of it you know with problems right so it doesn't take anything away from that to say that during the day during other parts of town need is a normal small town right we're doing a normal things we're walking down the street we're going shopping we're talking to each other all those things and then you know on those nights whenever it got really bad it was really really bad but like i said localized during the day what you see is the night are coming on the next morning and cleaning up and talking to each other and trying to figure out how to actually make you know solutions haven't it's complicated to say the least  and you know there's a lot of tension there has been a lot of tension especially the up to the grand jury decision whenever it was a week after week after week of people just right on the edge of falling apart because they were wondering a going to get i don't know you know you had different people expressing i was one of the political press and optimism is not going to be that bad and we're all human beings we're all care about each other it's going to be ok other people thought that they should you know you know run away to another country  crazy the range of responses that we had in the end it was bad but it was not it was not the end and was not a war zone it was a bad night and so yes so the community is there's a lot of and i see you know different business from the city wrestling with those i see different people from the protest side wrestling with those so right now what's going on is that we're really trying to get some changes in place and you know finding out what's possible  box and then you settle her but was that really the only conflict that came to the library attention that night two different two different times on the night of the grand jury decision small groups of people who were just you know they were they were breaking windows of the way down the road where the next building down the street as far as i can tell came in and started trying to kick in the front door libre which is big class doors we look at double double doors and while they were kicking around the first set of double doors i came around the corner with the fire extinguisher in one hand just basically said no not here please and they kick a couple times and go away in the next group of the same thing you know i don't know if it was me looking goofy with a fire extinguisher or if it was just seeing another human being brought them momentarily to mind of what they were doing i don't know but they went on and then it seems like as i read all the stuff about you and what you've done and what they done it seems like there's nothing that  the quiet the library is a kind of a separate space so to speak in that they can't you know if you bring the conflict in the library it just means that this is the place where you have to conflict so no people have been particularly good daily trouble that we've had is that right before the grand jury decision some of our teenagers who are clearly anxious and angry and worried we're acting up a little bit and you know doing normal teenager a thing that's where we've had probably had the whole time in the library itself how could this possibly happen in a cart load of books you want to have quit loads of books back in august but then following the grand jury decision i think in response to some of the things that we said on twitter where we just kind of proclaimed a library open in and accepting of people and reclaim the we're going to school the next day because the schools were closed on tuesday and so per the previous arrangement we went ahead and did the whole ad hoc school thing again people respond to that and we have gotten i want to say seventy plus boxes of donated books a  i actually forward i believe her name who is a buzz feed reporter was one of the early big names and has a huge following and they grabbed onto it and ran with it but also neil gaiman reading rainbow john green respond on in may which made the news man come people interested jones joel charbonneau author who started the hope through stories project which is what you getting a whole lot of signed author author sign books to us and pals book donation thing which give us a lot of really targeted high quality donations that are all about civic engagement civil rights history and recovering from trauma has been a number of individuals who have children's librarian because as of right now you're the only librarian you have twelve times someone else i mean i know you're still and the process of looking at where that money's going to go but what does it mean for the organization our board got together last monday  children's librarian children's slash programming librarian in here was a no brainer yes let's do this will radically increase our ability to serve the people of ferguson more community focused library and they also went ahead and approved we've been anguished worried about how we were possibly ever going to replace this carpet which is like older than you know probably older than me and we read ok we can go and move forward on that but we're going to be careful about to make sure we don't waste any pennies and then from there last night again i don't think there's any way you could have really prepared but probably had you and it sounds like you're doing that in the month between when you started and when you're sitting at her but i think the focus really should be on community partnerships would you agree with that probably i wish that i had been able to do more building communication and meeting partnerships with the community so that when everything started happening i could immediately kind of leverage having to try to build those relationships as i'm trying to leverage programming  to happening as far as for libraries in general i would say my to give anyone advice i'm brand new to this job but i would say generally say yes be willing to say yes say yes to the community say yes i think so people  are very early on i decided that i would rather regret saying yes too much they regret saying no too much when i look back on this so and that has worked out really well most what we've done has been a matter of some organization coming in saying can we do  end in sight is a couple of books on emotional healing and a resource list for local mental health options that are free or sliding scale and a little stuffed animal and the idea is that the parent or the kid takes it home  a reporter said summer that i read that that the librarian ferguson especially in the early days was the one consistent place the one constant in ferguson and i think as librarians that's something that we all want to aspire to people saying not only fourth what do you got to do to be number one scott i don't want to know you don't want to know it's not a crisis situation but maybe depending on what you do with the money maybe that'll be you know number one story for twenty all right thank you thank you jason thank you scott that was yeah you know that was wonderful i'm glad to hear this kind of stuff so coming up next we have a i am pretty certain that what we have coming up next is totally my favorite holiday season book it had snow it had axes it has vague recipes and a great deal of screaming and we hope that you enjoy it a lot couldn't stop screaming this story ends in someone's mouth but it begins in a tiny village more or less covered in snow the snow had fallen during the long night during which children had pressed their faces to the windows looking for a glimpse of a man who they suspected of bringing them wonderful gifts but instead they heard a terrible noise from a certain cottage in the neighboring the small a word which here means place where something was being born this cottage was already regarded with some suspicion as it was the only place not decorated with flashing colored lights at this time of year the thing that was being born was a walk out of a word which here means potato pancake luck because our traditional part of the celebration of hanukkah a holiday commemorating miraculous jewish military victory nearly everything in this world is born screaming and the laca was no exception even though the waka wasn't conceived and born the way you and i were conceived and born but instead was fashioned from grated potatoes chopped onion beaten eggs and a dash or two of salt once these ingredients were properly mixed the lot was slapped into a pan full of all of oil heated to a very high temperature and this is when it began to screen the lock it was suffering so much that it leapt out of the hot pan and out the window of the cottage and began to run screaming down the boulevard this may seem like an unusual behavior for a potato pancake but this is a christmas story in which things tend to happen that would never occur in real life the lot could ran past a row of flashing colored lights which hung from the rain the hands of the maccabees the oil was only supposed to last for one night but there was a miracle and it lasted for eight months frying makes my skin crispy i'm  something completely different locket rounded the corner and found itself face to face with a candy cane which wrinkled its red and white nose at the lock in distaste i'm trying to sprinkle the night air with my peppermint sends the candy  c when my people were not allowed to practice their religion in order to study the talmud they had to hide only gaves when they heard greek soldiers approaching they pretended that they were gambling with a small spinning top called the tree  the screams of the loch a group quieter and quieter as the pancake ran out of the village into the surrounding forest its utter fury was unabated a phrase which here means a lot but was still very annoyed at the objects to whom it had spoken but it was quite tired and so it decided to rest for a few minutes beneath the branches of a little pine tree the pine tree was napping but woke up at the sound of an object plopping down at its feet are you a present the pine tree asked presence are pretty much the only thing allowed to during this time of year the latka side presents are really a big part of it said in a voice hoarse from screaming there is nothing wrong with giving gifts to loved ones of course but it's more important to l exhausted to scream so this is nothing to do the lot because said christmas and hanukkah are completely different things but different things can often blend together let me tell you a funny story about pagan rituals but before the pine tree could begin its story a family came trooping through the snow searching the forest carefully ways that in avoided until the last minute to get ready for the holiday said the father in the family who is holding an  thinking bringing this the family strolled back to the village walking past all the cottages with flashing colored lights and smiling politely at the candy canes until they reached their own home the family carried the waka into their own home which was warm and cozy and set down at the table which was lit with the flickering candles of a menorah or a hundred which is a branched candelabra designed specifically for the holiday it is very frustrating not to be understood in this world if you say one thing and keep being told that you mean something else it can make you want to scream but somewhere in the world there is a place for all of us whether you are an electric form of decoration peppermint scented sweet a source of timber or a potato pancake on a cold snowy night everyone and everything should be welcome somewhere and the lot go was welcomed into a home full of people who understood what a waka is and how it fits into its their holiday and then they ate it eve at midnight small town square by lee rosevear they're both shared under a creative commons attribution noncommercial share alike license and or fail bill at free music archive dot org ok so now story time what we just did there that's one of those traditional library activities just like hosting book clubs now jason you have hosted a book club or two in your time have you not i have did you enjoy your book club times mostly ok well on the why not right now we've got one of our awesome colleagues from port alberni who was hosting a mild mannered book club before it turned to real life murder welcome maggie are you a magpie at wow time low i'm great how are you q very good very good now just to just to be clear as far as you know no one in your book club has ever murdered anyone correct no note and not including you know nobody ok awesome so i would like you to tell us a little story what has changed about your book club in the last couple of months because i know that there is a story going on here absolutely so i host a book club once a month that the port alberni branch and it's now into its fourth year with pretty much the same group of twelve very dedicated women and one poor man who could out everything and so they're lovely very talkative very very intelligent always a unique spin on the book and i adore the conversation and i look forward to the last there is a day of the month every and it's always wonderful but we've added on a level of awesomeness recently in october i think was it october that serial came out i believe so i think we're only been eleven weeks ago i think yes or so in october i started listening to cereal after after hearing about it online and cereal is a podcast but i'm sure we'll get into that a bit later and i was totally into the first episode totally sucked in and i could not find anyone else who wanted to listen to it and talk about it with me all my friends and family said no heads it's all dark that's not the kind of thing i want to listen to o yes yes yes yes so then one night i had this spark i have a wonderful former police officer and mystery writer in my book club she's totally fabulous and she loves exploring the darker side life so i emailed her right away and she listened to the first couple episodes emailed me back with like pages of thoughts about who did it or what her initial reaction was and then from there  shelley became sort of our serial evangelist in and his sort of shoved it into the book club discussions to the point that now there's a handful of people listening so at our november meeting we had a quick quick quick discussion about the book listening to this isn't the book going on here and you just tell us a little bit about what is the structure of cereal like and what is making it good storytelling for people who love books absolutely so cereal is a podcast you can listen to it on their website serial podcast dot org or you can download it onto your smartphone through your podcast app or or there's other ways to get to it so a podcast is sort of recording almost exactly like what you guys are doing and cereal is a podcast that is released once a week on thursdays episodes tend to be about forty five minutes long some a little bit longer some a little bit shorter but what are they a be about this is the best part serial is telling a nonfiction story and so the story for this sort of season i suppose you could call it is about the one nine hundred ninety nine murder of a eighteen year old high school student in baltimore named hey man lee and so hey is a scene male student she's really well liked well respected honor roll student totally involved in school and she sort of recently broke up with another well respected student named adnan say ed and long story short this doesn't spoil anything you'll hear it in the first episode adnan is currently serving life in prison for the murder of h although again which you'll find out in the first episode this is not a particularly strong case and there's a lot of dough cast on whether or not non actually committed the crime so just to be clear here this is this is an actual crime that happened this is an actual thing that happened back in one thousand ninety nine per yes this is a real life story this what is what is making it compelling radio look what's the difference between listening to this and like listening to your i don't know quirks and quarks and talking about that every week yeah ok fair question i didn't answer that what makes compelling well there's a lot of things the story itself is so interesting sara kane exude is the sort of narrator and head researcher i suppose is fascinating as well she has a really great voice for listening to and she and her team have done a really good job of pacing the story so that they're always giving you something but but they never give you enough so you're totally compelled to listen to the next one it's a little bit like the first season of lost that way i think oh yeah and so every time there's sort of a new tidbit about the story and new character is introduced and and these are real people and she has made an incredible effort to find them so we we talk to non's mom on the podcast and to some of his old friends people who attended mosque with him people that went to high school with and on and hey it just feels like this story kind of just wraps you up and you become a part of this world so well as part of that now as a book club people have a library people were totally used to doing that with the kitchen and stuff really giving the characters well yes and stuff but these are like actual people like if you wanted to you could find a non small you could talk to or couldn't you yes yes you could something i've sort of struggled with while listening to it i get immense entertainment value out of listening to the show i i mean i'm interested in the case but i also just enjoy listening to it because it's so interesting and gets me thinking about a lot of different topics but at the same time i have tried to be really aware that these are real people this was a real murder and there's parents who i think guesses are now back in korea who don't have their eighteen year old daughter anymore and they do i think that n p r has tried to treat it quite respectfully and i want to be equally respectful when i'm talking about it rightly so i guess so that and i know that there's a big like sprawling out there around serial there are people on reddit who are totally like trying to solve the mystery themselves and you said that you had a book club member who was had her theories and stuff is that a big part of your book club you're talking so i'm on this yes so that's that is a great question and and i sort of just said that i'm trying to be respectful of the case but i will admit that i had this horribly crude drawings of cellphone tower isn't my play on stocks about who was where and when so that is a part of it and i certainly think it's part of the appeal that like everybody who listens to it gets to be a bit of a detective i know in our book club pretty well everybody has decided who they think the actual murder is or who it isn't and i do think that's part of the appeal of it well ye so we have talked about we have talked about the crime itself but we've also had a really good larger discussions about baltimore at the time how race plays into not only the case but the podcast as well sort of  journalistic ethics around it so it's opened the door for a lot of really really really cool conversations that we wouldn't necessarily have had just around one of our regular fiction books that sounds ok and the last question here yeah this is real life stuff there's no author you know bringing us to a nice neat tidy conclusion here what are you going to do with it when the season ends and it is or is not resolved i have no idea and so it ends this thursday which is also book club day and yes it is perfect and i know many many but club members will be listening to it i don't know because i don't know how it's going to end ok i sort of have the feeling that we won't be any further ahead than we were at at the start of it in terms of that the case it fell so that frustrates me personally because i am a person who likes to wrap things up but i'm hoping that as a group we can just recognize that we've had these great conversations and we've gone down different avenues and we now have book club members who are looking for other podcasts to listen to so hopefully we'll wrap up on a strong note and everybody will be happy with the good things that have come out of listening to it even if there is no solid conclusion to the case all right worry i should say well that's that's also thank you so much for being on the show  justin so maybe hawkwind is the children's librarian with verlyn port alberni you're interested in starting up a podcast club or some like that at your library let us know what your library you know there are all sorts of cool ways we could arrange point seven f m new york campus and community station based in the imo but of course heard on the internet as well at c h l y dot ca where we stream live and pod cast just a few things to mention  unitarian fellowship mentioned on our show last week that tomorrow evening just summer seventeenth they will be having blue christmas and this is something for people who are having maybe not the happiest christmas season they've ever had because of bereavement or isolation or other things like that so there will be a gathering tomorrow evening seven pm at the unitarian fellowship five ninety five town site in the ny mo to share and take time to acknowledge the sadness and the seven pm tomorrow thursday artists in solidarity presents pulled together an evening of live music dance multimedia performance and silent auctions to raise funds to support the first nation's legal challenges against the enbridge northern gateway pipeline that is happening at the harbor city theater formerly and imo center stage at seven thirty once again december eighteenth and tickets are available at the port theatre and they must be purchased in advance so check out the port theatre two five zero seven five four eight five five zero or triple w dot port theatre dot com but that's not the actual venue where this will take place once again that's at the harbor city theater finally of course there's the magic lantern festival that's happening at bowen park on the winter solstice december twenty first four thirty pm meet at the lower picnic shelter and bring a lantern purchased one or just go along for the procession and we have another guest on the phone i can tell you how excited i am for this installment of the book fight ok you tell us jason we've only have patrick live on the radio to do a lightning round media fight so there whitening around sessions first up is die hard vs home alone patrick you've got die hard go ok die hard i'm going to keep this short and simple without dying or we would not have bruce willis and without home alone we wouldn't have  with that is a harsh but the thing is this home alone at home alone is i'm going to stay at home alone is the more visceral of the movies when you see them alone and you see the nail go through the robbers but as they're going up the stairs that stays with you even more than bruce willis walking barefoot over broken glass oh sure sure but who would you rather have more for christmas dinner certainly bruce willis or macaulay culkin right over oh wow this is p has really going for it is all of the manufactured emotions in it are there to get laughs they're not trying to squeeze terrible sentiment out of you the way love actually is and love actually is a terrible movie about people doing love to women to  women prizes explorable horrible thing ok ok ok wait a minute tara love actually patrick ok well this is tricky because actually i'm a big fan of self but i actually think that love actually is actually quite awesome actually is one of the villains and you know you do have a three love actually and andrew lincoln rick from the walking dead is also in love actually and really pretty neat to see him way back in the day oh my goodness ok it's still a terrible movie charlie brown christmas versus patrick's the original grange patrick go for it ok well you know i just have a hard time with charlie brown he's you know i'm already depressed around christmas why do i want to become more depressed and watched early brown christmas like seriously he's he's prematurely balding i was friends are occupied with your own problems you can't understand any adult in your life in his world and he's constantly being verbally assaulted by a girl rhymes you know there's there's a nice cadence and there's a rhythm to it you know what a christmas doesn't come from a store what is christmas perhaps means a little bit more just an ok well i responded to your rhymes with with song do you do you do you do you do and everybody smiles everybody is doing a snoopy dance this is charlie brown reaches deep into your heart and the whole point of it is it's yes it's depressing because charlie brown is depressed but there is redemption in there the tiny charlie brown tree what better christmas symbol is there than the little tree that gets built up by the community and it's charlie brown wins yeah and i agree around over point just  all right next up is patrick defending scrooged versus justin defending the patrick stewart christmas carol yes ok i'm going to go first on this one because a christmas carol is a classic ghost story at christmas time i picked the patrick stewart one because you know that's a classic you've got gravitas there on with your scrooge and you know real accents and things and the whole thing is that christmas is the darkest time of the year and this is this is a time for hustling down and having both stories and yes being kind of you know spoofs and stuff and you get that redemption arc in there so when it's the depression and the terribleness broad broad around with with a little bit of sentiment that they had to so yet know patrick stewart is a classic example of the christmas carol this time of year talk about scrooge patrick well you know i do like patrick stewart but i also think he was typecast by the next generation like you know i couldn't help but think this is all happening on the you know and waiting for worf to be host of christmas future or something and i think that he was so successful in next generation that it just kind of undermined the rest of his career and scrooged is i think it resonates with us more because it's an american eyes version of the dickens classic you know and bill murray is he is just so nuanced he has comedy well but he's also an everyman that we can identify with oh well yeah jason come on ok weigh in on th justin and bad santa patrick go ok i feel very strongly about national lampoon's christmas vacation the griswold's are really one of the classic families of our culture and i think it works so well because there  deeply flawed plus this is set at christmas time and there's all this extended family that shows up so i just resonates with us so so well and i think randy quaid his brother eddie like him alone plus chevy chase like is all it's all about and about the flaws and actually i like i like to actually think that it's in continuity with love actually better this is the same billy bob thornton in bad santa that was the president of the united states in love actually and he got this terrible out ok what's next all right x files christmas justin vs trailer park boys patrick trailer park boys i haven't you know always been a fan but i did watch  recently you know i like it that it's pure working class and we can all identify with it and they had they spent both two million dollars on snow for this for this want to suppress you know i choose exile sure if depressing day of the year for you know for people who have no families around and it is a ghost story and this is actually it's one of these things i realize that i have kind of a theme going through here is that i kind of like the dark and depressing ones but right kind of it's  is truly it is a beautiful beautiful ghost story for christmas and it's all about the people who don't have anybody at this time of the year which you know we need we need that kind of story to closing remarks but i first one is going to be dominic the docu versus corey hart's rudolph ok let's play a tiny bit doesn't it dominate the donkey here because you know what jason we're actually really good friends and that's what that's what the meaning of christmas is all about and the holiday season and i sense that justin is down a point so i'm i'm just trying to help him out you know i'm just trying to help my friend we were actually tied up you were you early to me to be able to do this lives the banks for the hit well thanks for having me you guys and merry christmas thank you here but it is so all well thank you both of you jason koffler and just in honor of that's been a fantastic so we will see you next in the new year january twentieth i believe is our next librarians on the radio show i think we're going to be talking about some things around family literacy day and maybe the score with reading program we're doing at the library it's a i'm sure that one will there will be a little bit less holiday cheer to it but i will be yeah i think it'll be it'll be a good one nonetheless and what about are we going to do a book fight oh yeah we're  thank you suzanne and changes and word to seeing you then all the best with the holiday season and that is our show changes is heard every tuesday morning at eleven here on c h l y check us out on face book and on behalf of our production team thank you so much for joining us