Letter Quote--"Must we hate them?"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/84493444@N00/8177762468/

One of my favorite blogs to follow, is "Letters of Note."  The goal, or mission if you rather, of this blog is to share with readers letters, telegrams, faxes, postcards, or any thing else that they can find that readers might find interesting or fascinating.  They've posted and shared items dating back to the 1600's and to the present.  And what is most interesting is that regardless of the passage of time...is how much we're all still the same.  Love, hate, hope...it crosses time without boundaries, to let us know that that those that came before us, still talked about the same things we did.

In the letter that was shared today, "Letters of Note" found one of the most powerful letters I've ever read or seen on the question of...must we hate them?  The letter was written by a Jamaican-born mechanic, Canute Frankson, in 1937 as he was fighting in the Spanish Civil War against Franco. The letter was to a friend back home, who wanted to know why, he a Negro man (wording from the letter) was fighting alongside white people, the same white people that had hated and enslaved people like him. Canute preceded to write one of the most impassioned arguments for why hate must not be allowed to win.

Here's a small part of that letter, just to give you an idea of what Canute writes:

All we have to do is to think of the lynching of our people. We can but look back at the pages of American history stained with the blood of Negroes, stink with the burning bodies of our people hanging from trees; bitter with the groans of our tortured loved ones from whose living bodies, ears, fingers, toes, have been cut for souvenirs—living bodies into which red-hot pokers have been thrust. All because of a hate created in the minds of men and women by their masters who keep us all under their heels while they such our blood, while they live in their bed of ease by exploiting us. 

But these people who howl like hungry wolves for our blood, must we hate them? Must we keep the flame which these mastered kindled constantly fed? Are these men and women responsible for the programs of their masters, and the conditions which force them to such degraded depths? I think not. They are tools in the hands of unscrupulous masters. These same people are as hungry as we are. They live in dives and wear rags the same as we do. They too are robbed by the masters, and their faces kept down in the filth of a decayed system. They are our fellowmen. Soon and very soon they and we will understand. Soon many Angelo Herndons will rise from among them, and from among us, and will lead us both against those who live by the stench of our bunt flesh. We will crush them. We will build us a new society—a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim-crow trains, no lynching. That is why, my dear, I'm here in Spain.
 So please, take a moment, and go read this letter and ask yourself, must we hate them?  Must we hate those that are not like us?

What would Jim Henson do

A while back I was having one of those days at work where the papers sitting in front of me and the code wasn't making sense, and I needed to do something outside my to do list. So I looked for inspiration online and I found some with Jim Henson.

Many people recognize Jim Henson as the creator of the Muppets and the gang at Sesame Street, but how many know of the innovations he wrought in storytelling, in puppetry, in educating and entertainment?  He wasn't content to let the status quo influence and dictate what he did.  He created puppets that had genuine facial expressions and had life to them.  He changed how puppets interacted with the camera and the stage.  According to Muppet Wiki:

The second innovation was to get rid of the stage that all puppets on TV hid behind, just as they did in conventional theater. He wisely realized that the TV screen itself is the stage. Freeing the puppets from the constrictions of the past, Henson found that the characters were able to move around their environment in a much more imaginative and exciting way. 

http://muppet.wikia.com/wiki/Jim_Henson
Can you imagine Sesame Street if the characters sat behind an artificial stage?  It would have been boring!  They wouldn't have last long if it were like the old "Punch and Judy show."  Instead lasting characters were created that interact with us today.  Where would the world be without Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo, Big Bird and the others?  I can't really say for sure, but I would imagine it would be a whole lot quieter in children's entrainment and education.

And I began to wonder...what more would he have accomplished if he hadn't died so young?  What new heights and innovations would we have seen in the puppetry world?  While his children and his group are still active Jim Henson was...well unique.  Time magazine had him on one of their top 100 lists and had this quote:

Joan Ganz Cooney, who created the show, once remarked that the group involved with it had a collective genius but that Henson was the only individual genius. "He was our era's Charlie Chaplin, Mae West, W.C. Fields and Marx Brothers," Cooney said, "and indeed he drew from all of them to create a new art form that influenced popular culture around the world." 

http://www.yachtingnet.com/time/time100/artists/profile/henson2.html

And so I wonder...how can I be more like Jim Henson?  How can I see the library in a new way to introduce new services to my users?  So I'm going to use Jim Henson as my inspiration for the year and see what new services I can come up with, what perceptions I can break.  Perhaps I'll introduce puppets into my information sessions.