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* National Nurses Day (U.S.) * Buddha’s Purnina / Vesak (Bangladesh)a celebration of Buddha’s Birthday * Martyr’s Day (Lebanon) * Kenpōkinenbi “Constitution Memorial Day” (Japan) * National Beverage Day (U.S.)
Our newest flash exhibit is about International Workers' Day or Labour Day, which takes place in most nations on May 1st. The history behind this day is fascinating and an opportunity to make Dewey ever so slightly more internationally oriented.
Last week I noticed that Labor Day was listed as a Relative Index term at 394.264 Holidays of September, October, November. That’s true for the United States, Canada, and some Australian states, but not generally true from an international perspective—most nations celebrate their Labour Day on May 1st. That stems from a commemoration of a movement that started in May 1, 1886. On that day activists called working people to arms: "One pound of DYNAMITE is better than a bushel of BALLOTS!" Hundreds of thousands of workers across the U.S. walked off their jobs. In Chicago, labor demonstrations were peaceful until a bomb was detonated on May 4th in Haymarket Square, killing at least eleven people. In 1889, an international coalition of trade unions and socialist groups designated May 1 as a day to celebrate the working class and remember those who were executed for the bombing.
To reflect the dates which different countries celebrate Labor/Labour Day, I've replaced the RI term Labor Day with Labor Day (United States) and Labour Day (Canada), both still classed with September holidays at 394.264. In contrast, May Day already has its own class number, 394.2627, which can be used for either the Northern Hemisphere’s springtime festivals or labor holidays. I've given a few new built numbers in that area to countries that have particularly large observances: 394.26270954 Labour Day (India) and 394.26270947 Labour Day (Russia).
I’ve also added a new built number for the LCSH Haymarket Square Riot, Chicago, Ill., 1886. While we might expect to see works about the Haymarket affair at a number about labor movements, the bombing was quickly associated with anarchists. The police decided that an anarchist had thrown the bomb and set about working to prove it; eight anarchists were convicted of conspiracy, and four of them were hanged. While many libraries have classed works on this topic with 335.83 Anarchism, in the economic systems hierarchy, they seem better suited for 320.57 Anarchism, along with other works about political ideology. The new built number for the Haymarket affair is 320.570977311 Anarchism--political ideology--Chicago (Ill.).
What other areas of the DDC don't reflect an international perspective? We’d like to hear about them and work with you to address them! Get in touch at dewey@oclc.org.
Violet's photo of the Chicago Haymarket sculpture by Mary Brogger
There has been a lot of talk about Kraven possibly being a villain in the next Spider-Man movie, and his live action debut is long overdue. Who best to play him, though? I used to think Jeffrey Dean Morgan, but he seems to be looking a little older and thinner these days. Gerard Butler could be an interesting choice, he still seems to be in decent shape.
So often do we talk about speaking with passion, much rarer do we think about listening with passion.
Conversations are two-sided, they only work if one person is listening while the other is talking. Unfortunately, we tend to have a greater innate interest in making sure others know the smart, interesting and important things that we think than truly absorbing what someone else has to say. So I love this quote from Harriet Lerner:
Listen with the same passion with which we want to be heard.
If we all could do this routinely with our colleagues, friends, family, children, and partners I’d guess it’d make quite a difference.
I learned about it from Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead.
Dork Tower is 100% reader supported. Join the Army of Dorkness today, and help bring more Dork Tower to the world!By becoming a Dork Tower Patreon backer, you get our everlasting gratitude (and also swag, commentary, bonus strips, and more swag), but, critically, you’ll help us reach our next goal – three comics a week! WE ARE SO CLOSE TO GETTING THREE STRIPS A WEEK!
If you had told me that Jon Cryer - the actor who played Lenny Luthor in Superman IV: The Quest for Peace would decades later play Lex himself (more convincingly than the latest big screen version), I would never had believed it. That is what has come to pass, though!
While the heroes are busy discussing Biff’s grand idea…or, perhaps, just recovering from the shock that she had an idea in the first place…evil!Gregory is putting his goggles to good use again. Good thing that the original Gregory isn’t able to see this, it would drive his frustration sky-high. He was frustrated enough that evil!Gregory got to profit from the goggles basic protective capabilities. If he knew that evil!Gregory can even access advanced, undocumented features of the goggles – features original Gregory was entirely unaware of – he’d go into conniptions.
The rest of the strip is mostly taken up by a philosophical exchange on the nature of evil. Two distinctly different schools of thought on evil clash, let’s call them pragmatical evil and orthodox evil. Evil!Snuka likely has had a somewhat similar upbringing as the original, and is thus firmly within camp pragmatism – a childhood on the streets would have left him little alternative to pragmatism, and it would have easily become a life-long habit. As far as he was concerned, it would have made the most sense to eliminate the heroes for good in their moment of helplessness – a low risk operation with a high gain in ruling out any future problems for good.
The evil!Professor*, however, is more of a proponent of orthodox evil. While he can and will acknowledge the basic rationality of evil!Snuka’s approach, he still feels that Snuka’s bereft upbringing has permanently robbed him of an ability to appreciate the finer things in life. Victory is more than the mathematical result of comparing two scores – it must be savored in order to experience it fully. Therefore, the Professor is deeply opposed to dealing death quickly and at the first opportunity. In order to truly destroy an opponent, they must be broken psychologically as well as physically, so it’s necessary to beat them down several times over, crushing their hopes over and over again, until death can be delivered as a sweet relief to them. That, in the Professor’s opinion, is the grand masterpiece every practitioner of evil should properly aspire to.
Snuka, for his part, has a pretty good counter-argument in the very poor historical track record of this orthodox style of evil…but, I guess, orthodoxy wouldn’t be orthodoxy if it was open to counter-arguments…
Feeling like a hermit these days? Me too, and that’s what inspired our latest flash exhibit!
We had the LCSH “Hermits” mapped to 305.568 Alienated and excluded classes, which didn’t seem right. Yes, hermits are excluded from much of society, but they don’t quite fit with the other marginalized classes there. In the traditional sense, which is also the LCSH’s sense, a hermit is secluded for religious reasons. I moved the LCSH to 204.247 Asceticism in the religion schedules to reflect this. This would be the comprehensive number for religious hermits, or hermits in comparative religion, though works on hermits in specific religions would go elsewhere (e.g., 248.47 for Christian hermits, 297.446 for Sufi hermits).
Though sometimes treated as synonyms, there are separate LCSHs for hermits and recluses. Violet and I thought that was a better fit for 305.568, since living reclusively may be influenced by hostility from society. Of course, the distinction may come down to works in hand.
I also added the LCSH “Hermit crabs as pets” to the built number 639.67, under 639.6 Crustacean culture. Did you know that hermit crabs aren’t true crabs?
Finally, there’s something curious going on with the famous Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It’s the second-largest art museum in the world after the Louvre, and among the world’s top 10 most visited. It was already represented in a built number in WebDewey at 708.721, for art museums in Saint Petersburg, but you might not know it. We had the LC name authority record mapped, but following LC romanization rules, it’s “Gosudarstvennyĭ Ėrmitazh (Russia)”. You probably wouldn’t find that on a keyword search! I ended up creating an electronic-only Relative Index term “Hermitage Museum (Russia)”, which happens to be the Children’s Subject Heading form. We had started doing something like this with the names of world leaders where LC’s romanization diverges from more popular usage. There’s nothing wrong with keyword searching as an initial approach, so I hope this is helpful.
If you want to alleviate forced hermetism, here’s an ironic resource: last month, Apple released a one-take video that’s a virtual trip around the Hermitage Museum, shot entirely on a new iPhone. At a whopping five hours and 20 minutes, it’s great for slow TV fans or might be nice background material while working from home. It’s free on YouTube. Enjoy!
