Head Tale
Yet Another Librarian's Blog
Music Monday – “So while you sit back and wonder why/I got this fucking thorn in my side/Oh my God, it’s a mirage/I’m tellin’ y’all, it’s a sabotage”
Shea and I recently watched the Beastie Boys documentary on AppleTV+ and really enjoyed it.
“Sabotage” – Beastie Boys
Who Should Be Vaccinated First? #skpoli
Today we announced the expansion of our #COVID19SK vaccine delivery plan to target remaining healthcare workers, first responders and staff working in pharmacies and grocery facilities.
You can learn more by visiting https://t.co/2EjdJrzTzt. pic.twitter.com/LdX5fhA1JY
— Government of Saskatchewan (@SKGov) April 12, 2021
There has been a lot of debate about the most effective order of vaccination roll-out and how to balance the need to vaccinate to prevent death (mostly older people) and to prevent spread (basically, people working in settings where they might have a higher risk of exposure for various reasons – can’t avoid close contact, work in a maskless environment, prolonged exposure, etc.)
In many ways, it’s a debate about vaccinating those living in a long-term healthcare facility (who are at great risk because of their advanced age) and the people who work in a long-term health care facility (who are more at risk of spreading the virus as they move around in their day-to-day lives when not at work.)
Of course, in that example, it’s not one or the other as the obvious best solution is to vaccinate residents and workers to minimize both death and risk of spread.
But how does that translate into the larger world where vaccine supplies are limited and different groups have different arguments for why they should be vaccinated earlier than others?
With a few exceptions for healthcare workers (but not all, only those considered “Phase One” which doesn’t even include everyone working in hospitals) and people who are considered medically fragile, Saskatchewan otherwise chose to initially use a straight age-based vaccination plan – starting with people who were 80+ and working downwards.
This is the easiest solution but I’m not convinced it was the best as it fails to take into account such nonsensical situations as a retiree who is 65 and more than capable of staying home getting vaccinated ahead of a 55 year old grocery clerk who may not be considered medically fragile but might be more at risk because they’re overweight and is more likely to be exposed to Covid than the retiree. Or a 62 year old union rep who is working from home getting vaccinated over the 42 year old bus driver they represent who’s been going to work every day without a break for over a year. Or a nurse who might be working with Covid+ patients normally so gets vaccinated because of where her home position is even though she’s on maternity leave but the person who is the same age and works 12-hour days at the Robin’s Donuts on a hospital’s main floor doesn’t qualify.
How Saskatchewan’s appointment system works is you enter your health card and birth date and that’s how they screen for age only – again, simple and easy.
And Saskatchewan has recently started to open up vaccinations more to other essential workers including teachers and others.
But if I was king of the world, I’d have a few more criteria to winnow down who qualifies in a more granular fashion to assist with the decision-making given limited vaccine supplies. I’d have the form designed to screen for a few additional factors besides age to see if you qualify for early vaccination or not:
- if you’re at an elevated risk due to multiple factors (eg. everyone who works in a hospital, corrections officers)
- if you interact with a large number of people in a day (teachers, retail workers)
- if you work in a environment where clients are often maskless (dental offices, early childhood educators, restaurant workers)
- if you work in a place where its hard to social distance (factories, transit including taxis, airlines, and buses)
- if you’re a first responder and/or regularly work with people in crisis (EMT, fire fighters, police, social workers)
On the other hand, my system would make it clear that people who are able to stay at home/work from home would either be considered a lower priority (or maybe could opt to *be* a lower priority and “donate” their spot to someone who does fit the criteria?)
At any rate, I’m mostly spitballing as a layperson but again, if I was the king of the world, I would let medical and scientific experts develop a priority list using mathematical models and in complete transparency. I would remove all politicians from the decision-making (see early criticism of Premier Scott Moe whose hometown just happened to be given early doses. Did they have an outbreak? Yes. Did it look like a conflict, especially when other towns who’d also had outbreaks didn’t get special treatment? Yes again. Same thing when he was one of the last age groups to get vaccinated at the drive-thru clinic before vaccines ran out then many people ended up going out of town for vaccinations.)
I might even try to include weighting within categories – a nurse on an ICU ward would get weighted more heavily than a nurse in a hospital but who doesn’t regularly interact with Covid + patients who would get weighted more heavily than a nurse who is able to work from home.). One report I saw said staff in a dentist office were one of the highest risk groups overall so maybe they get more weighting than others who might also work with clients who go maskless?
Maybe to prevent people lying on their vaccination application since more categories means more grey areas instead of pure birthdate which is pretty hard to lie about, you would do random audits of people wanting to get vaccinated. Or require proof when they show up that they fit in one of the identified categories.
Oh, and finally, I’d find a way to make this less of a car-based process – there are numerous people who simply can’t get to a drive-thru vaccination clinic because, duh, they don’t have a car! So I’d make sure there were options for people who don’t have vehicles (and if there are, I’d make sure they are well-publicized as I don’t remember hearing anything about them myself.).
And as much as I hate to say it, library workers would likely not be a high priority by any math (though, if libraries are open, they’re very similar risk factors to places like grocery stores, retail outlets, and occasionally, places where it is hard to social distance.)
Friday Fun Link – How Long Would It Take To Hack Your Password?
You don’t have to submit your password – just type it into the box on this site and it will tell you how long it would take a computer to guess it.
If you’re nervous about testing your own passwords, use something similar eg. instead of “password”, use “massward” or whatever.)
Reasons To Go Back to School / Reasons Not To Go Back To School
Regina Public Schools to return to in-class learning on May 3, 2021. https://t.co/YZayV5QOJv pic.twitter.com/OHaAUGGPED
— Regina Public Schools (@RegPublicSchool) April 26, 2021
Regina Public Schools has announced that students will return to school on May 3 and there is lots of debate on social media and elsewhere about the decision.
Five Reasons It’s Good To Send Students Back To School Right Now
1. I’ve seen it firsthand and also talking to our kids’ teachers and other parents, it’s clear that distance learning, even if workload and assignment complexity are reduced, is more of a struggle for kids in terms of self-starting and motivation and creating boundaries between “home” and “school” among other overriding stresses since we’re STILL IN THE MIDDLE OF A WORLDWIDE GLOBAL PANDEMIC.
2. Many students have parents who are still working or even if they’re at home, are not well-positioned to help guide them for other reason since parents, no matter their background or education level, might still have to focus on their own work and/or aren’t trained as teachers. (We’re fortunate that our kids are 13 and 8 so can be home alone, are relatively responsible, etc. but there are days where Shea and I are both at work and the kids miss their classroom meetings or don’t make much progress on homework during the day or whatever.)
3. Some parents don’t have enough (any?) devices and/or an Internet connection to support distance learning. Or, if they do, one family of four might share a single laptop or whatever so those kids, already likely at higher risk of not doing well in school, are falling further behind.
4. Teachers do their best work one-on-one in person as do students.
5. At some level, you have to trust the people elected to the school board (a few who I know personally) to make the right decision and I’m sure they wouldn’t make this decision if they didn’t feel the benefits outweighed the risks.
Five Reasons It’s Not Good To Send Students Back To School Right Now
1. The biggest reason by far is that, by pretty much every measure, Covid is worse in Saskatchewan than when schools were closed a month ago.
2. The government had a great opportunity when they shut schools to prioritize teachers (and anyone else who works in schools – EAs, receptionists, janitors, etc. etc.) for vaccination in anticipation of this moment to decrease the risk to school staff. But unfortunately they didn’t do that so many school staff members are going back unvaccinated.
3. The variants are more virulent and communicable than the initial Covid virus and there is some debate if some of the accepted measures – six foot distance, cloth masks – are even as effective in preventing variant spread as initially thought?
4. When the first closures happened in March 2020, the City, schools and public libraries made a joint announcement about the closure. This showed unity and also, frankly, provided some cover to each organization if they were going to be criticized as they could point to the other “partners” as making the same tough decision. With this decision, Regina Public Schools is “jumping ahead” of other orgs that are currently shut down until at least May 10.
5. On the flip side of trusting the elected school board trustees, I have a small niggling worry that this decision might at least partly have been made because of pressure from the provincial government to align with their political priorities, either overtly or even covertly. I wish this wasn’t even a thought in my brain but given that the Sask Party has repeatedly made decisions based on politics rather than science throughout this pandemic and most recently. had a very heavy-handed response to a motion by Regina City Council to ban advertising by oil & gas companies, I don’t think it’s outside the realm of possibilities – again, even if not an overt threat, could it be in the back of mind of decision-makers that they don’t want the blow-back of crossing a very popular (and occasionally vindictive) provincial government?
At any rate, the decision is made and since Shea and I aren’t in a position to home school or keep our kids out, we will simply have to hope that this works out and the kids can get through the remaining two months of the school year.
(I observed to one person that if schools get shut down again in the next two months after closing/opening/closing during the past year, that’s even worse as, because at that point, I think another shutdown only happens if something horrible occurs – a massive outbreak or worse.)
Another “First Sign of Spring”?
A bug landed in my beer…feels like I’m camping already! 😉
(And yes, I scooped it out and kept on drinking – no tiny bug is going to make me waste a $5 craft beer!)
Music Monday – “Wishing I was kissing/A girl with lips smooth as pearl/Wishing I was pretty/Wish that I could twist the world round my finger/Wishing I had money/Wishing for the time to spend it all”
“Wish I Were Skinny” – Boo Radleys
RIP Mick Burrs (Steven Michael Berzensky) 1940-2021
PICTURES OF THE DEAD (from “Dark Halo”)
The dead leave us only images of themselves:
souvenirs in washed out colours, dried petals
pressed in family albums, shadows that stain
our papered walls. They abandon us in our rooms,
teach us how to converse with dust, will not
let us forget them. But in our glistening
reeds of dreams we try to free ourselves
from their tangled reflections,
the memory of their once green, once brighter air.
They are shivering inside us now,
not as noisy leaves shaken by the wind
but as thin yellow shoots, muffled, insistent,
the ceaseless splash of wings
closing in on us in moonlight,
the small white feather
we find in our hands.
Just heard the sad news that well-known Saskatchewan poet, Mick Burrs, has passed away.
I’m not sure why but Mick was somebody I always felt a genuine affection for and who seemed to regularly pass in and out of my life, perhaps more than any other writer I knew – whether I was in Saskatchewan, Alberta or Ontario.
I first became aware of Mick’s writing in the early 1990’s.
I was working my way through college as a door-to-door salesman for a cable TV company in towns around rural Saskatchewan during the summer. The company was based in Yorkton (I didn’t know it of course but this is where Mick lived at the time) so one of my coworkers often invited me to drive up Sunday night and stay with his family. This meant I didn’t have to leave home at first light on Monday morning just to get to work for 8am. (And in the most 2020 tangent I can add at this point, I’ll mention that coworker’s sister nearly died from Covid last December.)
In the family’s guest room, they had a loaded bookshelf including Mick’s book “Dark Halo” which was one that I gravitated to repeatedly, first because of its eye-catching cover and then after flipping through, some pretty good poetry and also some pretty provocative titles (“Hitler’s Favourite Movie”).
(Guilty admission – though I have an English degree and spent nearly a decade in the Canadian book industry, I was never a regular reader of poetry. What’s the line I heard a writer say once? “The only people who read poetry are other poets” and there’s probably some truth to that. But after that early exposure, Mick’s work was some that I always made a point of paying attention to.)
Anyhow, after graduating with that shiny English degree, I found work with the Sask Publishers Group and I don’t remember meeting Mick for the first time as some life-changing moment or anything like that. But I do remember running into him at various times – when he’d pop into the office the SPG shared with the Sask Writers Guild or at the SWG conference or at the Sask Book Awards (where he won Poetry Award in 1998 for his book, “Variations on the Birth of Jacob”) and always appreciating our conversations for his obvious intelligence and insights about the world.
Mick lived the life of the stereotypical impoverished artist and is well-remembered for selling his poetry chapbooks at the Regina Farmer’s Market as “a unique form of Saskatchewan produce.”
When I moved to Calgary and ended up working for the Writers Guild of Alberta, one highlight was being able to invite a trio of Saskatchewan poets – Gary Hyland, Bruce Rice and Mick – to be readers at the Poet’s Corner stage at Word on the Street in 2002 or 2003.
The two others booked a hotel but Mick, ever the impoverished artist, ended up crashing on the couch at Shea’s and my condo (and important to note that in most of the inscriptions in this blog post, he regularly included Shea – a small but telling detail about his thoughtfulness.)
After that, our paths crossed less often but when I went to library school in London, ON in 2006, I somehow found out that Mick had also moved to Toronto. We were even able to connect at the Canadian Book Expo (which is where the photo above was taken) and I have a memory that I was an impoverished student but still bought Mick’s latest chapbook and picked up his lunch since (I hoped) my impoverishment would be temporary until I was done my MLIS but I knew Mick had chosen to live an impoverished life – at least in terms of income and material things.
(One other memory from that visit is that he said he never thought he’d leave Saskatchewan but that he’s moved to Ontario for love and I thought that was just a beautiful thing to hear and made me very happy for him.)
That encounter was the last time I saw him.
So it’s a weird mix of feelings to hear that Mick has passed away. There are dozens and possibly hundreds of people in the writing community across Canada who knew him better than I did it. But for some reason, I always felt an affinity for Mick – for his purity of soul and his commitment to his craft and his gentleness (he came to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War and we are a better country for it.)
Thinking about how to write this post, I went to my own bookshelf and pulled a few of the books of his that he’s inscribed for me over the years. I have scattered pictures of them through this post but my absolute favourite is one I’d completely forgotten about – Mick’s early book, “The Blue Pools of Paradise” had been weeded from the Regina Public Library collection so long before I worked at RPL, I ended up with a copy (not sure if I bought it at an RPL book sale or if Mick gave it to me or what) but at any rate, his inscription is hilarious and he was clearly a bit miffed that a library would ever withdraw a poetry book! 🙂
Speaking of RPL, this is a clip from a documentary about Mick which allows you to hear his voice and get a sense of who he was (including him leading a writing workshop *at* RPL and some prescient comments about how D-E-A-T-H might be the only thing to stop him writing…or maybe not!)
WHO WE ARE (from “Dark Halo”)
we are walking bundles
of electronic impulses
the light in each other’s eyeswe are warm hearts
in cold ribcages
each body
a portable prison
until we touch one another
conspiring to escapewe are God’s fingertips
stroking the dark universe
MICK BURRS (1940 – 2021)
It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Mick Burrs, known by his literary name, Steven Michael Berzensky, renowned award-winning Canadian poet. Beloved son of the late Shirley Burrs (nee Levi) and the late Albert Burrs, he will be greatly missed by his dear friends and colleagues, Kent Bowman and Sharon Singer.
Los Angeles born, Mick Burrs was one of Canada’s finest poets, winning both the Saskatchewan Poetry Award in 1983, and the Saskatchewan Book Award for Poetry in 1998. With seven published books of poetry, over 30 chapbooks, and 800 poems in various literary journals, Mick was a former editor of Grain, the prestigious prairie literary magazine.
A voracious reader “poor in everything except books” Mick’s countless tomes were filled with marginalia—ideas sparked by what he read. Mick’s breadth of knowledge was only outshone by his great compassion for people and for the natural world.
In 2001, Coteau Books published The Names Leave the Stones: Poems New and Selected, which achieved great acclaim. Previous publications include Variations on the Birth of Jacob (The Muses’ Company, 1997), Blue Pools of Paradise (Coteau Books, 1983), Dark Halo (Coteau Books, 1993) and Moving in from Paradise (Coteau Books, 1996)
Mick and Ted Plantos recorded the 2001 CD, East Meets West. After moving to Toronto, Mick collaborated with Allan Briesmaster in creating and editing the anthology Crossing Lines: Poets who came to Canada in the Vietnam Era (Seraphim Editions, 2008).
In addition to his many published works and radio plays, Mick played guitar and sang his songs for the CD Gold Rays, accompanied by concert violinist Rob Penner. Mick’s poem Quilled Sonnet was set to music by James Wright and sung by Ottawa soprano Doreen Taylor-Claxton, for the much-lauded CD Hail, Canadian Art Song. Other songs that Mick wrote include: I Have Been to War and Vancouver Rain on SEQUOYA, a folk music odyssey and memorial to Hugh Mullin.
Regina filmmaker Steve Wolfson produced the hour-long documentary about Mick’s life and work: Real Live Poet, excerpted here: http://bit.ly/2QUN7v6
Poet, songwriter, editor, beloved teacher, and mentor to many Canadian poets, Mick’s loss will be greatly felt in the Canadian arts community, and his body of excellent work will long be remembered and cherished by all those artists who labour in the service of creating truth and beauty.
A Celebration of Life will take place in the future, after Covid.