Notices by Robin DeRosa (actualham@social.coop)

I live in a small, rural town in New Hampshire. This morning, ICE was here arresting people. Seems like they were particularly targeting the road crews working on construction projects in town. It feels and looks like terrorism to see these masked men in unmarked cars grabbing people on their way to work. Everyone should be ashamed of this country. Everyone should be afraid. We all have to do whatever we can to stop this.

Happy Halloween, punks! Let's all take a moment to remember the year I made my confused husband dress up as a paywall so I could be Open Access Hero.

#OpenAccess #OA #OER #libraryLife #HigherEd #Elsevier #library #Halloween #AcademicHumor

Great turnout in the rural town of Plymouth, New Hampshire. #NoKings #NHPolitics

My life is in a hard place right now. This weekend I’m really grateful to The Ballad of Wallis Island (film) and Demon Copperhead (novel) for showing me what’s beautiful about life, despite—or because of—how hard it can be.

I’m late to the game on both, but 5/5. And 5/5 to what art gives us when we need it.

Generative AI is Turning Publishing Into a Swamp of Slop https://www.pastemagazine.com/books/publishing/generative-ai-is-turning-publishing-into-a-swamp-of-slop

#AI

Help me out! I am working on a creative project, and I need to know your favorite (ie- worst) QUACK in higher education. Who is peddling snake-oil, quick-fixes, and $$$ROI$$$ instead of focusing on learning?

Add your favorites (ie-- the biggest and most riduculous and dangerous asses) here: https://padlet.com/RobD/quacks

(Please punch UP! Target big corps, $$ players, disturbers of the public good, etc-- not small businesses or obscure individual educators trying their best in a broken system)

Happy to be with a HUGE group of fed-up New Hampshirites at the State House today. The crowds ultimately crossed the whole lawn and both sides of the street for blocks. #HandsOff

NIH to terminate hundreds of active research grants https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00703-1

In the hospital with my dad and here are a few things he’s been telling me as he starts to regain some strength. He loves to tell me stories of his growing up. (Slow thread.)

When he was a teenager, he would take the old metal cores of carburetors from his dad’s mechanic shop and bring them to the junk man to sell the metal. He would get 5 cents a pound. He did this every Saturday and that was what paid the rent on the shop many weeks.

His grandmother rescued a pigeon that had a broken wing. She nursed it and kept it out the fire escape on a long string around its foot. When it was time to eat, she would pull the pigeon down from the roof with the string and feed it.

The pigeon was named Brigit.

My dad’s father had his station wagon repossesed, and that was the only car they had for the family business. My dad was about 14. In order to get the money to get the car back, he went to customers who had taken delivery of rebuilt carburetors from his dad but hadn’t paid their bill. Most of them were broke too. But he collected whatever he could from them in 5 and 10 dollar bills and it took all day on foot and by bus. And he got enough to get the car back for a month.

My dad was a scrawny little kid and had no muscle or intimidation cred. He said most customers were just glad that they only had to give a few bucks to a kid. But he said he was afraid someone would beat him up for asking for their money.

My dad’s dad, my grandpa, was one of eight kids. They were raised in the North End in Boston by a single mom, my great grandmother. Every morning the eight kids would get up and whoever got up first got the shoes for the day.

I don’t know if that’s true but my dad swears it wasn’t told as a joke.

My great grandmother who had the pigeon also had chickens. In an apartment in Boston. When it was Easter, she gave my dad a basket of baby chicks. My dad lived in an apartment in Medford. I said, “What the heck did you do with a basket of chicks in the middle of the city?” He said, “I took them home and loved them until one by one they died and I cried.”

On St. Joseph’s Day, my great-grandmother would make Zeppoles (Italian cookie thing) and would not let anyone eat any until my dad came by for them, because his name was Joseph.

Though then he clarified that it was him or his three cousins, because they were all named Joseph. 🤣

Which is also funny because if you remember Leno from the next bed over (previous thread), he’s had three nephews visit over the last two days and all three are named Joseph!

The Italians love our Josephs.

Which also makes me think about immigration. All of my great-grandparents and a couple of my grandparents were born in Italy.

My grandparents were named Adelina Tomasello, Victoria Montouri, Attilio Fiore, and Salvatore DeRosa. 🇮🇹

But they were all so excited about becoming American, and they wanted their kids to speak English.

They named their kids Paula, Joe, Betty, Carol, and Bob. 🇺🇸

My generation is named Robin, Peter, Linda, Lisa, Bobby, Matt, Jen, Andy, John.

But both my brothers Peter and I picked our grandmother’s Italian names for our own kids’ middle names (his kid is Lucy Victoria and mine is Ruby Adeline).

Hospitals can be so hard and disease and illness bring such struggle. But sitting bedside for family is weirdly something like a gift. These stories, this ancestry, the birth and dying and death and memory of it all. Something like a gift in the right light.