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5 min read 34

UofWinds 393, Week 3̶3̶ 34 2024: The Bureau of Nooks and Crannies, Funology (YES, FUN), Justice from Below


Good morning. I'm sitting in the study, beside an open window, listening to New Sounds. It has been because of this program (and BBC 3's Night Tracks) that I am now able, without any conscious effort on my part, to start recognizing the names of various contemporary music composers. Each time I hear a familiar name, I radiate a small signal of the joy of connection.

Some weeks ago, I watched a video of Andrew Huang talking to fellow music-maker Sarah Belle Reid about what drew them from classical music to making noise, and both of them tell stories that begin in libraries. Huang talks about how he discovered vinyl records of Morton Sobotnik in his library, which lead into an obsession with modular synthesizers. And Reid tells a story that also begins in a library when and where she found Pauline Oliveros' Sonic Meditations. When I went to check out my local library's copy of her collection of "deep listening scores", I learned that the library staff person who checked out the book for me had seen Oliveros perform on our campus some twenty or so years ago.

I'm trying to find the right words to describe those particular small moments of joy when I make these kind of connections. It is not unlike the happy sound my new bluetooth speaker makes: two bloopy notes, one ascending. And then, music.

The Bureau of Nooks and Crannies


How can we let more people know that there are so many potential connections that can be activated and be made alive from the unassuming quiet inertness of the local library? For one, we can see what the Los Angeles Public Library is doing with their Creators in Residence program and especially, the Bureau of Nooks and Crannies.

Directory of the Bureau's Library Experiences
Where to find Collaborative Stories & Mischievous Meditations

You Are a Library (Central Library)
A guided exploration of the departments, resources, and collections within ourselves.

You Are History (Atwater Village Branch Library)
A haunting tale about re-remembering who we once were.

You Are the Future (Vernon Branch Library)
A cutting-edge research project taking place hundreds of years from today.

You Are a Lost Love (Baldwin Hills/Chatsworth Branch Libraries)
A romantic quest to capture words that have been left unsaid.

You Are a Giant (Lincoln Heights/Pacoima Branch Libraries)
An important assignment for big-hearted creatures ready to help a small community.

You Are Not a Book - Any of the 72 Los Angeles Public Library branches
A guided exploration of what it means to belong in a library.

Currently, there are two experience designers in the program. Andy Crocker, who may have developed the Bureau of Nooks and Crannies and Shing Yin Khor, who developed a series "large-scale, hand-painted maps documenting historical and personal narratives from L.A.’s queer and immigrant diaspora communities".

When I read that latter name, it sounded familiar to me. And sure enough, I have written about Shing Yin Khor's work before, in issue 249. Bloop-bleep!

Funology (YES, FUN)


I love the Bureau of Nooks and Crannies for many reasons. For one, and I particularly enjoy the fact that experience could be shared by anyone brave enough to call up a person they know to invite them to check out the mystery together. A grandparent could invite a grandchild. A co-worker to ask another if they would be interested in meeting outside of work for a low-key adventure. Friends could go just as an excuse to spend time with each other.

As someone who reads game studies for fun, I am aware of how the word fun is notoriously difficult to define. Many writers associate the word fun with the experience of flow, when one is so engrossed in a task that they lose themselves in the moment. But something is lacking from this narrow definition. What about the fun of hanging out with friends doing mundane errands together?

Alie Ward's podcast episode dedicated to fun - Funology (YES, FUN) with Catherine Price - was an episode I didn't realize I needed to hear until I heard it. Maybe you'll feel the same as well.

What exactly is “fun?” How will you know when you’re having it? Do introverts have special alone fun? Is it okay to seek fun in bleak times? Catherine Price is an award-winning journalist and author who spent years researching the science of fun for her book “The Power of Fun: How to Feel Alive Again.” She let me lob many questions at her including: adult vs. childhood fun, what’s the difference between happiness and laughter and fun, what does fun do to your actual meat body, how can you have more of it, do substances mean more fun, and how to have fun when the world is crumbling in cinders around you – and why it’s important that you do. It’s a fun one, I promise.

And if you are still not inspired to call someone up to find fun together, Ann Friedman has shared this list of 75 Nice Things To Do For Yourself.

Justice from Below


I got myself a laptop and that meant I needed new laptop stickers. Now my new laptop has a lovely illustration of Ursula K. Le Guin with the quote, To oppose something is to maintain it. It is from a longer passage in The Left Hand of Darkness:

"To oppose something is to maintain it. They say here "all roads lead to Mishnory." To be sure, if you turn your back on Mishnory and walk away from it, you are still on the Mishnory road. To oppose vulgarity is inevitably to be vulgar. You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk in a different road."

I find it challenging quotation because there are plenty of situations that require an active stance of opposition. But I keep the sticker to remind me that the ebbing or resolution of such conflict might require altogether different roads and destinations.

I've been meaning to find a timely reason to share this article that I've had saved as a bookmark for a while now, and I think my new sticker is a good-enough excuse: Justice from Below from an issue of n+1 from last year. In it, Amna A. Akbar suggests that, for all the attention that the Supreme Court demands, perhaps it is within the lower courts where activists could and should intervene.

In the absence of yachts, taking on an institution as powerful as the Supreme Court will require more than popular opinion and presidential commissions. It will require a movement — or a movement of movements. Those movements are already assembling, and their work will take time and extraordinary effort. But the Supreme Court is far from the sole site of struggle. For all its chutzpah, the Court sees a small number of cases every year, each of them scrutinized to the nth degree and lawyered by the most rarefied of lawyers. Meanwhile, thousands of lower courts are performing a parallel function, doing the ground-level work of debt collection, incarceration, and deportation every day. These federal, state, and municipal courts — which employ tens of thousands of judges, lawyers, clerks, guards, janitors, and more — are where some of the most meaningful political conflicts are taking place.

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