Robert Kennedy, Jr. was 14 years old when his father was assassinated in 1968.  I was a junior in high school that year.   I woke that day and wondered how we could endure any more pain.  JFK in 1963.  Martin Luther King in April 1968.  Bobby in June. It was unfathomable to us.

In his early years,  Bobby was not without the circumspection and controversy of many of the Kennedy family.   At the age of 30, in 1984, Kennedy was sentenced to 1,500 hours of community service.  He  joined the Riverkeeper organization to satisfy that commitment. When he was through, he joined that group as its chief attorney and he has never looked back.  Like many in his family, Kennedy has redeemed himself with a life of passionate activism.

Today, among his many, many hats, Kennedy co-hosts Ring of Fire, a nationally syndicated American radio program.  He founded the Waterkeeper Alliance and is a professor of environmental law at Pace University School of Law.  He is also a senior attorney for the non-profit Natural Resources Defense Council.

I didn’t know what to expect of Kennedy when he took the stage on Wednesday afternoon in a room that held thousands of people, the 54,000 square foot Terrace Ballroom, the largest ballroom in the Northeast.  Four huge screens projected the images of the speakers on the stage so that no nuance, no expression, no smile, no furrowed brow was held back from us.Over one-and-a-half hours later, I truly hoped that Robert Kennedy would never stop speaking. His pragmatism, his hope and his optimism were mesmerizing.  I wanted to take his brain and clone it.  I wanted to bottle his knowledge, his eloquence and his passion and take it home with me.

Don’t get me wrong.  Kennedy didn’t paint a pretty picture of our government but rather hurled images of a government stained by political interests.  He spelled out the atrocities along the Appalachian coal-mine peaks and valleys.  He threw accusations at BP and the oil industry and at re-exposed the abomination of Wall Street.   Time and time again Kennedy offered statistics in rapid-fire succession laying blame on our democracy that has been hijacked.

Yet, why then, did the audience give him a standing ovation that rose from optimism in our hearts?  Kennedy gave us hope that we, like him, would help to make the changes necessary to stay the America we have always been and can be again in the future.  It takes me, it takes you, it takes a Kennedy, and Americans like a Sanchez, a Gotovich, a Nguyen, a Chin and an Abdullah to make a difference to our country.  We can all try and we can all succeed.

As librarians, we can take away this hope for freedom and liberty of a country that does not have to be beholden to the interests of the energy-business and the corporations that choose to poison our water and our land. Kudos to the Conference organizers for choosing  this speaker to open our conference.  It was proof that our world did not end in 1963 and again in 1968 but it lives on in this son of Robert F. Kennedy who can inspire and educate a new generation.

Debby kindly gave us directions to the Tillamook Cheese Factory, where we sampled their amazing ice cream as a late-morning snack. After that, we headed up Highway 101, stopping at some dramatic ocean viewpoints and Arcadia beach. We saw a crew of dedicated whale watchers and noted all the warning signs about tsunami danger areas. The highway took us to Astoria, where we sadly turned out to be a few months too early for the Goonies 25th anniversary celebration. There, too, we took the opportunity to see the local library, which still had a number of card catalogs onsite to give it a classic feel.

Back in Portland on an even more beautiful day of sunny weather, we finally found the registration area after entering the convention center from exactly the wrong end. Natalie Merchant and Nicholas Kristof provided an excellent kickoff for the conference. Merchant’s songs based on poems set the mood, and she ended up in tears and with half the audience in tears as she sang an emotional thank you to the crowd. Kristof, an Oregon native, also gave the de rigeur accounting of how libraries impacted his youth. I think librarians live for nothing more than the chance to hear, just once, that they truly changed a life, so it’s very gratifying that so many speakers at our conferences share these stories. His talk about the importance of improving the lot of women around the world also touched and inspired the mostly female audience. The website for his new book with wife Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, offers a listing of organizations active in supporting women around the world. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling that, after hearing his talk, I wanted to do something concrete to help.

Points I gleaned: 

• He strives to have “the heart of Mother Theresa and the scaleability of Starbucks” – great tagline!
• Education is a hand up, not a hand out.
• Involve local people, especially parents, to increase the likelyhood that your work will continue after you’ve moved on. You can only help people who want to help themselves. Have you read Bridges Out of Poverty yet?
• Literacy is a long-arc proposition
• We need to find a way to get beyond the “they should do something about that” mentality.
• Have an intense focus on results – GSD – Get . . . you know . . . Stuff Done – what gets measured gets done
• Dream big – go big or go back home

Oh, and did I mention how great a job he does at telling the story? The story of mothers walking down a 2 mile mountain to carry 110 bags of concrete on their backs. Stories of children mashing the “stage” when he opened the boxes of books. Stories of children who are helping to write some of the very first pictures book (ever!) in their local language.

Leaves me thinking “Daddy, will you help me buy a yak?” But seriously, I think our yak is our service, and with nearly 73% of Cols City School children on free or reduced lunch, we have our own huge gulf to cross (and sometimes our own rickety bridges). He’s got some great BHAGs (big hairy audacious goals).

And what about the Big Hairy Audacious Questions? Here are mine:

• What can we do to really get our local parents or teachers or community leaders involved in leading Ready to Read workshops?
• What barriers do we still have that keep us from GSDing, and how do we break them down?
• And, because it’s been a long day and I didn’t really get much dinner, when is my delivery guy going to arrive with my Mostaccioli?

And after that “opening” came the opening of the exhibit hall.  I took my time getting there – with a quick and very expensive stop a the ALA shop — and I was amazed as always at the wide variety of services and products that it takes to keep libraries running.  Naturally I saw tons of stuff that I could have spent hours drooling over, knowing full well that my library system would be hard pressed to afford any of it.  But one can always dream.  I think the furniture vendors are where I get that drooly feeling the most (despite being a geek).  Oh to be able to redesign a library with an unlimited budget!

Of course I had to make a stop at Baker and Taylor to get my picture taken with the cats.  Two harder working cats you’ll never meet (and trust me, I do know what I’m talking about).  a little more roaming burned up time pretty quickly, so I settled down to a quick demo of the Graphic Novel core collection product from H. W. Wilson and then finished up my first visit with a run through the publisher tables.  Still more to see, so rest assured, I will be back.

And here’s a completely unsolicited plug that I can’t resist adding.  Check out the book “He Said Beer, She Said Wine” at the DK booth.  I’ve had the pleasure to meet one of the authors of this book, and if you like either beer or wine (or, like me, both) you’ll find this book a real hoot.

Okay, one more aside.  Is it just me or are public librarians some of the most polite people you’ve ever met?  Is it because of our job or does the job just attract that type of person?  I can only say that being in a jam packed exhibit hall with hundreds of people moving about and still being surrounded by “thank you’s” and “excuse me’s” is just an amazing feeling.

Okay, back on track.  My final activities for my first day were short visits to the New Members Reception and also to a reception hosted by Overdrive.  Both were enchanting (except perhaps for the part where I ended up walking up 14 flights of stairs…but that’s a story for another time) but I must confess that even on the best of days I’m not really a “reception” person, and after a long day like today, I am even less so.  But I do understand that a large part of PLA is the networking and the efforts taken by the PLA committees and the vendors are appreciated even by those of us who are a little less social than most.  So maybe I’ll give the All Members Reception a go on Friday.  so if you see a San Antonio librarian/blogger there, doing a fair imitation of a wall flower, do come on over and say hello.  I promise I don’t bite.

 Tomorrow, the programs begin.  I am excited!