Baseball will add two more wild card playoff teams, one in each league.  Also, the Houston Astros will move from the NL Central to the AL West.  It gets worse though!

There will be an expansion of inter-league play to 30 games, and yes folks, the potential for the National League to finally “adopt” the dreaded designated hitter (DH).  It could get worse – switching to aluminum bats, psychedelic laser shows and robot assisted bat and ball boys.

Seriously though, it is about one thing – MONEY!!!  Bud Selig is all for “fans loving the games”, but let’s be honest; all these cosmetic changes have the inglorious underpinnings of the mad dash for profit.  It is why games that are long scheduled for the daytime end up being turned into night games to “accommodate” national TV audiences.

To the average baseball Joe, these changes are probably innocuous, but to those who truly care about America’s pastime, it is as painful as an 18 inning game.

We’ve also paid dearly with a War on Terrorism, which perverted itself to an invasion of two countries, 5,000 American troops dead, countless others maimed on both sides, at least a trillion dollars spent ad nauseam.   Oh, and remember the tax cuts that didn’t pay for these wars either…good job George Bush and his ilk.

I am a U.S. Navy veteran from a different era – think post Vietnam era in the late 1970′s.  We were not at war then, but we had a different type of war – the Cold War, in which we were always a “hair trigger” from WWIII.    These things seemed sterile to us at the time, i.e. how many missiles did the Soviet’s have, what did we have, Mutally Assured Destruction etc.  We didn’t seem to go on and on about that time in our history – though the outcomes would have made 9/11 seem like a small popgun incident.

I am tired of hearing about 9/11!  Why?  Because it is thrown at us from all angles; just turn on your television or pick up a magazine; anyone for that matter.  It was a day that all of us will remember, including where we were at and what we were doing.   10 year anniversaries deserve to be remembered with dignity and discretion – none of that exists with 9/11; it will always hang around our generational neck.

Why don’t we remember the “never again another Vietnam”?  It has just been playing out over the last 10 years, but the record keeps playing over and over again….just like 9/11.  Let’s celebrate our accomplishments and build our nation back up with innovative programs to get people back to work.  I doubt many people who are jobless think much about 9/11 or terrorism, they just want their lives and liberties back again.

Stroke, it seems, is much more common than we think, but the good thing is how quickly (if help is available) they can be addressed and effects can be offset.

The doctor’s are saying that he will be fine, he has no slurring – at least today – of his speech and is in one of the best places for neuroscience care here in St. Louis.

I believe they are pointing to the much more common type of stroke, that which involves a clot in a vein/artery in the brain.   Symptoms vary on the area of the brain which has been affected.

So we are just waiting, particularly for the results of the MRI.  I believe he is at the “out-of-the-woods” stage, but there must be constant monitoring.  The brain has a remarkable way of compensating after trauma such as a stroke.

Now if they could just give him a little peace and quiet, he’ll be okay – think no vital signs being taken at 2:00 a.m.

Labor Day is viewed here in the U.S. as another day promoting a “sale of the century”, last day for swimming (everybody out of the pool), bar-b-que, and football season kick-off.  I believe that very few people think of what the day really means. 

For we laborers, it should represent all of our rights and privileges as workers.  Many of the advancements in worker’s rights were honed by laborers  in the late 19th century.  So what?  Well, I grew up in a union family, so we were always reminded of the importance of organized labor and for all of the pro-labor laws which are supposed to “protect” the modern American laborer.  I think if it were up to the business world, there may be no Labor Day, primarily because it would be another day of generating profit for the wealthy – heaven forbid!

So let’s hear it for the American Worker, still the most productive in the world; forget about a Labor Day parade - let’s go party at the pool and bar-b-que, after we’ve gone to the “sale of the century”.

I believe that one of the first things a doctor must do – depending if he/she were made aware – is to develop a clinical detachment of and to their patients.  Why is this?  Because doctor’s would go crazy if every patient they treated, either suffers from pain for the rest of their life, or meets the grim reaper. 

How does this apply to library science?  Well in a much smaller way, a librarian (particularly a newbie) must detach themselves from the collection – if they do not do this, then they will go crazy wanting to read everything from Modern Plumbing to an obscure article in PubMed.  Thus the librarian is prsented with a larger dilemma than a doc.   I  have learned this “clinical detachment” over the past few years, but sometimes I just cannot help myself to a heaping helping of Wikipedia, Google Earth, Popular Science, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, various medical dictionaries, ad nauseam.

Alas, I have clinically detached myself from these “patients”.  Now, doctors have something to learn about detachment….and they didn’t even go to library school!

Sometimes, it is not enough to “shhhhhhh” the student patrons.  So (tongue in cheek) I have decided to establish a goon squad for both my library and lab, together these constitute what is called the learning resources center.

These goons could be summoned at a moments notice, and would absolutely “thrash” the student competition, then follow-up by making a few choice “unfortunates” to spend their entire day researching obscure topics on EBSCO. 

Yeh, I kinda like that!  A goon squad for all occasions

I have decided to give a extra “little” annotated bibliography here, why?  Because this work is perhaps one of the best non-fiction books I have ever read. 

Cancer has touched every human being – in one way or another.  Dr. Mukherjee combines science, hope, personal struggle, and an enlightment to a “malady” we have dealt with (since the beginning of time)  and will be dealing with for generations to come.  This is not only a professional biography, i.e. cancer kills very professionally and often silently, it is also a personal biography of an oncologist whose skin peels off to reveal his true care and concern for his patients and his conveyance of the scourge that is cancer.

It is highly recommended reading – for me, it is personal, since the disease killed my father at 62 years, and my grandmother at 75 years – colon and pancreatic cancers respectively.  Recalling other friends and relatives stories here would take a long time.  Suffice to say, if you take time to read this, and can get past some of the serious science of cancer history and contemporary biomolecular jargon, you will be glad for both yourself and for others who may be interested whenever this subject is brought up.  The fact that we are our own “cancer factories” sometimes gone badly wrong is something that only science fiction could have imagined when the true story begins in the 1950′s with Dr. Sidney Farber’s noble quest of understanding and hope for a cure.

The more this story is read, the more fascinated one will become.  This is done not only examining  the science and the dedication of the researchers and doctors, but the true stories of the patients’ hopelessness, hopefulness, bewilderment and bravery during their collective encounters with the “Emperor”.  God willing, someday the Emperor will fully be disrobed and our quest for healthier generations to come will be realized.

Also, this book has seriously renewed my interest in health-sciences librarianship.  God willing, someday that renewal will be complete.

I am not debating this man’s skill, but in relationship to so many other necessities of society, can this man really be serious?  He states that he wants to play in St. Louis and has put his roots here, but talk is cheap when it comes to earning the God Almighty dollar.

Mr. Pujols is no better than any of the other greedy players who have played the game in the “modern era”.  The era that I know (1960′s and 1970′s) is considered the final stage of what is called “The Golden Age of Baseball”.  It was something to go to the stadium, like a big beautiful dream.  I didn’t see our St. Louis’ own Stan Musial, but “The Man” is considered one of the greatest players to wear a major league uniform  – believe me folks, you will NEVER see another of his ilk in professional sports again.  Most kids nowadays consider these “golden age men” nothing but mere dinosaurs from a black and white backdrop.  However, I did see players like Bob Gibson, Sandy Koufax, Roberto Clemente, Lou Brock, et al….too numerous to name here.

Which brings me back to Mr. Pujols.  How much is enough?  The micro-economists have calculated that Mr. Pujols’ salary for one at bat will be roughly around $ 49,000.   I believe that I, and my fellow librarians, add just as much to society and its advancement as Mr. Pujols.  However, I struggle to pay bills and my student loan on a regular basis.

The St. Louis Cardinals also have been known to be a cheap team when it comes to signing quality players.  They get a revenue base of 3+ million fans per year, plus all of the gigantic money which comes with Busch Stadium – that “shopping mall with a baseball field in the middle”.

In general and the final analysis, where are our priorities?