Acquisition | Chris Aldrich

Acquired Two Story Shed Blue Little Free Library (Little Free Library)

The Two Story Shed Blue Little Free Library is handmade by craftsmen in Wisconsin and Minnesota. This little library box is weather-resistant, long-lasting, and would make a great addition to any neighborhood.

$349.95

Key Features:

Durable little library design made from pine and plywood with a metal roof for extra water protection

Popular two-story design with an adjustable shelf for extra book storage

Arrives completely finished, assembled, and ready for installation

Handcrafted in America by Amish artisans

Details:

Weighs 40 lbs

Exterior dimensions: 22.5" tall x 14.5" deep x 17" wide (Roof overhangs 1" on all sides of the library)

Interior dimensions: 14.5" wide x 21" tall x 12" deep

Installation materials (post, post topper, and installation hardware) not included

View our Returns Policy.

Official registration and standard charter sign included with your library ($39 value)! They're your key to our World Map, exclusive Facebook stewards group, and other helpful offers and activities. Choose your sign with the drop-down box above. (Charter sign ships separately. Spanish and French signs available in Silver only.)

Special offer! Save 10% with promo code JULY2020 at checkout. Offer is good through July 14 or while supplies last.

Okay, it’s been far too long since I had to decommission my original Little Free Library. So for my birthday today I’ve ordered a new library. It’ll be about two weeks and we’ll be back in business!

I’ve been tempted to build or up-cycle something like I did last time, but I also wanted to support the mission of the non-profit, so I’m considering the overage on my purchase to be a donation to the cause. Plus, this one looks pretty cute even if it’s a bit smaller than my last library.

Acquired Becoming African Americans: Black Public Life in Harlem, 1919-1939 by

Clare Corbould (Harvard University Press)

In 2000, the United States census allowed respondents for the first time to tick a box marked “African American” in the race category. The new option marked official recognition of a term that had been gaining currency for some decades. Africa has always played a role in black identity, but it was in the tumultuous period between the two world wars that black Americans first began to embrace a modern African American identity.

Following the great migration of black southerners to northern cities after World War I, the search for roots and for meaningful affiliations became subjects of debate and display in a growing black public sphere. Throwing off the legacy of slavery and segregation, black intellectuals, activists, and organizations sought a prouder past in ancient Egypt and forged links to contemporary Africa. In plays, pageants, dance, music, film, literature, and the visual arts, they aimed to give stature and solidity to the American black community through a new awareness of the African past and the international black world. Their consciousness of a dual identity anticipated the hyphenated identities of new immigrants in the years after World War II, and an emerging sense of what it means to be a modern American.

This looks fascinating!

Total impulse buy.

Acquired Breaker – podcast listening & discovery (Breaker)

Listen to the best new podcast episodes with Breaker. Follow your friends to see what they’re listening to, and discover new shows that you’ll love. Like, share, and comment on your favorite episodes. Join the Breaker community and listen to the best stuff!

Downloaded a copy of this to my Android Phone to test out the functionality. Not much hope for using it as a daily driver, but I’m curious how they handle sharing URLs and if it could be used in creating listen posts.

Reminds me that I should throw a few podcast feeds into Indigenous for Android to see how it might work as a podcatcher and whether it would make a good Listen post micropub client.

↬ IndieWeb.org 2020/Austin/fromflowtostock Session (2020-02-22) (#)

Acquired Why We're Polarized by Ezra Klein (Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster)

America’s political system isn’t broken. The truth is scarier: it’s working exactly as designed. In this book, journalist Ezra Klein reveals how that system is polarizing us—and how we are polarizing it—with disastrous results.

“The American political system—which includes everyone from voters to journalists to the president—is full of rational actors making rational decisions given the incentives they face,” writes political analyst Ezra Klein. “We are a collection of functional parts whose efforts combine into a dysfunctional whole.”

In Why We’re Polarized, Klein reveals the structural and psychological forces behind America’s descent into division and dysfunction. Neither a polemic nor a lament, this book offers a clear framework for understanding everything from Trump’s rise to the Democratic Party’s leftward shift to the politicization of everyday culture.

America is polarized, first and foremost, by identity. Everyone engaged in American politics is engaged, at some level, in identity politics. Over the past fifty years in America, our partisan identities have merged with our racial, religious, geographic, ideological, and cultural identities. These merged identities have attained a weight that is breaking much in our politics and tearing at the bonds that hold this country together.

Klein shows how and why American politics polarized around identity in the twentieth century, and what that polarization did to the way we see the world and one another. And he traces the feedback loops between polarized political identities and polarized political institutions that are driving our system toward crisis.

This is a revelatory book that will change how you look at politics, and perhaps at yourself.

↬ Ezra Klein Why the media is so polarized — and how it polarizes us (Vox) (2020-01-28) (#)

Acquired Dyson V8 Animal vacuum cleaner

Acquired Dyson V8 Animal vacuum cleaner.

The Dyson V8 Animal stick vacuum is engineered for homes with pets. Captures dust, animal hair and allergens.

I got one of these at Bed Bath & Beyond for $239.00 which was one of the better deals I’ve seen recently. I was loathe to try out yet another vacuum cleaner and didn’t have much hope that anything could win against the inimitable German Shepherd Lily. However, I don’t think I’ve ever seen our carpets cleaner! I think the first pass at the living room rug took about two whole dogs’ worth of hair out. How did I manage to live without this for the past two years.

Now if I could just get the Furminator version of this vacuum so we could get it at the source…