A recent article in the BBC shows how recent violence in Kenya sparked from election disputes has affected the flower industry. Usually Valentines means that workers can expect to work longer hours, and make some extra money. Others can take temporary work on these large farms, but this year ethnic violence has forces many of these workers to flee their homes and jobs, leaving the Kenyan flower industry in a difficult situation for the highest demand of the year. The industry seems to be running on about 80% of it’s usual workforce, while some of the more fortunate workers have been offered housing on the farms, and have thus been able to keep their jobs, many have been forced to send their families to live elsewhere. The most unfortunate ones had to leave everything behind, or worst yet were killed.

Violence has also disrupted transportation routs forcing flower farmers to incur more expenses by having to charter flights to deliver their product. And while we can hope that this violence will be passing, failing to deliver on the industry’s most important day can damage confidence in the Kenyans flower industry for years to come.

In Colombia Valentine day has been adopted by workers in the flower as International Day of Flowers Workers; a day designed to raise awareness about the poor conditions in which many workers toil. This movement is being highlighted by Florverde certification which places its symbol on flower production which meets their social and environmental standards. Now Florverde is trying to increase labor standards and work with trade unions to continue improving the industry.

Florverde certification covers about 25% of the Colombian flower industry, and its criteria include standards such as sealing fumigated areas to protect workers. Although these seem like obvious steps it is actually commons to have workers in the same area where pesticides are being used. In the past the industry has also seen some very nasty disputes over labor issues and attempts at unionizing. Currently there are some farms that have greatly improved conditions for workers offering decent wages, and daycare, but many other farms still have a very long way to go.

Now partnerships with European markets may help improve the situation. In order to sell in European markets, Colombian flowers would have to meet UK’s Ethical Trading Initiative (ETI). Complying with ETI includes freely chosen employment (no prison labor), freedom of association and respecting collective bargaining, safe and hygienic working conditions, the absence of child labor, living wages, reasonable working hours, the absence of discrimination, having regular employment, as well as no tolerance for harsh or inhumane treatment (read their full code here).

It would be great if the other large consumer of cut flowers would also set up to the plate and help improve conditions in this industry that brighten our days, while exploiting so many others.

You can read the BBC article about Kenya here, Colombia here. You can read another article on the situation in Kenya from the Washington Post here.

Image from AP Photo/Bernat Armangue.

December 10 seems to be a date that gathers many great events.

Today is International Human Rights Day. This year the UN is celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. The theme for this year long celebration is Dignity and Justice for all of us. December 10 was chosen on December 10, 1948 by the UN General Assembly, to commemorate the first declaration of human rights. You can learn more about Human Right Day and see how it has been celebrated in the past here.

Today is also Melvin Dewey (1851- 1931) and Emily Dickinson’s (1830-1886) birthdays. Dewey was the inventor of the Dewey Decimal Classification systems for libraries. The American poetess was also born on December 10, 1830. Curiously, both Dewey and Dickinson lived in Amherst, MA around the same time.

Other interesting events that have taken place on this date include; The USA state of Wyoming grants women the vote in 1869; In 1898 the Treaty of Paris is signed, ending the Spanish-American War; The first Noble Prize is awarded in 1901; A year later in 1902 women are given suffrage in Tasmania.

To see other events and birthdays on this date, look here.

Today is also my birthday!

In 1960 the Mirabal sisters were brutally murdered after a long struggle against Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. The sisters grew up comfortably on the island, but once Trujillo rose to power the family lost everything, and this spurred the Mirabal to form a political group of opposition known as the “Agrupación política 14 de junio”; while working in this group the sisters became known as Las Mariposas (The Butterflies). Over the coming years they would be incarcerated, tortured. On November 15, 1960 the regime murdered three of the four sisters; the aftermath of this event created increase attention world wide for Trujillo’s rule, and in 1961 he too was assassinated.

The Mirabal’s story inspired the modern movement to stop violence against women. In 1981 the first “Encuentro Feminista Latinoamericano y del Caribe”, which took place in Bogotá, declared the date of their death as the day to eliminate violence against women. Later, in 1999 through resolution 54/134, the United Nation’s General Assemble declared the day International Day to Stop Violence Against Women.

The Mirabal sisters have also been commemorated 1994 by Julia Alvarez’ 1994 fictionalized account titled “In the Time of the Butterflies“, and the 2001 movie by the same name staring Salma Hayek.

You can read more about the Mirabal sisters from number of articles on the web. There is an article on Antillana.com, on Historia Patria Dominicana, and El Bohio Dominicano.

Image from El Bohio Dominicano.

Argentina made history yesterday by electing their first woman president! Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, wife of the current president Nestor Kirchner, and former senator for Buenos Aires won a solid 45% of the vote. She is considered to be center-left, and populist in her politics and is often seen as the new Eva Peron (Evita). Curiously this is the very position Eva Peron worked so hard for more than 50 years ago, but for which she was not allowed to officially run for. She took would have come to office while being married to the current president.

Fernández de Kirchner’s main issues while in office is likely to be the country’s economy. Argentina suffered a major economic crisis in the early 2000, from which it is still recovering. In her acceptance speech she also spoke about the impact women have in the country and who she hope to continue working with them.

Fernández de Kirchner will be joining the only other woman currently in office in Latin America, Michelle Bachelet of Chile. Hopefully these two women are some kind of proof that Latin American is leaving some of its machismo behind and moving in a new era.

You can read more about Mrs. Fernández de Kirchner from an article in the Guardian, or another article from the BBC. You can also visit her official site, or get her basic bio from Wikipedia.

Image from www.cristina.com.ar

I recently ran across a blog by a Puertorican library student titled “Información: Puente hacia el bien social“. Yesenia Hernández is a student at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, and her blog discusses a number of interesting issues relating to libraries, education, literacy, and technology, as well as cultural information on the island and its history.

Some of the previous blog posts include one on the International Book Fair in Puerto Rico, “Blackle” a lower energy web browser, technology promotion among poor populations in Brazil, UNESCO’s Information Literacy Resources Directory, and the web portal Rare Books Room, just to name a few. Hernández also offers some specific information on library issues in Puerto Rico and the academic institution where she works.

You can access her blog here, just be aware that it is all in Spanish.

Over the weekend London finally broke a tradition that had been running for over 500 years, that of only employing men as Beefeaters at the Tower of London. Moira Cameron from Scotland began her duties as a Beefeater after the requiered 22 years of service in the military, including time in Northern Ireland.

The Guardian had a couple of article about this, but unfortunatly they feel for the easy comments about how the uniforms look, the convenience of having big pockets to carry lipgloss in, and comments of upset (and sexists) turists who complained at having a woman be their tour leader when visiting the Tower.

You can read the articles here and here.

Image info here.

For some years now more and more initiatives are being created to help out poor women develop industries and help communities pull themselves out of poverty. The main belief behind this approach is that lending money to women will be spread out more evenly throughout the community; in general women tend to invest in three areas, health, their children, and their home, all areas that in the long term will benefit the community at large.

A lot of the business that poor women want to develop require relatively small amounts of money to get started, which usually means that banks are not likely to consider them for regular loans, or will do so with conditions that are very unfavorable to them,

This concept of microlending was made popular by Bangladeshi banker and economist Muhammad Yunus (his website), who in 2006, was awarded a Nobel Peace Price with Grameen Bank for helping finance the poor.

Today there are is a growing number of institutions which strive to help promote women headed businesses, some of these are Women’s World Banking, WAM international (Women Advancing Microfinancing), Financial Women’s Association, and the UN’s IFAD (International Fund for Agriculture and Development) among many others.

You can read more about microlending to women from an article in the BBC.

Image info here.

It seems like a lot of the rich and famous spend a good amount of time and money collecting books, manuscripts and other library material, which they treasure during their life time and which later become great assets to libraries once they are bequeathed. A number of very prestigious libraries have started out by such generous donations.

Harvard’s libraries started when John Harvard donated his collection to the institution back in 1638. Later Eleanor Elkins Widener, gave another significant push when she carried out her sons wish to donate his collection to the university. Her son, Harry Elkin Widener, class of 1907, perished with the Titanic.

The John Carter Brown Library, affiliated with Brown University has also greatly benefited from the donation of personal libraries. John Carter Brown was an avid collector of Americana; his collection was further developed by his son John Nicholas Brown, who subsequently assigned the funds to house this collection. During more recent times whey had also received the Paul R. Dupee Jr. collection which focused on Mexican History. And in two different installment, rare book collector Maury Bromsen donated the vast majority of his collection to the John Carter Brown Library as well.

Significant library collections are also established by those who don’t specialize in books. Collections of letters, diaries, and pretty much anything else can eventually also make it into libraries, and are usually considered part of Special Collections. Morehouse College holds the larger portion of the Martin Luther King Jr. Collection. While the University of Texas at Austin, Benson Latin American Collection acquired the Gloria E. Anzaldua collection just a few years ago.

This week the NYT had an article on CEOs personal libraries, describing both some of the treasures that are to be found in them, as well as commenting on just how protective some of these people are about their books. It’s also interesting to learn that some of these collections have hardly anything in common with these people’s professions. For instance, Steven P. Jobs from Apple had a large collection on William Blake.

While as a librarian I’m initially a little uneasy with having such treasures in personal hands, I’m comforted to know that in the end many of these personal treasures do end up in libraries where they can be used and enjoyed by all.

Best known for being J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, lived, and made her mark in the library world between 1883 and 1950. Having great knowledge and passion for illuminated manuscripts and incunabula, Greene became a woman to be recon with in the world of rare manuscripts, books and art, while working at the Morgan Library.

While working for J.P. Morgan she added a number of great treasures to the collection, and in 1924 when the library became public, she became its first director. Having always wanted to make these rare books available to the public, when she became the Morgan library’s director she celebrated by installing a series of exhibits, one of which attracted the record number of 170,000 visitors.

On the personal side, Belle da Costa Greene was the child of Genevieve Ida Fleet and Richard Theodore Greener, an attorney who serves as the Howard Law School, and who was the first African American students and graduate at Harvard. Growing up at a time when race greatly limited her opportunities, Greene eventually changed her last name and adopted “da Costa” as her middle name, using it to create a fictional Portuguese ancestry that would explain her complexion.

“Just because I’m a librarian, doesn’t mean I have to dress like one.” - Belle da Costa Greene

Today the NYT has a book review about her life that was written by Heidi Ardizzone, titled “An Illuminated Life: Belle da Costa Greene’s Journey From Prejudice to Privilege.”

Image info here.

Over the weekend I finished reading “Flower Confidential” by Amy Stewart, and what a fascinating read it was! With this book Stewart gives us both the macro and the micro of the industry; in the process she covers botany, genetics, business, marketing, sales, and even addresses the ever present questions of what is our collective fascination with flowers.

Stewart’s own fascination with flowers comes through in every page. She begins the books with the story of how the “Star Gazer” Lily came to be, explaining not only the breeding aspects, but also providing stories of the lives involved in this development. While explaining how different flower species are cultivated, she discusses the different types of flower farms that can be found in places like California, Colombia, Ecuador, and Holland; in each occasion providing plenty of details not only about the farms’ makeup and management, but also issues relating to pesticide use, labor rights, and land stewardship. In some instances she also traces the development of particular farms, or the growth in popularity of particular flowers.

On the more technical and detailed side, the author provides an amazing amount of detail about production, and growth; always in an accessible style. For instance, you might have guessed that flower production in a plant ought to be closely linked to light exposure, but did you know that it is actually the night length that regulates flowering? Or for instance that at an upscale florist a rose can fetch around $5 per stem, while the florist paid between $1.50 and $2 per stem, and if you trace this flower back to the grower, most likely in Colombia or Ecuador, this same rose earned the grower $.30. As for the worker who actually cared for this rose all along, each stem sold represents less than $.04 of their wages.

When discussing sales and marketing Stewart discusses how flower production began to take place further and further away from the point of consumption. Modern developments have allowed this to be the case, but decades ago, before we had all this infrastructure certain entrepreneurs began to think it was possible to grow flowers in a variety of countries around the Equator, for consumption in places like the USA, Europe and Russia. As early as 1969 Thomas Keller and David Cheever began to explore countries with ideal flower growing conditions, such as high altitudes, proximity to the equator, predictable weather patterns, and good airports, Colombia, violence and all, was perfect.

On the business side of things, Stewart discusses both the Latin American flower trade shows as well as the major one in Amsterdam. With sales she also explored the possibilities and complications of producing more environmentally friendly flowers with a product that still has hardly any brand name recognition. She questions how we can start asking for better flowers when once flowers are at the shop, ready for sale, it is nearly impossible to determine where they started out to begin with.

One of the things that I do think it a big gap in the book is the absence of a discussion of women in the flower industry. Stewart briefly mentioned that both in the USA and in countries around the world, women workers have complained about sexual harassment and exploitation while working at flower farms. Still, the author missed a great opportunity to further explore the situation, and the interesting relationship between an industry that in many ways caters to women, but which also has traditionally employed women in exploitative situations (I’m not arguing that this happens on every farms, but it happens much too often anyway). Still, Stewart does address the complicated issues around flower and labor. She discusses how for countries like Colombia and Ecuador, flower production has a bright and dark side. For years now the USA has promoted flower production in a number of Latin American countries as a replacement crop for illegal ones, the incentive being low or no tariffs as they come into the USA market. Flower production is taking over vast amounts of land and in many occasions pushing peasants off the land and into the city where conditions are often worst. Still, when Stewart asked a grower about this situation he pointed out that things are just as complicated when buying USA grown flowers, since in this case you are likely supporting not an “American” worker, but are instead supporting a Mexican, or other Latin American workers who has likely been separated from their family.

Overall it is a fantastic read if you already know something about the flower industry and what to learn more about the details, or if you occasionally buy flowers and had never thought about what flowers go through before they reach you. Stewart will fill you in with all the details in an intelligent, and straight forward manner.

Amy Stewart also has a great website, including an interesting blog.

Image info; Star Gazer Lily here; Roses here.