Here are the books that inspired you

"I wrote a story about the old municipal dock on the Mississippi River in Baton Rouge using digital archives almost exclusively. No one had written it previously and I was inspired during COVID. Few people were researching in person (certainly not I) and I was able to research and write part of it from the comfort of home because of access to the LSU databases that held digitized newspapers that covered Baton Rouge from the early 20th Century until the present. When COVID subsided, I began to use other sources. But your story in support of archives was most welcome — I agree completely. Libraries and archives must continue to be funded!"

— Author / writer Mary Ann Sternberg

"On the archiving tip, I've felt the same appreciation for what Ubuweb has done for avant garde, experimental, poetry, sound art, and other quirks (and treasures) of recorded history. It's been around for a few decades as a teeming repository of sonic delight and import, and has recently become more active again as other 'official' archives disappear and/or are dismantled. Archives as resistance, hell yeah!"

— Audio producer Julie Shapiro

From jail, Mary would send sweet letters to her kids, festooned with hearts and stickers. “I love you,” she’d write Karina, “with the heart of a lion.” She’d often include an earnest token of maternal care: a rectangular card that promised, “This coupon entitles Karina to mucho hugs and kisses,” or a “Prayer for Stress” that read, “Quiet my anxious thoughts.” Both her children struggled. When friends from high school asked Karina where her mom was, she’d keep it vague—“San Diego,” she’d say. She and Carlin held out hope that their “real mom” would return: the good-natured woman who’d sewn their Halloween costumes by hand (a green T. rex for Carlin one year, and a sequined disco queen for Karina), and who, whenever they were sick, held a Gatorade bottle to their lips and a washcloth to their foreheads. “When she was on her medication, her daily life was completely different,” Karina told me. “We could tell right away when she’d been off it. She’d go into a tunnel, and we had to protect ourselves.”