Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

1989, the year I turned 30, was another difficult one for me. Looking back, I realize now that I was still in mourning over my mom’s passing, and that it took a long time to get over it. I wasn’t happy living in Ann Arbor or working at the Undergraduate Library, but I also realized that I couldn’t go back home. Everything there had changed. I felt stuck in a job I wasn’t crazy about, and I had piles of bills to pay. I couldn’t just quit. To top it off, my best friend Richard’s wedding took place in mid-January, and I had to miss it because I had spent so much money traveling back and forth to Tucson the previous year. I just couldn’t afford it. It was a real bummer.

My job duties continued to consist of providing reference service, building collections and doing instruction. I was also given more responsibility for managing the PIC program and conducting training sessions for our reference assistants, but before I knew it, I got into trouble, as I continued to have disagreements with my supervisor. I felt that the only reason she wanted me to manage the PIC program was because I was the only minority staff person around to handle it, and I felt used. One day the head of the Undergraduate Library also got on my case. She took me to lunch, and before I knew it, she was tearing me a new one. She told me that I’d better get with the program or else. It was a warning that if I wasn’t more cooperative towards my supervisor, I’d be let go, and it made me very angry. I wanted out. I hated Michigan at that point. I felt that I was surrounded by a bunch of racist phonies who were full of themselves and who didn’t really give a damn about people of color, much less students.

Thank goodness my friend Barb Hoppe was around. I’ll never forget her kindness and generosity. She took me out on a long walk one day when I was very depressed to look for “signs of Spring” and then we later drove to Muskegon together, making a pit stop in Lansing and Michigan State University, where she went to school.  She showed me where she grew up in Muskegon and took me to Lake Michigan to see the lighthouse. She knew I was a mess, and she was very supportive at a time when I needed a friend. We’re still good friends to this day.

My mom’s death wasn’t the only thing that had me down. I really missed home. I missed the food, the culture, the mix of Spanish and English that was spoken around town,  the desert and my friends. Ann Arbor, while having been known in the past as a progressive community, was turning into Yuppieville, and I just didn’t fit in. Bookstores and head shops were rapidly being replaced by frozen yogurt shops, high end boutiques and expensive restaurants. My Mexican working class roots and my own beliefs about who I was made me feel very different and out of place. After I had graduated from college, from  around 1983 to 1986,  I felt like I was sitting on top of the world. I had a popular radio show and was an actor in a radical street theater group, and I was interested in what was going on in the world around me. I felt like my radio show and involvement with the Teatro helped me make a real contribution to the betterment of my community. My children’s librarian job also made me feel like I was making a difference. At Michigan, I just couldn’t find my niche. I had no creative outlets, nor did I feel any sense of community with others who wanted to make positive change in the world. All I had was Brent, and he and I were drifting apart.

Around the beginning of the year, I found a group of Latino graduate students who liked to drink and party, and I started hanging out with them. They were from various places around the country, including Texas, California and New York. We all attended the after party when Michigan won the NCAA basketball championships, and were present when the students started going crazy on South University Blvd., turning over vehicles and lighting fires in the street.  I was having a lot of fun, but was also paying a big price for it. My relationship with Brent deteriorated to the point that he ended up moving out of our apartment for a while.

I also developed a crush on a student who was part of the group of Latino students I had met. He wasn’t gay however, but I felt like he really liked me, so I just ended up spending lots of time with him, but frustrated most of the time, and feeling guilty because I was falling in love, and Brent and I were still attached. One day a friend of the guy I had the crush on showed up, and this guy was really bad news. He had gotten into trouble in Los Angeles, apparently, and was “in hiding” so to speak. He brought drugs with him and was soon having them delivered from California via Fedex on a regular basis. Before I knew it, I was having a really good time and spending a lot of money. There was snow everywhere, even in late May.  One night while we were all at my friend’s apartment drinking and getting crazy, I made the mistake of throwing a basketball at him, saying “Catch!”,  while he was taking a swig of beer. The basketball hit the bottom of the bottle of beer, and in turn the bottle broke my friends two front teeth. Boy, what a mess that all turned out to be. That was the low point of the year for me. I was in really bad shape. My friend ended up going back home to California to get his teeth repaired, and I ended up feeling like a royal idiot and wanting to die. I also had to help pay to get his teeth capped. The party was over, that’s for sure.

By the time the American Library Association Annual conference rolled around in late June, I was really ready to get the hell out of Dodge. The conference was held in Dallas, Texas, and it was spread out all over the place. It was hot and muggy too. I roomed with my friend Karen and her husband Stuart in a dumpy hotel off the beaten path. It was a nightmare. However, there were some very interesting things that happened. My friend from Library School, Richard DiRusso, was also there at the conference, and he had borrowed a big Cadillac convertible from one of his friends who lived there in Dallas. Richard took me with him to the gay pride festival and we drove around town for a while. That was a lot of fun. Another thing that happened was that I decided to check out the employment placement center at the conference to poke around for possible jobs. I looked like a bum, but didn’t care. I was just there to look around. As luck would have it, however, I ended up talking to the people from the Chicago Public Library and the Los Angeles Public Library. There were children’s librarian positions available at both library systems, and I was very excited about the possibility of finding another job and moving away from Ann Arbor, to Chicago especially.

There were another couple of memorable moments at the conference. While walking downtown, I stumbled on a place called the Shrine of St. Jude. I went in while mass was being said, and stayed a while. My mother was a strong believer in St. Jude, who is known as the patron saint of lost causes, and man, was I feeling like a lost cause. It made me feel much better just being there. I prayed real hard that day for guidance and help. Finally, on the night before I was to head back to Ann Arbor, I happened upon a street concert in an alley at the West End of downtown, and lo and behold the band that was playing was War, one of the funkiest R & B bands of the 70s. I had a great time. They played all their big hits like “Why Can’t We Be Friends’, “Low Rider” and “The World is A Ghetto”. All for free, too! I’ll never forget that night. Hearing that music made me feel right at home.

Shortly after I returned from ALA, I had lunch with the head of Library personnel, Lucy Cohen. She and I had been getting together periodically for lunch since I started in 1987. Our favorite place to go was Pizzeria Uno’s. That day at lunch, I told her about ALA and that I was excited about the possibility of getting a job in Chicago. She told me that she had grown up in Chicago and tried to discourage me. She stressed that Chicago was cold and crowded and expensive and that I would hate living there. She wanted me to stay at Michigan, and assured me that things would get better if I gave it more time. Bless her heart. I told her I’d think about it.

A few weeks later, I heard from Lucy again, and apparently she talked to Carla Stoffle, the assistant director, about having me join the Library Residency Program as a “staff resident”. Carla had been instrumental in recruiting me to Michigan in the first place, and was the driving force behind all of the Library’s efforts to diversify its staff and services. Carla and Lucy didn’t want to give up on me so quickly, and I was very touched by their determination to keep me. I officially joined the Residency Program in September, 1989. My friend Karen was a resident, and my new office mate Gene Alloway, was also in the program. The Residency Program was known for recruiting top notch, recently graduated library school students to Michigan. Students were hired in “cohorts” and worked in a variety of jobs while in the program, which normally lasted two years. The group had easy access to library administrators and met regularly with the Assistant Dean and others. Guest speakers were also brought in to give lectures and conduct seminars. By the end of their two year stay, most residents could get a job wherever they wanted, as the program had an outstanding reputation. I felt lucky to be a part of it, and enjoyed the collegiality that my cohort developed. I also enjoyed learning from some of the profession’s top leaders. Being a part of the program also got me out of the Undergraduate Library more often, and away from my immediate supervisor, who I was convinced was determined to get rid of me.

Things weren’t all bad this particular year. I enjoyed all the learning opportunities that came my way, from taking time management classes, to hearing amazing speakers like Michael Olivas and John Stockwell, to attending ALA and other conferences like the Michigan Hispanic Leadership conference.  I also started doing presentations and getting published, as well as creating exhibits. I enjoyed these activities, and over time they would increase as I became more comfortable in my role as a contributor to the library profession.

I also got to see Bob Dylan in concert twice, once with Tom Petty and then with the great guitarist, G.E. Smith. I also saw Judy Collins, kd lang, Joe Jackson and Buffy Sainte Marie. Ann Arbor was a hopping place when it came to live music, and it also had plenty of bookstores, both new and used, and lots of record stores. A lot of great albums and movies were released this particular year, and I continued building my record and book collections. I also saw a lot of classic Bette Davis movies, and had begun watching television shows like Are You Being Served? and the Tracy Ullman show.

By the end of the year, Brent and I were back together, and we spent Christmas with his family in Twin Lake. It was a nice way to end the year. Brent’s sister had just had a baby girl and there was snow (real snow) all around. Brent’s family was very nice to me, and I felt at home with them whenever we visited. Of course, we were all sad because Mr. Bates was gone and so was my mom, but we still had each other, and a new baby in the family, which helped brighten things up.

As the year came to an end, I couldn’t help but feel that things would get better. They did, at least for a while.

I became very attached to my buddy Roberto, and unfortunately, this put a strain on my relationship with Brent. The following song reminds me of this time in my life. I was not thinking clearly, that’s for sure.

To see all of the materials that we used in this poster session, click here.

Things to know up front:

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them. Click the back arrow key to return to the post.

Every chapter in My Life Story includes information about me, my work, my family and my friends. It also includes information about events that took place locally and nationally, etc. that I thought important enough to include. You’ll also find that I’ve included films, musicians and recordings/videos, in addition to books that were released in a given year.

While I have included many personal photos, most of the graphic content included below is borrowed from the Internet. I do not claim to own this material. I am just adding it for educational purposes. If the owners of any of the content in the “My Life Story” series want their stuff removed, I am happy to oblige. My email address is jrdiaz@arizona.edu. Thanks!

As the new year began, I was still trying to adjust to my new surroundings. I continued to feel out of place, and wasn’t very happy, but I held on because I didn’t want to waste the once in a lifetime opportunity I had before me. Michigan was a very highly regarded school and a great place to work, supposedly, and I knew I was very lucky to have a job there. Winter was tough, however, and seemed to drag on forever. The sun rarely ever came out, and the weather was always cold, gray and cloudy. My first full winter in Ann Arbor was challenging. My skin was so pale, I had to convince some people I was of Mexican American descent. I heard comments like, you don’t look like a Mexican. Oh well, I’d tell them. I am a Mexican whether you think so or not.

My job continued to consist of spending time at the reference desk, answering questions, and helping students find resources for their research, conducting instruction sessions on how to use the Library for students in English, Psychology, and other courses, and selecting materials for the collection. I also continued to learn the new technologies that were coming our way. The Library’s new automated library system, called Mirlyn, for example, was about to go live in the Fall, and I participated in a series of training sessions that covered the ins and outs of the system. I also had a couple of fun projects assigned to me. One was called the Rolodex Task Force. The work required that we verify and update information, kept on a giant rolodex, that was used at the Graduate Library’s reference desk. I got to know a lot about the various libraries on campus and about resources and organizations in and around the University.

 I also began to manage the Undergraduate Library’s Peer Information Counseling program in the Spring. In a nutshell, Peer Information Counselors were students of color who worked at the reference desk as reference assistants. They received extensive training, and were there to help other students of color feel more comfortable and welcomed as they approached the reference desk and used the library. Darlene Nichols, an African American librarian colleague, had been running the program since 1985, but wanted to hand it off. I eventually was given responsibility for it. I was assigned the task of getting a newsletter out and hiring new students. By the Fall I was managing the entire program by myself. I have to admit that at first, I was resistant to taking on this assignment, because I felt that it was being given to me only because I was a minority, and it just wouldn’t look good for a white person to manage it. Oh well. I got over it, and enjoyed working with the students I hired and trained. They were bright and engaged and eager to learn.

I went home to Tucson for vacation in February. I spent a lot of time with my old friends and with my family, and I got my portrait done in pencil at IBT’s, a gay bar on 4^th Avenue, by an artist named T. Barr Stevens. I brought it home as a gift to my mom. She was very ill, but I didn’t realize how sick she really was or that she wouldn’t make it until the end of the year. Sometime in the Spring after I had returned back to Ann Arbor, my older brother Charles called me and suggested that I might think about coming back home for a while. He told me that our mom didn’t have long to live. I decided that I couldn’t leave my job. I had bills to pay and felt stuck, and Brent would not have been able to make it on his own in Ann Arbor. He would have had to move back to Muskegon. I also didn’t believe that my mom was so ill. To this day, I regret my decision to stay put and not go home. It breaks my heart to think that I could’ve spent more time with my mom in her last days, and that I chose not to.  Dammit. It made my life at Michigan even more difficult, as I was unhappy as it was. I began to really dislike my job and Ann Arbor. The counseling that I participated in did nothing to help. It was a complete waste of time and money.

In early March, I participated in facilitator training on leading discussions among the staff about the issue of racism. The training was provided by Dr. Frances Kendall, a consultant from California who specialized in diversity training. She took the stance that if you were born and raised in the US, then you were racist, whether you knew it or not or agreed to it or not. She argued that our culture and its institutions were built to benefit wealthy white men, and that they hadn’t changed much at all since they were founded. Thus, racism was “institutional.” And built into our social structure.  Her work was all about helping people realize this. Her goal was to help people acknowledge their prejudices and work towards getting rid of them through dialogue, education and self-awareness. I was among several staff members who participated in the training she provided. Most of the participants were from the Graduate Library and were managers or administrators, and being in this group felt a bit intimidating, but I stuck it out and tried my best to learn and participate fully. A couple of weeks after we received the initial training, Dr. Kendall was brought in again and gave an all staff presentation on the issue of racism and the challenges of overcoming it. Another person, Vivian Sykes, an African American librarian from San Francisco,  also spoke about her personal experiences with racism in librarianship. Both presentations were hard hitting, and it left a lot of the nearly all-white staff feeling very uncomfortable. Once the presentations were given, the staff was then required to participate in a series of small group discussions, and I, as one of the group facilitators, helped to lead these.  

After the training was completed, some members of the facilitator group formed the Library Diversity Task Force, with the intention of continuing our discussions about the issues.  We wanted to build  momentum among the staff for learning and for cultural change.  It was at this time that I got to know my dear friend Karen Downing. We hit it off and became inseparable, and we worked together on several projects, including producing a diversity film festival for the Library staff that took place in the Fall and planning events for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day the following January.

In May, I attended my first conference while at Michigan. It was called LOEX, which is short for Library Orientation Exchange, and was focused on library instruction and improving teaching. The conference was held at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green Ohio, just about an hour’s drive south of Ann Arbor. I attended a workshop, Reaching and Teaching Diverse Library Users, conducted by Louise Greenfield. I had met Louise when I was a graduate student, and would later work with her at Arizona. My colleague Linda TerHaar, gave a presentation on the PIC program and my supervisor  also gave a presentation. I didn’t do anything but attend various programs and poster sessions. In my free time, I visited the library on campus and was in heaven because I found they had a bunch of Aretha Franklin 45s from her days at Columbia in their collection. They have one of the best popular music collections in the world.

In the Spring, I attended some lectures featuring several very interesting speakers. They included Angela Davis, Cesar Chavez and the writers Cherrie Moraga, who co-edited, along with Gloria Anzaldua, the groundbreaking book, “This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color”, and Rudolfo Acuna, who was the author of Occupied America, a Chicano history book I had read back in college. It was at these events that I started meeting other Chicanos and Latinos, including a graduate student named Raul Villa. He was studying in the American Culture program, and was from Nogales, Arizona. He had a girlfriend named Eileen, and she and I became good friends and remained so even after Raul left. Raul introduced me to several other Chicano and Latino students, including a medical student named Roberto Tostado, and other students who were enrolled in the law school. Unfortunately, Raul and I didn’t always get along, and he left Michigan at the end of the Spring semester to complete his graduate studies at UC Santa Cruz. He would continue to write to me, however, for more than a year, but we eventually lost touch. He now resides in Los Angeles and is a professor at Occidental College.

In the Spring, Brent’s dad got sick and was diagnosed with a brain tumor. He was told he didn’t have long to live so the family decided that he should receive experimental treatment in the Bahamas. It was expensive and promising, but it didn’t work, and he died later in the year, just a month after my mom died. Brent spent a lot of time with his parents both in Twin Lake and the Bahamas this particular year and I went home a total of four times, once in the Spring and three times in the winter. It was a tough time for the two of us, and we struggled to keep things together.

In late October, my sister Irene called me to tell me that our mom was in the hospital and didn’t have long to live. I rushed back home and stayed for about a week, and stupidly convinced myself that my mom was getting better, so I flew back to Michigan. A week later, I got another call and this time, it was definite. Mom didn’t have but a day or two left to live. She died on November 2, at University Hospital in Tucson sometime in the early evening. It was the saddest moment of my life. I cried like a baby at her funeral and felt like I wanted to die too. Thank goodness my friend Richard was there for me. He knew how much I loved my mom. She was my hero. Even though she had her problems, I loved her dearly, and I know she loved me unconditionally. I was her last and favorite child.

I went back to my job in Ann Arbor after having stayed with my dad and family for a couple more weeks after we buried our mom, and I did my best to resume my life as it had been before she died. But it wasn’t the same. I was a mess, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I didn’t know how I’d get through the coming months, but I suppose I managed. Brent’s dad died in mid-December, so we had another sad tragedy on our hands to contend with. Christmas came along, and I went back home again. It was a rough time for the family. Although we took a family portrait at this time, and we all looked like we were happy together, one of my brothers was getting out of control, drinking and fighting with anyone he encountered. He even fought with our dad one night while I was visiting, and we had to have him arrested.

Because I had to go back home several times, I ended up going into more debt by the end of the year. There was no way I could go back home the following year. I even missed my best friend Richard’s wedding in January, and it made me feel very bad. Winter was in full swing again, and the sun was nowhere to be found. God, how I missed it.

I turned 29 on January 15, 1988, and received several birthday cards from my friends and family back home, including my Teatro friends Liliana, Pernela and Scott, and my college friend, Tim Moles. It was a rough time for me, as I didn’t get to go home for Christmas, and things weren’t turning out so well at work. It was nice to hear from my friends and family. Winter time in Ann Arbor was cold and gray in more ways than one.

Here’s a birthday letter from my good friend Tim.

My friend Richard wrote to me several times in 1988. Below is another of many letters I received from him while I lived in Michigan.

The letter below, from my mom, is one of my prized possessions. She sent it to me for my birthday, January, 1988. The photos she refers to can be found at the tail end of the 1987 entry of My Life Story.

Here’s a live version of “Crying”.

My first professional conference while at Michigan was called LOEX, (short for Library Orientation Exchange). It took place in early May at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green Ohio, about an hour’s drive south of Ann Arbor. I and several colleagues, including Linda TerHaar, Lynn Westbrook and Barb Hoppe attended. Bowling Green was a very nice, well-kept, small college town. The Library at the University had an outstanding popular music collection, and I visited it while there.

One of my colleagues, Linda TerHaar, gave a presentation on what we called the PIC Program. PIC was short for Peer Information Counselors. Another colleague, Darlene Nichols, who oversaw the program up until mid-Spring, developed the handouts. In January, I was strongly encouraged to take over coordination of the program, and by this point, had started managing it. I probably should have been the one to do the presentation, but my supervisor chose Linda instead. This was yet another example of her denying me opportunities to participate in professional activities. It would be another year before I was “allowed” to attend ALA.

Here’s one of Chet Baker’s songs that I would play on my show all the time.

I love this song…

Here’s the title cut.

Another day when I was visiting my mom, a week or so before she passed away, a nurse came in and my mom called to her and said, “hi honey. Do you know who Ray Charles is? Well he can park his shoes under my bed any time!”. The nurse said, “that’s nice Mrs. Diaz” and rolled her eyes, or something like that, and then she left the room. I turned to my mom and said, “oh ma, why did you say that? How embarrassing!” She shot back, “well, I would’ve said Vicente Fernandez, mijo, but this pendejita wouldn’t have known who I was talking about!” I still crack up thinking about it, and remember it like it was yesterday…

This song, from the above anthology, just breaks me up.

A few days after my mom died, I went to the swap meet to see if I could find some good Mexican music so that I could play it in her memory. I knew she loved Mexican rancheras, and that she particularly enjoyed the music of Lola Beltran and Lucha Villa, so I looked around for some of their recordings at the various booths that sold Mexican music. Man, did I luck out! I found a cassette with the above photo on it that day and brought it home. Simply titled “Lucha VIlla”, it was a greatest hits anthology and it included some of her earliest and best known recordings from the early 60s to the mid 70s, including several songs written by Jose Alfredo Jimenez. My dad heard it and said to me, “this is a gift from your mother”. Every song hit hard and seemed to be about my parents relationship. From this point on, I was hooked on this woman’s music and on Mexican mariachi and rancheras in general. I’ve since traveled all over the US and Mexico collecting her music, and I now have practically everything she’s ever released on lp, 45, cassette and cd. I also have several of her films. She was a great actress too. Now that Youtube is available, one can listen to most of her recordings there, and even watch her many movies. Back when I started collecting her material, however, there was no Youtube, and finding her recordings required perseverence and dedication as most of it was out of print. Back in 2011, I created two websites devoted to her music. One covers her output in the 60s, and the other in the 70s. Included are all her albums and movies from each decade. I now have them linked as two pdf documents. You can see them here (60s)and here (70s).

My favorite song from the album…

The following song is from the movie, Scrooged, which premiered on November 23, 1988. I love both the original version by Jackie DeShannon and this version by Annie Lennox and Al Green. What a match!