Hundreds of New College of Florida library books, including many on LGBTQ+ topics and religious studies, are headed to a landfill.

A dumpster in the parking lot of Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus of New College overflowed with books and collections from the now-defunct Gender and Diversity Center on Tuesday afternoon. Video captured in the afternoon showed a vehicle driving away with the books before students were notified. In the past, students were given an opportunity to purchase books that were leaving the college’s library collection.

Some discarded books included “Nine and Counting: The Women of the Senate”, “The War of the Worlds” and “When I Knew” — which is a collection of stories from LGBTQ+ people recounting when they knew they were gay.

New College spokesperson Nathan March acknowledged the Herald-Tribune’s request for comment but had not provided the college’s response as of 2 p.m.

Amy Reid, the faculty chair and representative on the board of trustees, said when you throw away books, you also throw away democracy.

“They take the trees and people had a service to recognize the loss of those trees,” she said. “I want to do that for books, because books are what matter.”

Natalia Benavites, a 21-year-old fourth-year student at New College, said books in the dumpster carried the college’s seal as well as a “discard” sticker on the spine.

When she asked officials whether they could donate the books, she was told that under state statute the college can’t donate books purchased with state funds.

The college also discarded books from the Gender and Diversity Center, which was located across campus. The GDC books were purchased individually and not with state funds, she said. Several students and activists with the SEE Alliance worked Thursday afternoon to save the GDC materials before they could be thrown away.

This is a developing story, check back for updates.

Follow Herald-Tribune Education Reporter Steven Walker on Twitter at @swalker_7. He can be reached at sbwalker@gannett.com.

Stream rocket launch here:

BREVARD COUNTY, Fla. – Some Florida residents may hear sonic booms following the liftoff of a Falcon 9 rocket on Thursday morning, according to SpaceX.

The agency plans to launch the Maxar 2 mission into orbit from the Space Launch Complex 40 (SLC-40) in Cape Canaveral, with a 60-minute window opening at 9 a.m.

Eight minutes after liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage is expected to land at SpaceX’s Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. 

SpaceX set to launch Maxar 2 mission into orbit from Florida on Thursday

SpaceX said there is a possibility that residents of the following counties could hear one or more sonic booms, but the sound will depend on weather and other factors:

• Brevard
• Orange
• Osceola
• Indian River
• Seminole
• Volusia
• Polk
• St. Lucie
• Okeechobee

What is a sonic boom?

A sonic boom happens when something travels through the air faster than the speed of sound – about 750 mph – resulting in a loud boom similar to an explosion or thunder, according to NASA and U.S. Air Force.

NASA said the sound energy of a sonic boom is around 110 decibels.

If Acme’s here, can Coyote be far behind?

While riding my bike recently, I passed a construction site where a new house is being built. At the entrance to the project was a line of orange barrels marked “Acme Barricades.”

And I thought: “Acme Barricades? Wile E. Coyote must be building this house.” Because if you’re a kid like me who grew up in the 1950’s and 60’s, Acme could mean only one thing: the Acme Catalog from which Coyote ordered every gadget imaginable to outwit Roadrunner—gadgets that failed spectacularly every time.

During the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century, many corporations used the name Acme. It was a good name because “acme” is the Greek word for “high point, peak or summit,” implying that your company is tip-top, or better than any of the others. And it didn’t hurt that alphabetically, it would show up right at the front of the list in the phone book.

And yet, I thought, other than this morning’s orange barricade, when was the last time I ever saw any product with the name Acme on it? Do any companies call themselves Acme anymore?

TR KERTH / FLORIDA WEEKLY

As my mind spun through circles of ill-conceived logic, I resolved to do some Acme research as soon as I got home. Because, after all, that’s the main point of my morning bike rides—to prod my brain into following some absurd, meaningless train of thought that isn’t worth your time to follow. You probably have better things to do with your time, so I’ll dive down that rabbit hole of ridiculousness and then report back to you.

You’re welcome.

And so, when I got home, I dug through that rarely opened bottom kitchen cabinet where I stored paper phone books (remember them?) back in the days when I had an actual land-line telephone (remember them?).

And sure enough, there was an old 2018 Yellow Pages phone book, surely the last one ever sent to me. I was a bit surprised that I even had it, because I’m certain I had not opened a phone book for at least a decade before that one arrived.

So I went to work, scanning the Yellow Pages for Acme businesses, from air conditioning and appliances, through floor materials and florists, all the way past pest control, plumbers and beyond.

And I found not a single company called Acme in the entire book.

But why? How did one of the most common company names of a century ago—with products as diverse as whistles, anvils, and traffic lights—slide virtually to the edge of brand-name extinction?

The answer must surely be Wile E. Coyote, who ordered exclusively from the Acme Catalog whenever he sent away for some device to outwit the Roadrunner. Those film shorts began at the end of 1949 and grew in popularity over the ensuing decades.

The list of Acme products that Coyote ordered was virtually endless:

Acme dynamite.

Acme axle grease.

Acme giant rubber bands.

TR Kerth

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All were total failures in Coyote’s war against Roadrunner, serving only to bring harm to Coyote. And yet, undeterred, he dug deeper still into the Acme Catalog:

Acme rocket-powered roller skates.

Acme dehydrated boulders.

Acme jet-propelled pogo stick.

Failures all.

And bit by bit, year by year, as Coyote failed time after time with Acme product after product, the list of actual Acme corporations in the Yellow Pages grew smaller and smaller.

And today, according to my extensive research in scanning the Yellow Pages of a phone book from 2018, the Acme corporate name is virtually out of business—at least in my area covered by that neighborhood phone book.

But why stop there? To go the extra mile for you, I turned to Mama Google to see if Acme existed anywhere in the non-paper Twittersphere.

You’re welcome.

I found ACME Foods, founded in 1891 in Philadelphia and becoming a full-service Supermarket in 1937, decades before Coyote’s Acme Catalog appeared. It still clung to the name through most of the 20th century— at least until it was bought out by Albertson’s, which was later bought out by Kroger. Acme Food stores? Mostly gone now.

And there was Acme Tools, founded in 1948 in Grand Forks, North Dakota, the year before the first Roadrunner film was made—but with a hard-hatted mascot in its logo that looks suspiciously like a scruffy coyote wearing sunglasses. ¦

TR Kerth is the author of the book “Revenge of the Sardines.” Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com.