By Tess Goldwasser
Meet Mack Freeman!
Mack, a member of the News Committee, recently redesigned GLBT News to the new weekly format and also serves as the Blog Administrator on the Web Committee. Starting in July, he will chair the News Committee and is looking for committee members. Interested GLBTRT members should contact him and Ann Symons about more information. Mack wants to make sure that GLBT News is a galloping success and encouraged other students and young people to become more involved with the RT. He was still in grad school when he started volunteering and thinks it can greatly benefit folks. In addition, Mack reviews books for the GLBTRT reviews blog and will write a regular poetry column for it.
His passion in life is making things better and helping other people. Mack went into library work after a stint in AmeriCorps and sees libraries as one of the truly ubiquitous nonprofit-style organizations that can help all people. He said he is most proud of the distance he’s come in the past year. He quit a “dead-end job†that paid the bills, became a freelance technical writer and content marketer with a pretty good degree of success (including being the primary writer on the social media plan for a Fortune 100 company), and did all this while finishing his MLIS and taking a job at his local library. He said, “It’s been a crazy year, but completely worth it all.â€
Currently a librarian at the Tifton-Tift County Public Library in the south Georgia town of Tifton, Mack describes himself as a jack-of-all-trades. His main focus, however, is outreach work beyond the walls of the library, including a new program providing monthly visits to area senior facilities, basically turning their activities rooms into an extension of the library for a few hours.  A partnership with the local Day Reporting Center makes sure all participants have a library card for computer access to look for work for rural and underfunded libraries to give them access to contemporary quality materials despite budgetary or local area skills shortfalls.
He has been dating his wonderful boyfriend, Dale, for almost two years now, and they have the world’s laziest Australian Cattle Dog, Micah. To quote film director John Waters, “Life is nothing if you’re not obsessed.” And Mack is obsessed with a lot of things! He takes A LOT of enjoyment in books, theatre, cycling (he hopes to do a trip of over 100 miles), yoga, rock climbing, writing his blog, traveling, cooking (especially Italian and Latin food), pursuing his “old Southern lady crafts†(crocheting, knitting, etc.), and going on adventures.
If Mack were an animal, he’d be a polar bear because (you guessed it) he’s obsessed with them, and, he says, if you’re going to be animal, you might as well be at the top of the food chain. Plus, polar bears love to eat, so they already have that in common.
If he could have a dinner party with five culturally or historically significant figures, living or dead, he would invite (surprise!) John Waters, the author Augusten Burroughs, drag performer RuPaul, artist Marcel Duchamp, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill. He says these are some of the top people he’s tried to emulate at one point in his life or another.
