Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Pirate day

Today was our Summer Reading Program kick off. For those of you unfamiliar with library bacchanalia this tends to be our most festive day of the year. Many children's events are packed in on this day and things are all a bit joyful and chaotic. This year we have a pirate theme. I have been keen on pirate themes ever since my early exposure to the moody and thrilling Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland when I was four years old.

My favorite part of this event filled day was when a parrot came flying out of the community program room, crossed in front of me at the Service Desk, and landed in the requested books section. But I have also very much enjoyed The Hardtack Jack Band, a pirate band playing sea shanties, particularly those of a pirate nature. While this group has curiously spent two hours in the staff break room for every ten minutes that they've played, making our break room smell all piratey, they have been great when they have played. For some reason no music I have ever heard performed at the library has seemed so natural and appropriate to the library as pirate songs. Perhaps this is because, for no reason I can properly explain, library work has always reminded me of the pirate life. I often feel somehow like I'm swabbing a deck or hoisting sail or making someone walk a plank even if I'm just cleaning a belt on our machine (swabbing the belt!) or emptying a bin (hoisting the bin!) or making someone pay a fine (Arrrrr!).

I suggested to our library director that we should all, dressed as pirates, take over an outlying branch library of an adjoining library system, annex it, or maybe just plunder their quality materials, if they have any.

I don't think she took me very seriously.

So I went back to the Service Desk, where I steer this ship of a library through the great Midwestern Seas, in love with freedom and the open oceans.

4 comments:

  1. Aaaargh! !! And ye didn't send Polly or I an invite?! Blast ye pirate Calypso 4 we R sorely bruised 2 B sure!

    ReplyDelete
  2. And we'll take no more sweet talk from a black hearted brute like yourself! So there.

    ReplyDelete

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