Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Susceptible to praise








I have a theory that I am susceptible to praise.


Like if hundreds of readers said "I love all your Bob Dylan posts. Please do more!" I might write more Bob Dylan posts.

Likewise if a hundred readers wanted me to talk more about shelving books.

But hundreds of readers have never really done anything around here.

I guess that's their prerogative.

For six years I observed, with an almost religious adherence, the daily brief essay, an old school, blog-like devotion. I wrote, for all to see, if they wanted to. I also talked about my library a lot, cheese occasionally, Bernini, music, politics, god, especially noting his shortcomings, publishing. management, books, movies, turkeys, weather, well, I kind of spread out. I wrote for the masses and for you personally.

Oh, really?

You're so welcome.

Gosh.

In the pandemic I started the pandemic rules. They were a kind of anything goes approach to my blog for awhile. They even included the heresy of taking pictures. They're okay, the pictures, but, like with everything I have ever done, I expected 100 people to weigh in.

"I don't want to see a magnolia! Tell me about drinking Chartreuse with Bob Dylan!"

"But what's going on with the curbside pickup at your library. I can look at squirrels on my own!"

"Tell me again how the local governmental systems echo the federal, Trumpian one."




These and many other things have not appeared in my comments.


Oddly that has sort of worked out to my advantage.




So here are some flowers:








Hmm, and...


















Brace yourself, this one will be a different color:
















This one is on a river!












They call this one a "close-up":













Actually, I guess I might as well just show you them all:

































































There's always more flowers!

And, if you have a favorite, let me know. There's absolutely nothing I can do about it.






























4 comments:

  1. Dear Clerk Manifesto,
    Any chance of a live "ClerkCam" appearing here?
    If yes, yay.
    If no, what would we see if there WERE a live ClerkCam?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you for your proposal. Lately I have been bringing more visuals to clerkmanifesto, so taking your concept "ClerkCam" loosely, who knows what's coming forth?

      But to be more literal and frank, I assure you that watching an actual ClerkCam would be like drinking sap from a maple tree, that is, tepid and not particularly appealing or tasty. That watery sap of the maple tree needs to be boiled down and intensified in a great, elaborate process, endlessly cooking the liquids down, until, finally, it is the exquisite syrup we so adore. And so then is clerkmanifesto like that syrup as the raw sap would be to ClerkCam- the raw footage of clerkdom boiled at terrible heats, billowing off steam into the skies of Minnesota, until, painfully reduced down, one ends up with the blog posts you can read here with your pancakes.

      Delete
  2. It is definitely good that you decided to get the new camera. Nothing wrong with your (few) earlier pictures, but now...WOW! Keep it up!

    ReplyDelete

If you were wondering, yes, you should comment. Not only does it remind me that I must write in intelligible English because someone is actually reading what I write, but it is also a pleasure for me since I am interested in anything you have to say.

I respond to pretty much every comment. It's like a free personalized blog post!

One last detail: If you are commenting on a post more than two weeks old I have to go in and approve it. It's sort of a spam protection device. Also, rarely, a comment will go to spam on its own. Give either of those a day or two and your comment will show up on the blog.