Jewish joke

 

Sometimes a good joke simply comes one's way. And maybe it's a little too perfect to be terribly funny. But it's right there! And with this one, as a Jew, I could especially appreciate its tailor made quality. 

I was technically the author of this joke, but fundamentally it wrote itself.

Or...

Perhaps there was an even greater author!

Anyway, it's all pretty brief, so pay close attention.

The following DVD (pictured below) was left to the more unused side of our front desk, across from The Friends of the Library Used Bookstore. It is not an item from our collection, and presumably it was left for us where I found it for reasons that will soon become clear.

This is the DVD as I found it:

I picked up the DVD wondering why it was there. It felt light. I opened it. This is what I found:

Empty.

Excitedly I held it aloft and proclaimed, Jewishly:

"There is no Son of God!"

I did this six or seven times to not much laughter, either because my audience didn't even know it was a joke, or, as Christians, didn't appreciate it, or people simply found it wasn't funny. Six of one...

And then, as eventually happens with all that delights or interests me at my library, I, like a neighborhood cat, grabbed it in my teeth and brought it to lay at your door.

Playing in the water

 

In what is surely the last of my modifications of pictures taken on an exploratory neighborhood walk recently, I have once again returned to my local creek.

I have taken a lot of pictures of this creek!

I have taken thousand of pictures of this creek!

And, as you know, most of these are just close-up pictures of all the water churning around and creating magical abstract effects, and vivid clusters of bubbles.

It's a living.

Oh, it's not? I'm not a professional creek photographer?

Hmmmm....

Good point. I have never actually been compensated, oddly, in any way for taking detailed pictures of the waters of my local creek.

Which makes my behavior even more peculiar!

But whatever is going on here (your guess is as good as mine), I took even more pictures of the creek on my walk! And I had to do something with them, so I've been fiddling around all morning. Oddly the whole thing was more difficult than I thought it would be, and I feel there is more promise here than result.

We have what we have right now, and here they are:

Bunny cosplay

 

In a recent column I showed you some pictures of a neighborhood walk. Because I did not see any bunnies on this walk, there were no bunny pictures. I was really keen on getting some bunny pictures on this walk because this has been an all time record Summer for bunnies. Nevertheless it was a disappointment I had learned to live with. 

But then I realized I did have a couple of pictures of squirrels.

And squirrels are almost bunnies!

Why, to a mad scientist of photography, like myself, and to a small squirrel with a big dream, they can be bunnies!

So here are three bunny pictures for you.

Is it madness?

Is it unholy?

Or is it...

Genius!

Positivity as a sink

 

"Hey," A reader writes in. "You're always writing about how great your library is, and how funny and charming all the library patrons are, and how thoughtful the management is, and how lovely and gracious your co-workers all are. Doesn't anything ever bother you?"

Well...

There is this one, tiny, wee little thing. 

I don't like when one offers to do something nice for someone and they ascribe selfish motives to it.

My example is from earlier today:

A patron approached the front desk of my library. They had a dollar. "I needed to pay for a printout they helped me with at the Reference Desk." The patron said. "But they didn't have change and said you could help."

This is true!

I gave them change for the dollar and, since they were clearly pocketing all the change without looking at it, told them that I couldn't take the payment for printing, but they could put it in any of the lockboxes next to any of the copiers or printers.

This person got super confused super fast! So I explained it all again and pointed out the nearest convenient lockbox, across the library.

The patron gazed out into the distance and remained resolutely confused. So I took pity.

"If you want to give me the twenty cents I could walk over and drop the money in the box when I get the chance."

The patron slid me over their two thin dimes and, now understanding everything, said "Need to get your steps in, eh?"

Other than that everything is basically perfect here.

The soul of discretion

 

While I am shockingly frank with the library visitors I help at the front desk and on the phones, and though I might say all manner of daring things that occur to my fervid mind, I don't say everything. I read my audience. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't want to confuse people more than necessary. And I certainly don't want to make anyone feel bad, unless they really, really deserve it.

For instance, in the recent kerfuffle with computers worldwide, we had no public Internet for two whole days. We have over a hundred Internet computers and a large chunk of our library population is passionately devoted to them. Some of these people simply left upon finding we had no computers. Some asked endless questions about it hoping for a loophole that would allow them onto the Internet after all. And several cried out to me:

"But what am I supposed to do here then?!!!??"

At a library, no less.

I did not say: "You could read a book."

Though I will admit that I tried to convey it with my body language .

Another recent example involved a man for whom I was registering a library card. During one of the short periods where I was putting in information, but didn't need anything actively from him, he wanted to know if he could look for something briefly and come back. Because I would have an occasional essential question for him, and, crucially, because other library patrons would think that I was thus available to help them as there was no one standing there, I said "No."

I did not add:

"You are my human meat shield."

You might be surprised to find that there actually is an audience for a comment like that. Unfortunately, there is no Venn diagram overlap between them and the people who would want to wander off while getting a library card.

Neighborhood follies

 

I haven't been out taking pictures on my neighborhood walks very often this Summer. Perhaps a combination of my rib breaking and the intense rains got in the way. But it has been a glorious Summer from all that rain. It is lush and rich with exotic mushrooms, a family of turkeys nearby, and adorable bunnies everywhere!

So I finally went out with my camera and...

I didn't see much.

The cute mushrooms were all destroyed by someone's lawnmower.

The thousands of bunnies were on their midday nap.

And the family of two turkeys with their ten babies were on a brief hiatus.

I didn't let it stop me though. I took some pictures of flowers, and some of my little local stream in dappled sunlight, and some of leaves with jeweled dewdrops decorating them. A few of the pictures were possibly even nice enough to show you here on their own. But I'm a bit too mad with the power of AI to resist an occasional embellishment.

Well, maybe a bit more than occasional.

So some, let's face it, most of these, have been, er, tampered with. But not all! And they are all rooted in the simple local scenes of my neighborhood. Which is to say... they're all real, but fake.

Refrain

 

I was busily engaged with my computer on the front desk of my library. Whether it was work related or not I don't remember nor care. A library patron came up to me and said "You don't look like you have anything to do, so I'll give you my books to check out."

It's not that I dislike this comment.

It

simply

disgusts

me.

But, I am an old hand here, and excellent at my job. 

"I am very busy." I say clearly and evenly.

I pause.

Then I add:

"But for you... I would love nothing more than to help you today."And the strange thing that makes me so good at my job is...

I mean it.

Explaining my blog posts

 

A co-worker of mine came in for her evening shift and I greeted her with an elaborate Latin nickname loosely related to her actual name. I thought of it on the spur of the moment. She didn't understand what I was talking about. It didn't help that she was born and raised in a far distant land that used even less Latin than we do. Either way, I ended up having to explain the term "Modus Operandi". A librarian nearby patched up my leaky explanation and a rambling discussion between the three of us followed.

As the instigator of all this nonsense, I felt an explanation was in order. "When it comes to language," I explained, "I abide by the Wayne Gretsky adage: 'You miss 100% of the shots you don't take."

A short time later a kid's library book came in on our automated check in machine. It was called "A Girl Can Build Anything". The same librarian from earlier was in the area again, so I held up the book and asked "If a girl built a machine that made it so girls couldn't build everything, would we then weed this book?"

"Good question." They replied.

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." I replied.

I felt a refresher was already in order.

The wisdom that comes with little power

 

The County is using our large meeting room today for a leadership conference. It is packed full of county middle managers, including most of my library system's branch managers. None of them look like they're having a lot of fun.

A regular library patron asking about this class found out it was about county leadership. They teasingly asked me "Why aren't you in that meeting."

"I only believe in leading from below." I commented.

The teasing continued, perhaps not as mean as it sounds. "Very far below." She said.

So I shrugged: "The only real leadership is the kind that no one can observe."

Just pick one

 

In one of those darling movies my lovely wife and I have watched so many times that now we've had to switch over to watching British Amateur Home Economics Competition Shows, there is a scene I must describe to set the stage for today's column. The movie this scene is from is called "Dog Days". An aspiring musician is taking care of his sister's dog. Reluctantly, on the first morning that he is taking care of the dog, he has to take that dog outside to answer the call of nature. The dog is in no hurry, and he wanders to every possible place to sniff and inspect before relieving himself. The musician becomes increasingly frustrated as the dog cannot seem to decide.

Finally the impatient musician cries out at the dog "Just pick one! They are all the same!"

Set that now into your mythical frame of reference.

Thank you.

Now let me tell you a story, a not uncommon story from the front desk of my library.

At my library we have over a hundred Internet computers available for the public's use. One can log on to these computers with a library card. But for people who don't want or have a library card, or for paranoid patrons who fear their Internet activity might somehow link to their card, we have generic Internet passes freely available. They sit piled up on our various public desks, and we give out hundreds of these every day. 

Most people just come along and swiftly grab two or three of these passes (just to be sure?). But it is not uncommon for a library visitor to come stand over our passes, poking their fingers at them, and studying them carefully as they block up the desk.

"Can I help you?" I ask.

"I'm just trying to find a really good one." They say, as if it makes any sense.

Just pick one! They are all the same!

Coda:

In the movie "Dog Days", near the end the musician has bonded very closely with his sister's dog, and on their last morning together he takes the dog out for his evacuations.

"Don't rush it." He advises. "It has to feel right."

Sometimes I feel pretty peaceful at the desk too. And as the library patron endlessly sorts through our passes, carefully reading through every one, I only think: "That's right, get a good one. Logging on with the wrong Internet pass could affect the whole experience.

Too much winning

 

In my adventures in following soccer, I have mostly experienced losing. My chosen National team was losing the World Cup simultaneously with my interest bursting onto the scene. My newly discovered club team circa 2014 swiftly emerged as the best in the world at that time and won everything while I still only partially understood what was happening. And then followed increasing heartbreaks for a decade. In this past year my chosen club team won nothing. Even following excellent teams, when it came down to it at the end of a season or tournament, I mostly had to wallow for days in the bitterness of catastrophic defeat. When one thinks of it, that's how sports are. In any single year or tournament, out of twenty or thirty teams, only one team can win.

That's a lot of people losing.

Sports, like the lottery, is all about losing, all while we dream big. It's the losing that is what's normal.

Until Argentina kind of stopped losing... anything.

A few years ago the major South American tournament, that had eluded Argentina and Messi through his whole career, came along.

And they won!

It was amazing.

It was glorious.

It was everything I had been suffering for in soccer all those years.

 Or almost everything.

Because next came the World Cup. The real prize. And Argentina won that too. The greatest triumph for any player or team in all of soccer, maybe even in all of international sports!

And it was heaven.

Soccer accomplished! 

The debt of all my pain paid off in full, with interest at a good return!

And then a month ago the Copa came again. The final was just last night.

And Argentina won again.

So, I guess that was nice. 

I mean I already have so much money, so to speak, with all the lottery wins.  I'm not complaining, it's just that it would have been so great for Colombia, who lost. And to be honest I don't really know where to put another one of these trophies of my winning team. They're kind of heavy, and have a tendency to pile up. But I guess I can pick it up and maybe throw it in the back of some closet somewhere?

Surely I'll need it eventually?

Revised policy on killing people

 

I have long been opposed to Capital Punishment. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people whose death I have no problem with and might even coldly appreciate. But I cannot come up with a circumstance in which I trust any State in any way to bring that death about.

However, I have held onto the idea that there could be a good person, quietly and grimly, with skill, presence, and justice, who could do the bitter work of ending the life of an evil person who could not reasonably be stopped in any other way.

Unfortunately, I think I read too many novels.

People of profound judgement who can quietly engineer a natural looking heart attack for a deeply corrupt Supreme Court Justice who is defiling the constitution are, and it pains me to admit this, almost certainly non existent. As are the ingenuous operatives who could create a natural looking car accident that takes out a person committing vast crimes against humanity, say a Putin or Netanyahu. I know that the nature of these extraordinary vigilantes are such that we would not clearly see what they have done. It would look like the hand of god. But as I have observed recently in this space, that is the point. We haven't even seen the hand of god killing people whose death would lighten the world. How easy it is to conjure up from history, recent and long ago, a premature tragic death that is only a loss for the world. But as to the many people whose death could benefit so many?

 Crickets.

And so if we don't have these angels of justice out killing people where it needs to be done, what do we have? We have idiots who shoot the wrong people or miss, or simply set it all up wrong so that it could never have any positive effect. We have crazy people. Mean people. Deluded people. Inept people. Insane people. Or all of the above, killing people left and right to no tune but agony and destruction.

People who head on out to kill other people, it is impossible not to conclude, simply suck. 

And so I unconditionally withdraw my support.

It was pretty theoretical anyway.

And though my heart may still clamor for justice at any cost, I bow to the reality of human nature. Perhaps means other than assassination are equally hopeless to solve our gravest problems. But if we are going to fail justice either way, through execution or craft, we may as well do it with less collateral damage.