Every four years

 

I try not to repeat myself around here... much, but the Olympics tend to evoke a similar reaction in me, and they come around every two or four years. So I sort of forget and am yet again inclined to come here and say:

I really like the Olympics.

I get a little obsessed by the Olympics.

In the pre-cursor version of Clerkmanifesto, from the mid nineties, there was my cartoon: I. E. Skin's Guide to All There Is to Know. And even back in 1996 this was all true, and I was compelled to go on about the Olympics in precisely the same way I am now.

For your reference:

Not much has changed in my feelings from this from 28 years ago. In fact, I even have the heat rash of concentric circles on my forehead again! The wonders of human achievement are as enthralling to me as they ever were. Indeed, the biggest difference is that the technology has changed and made everything even better. On my computer right now I can pull up any event. I can watch them in replay at any time I want. I can watch them with subtitles if I need to. I can watch them on my phone in the library stacks. I (mostly) have no commercials. I can watch four events all at once, shifting my focus wildly to take in the peak moments of each competition. It is all amazing! 

But it is also far, far worse. There is vastly more to see now of the Olympics, and my little cartoon joke about barely having time to go to the bathroom is all the more true! With the deciding set of a live archery challenge in play, it would be better to just... hold it.

The obsessive coverage of U.S. athletes has not gone away completely, but it is so avoidable that I hardly notice it. I'm even willing to cheer for some American athletes. Although in rooting for the U.S. women's gymnastics team as they won their gold medal, I could not help but note in all the jubilation that I never even saw who won the bronze and silver. I was kind of hoping Italy did well. I might have to check out some of the replay.

Finally, as to cartooning not being an Olympic sport, well, blogging isn't either. But all these years later I'm far more comfortable with that. All my Nobel Prizes keep me company. One can't win everything.

Proving there are animals in the library

 

Having seventy pictures of mine on display at my library, showing all manner of animals, cartoon characters, and biblical calamities taking place in the library I have worked in for decades has telegraphed to the public that these might not be real events. No one has asked me when Charlie Brown visited our library. And seeing a picture of a Peanuts character tends to tip people off that a picture of, say, a lion lying around in front of our front desk, no matter how realistic it looks, might not be entirely authentic.

And yet despite all of this my colleagues and I are still regularly called upon to explain that, no, we have never had a tiger in the library freely adventuring through our stacks. And though the fact of this reflects well on the verisimilitude of my photos, it's not that fun to explain. I used to end up resorting to invoking the partially true word "Photoshop", which people grab onto like it's the holy grail. The illusion is dispelled. No one has learned anything. And magic is dead. 

People don't like the more enigmatic answers about these pictures any better, and I have probably tried all together too many different solutions to the problem of: 

How does your magic trick work?

And so, in a sense, this is just another solution attempt. 

But I really like this one!

And the solution is:

Try to make the magic trick even bigger!

(I am sorry I could not embed these here. Unfortunately, that feature seems to have broken, but the link clicking should be brief, simple, and mildly rewarding)

https://youtube.com/shorts/JzWOa4H7EjY?si=FygIvnD3L0RTXqtB

https://youtube.com/shorts/eK6PJk8MyAw?si=VVk3RkYrw1Y0aAWA

https://youtube.com/shorts/5pJZYPtCKYs?si=5jyd2Y6sFsYF9CXg

https://youtube.com/shorts/Lf5TG4-oLkY?si=fOcGcJdehdw2MH6i

I am Gen X

 

Growing up there wasn't much talk of generations. There were just The Baby Boomers, gigantic in every way, blotting out everything else beyond them, like a massive planet passing before the sun. And while on the one hand I grew up feeling I missed many of the greatest things, the explosion in music and art, The Beatles! Dylan! Melanie! The Godfather! that had all happened 10 or 15 years before my coming of age, it also felt like I was getting all the scraps left behind by some kind of a once-in-a-century locust swarm. My many schools at every stage were all marked by interesting experimental programs that were ending and becoming more conservative and institutional. Reagan was elected. The dream was over.

But as I got older, and the wicked Baby Boomers started growing old and getting vilified by subsequent disenchanted generations, I found that I, having reaped none of the benefits, was somehow mistakenly placed as a baby boomer by a mere 64 days! I don't know what cloistered statistician cast these generational lines so poorly, but as "Boomer" became a resounding epitaph to some qualities and benefits that I never partook of, I was helpless. The dates were somehow set in stone.

Until Kamala Harris came along.

Kamala is seven days older than me! She is, technically, seven days more a boomer than I am! And as the biggest figure to loom up out of this year, suddenly those generational lines are back in play. Kamala Harris cannot be a breath of fresh air and the hope of Democracy and yet also a Boomer! It doesn't make any sense.

And so it was that I read today: 

Kamala Harris identifies as Gen X.

So do I, Kamala. So do I.

Passion fruit

 

Passionately watching cozy British competition shows with my lovely wife is such an engaging pastime that we have been forced to circle round and start watching them all over again. We are currently on our second go-round with the OG of the genre: The Great British Baking Show. I usually can't remember for sure who wins any given season, but I do seem to remember enough on the second watch that it takes out some of the worse tension of the viewing.

Oh yes, there is plenty of tension in British competition shows, sometimes a little too much. So... they are even cozier the second time around! I like everybody better now that I don't need to worry so much about any particular person winning or losing. Everyone is getting a second chance here.

But boy, this show sure does make me hungry. Or not hungry, exactly, it makes me want to make and eat elaborate baked sweets all day long. Unfortunately, eating rich, sweet baked confections all day long is likely not terribly good for me. In fact, it is probably healthiest for me to eat them... never. And though I'd like to say that this is the kind of thing I could perhaps compromise on, it doesn't really work like that.

And nothing, no ingredient gets me going quite like (as happens surprisingly often) when someone uses passionfruit.

Oh passionfruit!

I don't think I even encountered a real live passionfruit more than about 15 years ago. And it was also about that time I encountered some passionfruit pastry of the most extraordinary kind at a French bakery in Edina.

Do you know what the main street of Edina is?

France Avenue.

So of course they had a fabulous passionfruit patisserie.

But does this all mean I hadn't encountered the flavor of passionfruit until I was in my forties?

No. Let us return to my childhood and one of my all-time favorite sickening indulgences of my preteens: Hawaiian Punch Red.

This was a hideously sweet commercial fruit punch drink. Its main flavor was passionfruit. And I only liked it one way: When it came in a mix-with-water sugar flavor mix in a tin, and a person could use far more than the appropriate amount when making a drink. The best part was when one drank the increasingly strong liquid and got to a kind of syrupy passionfruit flavored sugar slurry at the bottom. It was passionfruit heaven, though I didn't know it was passionfruit at the time...

Nor how close I must have been to instant diabetes. 

Manufacture of my own demise

 

A package was delivered to me at the front desk of the library. Alas, it wasn't for me, it was for a children's librarian who has lately also become a branch manager. I brought it into the kid's room because they are nice and fun to talk to. But they said the librarian in question was not around and the package should probably just go upstairs. I told them that I only do special deliveries to the kid's room and that the upstairs librarians don't deserve it, so I would put the package in its normal place by the mailboxes.

They understood.

Then I hurried back to find a small group of people needing help at the front desk. They had been able to log onto the computers with their card, but once logged on to the computer it wouldn't let them do anything.

Curious!

I started to head out to the computers and asked them to show me where they were logged in. They said they were upstairs!

"Oh." I said. "There should be librarians up there who could help you."

They all got a real sad look on their faces.

"No. They wouldn't help us." One of them said grimly.

So I helped the little group get going on some computers downstairs.

But I understood about the librarians upstairs.

They probably needed that package.

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.