Potluck

 

The annual holiday potluck just took place at my library. I brought cheese.

Cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese.

Because my library's holiday potluck is truly a random potluck, it just so happened that everyone brought cheese this year.

Mine was the best cheese though; There was a Brie, a very aged cheddar in a thick green rind, Roquefort, stilton, gruyere, and a bourbon honey goat cheese. 

It was a lot of cheese!

Everyone else brought pre cut Monterey Jack and Colby slices, although one person brought a cream cheese and poured some kind of pepper jam on it.

I'm sure they were all fine.

I don't like to judge my co-workers...

Even if I am regularly compelled to.

But why all this about the holiday potluck? You wonder.

It has inspired me.

The over-abundance of dubious choices is so... American! So... Christmas! And so I have decided to create my own potluck of clerkmanifesto right here, today, in order to give clerkmanifesto a little of that holiday spirit. I am including below three random previous blogposts from this date in the past! It is a clerkmanifesto potluck!

You can read all three. You can pick little bits of each blogpost to read, or you can just find the most appealing looking blogpost and strictly gorge on that. Whatever you like! And whichever remains of the three blogposts that you don't want, or did not finish, do not worry! Just leave it as is, and I will come along later to wrap it in saran wrap and throw in the fridge for some undefined purpose in the future.

So join me now on this random journey through yesteryear!

2020:

Saint Minneapolis

After many years on the sidelines here at clerkmanifesto, refusing to take a stand on anything, or have an opinion of my own on any subject, I have decided enough is enough! I have built up some real carte blanche through my years of prudent moderation in this world famous blog. And while the rewards of all this fame and adulation cannot be understated, aren't they all a little hollow if I don't give back, if I don't wade in and take a stand for something important, if I don't spend a little of that cache?

Yes. 

Yes is the answer. 

In case you wondered.

So what happened, you ask?

I was reading about cities. And I came across something regarding twin cities; that is small cities that grew until they were crammed together and somewhat indistinguishable. Cities like Bridgeport and New Haven in Connecticut, or Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas, or, where I live, Minneapolis and St. Paul, in Minnesota. The book said that once in Hungary there were twin cities, that is, two cities so close that they grew together. These twin cities were called Buda and Pest.

I think you could guess what happened.

Budapest happened. The two cities became one. And in that moment I realized:

I don't like twin cities. I like cities.

I live in The Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul.

I like our metro area, and think it's a nice place to live. I love living here with my wife. I love the Mississippi River running through the heart of it all. I idly hope all our sports teams win even though they generally don't. I support our excellent museum. I like our coffeehouses and bars (well, I used to when one could actually go to them and not... kill people). I enjoy our giant mall and our State Fair and our Frank Gehry building leaning over the river. I even love our secret, hidden Mannerist Fountain imported from Italy that they put away for the Winter.

But I hate our Twin Cities.

I think they should be one city. And we should call it:

Saint Minneapolis.

My new Budapest-like city will incorporate the inner ring suburbs, like Bloomington and Edina, West St. Paul and Roseville. And it will be only one city, large and vital and consistent enough to compete with the other notable, medium-big American Cities, like, I don't know, Denver or Seattle.

I'm just saying enough with the meaningless local competition and regionalism, with its multiple library systems and shitty police forces and uncoordinated bike and walking paths that dead end at city boundaries that are completely irrelevant!  

I don't like Minneapolis.

I don't like St. Paul.

But I am very fond of beautiful St. Minneapolis.

So brace yourself; no longer will I refer to St. Minneapolis as The Twin Cities. I will not say I live in St. Paul or Minneapolis. And if it confuses people my made up geography of St. Minneapolis, that's a risk I must bear. But my hope is that the purity of my vision will alter the landscape until, little by little, the people of this part of the state will come together and make that which is already true underneath, official.

This is my quest.

This is my star.

No matter how hopeless.

No matter how far.

St. Minneapolis.

 

 

 

2017:

Cut My Hair

A co-worker came into the back room of the library while I was working on the check in machine.

"Your hair's getting really long." He said.

We all know that different people are allowed to say different things, depending upon how we feel about them. He was marginally allowed to say this but he wasn't really winning any further allowance points.

"Should I cut it?" I asked. I'd been thinking about cutting it for a few months and hadn't gotten around to it.

"Sure."

So I took the scissors, grabbed all the hair on the right side, and cut it. Then I took all the hair on the left side, bunched it up, and cut it. I threw the hunks of hair in the garbage. It was looking a little silver in places.

"Better?" I asked.

He laughed. "Better." He said.

A little later someone else asked, peering at my hair "Is your hair in a ponytail?" 

This may have been due to my not really cutting the back of my hair during my earlier eight second haircut. But really, what business was it of theirs?

2015

The Bridge Metaphor

You have probably heard of the runner's high. I don't run, but sometimes when I am on my walk, and I am very late, I sort of trot along for awhile. The closest I come to a "high" doing that is when, for a few seconds, neither my feet nor my ankles hurt. Curiously, though, I do frequently experience a walker's high, or more specifically, a blogger's high. When I'm out walking a few miles and ice isn't blowing in my face, the fresh air stimulates me. I take joy in the world around me. I become attuned to the Universe. I start to think of really good blog ideas. Then I get really excited by these blog ideas. I simultaneously compose them in my mind and try to memorize them as I go. It's a wonderful, very creative, inspired feeling. And the more ideas I come up with the more new ideas come to me until they are delightedly and nerve-wrackingly piling up on me.

This is where we come to the rickety bridge analogy. This blogging high is like climbing a high, rickety bridge. It's slightly terrifying, very precarious, and absolutely lovely. But the bridge is wildly unsafe, and each new blog idea takes the bridge even further beyond its load bearing capacity. I can't stop the thrilling rush of new ideas, and usually around the fourth or fifth blog outline it all comes crashing down.

Here I am among the shattered remains of the rickety bridge. It's usually about eight hours later that I do my salvage work on that fallen bridge. Here, this looks familiar. I think it might be part of the railing. what was I thinking when my hand glided along it? Here's a piece of something about a letter to a publishing syndicate. I wonder what that one was about. Was there something about a cardinal? Rome? Sandwiches? Surely there is a piece of this detritus I can still make use of.

Ah yes, I remember. Here's a big piece of it now. It was that blog idea about the rickety bridge metaphor.