fifty-three

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

An academic library journal wrote me. I think they were called Public Libraries Quarterly? I pretty sure that's the name. They were interested in my "King of the Library" series, and left me a comment under "The Second Decree". I wrote back to tell them that august and toney academic journals hound me like teeny boppers with a hot new boy band hitting it big, but that I remain humble and always willing to help in the advancement of human knowledge.

Or, at least, that's what I meant when I said, thank you. I told them that I'm leaving the country any second now (yes, I know, from your perspective I will have left almost three weeks ago!), but I said I'd be glad to help if I can.

I did check out the "King of the Library" that inspired the interest and found it... good. So I thought I would share it with you here in case you are not yet retired from a library, have oodles of power, and want to make yours better.

So here you go:

Now that the King (me) has solved the shelving issue (see the first "If I were King"), what about the fun? 

Fun goes to the passionate! Every quarter (that's 4 times a year!) we fund pet projects. Who can apply? Anyone who works there! Hell, longtime volunteers can apply too, and my blog readers! What do we fund it with? Time and money and space. Oh, then hmph, grumble, and how do we pay for this?

Aha. The king puts his money where his mouth is. All the other functions of the library are hereby stripped to the bare bones. Acquisitions are greatly reduced. Classes are reduced. Programming is reduced. The library is simplified and reduced to its basics, and everything that it loses there is filled back in by these pet projects. How do we choose these pet projects? We vote, everyone votes. Everyone has to read every proposal and everyone votes on every project. So, um, can we see an example? Yes. We will pick something simple and basic lest you think the whole thing will be too much of a carnival.

Sylvia is a kids librarian and she likes being a kids librarian, but she loves jazz. She can't stop thinking about jazz. She listens to it for hours and hours every night with her cat Thelonious. She wants a jazz corner at the library. As befits a library she believes it should be materials oriented. There will be a deep, deep master collection of CDs, the best of DVDs, books and even some long forgotten record albums. There will be a detailed and heavily stocked "Suggested" section as well. She wants a largish chunk of money and the equivalent of 2 hours a day to work on it. She also wants the maximum time for it. 2 years. After 2 years she would have to apply for some kind of renewal.

Okay, there's your example. Let's say there are not a lot of super great projects that quarter (or, heck, there are other great projects, but this one is still very popular and people trust Sylvia) and Sylvia gets fully funded. What really does the library end up with?

Instead of a mediocre CD collection (like nearly every public library I have ever been to), we get, well, a little bit more mediocre CD collection, and one, ferociously beautiful, destination Jazz collection. The kind that inspires people to explore Jazz by its own radiating conviction. We get a happy employee contributing their masterful knowledge and deep energy, and we get personality and depth. And oh yes, we wake up! I just went to three Minneapolis libraries. They were varying degrees of okay to a little bit lousy but not totally terrible. But they were mostly so absolutely asleep! The staff was asleep! The collection was asleep! The libraries were asleep. Just, wake up! Libraries can be beautiful. They can be adventures! They can be quiet and studious and calm and keenly awake. Yes, yes, they can be partly responsive to simple popularity, they should be, responsive to their statistical measures and the pull, and even the wonders of Big Media, but they can also be personally curated. Museums of art. Places of personal conviction and insider knowledge, of mercurial and fierce fandom!, where items are part of the collection because someone in the system unreservedly believes in it. Places where the forgotten that should not be forgotten is held on to, and places where the luminous depths of our culture can emerge out of the flotsam and resolve itself into the amazed and enlightened hands of its constituents. We need only be awake, and free, and care.

I can think of 20 more examples beyond Sylvia's Jazz without effort. And though tempted to run on endlessly with my visions I believe, reluctantly, especially reluctantly if I get to be King, in Democracy. So I think you should think of some of your own simple or mad ideas. I think you could, if you let yourself. Leave them here with me. When I am King we'll see about getting them funded. I think your project will win the votes necessary to get you going on your mad or simple dream, and our library will be magic.

So it is decreed, this day, etc. etc.

The King.

This is Clerk Manifesto, once again reporting from the present in Kyoto, Japan, where it’s hot and confusing, and everyone speaks a language I still understand fewer than ten words of. 

I miss nothing.

fifty-two

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

A drawing from the show 85 and up, of Jewish people all 85 or older. If I were to revisit the show now I think everyone would be 106 years old at a minimum, which suggests some of these people, alas, may have passed on. Of course, this isn't the drawing, but rather a modestly faithful version of the drawing come gloriously to life.

I'm not sure, but it's possible it has music?

If you don't know the drill: click to engage the picture, enlarge it, and then click once more to play it.

Clerk Manifesto is once again reporting from the underground of these posts, in the present, in Kyoto. These pictures take a while to build, so maybe I won’t include so many in each post. But they do reflect the actual places we’re going—and hopefully a little of the magic and delight of Kyoto, though often not quite as much of the suffering of Kyoto. But that’s sort of how all travel stories go, isn’t it?

fifty-one

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Really leaning into the above statement, another old watercolor I painted long ago, featured below. We'll call it a two on the scale to ten of how altered by the AI that it is, meaning it mostly just tidied things up.

Once again, down here in the bottom basement regions of our Clerk Manifesto post, Clerk Manifesto is reporting from the present in Kyoto, where it’s still uncomfortably hot every day. But we seem to be sufficiently loving it, so I’ll carry on in the heat. Here are today’s pictures of adventures in Kyoto. While these images are, of course, full of fantasy and artificial intelligence confection, they’re built from original photographs and reflect the actual places we’ve been, anywhere from, oh, I don’t know, 50 to 75 percent.

I am thinking that these two go along well with the post above.

fifty

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

For today I am yet again showing you an old watercolor painting, this of a young tiger. I am pretty much bypassing the static picture and going full living painting version right out of the gate.

If you don't know the drill: click to engage the picture, enlarge it, and then click once more to play it.

I still haven’t taken out my computer in our small Kyoto house, so for now I’m working on my phone. I’ll primarily be reporting with photographs from Kyoto, Japan, where I am now. This is Clerk Manifesto reporting from the present, and here are today’s pictures.

forty-nine

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

I'm not likely to get tired of these videos of old drawings of mine brought to life, thought this may be the last one from 85 and up, my show of Jewish people who were 85 years old or older. 

If you don't know the drill: click to engage the picture, enlarge it, and then click once more to play it.

forty-eight

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Continuing along from yesterday, these are the paintings version of the recent alien invasion pictures of Saint Minneapolis. Thank goodness my wife and I are safely in Japan now!

And then here is a video version as well. I think it even has accompanying music!

If you don't know the drill: click to engage the picture, enlarge it, and then click once more to play it.

Typing on my phone is a pain, so here’s a quick intro I’ll reuse. These photos are from Kyoto, where my darling wife and I are staying. It’s sweltering, beautiful, bewildering. I take a few photos each day and edit them later while recovering at our quiet house here. No commentary then for today, I will let the pictures speak.

forty-seven

 

Clerkmanifesto is going context free for 100 days!

While I retire from 31 years at the Roseville Library, sell nearly everything I own, fly with my darling wife to Japan for 40 days, and then move together to France to start to build a life there, I present a less explained clerkmanifesto, a clerkmanifesto of snapshots and time travel. Below you may see old posts without introduction from my 4,750 post collection. You may see random photos, brand new or years old. I may write a passage about Japan as if of course you know I'm in Japan, I may make a simple observation or joke, but whatever it is, I won't be explaining it. You'll have to take it as it comes.

For more context you are welcome to read this longer introduction.

And if this is all too confusing I welcome you to investigate our thousands of fully explained historic posts from the past 12 years, though I'll be the first to admit, hours later, you may still come away a little confused.

Here, however it works, is what clerkmanifesto has for you today:

Not to belabor the point...

Wait!

To belabor the point, as you read this my darling wife and I have long gone from Minnesota (assuming all has gone normally) and will now have almost been in Japan for two weeks. But as I write I am filling clerkmanifesto in well ahead of time. We still live in our mostly empty apartment. I am retired (no library strories today!). And we even sold our car this morning. And since I have been showing pictures taken out our apartment window (of birds lately), today I was inspired to take a few more pictures, or make them.

I got carried away.

I don't even know what to do with all these pictures. I think I have about 30 or forty of them in various versions. I have been rereading the incredibly enjoyable Andy Weir novel "Hail Mary". So it is possible that planted in my mind the desire to photograph an alien visitation. 

These are alien visitation pictures.

We'll start with this robust selection of the scene captured out my window and a couple more from our walk into town.

 

I’m now the up to date version of me, sitting in a small house in Kyoto looking at this post (that seems so long ago) wondering if I should put some aliens into my Kyoto pictures. 

Maybe later. 

Now I am sending out my photography of Kyoto by way of scroll paintings inspired by a museum from several days ago.

The change in tone is not lost on me.