The return of the coffee shop

 

I, along with so many of the library patrons here where I work for another month (!), have been bemoaning the loss of the library coffee shop for years. Unfortunately, for most of its existence, the coffee shop wasn't all that great. A chain with mediocre coffee, bad food, and deteriorating management, it still added a little warmth and city complexity to the library. So, since it was gone, and maybe even a bit before that, I  harbored the fantasy of putting a good quality coffee bar right into the library. Surely I have articulated my plans for such a thing here. Not believing in outsourcing I felt the coffee stand could be staffed by interested library staff throughout the day, and it could be priced at a self-sustaining rate.

It's too late for this sort of thing to happen at my library. And certainly it is too late for me, but I thought I would offer my parting shot at this small dream...

Welcome back, welcome back

 

Having issued forth hundreds of mildly amusing quips at the front desk of my library, or perhaps thousands, or possibly millions, over thirty-one years, I am aware that the number still to come is dwindling into the double digits, and maybe even soon the single digits. I have few clever quips to issue at the front desk of my library left in my life.

And so, as the curtain comes to a close on my career here, while I am still saying ridiculous things at the front desk of the library, I am eager to report each one of them.

And so it was that today a woman came to the front desk of my library to pick up her interlibrary loan copy of the DVD Phenomenon, starring John Travolta. As I handed the DVD over to her, in the process of checking it out, she said she was surprised that her local library didn't have a copy, and that she had to request it through interlibrary loan.

I was non plussed. I said that what surprised me is that the guy playing the Sweathog Vinnie Barbarino was starring in an actual movie!

The person checking out the DVD seemed to find this somewhat amusing, so I added:

"Did Arnold Horshack also go on to have an illustrious career?"

The final quips

 

There will be all too few stories like this to tell you soon enough. So I had better get them in while they're still happening.

A young man came to the front desk of the library to pick up a DVD double feature of George C. Scott movies. We had to get them on Interlibrary Loan because we don't have as many old George C. Scott movies as we used to. I think this one had "The Hospital" which was pretty a big film, and then there was another movie rather more forgotten in time.

I considered the cover of the dvd for a moment as I checked the item out to the young person. He was maybe 20 years old. "I considered doing an impression of George C. Scott for you just now." I told him. "Only, two things prevented me."

"Yeah?" Said the guy with tepid interest.

"One. I wasn't sure you would know George C. Scott before watching the movies. And two, I can't do an impression of George C. Scott."

France in the library

 

Surely putting Japanese gates into my library yesterday was the inspiration for today's work. I struggled to get my tools to do what I wanted here, namely, find a way to put France into the Roseville Library. And though these pictures aren't as seamless as I was hoping they would be at first, I am resisting the temptation to put a bunch more Photoshop manipulation into them to make them more complicated and clean. Maybe the fact that they read as half double-exposure superimpositions, half real spaces, makes them more dreamlike?

Either way, these are an all too real and yet also unreal vision of my current feelings of being in two worlds at once, all while being a little bit in neither.

Japan in the library

 

After I finish up here at the library, after 31 years, my darling wife and I will be going to Japan for awhile.

Naturally though it is all starting to blur a bit together.

The lost archives of... the last few hours

 

Over the last couple of days I have been digging deep in the clerkmanifesto archives for some of our best overlooked photographs. I have more of these today, except, well, these were mostly made in the last several hours.

That doesn't mean they weren't deep in the archives!

You wouldn't believe how fast I can forget some of this stuff. Also I cannot keep up with my organizational systems. An hour after I finish a series involving baroque redesigns of flowers, or images turned into chinese tattoos, they are as lost to me as a bonus fox and skunk picture from the time of covid.

I'm just saying that simply because some of these pictures were done today doesn't mean they aren't forgotten treasures pulled from the deep archives of clerkmanifesto.

More pictures from the archives

 

With so many photo projects swirling around clerkmanifesto these past months, many very nice images were left on the cutting room floor. That is why over these few days I am presenting some of my photographs that missed their chance to appear on clerkmanifesto.

How sad they all were!

How happy they will be now.