Friday, February 14, 2025

My valentine advice to young people

 








Hello young people. Thank you for coming to clerkmanifesto. You will find it an endless wellspring of wisdom.

Alas for you that like all wisdom, it still leaves nearly all of the heavy lifting.


Still, here is a head start for today, Valentine's Day, based on my personal journey!




In life, do the love thing.


Everything else ends up having been a waste of time.













Thursday, February 13, 2025

Hard for a mouse

 




















Not to complain about a creative endeavor that no one particularly asked for anyway, but...


(Several paragraphs of complaining here redacted out of sympathy for my readers. Hi readers.)




One thing I have been finding with these slightly longer little fable music videos I've been doing is that I think they're really fun and terrific as they develop, but trying to bring them together at the end becomes exponentially more difficult since, and all of you dealing with AI in usually more business like settings will know, AI is extremely bad at specificity and particular situations. This as opposed the more open or common ones it excels at. 

To be honest, this isn't just AI that suffers this problem, but is in the nature of all machines. It is why we are always compelled to adapt ourselves to the capabilities of machinery and technology every bit as much as they help us with our needs. 

But I didn't mean to lecture on AI. I just meant to show you my shiny new "Mouse in the Library" video. You can decide for yourself if the ending kind of fizzles here. The sad part is I was enamored with my song, but the video ends before the song got to my favorite part!





































Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Behind every door: The endless journey part one

 




Because we are taking you on the first part of an endless mystical journey today, we couldn't fit our video here, so it's off to YouTube land for you again. I am not certain the first link will work, so you can also hit the second one by clicking through. They both go to the same thing. 

Music is essential with this journey so please set up your state of the art sound systems. Thank you, and I hope you'll come to the Planetarium "Behind Every Door Experience" when it arrives your town. Drop me a comment and I'll make sure you get comped tickets and some edibles.

Peace.

























Tuesday, February 11, 2025

Elevators at work

 





In assembling today's post, which I largely did on the more complicated medium of my phone, at work, on a day that afforded me extra free time due to the library delivery truck breaking down, I focused largely on elevators. Indeed here are two, half-minute vignettes involving our two elevators at the library.

But what surprised me is that though I use labels to help identify my thousands of posts by subject, I do not yet have a label for elevators.

This is a shame, because I am certain that my library elevators have been the subject of many excellent posts. Not only have I featured monsters in our elevators before, and even a bloody elevator "Shining" homage, I also have fond memories of posts about the library elevator functioning as a time machine. And I remember travelling up and down on the elevator to different times of the day like it really happened. Less dramatically, because it is a source of fascination for me, I've probably written a dozen odd pieces about how fantastically slow our elevators are. But, alas, no label linking them all together.

So anyway, here are our elevators in all their glory, the first post featuring our wonderful new label "elevator" that as yet is connected to nothing. 

Remember to click on the video to set it, enlarge by clicking the bottom right, and click it all again to go. 

No music today with this footage, I am sorry to say.



































Monday, February 10, 2025

My mind wanders to France

 





I try to stay moored in the present. It's all we have. But as a dramatic change in the life of me and my darling wife inches relentlessly closer, things oscillate in me, and every once in a while I find myself in the future at the same time as I am here. Where is here? It's not quite a dream. It's like two panes of glass that almost match up, but can't, quite. 

And if I'm not sure where I am I look around me. 



If I see fox and skunk, I know it's all still to happen.


























Sunday, February 9, 2025

A unicorn for your forest needs

 






I was working on a nice fox and skunk at the beach in France video. It was inspired by a handwritten post I was writing. I'm sure it's somewhere around here. Let me check my metaphorical pockets.  It will turn up at some point. 

While I was working on fox and skunk, I also put a unicorn in a meadow and, lo and behold, that's the video I actually finished!

Well, I mean, I'm almost finished.

I'm sort of working on it now, trying to get the last five seconds to come out vaguely how I want it to. In the meantime I am writing this.

Was there anything you were interested in hearing me say?


Really.

I'd love to!

This is great, finally!!!


So let me...


Oooh. It's ready!


Ok, click the video to set it. Enlarge it on the bottom right. Click to play.

It's meant to be a soothing magical forest experience with calming harp music.
























Saturday, February 8, 2025

The library is open!

 




Though I have written thousands of reflections on my life in the library, and covered details of every sort of event that takes place there, there is one moment at my library that regularly induces in me a strange feeling that I have found it hard to express: the moment when my immensely popular library opens and people flood in. 

Every time I see the frenetic moment of my library opening I think, "Instant Library"! There's just something about all those library patrons corralled in the lobby, flooding into the library as we pull back the gates. There is such a strange sense of urgency as they all race off to carry out their plans for the day, or simply to grab their special places, or are maybe racing off to one our first come, first serve private study rooms.

But I think I finally have it.

I have a way to express it! And even a theme song!



(Click on the video to set it. Click the bottom right corner to make it suitably sized. And then click once more to play, and thanks for coming!)















Friday, February 7, 2025

Second languages







At the beginning of a no doubt long journey to learn the glorious French language, I take heart that I have once before managed, over the years, to learn a second language.

I speak Library Patron.

While Library Patron is not an official language recognized by the U.N., it is a language with its own rules and words. And if, at first glance, Library Patron looks a lot like English, so does French! But no matter what others think of it, the language of Library Patron is as full of as much idiosyncrasy and nuance as any other language on Earth. What other language requires a person to interpret "2289" as "22089"? Or, did you know that in Library Patron the phrase "Can I ask you a question?"  often means "I am lonely."? 

Come to think of it, in Library Patron, a weirdly large number of things translate to "I am lonely."

All of this barely begins to scratch the surface of the complexity involved in the massive language known as Library Patron.


Today someone came to the front desk and asked me and my co-worker if anyone had turned in to our lost and found a blue coffee mug. I went to the back, where the lost and found shelves are, picked out an olive green water bottle, and brought it back to the front desk.

"There it is!" The library patron exclaimed in delight.

"How did you know that green water bottle was a blue coffee mug?" My young colleague asked.

A shrug. Who can really explain?


I speak Library Patron.








 

Thursday, February 6, 2025

Randomized blast from the past!

 






I turned to my lovely wife and asked her to pick a number between one and ten.

"Eight."

The die it is cast then!

We take our way back machine to 2018.



I have not seen this post from seven years ago and will encounter it just as you do now. There is no saving roll. I will publish it here!


What if it is no good?

What if it is bad, or boring, or slight?

Is this the measure of clerkmanifesto?

And what if it is really good?

Or, oh my God! What if...

What if...




What if it's silly!!!




Yeah, it'll probably look like it's going to be really good, or really bad, and then it will be...


silly.



I guess I can live with that.




Anyway, whatever it is, in whatever form, here it is as it was, February 6, 2018.









Sidewalk hijinks




After three months of freezing rain, light snows, partial thaws, deep freezes, and heavy snows, the sidewalks and walking paths of my city are at about average for this time of year. That is to say they are neither dangerous nor miserable to walk on, but they do require a certain care and attentiveness, with also a smidgen of struggle. There are good long sections of relatively clear footing, occasional banks of snow to climb, areas of greasy slush to plow through (like walking on sand), a bit of powdery fluff to crunch over, and the dreaded ice patches.

Of course ice patches are the worst of it, and when a dusting of snow cleverly obscures one it can be even worse. However these ice slicks are isolated enough that sticking to a clearly safe section of sidewalk is usually no significant hardship. A great case in point comes from my walk this morning. I was walking along the river when, on my mostly clear path, stood an island of pure, slick ice. And right in the middle of that patch of ice was one fresh and bright yellow banana peel. Almost like a joke, but there it was.

I suppose there was only one thing to think as I easily skirted the danger:

"Well now, that's redundant."











Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Elephants at the front desk

 





I should be sharing with you my hilarious banter at the front desk of the library, like with the woman who returned a bookclub in a bag at the front desk (a sort of small duffle with ten of the same book and a readers' guide for bookclubs). I thanked her and she said "Aren't you going to check it?"

And I replied, "I think if you're wanting me to check it it's going to all be there."




Or with the man who wanted to check out a book on investing, who didn't have his card or ID, but could rattle off his 14 digit library card number with aplomb. To whom I said "With your flair for numbers I'm sure you'll be a millionaire in no time."


And my god those would have been delightful posts!



But for some reason, I found a picture I had taken of a lovely romantic painting on my phone. And I thought it would be nice if some elephants walked through it.


And so that's what I've done instead.




There is sound here. And remember, click once to set it. Bottom right corner for full screen. And then hit go,  and voila!


Elephants!











Tuesday, February 4, 2025

Bob Dylan's opinion of Complete Unknown

 







Some of you, knowing about my personal relationship wherein I go drinking with Bob Dylan, were perhaps disappointed that I covered my seeing the movie Complete Unknown in this space yesterday with no reference to what Bob thought of it. So I called Bob.

I don't normally call Bob.

Bob does not normally answer.


But expect the unexpected with Bob.

Except not too much of the unexpected, and once you work out the pattern, barely any at all.

Nevertheless, there was Bob.

"Hi Bob. I saw it!" I said.

"You saw what?"  He asked.

"Your movie."

"Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid?" He asked.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid is a movie he had a small part in in the early seventies. I ignored him. He knew what I was talking about. 

"I thought it was hilarious. Finally, they had the sense to make a comedy about you."

"A comedy?" He replied. I could tell he was thinking this interpretation over and kind of liking it.

"What did you think of it?" I asked, coming to the alleged heart of the matter.

There was a long silence.

"I think we should go out drinking sake the next time I'm in town." Bob said apropos of nothing.

"So you thought it was fairly accurate." I interpreted.

"I guess so." He said in an offhand way that sounded weirdly like Timothee Chalomet.

Then we talked of more important things.




Just kidding.

We made brief plans and hung up.








Monday, February 3, 2025

A complete unknown

 







I went on a date with my lovely wife, and after Japanese food, as part of the date, we went to a movie!


We don't go to many movies, which is why there was an exclamation mark there.


We saw the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. We liked it. I particularly thought it was very funny. But it's a little weird watching an entire biopic movie about someone you know personally, like I do with Bob. I mean, have you ever seen a major Hollywood movie about someone you know?

Oh, right, Clerkmanifestoland. So you know what I mean.







Sunday, February 2, 2025

Whiplash

 






This weekend at my work at my library, much of the training for one of my new co-workers was dropped in my lap. And while I am a very nice, and very thorough teacher, if my instruction is not taken with enough attention or consideration I can get pretty strict.

I have never seen the movie "Whiplash", so I will probably do myself no service by comparing myself to anything in the movie, a movie that I have merely seen clips of. And yet, lately whenever I am training in a new employee, "Whiplash" is the movie that comes to my mind.

"Whiplash" is about an aspiring jazz drummer who goes to the best music school in America, where his teacher (JK Simmons) is a monstrously demanding figure who extracts musical talent and skill through fear, demand, and intimidation. He is a ferociously demanding teacher who will settle for nothing less than perfection. 

Just like me!



Well, I hope I'm not that bad.

But if my student starts questioning my instruction, or countering with "That's not what (insert manager or co-worker's name here) said." They will receive a long, ferocious, and withering lecture from me that will tear apart everything they ever thought they knew about library work, or managers, or the nature of the Universe. Hopefully all three.


And if they turn out to suck anyway?



I will be gone before the leaves fall again.







Saturday, February 1, 2025

A hearty non recommendation

 





On the heels of a post in which my recommendation for a thoughtful video essay by Innuendo Studios was so strong that I provided a link for you to it, to the YouTube video called The South Bank of the Rubicon, today I would like to heartily recommend nothing. 

And the nothing is called:

Spy School Goes Wild

Spy School Goes Wild is the 12th book in the Juvy fiction series by Stuart Gibbs, and it's terrific. I have read all of them, and this one might be the best, though all of them are quite good. They are rollicking, wildly improbable kid adventure spy tales with tongue wildly in cheek. This one is particularly funny and even a bit wise sometimes. More than once I felt the strong urge to jot down some wonderful random line, but seeing as I'm listening to the book as an audio book, I have only managed to get to paper and transcribe this most recent line very close to the end of the book. I present it here without context because the context would take way too long:

"In addition to being the international language of commerce, medicine, and science, English is also the standard language of evil."


Maybe you had to be there?


But if this book is so delightful why isn't this a recommendation, you could, theoretically ask?

All the really good recommendations are bespoke. And this book isn't so fantastic that I am compelled despite that to make a blanket recommendation, like with The South Bank of the Rubicon, which, I suspect, didn't work out as a recommendation for hardly anyone anyway. If there was someone I knew who liked this sort of book, I might recommend it here. But the truth is, I just don't think Spy School Goes Wild is quite the thing for anyone reading this now.

This isn't reverse psychology or anything. Reverse psychology rarely works anyway. and certainly wouldn't for recommendations. No, this is just a real, bona fide non recommendation of a book.


But it's a pretty funny book.



Definitely don't read it.











Friday, January 31, 2025

Alas, a journey into our current political situation

 






In my life I have always been politically attentive, sometimes even studious. Much of this comes from a genuine desire for a better world for everyone.

So naturally, like you, I have suffered terribly.


My sources for political knowledge and insight have varied from books and newspapers, interview shows, political, artistic, and economic theory, movies, radio, TV, magazines, and the video essay. With the advent of the Trump era my attention heightened for two reasons; The stakes seemed to be getting so much higher, and YouTube, podcasting, and the short video format produced so much more informative, entertaining, and thought-provoking content. And so I followed politics with increasing intensity.

I was very well informed.

And though I tried to share my political knowledge and ideologies with the people around me, I am, alas, better at art, magic, and clowning. So I also tried not to share my political knowledge and ideologies. 

With very mixed success. Jesus, look at this!


And then Trump was elected again in 2024.




I had to take a break. Not just because it was all too horrible to process. And not just because it seemed to demonstrate that all my attention was functionally meaningless. But because all of the people who I read, and appreciated, and who I still believe are mostly thoughtful and clever people, had, in a sense, failed.

I know that some of this is simplistic. I know that people fight, have fought, and must continue to fight for what's right. But I also understand that the election of both Donald Trump and a Republican majority was a failure of this country too large to really look away from. 

Too large for it not to have been the responsibility of everyone.

Everyone.

Me too.


Well, maybe not you, but you can decide.




I went on several deleted rants here in this space about how despite this spread of guilt, some people are far more guilty than others, in proportion to their power. But fine, let's just say that's true. The main point is that I have yet to hear any contrition, anywhere.

And so I walked away.




But fascism is loud. And I keep hearing it around the edges of things even as I try not look its way. But when the tide is low there is no reason to think of the water. And when it's high?

The water sloshes miserably in one's boots as one tries to walk.



And so sometimes I drifted irresistibly, accidentally back. Just a little. Just to a person or two who I respected, or appreciated, or learned from the most. Which is how I saw one of Innuendo Studios rare videos:  The Alt-Right Playbook: The South Bank of the Rubicon.

It didn't make me feel worse, exactly.

And I really think it's the best understanding of this country in the wake of the 2024 election, the best analysis, the best... consideration.

I don't hardly ever share things like this here, but today I'd like to just this once. It is not a bombastic piece. It is measured, and serious, and thoughtful, but I think, heartfelt. And I am hoping you might like to take it in.





The Alt-Right Playbook: The South Bank of the Rubicon.
















Thursday, January 30, 2025

Leaving early

 





I can see that this is the kind of post that might give the casual reader the feeling that I don't like my job. So you should know this:

I kind of like my job!

I just like not working way better!




One of the peculiarities of my schedule at the library is that every single day I work, I work until closing. My library is open for 59 hours a week so this is not true for any of my colleagues. For the most part, I am happy with this schedule, although there is a touch of pained jealousy at that all too common point in the day where I have to watch my co-workers leave while I have to stay behind. Another side effect of this schedule is that when I do leave early, for an appointment, a minor catastrophe, or in some prearranged vacation, I get the peculiar feeling of transgression, like I am playing hooky, or leaving something incomplete. Of course, it is a sublime feeling as well, like I am stealing time. 

Time is delicious.

With this in mind, over the past few years, on the almost but not quite rare occasion where I go out after work with one of my two local friends, I have taken to leaving one hour early and using one precious hour of vacation time to do so.

This is great.

This is happening today and in 75 minutes I am leaving to go to a restaurant called Lynette to schmooze with old Marcus. Leaving an hour early is not much really. And an hour of vacation time, though small, is terribly valuable to me. But outweighing all of that is the invaluable fact that all day long a secret refrain quietly rings out in my spirit, like a lovely whisper slightly lightening everything:

I'm leaving early, I'm leaving early, I'm leaving early, I'm leaving early,






Wednesday, January 29, 2025

The height of my political cynicism

 






At the height of my political cynicism, where the situation is too dark for me to spend much time with it, we are having a special election for a County Commissioner.  I know, of course, all about the looming fascism here, and the very real Republican horror slowly lowering on my country like a dark, miasmic fog right now, but these county commissioners are every one of them Democrats. 

So that shouldn't be so bad, right?

But that's not the way it works. 

And I happen to know that none of the county commissioners are, well, for lack of a better word, good.

Or to put it another way, they are bad.

For instance, the reason there is an open seat for this special election is because the County Commissioners created a new agency, and then one of them left to run it at a very generous executive salary notably higher than that of a County Commissioner.

So the hope would be that a really good person is running for this newly created opening. But there is little news or information about the people running for the position. 

And here comes the cynicism part.

We know that no one good is running because if they were...


We would be hearing all about their flaws.







Tuesday, January 28, 2025

The wit and wisdom of me

 






In the aftermath of my post about how I could stand to be more humble, I would like to now quote myself. And if this goes against the ambitions of my last missive, well, I offer this:

All of clerkmanifesto really is simply me quoting myself.




Our story begins at the children's room desk. There, the librarian, putting her desk in order, discovered that a sign had been on her desk saying "The library will close at 5".

The library won't actually close until 8 tonight. So she removed the sign. And in so doing, she looked at the sign and said "I didn't know I had this power."

So I said:


"We all have the power to do everything, once."


















Monday, January 27, 2025

I could stand to be more humble

 





"I could stand to be more humble."

I say in an act of self reflection so awe inspiring grown men weep.

This thought came to me when I turned on a jazz station driving to work today. Well, not the second part of the thought. That came later. But the first, humble part came when I heard, as I usually do, a terrific song on the jazz station and, luckily, my car radio was displaying who the song was by:

Chick Corea.

I have nothing against Chick Corea.

I have heard of Chick Corea pretty much all my life in the way one hears of someone and then just thinks:

Eh, whatever.

And it never occurred to me that Chick Corea might be absolutely fantastic to listen to.


I probably don't know a lot of things.

I like the jazz station because it is a nice place to be ignorant. Pretty much everything is a pleasant surprise.

After the Chick Corea song, a song came on by, well, I can't remember the name, maybe Joey Defrancesco? It was just as good really as the Chick Corea one. The title was something like:

Things You Don't Know.


There are still a few.

I wouldn't mind finding some more.












Sunday, January 26, 2025

The Sunday funnies

 





It's always pretty quiet around clerkmanifesto on Sundays. It might be quiet around clerkmanifesto on all days, but I can't tell because clerkmanifesto is so large and full of footprints, and they could be fresh or a million years old.

Although someone is eating the cookies I leave out.

But yeah, Sunday is quiet, so it's a good day for just kicking back and reading the comics. Or watching them. Today is sort of a comic, in its way.


This is a comic called:


"They Are Already Among Us"




This video has sound and can be played right here in our own living room where there are snacks and stuff! Click once on the video for it to load. Click on the bottom right if you want a more cinematic experience, and then click again on the video to play it and its lovely music. Voila!














Saturday, January 25, 2025

Dan Dan Dan






I'll admit this might not be the most appropriate video project, nor one for me to have taken so seriously. But my co-worker Dan is something of a bizarre muse to me, amusing in stories, funny in a series of "Mini Dans in the library" pictures where he is so tiny he can hold up towering books like a human bookend, and now he is appealingly reproducible in AI video with his distinctive features and expressive... qualities. So the lark of putting him drunk in alleys with dinosaurs just sort of ran away with itself, leaving me with something approaching a two minute movie. Yes, twenty seconds might have been a more appropriate length for all of this, but there's simply so much irresistible Dan in this movie! Well, irresistible to me, and it even has the suggestion of a storyline! Although as to that, you'll have to supply a fair portion of it for yourself. 





I wrote a whole thing here about how to watch this now on clerkmanifesto and then found my video is simply too fat to show here, so we're back to directing you to YouTube, for today at least. Click on the picture to watch the (possibly painfully long- depends on how much of a Dan fan you are) video. 



It has meticulously crafted (only sort of fake) music, so turn up your stereo system.




























Friday, January 24, 2025

Things that work on clerkmanifesto!

 








Having struggled for some time with the functionality I have here with my posting of visual elements, I am delighted to find I can do things that I wasn't able to do before. One of these now appears to be video! I might like this method better than linking you over to YouTube or Instagram, but this method looks a little less fancy at first glance, and it requires simple instructions which I will share with you now so that you can watch the following two library promotional non promotional videos in the best way possible.


These videos all have sound.


Instructions:


1. Click once on the video. This will load it and give you a fresh viewing box!


2. (Optional) Click on the box in the bottom right corner to give you a full screen version. The video will play fine without doing this, but it will be very small and you will miss out on the fantastical cinematic wonder of my movie (or, er, TV commercial?)


3. Click one more time on the video to play it.



That's all!


Pretty easy, huh?


It might even work!!!


So try it out...

























Thursday, January 23, 2025

The fun-pak

 







Today is a medium-sized fun-pak of entertainment on Clerkmanifesto.


First we start with a pretty good Library Promo, featuring a buffalo, which, as one of my co-workers so nicely informed me an hour ago, is the national animal of the United States of America.


At least until they change it into, I don't know, an angry dog barking in someone's yard.



Sorry, things are getting a bit dark here in the USA.




And this is supposed to be a fun-pak!






So maybe to get back on the fun trak start with a click through on the buffalo below. There is a good song with it too:














And, as if that wasn't enough, next is a trip back in time to exactly eight years ago to the day, and a post called "Dear Library Director".


I pick the year for these ahead of time on these throwbacks, predetermined, so they really are luck of the draw, and not in any way a best of, and...


...at first I was like, uncanny, I have hit gold.


But as I read on I was like...


Hmm, I don't know.


And then I was like...





Well, why don't you make up your own mind here. It's one of the things I like best about you.



So here is "Dear library director", from January 23, 2017.








Dear Library Director,



I'm just so tired.


I have been working here, if you can call it that, and I think you can, for over twenty-two years. Twenty-two years! Do you know how long that is? 


It's twenty-two years and then some, as I previously stated. I don't understand why there would be any confusion. 


I realize it is not so much the labors of my job that exhaust me. I have learned a great deal about how to mitigate those with a kind of "work on demand" approach. No, it is the pretense that exhausts me. Everyday I have to pretend. I frequently have to pretend I'm working. I have to pretend I have bosses who are in charge of me. I have to pretend I am a cog in a highly structured library machine. I have to pretend I am part of a reasonably run, hierarchical structure. I have to pretend that I am a library worker, a clerk.


I am not any of these.


I realize this may come as a surprise to you.


Allow me to outline my actual job:


I am a wild card. 



I am the trickster of the library, Coyote, the court jester. I am both its good fairy and the touch of acid to keep it honest. I am the library's blogger and its mascot. I am here to enjoy myself. I am the clutch hitter, the keeper of secrets that I will tell to anyone who deserves to know. And everyone who wants to know deserves to know. I am the visionary ignored, the history keeper, the bon vivant, and the teller of tales. I am he who makes our library into a living room, the bartender, the loose cannon, the flaneur watching soccer games in the teen room. I am the one who makes the whole library into a theatrical production of community theater. I am the hail mary pass, the giver of gifts, and the dreamer of library dreams. I am every cartoon ever drawn about books and libraries. I am a satire of bureaucracy, the wilderness at the heart of the library, the burning fusion mysteriously powering it forever, and that which must not be named.

And I am good at this job.


I was made for this job and have made this job mine.


But I am not nearly as good as I could be. I am held back by the false expectations that I should shelve when I'm supposed to shelve, that I should appear busy, that I am beholden to people who are allowed to tell me what to do. I am held back by the urgings of normalcy, industry, and conventionality. This is a painful fiction that serves no one. It merely frustrates my managers. It irritates the more confused of my co-workers, and it dampens my full exposure to the greater library.


It is a foolish consistency, the hobgoblin of little minds, it is Derwood to Samantha, and it is a trim for Samson's unwieldy hair. It is employing dementors to watch over the grounds of the library.


Free me.


Make me Clown Prince of the library. Trust danger. If there is no way around our entrenched structures then have me report to you, with the understanding that I report only to the mad little gods of the forest and to the books on our shelves. There is work to be done. Dark times are upon us. Now is not the time for us to cower in the shadows, now is the time for us to reach for the stars.



No, I am not the one who reaches for the stars. I am the one who creates the beautiful accidents that hurl us there.





In deep camaraderie and library devotion,








Feldenstein Calypso

Clown Prince of the library (provisional)
















And finally in our fun-pak, there are these test clips to see if I can upload video once again directly to clerkmanifesto. They are just short pieces of Dr. Seuss at the library, and one is "Dan with a dinosaur". They are designed so that if they don't work you won't have missed much, but if they do work...


Fun for the fun-pak!




(Update: They seem to work if you click on them a second time!)





























Wednesday, January 22, 2025

New staff and clientele at the library

 







Continuing on with clerkmanifesto's most recent project of library promotional films, I have a very cat oriented video today. The staff, always pretty catlike, becomes more so in this rendition of my world, but the library itself, as you will see, also moves in a cattish direction.

I am still plagued by some finicky transitions, but I am back with an AI generator called Minimax which, despite its many limitations in this regard, is still my favorite generator, and I am happy enough to show you this latest 30 second, er, I don't know, Ad?

There is music and, of course, click through the picture for all the fun to begin.


























Tuesday, January 21, 2025

I sell the library

 







As promised, or warned? I have the first of this round of library videos. We will start with a simple tribute to lions in the library. I am relearning how to do transitions, which are always a bit wonky when it comes to this AI that I'm using, but when it gets a shot I am hoping it will get, it makes me very happy indeed. This is what happened when the camera lick shows up. 

You'll see.

Anyway, click through the picture and you'll be on your way. And note: We have music again!






















Monday, January 20, 2025

Old revelations new projects

 









I am working on new images for new projects which is always a tricky time at clerkmanifesto. Everything I make is for clerkmanifesto, but some things take longer than other things, which sometimes challenges the sacred law of daily posting. One solution is to show work in progress, which is what we are up to today. And as you will soon see I am working on library promo pictures. These will eventually be for short films of some kind.

I don't know why I am making library promo pictures. They're not actually promoting anything. They're really just whimsies.

Perhaps my upcoming departure from the library after so many years is playing on my mind. And even my careful circumspection around exactly what library I have been writing about for all these years on clerkmanifesto seems to be falling away to the point where I now have animals emblazoned with the name of my branch. I look around where I work these days and think "What a tiny world it all is and what a big one it has been."



I won't be sad to go.




But I'm not sad to have been.