A cartoon about getting older

 

It's my half birthday today.

I'm just noting it. No presents are necessary. Also the coincidental fact of it dovetails nicely with this Doris cartoon I made for today:

Age appropriate

 

Yesterday I said I would be letting the dioramas speak for themselves, but I do want to step in to note this significant arcana change:  I have aged up my cartoon character to a level rather more commensurate with, well, me, retired in the South of France. I think my character might have even gone a little past my age sometimes, but that's okay, I can grow into him, and he seems about right today.

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?

Grape and Kamala turn 60

 

There is no refuting it; once you get to enough birthdays the numbers start to feel a little random. There are just so many of them! And what kind of meaning does a person want to attach to even a fairly even number like sixty, let alone, I don't know, 62, or 59?

Are these interesting questions?

Not particularly. 

But I am turning sixty too! And so I think about age, and these numbers, and yet I can't quite get them to be all that interesting.

On Grape's birthday, which is today, we like to reminisce about some happy times with him; a summer of miniature golf for instance, or crashing a car, swimming with hundreds of sharks or taking peyote. And so we need not particularly dwell on numbers. But that said, today I don't have much of a story. The time I am thinking about was too sweet, too complicated and yet simple for that, but fortunately I do have something else pertaining to that time in my bag of tricks.

Anyway, the period I have been thinking of was when he was a best man at my wedding and came out to Chicago, where myself and friends and some family had taken over the house of a friend of my mom in the lead-up to the best and most essential day of my life. It was a few days of drinking and midnight swimming in Lake Michigan, assembling a wedding outfit, and generally wandering the city. It was a moment of calm sweetness, all of its own thing. I have a picture of Grape from this time, 1991, so maybe he doesn't look exactly like this today. We are on the grass, by the lake. He is lying on me.

Despite the fact that this was merely a snapshot, if you click the picture, well...

He comes alive, like when I remember the time.

All been done before

 

As I wind down my library career (that sounds too fancy. How about "my library sojourn"?) I find that our staff suddenly consists of a cadre of young people, people much the age I was when I started here. Thirtyish. And some of these young people are lively, and come up with ideas for the library.

"I wish we had merch."

Or

"They should have interesting authors on In Service Day."

Or

"We should have a library team."

And as an elder of the library, I am here to meet their enthusiasm with the cold dose of history.

We have done everything already. We had merch, we had authors, and have you ever heard of "The Dewey Decimators?" And like the Ancient Mariner, I am here to tell them all about it. These are long, harrowing stories meant to curdle their bones.

But it's not like I'm all doom and gloom about their fresh new enthusiasms. Sure we have already done everything... 

But we didn't do any of it very well.

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.

The week of goodbyes

 

One thing you learn around here, on Planet Earth, is that if you stick around long enough, people get old.

You might think that this is obvious, and that everyone knows this. But that is only because you are old... ish.

Come on now, think back. I dare you.

Once upon a time, this was all just a kind of theory. There were old people, tons of them, but no one had seen it happen.

Now people drop dead before our eyes, they fade like wraiths in abrupt fits and chunks of time, three years, ten, and the indomitable suddenly show up one day frail, bent, bleached, withered. 

This shit never happened when I was 25.

I noticed it, and then soon there was a point where it made me mad. But even that wore away, like mountains dissolved by snowflakes.

Now, like you, when it comes down to it, I am just... wise. Venerable. Still.

We're all just trees here, watching the sun and the night.

One long-time colleague is retiring tomorrow. She liked Italy and spoke Italian. She ran some history courses that were wildly popular with seniors. And she was the librarian who dealt with all the public challenges to items in our collection. 

Our library has never been the sort to be on the verge of being forced to ban books, but it was nice to have someone there for the eventualities.

I am bringing gelato to her farewell potluck, and the following joke to tell her:

Thank god you are finally leaving. Now we can get some of these awful books banned from here!!

Trivia

 

Historically I have been pretty good at trivia, or maybe even excellent. But I have found that as I have gotten older, less of what I know is generally relevant. So I am increasingly less good. Thirty years ago I could tell you who wrote the lovely song "Lalena", and it might have been a mildly impressive trivia moment for me. I can still answer it now, but I simply won't be asked it. 

It's not coming up.

For general trivia, notable chunks of what I know has moved on from mildly obscure to of no general interest whatsoever.

Sometimes when I go up to shelve I'll find myself scrolling through short youtube reels for a bit, you know, like tik toks, and there is a recurring one where some guy who does man on the street quizzes, where he doubles the money for each identification of increasingly more difficult songs. Curiously I watch these without sound, only subtitles of the conversation, and my only impossibly, unintentional clue will be an intensely, insensibly pixilated view of the album cover that is shown for the song playing. But the amazing part for me is some random musical genius will answer question after question of people I have barely heard of, and would rarely be able to answer correctly. The Thermals? The Used? Against Me? I have no idea. These people on the street are bloody savants! But then as the challenge money rises into the hundreds of dollars, an album cover will come up on the screen, represented by about eight squares of different colors and I'll just be confused. "That's Music From the Big Pink" I'll mutter, surprised I can recognize it from so little. And hearing any song from it would be the most comically easy song identification in the world to me!

But it's not for these people gunning for the big money. "I give up." They say after not even very long. This, this one is the one that is too ridiculously hard!

And they are only slightly disappointed when they are told how they failed.

They know every Tame Impala song by heart, but they didn't know The Band?

Perhaps as we age we slowly begin to enter into a kind of backwards world...

Fox and Skunk in the toyshop

 

In a local toyshop I saw these Fox and Skunk figurines and thought "I would play with these!"

And then I thought "That's silly, I'm a 59 year old man."

 Everything hypothetical is gone. 

I remembered: 

"I do play with these."

The second chance

 

While I was shelving in the fiction section, an elderly lady hailed me down like I was a cab. I removed my earplug through which a novel was being read to me, and I asked how I could help. She asked me the date.

 I told her that it was the Summer Solstice, June 21st. This merely confused her so I reiterated the date without any of the planetary fluff.

Then she showed me her Daniel Steele book, and pulled out of it her date due slip. She pointed to the due date. "Does this say July 8?" She asked. 

"It does." I replied. "It isn't due for 17 days." I reassured.

She wasn't reassured. She was confused. "So is it due yet?" She asked.

"No, it isn't due yet." I said.

"When is it due?" She asked.

"July 8." I replied.

She walked away.

"I don't think that went very well." I thought to myself.

Fifteen minutes later she was back.

She asked all the same questions again.

This time I answered each one as clearly and briefly as possible.

It went far more smoothly, but it was way sadder.

Trifling front desk dialog

 

In replacing a co-worker at the front desk I am brought up to date.

"It wasn't on the schedule, so I wrote down that the Teen Maker has just started." My co-worker says, gesturing to the back corner of our library.

"Oh, is that where they make teens?" I inquire with great interest. "I feel silly. I always thought they somehow emerged spontaneously out of children!"

Our teen bins, a true story

 

Tonight at the library I was emptying one of the bins that is part of our large, automated check in machine. These bins are large, sturdy things that plug in but also can run on battery for when they're not connected to the machine or a socket. Actually these bins are getting pretty old so sometimes they work better than others. When they break down in any number of ways we collect them in an out of the way area where they wait to be worked on. But the basic idea of these bins, when working properly, is that the floor of the bin automatically lowers as it fills. Then when full it can be sent to another branch as is, or, more often, emptied into appropriate boxes or carts, as the floor of the bin automatically rises.

I was emptying one of these bins then into gray boxes to send all the books to another branch. The bin wasn't working on the battery power. It also wasn't working very well even when plugged in. As I said, these bins are getting on in years, heading towards the teen years, and they have thus become recalcitrant and moody. Through cycling the bin on and off I managed to inch the floor of the bin up in little bits and finally was able to get everything out of the bin.

Then the thing happened with the machine that one dreads happening with any teenager of any kind anywhere:

It started smoking.

Energy

 

A co-worker and I were discussing, one late afternoon, our low energy levels. We started talking about when we did have energy. I said "I guess for the most part my most energetic times have been between three and seven."

"In the afternoon?" My co-worker sensibly asked.

"No." I replied a bit sadly. "Years old."

Even children get older

I have taken much delight in my impassioned following of Lionel Messi, the greatest soccer player ever, and, by complicated extension that you really don't want me to go into, possibly the greatest athlete ever. But he is 32 years old, and for a soccer player that means his days are seriously numbered. Whether he be magically great for another week, or year, or three years cannot be known, but there's way less sand in this top half of that hourglass than there is in the bottom half. Way less.

Will I need to pick another greatest athlete to follow then? Who even is out there? It's looking pretty clear that the gymnast Simone Biles is the greatest gymnast ever. And there is the Olympics to follow her through this Summer. But there are three problems with that. One, I don't like entirely judged sports where a panel of judges' scores determines everything. It's bad enough already in soccer with the referees, at least there are actually goals even if they're increasingly fond of disallowing them for various reasons. Two, I'm not keen on most of the stuff in gymnastics in between the tumbling, where they awkwardly pseudo dance around, and, perhaps most importantly, three, Simone Biles is 22, which, apparently is ancient in gymnastics. She's almost certainly closer to the end of her mastery than Messi is. She is old.

The fact of the matter is that all these performance based jobs have their age limits. Gymnasts, as we see, age out very fast. Sprinters have a last gasp peak at 30. Soccer players generally start to fade in their early thirties. Marathoners peak in the mid thirties. Painters, just to jump into the arts, hit their peak in their mid forties, supposedly. I read that one on the Internet and since the two greatest painters I've ever seen both died in their late thirties I have a lot of questions there. In music I've found that one might take over the world in one's mid and late twenties, but if one is really brilliant they can have a late career masterwork in their mid thirties. Nevertheless it's all a precipitous decline from there.

And what about writers like me? I first looked into this when I was in my early fifties, which was roughly the time of writers' late masterworks, and so I was satisfied. Now I am in my mid fifties and we must face the very real possibility that the greatest of my blog posts will soon be behind me. Yes, the quality here may well start dropping off to the point where you will need, like me with Messi, to consider following another wildly obscure, ridiculous and transcendent library blogger who writes every single day merely for the uniquely wee bit of good it brings to the world.

Good luck with that.

A post comprehensible to people of a certain age

I am not old yet, but I am old enough to experience the frequent "gee whiz" moments like: 

"I can't believe our new Doctor is young enough to be our daughter!"

I am not old yet, but I am also old enough to experience how when I tell people about "gee whiz" moments like: 

"I can't believe our new Doctor is young enough to be our daughter!" 

they look at me like:

"Yeah, so, why wouldn't they be?"

Unless they're of the right age to simply shake their head, and click their tongue in mute understanding.

Employee development

I have been working at this library for a very long time. This has given me some occasionally useful talents, like the ability to picture, upon hearing the title, the cover of any book published in the last 30 years. It has also given me a vast array of stories that are mildly interesting, in the right context, but only if they're told flawlessly. And then too all this time here has gifted me with more obscure and useless talents.

I'll tell you about one of those.

We have student workers here. They work 10 to 15 hours a week. Usually they're in high school although some of them stick around a little into college. Mainly they shelve in the kids' room. I have recently found that I can accurately chart their career here by what my relationship is to them. This measurement has become increasingly accurate and is measured in five stages.


1. I think they are maybe a volunteer or have mistakenly wandered into the back room.

This means they have been working here for 1-2 months.


2. I know they are a student worker but can't quite remember their name.

This means they have worked here for 3-4 months.


3. I know their name! Every month or so I greet them.

This means they are in the 6 months to a year stage of working here.


4. We say hi occasionally and I will toss off a trenchant witticism to them like we are old colleagues.

This means they have worked here for a little more than a year.


5. We chat briefly twice. They see me as a mentor. I have grown distantly fond of them.

They will be leaving for college or a real job in a week or two.

Totally about my birthday

As I sit down to write this it is my birthday tomorrow. As you read this my birthday will have been yesterday. What this means functionally is that my town, Minneapolis, will have gone from an exotically beautiful Autumn paradise full of strange plants, gouts of dazzling leaves, moody winds, and unexpectedly late flowers lurking mysteriously in a chaos of gone wild Midwestern yards to a blighted black-gray lunarscape of death.

I find this a little too metaphorical for a birthday. I mean maybe when I'm 120 or something, but the way Fall spends October in buoyant, off-kilter enthusiasm, bolstering my optimism and my feeling that it could simply go on forever, and then, usually just before my birthday, almost on a whim, pulls up suddenly in a killing frost and a 30 degree drop in temperature, is always a little hard for my spirit to take. But this is the first time I can remember it having the audacity to happen directly on my birthday. The weather for my birthday, which, to capriciously invoke the calendar, is hardly even a third of the way into Autumn, is best defined by the alarm banner that shows up in any weather search of it: WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY.

Tonight the temperature will plunge 30 degrees, into the twenties! We could see four inches of snow tomorrow, though we probably won't. We'll just see everything die and start to rot into the ground, which, once we're all agreed it isn't a metaphor in any way at all, is kind of pretty in its way too.

Totally not about my birthday

Today is my birthday. But I say this not to make a fuss, or to elicit...

Oh. Well, thank you. That's very kind. No, you don't have to s...











Thank you. I didn't know there were so many extra verses in that song. Usually I just hear the one. Anyway, I was saying that...

Oh, I don't need anything, but it's so kind of you to ask.

No, really, I have everything...

I... Okay, fine. Dream gift? Uh. I'd like a Major Metropolitan Newspaper. I've always fancied one.

No, I didn't expect you to get me one. No, I understood that. No, just because you asked.

Er, maybe an electric bike? With snow tires on it?

This? What's this?

No, really, you didn't need to.

I really don't...

Okay. Thank you.

It's really nice. It's uh...

Oh. It's a rock?

Yes, I can see that by how, er, hard it is. Thank you?


Naw, I like it. I find the older I get the more I appreciate things that last.

Beyond my years

Over the last couple years here at my library we have unceremoniously hosted a biannual art show for the local school district. They've got these big black grid things that they put up all over the library, and they are filled with art. It's lots of fun stuff from class after class of grade schoolers. Naturally I wander all over the library and complain derisively about how all this art they put up is, like, at a fourth grade level.

When I told Marcus, the teen librarian this, he laughed and then riposted that that's pretty good for second graders!

Good one Marcus.

I walked back to my corner when it hit me: I long ago aged out of that ability to do something at a higher level. I'm not 16 and reading at a college level. I'm just reading. I can't do it beyond what's expected of me. In fact, at this point my only option is to go down, like, I can either play harmonica, which I can't, really, or I can play it, poorly, at a seventh grade level, which, if I practice for a bit, I can.

This is dispiriting. I think skill should go up forever. There should always be an achievement level beyond us that we can overachieve to. What if as a 52 and a half year old (today is my half birthday) I didn't just write, but I could be so good at writing that I write at the level of a ninety year old? What if, with perhaps another 20 years of aging and practice in the craft, I could write like a hundred and eighty year old. 

Whoa, that's like Mark Twain level! 

Dentist

My trip to the dentist was a success.

The hygienist scraped and made conversation and poked around and prodded and said, well, there is this issue and there is that issue, but there is nothing worse than when I was there last time.

There comes a point in every person's life where the absence of deterioration is a triumph.