In tribute

 

Yesterday I meant to post this as a sort of tribute, but my introduction to it turned into an elegy that instead I let stand on its own.

But it started from watching a bit of Messi magic, and thinking curiously that it would be nice to post the oldest Messi discussion from clerkmanifesto that I could find. And though my wee essay was a little bit more about me, and about clerkmanifesto, than it was about Messi (though it was about us both), I thought it would be nice to share it nevertheless. 

It is more than ten years old, and though it feels like it might not be my very oldest about Messi, it marked the point where I created a subject tag for him, which was perhaps my way of getting serious.

In as much as I get serious.

Which is only kinda.

This is from March of 2016 and was called:

Mellow like Messi

"Just" You ask "What kind of Library Clerk are you?"

"What's that?" I reply. "Have you read my blog clerkmanifesto? Roughly ten percent of my posts are all about what kind of library clerk am I. Twelve hundred posts, ten percent, so that's 120 essays on the sort of Library Clerk I am."

"Yes, I've read them." You say. "What fun! Tell me again please?"

"Okay."




The greatest soccer player who ever lived is Lionel Messi. The teen librarian Marcus, who among the one billion fervent soccer fans in the World is the only one I actually know, might say "How can you really say who is the greatest player of all time?"

To which I might reply "Like this: Messi is the greatest player of all time." But only because, well, sometimes I can get a little like that, which you might have noticed.

And here's how the great Messi plays soccer: 

Economically.

There he is, jogging easily up the side. There he is, studying the game, pacing himself, laying back, only doing just what is needed, a spectator, enjoying the Spanish sun, quietly stalking the game, resting up.

And then he is needed. He is called on. He is essential, and he rises up fluidly from a kind of snooze mode to perform absolute miracles and magic. Practice, training, time on the pitch, and two full games every week, but as for pure, heart stopping soccer, greatest of all time soccer, we get about 15 minutes of it every week.

That's just exactly how I clerk!

I hope that doesn't sound self-aggrandizing. If you think about it at all you will likely come to the shrewd conclusion that it isn't, really, self-aggrandizing at all. After all, clerking is not soccer.

"So," You wonder. "Is that how you write clerkmanifesto as well?"

Oh no. For that I run flat out until I collapse, panting and vomiting in the grass.

Clerkmanifesto goes to the library

 

I do try to add subject tags to my posts here. And looking into my statistics, I have now written 4,912 posts that include the tag "Libraries".

This sounds like the kind of confusingly exaggerated joke I occasionally make here, but I assure you, that is the number as I assume it is accurately reported in my blog statistics, with more than two thirds of my already copious missives from over 13 years of clerkmanifesto featuring libraries in some way.

And then I retired.

Libraries don't figure into clerkmanifesto quite so much anymore, though we have a long way to go before, say, "France" surpasses "Libraries" in the tags totals.

Nevertheless, I went to the library yesterday. A French library!

It's a slightly famous library because it has a giant head building that is currently the administrative offices for the library (and once was an active library that had shelves of books!). Here is a picture I took because I had a feeling you'd want to see that.

The path in front is the one heading to the entrance of the library. 

They have been doing updates and work on this library since we got here, and it just reopened. Years ago we went here and the entrance was far on the other side of the building/park, under a kind of fancy bridge/park complex that smells of pee and always had quite a few homeless people hanging about it. I think this is a universal library issue in the Western World, and I seriously suspect that more than half the motivation for moving the entire orientation of this library was to solve the unpleasant situation at the other entrance, which besides an everpresent homeless contingent, gloriously had a modern museum opposite it and stupidly ran a high traffic road through the center of it.

This new entrance is better; bright and sunny, and taking advantage of the elaborate gardens, paths, and parks that is functionally the library's roof. The downsides are that the entrance is now oriented away from the center of the city, and, as it is buried under a park, it is a little windowless and charmless inside the large library.

We didn't have a lot of time for this visit, which we snuck in while waiting for the bus to Eze, a medeival village nearby, which is a story for another time. My dear wife found the periodicals and a rather amazing looking ceramics magazine, while I checked out some very nice jazz albums and a rather tiny English Language section I would describe as vaguely random. We didn't have time to look into getting library cards or anything like that and went off in a bit of a hurry as our bus time precipitously approached.

Here are a few more pictures of the entrance area. I left them as is except for adding some cats, which improve them unreasonably. 

If you find yourself thinking "Hey, I've got to get to this library! It is the greatest thing I've ever seen!" that's mostly the cats.

Postcard at the library

 

In 2022 I sent a postcard from this city to the library I worked at. It was a vintage image of a surrealistic scene of The Reserve, which is a restaurant and an outcropping of rock just past the port area of this city. In the old black and white photograph there was an old sailboat perched on this table of rock in the ocean, with a little bridge to it. It was very much a real scene. Now, and when I sent the postcard, the boat is gone and it is only a fancy restaurant with a fantastical setting floating on an island of rock. 

After my trip someone taped the postcard to the computer area we use when we're in charge of the automated check in machine.

The postcard was still taped up there when I left the library after 31 years working there.

I don't know how many of the traces of me have been removed from that library, or have faded away. I don't know if someone bothered to toss a four year old postcard away yet.

I looked at that postcard a lot, working on the machine late at night. Now I live here and sometimes we walk by the place from that image. I've taken quite a few photographs of it and here is one, in my current style. This was taken from a similar, hopefully almost identical vantage point that the postcard picture was taken from, with maybe a hundred years between them.

The bookstore

 

In the spirit of unadorned photography from around my Belle Epoque City, I have some pictures to show you today of a bookstore, or "librairie".

But a few things before we go. First is the funny, and initially confusing reversal of the English words "Library" and "Bookstore", something that led me to confusion and misunderstanding the first time I went to Paris. A "Library" in French is a "Bibliotheque" which, at least to me, sounds like it would be a bookstore, whereas, as stated, a "Bookstore" is, in French, a "Librairie" which, of course, sounds like it would be a library. It's all a bit Goose Juice and Moose Goose from Dr. Seuss, where the trouble comes when Mooses dream of goose juice and Gooses dream of moose juice.

As an aside, we walked to what we remembered as the truly amazing main library here in this city, which shares a sort of fabulous complex, bridge, and elevated park, with the modern and contemporary museum. But the whole thing was closed down for some major refurbishment project and had no indications of when it would open again. 

But, on the subject of unaltered photos, here are a couple pictures of the terrific dragon fountain in the park above the library and museum:

Anyway, to return to the subject of bookstores here in France, I haven't been into very many. After all, while they seem terribly appealing, how terrible to be faced with so many intriguing books that I AM INCAPABLE OF READING.

Nevertheless, the one pictured below, elaborately Christmassed up, looked so full of charms and treasures, we did venture in to just its vestibule to moon at its displays and all the promise of its antiquities. We could not bear to enter its front doors though, and instead we wandered off to buy chocolate.

seventy-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:

I'd just like to point out that when you see something like this, you naturally are going to take a lot of pictures:

sixty-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:

Here you go: a reprint of a post not that much more than a year old that caught my eye because it is about problems replacing staff at my (former!) library. This situation was still going on when I retired, and (I'll admit, to my pleasure) they are not even bothering to pretend to replace me.

Though if they did it would be quite a process...

This Spring's half day In Service Day came and went without my attendance. But the one thing that everyone was super excited to tell me about is the moment when the county's human resources department explained to everyone about the the county's 36 step hiring process.

Over the past years my library has been shedding workers like fur from an old sheepdog. Replacements are ever promised, yet never arrive. Finally, an explanation!

A 36 step hiring process. This, the County thought, would surely explain it to us all!

That was the highlight of the day.

I think it was the combination of the ridiculous, the hilarious, and the quietly insane that people found so appealing. Many people told me about how a hilarious comedy show sketch could be made out of it. I disagree. It would make a terrible comedy show sketch. I don't think any of these people have ever tried to write a comedy sketch! This story barely even makes a decent blog post, though I will continue to apply every one of my formidable skills in that department to do the best job possible of it.

Even that may not be enough.

What it really requires is a freakishly talented Jewish Czechoslovakian writer to bring it properly to life, and even they'd probably need a full novel to do it. 

It would be a funny novel occasionally, but that probably wouldn't be its most salient feature.

By the end of the novel I don't think anyone would actually be hired.

Just like in real life.

fifty-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:

This is a modified version of a series I did of themed bookshelves at the library. This is the living version, full of dramatic trickling water action. Hopefully it won't do too much damage to the books.

Click twice as ever to get it to play...

Reporting again from the present, this is Clerk Manifesto in Kyoto, Japan. I am having a bit of a hard time keeping track of what images I have posted here because they are so involved to produce, going through layers and layers of images. I have switched over to a postcard perfect approach to Japan pictures after the earlier ink scroll approach. Maybe this comes along with some visits to classic places like the shrine with all the red torii gates (Inari, which is a fox shrine!), or the tea growing region of Uji, which is really more of a neighborhood of Kyoto. Or maybe it is just an expression of not really being able to live up to how pretty some of the things we see here actually are.

Every day is exhausting and demanding, which explains how there are so many old people here who seem to live life on the streets with a great deal of vigor and persistence, much like the amazing and tough old trees that populate this city and never stop fascinating me. Even today,  taking a day off, so to speak, from our usual touristic explorations of the city, involves coffee shops, grocery stores, incredibly long walks to botanical gardens (one of my favorite places in all of Kyoto), and several different temples.

Today we are in the house a little bit earlier than normal, so perhaps I can manage to put together one small collection of more recent photographs for you from Kyoto, Japan.

fifty-four

 

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:

We'll just let this one mostly speak for itself. It's a more than two minute music video of some of the muppets I worked with at the end of my time at the library.

To operate it, click once to engage the video player. Enlarge it by click down at the bottom of the player if you want the big screen version. And then click again to play it. 

It has music so be prepared for the listening part of it too.

From Kyoto: