Put this in your newspapers

 

Hostile as I am to the modern press, owned or run as it is exclusively by the rich and powerful, I decided it was time to sum up my feelings in a brilliant quote for the ages. This should be a quote that can speak to anyone who is even mildly interested, and yet still contain a winking cleverness that expresses my own inimitable style.

Fortunately, I found one of these close at hand:

"If you don't read the newspaper you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you're misinformed."

-Feldenstein Calypso

Part of what I love about this quote is the repetition of words and phrases, but with small, simple twists that turn everything on its head. It has some of the structure of a joke: It starts out looking as if it will be conventionally respectful of newspapers, and focus on the foolish people who eschew them, but with a short, elegant, and surprising turn it completely and plausibly skewers everything a newspaper fancies itself to be.

It reminds me of another favorite quote of mine that actually is a joke rather than a social analysis. By curious coincidence, reading also comes into this one:

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."

It's short and full of movement. These quotes set a cadence and expectation and then elegantly subvert it in an astonishingly economical space.

I wish that I had thought of that quote about newspapers! But I did not. 

Amazingly, though, it was laying around unclaimed! Over the past couple of decades, the general attribution has gone to Mark Twain, as it often does with clever quotes pulled out of the ether. But Mark Twain was decidedly not the author of this quote. 

No one was.

So I thought I'd scoop it up. Call dibs. Stake my claim. 

How does anyone own anything, I ask you? 

How

does

anyone

own

anything?

And while I'm at it I might as well take that clever "Too dark to read" quote too. Groucho Marx usually had it ascribed to him though he did not say it. There was a jockey who someone attributed it to glancingly, except had it all regarding a horse (which suggests how long ago this was), and I question the whole thing. I think such a great quote would be better given over to the clever fellow who once said "If you don't read the newspaper you're uninformed. If you do read the newspaper you're misinformed."

It kind of sounds like something he'd say anyway.

 

Elon Musk Buys Twister!

 

I haven't played Twister very often over the past 30 years what with my back problems and everything. Nevertheless I like to keep my eye on what's going on in the World just in case God pips by for a bit a advice. And during that time of... waiting, I couldn't help but notice Twister has been much in the news, rising from a simple party game centered on acrobatics, yoga, and colored dots, to a pastime of Presidents that's played obsessively by limber celebrities while the world watches.

In fact I have seen Twister become such an enormous worldwide phenomenon that it featured prominently in 2018's Princess Switch, starring Vanessa Hudgens and Robin Soans.

So it really caught my eye when the richest man on earth bought Twister for himself.

He must play a lot of Twister! He paid over 400 billion dollars to own a board game.

But I'll acknowledge it's not just any board game. It has a spinner!

And in the end I suppose I am left with the same question as everyone else:

Will everyone still be able to play Twister, or just Elon Musk?

How to use the Internet

 

You are a busy person.

Or perhaps you're not a busy person, but you don't want to spend all your precious time in this World studying the endless conjectures, science, rumors, and details of this Covid-19 Pandemic.

But you don't want to be ignorant. You still want to know what's going on.

Don't worry!

No, no, you should probably worry about the pandemic. It's pretty serious. I mean, don't worry about not keeping up with all the endless Pandemic news.

I have done it for you!

I have spent a lot of time on the Internet. I have poured over the news feeds. I have monitored the wide ranging public chats of other casual observers, listened to the interviews with epidemiologists, consulted the scientific publishing, poured over the statistics, the hard evidence, the anecdotal evidence, and assorted leaks of information regarding vaccine trials. I have, all from the magical portal of my Internet computer, roamed the vast breadth of up to date knowledge, discussion, conjecture, fear, news, and politics regarding the Coronavirus Pandemic. And I am here, in one convenient location, in a clear and intelligible distillation of available information, to give you a full, up to the minute, advanced, informed summation of local and World statuses regarding this serious public health emergency.

You have, understandably exhausted, turned your attention to a variety of other things, but you would still like to be reliably informed. I am here, without fuss or embellishment, to simply do so. 

Here is my comprehensive, yet simple, concise, but thorough, informed, but digested, completely up to date report on the Covid-19 Pandemic:

It's not looking great.

I'll be back in six months for another update.

Accused of plagiarism

One of the most delightful things to be wrongly accused of is plagiarism.

After all, isn't the accuser saying in some sense "This is so good it must be stolen."

I had a very fine compliment like this once on a major news media website. In the comments section I couldn't resist pasting in most of a blog post I had written. I felt it fit some situation being written about in an article. Someone then angrily proceeded to berate me that I had taken this without attribution from The Clerk Manifesto. They were disgusted.

It is hard for me not to see this in the following way:

They were so taken with the elegance or humor or quality of my comment that they checked it against the whole of the Internet. "This is too good for some random guy to comment on the Internet!" They said, so to speak. So they took my comment and searched it. A hit! Their suspicion confirmed, they rode out to protect the honor of my blog. They informed me that I had been caught red-handed.

I explained the misunderstanding, letting them know that I am clerkmanifesto. 

And they became a regular reader.





Just kidding about that very last part. 

Which oddly calls into question my interpretation of all the rest of it as well.

Gallows humor

I don't want to be too harsh on us, but I think toying with WWIII might not be the brightest course of action for our country. Assassinating the second most powerful person in a large, reasonably well-armed and powerful country can have... repercussions. If those repercussions are that they then kill our second most powerful person, and we go back and forth killing second most powerful people like that forever, I could probably live with it. I mean fair is fair. On the other hand if it leads to the extinction of all life on the planet, I probably can't live with it.

Get it? Can't live with it? Cause we'd, like, all be dead. Except maybe some clever bacteria. But they wouldn't really be that happy without us. We're surprisingly cozy.

And if you are inclined to think, actually like I am inclined to think, that this all is not our fault, that most of us here in America distinctly do not support this sort of, um, murdering, I can only be of two minds. Sure we've opposed this sort of thing all our lives, but, um, we kind of mumbled when we did so.

One of my favorite things to mumble about is the press. I find they have a tendency to disassociate from reality and context at convenient and controversial moments, taking refuge in obtuse reporting. But I'm only going to go so far into that thesis here as to say this:

Today one of my local papers, The Pioneer Press, loudly screamed its headline from the newspaper boxes:

Trump: Aim of killing Iranian general was to 'stop a war'

So I did the only reasonable thing I could think of under the circumstances; I broke open the box of newspapers, threw them all away, and left a note:

Pioneer Press,

I have removed all your newspapers to foil thieves.

I hope it doesn't apply to this

I was reading an opinion piece in The New York Times maybe, or on the Guardian website. Well, maybe it was Salon or The Atlantic or CNN or NPR, I'm not entirely sure because everything is everywhere.

No, wait, not everything, but the 25 stations of the Internet are everywhere, winding back and forth, in and out of each other.

But anyway, it was a pretty interesting piece. It was a really good idea. And I thought "Maybe I should have this idea too."

But then I remembered sadly:

If I'm seeing it, it can't be very good.

The end of the world as reported in the newspaper: Day seven

Here is my fever dream of the end of the world as it is reported in the newspaper. It doesn't matter much from which newspaper... In day one President Trump lashed out at New Zealand, feeling that the lack of cheese on his cheeseburger was attributable to them. The contretemps grew more heated on day two and warships were mysteriously sent to the Tasmanian Sea. In day three missiles rained down on Sidney, Australia seemingly as a warning, but were later claimed to have nothing to do with "Cheeseburgergate". In day four riots at the U.S. Embassy in Australia injured Americans, ramping up the tensions even more as world leaders called for all sides to stand down. On day five Trump stood strong, nations (and political parties) took sides, and Australia was obliterated in a nuclear holocaust. On day six the Democrats finally impeached and Trump replied by bombing Oakland and possibly Paris. 

Day Seven:

Headlines:

Trump Killed in Nuclear Attack on East Coast
Other Areas Also Affected


Content:

After a stirring but politically impotent impeachment of the President that the Republican Senate scoffed at, Trump's embattled Presidency came to an end yesterday afternoon as a series of either French, Chinese, Russian, American, or a chance combination of the above's nuclear bombs obliterated the state of Florida. Some of the President's family also died and as many as twenty million bystanders were killed as well in the incident which seems connected to the event now known colloquially as "The Apocalypse".

Below the fold story number one:

This beloved National Newspaper will cease publication due to nuclear missiles heading towards its general location. Concerns have also been raised about loss of advertising revenue and how the billions of dead across the planet will deeply depress its subscriber pool.

Below the fold story number two:

With Trump and many around him now dead due to the thermonuclear war, it is unclear who is currently the president of the United States. Betsy DeVos is currently assuming the role and was last heard from issuing an executive order that the public education system be dissolved in order to fund an emergency tax cut. However, she is now feared dead too.


Third page analysis:

With billions dead across the planet we look back with pride on the great achievements of the American people and those of people everywhere. While it is unclear who is responsible for this nuclear holocaust that appears to be about to take all our lives, we must say that both sides bear real responsibility for the acrimonious environment that has claimed, and is claiming so many lives. Perhaps if New Zealand had been more generous with the President's cheeseburger, or Trump less likely to take so much offense. Perhaps if the Australian people could have forgiven an uncertain mistake, or Democrats could have tempered their acrimony and not provoked Trump with a thrilling but ill-timed Impeachment, none of this needed to have happened. 

The sad thing is that we will never know.

Signing off for the last time,

Farewell.

The end of the world as reported in the newspaper: Day four

Here is my fever dream of the end of the world as it is reported in the newspaper. It doesn't matter much from which newspaper... In day one President Trump lashed out at New Zealand, feeling that the lack of cheese on his cheeseburger was attributable to them. The contretemps grew more heated on day two and warships were mysteriously sent to the Tasmanian Sea. In day three missiles rained down on Sidney Australia seemingly as a warning, but were later said to have nothing to do with "Cheeseburgergate".

Day four:

Headlines:

"Cheeseburgergate" War of Words Escalates and Tensions Mount

American Casualties in Australian Riots


Content:

Australian and New Zealand leaders demand justice, claiming that Trump and the U.S. bombed Australia to provoke New Zealand. Germany says U.S. should apologize at this point and everyone should calm down. United Kingdom's PM Boris Johnson stands firm with U.S. "as our deepest friend" and claims, without evidence, that the U.S. has no responsibility for the tragedy in Sydney.

Below the fold story number one:

Trump seems to apologize at first, saying that he's "Never had anything against Australia or New Zealand" and is "On good terms with the New Zealand Prime Minister". Later though he says he "thought the Prime Minister cheese guy was a guy!" and then commented "So that could be trouble." But then he added "I'm just kidding folks. Just kidding".

Below the fold story number two:

Riots broke out at the U.S. Embassy in Canberra, Australia as first funeral services held for victims of Missile attack widely believed by Australians to have been launched from U.S. warships. Two American Embassy personnel were injured in a rock throwing incident. Trump vows revenge and blames "The Cheese Lord of New Zealand" for lying and getting people dangerously worked up.

Third page analysis:

As tensions rise in the Tasmanian Sea and brave U.S. Embassy Personnel fall victim to Australian mobs, perhaps it is time to set aside the petty infighting over Trump and his unorthodox methods and stand behind him and America in this moment of crisis and tragedy.

End of the world as reported in the newspaper: Day two

Here is my fever dream of the end of the world as it is reported in the newspaper. It doesn't matter much from which newspaper... In day one President Trump lashed out at New Zealand, feeling that the lack of cheese on his cheeseburger was attri  butable to them.

Day two:

Headline:

Cheeseburgergate Day Two!
Trump Calls Out "Cheesy" New Zealand Prime Minister

Content:

President Trump is considering retaliatory action after claiming that the Prime Minister of New Zealand, who he nicknamed "Cheesy" admitted to "only sending tiny amounts of cheese" to U.S.

Below the fold story number one:

In response to increasingly persistent questioning the Prime Minister of New Zealand said she does not understand what Trump is talking about and was caught off mike commenting that she thinks "Trump is mentally unwell"

Below the fold story number two:

After a series of incendiary Tweets President Trump said he is as well as any man can be, and that "Smart people, loads and loads of really smart people folks, tell me I'm the smartest person they've ever met." He added that "the sheep in chief of Zealand will say anything to to try to keep America's rightful cheese to themselves". 

Meanwhile Warships have been dispatched to the Tasmanian Sea.

Third page analysis:

Who is the unstable one? Both Trump and the New Zealand Prime Minister are upping the ante on an international brouhaha about cheese, but maybe about a lot more. New Zealand may need to stand down, but can the Prime Minister save face?

End of the world as reported in newspaper: Day one

Here is my fever dream of the end of the world as it is reported in the newspaper. It doesn't matter much from which newspaper- New York Times, Washington Post, The Guardian, The Star Tribune. They are more distinguishable by their font than they are by their ideology.

Day one:

Headline:

Angry Trump Lashes Out at New Zealand

Content:

President Trump, said to be furious at the lack of cheese on his cheeseburger, demanded more cheese from New Zealand, who, he said, have "lots of sheep" and are "being stingy just to spite him".

Below the fold story number one:

Reports suggest than Trump angrily hurled his cheeseburger against a White House wall and demanded more cheese on his burgers. White House spokespeople denied this as "More President hating" and also denied reports that a startled kitchen staffperson blamed New Zealand in a "moment of panic" and then had to stick to her story when Trump seized on it.

Below the fold story number two:

The New Zealand Prime Minister said he was sorry the President was unable to enjoy his dinner, but that New Zealand exports very little sheep cheese to the U.S. and had nothing to do with the situation. It is merely an unfortunate misunderstanding.

Third page analysis:

Is New Zealand withholding cheese? What is our recourse if New Zealand is withholding cheese and other essential products from the U.S. in violation of world trade agreements?

New York Times fever dream

Perhaps now John Oliver said it best, though he was discussing compromises in vaccinations at the time. "The problem is that it’s the middle ground between sense and nonsense,” Oliver said. “It’s like saying, ‘It would be crazy to eat that entire bar of soap, so I’ll just eat half of it.'”

Here's how I imagine the tragedy unfolding:

Three Alt-Right friends with a history of far right Internet trolling shoot their way into The New York Times. One of the three is killed breaching security, but the others shoot people indiscriminately with military grade weapons before setting a bomb off that kills themselves and dozens of others. In total 93 people are tragically killed, and The New York Times, America's newspaper of record, is shut down for 32 hours.

The President of The United States tweets "Maybe if they didn't write fake news this terrible tragedy never would have happened! My prayers go out to the victims." Less than an hour later the tone changes slightly as he tweets "Our deepest condolences to the victims of this terrible, horrible event! Violence is not the answer!"

The New York Times reels in horror, grief, and chaos, missing a day's paper for the first time in 168 years. But the community and the nation's presses rally to help them. They publish their paper again after a brutally painful day and a half with the following headline:

Non Centrist Politics Spur Mass Shooting at New York Times 

Dead now number 93

Some Say President's Condolences Show Signs of Hope

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Or maybe really it was Bernie Sanders who said it best, though he was talking about climate change. "...when the future of the Planet is at stake there is no middle ground."

Let us declare a war then on fire

I catch colds too easily. Show me a picture of someone sneezing and my throat will start to burn. I figure I better start drinking plenty of fluids. And then before you know it I have coughed a thousand times and I'm urging you to wash your hands after reading this blog post.

Please remember to wash your hands after reading this blog post.

This morning I called in ill at work. I didn't feel too bad. I just wanted to save my co-workers, and maybe a few library patrons as well, from all the things I carry and sneeze around me. When I told my co-worker that I was staying home sick she didn't say "thank you". My virtue had to be its own reward, that and not having to spend a day wandering around with a Kleenex box and with my colleagues backing away from me making the sign of the cross like I was a vampire.

A whole day ahead of me I opened up my computer to check on my blog and consider what I wanted to do. I read a bit of a book about vampires. I ate lunch.

Then I opened my computer again.

Not that long ago I found the world of live feeds on YouTube. This is 24 hour streaming footage of things like waterholes in Africa, or kelp forests somewhere in the Pacific Ocean. I've taken to checking in on them. Most of the time there's just some camera panning around on nothing, so when one pops in and sees a giraffe, or a couple of elephants fooling around it's pretty exciting. Nothing much was happening at any of the waterholes, but then I noticed there was a live stream of a Cathedral burning. 

A Cathedral.

Burning.

One that I've even been in.

So I spent the rest of the day watching that.

Notre Dame is still burning as I write. The rose windows are all gone (update note from the future: they appear to have survived!), the roof, that spire that so dramatically fell. The towers are going to be okay, I think, because people are walking around on them now with flashlights. But you all presumably know this since I present my blog in old fashioned tape delay. You do not read this via live feed. The world always outpaces my blog posts, and by now surely the main news will be well set for you. 

I however remain ensconced in real time. The moment I am done here I am history, preserved in amber, outdated, a piece of the past.

But what I lack in immediacy I try to make up for with- sorry, coughing fit. I'll get back to you later.

The standoff

As I write three people are allegedly holed up in a room at the University's Hotel, currently known as The Graduate Hotel. A large swath of the area, near the center of the Campus, is shut down, and SWAT teams and a significant police operation appears to be operating in the area. I say "appears to be" because although some kind of stand-off in this situation is well over 12 hours old, the local media seems lightly interested, or maybe not having their best day, and details are as yet far and few between.

Because this is an area much involved in the life of my wife and me I am interested in how it develops. By the time you read this it will surely have long ago resolved and you will probably either know some full enough version of the story or, I suppose, you will have heard nothing about it at all. It certainly shows no signs of shaping up into any kind of a national story.

But from where I am, four miles away, at a library, we are left with little more than speculation, rumors, and wild conjecture.

At the front desk discussing the situation we imagined a Dog Day Afternoon-like scenario. My partner at the desk was something of a Dog Day Afternoon aficionado, and after hearing recitations of so many of the best parts from that movie it is hard for me not to picture an increasingly frantic Al Pacino trying to manage a desperate situation with an unstable partner and hostages. Unlike the movie though we apparently don't have much of a media circus. Hostage standoffs are just so quaint and Seventies-ish. Nowadays only massive gun shootings warrant real attention.

Later, my colleague Dan reported that he heard the police were just waiting for some disturbed guy on drugs to "come down". This immediately made me think the main subject was white because I assume that for a black guy the door would be dynamited down in the first ten minutes and the man promptly beaten unconscious. But who knows, maybe it's just the opposite and the Minneapolis Police are trying to prove they've turned over a new leaf in response to past incidents. It's not like that would be a bad thing.

For today though, we just wait, with part of the U closed down, a local media that seems to have no informants in the police department and nothing to tell us, and the strange sense that this should all be a much bigger story than it is, or a smaller story than it is, but definitely not both at the same time.

Eclipse

The Earth hurtles through space circling the Sun which also hurtles through space. Whizzing around the Earth is the Moon and everything is flying so damn fast you can only see it if you're racing right along with some of it. Stand still and everything's probably a blur. Luckily, in the scheme of the Universe there may be no such thing as standing still. It may be impossible.

Every rare once in awhile, if you are the Earth, or moving at just its speed and trajectory while nearby (easiest by standing on it), the Moon, swirling around you, will soar across that Sun that you are yourself hurtling around. And though the Moon is tiny compared to the Sun, it will, for a brief moment, block it. 

Today is one of those days.

The Moon is way smaller than the Sun. How can it possibly block it all? The same way if you hold your thumb up in front of your face you can block out a distant skyscraper, though your thumb is closer in size to that skyscraper than the Moon is to the Sun. The same way a moth, flying at night, can briefly blot out a star, bigger than the Sun in the same proportion the Sun is to the Moon.

I like to think of all of us as our own planets, mingling and circling each other on the Earth. Separate bodies, standing on Earth, sitting on Earth, circling the Sun. And every 24 hours or so the Earth, from our vantage points, eclipses the Sun. Every night is an eclipse to us. It goes for about 12 hours. During these roughly 12 hours of occlusion, called "night", it is safe to look directly at the sun. Stare at the ground.

There is always something in front of something else. Screen in front of shelf with books, in front of wall, in front of tree, in front of cloud in front of sky. Look at you, reading this. I have hidden the whole world behind it.

Today is the solar eclipse. But as far as eclipses go, all around you, everywhere, is full of  eclipse. A million things in eclipse. There is always something in front of something else. We are mostly in shadows. And when the eclipse is full, which, right now, in some way or another, it is for everything you have ever known or ever been, it is safe to look. So go ahead and open your eyes.

Less than 2 percent about Syria

This is a complicated story.

But I try never to let that stop me from trying to reduce it all down to a handful of paragraphs. If I don't get it now I'll get it down the line when I least expect it, writing about turkeys or in a letter to an editor somewhere.


Here is how I feel about my boss:


10%  Total, heartfelt pity

5%   White hot, borderline murderous, hatred

20%  Deeply rooted camaraderie

10%  Simple sadness

20%  Rueful affection

10%  Withering contempt

10%  Careful tolerance

10%  Nothing, just... nothing.

 5%  Agreeable bemusement


Today, before the library opened, I was assigned to project time, a time to work on those projects I am responsible for, like supplies. So I was on a computer working on some supply things. My boss said to me "Can you take these newspapers upstairs?"

My boss rarely delegates anything, and the job he was proposing was barely different than asking me to move a stapler from one desk to another desk, albeit a stapler that actually needed to be moved from one desk to another, a desk he would be walking by in three minutes anyway.

Here are some more percentages because these percentages are so sad and satisfying. This time the percentages are about how likely it is that the below reason is true:


2%   He is overwhelmed, and it would genuinely help him if I did this minuscule newspaper task 

8%   He thinks I'm over at that computer writing unflattering things about him, and at all costs he must distract me.

40% There's just no way I can be up to anything good over at that computer, and though he doesn't really mind, he feels it's his responsibility to try and modify my behavior.

40% There's just no way I can be up to anything good over at that computer and it's driving him literally insane and he's got to do something about it, but it should be something that doesn't make him seem as insane as he feels.

!0%  It's time to remind me that he's my manager.


Here's what I find humiliating about it: Without any real explanation for such a seemingly absurd request, my normal response would be "No." or possibly "Fuck you." That's what it would be to a co-worker. But because of position, situation, and politics I feel forced into saying "Sure." Only now does it occur to me I could have asked "Why?", though I understand I am still in no proper position to evaluate the advisability of that question.

And so I go put the newspapers away after I finish up at my computer. Curiously, this affords me the opportunity to read the newspapers.

And lo and behold all the newspapers are undergoing the same version of the humiliation I am experiencing. The monster baby President has just rained down some millions of dollars worth of fancy missiles on some airport in Syria. All the newspapers know, they absolutely know, that the whole thing is completely full of shit. Well, except for two percent. There is a measly two percent chance that the whole thing is not completely full of shit. And because of that paltry two percent, and because of Presidents, politics, power, and a fear over the delicacy of their position, the newspapers feel forced, cornered, into treating it like it's all normal, and reasonable, and how things are supposed to be.

In the usual course of events I would feel such a rage at the press. I would be angry at their abdication, lack of resourcefulness, and their cowardice. I would be full of contempt and grief.

But not today.

Today I just feel sympathy.

Dear Newspaper Editor

Dear Editor, Star Tribune Newspaper:



I am writing to suggest that you begin publishing my mercurial and unusual commentaries as a daily column in your newspaper.

I know that every fiber in your newspaper editor being cries out against doing this. Running a newspaper has long been a game of diminishing returns. Once upon a time the newspaper, solid and powerful, was, at least occasionally, a place for taking an artistic and cultural chance like this. But for decades now the daily newspaper has been like a tire with a slow leak. Everyone riding on that tire has been terrified of any action that might accelerate that doomed leak. That means no rocking. No moving around. No sudden motion or unexpected gestures. Everything should be as still and inoffensive and conservative as possible. Do not hasten that dreadful escape of air because when one is living on borrowed time every tiny second becomes unbelievably precious. So publishing a wildcard columnist with feisty, frank, and unconventional views of the world seems like the worst possible action a newspaper editor can take. One might as well drive a spike into the tire. 

I understand.

But because you are riding on this leaking tire you cannot see what we, by the side of the road, so easily can: All the air is already gone. You all are riding on the rim now. You shredded the tire itself years ago.

So it's time for a little caution to the wind. It is time to throw a wrench into the works. It is time for mad schemes, hail mary passes, and dumping all the fireworks you have left onto the fire. Stand back!

I am that caution to the wind, a habanero pepper, the guy with a surfboard waiting for you to pull your ten fingers out of the holes in your leaking dam. There are fourteen holes in your leaking dam and you have but the ten fingers. Let it go dutchboy! Let me ride! Carry my column in your newspaper. There is nothing left to lose.


Will we make money? Will we achieve acclaim and honor? Will we, dare I say it, save the daily newspaper?



Ha ha ha ha ha ha. No. 





Yours in fellowship,



Feldenstein Calypso

Schrodinger's President

On November eight I went to bed not knowing who was elected President of the USA. So when I woke up, after coffee and a shower, and went down to turn on my computer I knew that within my computer was contained two possibilities. Hilary Clinton could be the next President, or Donald Trump could be the next President. For that moment both were true at the same time. This is quantum mechanics.

Of course, when I opened the box, the cat was dead.

Public Libraries Online: Donations and Lottery winners

I have been writing for Public Libraries online. It's all a little iffy at the point I write this. But this would have been published on their website. And since you weren't likely to see it there I, now that I am allowed to, publish it here for you to see.





If you closely follow library stories across the world you may have come across this heartwarming one:

A  small rural public school's largely abandoned library in Las Plumas County, California, was so outdated that it was unusable. A local writer, Margaret Garcia, had a dream of reopening this library, so she put out a call on her blog for people to send a book. Her blog post went viral and people sent in forty seven million books!

I may not have that exact number correct. Indeed all of my facts here are like unto a crayon rendering of the actual story. But the main point is there were a lot of books donated. So many books that they're reopening the library and don't want anymore books, just gift cards, money, and shelving.

If you haven't before heard this story you have heard one like it. It is a cat in the tree story. It is a poor person wins the lottery story. It is hard to fault the story because it seems to restore faith in destiny, in generosity, and in the kindness of strangers. It says despite the problems out there with proper school library funding this good will can solve problems and make things better. And above all it says that people really care about books and libraries.

I am here to rain on your parade. 

Full disclosure: I like raining on your parade, especially if it's a stupid parade for rescued cats who are going back up that tree to be rescued again. And can I just ask here, if firemen are always rescuing cats in trees, wouldn't it stand to reason that occasionally, even just once I would have seen a dead cat in a tree. Have you ever seen a dead cat in a tree?

Which is to say The Reinstated Las Plumas County School Library is almost certainly going back up that tree. The lottery winning poor person is going to squander all the money they won because they have no idea how to manage money, and because everyone they know is poor and didn't win the lottery. And the chance that they will win the lottery again is as unlikely as you winning the lottery for the first time (sorry). It is as unlikely as Margaret Garcia's blog post going viral again in ten years when all these forty seven million books are once more outdated. But there will not be a news story about that. It's not heartwarming.  

It is my guess that miraculously well-heeded calls for books will be far less heeded across the nation when the books are done and the call is for money, gift cards, and shelving. It is a cozy notion that libraries are simply books and by each of us donating a few books we can make a library. It is a less cozy notion that a library is good shelving, a viable cataloging system, a pleasant, safe space to be in with decent furniture and good light. And perhaps it is the least cozy notion of all that a library too is probably a person getting paid $56,880 dollars a year to deal with it all.


I work in a large library in a big city and rarely does a day go by where I am not dealing with book donations. Like the generous donations to the Las Plumas Library they may be intended to save us too. I think we regularly get more donations than they even received in the bonanza at that school in Plumas County. Sadly ours mostly consist of yellowed Ham and Pineapple Cookbooks from the fifties and the early works of Danielle Steele in vintage book club editions that have been fully seasoned by a couple decades of storage in a basement. There's not much we can do with this stuff other than trying to trick people into buying them or furtively recycling them when that fails. All our donations together provide a rare few items we add to the collection and a small stream of miscellaneous income. If you took all the vast thousands of donated books we receive in a year you would not have a library. You would have a rummage sale. Which we do, twice a year.

 But we do have a pretty good tax base here in my city. And a just steady enough commitment to libraries. This allows us to have a greasy but up to date collection of books and movies. It means we have shelving. We have great windows full of light and proper recessed lighting inside as well. And we have librarians, many of them, some good and some not so much. We have clerks and student workers and volunteers and board members, computer people and computers, and open doors. We are a library. I am confident we will be around in five years. I am not so sure about the one in Plumas County. We in no real way rely upon the kindness of strangers. No library should have to, and very few that ever do will thrive, let alone survive.

PL Online: The Secret Dream of Librarians

I have been writing for Public Libraries online. It's all a little iffy at the point I write this. But this was published on their website. And since you weren't likely to see it there I, now that I am allowed to, publish it here for you to see. Actually this version is the pre edit version, and I like it better because I am allowed to ramble more. On the down side it's context is more confusing here, so keep in mind that Public Libraries Online is keen on some very boring "professional development" kinds of articles.








I recently came across an article in The New York Times about libraries. Having a keen interest in libraries and much experience with working in one I decided to read the article. As is the modern custom, this article had a clickbait headline. And though I am keen to feel superior to the cheesy desperation of clickbait headlines, the article you're reading now, this one, probably has a clickbait headline too. As any librarian can tell you, these days no one will read of their own free will. They must be tricked into it. I haven't decided what my clickbait headline will be yet, maybe something like "E Product Management" or "ALA's New Guidelines for Web Services", something that will leave you breathless in anticipation. I mean, only if someone isn't using those headlines on this site already. 

Someone is probably using those headlines on this site already, but you can hardly expect me to link to them and risk losing you few readers who have been tricked into reading this much of my article as it is.

The clickbait headline the New York Times used was Why Libraries Are Everywhere in the Czech Republic.

A normal person wouldn't find that to be a clickbait headline and would simply say to themselves "Probably because of some law passed in the early 1900's soon after Czechoslovakia emerged as an independent country." And then they would move right along in the Internet to see if anyone has come up with a new potato chip flavor lately.

But we in the library community are not normal people.

You, especially, seem pretty odd to me.

I mean that in a good way.

And when we in the library community read "Why Libraries Are Everywhere in the Czech Republic" our hearts start racing. Our eyes bulge alarmingly from our sockets. We begin trembling. We are excited! 

And the reason we are so excited is because we hold in our hearts a secret dream, a vision that we dare not name. We know it's mad. We don't speak of it even among ourselves, sometimes not even to ourselves. 

Actually this would make a really good clickbait title for this article: What the Secret Dream is that all Library Workers Share but Will Never Admit.
I'm going to tell you right now.

Any second now. I'm building anticipation.

This is it: 

We secretly believe that the whole world should be a library.

We secretly believe that we should be able to borrow everything for free. Just so long as we bring it back. 

It should mostly be books though.

Books, clothes, cars, books, power tools, furniture, telephones, books, glassware, pens, cleaning supplies, Caravaggio paintings, houses, and books. If store after store in my city were, every single one of them, libraries loaning all these things, along with books, if every house on my block were a library house that I could check out for three weeks, I'm not sure I'd really need to own anything. There is your strange paradise, maybe even a secret restatement of reality itself: 

The world is really a library. Everything is free. But everything is borrowed.

Here is how clickbait really works. It leads you into imagining something wild and wonderful. It may not even be conscious, but it sets your heart aiming for the stars. And then when you click, and that clickbait article is fleshed out, you are left with the corpse of your mighty dream. It sits deflated in your hands and you feel so embarrassed that you ever hoped for so much that you go ahead and read the article like it was all perfectly reasonable all along and never broke your heart at all.

Libraries aren't everywhere in The Czech Republic. 

In 1919 they had a law in Czechoslovakia saying that every community, no matter how small, had to have a library.

Well, that's not so bad, I guess. I can live with that.

Oh, except they got rid of that law 15 years ago and lost 11 percent of their libraries since then.

Here is a fun fact for you: The New York Times could have written equally accurate articles with either of the following two headlines:

Why Libraries Are Everywhere in the Czech Republic

or 

Why over 600 libraries have closed in the Czech Republic

At this point you are probably wondering "What does he have against this innocent article in The New York Times about Czech libraries?

It's a long list, so I've decided to go with just this one thing. Sure it's petty, but you should see how petty the rest of my list is. 

At some point in the not very long New York Times article we come to the following paragraph:

 “Czechs developed a strong reading habit, and even today, those who visit libraries buy more books — 11 a year, on average — than others,” said Vit Richter, director of the Librarianship Institute of the Czech National Library.
 
I don't know about these budget slashing Czechs, but at my library we've got tons of books. One doesn't buy them. We loan them out for free. That's sort of the point. 

The big news

 


There's nothing wrong with email's ability to disseminate information. There's a pretty good chance you are reading these words via email and look how knowledgeable and informed you are.

You are incredibly knowledgeable and informed!

But only about the important things.

Nevertheless email cannot begin to compare to the power of word of mouth when it comes to the really big things. The news about our library director resigning flew through the back room of my library like a swarm of bats, thousands of bats all startled in a single, dramatic moment. It was unmissable. Even if one was on one's email at the precise second the news broke, the act of clicking on the read button of that message, or even reading its subject title, would have lagged badly behind the almost physical burst of information as it tore through the staff.

In the eruption of this earth shattering news the staff was instantly formed by the force of it into small, local groups to furiously discuss the prospects, meaning, causes and details of this major library news. No one was talking about anything at all other than our library director's new job and who our new library director might be. And nobody was not talking. Every other consideration, gossip, discussion, and work issue was swept into nothingness by the magnitude and interest of this vital news that was bound to affect every one of us.

This flurry of fascinated, overwhelming obsession lasted for about ten minutes, at which point every drop of juice, even every hint of moisture, was sucked out of the news and all that was left was a dried out, dessicated husk.

So we went back to chatting about all the other things, and since then we have hardly discussed it again.