Who are the people in your neighborhood

You cannot see these people just anywhere. They are not in the movies, nor on TV, not in magazines or written into the pages of any books, fiction or non fiction. They don't appear on the internet, in newspapers, or even in the imagination of anyone. They can even be hard to see when they mill about on their peculiar missions right in front of you. And yet I do see them, if I dare to open my eyes wide enough, any workday I want to. These are the people that come to my library.

This is not a just folks, salt of the earth post about the wondrous diversity of humanity as it really is, and neither is it a cynical take-down of the same. All I am saying here is that if I in anyway tried to show you these people on my own, even were I given vastly greater skills, equipment and assistance than I possess, through film, sound, prose, patience and respect, humor and vision, my, or really anyone's project in this regard, would fall hopelessly flat. Any attempt to convey the however many hundreds of people I see in a day would be unbelievably bizarre. Unbelievably. It would also be too boring to watch, and it would be cynical, treacly, fantastical,  mundane, uninspired, desperate in its hopefulness, plodding, pointlessly weird, and needlessly depressing. It would be unfair, inaccurate in its representation, confusing, glamorizing, too good to be true, evil, unintelligible and inappropriately whimsical.

Just like life.

Welcome to Clerkmanifesto

Welcome to my blog, clerkmanifesto.

This page is to help you orient to this blog and see if you might like it. You could, theoretically, as such an event is within the realm of statistical possibility. This page here has a lot of links in red and these will lead you to different places on my blog, so you may find this to be a good starting hub for exploring around here. Alternatively you could turn off your computer and go outside and take up wildlife observation as a hobby, which I understand is quite good for the soul.

So, what's up here?

I post daily, um, essays?, blog posts?, writings?, musings?, accountings? of the world around me. The world around me often involves my job as a clerk at a large inner ring suburban library, so my blog is much concerned with libraries, work, books, culture and all these people everywhere. It's all slightly better than it sounds.

Okay, I'm still here.

Really? You're not just teasing? Okay then. Gosh! So then, now we will have you try out three posts of mine, and if you're still with me you can continue on from here. If you're too mesmerized to break your reading chain with a click you can come back to this later.

1.   This first one is on the shorter side for me, and is about my magnificent famousness!

2.    Less funny, more thoughtful. I'm too shy to say more. 

3.   More fun and games because you're just starting out. As an explanatory note we work the front desk in pairs at my job.

 Yeah, so, those were okay. Why aren't there any pictures? Where are the links to the good stuff?

Hmmm, this is kind of awkward, what with me writing the questions and everything. But you probably don't need an answer to those questions if you're still here. Still. I resist pictures because I am an old fashioned blogger who believes 12 words are worth a thousand pictures, and I try to resist linking as I feel if it's all that great you'll be funneled inexorably there anyway. I just have here, mostly, what I make myself.

Okay, I'm still here again. Hit me with the hard stuff!

1. Philosophy, comedy, anarchy! Getting longer. You said you were ready.

I'm fine (cough!), again!

1. A grim farewell to someone retiring...

2. This is about the shortcomings of others, because others have them!

Okay, okay (cough). That's good. I guess I can read your blog sometimes if I remember. What now?

You can follow my blog by email by filling in the box on the right over there. All my new posts will be sent to you like letters. If you like commenting please go comment crazy. I like comments! You can follow me if you find my picture on the right, farther down probably, but that probably won't do much unless it already means something to you. I'm not sure. You can bookmark this page and come back later. If you're unsatiated, unable to sleep, in a trance-like state, you can go to my home page (click below) and just work your way through all my posts going backwards (also just clicking the banner title at the top takes you to my homepage):

www.clerkmanifesto.com

Also there are usually more links to groups of posts on the right sidebar.

Finally, you might want to reconsider the wildlife observation hobby. 

Thanks for taking a look.

North woods comedy

In my week here in the north woods and at the great lake I have decided I would do quite well writing something more like a nature blog, maybe "northwoodsmanifesto", but, actually, probably not "northwoodsmanifesto". By "quite well" I mean I would enjoy writing this blog and would be even less inclined to run out of material here than I already am back in the city. I don't know how well you the blog reader would take to this change to a nature blog from a library blog. I suppose my last six or seven posts would give anyone a fair indication. The main problematic thing is it all seems just a bit less funny up here, the hilarious antics of a yellow hummingbird being no match for those of a huge drunk man looking for books on beer making. And yet, if I can somehow miraculously work it out, I might sort of prefer watching and dealing with the hummingbird than the man. Should I ever be so fortunate as to have to face this luxurious problem I believe I can manage to make the appropriate adjustments. The birds here aren't right off the top terribly hilarious and so may take a dash of embellishment to get up to speed, but many bugs are quite funny as is, and if I did get to live here I'd be bound to see a moose. Moose are so notoriously wacky that with a few sightings I'd be halfway home, especially if I fell in a pond or something from excitement. 

But I'm just thinking out loud here, as one does when their vacation is ending, of having it go forever. The library is very nice, too.

did not see this moose!

  

Blue Berries

Coming to the north woods I had two, mostly serious, north woods dreams. I wanted to see a moose, and I wanted to happen upon large areas full of wild blueberries, free, but for a dozen or two mosquito bites, for the picking.

The moose seemed like a long shot. Apparently three quarters of the moose up here have died of global warming. Plus, I don't think the remaining moose are especially keen on wandering up and down the shore of Lake Superior, a rather narrow strip of sort of wilderness between a well traveled two-lane highway and water everywhere. And this is where most of my moose watching time is being spent.

So, not surprisingly, the moose thing did not pan out. As far as I can determine, in six days, the closest I have come to seeing a moose was when, down by the shore one day, both my wife and I spotted a chipmunk. It was cute, sort of, but had no antlers. I did have the odd thought though, hiking along the Superior Hiking Trail today, that a moose was watching me. Whether or not this was of any use to the moose, I cannot say, but it did me no good whatsoever.

As to the blueberries, I believe the answering gods heard my call, but the connection was very bad. The only blueberries I have seen up here were in a grocery store, imported from Michigan or California. However, I have seen fantastic numbers of blue berries. They grow on a ground stalk in the woods, frequently near the trails. The are definitely not edible. Don't try. And they are not the deep blue purple black of blueberries but are instead an arresting, perfect blue. How do I describe a color? Luminous periwinkle maybe? It is one of the loveliest colors I have ever seen in nature. So, mostly O for two, but I'll take what I can get. Plus, I still have about 36 hours left here. A moose could easily wander up to this window I'm sitting at. Many of these wild ferns look like a moose would find them quite edible, and they probably just need some clearing out to reveal the rich blueberry beds below. 

Story of a smell

I first found the smell as a teenager, hiking on the dry mountain paths in the Sierras. I thought maybe some pop tarts broke in my pack, or fell from someone else's pack and was ground into the mountain granite by hikers' boots and the hooves of horses. It puzzled me for hours, maybe for multiple backpacking trips in that time of my life. I wasn't sure about liking a smell of pop tarts in the wild. I waited.

Somewhere in there, after spotting enough dead things, after seeing enough things decomposing in the high dry air I pieced it together. This is the sweet, pop tart smell of decay. I don't know how I feel about liking the smell of something rotting, so I set that aside. I set it aside for decades and decades. I set it aside without knowing I had, through hundreds of encounters, thousands.

Yesterday I am walking with my wife on the Superior Hiking Trail. It is a dry north woods forest path and I smell it. I smell the sweet pop tart smell of decay. I think "There is that smell. There is that pop tart smell." And then suddenly, after 30 years, it comes to me:

I love that smell!

Ten minutes

Here, a house to view from, a great lake and its rough shore, all seemingly belonging to eternity. And what's to see if it's all geological time, if nothing changes, or things change all so slowly my need for stimulus cannot wait for it. But it's not like that. I think I could pick any amount of time, but all week here the one that has kept coming to my mind is:

Every ten minutes there is something new.

I have an hour here. We'll check in every ten minutes to demonstrate my point. This quiet magic of change might be true everywhere in the world forever and for everyone. I don't know. It is true here.

We start with:

3:40:    The 13 geese are leaving. For awhile they sat directly out, 50 feet off shore, in a ragged line. Their business is done here.

3:50:    A bird starts cheaping. One "Cheap" a second. I went to go find it but found only flowers and the first splashes of waves breaking on the rocks that I have seen for two days.

4:00:    I look around. Nothing. I am panicked because I really dislike being wrong, but I am merely looking the wrong way. It's down. An orange butterfly, like a small monarch. The first butterfly I have seen here at all. The moment I see it, and spot it land, a seagull flies overhead.

4:10:    A small group of sleek swift birds sprint across the shoreline. Just as they're leaving my view they dart half back to the center of it, as if far more than any travel, they are absorbed in some chase game of flying. Then they turn again and, dartingly, they are gone.

4:20:     I look. Nothing, a dog barking, a rare sound here that I hate. A seagull is now floating off shore. The sun comes out, and the sun hides. I feel I can count none of this. Why can't a moose amble up the shore. That would be a good one! All I get is a fly, landing next to me on the balcony ledge. Hey! Wait! I know this fly!

4:30:    Oops. I sort of lost track of time writing something else. I'll pay better attention, but I am nearly certain that clump of purple flowers there have newly bloomed in the last ten minutes. Ninety-five percent certain.

4:40:    Only a bit cloudier than before, and yet, it drizzles, barely, for five seconds.

Fly and me

The lake house my wife and I are at is perfect. This may not be the nicest thing to tell you. It lacks grit and reality for any reader and changes even the least boastful of all writers (which I already severely lack any claim to) into a bit of a braggart. But I cannot tell you this tale without starting here. It is perfect here. And perfection, personal and eternal though it may be, also somehow only exists in bookends, in the niggling bits of imperfection that obsessively sketch its borders. This is about a small imperfection looming large and the restoration of harmony.

We are much in and out here, onto the balcony, testing the air, down to our great lake, in and out through sturdy wood doors made, like our walls here, mostly of glass. Outside there are sometimes many bugs, and I have perhaps enough mosquito bites to satisfy those readers bored with my claims of perfection. Sometimes we are chased inside or just choose to come inside and someone slips in with us. A moth is not so great a problem, and I have caught one in a glass and taken it out. A mosquito or two is a misery, but it is not hard to get lucky with a stray swat, and, if not, ten minutes of concerted hunting will always do the trick. A fly though, a fast, uncanny, smart fly can be a small torture of surprising persistence and near unsolvability. Last night such a fly slipped into our house.

This fly was a genius and a miracle of speed, a master of irritation. It began its visits at dawn, buzzing loudly about our heads, landing on our skin, circling, racing, always patternless and endlessly interested in our company. For reasons of its own it would disappear until the exact point where my spirit would start to calm, and then it would return. All through the morning hours I'd engage in long, futile hunting expeditions with a rolled up magazine. I'd wait for it, through long tracking operations, to land some place whackable, and I'd whack. There'd usually be a slight injury to my hand, a loud noise, and a curious sense of missed opportunity, curious because one wonders what opportunity I was missing when I was not getting within the realm of distant hope of even coming near this fly.

I wanted to kill this fly very much.

I was not going to kill this fly.

The morning advanced and the fly only grew faster and louder and smarter.

I so wanted to kill this fly.

I won't draw this all out with all the long tales of all the ridiculous things whacked and flung with all the comedy of something so utterly without effect. But it was all there. Know that it was there.

I was in the kitchen. The fly landed on the counter. My thousandth chance. I swept my hand across the counter, an odd attempt even more futile than most, and the strangest thing happened. I caught the fly. I caught the fly!

I took the fly outside. I threw it out of my hand onto the wide wooden plank of the balcony railing. The fly, unphased, looked up at the sun and clouds and felt the wind.

"It's nice to be outside." It seemed to say.

I breathed in the perfect air that smells of pines and almost of the sea. I was calm for the first time in five hours.

"Yes it is." I seemed to say. "Yes it is."

Lake Superior in twelve words

It is fresh water in a great basin. Casually I always think it will be the same: Ah, there is the lake. The Lake, one thing. From great windows and our own shore I look on it day after day and even the slightest attention marks change instead, unending diversity, never seen patterns and wild mysteries. If I had a camera I would maybe take pictures to show you, but I don't have a camera, and I sometimes suspect pictures are the bloggers easy way out. Twelve words are worth a thousand pictures. So instead of pictures I have collected for you these phrases of what the playful and serious, mysterious waters of Lake Superior tell me, sometimes once, and sometimes often, all in twelve words.

We are all gathered here today, dark flocks of water, flying north.

We little circles within circles can briefly become the tips of waves.

A small god, with its finger, draws sweeping curves in the water.

I have decided to be a wave in the middle of calmness.

With never a hint of green before, suddenly 17 shades of it.

The waves moving east and the waves moving south are in harmony.

Between two pines the pale water disappears and pretends to be sky.

The slow wind has blown our waves an inch below the surface.

The endless dance of diamonds were never there when the clouds come.

Over and over these are the the long, slow waves of liquid pewter.

We cannot be distracted, we are water in a hurry, standing still.

Sunday Update

Officially returned from blogger summer vacation in the north woods, I thought I'd use Sunday here for a little blog housekeeping. Tomorrow I will launch off into six or so naturey sorts of posts I wrote while on vacation. In case you were wondering, "Naturey" means:  of a nature nature.

So, I wrote blog posts on vacation! Why? Because writing blog posts is fun and very good for the muscle tone in my fingers. Plus it makes me think about things more, and I like to think about things more. Then I take the things I thought about and drop them from a high place or throw them in a roaring fire or soak them in grain alcohol or lay them on a sidewalk in a busy part of town and then we see what happens. Things happen. I think it's good for everyone involved.

So quickly here I should mention that my computer seems alarmingly ill since my return home, and this blog post is being typed as fast as possible in order that I have something finished to post in case I can't get to a computer until Monday. Then I read over each furiously typed sentence eleven or twelve times completely defeating the purpose of writing fast. Then I edit and read the whole thing over from the start every six seconds. Thankfully my computer is holding out despite all of this and doesn't feel taunted. I think me and my computer may be bonding as I nurse it. But the point remains that this post could end at any point without coming to it's astonishingly revealing concluding sentence.

As to the blog housekeeping, I just want to bring your attention to the sidebars. I'm trying to make them a bit more lively. One feature is "Upcoming on this blog" or whatever title I gave it. It tells you about upcoming events here. I'm also trying to put together more useful groups of links to other, older, posts in my blog, something more like beginning, intermediate and advanced blog posts. Really they're just different kinds of best of collections, but that might have to wait until my computer stops sneezing. Poor computer.

Happily there is now time for the astonishingly revealing concluding sentence!

FAQ talk

Longtime readers who like to memorize what happens here at clerkmanifesto will note that I am now up to my third FAQ written for this blog. Is this blog so complicated it needs three FAQs? I asked that as a rhetorical question thinking my answer would be a cheery, hopeful "Of course not!"  Then I realized: Oh, no, it totally is. This blog is so complicated that, for good or ill, we could just write new FAQs everyday and never quite get to the bottom of it. Nevertheless, I have a tendency to not take my FAQs with the proper bit of grave helpful seriousness that might give said FAQ a fighting chance of letting people know what's going on here. Perhaps this dooms me to a groundhog day like recurrence of FAQ writing.

In addition to the lack of seriousness problem is my feeling that the FAQ must be useful to both total beginners and to very advanced users of my blog who often have the advantage of knowing me personally and so can just, for instance, ask, "Was that last post about confused patrons supposed to be written in Ancient Arcadian, or was that a formatting mistake?" And I can reassuringly answer "I didn't know you still read my blog. What a pleasant surprise!"

Fortunately I have a solution to these issues. Soon I will write a FAQ for true beginners. And I'll try to actually be helpful and informative and explaining. Then, another day I will write a FAQ for advanced users. I will undoubtedly get metaphysical in that one, but in a nice calm way that still imparts some information.

Anyway, I hope these upcoming FAQs might be useful for you and I'll probably pin them out to my sidebar on the right, for ready reference. When I write them. Which will be eventually.

If you are all like "I don't need a FAQ to read a blog!" I say "Hang in there.  I will write a special FAQ for you too!"

Maybe that one should go first...

I Am Back

I am back!

Where was I?

I, I don't know, really, it's all so hazy. There was a baby elephant, really good samosas. I kept having to tie my shoes, my wife and I dancing, clouds. A man named Voors or Roy, a prophet, Kabir poems everywhere...

No, I'm just kidding. I went to a pretty house on Lake Superior. Sorry to get you all excited for nothing, but it is a very pretty lake, so it's not like it was for nothing. Maybe it was for a lot.  Maybe I will say a lot more interesting things than usual about it all. I don't know yet. But it's not a secret or anything. Just, right now I want to thank Grape for stepping up and guest blogging so beautifully. Let's give him a big hand. If you feel silly applauding while sitting at a computer at work, or alone in an office, or looking at your phone in a garden, then maybe you can applaud very softly. He can't probably hear you actually, so it's all a little tricky. I'm now thinking this applauding would work best for those of you who are sitting at a whole bank of computers, together, in a room with Grape and many other people who are reading this blog post simultaneously. I think the odds on this are rather low, but if you are in this configuration, when I say "now" then applaud all at once. Unless you didn't like what he wrote, but, really, what's not to like?

If you're not in this configuration you might like to use my 'now' to experience a moment of pure presence in the universe. It's up to you either way.

 So...


Now.


Thanks.

Rainy Day Post 8, easing...

We are on our eighth emergency blog post, which means things must have gotten pretty darn serious. Emergency Protocol Tav was invoked, the rainy day blog posts were released into the wild by our lead blog bot, Bot A. Then Emergency Protocol "Wine fruit par Argentina" was invoked, causing the special pager to buzz (hopefully) on Grape's belt, alerting him to the need for him to guest blog. For three grueling days he heroically guest blogged, averting an even deeper blog crisis and leading us to today, day eight. Now, finally, I have some hopeful news.

Protocol Tav has been revoked! Emergency Protocol "Wine fruit par Argentina" has also been revoked, and the blog emergency alert rating has been downgraded from "RED (humph, I wonder where the blogger has gone to?)" to "ORANGISH YELLOW (I think I hear the blogger's footsteps. I hope he won't mind that I ate all the tortilla chips)."

So what does all this mean? It means we're pretty sure that this will be the last emergency "Rainy Day" blog post for awhile, and that tomorrow we will be back to regular, old-fashioned clerkmanifesto blog posts.

"What" you may ask "Constitutes regular clerkmanifesto blog posts around here?"

We're still really not sure, and there's a very good chance you will notice no particular difference whatsoever.

Rainy Day 7, Grape guest blogs 3, Live blogging.

Live Blogging

  

By Grape Areeww

As Feldenstein Calypso noted on an earlier post, I was invited to guest blog for The Clerk Manifesto over 30 years ago, while he and I skinned a rattlesnake in the bathroom of my parents’ home (the smell was delicious, a mixture of strawberries and walnuts and chocolate cake mix) and my grandmother asked us through the door in her thick Boston accent why we were taking so long and why it smelled so nice. We said something about inventing a new cologne and, after decapitating the snake and scraping the innards from the skin, we cut the rattle off. That left us with the rest of the snake to dispose of, and that’s where my memory fails me. Maybe Feldenstein Calypso recalls what happened. 

I do know one that Feldenstein Calypso took the skin home to dry in the sun. Grape Areeww kept the rattle. All was well until Feldenstein Calypso called the next morning. 

“I have some bad news,” he said.

“Oh, no!” 

“Our handyman’s rabbit chewed up the snake skin.”

“Dios mio!”

Later that day we went bowling and discussed what we had left of the snake. In a few short weeks I would be off to chiropractic school and Feldenstein Calypso would begin his training as a line judge at Wimbledon.

“The rattle!” we both said.

“We could cut it in half,” I suggested.

“Or bury it somewhere,” said Feldenstein Calypso.

“That’s a good idea. That way we’ll always know where it is.”

“Hmmm....” said Feldenstein Calypso.

“What?”

“I think I have an even better idea!”

“What is it?”

“It’s a good one!”

“I’m so excited to hear it!”

“I can’t believe I thought of this! It’s perfect!”

“Wow! I can’t wait!”

“So, how about—man, this is such a neat idea!”

“Yippee!”

“Okay…so…how…about…we…” 

“Yesssss????????”

“Share the rattle?”

“Share the rattle?”

“Yes! How about you keep it for six months and then mail it to me, and we’ll keep doing this until the day we die.”

“That’s a million dollar idea!”

“Why, thank you!”

“A zillion dollars!”

“Thanks!”

“But one question,” I said. “The person who dies first—does he get buried or cremated with the rattle, or does the survivor keep it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s think about it. I’m sure we have a lot of time before one of us dies.”

“I hope so!”

And so it was settled: Grape Areeww brought the rattle to chiropractic school, and in six months time he mailed it to England, where Feldenstein Calypso kept it, and so on, until this day, where it sits here, right now, on this desk, ready for a new journey to an unnamed Midwest town.  It has been in every continent of the world and even for a short time in the micronation of Asbamaslovendad. Here, dear Readers, is the rattle:

And so, um….Where was I?

Oh, yes! I am live blogging here, blogging about what’s going through my mind right now, this day, and how deciding what to blog about isn’t as easy as it seems when you don’t blog regularly, and how blogging live this morning just felt like fun, and then I started describing the origin of my promise to Feldenstein Calypso that led up to it.

I see the fates have played a lovely joke on me: I have live blogged! 

I am left with only one thing to do: I must pack the rattle in a secure way. It is Saturday here in Guadalupe del Los Arboles, 12:45 in the morning, and the post office is only open on odd hours. 

Rainy Day 6: Grape guest blog 2, Feldenstein

Three Theories on the Whereabouts of Feldenstein Calypso

By Grape Areeww

Dear Reader,

Where is the Clerk of The Clerk Manifesto? Do you think you know? What hints has he left of his whereabouts? What does he do when he is on vacation? Why doesn’t he just tell us?

I would like to suggest three possibilities. It is up to him, of course, to divulge his location—or if he remains in the library after all, letting his fingers and mind rest a bit from the demands and stardom of blogging.

Alas, I think not. I believe Feldenstein Calypso is somewhere. 

And now, I will, like all great logical thinkers, drink seven glasses of chocolate milk and sit still until memories of Feldenstein Calypso rise, memories that might give us some clues as to his whereabouts. 

  

Memory #1

I have known Feldenstein Calypso since junior high—a bit peripherally then, but we were aware of shared thoughts only available that year, 1976, the Bicentennial, when we set our balloons free, notes tied to their tails. 

Our friendship blossomed in high school, when we opened a jazz club deep in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California. That year, he let his hair grown out, but mine remained short. We collected turtle cars and lived on wheatgrass mangoes. And so…

THEORY “A”

Feldenstein Calypso is tented against a lightening storm at Thousand Islands Lake in the Sierra Nevadas.  A lovely stream flows by.  Paul Bley is there, playing piano. 

Memory #2

Another story you might want to tell your children: Feldenstein Calypso is an excellent bowler, and his minigolf skills are legendary (Wiki it!).  For years, after serving as vice president of Chevron, he toured the minigolf circuit, dominating the competition, but always, of his own free will, losing on the final hole. “It teaches me something,” is all he said in his many postgame interviews. With his second place winnings, he got on, buying a Winnebago and a herd of sheep he called his Watchdog Crew.

THEORY “B”

Feldenstein Calypso sits cross legged on a bench at hole six of the Sherman Oaks Castle Park miniature golf course. He writes on a scorecard with a vintage minigolf pencil.  Although a club rests by his side, he does not play, and the families and couples take no real notice of him. He is like a light post, a part of the place, as natural as a beach toy on the sand.  

Memory #3

As noted on an earlier post, when Feldenstein Calypso and Grape Areeww were 16 years-old, Grape Areeww drove them to the top of Stunt Canyon Road, a saddle atop the San Fernando Valley. From there they saw the Topanga Mall and, in the other direction, the wide Pacific. After various UFO sightings, the boys decided it was time to drive down the winding road to have dinner with their new rabbi, but not before picking up a hitchhiker, Gabriela Quilavonovitch, who asked if she could drive.

She took the wheel and sang us lovely songs about mirrors and doves that put the boys to sleep despite the screeching turns and increasing speeds. Three hours later they woke.  The car was on its side, resting against the hill.  In the road, a GIANT rock shaped like an elephant.

“Are we alive?” asked Feldenstein Calypso.

“I think so,” Grape Areeww answered. “Does the boom box still work?”

Feldenstein Calypso pressed play. Melanie Safka’s bicycle roller skating song came on.

“Cool,” said Grape Areeww. “But that rock in the road sucks.”

“Yup,” agreed Feldenstein Calypso. “What will your parents say?”

“We’ll tell them about Gabriela Quilavonovitch and show them the rock. They’ll have to buy us both a new car!”

“But Grape Areeww…”

“What?”

“The rock’s gone! And so is Gabriela Quilavonovitch!”

*          *          *

Two weeks ago, a woman stood in the checkout line at Feldenstein Calypso’s library, a copy of Jack the Bear in her hand.  Feldenstein Calypso happened to be carting some books by.

“I love that book!” he said to her. 

“I know,” she said, and stepped forward to the desk.

“What a strange thing to say,” thought Feldenstein Calypso.

He went on with his day, busily encouraging his colleagues to invest in a sushi bar for the break room, tying cherry stems in knots, fantasizing about a macchiato, when, all of a sudden, he stopped in his tracks.

“Oh my God!” he shouted.

“What’s wrong, Feldenstein Calypso?” his colleagues asked. “What’s wrong?”

“That woman, the one with the Jack the Bear book, that was Gabriela Quilavonovitch! I would recognize those shoes anywhere!” 

                                                 THEORY THREE

In a storage unit made of cinder blocks, Feldenstein Calypso sits before his laptop, reviewing the security camera tapes of Gabriela Quilavonovitch, scouring each frame for clues. Feldenstein Calypso has not eaten for days.  He falls asleep fitfully, drinking from the melting ice atop the unit. He stops the tape only long enough to read the annotated edition of Jack the Bear, searching for some clues, some numerology, something to help!

Now, Dear Readers, it’s your turn. In the comments section, please let me know which of the three theories you believe is most likely.  You can also, of course, posit your own theories. When Feldenstein Calypso returns, it will be up to him what he divulges!

Rainy Day 5: Grape guest blog 1! In the spirit of lists and Work.

Five Things that Never Happened at Work that Happened

By Grape Areeww

In the spirit of lists and work, the lifeblood of The Clerk Manifesto, I would like to share five things that happened only once in my 25 years of teaching at the elementary, high school, and college levels. 

1. Grade six: David forgets his shoes!

The kids run in, throw their backpacks on their desks, tell Captain Underpants jokes and mill about. I say my good mornings, but stop at David’s feet, at the bright white tube socks.

“David,” I ask, “where  are your shoes?”

He looks down, his jaw drops, his face reddens. “I guess I forgot to put them on,” he says. 

2. College: A bird hops into the classroom!

Every session, around twilight, there’s lovely tweeting in the hedge outside. I often stop the class so we can listen.

This evening, the door’s open. I can’t recall what we’re discussing—perhaps the use of the dash—when in hops a small bird.  Hop, hop, hop between the desks and the whiteboard. What could we do but stop and watch? The bird must have hopped a full thirty seconds before hopping back out.

3. Grade Six: Sam vomits!

Sam is a quiet, shy boy—a good, attentive student, and so I should know something’s wrong when his hand’s raised throughout my stirring, remarkable, glorious lecture on the Boston Tea Party. 

“Just a minute, Sam,” I say.

His hand remains up until, just as the tea is thrown into the Boston Harbor, Sam cups his hands beneath his mouth and vomits. I rush over with the trash can, then help him to the bathroom.

4. High School: The teacher wears a pager but dramatic irony strikes!

The pager is a pod-like device, smaller than a garage door opener, that hooks onto my belt loop and is set to buzz and vibrate. My wife and I rent it for the last few weeks of her pregnancy. I feel a bit, well, 007 wearing it around.

“What’s that?” Mr. Grape Areeww, my students ask.

“A pager,” I say. “But please don’t touch—it’s a very, very valuable piece of equipment. Practically top secret.”

Fast forward a week or so.  We are at the heart of Gilgamesh, just after Enkidu’s death and our hero’s inner quest, when Patty, the office worker, walks into the classroom.

“It’s time!” she says.

“Time for what?” I ask.

“Baby time!” she says. “Your wife just called.”

The students erupt with shouts of encouragement. I gather my belongings, head to my car, checking the pager on my belt loop. The pager’s still there, but that’s it. No vibrating, no lighting up, no nothing.

5. Grade Six: The teacher loses a sense of time and self, and his students watch him from afar!

I am in the habit of walking the oak grove at the far end of campus while the students attend Art class.  I make a loop that lands me back with a few minutes to spare, refreshed and ready for the afternoon.  Today, though, after a night’s rain, everything shines brightly. The oak limbs reach out like shelters, the fallen leaves still wet. The trail through the grove is like a happy dream. My body moves through it, towards the playfield. I stop at a particularly loamy section of the path to feel its soft depth—in fact, I step on it repeatedly, enjoying the give-and-take of the soil, when all of a sudden, laughter from across the field.  The kids are there, all of them, mimicking my steps, pointing at their watches.

Rainy Day Blogging 4, Guest Blogger!

For unspecified reasons I am still away from my blog, but, since you're reading this, our back up protocols are working flawlessly to provide fresh, trenchant content. Because I need to write these posts ahead of time and seal them for freshness my subject matter is limited. How can I talk about Libraries if, for all I know, no one even checks out books anymore, they just sit in the library reading some kind of atom powered color television set about taking rocket ships to the moon! So mostly I've been talking about our emergency protocols. Before that wears out it's welcome, though, I have a new solution lined up. A guest blogger! No, a real good one! You'll like this. Starting tomorrow Grape Areeeww is going to be guest blogging for a few days.

Who is this Grape, you want to know? Well, it depends when this emergency protocol is invoked. For all I know he could be the father of grown children now, with gray hairs! Yesterday we were dissecting a rattlesnake in his parents' bathroom. We found the rattlesnake out on stunt canyon road. It was dead, but we didn't know that until we tremblingly poked it with 14 foot branches. Then we took the dead snake home and put it in the freezer. While dissecting and telling his grandparents to use the other bathroom I entreated Grape to undertake a sacred calling. I told him if I was ever called away temporarily from my blog for a long enough time, he would be notified, and would have to step in for a few days. I said that this could happen in thirty days, or thirty years, but he would need to be ready. Being a brother of my heart he accepted this sacred duty. Tomorrow he will blog for you here. He's a very good writer! He is studying poetry a University this fall, I mean, unless it's like the year 2000 or something, then who knows what he's up to. But no matter when, I believe he will answer my call!

Rainy day blogging number 3

I am out of the office or out of town or out of commission or maybe just out of it. I don't know which because I am cleverly using time travel to provide sparkling fresh, enervating and effervescent blog content despite my unavailability to actually post new blog content. Yes, I am a voice from the past. I wrote this in the halcyon days of yore, then sealed it behind 4-inch thick glass in a pure vacuum environment. There is sat until I or some authorized designee of me and my blog, went down to sub level security containment section B, entered the codes for protocol Tav, and hit the big red button. This metal sealed all blog access and released emergency bot A. Bot A is our blog's most sophisticated AI, who, under protocol Tav then would have cracked the sealed glass containers sequentially for the Rainy Day Blog Posts, releasing this post and its siblings, until either protocol Tav is revoked, the rainy day blog supply is spent, or bot A manages to produce prose of sufficient quality to post in a holding pattern to provide a minimum level of entertainment and insight until protocol Tav can be revoked and I can resume writing the blog myself. At the time this blog post is being written, it does not look likely that Bot A will be able to produce prose of a sufficient quality to meet the clerkmanifesto standards. In our most recent full scale test Bot A took eleven 24 hour days, 9 fuses, and 14 buckets of Haas avocado pits to produce the following post:

Bot A Holding Pattern Post 7

Bot A holds post pattern. Pattern posts to hold post pattern. Resume post pattern to post until pattern posted. Post complete.

Actually, this does show some real improvement over earlier tests, and who knows how many years have gone by since I wrote this post and how much improvement has been achieved on Bot A's AI. The bigger concern is actually, at this point,  that as Bot A's prose improves so does its need for fuses, and, of particular importance, for avocado pits. There is grievously no commercial market for avocado pits. And, while to you out there in the future, nightly clerkmanifesto guacamole parties might sound great, they lose some of their luster when you have to throw them night after night. Admittedly, watching Bot A break the 4-inch thick rainy day blog post's containment glass in the nightly tests never never loses its luster and is always fun, but one gets incredibly tired of guacamole, and, despite several attempts, California rolls do not use anywhere near the amount of avocados we need.

So, hopefully I'll be back tomorrow, or there'll be another rainy day blog post, or, who knows, there could be a post by Bot A. The important thing is that we should have something for you. We prepare.

Additional note to our clerkmanifesto friends:

We have been incredibly moved by your generous donations of avocado pits. Bot A is especially thankful. But I would be wasting your fantastic efforts if I did not tell you the strict conditions under which avocado pits are actually useable to Bot A.

1. The pits must be from Haas avocados only. No "Booths" or "Bacons." They do not work.
2. Pits must be cleaned in pure grain alcohol, then white vinegar then distilled water.
3. Pits cannot be in contact at any time with plastic, glass, wood, wood pulp products such as paper or cardboard, fabric, or metal of any kind other than a basically pure silver, which means "fine silver" or "three nines fine silver" only, which will generally be too soft for normal use. The pits should be packed directly from the distilled water into unglazed earthenware jars.

Thank you again! Keep 'em coming.

Rainy day blogging #2

Hi, you have reached clerkmanifesto.com. No one is here today because we are either:

a. in the bathroom (bringing new meaning to today's blog title: Rainy day blogging #2. Hey! It's my blog's first potty joke! Maybe I should start a Juvy Fiction blog!)

b. hiking in the Himalayas (if I am, I'm probably calling them something more insider like, such as the "him-mal-yuhs").

c. standing near an intersection looking at a slightly askew, marooned bus, saying "Whew! That was a close one! Hey, weird, that looks just like me laying there unconscious in front of that bus. (so, hopefully not "c.").

d. being questioned by the authorities, as in "No, no. I like America lots. I was just teasing, like, you know,  between really good friends."

e. running from zombies, as in "Okay, that's all the gas. I'll work my way to the utility box and at my signal you start yelling and waving your arms. When they hit the halfway point I'll light the fire. We both then hightail it across the tarmac and hope to god that jeep starts!"

So it's probably one of those. If there's another rainy day post tomorrow it may or may not indicate which of the five. But either way you might want to put some spikes into a baseball bat, just to be safe.

At the tone leave a message.

The first rainy day blog post

In some recent storms that assailed my small part of the world and toppled mighty trees I found myself cut off, at least at home, from the internet for about a week. Since the internet is of questionable benefit I am not sure I suffered greatly, but I was worried sick for my blog. I think my blog is a little like a cat, happy and healthy with regular attention and feeding. Toni Morrison said  “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” I have applied this to blogs. There was a blog I wanted to read but I couldn't find anyone writing it, so I started writing this. It was like getting a cat! I feed it and play with it. It is occasionally shy of strangers and sometimes hides, but is not above demanding attention from random people or just clawing someone inattentive for fun. But even though I am writing this blog I still would like to read blogs at least sort of like it. I like cats. So sometimes I wander out into the internet, try and find my way off the main roads and into back internet alleys of quirkiness and slightly uninternetiness (almost positive that's a word! Sounds better out loud than one would think) all to find a like-minded blog. I find the usual big monoliths (despite trying to stay off the big roads) with all their product or fill in the blank content. I find the motivated and confident professionals, the helpful practicals, and the socially connected internet slicksters. But you know what I find most of all? Do you know how I can tell if I am really deep in the back alleys? There are dead cats. I find lots and lots of dead cats. "Oh, this blog looks interesting, just maybe..." I say. But it's last post was three years ago. Over here this one has a good title, but whoever made it posted once and was gone forever. They brought home the cute kitten, fed it, played with it, moved to New Brunswick and left the cat. The cat died, abandoned. Except, it's a metaphorical cat, so it wasn't murdered really, and it didn't decompose. It pristinely mummified, a perfect frozen image of itself exactly as it last was in life.

This works as a cautionary tale to me. No, not of getting lost in one's own analogies. Though, hmm... No, no, not of that, but of what I secretly suspect may be the fate of my blog one day, the fate of all blogs. One day the cat must die. And its corpse must sit up looking fresh and ready to be petted forever. Ew. So I think that sometimes all one can do when one begins dwelling darkly on inevitable ends is to recommit to battle against that end, find new weapons, and buy more cat food.

So, what I am doing is writing some non time sensitive blog posts for rainy days. Is my internet down? Did the global apocalypse happen? Am I sick, overcome with enuii, on remote vacation? Am I lost in the woods? Still sleeping, called away on an emergency? Could be any of these. But I'm not running reruns or letting my cat go hungry. I have saved these special blog posts, let's call them rainy day blog posts, to feed the cat while I am away. Everything is fine, cat is here, and there is exciting new content everyday.

Unless of course the posting date on this is like a month or a year or a decade old, and there's nothing after. Then, oh, it's too horrible to contemplate!

No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up.

I recently heard this quote by Lily Tomlin and was immediately smitten by it:

"No matter how cynical you become, it's never enough to keep up."

I certainly try to keep up with my cynicism and there's plenty grist for the mill for that at the library. But unlike, say, National Politics, or "The World," the library is not, at heart, a bad place. Actually, in balance, barely, it's a pretty good place. And since it's "A pretty good place" there's a surprising amount of room to see what one expects to see. With my cynical hat on it's very easy to see wicked parents prodding their children into sad adulthoods, to check out books of broken lies to people who have given up, and to watch  vast swaths of humans idly toying with nothingness on the computers until they can officially count down one more day off their rough stay in life.

But if I want to see magic, and hope, and beauty, it turns out it's right there too. Suddenly there are people on the computers raptly watching strange old footage of people playing the blues, or they're reading some ancient language no one speaks anymore, or they're learning to build a steam engine from scratch. And then, right there, walking out of the kids' room is a parent who clearly loves their kid, not in that, usually false, one-day-the-kid-will-know-it way, but in a way that surrounds the kid and makes the kid shine and fly.

And then up to the front desk comes a small 12 year old. They are checking out Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle. I'm not asking this kid if they're going to read it. Of course they're going to read it! We are the impossible creation. We are the great wonders of the universe!

At least, sometimes.