Cartoon Sunday

For my regular readers, let's just pretend that every Sunday is cartoon day on the blog. I mean, if that's okay with you. Would you like some hot cocoa? For today's cartoon I drew a political cartoon. I think it's a political cartoon. Are they supposed to be funny?

If you are new to clerkmanifesto, how on earth did you get in? I thought we hid the door! Well, you're here, no harm done. Pull the chair up to the fireplace and I'll go make you a drink. You have a lot of reading to- oh- no- wait, today is cartoon day. We have cartoon day every Sunday. This'll just take you a few seconds.

Wot I Learned: In Service Day

I approached this year's Fall In Service day with a touch of jaundice in my anticipation. To start small, the day itself works badly as a reorganization of my personal schedule. Also I had a mysterious presentiment about the bagels. Furthermore, as a Clerk of the People, I take it hard when we close the Library to those heartbreaking and heartbroken masses. But, perhaps most of all, the schedule of events for the day was seriously unappealing. The keynote for the day was a long, all staff session with the Sheriffs Department to learn about mass shootings in the workplace. I looked up the odds of a mass shooting in the Library and decided that the session should have been on what to do if you, or one of your co-workers, are chosen to be the All Powerful Ruler of the Universe, as this event is at once slightly more likely, and vastly more entertaining to anticipate, than a mass shooting.

To my surprise I learned a great deal during the day. Unfortunately it did not have anything to do with any of the things I was supposed to learn from the day. But isn't the learning the key thing? I think so, and that's why I will now share with you the things I learned from this year's In Service Day.

1. Get to the bagels early, and if you want more than half of one, grab spares and shove them in your pockets.

2. If a bag of nuts with a grade higher than "Peanut" appears on the food table, you should seize it immediately and act as if you just won the Miss America Pageant.

3. The Administration office staff, responsible for providing the In Service Day food, secretly hates us all.

4. More people around my Library System read my blog than I think. They vastly prefer it in written, rather than spoken, form.

5. The librarians know of a strange labyrinth of warrens that honeycomb my Library.

6. The moment that there is nowhere anyone has to be, and all work is optional at my Library, it becomes a ghost town, empty, with tumbleweeds blowing through, and I stand alone in the entire, huge Library having paranoid feelings that there is some fabulous secret staff party I have not been invited to. I make friends with the Library cactus.

7. In staff meetings there is a minutely detailed, invisible wall surrounding all ideas for improvements that is defined by resistance to change, your three worst co-workers, the places that your supervisors have detached from reality, and your personal megalomania.

8. As observable from our upstairs windows, many of our regular patrons believe carpool or vanpool means one or more persons in a car or van, and that the cut off for energy efficient vehicles is seven mpg or better.

James Dashner is not weird

A little while ago I met, and heard speak, best selling YA author James Dashner at my Library. He wrote The Maze Runner, which is having a movie made of it, or, it turns out it is sort of made, but delayed because it got more money to have better effects put in it. I have written two silly posts about this visit and now offer a slightly less silly one to round out my trilogy. I'm not sure if any blog post can not be silly, but I'll do my best to work my way to that end of the spectrum. It might be the name: blog post, blaahhg post. Can you see my throat? I still have my tonsils. I wouldn't dare write blaaahg posts if I didn't have my taaahnsils!

Right, right, serious. More Sophisticated Miniature Essay than mere blog post.

James Dashner seemed nice enough. He was friendly. He connected well with his audience and the many young readers therein. He seemed like a real "Guy". He liked guy things. He was nerdy, by his own definition, so no sports talk, but on the acceptably nerdy side of the spectrum. Nothing too Japanese, or esoteric, or unadmired entered into it. He liked The Matrix and Inception. He liked Lord of the Rings, Narnia. He was interested in video games but did not linger for a moment on that.  He liked modern television, I don't remember what shows, maybe Dexter, Breaking Bad?, and he used the phrase "I think we are in a Golden Age of Television."

And though I kind of hate the whole "Golden Age of Television" part for its generic and received quality, all of it is okay. People like what they like. I even love some of those same things he loves too. 

But, nevertheless, I find I am even less interested in reading his books than I was before I met him or heard him speak. The reason is because there was nothing odd about James Dashner. Everything fit. Everything fit perfectly. There was no texture. No quirk. No mania, no obsession with Pez dispensers or Ballet or strange shoes or Claes Oldenburg sculptures or 60's Sitcoms. Two hours and there was not one single ill-advised (in a good way or even a we're-not-sure way) moment. All of his taste and references came from one single and fully mapped cosmology of guydom and so were frictionless and could produce no heat. Alchemy requires the merging of disparate parts and their untried collisions. And so while I have nothing against him, and I certainly will not refuse to read his books, I don't really trust such a writer, with such placid and perfect and uniform inspirations. It makes it so hard to imagine how there could be any magic, any real magic, in what he does.

Sorry Lovely Bones Fans

Yesterday I was talking about my experience reading the essays of acclaimed critic Daniel Mendelsohn. I learned something right away reading his book: I am one bloodthirsty reader!

I think it was the first essay in his book, or at least the first one I read, where he starts talking about the Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones. His opening gambit was a description of the wide acclaim it received upon publication, the To Kill a Mockingbird comparison reviews, and its astonishing sales numbers. He also talked about its Amazon reviews as an indication of how well read it was. Because Mr. Mendelsohn's essay is a bit older now I have idly hopped over to check those review numbers out.

How Beautiful It Is and How Easily It Can Be Broken (from which this essay I'm talking about is drawn) by Daniel Mendelsohn, has ten reviews (4.5 stars avg.)

Dear Life: Stories by (newly minted Nobel Laureate) Alice Munro, has 205 reviews (by far her most, 4 star avg.)

The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, has 3,476 reviews (4 star avg.)

I don't know why I just did that whole breakdown of Amazon reviews for you. But it certainly makes his point; people were reading the binding off this book- though I don't think Daniel Mendelsohn would ever say "people were reading the binding off this book"- and more power to him. I wouldn't say that either!

Anyway, there I am reading this introduction and every last bit of my readerly self is half consciously thinking "Please hate this book. Please say this book is terrible. Please irrefutably tear this book apart into minute pieces."

Yes, I have read The Lovely Bones. I don't remember even having a conscious reaction to it. I read it, probably didn't think very well of it, and was done. But when Daniel Mendelsohn started to talk about it it tapped into some real sense that there was something very wrong with that book. I did not like it, and I was very hopeful that I was about to have some half forgotten whisper of a feeling, my forgotten sense of disaccord, showered with justification.

The object of this essay is not to restate Daniel Mendelsohn's critique of The Lovely Bones. You would have to read it for yourself. But I would describe his deep criticism of The Lovely Bones as so thorough, intelligent and self contained as to leave only one line of defense to the people who have sung The Lovely Bones praises: "I just liked it" probably mumbled. Anything else would look silly.

The funny thing is "I just liked it" is fine. It's just if, say, someone prefers the 79 cent cappuccino at SuperAmerica to the best cappuccino our cities have to offer (Kopplin's, $3.50) what can a person say to that?

Well, if you're Daniel Mendelsohn, a lot. And it's very interesting.

Writing is not hard work if you keep it to two paragraphs!

To my surprise I recently picked up a book of critical essays and started reading them. These are very smart and insightful essays by a writer who uses language like it's a vast array of surgical instruments, each with a detailed purpose he has mastered. Because I write I have become more attuned to the process and so occasionally recognize one of these surgical instruments and get all excited and smart feeling that I do. Most of the time though I'm baffled by them, or understand that I would have to read a lot of Ancient Greek Poetry to use one of these tools without causing my sentences to start bursting forth with blood.

The writer is Daniel Mendelsohn. He has written several books and writes a lot for The New York Review of Books. I wonder if they let him review his own books in The New York Review of Books? I would like to see him review one and tear it precisely to shreds. It would be fascinating. But my guess is that he would be okay with his own books, not because he is self serving, rather because he is a person who works things out carefully and thoroughly. You need pointless scraps and hanging threads to get the grip to tear things apart. Good luck with that on one of his shiny marble essays. Lately I am reading a lot of very good essays and often end up thinking "These people are working really hard." I don't want to work that hard. The fact that this is the end of my essay is my confession of that alone.

Blog Nirvana

"Hey," one of my readers asks "What's the deal? I read your blog and it's pretty good: clever post, funny post, thoughtful post, post that makes me teary, silly post, quiet musing post, then, Bam! There's suddenly a post like 'Fungal infections mid leg in the modern beetle', or 'My thoughts on mass produced wicker.' What's going on?"

These are called, in blogger's parlance "Stoppers" and there is a very important ethical reason for them. If a person stumbles on the homepage of a long running blog, starts reading, and likes what they see, there is little to stop them from scrolling down through the history of that blog, reading with increased feverish addiction as they go. That one-more-before-sleep compulsion keeps them glued to their chair, staring at a computer, device, or phone, for hours and hours, causing muscle cramps and seizures, urinary tract infections, and a little know or understood condition called Retinal Erosion Festering, which is every bit as bad as it sounds. This is why most ethical bloggers (and many bloggers are ethical) regularly insert into their blogs an occasional post that is full of bizarre information and thick, gelatinous prose. This serves as a break on compulsive reading and allows an obsessed, chain reader, to be reacquainted with the physical world. Reading suddenly about mass produced wicker makes them suddenly realize "Hey, I have to go to the bathroom!" and "Why are these crabs eating my feet?"

Unfortunately, like some safety measures designed to help rare, but severe, situations, there can be an inconvenience involved for the rest of us. The obvious one is that if you are a moderate, temperate reader, of this blog for instance, a "Stopper" post is merely a tedious inconvenience in your well-regulated reading. You rely on entertainment and edification and suddenly you find yourself trapped in quicksand like nonsense. When this happens, like now for example, say to yourself "I may be saving a life!" And that's just it. You may be saving a life indeed.

There is one other important problem with these "Stopper" posts. As they are common bailout locations for people reading blogs, the departure point as people leave blogs, search engines register them as high traffic locations on the internet. This brings these posts much higher in search engine results, causing more people to visit them, resulting in even higher places in search engine results. So when you go out looking for interesting blogs to read you will invariably be linked to non representative, boring, obtuse, and generally awful bits of writing. Sadly you will end up thinking there are not very many good blogs out there, indeed, that good blogs are profoundly rare, little realizing that what you are encountering is more likely an altruistic bluff, probably by some brilliant and fascinating prose stylist, who is throwing their writing on a sword to protect innocent internet surfers. So if you are out on the internet, looking for fascinating blogs of an independent and unique nature, and you encounter some bizarre nonsense like, well, this, for instance, you might want to click on the blog title to go to the home page and try another post. Below what seems to be rank madness may lurk blog nirvana.

Cell phone ringtones

I don't have a cell phone because I cherish and hold fast to my outmoded idea that it makes people look insane. Also, I quite dislike talking to people on the phone. Can't they just pop over to the library if they want to talk to me? I'm here, like, half the time! Nevertheless I started musing upon what ringtone I would like if I did have a cell phone. I don't know why I started musing on this, but, as a daily blogger, musing on pretty much anything mainlines right into a blog post. And here we are. This is that blog post!

So here is my list of ringtones for my phone. Can I just have them go off as kind of random choice ringtones? You plethora of cell phone users out there would have to advise on that. Maybe I can skip the phone and just get a little speaker that periodically plays these ringtone sounds from my pocket.

1. Help, I'm trapped in this guy's pocket! Help, I'm trapped in this guy's pocket! Help, I'm trapped in this guy's pocket!

2. (Sound of toaster springing up toast, followed by extended sequence of the frothing of milk)

3. Hi! It's me! I'm in my car and should be there in (Horrific sound of massive car accident).

4. (Sad defeatist voice saying) Oh, it's just me, don't bother answering. I don't have anything worth saying anyway.

5. (Generic musical ringtone that accelerates in speed, hits a high pitched screech, and ends in an electrically fizzy pop of self destruction)

6. (Alarmingly loud) I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! I'm in the Library! (Never ever turned off).

Live Blogging James Dashner at the Library

My Library stayed open late to host Young Adult author James Dashner. No, he is not a Young Adult, more he is writing for an audience mainly considered to be Young Adult, or teen. James Dashner is, like, fortyish, and a best selling author whose novel The Maze Runner is being made into a movie. I have no more to say about him by way of introduction, but did scrawl the following picture during his talk:

I live blogged the event on a series of barely coherent post it notes which were translated/photographed into tweets from the account of the other teen librarian who is not Marcus. The following are my post it notes as they happened, transcribed without alteration or editing from those post it notes. How is this live blogging? It isn't. It is Art. And in art we lie to tell the truth, thus, this is live blogging!

I present the text of the notes numbered, but otherwise, as I said, unaltered.

Blogging commenced upon the arrival of Mr. Dashner:

1. Said to James Dashner: If you need anything from the Vending Machine, just break it. He laughed politely.

2. James Dashner at the Library not all about me, but I am trying hard to make it that way.

3. James Dashner said to me! "If I worked at a Library this is the Library I'd want to work at."

4. When James Dashner said he'd work at this Library I said if I wrote books I would write his books. Oh how we laughed.

5. Pressure from fawning over famous person too much, left room awkwardly.

6. Teen Librarian approves of crowd size. Doubt that Random House does.

7. Never thought about name "Random" House. So... they just collect all submissions in huge pile and... pick one?

8. James Dashner walked through on way to lecture, seemed to have forgotten our new friendship :(

9. James Dashner asks crowd of 107 Has anyone started my new book? I get to raise my hand having read 1st paragraph of Marcus's copy!

10. James Dashner talking, am distracted by weird impulse to sign a bald man's head.

11. Ability to listen to James Dashner further eroded by incoming people making me feel trapped in room!

12. James Dashner seems nice but MUST GET OUT OF ROOM!

13. At James Dashner: NO WAY OUT, Paths appear open then close up, need oxygen, night falling.

14. "Publishers... they're really evil people."  -James Dashner

Alice Munro and James Dashner place One-Two in exciting Nobel Prize finish!

As I write these words my Library is soon to host Maze Runner novelist James Dashner. I will live blog this special evening event, except the live blogging will, as per this blog's tradition, be done on post it notes, and transcribed to the blog only after it's all old news. Why do I do it this way? Because I believe news is like cheese.

Still, James Dashner at our Library! Not only is there the glossiest poster I have ever seen in my Library, announcing this very event, and not only are they making a genuine movie out of his book, but, word in the literary community is that he finished a close second to Alice Munro for this years Nobel Prize for literature. Not many people thought he had a chance, but those literature lovers were looking in the wrong place. They were looking at literary quality and stature, and yet the place to look, for any prize, is at who the people are on the voting committee, or, in this case, who are the 18 members of The Swedish Academy. Those of us with loads of Swedish connections were aware that there are seven new members of The Swedish Academy and five of them, yes, five of them, are under 16 years of age. There are two 13 year old boys, a 15 year old boy and girl, and one six year old boy, which explains to a lot of people how Mo Willems got a vote this year. Well, out of the mouths of babes, because Mo Willems, author of the Elephant and Piggie books, would have been a superb Nobel Prize Laureate. But I suppose if the Swedes themselves couldn't be bothered to give Astrid Lindgren the Nobel Prize for Literature it's hardly happening for Mo Willems. Well, Dr. Seuss never won a Caldecott, and Meryl Streep has yet to win an academy award.

My point? Well, I don't have one. It was a fishing trip for greatness that went horribly awry.

Nobel Prize

Well, another Nobel Prize for Literature has come and gone again and I didn't get it. And before you ask, no, I am not bitter. Those fuddy duddys in Sweden were never going to pick an obscure library clerk blogger, even if he's a way better writer than Alice Munro. Which, I am not saying I am, because I am sure Alice Munro is a very fine writer and I look forward to reading more tiny pieces of her books while shelving in the fiction section. I'm just happy for the Canadians. Their only other Literature prize winner is Saul Bellow, who moved to Chicago when he was nine, presumably because he hated Canadians. I think the Nobel Committee was looking to redress this old wound and repair their Canadian relations. It's all politics really, mostly so the Swedes can put maple syrup on their pancakes like the rest of us, instead of lingonberries, which is why I'm fine with this Alice Munro choice. I'm above all this stuff and don't need their 1.2 million dollars anyway, which I would only squander on helping people, poor, disadvantaged and oppressed people. I didn't get the peace prize this year either, but I have this theory they're saving up for a trifecta. Come 2014 look for me to sweep the Literature, Peace, and Physics prizes. You heard it here first.

Readers advisory

Not being a fully licensed and tattooed librarian I nevertheless find myself doing a good deal of traditional, straight up reference work. I do not shirk this now quite common duty. In the first place, I am for the most part good at it. In the second place, sending people to the appropriate desk, due to the vagaries of lines and the notable distance between the service desks at my Library, generally falls under the category of patron torture. I only very, very rarely believe in patron torture. Lastly, I like this reference work, so I do it.

The vast majority of the reference work I do is direct, verifiable, and easy to be confident of. But there is one aspect of reference that I find murky, smoky, and open for a lot of interpretation. That is readers advisory. Not only is suggesting books a profoundly inexact science, but so often, when I am asked for suggestions, I am far removed from many of my best tools. I am usually asked for reading suggestions while shelving, distantly removed from computers and other people, and thus reliant purely on what I can happen to dredge up on the spot.

The first thing I do when I am asked for a suggestion is try to find out what the person asking has liked in the past. One has to have at least a general idea of the type of things people like in order to steer them to something they might, when face to face with it, actually want to read. If someone is a hardcore blood and guts fantasy reader, then In Watermelon Sugar might be a brilliant and twisted suggestion for them, but only if they'll read it, which I don't think they're going to do. Unfortunately, when I do ask what these people like, they invariably come back with a list of authors I don't like. This is where I get thrown off. Somehow it makes me get all librariany and official. They like Sandford and William Kent Krueger? Well, I have heard tell that people who like them also like Harlan Coben and Lee Child. I don't know what I'm talking about and I don't care because I don't care about those authors. The fact is that I don't care what the large system of recommendations says, and what I have realized is that those recommendation lists have never worked for me anyway. Any version of any "If you liked this try that" website or listing or program I always end up either hating or completely uninspired by. I believe my distaste for these things stems from their being powered by groupings and numbers and aggregations. You like the Beatles? You might like the Rolling Stones, so obvious as to be banal, but never powered by feverish passion. I don't want those lame and joyless recommendations. I want "You like Dick Francis? Well, sorry, there is nothing really like Dick Francis. We must accept it. Try the Horatio Hornblower books." I want insouciance and inspiration and adventure!

So here is what I resolve. I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books, spanning every genre, age range, general subject, and level of literary respectability, that I would recommend with overwhelming fanaticism. That's it. That's my list. I will find, request, shelve, and seek to acquire for people whatever they want, but I will no longer recommend anything not on my list. When someone asks what fantasy I recommend I will not take it to mean that they want to know what books in that genre are popular. No, I will pick the closest thing on my list of odd, acclaimed, and unacclaimed masterpieces to what the patron is asking for. They didn't ask me for some dead list. I will give them my recommendation. And I will be excited at the very thought of them reading it. They are in for a treat.

Reading as virtue

Working all these years at a Library I have experienced many a comment and reference to the idea of reading as ennobling and virtuous. And though I am strongly pulled by the desire to fawn over you for reading this, sing your virtues for struggling through my illuminating and visionary prose to elevate your humanity, I have some hesitations. It might have something to do with all these years spent in the thick of a very busy public library. My overwhelming impression, standing in the heart of this maelstrom of reading, is not one of Profound enricher of Humanity but more of the Circus part of Bread and Circuses. Even if we're talking about Proust, we are just talking about stories, which are basically entertainment. I'm not saying it's a waste of time, or worthless, or even not wonderful, but I do think the whole reading thing may have suffered a bit from having a cadre of the most eloquent, articulate, and beautifully spoken people in the history of the universe constantly shilling for it. Writers. And I think these writer people have been just a touch over invested in reading's stock. So we've all gotten a bit puffed up over it.  I see it all the time at the front desk. Someone proudly coming to check out a few books, presenting me with a little speech about loving books and how no one understands how essential they are anymore. "If only more people would read!" They exclaim, tsking at others and bathing in the beatific glow of their readerliness. I nod politely. I hope they enjoy their Swann's Way or, more likely, LaVyrle Spencer books or Post Apocalyptic Zombie Detective Story. Why shouldn't they. Stories are blood. Stories are essential. Stories make us human! Which, I am sorry to say, is a very good reason for tempering our pride.

One about making sense

Tom Clancy died, so it was easy and even likely, if one frolicked on the internet long enough, to run into this quote by him:

The difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. 

I did frolic on the internet and did read that quote. I thought it was a pretty snappy quote for a writer I bore no great respect for. Did I need to revise my opinions? Are Tom Clancy novels packed with pithy insights stored neatly amongst the military hardware? I decided to research. Oh no, not by reading Tom Clancy novels. My blog is on a very tight schedule. Even if those Clancy novels move adroitly along from one submarine chase to another they're still absolute bricks.  I read quotes.

 Leo Rosten:

Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense.

Emerson:

Fiction reveals truth that reality obscures.

And finally, Mark Twain said:

The only difference between reality and fiction is that fiction needs to be credible.

We have a hit! We have a hit! Man your battle stations! Full power aft!

So, did I just come here today to mock and criticize a guy who just died? 

Well, when you ask it like that, um, no, god, why would I do that? I came here to make some really important point. Probably. Just let me think for a second. I can't think with all this pressure! 

Okay, I thought of one. Or, um, here's the one I had all along. Thanks for your patience. 

My point is that I don't think the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction has to make sense. And I thought it might appear easy and churlish just to disagree with Tom Clancy. So instead I disagree with Mark Twain, Emerson, and Leo Rosten, which is not, generally speaking, some great recipe for wisdom. Nevertheless, yes, I disagree.

I think fiction works, and really all art, because of the overwhelming human compulsion to make sense of things. One might even say we are compelled to impose sense. The novelist does it, the reader of the novelist does it to the novel, and the blogger does it to the reader of the novelist reading the novel. And we do it to life. We do it with all our Gods and for the bests and with our interpretations of the world around us. We are inveterate creators of sense. Life and fiction stand shoulder to shoulder here. Life makes about as much sense as fiction and most of it's in the interpretation.

As Dr. Seuss said:

No matter what you do, somebody always imputes meaning into your books.

Or, as I might put it:

No matter what one does, someone always imputes meaning into books. 

Let it be my epitaph. I thought of it myself.

Give them what they want

No one has ever come to me at the front desk of my Library and ordered a corned beef sandwich, don't be shy about the mustard. Requests for obscure bits of a/v technology are about as exciting as requests for things we don't have gets, which is to say, not very exciting. "Do you check out slide projectors?" No. The request itself is far less odd than the decade in which it is happening. The other day someone asked if we had any typewriters. We never have had, but I used to hear that occasionally, almost regularly. However, at the time of this recent inquiry it had been so long since anyone asked for a typewriter that I hugged the patron, weeping, and started to sing Auld Lang Syne. 

The great majority of things people ask me for, that we don't have, are office related. We seem to have several hundred staplers up at the front desk, but no three hole punch. If you ask me for a paper cutter you're also completely out of luck. No cutting and punching of paper at my Library! There has always been in me the slightest, unexpressed, deep down touch of irritation when people ask me for these office services and supplies we don't have. "Do you have a fax machine?" I have heard that question a thousand times. I'm reasonably nice about it and try to offer helpful alternatives, but also I am thinking, almost unconsciously "Why would we have a fax machine, we're a Library!" What are these people doing coming to the Library to fax? We don't have a fax. And though we do have copiers, why on earth would they come to us for some complicated copy job. We certainly do not charge less than well equipped, vastly more full service stores. Enough already.

And then, one day recently, like the Grinch, when he was hanging on that precipice, poised for disaster, my heart suddenly grew. It grew three sizes.

What is a Library? If we think clearly and bravely, and our hearts are in the right place, a Library is half what we, the Library, say it is and what we can make it be. The other half of what a Library is is what the Library users want and expect it to be. If they're coming in every day going on about wanting corned beef sandwiches we should be thinking about how and why we might be able to and want to provide them, not doing that whole "Ugh! Patrons! This place would be perfect without them" thing. But they don't want corned beef sandwiches, they want a fax machine.

When did my heart grow three sizes? I think it was when I was at an office supply store with my wife. She was looking for something. I was dawdling, looking at things in a desultory manner when my eye landed upon a display of fax machines. They were $60. Sixty dollars! I had told a thousand people we couldn't help them because we didn't have something that cost less than three James Patterson novels. I had sent them off to pay $1.50 a page at some Fed Ex Kinkos because we didn't have a fax machine! With my new big heart I suddenly just felt bad for all those people.

Not long ago a person who works in a different Library system than my own was in and asked if we had a fax machine. When I gave her the rundown about how we didn't, she said, with a touch of awe "How do you get away with that?" The implication is that having a fax is really irritating. I am well enough acquainted with all the printers and projectors and computers and copiers to understand that a fax machine would be an additional, small, but irritating task. But like any person working in a Library who actually cares, any number of glitches and paper jams will be less irritating than saying "No." Because saying no, unjustified, is the most irritating task of them all.

Michael Chabon

No, Michael Chabon never came to my Library. But all his books have been here at one time or another. And they always seemed like just the sort I might like. So I've tried reading them, one after the other. I might even have finished Summerland, but without relish, and with a feeling of how it could have been better. I loved the movie of Wonder Boys and yet somehow never finished that book, though a description he has in there of addictive reading sticks with me from it to this day. And that's just it. It's not just the fresh, edging up into genre approach that appeals to me, but there's always something in the writing, somewhere, that gets something just right to me. And so I keep at it.

At my house we are now reading Manhood for Amateurs, by that same Michael Chabon. It is a collection of essays and, so far, I am seriously enjoying it. I might, all along, have been waiting for Michael Chabon essays. It is a real pleasure to find them. But there is also something just a tiny bit disturbing to me in them. They remind me of me, and of my writing, and of what I would write, only, well (suddenly my stomach kind of hurts), they're better.

Not long ago I became enthusiastically acquainted with the music of The Tallest Man on Earth. I mentioned it to a friend of mine, who I will not name because I'm weary of Marcus coming up in so many examples of things here lately, and this unnamed person who is definitely not Marcus yet again, looked ever so slightly pained, like he just remembered he had a toothache. It turned out there was something a bit too similar in what he was trying to do in music to what The Tallest Man was doing. He seemed to admire The Tallest Man, but his music also seemed to create a bit of feedback that made it hard for him to enjoy.

That's a bit of what I hear in Michael Chabon, a bit of feedback. But I kind of like it. Yes, it's not all roses, and forcing myself to use a word like "better" in reference to him is a bit like firmly grasping the thorn infested stem. But getting to see something similar, in some ways, to my own kind of writing, from the outside, as a pure reader, is really interesting. There is also something strangely nice about wandering over to the Amazon reviews and seeing a full range of opinions (about a quarter of them are three stars and lower) on what to me are just irrefutably (so far) really terrific essays. There are places where the perfidy of others can be helpful. A theoretical blog post by Michael Chabon might not get as high a percentage of disinterested readers as my own, but certainly we could happily share a core group of readers running for the hills by the third paragraph.  Also, I occasionally go out on feverish searches for blogs that are at least sort of like mine, mostly just because I want to read them, but I never have much success. I have so little success that I sometimes worry that I am competitively braced against them. I fear that maybe I secretly don't want to give up on feeling all that uniqueness. So going out and finding these essays allows me to just say "This is all I'm talking about." Of course, they're by a Pulitzer prize winner, so the matter can't be said to be fully resolved.

There are a few reasons I started writing this blog. Perhaps the biggest one is best referenced by a quote by Toni Morrison “It there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” I don't think Michael Chabon erases that. It surely isn't my book that he's written, but it is some of what I want. Which is nice. And this, right here, is some of what I want too. Just telling you about it. There's room enough. The world is big.

Our friend the squirrel

Actually, the squirrels in our backyard don't look like this at all, but I found this picture by Red R out there on the internet and had to have it! He's just so chubby! (The squirrel, not Red R, unless Red R is the squirrel and this is a really nice selfie!). The tree actually looks a lot like our backyard tree though. Just saying, anyway...

Our friend the squirrel

I have a friend who sometimes comments here on my blog. You have to be pretty intrepid to comment here, what with the lack of response and everyone just sort of staring at your comment like it's in an aquarium or something- swimming around, back and forth, wondering how it got there, why everyone's looking at it and what the ocean is like. Being of a too nervous disposition to get all respondy to comments I nevertheless get pretty excited about them. "Look!" I cry to myself, inwardly, so as not to startle people nearby and make them think I'm crazy, "I got a comment!" It's a happy moment. It happens every two to five days, and sometimes it's because of Mdnez. No, Mdnez is not a squirrel! Don't worry. We're getting to the squirrel part. We're through with the aquarium part though, so we're halfway there.

Because Mdnez is an old friend I follow these enchanting photos he's always posting on facebook (if only he had a blog of them instead then I could show you!). He spends much time in some magic garden in some magic city in the south. There are exotic plants, a diversity of interesting animals, fascinating insects and flowers, a black cat, and just a lot to look at. But recently he had some harsh words for the squirrels. I think they were being disrespectful and wasteful vis a vis the pecans. I'm not sure. I am glad he is feeling his feelings. I even understand the anti squirrel sentiment, after all, I probably wouldn't be so keen on squirrels if they were serially misusing pecans in my yard. If I had pecans. Which I don't. I also don't have a lot of flowers. I don't have a black cat. No frogs. The birds are capricious. They'll visit and then, they just won't, for awhile. For insects we specialize in mosquitoes, yellow jackets, gnats and ants, but now that it's October it can get a little quiet with them too. Which, ultimately, brings me to my point. 

I really like to sit out on my back stoop and watch nature. I do not have a single harsh word to say against the trees, and really there's quite a bit to look at. But it's nice to see a bit of wildlife scampering around entertainingly every now and then. These days, most days really, a lot of the time, that's going to come down to squirrels. Squirrels and just about nothing else. The gray squirrel, Sciurus Carolinensis. They like our oak tree. They're almost cute. They're pretty interesting. For awhile there they were dropping stuff on our heads, but I don't think it was intentional. It was hard to tell. They're around a lot. Our friend the squirrel. Well, it's what we got. I'll take it.

Goldilocks in blogland

Every once in awhile I toss out one of my posts, or a link to it, onto some likely place on the Internet. If I blog about a fly (and me) and stumble across a thriving entomology website I might put a link there. It's a bit like fishing. Wait, it's a bit like fishing really ineffectively. Let's say I post a link on that entomology website. If it's a hotbed of activity, and I bait the link well, maybe 150 people will hit the link over to my site to see what's up. I probably lose more than half in the first glance, or first sentence. Some other mass of the remaining 75 drops off along the way. A few people make it through to the end of said essay. One person out of the 150 checks out a few of my other posts, and if I gather maybe ten or 15 of those singular people together from multiple subject specific linking expeditions (so, roughly, out of 1500 people) perhaps one of them might, sort of, if everything comes together really well, follow my blog regularly (Hi! I'm so sorry I analogized you to a fish!). I am not complaining.Well, I used to complain, but right now, not so much.

I have spent most of my life in the arts, painting, drawing, writing, cartooning, even a short bit of music. When I look around the culture it is filled with artists who have set the world on fire. When I look around at the sizable collection of all the people I have ever known who are, in some way, artists (which is a not insignificant portion), none of them have set the world on fire. None. These are really hard things to reconcile. I have had to use my scientific brain to get anywhere in understanding this. On one hand, famous, zeitgeist, magical, rich, artists are everywhere. On the other hand, in my world, they don't even exist as a freakish aberration. Do you personally know Lady Gaga? Are you Lady Gaga? No, but likewise, you never pop over for tea at Mary Oliver's house either. Why don't you? Because there are, like, 10,000 famous artists (I counted), and there are six billion people. As I figure it, extremely roughly, you will need to meet 600,000 people to meet one quite famous and successful artist. That's a lot of hand shaking and "How're you doing?" You better get going. If you want to be one of those famous artist people you are going to have to go through 600,000 reincarnation cycles. More if you're no good at staying in species. It could easily take you 39 million years!

So, here's the thing. I always thought I belonged in the famous artist category. But as I started to get a little space between my feverish desire to be a rich, acclaimed genius and just living, I started to develop the beginnings of an ability to look at all this in a more "How things are" instead of "How I want things to be." And I found something like this:

One post I wrote recently was about Bob Dylan visiting the Library. Lo and behold, among the many, many websites devoted to him there is one called Expecting Rain that is very prominent. So I plopped one of my links there under a category I invented called "Dylan in the wild." Within a couple days a couple hundred people went over to look at my little essay. How many read it, I don't know, but they went and looked. How nice. A small few of them left comments over on the Expecting Rain message board where it was posted. raging_glory said "Thanks, I enjoyed your interesting perspective." mjeff said "Sort of interesting." and Still Go Barefoot said "Yawn."

What would my assessment of the Dylan at the Library essay have been? I won't tire you out, but it would have included powerful agents and publishing houses pounding desperately on my door, 4 million hits in two days, and lots of fuss. It took me a really long time, for a number of reasons in my life, to come to terms with the fact that I am a highly biased and unreliable assessor. But beginning to come to terms with that also allows me to step out of the fray. Stepping out of the fray lets me see not only that I am not on the verge of setting the world on fire, it also allows me to see that the world is pretty wet. It allows me to see that Raging_glory, mjeff, and Still Go Barefoot are about what it is for me, with what I make, sometimes better, sometimes worse, and it allows me to care so much less. Furthermore it allows me to do what I do from a little bit better and a little more pure place.

Of course, I still do care a bit. I did, after all, go look at that message board to see if anyone had anything to say. And I still kind of hate Still Go Barefoot. "Yawn"? What an asshole!

And she is gone

A mighty legend of my Library is now gone. Retired. I feel wistful, nostalgic and strangely untouched. But I have one last story about her before all stories about her are strange reminiscences of other times. One last contemporary story, related out of the day to day to me, at the front desk, by a favorite co-worker who keeps a devoted finger on the pulse of my Library. I won't use the overly disdained G word. She is an Information Provider, just like me! Ahem.

At the service desk are black pads, RFID readers. If you put tagged items (which is to say all library materials) on them they will input things into our computers. It can be a bit annoying when patrons come up and put books on these pads because things start entering sort of randomly into our computers. It's a minor problem, but irritating. Most people know not to put items on these pads, but the people who don't know really can't be faulted. Unless you're pretty familiar with our technology or with new technologies in general, or are just really good at reading subtle layout and body language signs, it is pretty easy to figure that the black pads are just a sensible, even helpful, place to put your books. As staff we must temper or even dissolve our irritation with this understanding. Or not.

As the story goes, the legend, just in her last few days at the Library, so, last week, was sitting at one of the service desk computers when a patron came along for help. The patron placed a stack of books on the black pad. The legend swept the entire stack of books off her pad and onto the floor. The patron said "That was incredibly rude."

The legend replied "Well, it was rude of you to put your books there."

I can hear her voice in my head.

To those of you who quailed at the sheer ice in my "She is leaving" post I invite you back there now, with this sweep of her arm in your mind, and that farewell to the patrons comment to guide your way.

Breakroom Cafe

This is a non-scientific study.

Today we had a rather well attended retirement party for a long time co-worker. There was a potluck. I brought cappuccinos. How do you bring cappuccinos to a potluck?

1. You bring one gallon of organic whole milk.

2. You bring roughly a pound of finely ground organic fair trade Bolivian coffee.

3. You bring a little workhorse of an espresso machine, a Mr. Coffee pump espresso machine with a steamer that all works way better than it has any right to.

One and two I had to buy. Number three I keep all the time in the Library break room anyway, and use often.

The party starts. You make cappuccinos. Lots and lots of cappuccinos. In about an hour and a half I made 23 cappuccinos. Making this many cappuccinos led to more than a few jokes about opening up my own cafe. This made me say "Hey! Yeah!" and caused me to do the math. Twenty-three cappuccinos at $3.50 a cappuccino is $80.50. Two hours labor (counting half an hour added for clean up), no rent, no employees, about $15 for ingredients and I came out to about $33 an hour. Okay, so not huge, but as long as I had no rent or equipment costs I think I could get by. Of course the drinks would have to be free for that kind of sales volume around here, but, theoretically, if I operated out of the break room, applied for a State Coffee Board grant, worked 16 hour days, and begged at high traffic stoplights in my spare time, I could, with some small bags of unusual, locally sourced potato chips sold at a 400 percent mark up in massive volumes, make it all work. But it might be challenging. Which is why I have developed today a new sympathy for my local independent cafe owners. I think I'll also tip more.

The books I refuse to read

Now that banned books week is over I can safely discuss the tiny subsections of the written word that I just won't read. I think everyone has things, by disinclination, principle, or unconscious aversion, that they will simply never read. Among people capable of reading, these exclusion zones can be quite massive (everything other than road signs maybe, or, currently popular among phone/internet devotees, anything beyond the second sentence in any collection of text), and, alternately, among voracious readers, the exclusions can be very tiny. The teen librarian (Hi Marcus! Don't worry, I won't mention your name here!) has even devised schemes to push his reading boundaries, like reading a book from every shelf in the Library. I, likewise, have an ability, or compulsion, or feverish interest enough, to poke my nose into virtually any collection of text, at least for a few minutes. Nevertheless I do find odd little categorical pockets of things, for various reasons, that I just can't get myself to investigate. Whether naming them here drives me to break down these barriers or helps to solidify them remains to be seen.

1. Any large scale piece about cats written by someone who has also written similarly about dogs.

The last one I willingly read was, years ago, Tribe of Tiger by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, who also wrote The Hidden Life of Dogs. I liked both, but I just can't take it anymore. As a fierce pro cat, it's too emotional. I will not crack the cover of Cat Fancy Magazine when there is also a Dog Fancy Magazine. It's a loyalty thing. Pick one.

2. The books of Barbara Kingsolver.

Based on the hostility of people I respect, I do not read her books. When I express to other people my horror at myself for doing this they always reassure me I have done the right thing, reinforcing this strange exception to deciding for myself.

3. Romance novels involving "Highlanders"

Anyone involved in romance fiction in any capacity can tell you that about 20 percent of all "Romance" novels involve "Highlanders."  What are these Highlanders? I think they might be Scottish or something. I try desperately to get interested, to even just read a back cover, but everything grows fuzzy when I try, and somehow I suddenly have a Vampire Romance in my hands, or a magazine about pumpkins. So I read those instead.

4. Any book of politics from a "Centrist" perspective.

I avoid the direct discussion of politics here as my prose tends to develop fever blisters, therefore it would be for the best if I did not explain this. You must trust me that you should not ask. I hope you can understand.

5. Anything by any author who exceeds a cumulative quota of killing their characters.

All the works of Larry Mcmurtry and George R.R. Martin could be glued page to page together at this point and I would never know it.