As you know by now Sunday is the day where we discuss procedural matters on clerkmanifesto. Just how dedicated a reader you are is fully illuminated when we discuss our flexon algorithms and the curious retention rates we are experiencing among new readers in Madagascar. It is also a day where we get very self referential. During the other six days of the week I refer to myself or to my blog a scant 98.2 percent of the time, but on Sunday this jumps wildly to 99.1 percent of the time. The figure is even larger than that if we don't count the time I unintentionally left the text body blank one Sunday. Did you know that the reddit "minimalism" page linked to it, and to this day it is still my most heavily viewed page? It has over 14 million thumbs up.
Today we will discuss my recommended books page. I am honestly not sure why I bring this up so much. Trust me that I say this utterly without recrimination, but almost no one visits that page. It is too complex, probably, for newcomers, who we don't really have around here anyway, and it is mostly old hat for, well, you. Hi. Plus it's ramshackle and constantly under construction. But strangely I feel like one day it will suddenly be, if not done, than at least highly presentable. It will come into its own. So I keep picking at it, fiddling, improving, connecting, all in little ways, but with bits of forward momentum that I tell you about on many Sundays, as if you'd be far more interested in that than in another tale of a deranged person at my library.
The newest change to my recommended books list was precipitated by a moment of jealousy. One of my favorite co-workers (I know, there are many), who is no longer around much, told me about being out shelving in the DVDs and being asked for recommendations on Romantic Comedies. I'm afraid I no longer remember the rest of that story because I was so overcome with jealousy from not being asked that question myself that I was no longer thinking clearly. I have an absolute thing for Romantic Comedies and the only other things I am as keen to offer my opinion on are Caravaggio, Mysteries, Science Fiction, Jasper Fforde, Videogames, Bob Dylan, CDs, Anarchism, Ursula K. LeGuin, late Tolstoy, Messi, The Kinks, the 1974 Los Angeles Dodgers, drug legalization, tomatoes, coffee drinks, Bernini...
Oh, sorry. It turns out that I was trapped in a list that actually, technically, had no end whatsoever. But that being said I am very keen to recommend Romantic Comedies. Indeed, I was so keen at the thought of someone else being asked for a recommendation that I decided to open the floodgates and breach my limit of only recommending books on my recommended books list. So I am going to add a Romantic Comedy section. As always it will harbor within it links to appropriate blog posts. Off hand (pun intended), the only immediate link I can think of is to a post called "Anger" that will be linked to from the recommendation of Moonstruck ("I lost my hand!"), but there may be more out there.
So what's on the list? Am I going to make you go to the dreaded Recommended Books page to see?
No, I'm not going to make you go there. I'm not even going to give you the link. You'd have to really work for it to go there. And as to what's on the list, it turns out this whole post is a bit premature. I haven't even started to add this new section yet. But for starters my obvious choices of the Romantic Comedies I love and recommend include:
Moonstruck
Notting Hill
Love Actually
Music and Lyrics
French Kiss
Holiday
Tin Cup
Wimbledon
Two Weeks Notice
50 First Dates
Management
New in Town
About Time
Well, I'd have to think about all the other ones some more, what with the high standard there is for love.
After Romantic Comedies, now that the wall is down, I'll no doubt be adding albums.
I will say this though:
My recommended books list will be and is clever, engaging, diverse and idiosyncratic.
My list of loved albums (CDs) will be overwhelmingly accurate and brave and deep and wide ranging and critically astute.
But I must confess that this list (possibly any list), but definitely my list, of Romantic Comedies will be a bit treacly, oddball, giddy, and hopelessly aesthetically and politically unsupportable in every way.
I just thought you should know.
Sunday, July 20, 2014
Saturday, July 19, 2014
Sadly the decorum and the code of my job means I must disguise this person. I am telling a real story, but no matter how deep the sins of this patron, he is still entitled to a rough anonymity here. He is a type, but he is specific. Nothing I write here in describing him will be particularly true, but I do hope very much to get at the basic idea.
He needs help.
There is a variety of patron that needs help. No, not the regular every day help that so many patrons need and that some of us actually like giving. This is chronic help. Unending help. These are people that the staff has to learn. These are people we huddle together in the back forming special rules for. I have seen actual library policy rewritten around single individuals like this, general rules that ultimately only ever ended up applying to one person. While our maximum number of items checked out allowed is far more reasonable now, we once had to invent a rule limiting it to 500. Five hundred! This was almost 15 years ago and I can still remember the patron's name. These people can sear themselves into one's consciousness. How fiercely she had to juggle to abide by our newly strict 500 item limit! There were calls and renewals and elaborate trades where certain books had to be checked in so that certain books could then go out. It inevitably ended badly because a few books out a few days late at 30 cents per book a day is manageable, but a small returning mistake with 300 biographies is going to hurt.
Our current guy isn't asking for anything unreasonable, but that's the problem. A few reasonable requests: "Can you remove my card from my wallet?", "Can you fix this thing attached to my cane?", "Will you load these in here?" are bearable enough, the man has a series of physical disabilities, but when they pile forever upon each other they will bury you.
So we work out, with the managers, all the things to say no to, things that would be individually churlish, but that are absolutely necessary. We are not to help him or touch his property. We can't do things for him. He says "I've dropped my wallet. Could you just pick it up for me?" And we look at him, his legs wrapped in unbending braces, helpless before his wallet, and we say "I'm so sorry. I'm not allowed to touch your wallet." and sort of hope that there are no other patrons standing around looking at us like we're dirt as they pick the wallet up for him. Of course, a lot of the time we don't say it so kindly even as that. We say tersely "I can't touch your wallet. No." But that terseness isn't usually until his 14th needy request.
I haven't been out on the front desk with him around much, but tonight I was. He wanted me to copy a coupon for him. He dropped something. He needed an adjustment on his painful looking shoes. He wished me to push something over for him and to carry something of his from one place to another. He just needed a hand. Oh, he dropped something again. Could I hand him one of those envelopes?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry.
It wasn't a bad night, seven "no's" and I was out. It is well established that the "yes's" go on forever. He ended up corralling various random patrons for his needs. I was unable to protect them and they were embroiled in acts of momentary kindness that swallowed them like quicksand. I would see them occasionally gulping for air and wondering if they'd ever escape. When he'd had enough of that he mysteriously stopped dropping things. Seven "no's" was the right thing, along with the four "no's" from my partner at the front desk. We did well.
But I hated it. I hated saying no at the service desk. It always seems like a terrible defeat to me, whether of the library, or my resolve to be helpful, or of how I want the world to be. The one thing that I think I am truly afraid of ever acquiring at the front desk is a real taste for saying no. Yes, saying "no" is one of the most valuable and important and powerful tools we have, but we are a library, and no matter how completely right and perfect and just it is, in a library "no" is always stained with a little blood.
He needs help.
There is a variety of patron that needs help. No, not the regular every day help that so many patrons need and that some of us actually like giving. This is chronic help. Unending help. These are people that the staff has to learn. These are people we huddle together in the back forming special rules for. I have seen actual library policy rewritten around single individuals like this, general rules that ultimately only ever ended up applying to one person. While our maximum number of items checked out allowed is far more reasonable now, we once had to invent a rule limiting it to 500. Five hundred! This was almost 15 years ago and I can still remember the patron's name. These people can sear themselves into one's consciousness. How fiercely she had to juggle to abide by our newly strict 500 item limit! There were calls and renewals and elaborate trades where certain books had to be checked in so that certain books could then go out. It inevitably ended badly because a few books out a few days late at 30 cents per book a day is manageable, but a small returning mistake with 300 biographies is going to hurt.
Our current guy isn't asking for anything unreasonable, but that's the problem. A few reasonable requests: "Can you remove my card from my wallet?", "Can you fix this thing attached to my cane?", "Will you load these in here?" are bearable enough, the man has a series of physical disabilities, but when they pile forever upon each other they will bury you.
So we work out, with the managers, all the things to say no to, things that would be individually churlish, but that are absolutely necessary. We are not to help him or touch his property. We can't do things for him. He says "I've dropped my wallet. Could you just pick it up for me?" And we look at him, his legs wrapped in unbending braces, helpless before his wallet, and we say "I'm so sorry. I'm not allowed to touch your wallet." and sort of hope that there are no other patrons standing around looking at us like we're dirt as they pick the wallet up for him. Of course, a lot of the time we don't say it so kindly even as that. We say tersely "I can't touch your wallet. No." But that terseness isn't usually until his 14th needy request.
I haven't been out on the front desk with him around much, but tonight I was. He wanted me to copy a coupon for him. He dropped something. He needed an adjustment on his painful looking shoes. He wished me to push something over for him and to carry something of his from one place to another. He just needed a hand. Oh, he dropped something again. Could I hand him one of those envelopes?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Sorry.
It wasn't a bad night, seven "no's" and I was out. It is well established that the "yes's" go on forever. He ended up corralling various random patrons for his needs. I was unable to protect them and they were embroiled in acts of momentary kindness that swallowed them like quicksand. I would see them occasionally gulping for air and wondering if they'd ever escape. When he'd had enough of that he mysteriously stopped dropping things. Seven "no's" was the right thing, along with the four "no's" from my partner at the front desk. We did well.
But I hated it. I hated saying no at the service desk. It always seems like a terrible defeat to me, whether of the library, or my resolve to be helpful, or of how I want the world to be. The one thing that I think I am truly afraid of ever acquiring at the front desk is a real taste for saying no. Yes, saying "no" is one of the most valuable and important and powerful tools we have, but we are a library, and no matter how completely right and perfect and just it is, in a library "no" is always stained with a little blood.
Friday, July 18, 2014
The statistics of help
Today I will tell you a tiny game we played today at the service desk of my library.
Every once in awhile we have to fill out a survey sheet for our time at the front desk. It is a tally of Reference questions and Directional questions. Because there are a lot of people in a row to help sometimes, and because of the ambiguity and strange complexity of a surprising number of these interactions, it can be a little too hard to really keep proper track of these, or to take the whole thing very seriously, so we sort of guess.
And then today we did this:
Me: "Where is the survey sheet?"
My co-worker: "Here." (pointing).
Me: Makes one tick in the tally under "directional questions".
My co-worker: "What is the survey sheet?"
Me: "It's a sheet where we keep track of reference questions."
My co-worker: Makes one tick in the tally under "reference questions".
Then we repeated it until we had filled out the approximate number of directional and reference questions we would handle for two hours.
Then we helped people.
Every once in awhile we have to fill out a survey sheet for our time at the front desk. It is a tally of Reference questions and Directional questions. Because there are a lot of people in a row to help sometimes, and because of the ambiguity and strange complexity of a surprising number of these interactions, it can be a little too hard to really keep proper track of these, or to take the whole thing very seriously, so we sort of guess.
And then today we did this:
Me: "Where is the survey sheet?"
My co-worker: "Here." (pointing).
Me: Makes one tick in the tally under "directional questions".
My co-worker: "What is the survey sheet?"
Me: "It's a sheet where we keep track of reference questions."
My co-worker: Makes one tick in the tally under "reference questions".
Then we repeated it until we had filled out the approximate number of directional and reference questions we would handle for two hours.
Then we helped people.
Thursday, July 17, 2014
Messi the Introverted Soccer Player
This is a children's story. I'm thinking that it will ultimately be a picture book. I will only say at this point that the illustrations are being worked out. With the international popularity of soccer I am sure it will be easy to find a publisher. Of course, this will be easy enough to begin with as publishers these days are desperate for manuscripts and will publish almost anything to feed the national craze for reading.
For foreign markets we will use the word "Football" rather than "Soccer" because foreigners use different words.
This story turned out to be the only way I could work out my strong feelings about the soccer player Messi.
Once upon a time there was the greatest soccer player in the world.
His name was Messi
He was not like the other great soccer players.
He did not strut.
He did not shout.
And he did not throw his chest out.
His smile did not light up the world.
It was just a nice, shy sort of smile.
Messi was an introverted soccer player.
Messi was always little for his age.
They called him the flea.
Some people said he was autistic.
Some people said he was terribly shy.
Some people said he should be different.
They do not understand.
He is introverted.
It is hard to be introverted.
But it gives you secret wisdom.
Millions of people love Messi because he is so great.
But with his secret wisdom,
Messi knows this is not really love.
Love is how he feels about soccer,
And about the people close to him.
Messi does not say a lot.
But he scores a lot of goals.
More in one year than anyone ever has.
He does not do it by being dramatic,
And kicking the ball far away.
He keeps the ball very close to him.
Closer than anyone else.
Messi is an introvert,
And the best soccer player in the world.
For foreign markets we will use the word "Football" rather than "Soccer" because foreigners use different words.
This story turned out to be the only way I could work out my strong feelings about the soccer player Messi.
Messi the Introverted Soccer Player
Once upon a time there was the greatest soccer player in the world.
His name was Messi
He was not like the other great soccer players.
He did not strut.
He did not shout.
And he did not throw his chest out.
His smile did not light up the world.
It was just a nice, shy sort of smile.
Messi was an introverted soccer player.
Messi was always little for his age.
They called him the flea.
Some people said he was autistic.
Some people said he was terribly shy.
Some people said he should be different.
They do not understand.
He is introverted.
It is hard to be introverted.
But it gives you secret wisdom.
Millions of people love Messi because he is so great.
But with his secret wisdom,
Messi knows this is not really love.
Love is how he feels about soccer,
And about the people close to him.
Messi does not say a lot.
But he scores a lot of goals.
More in one year than anyone ever has.
He does not do it by being dramatic,
And kicking the ball far away.
He keeps the ball very close to him.
Closer than anyone else.
Messi is an introvert,
And the best soccer player in the world.
Wednesday, July 16, 2014
Soccer, truth and stories
The team I wanted to win The World Cup lost in the finals. But somewhere watching the finals I realized I didn't really love Argentina. I just wanted Messi to win. I don't think I even liked Argentina that much.
For those of you who don't care about soccer and know little to nothing about Messi I will give you a brief outline.
Messi is the greatest soccer player in the world. Approximately 70 percent of the Football firmament are agreed on this. A notable portion of them feel he is the greatest football player ever.
And it is always a joy to watch people who are so miraculously great at something.
Another 30 percent of the soccer firmament think Messi is not that great. Sadly this 30 percent naysayers seems to have included the entire Argentina World Cup team, Messi's own team! I walked away from their sad last game thinking they needed to push the ball to him, hoping he would make it happen. But they liked the idea that they could do it on their own, all together. They couldn't. They were not that good.
When I become very interested in something I write a kind of story about it in my head. The story says it is the real truth. A few weeks ago I knew almost nothing about the state of world football. I suppose that after my information binge I still don't know much. But I wrote a story about it in my head. This story. I wrote Messi's story.
Once I write the story in my head I think maybe I believe it all a little too much.
It pains me to say that. I have to pull it out of me, wrench it out of me because once I write the story I am convinced. I hardly even know it is a story.
But now that I have found a way to confess this I suppose I'd better go all the way.
Sometimes here I think that I am writing the shimmering truth. Brave truth, angry truth, hidden truth. But no, I am writing stories. Stories wiggle in their slots. They creek in their gears. They overflow their banks. They whir and clank and smell faintly of blood. They are like the truth, sometimes they are truer than the truth, but they are stories.
Sometimes I come up with just the thing I want to tell you here. It will blow your mind. It will change everything in the world. You will be convinced.
But it never comes out that way.
The truth is like a crow in your arms. You can hold it for a few minutes if you're feeling brave and wild enough and don't mind a little blood. Then you can set it down and tell it where to go.
Ever so reliably, it won't go there.
It will scramble off cawing and seeking its small destiny. And all the truth you dreamed of will become something you barely knew, screaming hoarsely in a tree. But if you are lucky you will still recognize some tiny hint of what you thought you knew in its harsh call.
For those of you who don't care about soccer and know little to nothing about Messi I will give you a brief outline.
Messi is the greatest soccer player in the world. Approximately 70 percent of the Football firmament are agreed on this. A notable portion of them feel he is the greatest football player ever.
And it is always a joy to watch people who are so miraculously great at something.
Another 30 percent of the soccer firmament think Messi is not that great. Sadly this 30 percent naysayers seems to have included the entire Argentina World Cup team, Messi's own team! I walked away from their sad last game thinking they needed to push the ball to him, hoping he would make it happen. But they liked the idea that they could do it on their own, all together. They couldn't. They were not that good.
When I become very interested in something I write a kind of story about it in my head. The story says it is the real truth. A few weeks ago I knew almost nothing about the state of world football. I suppose that after my information binge I still don't know much. But I wrote a story about it in my head. This story. I wrote Messi's story.
Once I write the story in my head I think maybe I believe it all a little too much.
It pains me to say that. I have to pull it out of me, wrench it out of me because once I write the story I am convinced. I hardly even know it is a story.
But now that I have found a way to confess this I suppose I'd better go all the way.
Sometimes here I think that I am writing the shimmering truth. Brave truth, angry truth, hidden truth. But no, I am writing stories. Stories wiggle in their slots. They creek in their gears. They overflow their banks. They whir and clank and smell faintly of blood. They are like the truth, sometimes they are truer than the truth, but they are stories.
Sometimes I come up with just the thing I want to tell you here. It will blow your mind. It will change everything in the world. You will be convinced.
But it never comes out that way.
The truth is like a crow in your arms. You can hold it for a few minutes if you're feeling brave and wild enough and don't mind a little blood. Then you can set it down and tell it where to go.
Ever so reliably, it won't go there.
It will scramble off cawing and seeking its small destiny. And all the truth you dreamed of will become something you barely knew, screaming hoarsely in a tree. But if you are lucky you will still recognize some tiny hint of what you thought you knew in its harsh call.
Tuesday, July 15, 2014
We'll never know
I was at a midweek farmers' market with my wife today. I got a free band-aid, a tote, and a lanyard key chain. Some of the berries looked good but I wasn't feeling flush enough to buy any. Someone was selling half pints of tart cherries for four dollars. Please don't tell my co-worker that she is giving me about 80 dollars worth of cherries this year. My fancy thank you pint of ice cream that I plan on getting her is looking a bit thin right now.
Between a couple of booths I was surprised to see my name written clearly in chalk on a bare place in the asphalt. That may sound a bit fanciful, and yet it's completely true. My first name actually was spelled out exactly, in a moderately neat, pale yellow script. It faced towards the main thoroughfare of the market. So I stood behind it and waved for awhile. No one paid much attention, but I'm not sure what was supposed to happen anyway.
Between a couple of booths I was surprised to see my name written clearly in chalk on a bare place in the asphalt. That may sound a bit fanciful, and yet it's completely true. My first name actually was spelled out exactly, in a moderately neat, pale yellow script. It faced towards the main thoroughfare of the market. So I stood behind it and waved for awhile. No one paid much attention, but I'm not sure what was supposed to happen anyway.
Monday, July 14, 2014
No hippies
I have now seen a curious sign twice in my neighborhood. I am not sure if the first one I saw is still up, but I pass the second one every day that I walk to get a bike to get a car to go to work. The sign is posted near the front door of a modest, nondescript, single story home and says "Hippies use side door."
As best I can tell this sign is meant to be humorously disparaging of hippies, and holds within it echoes of traditional hippie putdowns like "Dirty Hippies". At least, that's the one these signs make me think of.
I am not surprised by the hippie animosity in these signs. Hippie bashing followed fast on the heels of the hippies first cultural appearances and I have had opportunity enough to see it in my life, but there are two very strange things to me about these signs.
The first is that if there were any hippies left they would actually be in my neighborhood. I live in the most modest, humbly and sweetly unadorned middle class, fiercely leftist, innocent, pro hippie neighborhood in the entire Nation. In any election Greens will receive more votes from my neighborhood than Republicans. The sounds of middle aged men playing electric guitars rises from the basements, at least, when they are not in flood. If my state had the simple sense to legalize marijuana (which I suppose 95% of my neighborhood would vote for) I suspect they would sell it in my neighborhood from roaming marijuana ice cream trucks that play Grateful Dead music. If there were a pro hippie sign, I would expect to see that in my neighborhood, but a mocking, anti hippie sign is just churlishly bizarre.
And yet it is particularly bizarre because of the even stranger second oddity here:
There actually are no more hippies left in the world.
Nope. Not a one.
"Hippies use side door" might just as well be "No Phoenician Solicitors"
Hippies were scattered, diluted and bought off through the seventies, quashed and marginalized through the eighties and remade and killed off in the nineties. Hippies exist now curiously as hipsters, who are slightly more closely related to beatniks and are only hippies in the way that say, Etruscans became Italians, or the Anasazi became Hopis, or Phoenicians became Iraqis, or you became your parents.
And though we can have more or less similarities and commonalities with, say, the fish that first crawled from the sea, we are not them.
So if all that peace, love, and understanding stuff, if the hippies broken, failed dream of a better world, and all their high water mark music is so offensive to someone, you'd think they'd be satisfied with the hippies extinction.
No, man, no long hairs will be nosing around your front door ever again.
As best I can tell this sign is meant to be humorously disparaging of hippies, and holds within it echoes of traditional hippie putdowns like "Dirty Hippies". At least, that's the one these signs make me think of.
I am not surprised by the hippie animosity in these signs. Hippie bashing followed fast on the heels of the hippies first cultural appearances and I have had opportunity enough to see it in my life, but there are two very strange things to me about these signs.
The first is that if there were any hippies left they would actually be in my neighborhood. I live in the most modest, humbly and sweetly unadorned middle class, fiercely leftist, innocent, pro hippie neighborhood in the entire Nation. In any election Greens will receive more votes from my neighborhood than Republicans. The sounds of middle aged men playing electric guitars rises from the basements, at least, when they are not in flood. If my state had the simple sense to legalize marijuana (which I suppose 95% of my neighborhood would vote for) I suspect they would sell it in my neighborhood from roaming marijuana ice cream trucks that play Grateful Dead music. If there were a pro hippie sign, I would expect to see that in my neighborhood, but a mocking, anti hippie sign is just churlishly bizarre.
And yet it is particularly bizarre because of the even stranger second oddity here:
There actually are no more hippies left in the world.
Nope. Not a one.
"Hippies use side door" might just as well be "No Phoenician Solicitors"
Hippies were scattered, diluted and bought off through the seventies, quashed and marginalized through the eighties and remade and killed off in the nineties. Hippies exist now curiously as hipsters, who are slightly more closely related to beatniks and are only hippies in the way that say, Etruscans became Italians, or the Anasazi became Hopis, or Phoenicians became Iraqis, or you became your parents.
And though we can have more or less similarities and commonalities with, say, the fish that first crawled from the sea, we are not them.
So if all that peace, love, and understanding stuff, if the hippies broken, failed dream of a better world, and all their high water mark music is so offensive to someone, you'd think they'd be satisfied with the hippies extinction.
No, man, no long hairs will be nosing around your front door ever again.
Sunday, July 13, 2014
Wild Library
An author I rather go on about a bit here, Jasper Fforde, has, on his ornate, entertaining website, a section called "Wild Library Tales". It is devoted to library stories that others have submitted. There are almost no stories there, but there is a funny picture of the author. The link seems semi abandoned and outdated. I decided that it was my sort of thing, so I am sending Mr. Fforde some of my library stories.
I have a lot of them.
This is probably a violation of my non marketing vow, but I've decided to pretend it isn't. It remains to be seen how hard I will need to pretend.
But the real reason I am telling you this is because it got me thinking about my library tales and how they aren't wild at all. I'm pretty sure most of the good library stories have to do with things being incorrectly filed. I know, weird. But it's a library, and stories in a library are naturally ornate, low key, humorous, thoughtful, ironic, whispered.
Yes, wild things happen in my library occasionally, but they are not at all my favorite stories. Once, many years ago, a mentally disabled young man with a group home, generally a pretty friendly kid, came running down the checkout lanes and leaped on one of the group's leaders. He knocked her to the ground in one of the most visceral attacks I've ever seen up close. There was an intense thud of flesh and bone and flesh and bone and pure rage all meeting as hard as they could. The young man was like a bulldog, utterly compacted, stout, dense. He was pulled off the group leader quickly, but five hard working people were required. The group leader was not lastingly hurt. The whole thing was over in seconds, and they were all gone from the library in minutes. But for 20 seconds it was absolutely wild in the library.
I do believe that Mr. Fforde, when he includes a wild library tales section, means it with a certain touch of playfulness and irony and a wide sense of the word "wild". And I eagerly take the suitability of my stories in that guise. It's my bread and butter here.
Nevertheless, if a tornado rips through my library sometime this summer, I'll probably give you a straight up account...
eventually.
I have a lot of them.
This is probably a violation of my non marketing vow, but I've decided to pretend it isn't. It remains to be seen how hard I will need to pretend.
But the real reason I am telling you this is because it got me thinking about my library tales and how they aren't wild at all. I'm pretty sure most of the good library stories have to do with things being incorrectly filed. I know, weird. But it's a library, and stories in a library are naturally ornate, low key, humorous, thoughtful, ironic, whispered.
Yes, wild things happen in my library occasionally, but they are not at all my favorite stories. Once, many years ago, a mentally disabled young man with a group home, generally a pretty friendly kid, came running down the checkout lanes and leaped on one of the group's leaders. He knocked her to the ground in one of the most visceral attacks I've ever seen up close. There was an intense thud of flesh and bone and flesh and bone and pure rage all meeting as hard as they could. The young man was like a bulldog, utterly compacted, stout, dense. He was pulled off the group leader quickly, but five hard working people were required. The group leader was not lastingly hurt. The whole thing was over in seconds, and they were all gone from the library in minutes. But for 20 seconds it was absolutely wild in the library.
I do believe that Mr. Fforde, when he includes a wild library tales section, means it with a certain touch of playfulness and irony and a wide sense of the word "wild". And I eagerly take the suitability of my stories in that guise. It's my bread and butter here.
Nevertheless, if a tornado rips through my library sometime this summer, I'll probably give you a straight up account...
eventually.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
The failures of others
Each day that I work at the library I am faced with the evidence of the failures of my co-workers. We could be generous, or perhaps even just, and call them mistakes, but because I work with a great assortment of people engaged in largely anonymous work it makes these mistakes amorphous and collective. It weaves them into a slow trail of broken things. It makes the word mistake feel wrong. Individuals trying, living, acting, and working make mistakes, but institutions such as libraries are littered with little failures. They sit there, lumpen, like speed bumps in my tasks. I am no paragon of perfection. I'm sure that I, in all my many jobs in a given week, make mistakes that I don't catch. But I am forgiven for my mistakes. I try. I work. They are just mistakes really. But alas, when someone else finds one later, anonymized, my little seed of mistake is sprouted. It no longer belongs to me. It is a free growing weed, a bitter fruit. It has grown into its own failure, untraceable, possessed only of itself and freed of a creator.
But surely whatever mistakes I make unknowing are dwarfed by all the mistakes I stumble upon. There are just so many!
What do we have today? The same sort of things we have everyday: A bin full of easy books that says it's supposed to go to another of our branches when it absolutely isn't supposed to. A cart pushed into the wrong place or merely forgotten. A cord I need that's been removed and not replaced. Two rows of books wildly mis-shelved. The last of the masking tape taken so that the bare cardboard core forlornly sits in the dispenser, looking naked and useless. A note on a patron's record frantically alerting us to something that has already been resolved. A very popular book that we don't own a single copy of. A used Internet pass in the unused stack. And so on...
And what says my heart at the fresh and frequent encounter with each new failure?
"Who are these people?!!!"
I am furious like a flash of lightning. I am superior, diligent, mystified, stunned, suspicious, tired, and righteous.
I set the failure right. The cord is replaced, the vestigial note deleted, new tape is added, and the books are re-shelved. Perhaps I have even done it correctly. And if I have then the waters can close over our failure. The failure drops into the depths and soon even I, who was the only one ever to see it, have forgotten it completely. For twenty seconds the library is whole again. I am on to the next thing. And so are 17 other people, my co-workers, all working some job around our grand library. Eighteen of us then working at a given moment, 17 of us perfectly.
But surely whatever mistakes I make unknowing are dwarfed by all the mistakes I stumble upon. There are just so many!
What do we have today? The same sort of things we have everyday: A bin full of easy books that says it's supposed to go to another of our branches when it absolutely isn't supposed to. A cart pushed into the wrong place or merely forgotten. A cord I need that's been removed and not replaced. Two rows of books wildly mis-shelved. The last of the masking tape taken so that the bare cardboard core forlornly sits in the dispenser, looking naked and useless. A note on a patron's record frantically alerting us to something that has already been resolved. A very popular book that we don't own a single copy of. A used Internet pass in the unused stack. And so on...
And what says my heart at the fresh and frequent encounter with each new failure?
"Who are these people?!!!"
I am furious like a flash of lightning. I am superior, diligent, mystified, stunned, suspicious, tired, and righteous.
I set the failure right. The cord is replaced, the vestigial note deleted, new tape is added, and the books are re-shelved. Perhaps I have even done it correctly. And if I have then the waters can close over our failure. The failure drops into the depths and soon even I, who was the only one ever to see it, have forgotten it completely. For twenty seconds the library is whole again. I am on to the next thing. And so are 17 other people, my co-workers, all working some job around our grand library. Eighteen of us then working at a given moment, 17 of us perfectly.
Friday, July 11, 2014
How we shelve
While I was shelving in the genre fiction section I could hear a woman
grumbling about poor instructions and about not finding any of the books and
just generally about how unjust everything was in the world. So when she
popped around the corner into my row I defied my tendency not to offer
help unasked while shelving and inquired whether there was anything I
could do for her.
There was!
She was looking for several books by Emily Griffin. She was told they were in, but she couldn't find them!
"Are you sure it's not Emily Giffin?" I asked. I was pretty sure it was Emily Giffin.
"No, it's Griffin." She said emphatically.
"I think it will be in fiction." I said, starting to lead the way.
"I'm pretty sure it's in romance." She said to my back.
Like I said I was pretty sure it was Giffin, not Griffin, but I had a weird hunch, one that would let me pretend to believe her, so I led her to the Griffins in fiction. There, perfectly misshelved, was one Emily Giffin book. I pulled it out and handed it to her.
"It is Giffin." I said. "The rest will be here." I headed around the corner to where the Emily Giffin books should be shelved. She followed slowly, examining her new Emily Giffin book.
"Here are the rest of them." I said, gesturing to a full shelf of Emily Giffin books.
"Oh." She said. "I'm sorry. I thought for sure it was Griffin."
"That's okay." I said. I meant it too.
After all, we weren't so clear on it either.
There was!
She was looking for several books by Emily Griffin. She was told they were in, but she couldn't find them!
"Are you sure it's not Emily Giffin?" I asked. I was pretty sure it was Emily Giffin.
"No, it's Griffin." She said emphatically.
"I think it will be in fiction." I said, starting to lead the way.
"I'm pretty sure it's in romance." She said to my back.
Like I said I was pretty sure it was Giffin, not Griffin, but I had a weird hunch, one that would let me pretend to believe her, so I led her to the Griffins in fiction. There, perfectly misshelved, was one Emily Giffin book. I pulled it out and handed it to her.
"It is Giffin." I said. "The rest will be here." I headed around the corner to where the Emily Giffin books should be shelved. She followed slowly, examining her new Emily Giffin book.
"Here are the rest of them." I said, gesturing to a full shelf of Emily Giffin books.
"Oh." She said. "I'm sorry. I thought for sure it was Griffin."
"That's okay." I said. I meant it too.
After all, we weren't so clear on it either.
Thursday, July 10, 2014
Carny barker
I don't mean to generalize too much, but when I am working on the phones a lot of the people who call are senior citizens. Very senior. The kind that does not do computers, cannot handle automated phone renewal systems, and is left with the old school option they seem to prefer. They call us. Sometimes they cannot hear well. Sometimes they are easily confused. Sometimes they struggle to read their library card number, or to use their phone properly, or to fully track what we're talking about. Projecting, communicating, and transacting the required business in these situations can sometimes require extra effort. I don't really mind. But, still, when the phone rang today and there was a 90-year old ex carny barker who needed help I was delighted. It was a breath of fresh air. It was intensely audible, it inspired me to speak loudly and clearly, and the whole transaction was crisp, clear, and neat, albeit slightly more thorough than is my preference.
Plus I made my co-worker laugh when I reenacted our conversation upon it's conclusion.
I can't do that here, exactly, but I can try and demonstrate a bit of it.
You might want to turn your computer down a bit.
A bit more.
Yes, there, that's good.
"Good afternoon, this is the library." I said.
"I GOT A THREE BOOKS HERE FOR YA TO RENEW. A THREE BOOKS THAT ARE DUE TODAY AT YOUR A SUBURBAN COUNTY LIBRARY."
"Great, um, I just need the barcode number off your library card."
"I HAVE THAT CARD A RIGHT HERE. A COUNTY LIBRARY CARD. IT IS A REGISTERED TO ME, CARNUS BARKARD DATE OF BIRTH APRIL A 19 A NINETEEN AND A TWENTY-FOUR. THIS LIBRARY CARD IS A NUMBERED TWO AND SEVEN, FIVE, FIVE, EIGHTER, EIGHTER, ZERO, ZERO AND A FIVE AND A SEVEN"
"Okay, your three books will now be due on July 28th."
"CARNIVAL HISTORY, ON THE CARNY CIRCUIT, AND HIGH TIMES ON THE SIDESHOW A CHECKED OUT TO ME, CARNUS BARKARD, WILL BE DUE ON JULY 28TH! I DO UNDERSTAND SIR AND I MOST SINCERELY HOPE YOUR DAY IS A GOOD ONE! CARNUS BARKARD SAYS GOODBYE!"
"Bye." I said.
Well, it wasn't quite exactly that, but it's as close as I can get.
I so hope he calls back soon!
Plus I made my co-worker laugh when I reenacted our conversation upon it's conclusion.
I can't do that here, exactly, but I can try and demonstrate a bit of it.
You might want to turn your computer down a bit.
A bit more.
Yes, there, that's good.
"Good afternoon, this is the library." I said.
"I GOT A THREE BOOKS HERE FOR YA TO RENEW. A THREE BOOKS THAT ARE DUE TODAY AT YOUR A SUBURBAN COUNTY LIBRARY."
"Great, um, I just need the barcode number off your library card."
"I HAVE THAT CARD A RIGHT HERE. A COUNTY LIBRARY CARD. IT IS A REGISTERED TO ME, CARNUS BARKARD DATE OF BIRTH APRIL A 19 A NINETEEN AND A TWENTY-FOUR. THIS LIBRARY CARD IS A NUMBERED TWO AND SEVEN, FIVE, FIVE, EIGHTER, EIGHTER, ZERO, ZERO AND A FIVE AND A SEVEN"
"Okay, your three books will now be due on July 28th."
"CARNIVAL HISTORY, ON THE CARNY CIRCUIT, AND HIGH TIMES ON THE SIDESHOW A CHECKED OUT TO ME, CARNUS BARKARD, WILL BE DUE ON JULY 28TH! I DO UNDERSTAND SIR AND I MOST SINCERELY HOPE YOUR DAY IS A GOOD ONE! CARNUS BARKARD SAYS GOODBYE!"
"Bye." I said.
Well, it wasn't quite exactly that, but it's as close as I can get.
I so hope he calls back soon!
Wednesday, July 9, 2014
Me?
I have written on occasion about coincidence here at the library. One of my points has been to stress how even a lot of quite striking coincidences fall within a statistically normal range. Talking about a famous person with a co-worker, for instance, and then shortly after coming across some book or DVD or something that prominently features that person feels a little funny, but famous people are famous because, well, they're famous. They're ubiquitous. In a place like a library, packed to the gills with cultural references, one is unlikely to go twenty feet without smacking into a hundred mentions, pictures and odes to famous people, from Dr. Seuss to Madame Curie to Rimbaud to Phranc the lesbian folksinger. It can come at you like great waves.
So I try to keep the coincidence stories to a minimum.
I know this sounds like I am going to tell you a coincidence story anyway. And I am. But it's not because it's such an amazing coincidence. It's because I was unnerved. I am writing about this to you because I secretly believe it will dispel the curse of the coincidence I encountered.
It will be brief.
Our requests at this library are filed under a three letter code derived from the first two letters of a patron's last name and the first letter of their first. So, requested items are filed under a three letter code. When one works on the phones one processes materials on hold for people to generate slips that get placed in the item. I think that's enough of an explanation. Anyway, that's what I was doing. I ran a DVD over our reader pad and generated a slip with the initials GOD.
The DVD belonging to that slip is a scary looking horror movie called You're Next.
GOD, and then, You're Next.
I am not keen on the message. But if you're seeing this post, I am probably okay.
So I try to keep the coincidence stories to a minimum.
I know this sounds like I am going to tell you a coincidence story anyway. And I am. But it's not because it's such an amazing coincidence. It's because I was unnerved. I am writing about this to you because I secretly believe it will dispel the curse of the coincidence I encountered.
It will be brief.
Our requests at this library are filed under a three letter code derived from the first two letters of a patron's last name and the first letter of their first. So, requested items are filed under a three letter code. When one works on the phones one processes materials on hold for people to generate slips that get placed in the item. I think that's enough of an explanation. Anyway, that's what I was doing. I ran a DVD over our reader pad and generated a slip with the initials GOD.
The DVD belonging to that slip is a scary looking horror movie called You're Next.
GOD, and then, You're Next.
I am not keen on the message. But if you're seeing this post, I am probably okay.
Tuesday, July 8, 2014
Deciding not to read
One of the most important skills for a person working at a library is knowing how to decide what not to read. There are way too many interesting books here, and bringing eleven of them downstairs after a round of shelving is an unrealistic endeavor. Imagine a buffet created by master chefs, indeed, the greatest chefs in the world. Then pretend that all buffets don't suck. Okay? Now picture brilliant and diverse displays of every cuisine and culinary trend you can think of. Miles of brilliant, exquisite food. Now have a yourself a meal.
I think you see the problem.
At this point it might be a good idea to develop some highly particular traits, princess and the pea traits, obsessive peculiarities, a raft of allergies, hair-triggers, and impossible perfectionisms. No food over 80 degrees. You like beets but not enough. No beets them. No shellfish smaller than your fist. No cheese you have already heard of. Nothing derived from the corn plant. No sugar, no bacon, nothing foamy, nothing you can name by smell, and nothing derived from any plant or animal that was over one year old. You can take the list from here, but it had better run for several pages or you're going to get gout. Do you want gout? It's almost as bad as jaundice. Worse sometimes than beriberi.
I saw a new book today by Diane Keaton, a sort of post memoir, commentary on life and aging and success sort of book. She has been in several movies I liked very much. Maybe she has interesting things to say. She seems smart and quirky and idiosyncratic. Or at least, it says something like that on the book flaps. I think it talks about what a nice dose of unconventional, to the beat of her own drum, fresh bit of sauce we'll get from Diane Keaton if we open up the book and see what iconoclastic things she has to say.
I opened the book at random and read "I have never met a woman who doesn't love to shop."
I closed the book.
I don't eat any cheese I have already heard of.
You have to draw the line somewhere.
I think you see the problem.
At this point it might be a good idea to develop some highly particular traits, princess and the pea traits, obsessive peculiarities, a raft of allergies, hair-triggers, and impossible perfectionisms. No food over 80 degrees. You like beets but not enough. No beets them. No shellfish smaller than your fist. No cheese you have already heard of. Nothing derived from the corn plant. No sugar, no bacon, nothing foamy, nothing you can name by smell, and nothing derived from any plant or animal that was over one year old. You can take the list from here, but it had better run for several pages or you're going to get gout. Do you want gout? It's almost as bad as jaundice. Worse sometimes than beriberi.
I saw a new book today by Diane Keaton, a sort of post memoir, commentary on life and aging and success sort of book. She has been in several movies I liked very much. Maybe she has interesting things to say. She seems smart and quirky and idiosyncratic. Or at least, it says something like that on the book flaps. I think it talks about what a nice dose of unconventional, to the beat of her own drum, fresh bit of sauce we'll get from Diane Keaton if we open up the book and see what iconoclastic things she has to say.
I opened the book at random and read "I have never met a woman who doesn't love to shop."
I closed the book.
I don't eat any cheese I have already heard of.
You have to draw the line somewhere.
Monday, July 7, 2014
Cat among pigeons
I read my fair share of mystery books, but I do not do it for the joy of
matching wits with the detective, or with the author, or for the joy of figuring out who
did it. I never figure out who did it. I reread mystery books a few short years after my first read, and I still don't know
who did it. I could say that I am too avid a reader, too interested in
the plot and characters to sit around puzzling out the clues and the
patterns and the red herrings, but really I suspect that I am not
particularly good at that sort of puzzle solving.
So you might imagine my delight when I solved a chain of real life crimes by a serial murderer.
Oh, ho, you think I'm kidding?
Nope.
No one knew they were murders, but people were dying left and right. Someone wrote a book about it, but they missed the crimes completely, and so did everyone who read and commented on the book. They were all looking elsewhere. The book was about something else entirely, not crime related. I looked over the book and solved a mystery that was sitting in plain sight, snuggled deviously into the very conceit of the book, disguised as innocence. I spotted a crime wave. I used my little gray cells. I figured it out. I solved a string of murders! It was a delicious, heady feeling.
I don't know if I can stop this horrible chain of killings, but of course I have every hope I will. I expect that this post will serve to alert the authorities and these ghastly murders will come to an end.
But this isn't how you're supposed to tell mystery stories. I am giving the game away before I start. And now, when I tell you the set up, you will be all primed and able to figure it out for yourself. You will be less impressed with my sudden burst of sleuthing genius. And so I understand now why Poirot and Holmes and Nero Wolfe all hold so much back.
But this is real life, and a real story, and so you will have to be impressed or not as you see fit.
But maybe, before we start, you can pretend a little that you didn't just read all of that.
A book came through the delivery, and, as is my habit, I read up all the words on the covers and inside flaps. The book was called Making the Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat by David Dosa. What I learned from the cover, and from later research on the Internet, is that people mostly like this book. It is supposedly a heartwarming and interesting story. And it has a very interesting cat. Everyone likes cats.
The story is that there is Nursing Home where this cat Oscar lives. Oscar is an aloof cat. David Dosa is a geriatrician who does not much like cats. But he hears about this cat who hangs around dying patients and comforts them, and so he watches this cat and decides there's something to it. Oscar apparently has an uncanny ability to predict when a patient's time is nearing. He snuggles with the patient until the patient passes. He refuses to leave the dying patient's room. His presence reassures and comforts the grieving and frightened family. Etc. etc.
I like cats a lot. I am all ready to be taken in by this heartwarming and interesting story. But when I read about it some latent detective aspect was awoken in me instead. Something was off. I started thinking, using my little gray cells, as Poirot puts it. I came up with this:
1. Oscar is always, then, in the room with the patient when they die.
2. We only know they are dying patients in hindsight, because when Oscar goes to them, and starts hanging out with them, they die.
3. If Oscar is so "Aloof", what's going on with all this snuggling of people who soon die with him in their beds?
Or perhaps we should look at it from another angle, perhaps an angle featured plentifully in mystery fiction. Let's say there is a healthy young woman who marries old men. Immediately after marrying them they sicken and die. Do we marvel at this woman and say she has an enormous heart, she senses the imminent death of these, perhaps wealthy, old men and marries them to ease their passing? Do we suggest that she has a second sense for the nearing footsteps of death? No. We suspect her of murder. We look carefully at the situation. We don't let ourselves get distracted by fanciful, magical explanations. We ask, who had access to these people when they died. Who had an alibi? Has anything like this happened in this person's past before?
And so it is with Oscar the cat. He alone has the opportunity. And while old people are perhaps more prone to die than the young, we are talking about dozens of people, alone and vulnerable, dying with this cat. Indeed, it is every single person this aloof cat "befriends". The cat watches the dying, but who is watching the cat?
I will admit I do not have the case sewn up, but there is a precedence for this in the detective fiction. We have the victims, we have the killer, it can be no one else. We only lack the motive.
Why is Oscar the cat killing all these old people?
To bring this case to a proper conclusion I would need to be called in on the scene like a proper detective. But I do think we can get close enough even at this distance.
We are only missing motive and method. As to motive, I think we are not in the realm of the usual human motives like greed and anger, and psychopathology. This is a cat. And much as I adore all cats I have noticed that they have a real taste for recreational killing. Murder. I think Oscar may just be a perverse and clever master of this. Whether this is "wrong" is perhaps for others to say. The victims are old and weak and ill. And no one seems put out by these deaths. Indeed a whole book has been written here to speak well of these deaths.
But when we speak of method, when you think of it, think of a person struggling feebly and succumbing, your view of it may be altered. We cannot forget to consider the victims.
Clearly the method cannot be by claw or tooth. Cuts or bleeding would have been noticed, but if I were on the scene I would first verify the lack of mysterious wounds. Based on the silent deaths and the habits of cats I believe the method used is suffocation. The elderly victims are being smothered. Oscar presses down over their mouths and noses and our old, feeble victims are at first confused, then too weak to pry the small, but tough and able cat off of their faces. This method has the effect of causing the whole murder to be silent as the victims are unable to cry out.
In a proper case there would be a dramatic denouement where I would reveal this all with a more appropriate impressiveness. But as I stated this is reality, with real senior citizen victims. I was not called in as a consulting detective and have not been able to test all my hypothesis. Nevertheless our facts are clear and our conjectures, though they may differ slightly from the actuality of events, could only stray so far. Oscar the cat has the deadly, hunter cat inclinations which, as anyone who has received a "gift" from a cat knows, would easily suffice for motive. Oscar alone had the opportunity in death after death. Oscar alone explains an unusual series of deaths as well. And Oscar, the geriatric killing, fluffy, suffocating cat, had the means.
I think that if this case isn't exactly "closed", it is fair to say it is solved. Oscar the cat, j'accuse.
So you might imagine my delight when I solved a chain of real life crimes by a serial murderer.
Oh, ho, you think I'm kidding?
Nope.
No one knew they were murders, but people were dying left and right. Someone wrote a book about it, but they missed the crimes completely, and so did everyone who read and commented on the book. They were all looking elsewhere. The book was about something else entirely, not crime related. I looked over the book and solved a mystery that was sitting in plain sight, snuggled deviously into the very conceit of the book, disguised as innocence. I spotted a crime wave. I used my little gray cells. I figured it out. I solved a string of murders! It was a delicious, heady feeling.
I don't know if I can stop this horrible chain of killings, but of course I have every hope I will. I expect that this post will serve to alert the authorities and these ghastly murders will come to an end.
But this isn't how you're supposed to tell mystery stories. I am giving the game away before I start. And now, when I tell you the set up, you will be all primed and able to figure it out for yourself. You will be less impressed with my sudden burst of sleuthing genius. And so I understand now why Poirot and Holmes and Nero Wolfe all hold so much back.
But this is real life, and a real story, and so you will have to be impressed or not as you see fit.
But maybe, before we start, you can pretend a little that you didn't just read all of that.
A book came through the delivery, and, as is my habit, I read up all the words on the covers and inside flaps. The book was called Making the Rounds with Oscar: The Extraordinary Gift of an Ordinary Cat by David Dosa. What I learned from the cover, and from later research on the Internet, is that people mostly like this book. It is supposedly a heartwarming and interesting story. And it has a very interesting cat. Everyone likes cats.
The story is that there is Nursing Home where this cat Oscar lives. Oscar is an aloof cat. David Dosa is a geriatrician who does not much like cats. But he hears about this cat who hangs around dying patients and comforts them, and so he watches this cat and decides there's something to it. Oscar apparently has an uncanny ability to predict when a patient's time is nearing. He snuggles with the patient until the patient passes. He refuses to leave the dying patient's room. His presence reassures and comforts the grieving and frightened family. Etc. etc.
I like cats a lot. I am all ready to be taken in by this heartwarming and interesting story. But when I read about it some latent detective aspect was awoken in me instead. Something was off. I started thinking, using my little gray cells, as Poirot puts it. I came up with this:
1. Oscar is always, then, in the room with the patient when they die.
2. We only know they are dying patients in hindsight, because when Oscar goes to them, and starts hanging out with them, they die.
3. If Oscar is so "Aloof", what's going on with all this snuggling of people who soon die with him in their beds?
Or perhaps we should look at it from another angle, perhaps an angle featured plentifully in mystery fiction. Let's say there is a healthy young woman who marries old men. Immediately after marrying them they sicken and die. Do we marvel at this woman and say she has an enormous heart, she senses the imminent death of these, perhaps wealthy, old men and marries them to ease their passing? Do we suggest that she has a second sense for the nearing footsteps of death? No. We suspect her of murder. We look carefully at the situation. We don't let ourselves get distracted by fanciful, magical explanations. We ask, who had access to these people when they died. Who had an alibi? Has anything like this happened in this person's past before?
And so it is with Oscar the cat. He alone has the opportunity. And while old people are perhaps more prone to die than the young, we are talking about dozens of people, alone and vulnerable, dying with this cat. Indeed, it is every single person this aloof cat "befriends". The cat watches the dying, but who is watching the cat?
I will admit I do not have the case sewn up, but there is a precedence for this in the detective fiction. We have the victims, we have the killer, it can be no one else. We only lack the motive.
Why is Oscar the cat killing all these old people?
To bring this case to a proper conclusion I would need to be called in on the scene like a proper detective. But I do think we can get close enough even at this distance.
We are only missing motive and method. As to motive, I think we are not in the realm of the usual human motives like greed and anger, and psychopathology. This is a cat. And much as I adore all cats I have noticed that they have a real taste for recreational killing. Murder. I think Oscar may just be a perverse and clever master of this. Whether this is "wrong" is perhaps for others to say. The victims are old and weak and ill. And no one seems put out by these deaths. Indeed a whole book has been written here to speak well of these deaths.
But when we speak of method, when you think of it, think of a person struggling feebly and succumbing, your view of it may be altered. We cannot forget to consider the victims.
Clearly the method cannot be by claw or tooth. Cuts or bleeding would have been noticed, but if I were on the scene I would first verify the lack of mysterious wounds. Based on the silent deaths and the habits of cats I believe the method used is suffocation. The elderly victims are being smothered. Oscar presses down over their mouths and noses and our old, feeble victims are at first confused, then too weak to pry the small, but tough and able cat off of their faces. This method has the effect of causing the whole murder to be silent as the victims are unable to cry out.
In a proper case there would be a dramatic denouement where I would reveal this all with a more appropriate impressiveness. But as I stated this is reality, with real senior citizen victims. I was not called in as a consulting detective and have not been able to test all my hypothesis. Nevertheless our facts are clear and our conjectures, though they may differ slightly from the actuality of events, could only stray so far. Oscar the cat has the deadly, hunter cat inclinations which, as anyone who has received a "gift" from a cat knows, would easily suffice for motive. Oscar alone had the opportunity in death after death. Oscar alone explains an unusual series of deaths as well. And Oscar, the geriatric killing, fluffy, suffocating cat, had the means.
I think that if this case isn't exactly "closed", it is fair to say it is solved. Oscar the cat, j'accuse.
Sunday, July 6, 2014
More food blog for a day
I am just sitting around today poking at my blog, messing with my recommended books list, adding new links to old posts there, and leaving obscure comments on old posts that I am running into that are never likely to be found by anyone else, but you never know. I am also waiting for our new refrigerator to arrive. So it seemed like a good time to write a Sunday post, which we all know is the incredibly folksy kind of post. The kind of post where a person can talk about a refrigerator and not have it mean anything. Yes, I could develop a refrigerator discussion into a rumination on aging, or life in Minnesota, but on Sundays we let the new refrigerator just be a place to put food that we want to keep cold.
And the refrigerator breathes a cool sigh of relief.
I have a sort of vision for this new refrigerator. Part of me is aware of the perversity and ultimate unhealthiness of this vision, but nevertheless it leaves me breathlessly excited about the arrival of our new appliance.
I picture my big, shiny, white, clean new refrigerator shelf, which is far bigger than anything I had in our old, small, freezes-anything-too-far-to-the-back refrigerator. And on this beautiful shelf are jars, just jars. None of them will be fancy, but all will be at least plain, clear, unlabeled. The left side is full of slightly varying in color mayonnaises and aiolis. Saffron mayonnaise, sweet meyer lemon mayonnaise, sesame tamari mayonnaise. The other side of the refrigerator shelf, the right side, will all be full of fruit syrups, each one like a big, fat, sweet jewel, full of light and rich gem colors. Cherry syrup and strawberry, peach and plum, raspberry and mango, all waiting to be poured into a clear glass a quarter to a third full, and then finished with the most strongly sparkling water I could find. When one adds the strongly sparkling water to the syrup it foams beautifully into a pale opaque colored version of the syrup itself, and tastes quintessentially of the fruit one started with.
No one asked about the mayonnaise, but I did get a comment request last week for a fruit syrup recipe when I mentioned them in passing. I thought, "Why not?"
This is a very simple recipe (well, simple to write, or explain, but it can vary, based on the fruit, as to how much work it is). I am going to base our fruit syrup recipe here on the bucket of cherries my incredibly kind and generous co-worker gave me just yesterday. But similar principles apply to other fruits.
1. Get a bucket of some kind of non sweet pie cherry. These should be fresh cherries ideally, given to you by someone you work with.
2. Spend a couple hours pitting these cherries on your back porch or somewhere pleasant outside. You have to do this outside because pitting cherries is roughly like slaughtering a pig. Staining red splatters would spray the entirety of the inside of your house no matter what precautions you took if you did it inside.
3. Discard the pits. These are not edible! Too crunchy!
4. Put all your cherries in a big pot. Add a whole lot of agave syrup, or if you will, sugar. But they have to be organic because otherwise you will get cancer and die. I don't want you to die!
5. "How much syrup or sugar?" You ask. A whole lot. But not too much. I know this is awful cooking blog measuring, but fortunately there is a huge margin here before you can go wrong and I'm not even sure you could go wrong.
6. Cook on low heat for a couple of hours. Ideally it will look a bit thickish, but it's still going to be quite liquidy.
7. Just let it sit there for some hours cooling.
8. Strain it through a metal mesh thing, you know, a strainer, that's like mesh. You really want to stir and get all the precious liquid that you can out and into your jar.
9. Add your beautiful, deep red jar of cherry syrup to your shelf with the blueberry syrup, plum syrup, espresso syrup, and cantaloupe syrup. These will be to the right of your Aiolis, unless you are tragically allergic to raw eggs and have something else on that side of the refrigerator.
10. Reserve all the drained cherries for other recreational eating opportunities!
And the refrigerator breathes a cool sigh of relief.
I have a sort of vision for this new refrigerator. Part of me is aware of the perversity and ultimate unhealthiness of this vision, but nevertheless it leaves me breathlessly excited about the arrival of our new appliance.
I picture my big, shiny, white, clean new refrigerator shelf, which is far bigger than anything I had in our old, small, freezes-anything-too-far-to-the-back refrigerator. And on this beautiful shelf are jars, just jars. None of them will be fancy, but all will be at least plain, clear, unlabeled. The left side is full of slightly varying in color mayonnaises and aiolis. Saffron mayonnaise, sweet meyer lemon mayonnaise, sesame tamari mayonnaise. The other side of the refrigerator shelf, the right side, will all be full of fruit syrups, each one like a big, fat, sweet jewel, full of light and rich gem colors. Cherry syrup and strawberry, peach and plum, raspberry and mango, all waiting to be poured into a clear glass a quarter to a third full, and then finished with the most strongly sparkling water I could find. When one adds the strongly sparkling water to the syrup it foams beautifully into a pale opaque colored version of the syrup itself, and tastes quintessentially of the fruit one started with.
No one asked about the mayonnaise, but I did get a comment request last week for a fruit syrup recipe when I mentioned them in passing. I thought, "Why not?"
This is a very simple recipe (well, simple to write, or explain, but it can vary, based on the fruit, as to how much work it is). I am going to base our fruit syrup recipe here on the bucket of cherries my incredibly kind and generous co-worker gave me just yesterday. But similar principles apply to other fruits.
1. Get a bucket of some kind of non sweet pie cherry. These should be fresh cherries ideally, given to you by someone you work with.
2. Spend a couple hours pitting these cherries on your back porch or somewhere pleasant outside. You have to do this outside because pitting cherries is roughly like slaughtering a pig. Staining red splatters would spray the entirety of the inside of your house no matter what precautions you took if you did it inside.
3. Discard the pits. These are not edible! Too crunchy!
4. Put all your cherries in a big pot. Add a whole lot of agave syrup, or if you will, sugar. But they have to be organic because otherwise you will get cancer and die. I don't want you to die!
5. "How much syrup or sugar?" You ask. A whole lot. But not too much. I know this is awful cooking blog measuring, but fortunately there is a huge margin here before you can go wrong and I'm not even sure you could go wrong.
6. Cook on low heat for a couple of hours. Ideally it will look a bit thickish, but it's still going to be quite liquidy.
7. Just let it sit there for some hours cooling.
8. Strain it through a metal mesh thing, you know, a strainer, that's like mesh. You really want to stir and get all the precious liquid that you can out and into your jar.
9. Add your beautiful, deep red jar of cherry syrup to your shelf with the blueberry syrup, plum syrup, espresso syrup, and cantaloupe syrup. These will be to the right of your Aiolis, unless you are tragically allergic to raw eggs and have something else on that side of the refrigerator.
10. Reserve all the drained cherries for other recreational eating opportunities!
Saturday, July 5, 2014
Work comes
I have heard enough anecdotal accounts of the work lives of a variety of
people to know that work comes in a lot of different forms. Some people
have a very set array of responsibilities that they can get to on their
own schedule. Some people mainly pretend to work, or work dodging work.
Some people don't have much to do and wish they did. Some people have
to sort of invent their jobs on a day to day basis. Some people have an
endless job that they just need to steadily plow through. Some people
choose amongst an array of complicated, important, and yet optional
tasks. Some people race around in a desperate attempt to manage too many
things at once. And some people, like me and many of my co-workers, are
often in the position of taking work as it comes.
My job, and I suppose many jobs, has some elements of many of the different kinds of jobs described above, but it is that last one about taking work as it comes that feels most defining to being a library clerk. Sometimes there is a blizzard of calls, sometimes there isn't. There may be a long line of people with a lot of complicated issues at the front desk or there may just be one guy who says a couple of things to you in what seems to be Swahili before leaving you to do what you want for 15 minutes. You may be buried and pressed for weeks, even months, under a crushing load of books and people, and then, almost out of nowhere, find yourself in a lot of conversations like this:
"I wonder why it's so quiet tonight?"
"Maybe because it's so hot out."
"But it's snowing."
"Maybe because it's snowing. Also, there's a big ferret show at the civic center this week."
"Hmm. Could be."
I think a lot of us try to take our pacing as we can. We race hard when everything is thrown at us, and, maybe if we see an opening for some down time, we try and grab it. We may have that downtime for so long it starts to curdle, and yet too we may have it ripped away from us before we even can get the first, sweet whiff of it, before we even know what it is.
Last night I was on the machine, as I usually am, and the library was very much on the quiet side of things. But closing up the machine is still usually a bit of a job. So there was no hope for me. But my colleague in the back room with me was on the phones, which is among the most fertile assignments for down time. As things were slowing down dramatically, and we neared the end of the evening, he saw a suddenly blossoming opportunity. No calls had come for over an hour. He'd finished all the requests. Nothing was backed up. No managers were restlessly roaming. He'd put in his full day, so he said, with twenty utterly placid minutes laying out before him "That's it, I'm done for the day."
And immediately the phone started ringing...
My job, and I suppose many jobs, has some elements of many of the different kinds of jobs described above, but it is that last one about taking work as it comes that feels most defining to being a library clerk. Sometimes there is a blizzard of calls, sometimes there isn't. There may be a long line of people with a lot of complicated issues at the front desk or there may just be one guy who says a couple of things to you in what seems to be Swahili before leaving you to do what you want for 15 minutes. You may be buried and pressed for weeks, even months, under a crushing load of books and people, and then, almost out of nowhere, find yourself in a lot of conversations like this:
"I wonder why it's so quiet tonight?"
"Maybe because it's so hot out."
"But it's snowing."
"Maybe because it's snowing. Also, there's a big ferret show at the civic center this week."
"Hmm. Could be."
I think a lot of us try to take our pacing as we can. We race hard when everything is thrown at us, and, maybe if we see an opening for some down time, we try and grab it. We may have that downtime for so long it starts to curdle, and yet too we may have it ripped away from us before we even can get the first, sweet whiff of it, before we even know what it is.
Last night I was on the machine, as I usually am, and the library was very much on the quiet side of things. But closing up the machine is still usually a bit of a job. So there was no hope for me. But my colleague in the back room with me was on the phones, which is among the most fertile assignments for down time. As things were slowing down dramatically, and we neared the end of the evening, he saw a suddenly blossoming opportunity. No calls had come for over an hour. He'd finished all the requests. Nothing was backed up. No managers were restlessly roaming. He'd put in his full day, so he said, with twenty utterly placid minutes laying out before him "That's it, I'm done for the day."
And immediately the phone started ringing...
Friday, July 4, 2014
Independence
Every time I go to the dentist my view of the nature/nurture debate skews heavily to the nature side. So far I am clearly the beneficiary of inherited good teeth. To people who brush and floss seven times a day only to have to visit dentists every month for intrusive surgeries I can only say "I am sorry." It would be generous to say that my dental hygiene is barely acceptable, but I waltz into the dentists office (well, it's not waltzing exactly so much as it's dread-tinged walking) and I am immediately showered with compliments. "You have great teeth." "Doesn't he have great teeth?" and "Don't forget to floss. But look who I'm telling to floss! I surely don't need to tell the god of teeth to floss! Ha ha ha."
Well maybe not that last one so much, but it's not as completely outrageous as it might seem.
My occasionally pessimistic nature makes me feel like this toothy paradise could come crashing down at any moment, but the fact remains that, despite my trepidation, I do not get much bad news in Dentist offices. I have good teeth, by nature.
Although, come to think of it, it's not like my relatives have been any great shakes in the teeth department. My ancestors have had braces and root canals and cavities the likes of which I have barely experienced a glimmer of. So, it's beyond nature, which really here is intended to mean genetics. We are all the way into luck here.
I don't have a great deal of experience at overwhelmingly excelling at things. Sure, I write the greatest blog on the Internet, but it's not the sort of greatest blog on the Internet that other people are constantly thinking is the greatest blog on the Internet. It's more the kind of greatest blog on the Internet that I like to tell you is the greatest blog on the Internet. I was not the fastest runner in school, any school, ever, nor the best athlete in any sport. People have never fawned over my beauty except, possibly, a little when I was about four and exceptionally cute. I don't think I was breakout cute though. In all the various endeavors where I applied myself to making a fortune it never led to my being a multimillionaire. My art career never inspired passion. At least, not in very many others. Indeed, I have never met with what I would describe as an electric reaction in any field. I'm not saying that I have met with no success in life, just, I have never demolished the curve in anything.
Except, apparently, teeth.
And I believe this experience has given me some insights.
Would you like to hear them?
When dental personnel speak so highly of my teeth I feel a little funny. I feel like I am getting credit for something I did not much have any part in. I didn't make my teeth so great! And yet, at the same time, I sometimes find myself secretly giving myself credit for tiny peculiar habits of dental hygiene that I do have, some method of tooth picking or brushing or whatever. Some part of me does not want to pass up this tooth bounty. Some part of me strives for credit.
But in the end I find I have to go with the humble choice. My teeth are mostly just a nicely dealt hand. And one doesn't need to be a great poker player to win a hand with four Kings. Now, I'm not saying to you, Mr. Multimillionaire, that you didn't work and augment and nurture your inherent luck and perfectly suited money making talents, and I'm not saying that you, Handsome Johnny, didn't choose the right haircut and go jogging and dress wisely, and I'm not saying that you, Bob Dylan (who regularly reads this blog, so, hi Bob!), didn't play long hours and find good places to write from and didn't help the magic happen. No, I'm not saying that at all. But I am saying this: I work with people who help at a service desk, who answer phones, who shelve. Indeed, some of them work hard enough, harder than me even. And that work produces something perfectly nice. It is, believe it or not, roughly the same amount of work as Mr. Multimillionaire and Handsome Johnny and Bob Dylan and the greatest blogger on the Internet. It's just work. And all adulation and millions, all fandom, and praise of teeth is a kind of a freakshow.
And we are all, magical or not, every last goddamn one of us, innocent of greatness.
Well maybe not that last one so much, but it's not as completely outrageous as it might seem.
My occasionally pessimistic nature makes me feel like this toothy paradise could come crashing down at any moment, but the fact remains that, despite my trepidation, I do not get much bad news in Dentist offices. I have good teeth, by nature.
Although, come to think of it, it's not like my relatives have been any great shakes in the teeth department. My ancestors have had braces and root canals and cavities the likes of which I have barely experienced a glimmer of. So, it's beyond nature, which really here is intended to mean genetics. We are all the way into luck here.
I don't have a great deal of experience at overwhelmingly excelling at things. Sure, I write the greatest blog on the Internet, but it's not the sort of greatest blog on the Internet that other people are constantly thinking is the greatest blog on the Internet. It's more the kind of greatest blog on the Internet that I like to tell you is the greatest blog on the Internet. I was not the fastest runner in school, any school, ever, nor the best athlete in any sport. People have never fawned over my beauty except, possibly, a little when I was about four and exceptionally cute. I don't think I was breakout cute though. In all the various endeavors where I applied myself to making a fortune it never led to my being a multimillionaire. My art career never inspired passion. At least, not in very many others. Indeed, I have never met with what I would describe as an electric reaction in any field. I'm not saying that I have met with no success in life, just, I have never demolished the curve in anything.
Except, apparently, teeth.
And I believe this experience has given me some insights.
Would you like to hear them?
When dental personnel speak so highly of my teeth I feel a little funny. I feel like I am getting credit for something I did not much have any part in. I didn't make my teeth so great! And yet, at the same time, I sometimes find myself secretly giving myself credit for tiny peculiar habits of dental hygiene that I do have, some method of tooth picking or brushing or whatever. Some part of me does not want to pass up this tooth bounty. Some part of me strives for credit.
But in the end I find I have to go with the humble choice. My teeth are mostly just a nicely dealt hand. And one doesn't need to be a great poker player to win a hand with four Kings. Now, I'm not saying to you, Mr. Multimillionaire, that you didn't work and augment and nurture your inherent luck and perfectly suited money making talents, and I'm not saying that you, Handsome Johnny, didn't choose the right haircut and go jogging and dress wisely, and I'm not saying that you, Bob Dylan (who regularly reads this blog, so, hi Bob!), didn't play long hours and find good places to write from and didn't help the magic happen. No, I'm not saying that at all. But I am saying this: I work with people who help at a service desk, who answer phones, who shelve. Indeed, some of them work hard enough, harder than me even. And that work produces something perfectly nice. It is, believe it or not, roughly the same amount of work as Mr. Multimillionaire and Handsome Johnny and Bob Dylan and the greatest blogger on the Internet. It's just work. And all adulation and millions, all fandom, and praise of teeth is a kind of a freakshow.
And we are all, magical or not, every last goddamn one of us, innocent of greatness.
Thursday, July 3, 2014
The fourth post
Yes, I was going to write about something new and interesting today. I have a long list of subjects and was about to pick one when I saw a certain, evocative book on my shelving cart and all my plans flew out the window. Or they would have flown out the window except this is a building with tons of windows and yet none that can be opened. So I guess all my plans just got stuffed in my pockets for now because I have a new plan.
I'm going to talk about Jasper Fforde.
Yes, again!
But I am going to talk about titles, which I haven't much talked about. And furthermore I am going to talk about Mystery titles, which I have never talked about.
Which is why you have that tingly I'm-there-at-the-invention-of-the-wheel feeling.
The book that I came across on my cart is a mystery novel called The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde. This book is part of the Nursery Crimes series which as yet consists of only two books. These are two of the greatest mystery novels ever written. Curiously enough these two mysteries are shelved in the Science Fiction section for reasons I would take far too long to explain, and, in the process, would vehemently insult my library slightly more than it deserves.
But besides not explaining why The Fourth Bear is shelved in the Sci Fi section I am also not, mostly, going to talk about why this is such a great mystery novel.
This may be disappointing to Jasper Fforde, but I'm not sure about how the rest of you will feel. But, oh man, the things I could tell you!
But won't.
No.
Because I am going to talk about this puny, great, three word title instead. The Fourth Bear.
Mystery novels are not bad at titles, except when they are bad at titles, at which point they are the worst of all genres at titles. Gimmicks like numbers, letters, puns, and repeated word schemes in detective novel series are not necessarily bad, but tend to lock themselves into a system of diminishing returns, and before you know it your mystery novel is struggling to make a crime pun out chocolate cake for the third time or you're forced to work the number 22 or the letter "X" into your title and have it be vaguely related to your actual book. On the other end of this scale are the scads of terse, tough titles that are also mostly fine, but, whether I like the book or not, fairly interchangeable.
Most of my favorite mystery titles lean towards a simple, evocative elegance. The Big Sleep is a beautiful, tone setting title. I'm also fond of Tony Hillerman, well, his books, but some of the later titles too. Coyote Waits in particular is quite nice. But oh, The Fourth Bear is most wonderful of all to me. It starts off by placing it in all those pun based, theme books contexts, but is more allusive, complex, witty and referential. It's no cheap pun, but a clear, direct reference to the Goldilocks story, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, but all hitting the edge of it from the perspective of dark mystery, overcoats, hard boiled street corners, clues, police procedurals, mystery. Neither is stated directly but, as we stand close to each, a noir mystery and a fairytale, we see them dovetail with lovely, perfect matching, and simple grace. "Aha!" we say. "They belonged together all along!" But we're in on the joke too, and take our pleasure in getting it.
And that, marvelously, is how the whole book is too.
I'm going to talk about Jasper Fforde.
Yes, again!
But I am going to talk about titles, which I haven't much talked about. And furthermore I am going to talk about Mystery titles, which I have never talked about.
Which is why you have that tingly I'm-there-at-the-invention-of-the-wheel feeling.
The book that I came across on my cart is a mystery novel called The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde. This book is part of the Nursery Crimes series which as yet consists of only two books. These are two of the greatest mystery novels ever written. Curiously enough these two mysteries are shelved in the Science Fiction section for reasons I would take far too long to explain, and, in the process, would vehemently insult my library slightly more than it deserves.
But besides not explaining why The Fourth Bear is shelved in the Sci Fi section I am also not, mostly, going to talk about why this is such a great mystery novel.
This may be disappointing to Jasper Fforde, but I'm not sure about how the rest of you will feel. But, oh man, the things I could tell you!
But won't.
No.
Because I am going to talk about this puny, great, three word title instead. The Fourth Bear.
Mystery novels are not bad at titles, except when they are bad at titles, at which point they are the worst of all genres at titles. Gimmicks like numbers, letters, puns, and repeated word schemes in detective novel series are not necessarily bad, but tend to lock themselves into a system of diminishing returns, and before you know it your mystery novel is struggling to make a crime pun out chocolate cake for the third time or you're forced to work the number 22 or the letter "X" into your title and have it be vaguely related to your actual book. On the other end of this scale are the scads of terse, tough titles that are also mostly fine, but, whether I like the book or not, fairly interchangeable.
Most of my favorite mystery titles lean towards a simple, evocative elegance. The Big Sleep is a beautiful, tone setting title. I'm also fond of Tony Hillerman, well, his books, but some of the later titles too. Coyote Waits in particular is quite nice. But oh, The Fourth Bear is most wonderful of all to me. It starts off by placing it in all those pun based, theme books contexts, but is more allusive, complex, witty and referential. It's no cheap pun, but a clear, direct reference to the Goldilocks story, fairy tales, nursery rhymes, but all hitting the edge of it from the perspective of dark mystery, overcoats, hard boiled street corners, clues, police procedurals, mystery. Neither is stated directly but, as we stand close to each, a noir mystery and a fairytale, we see them dovetail with lovely, perfect matching, and simple grace. "Aha!" we say. "They belonged together all along!" But we're in on the joke too, and take our pleasure in getting it.
And that, marvelously, is how the whole book is too.
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
Bike path etiquette
We have a lot of bike paths in my city, many of them quite close to my home. Some of them are underwater at the moment, but that's another story, and in the vast majority of years the design of these bikeways has proved elevated enough to keep them out of rivers and creeks. I often walk and bike on these splendid paths, but I do tend to try and avoid them during hours of peak traffic.
It's not that I don't love mankind (in the words of the great Linus Van Pelt "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand"), but more that I have a real taste for keeping a breeze friendly distance between me and all but one of the species. So on lovely weekend days and pleasant early evenings I tend to stick more to my city's lightly populated and plentiful sidewalks. Nevertheless the bike paths are a good way to get around and often enough I am on them with a fair share of other people.
Some of them pass me.
When they are on bikes and I am on foot or when I am also on a bike but they are still passing me they are supposed to announce their passing. The serious bikers generally call out "On your left". This is the safe thing to do.
Except, unfortunately, it's not. Not having grown up in a soothing environment and being of an, at times, deeply inward nature, has left me easily startleable. So when people call out briskly to me "On your left" I tend to jolt. When I'm on a bike I swerve across the width of the bike path, make a sort of S-curve across both lanes, and then wrestle control back of my bike and move demurely to the right side of the path, but only long after I have already been passed. When I hear the warning while on foot I stagger like a drunk person who has been buffeted by a strong wind.
So sadly this "On your left" business isn't really working out for us. I actually do best with children who are obsessed with their bells so that I can hear the tinkling sound of it gently rising. For adults I would probably do best if at 200 feet away they started softly saying "On your left, on your left, on your left..." but I suppose this would make them seem a little crazy. Perhaps they could sing a song? I sometimes sing songs, but I don't really pass anybody. Maybe, in the end, the best thing for them to do is just silently avoid me. As they pass I'll probably startle and stagger, but at least by then it will probably be too late for us to crash into each other. Just, they should give me a very wide berth. I think that would be the best, all around.
It's not that I don't love mankind (in the words of the great Linus Van Pelt "I love mankind, it's people I can't stand"), but more that I have a real taste for keeping a breeze friendly distance between me and all but one of the species. So on lovely weekend days and pleasant early evenings I tend to stick more to my city's lightly populated and plentiful sidewalks. Nevertheless the bike paths are a good way to get around and often enough I am on them with a fair share of other people.
Some of them pass me.
When they are on bikes and I am on foot or when I am also on a bike but they are still passing me they are supposed to announce their passing. The serious bikers generally call out "On your left". This is the safe thing to do.
Except, unfortunately, it's not. Not having grown up in a soothing environment and being of an, at times, deeply inward nature, has left me easily startleable. So when people call out briskly to me "On your left" I tend to jolt. When I'm on a bike I swerve across the width of the bike path, make a sort of S-curve across both lanes, and then wrestle control back of my bike and move demurely to the right side of the path, but only long after I have already been passed. When I hear the warning while on foot I stagger like a drunk person who has been buffeted by a strong wind.
So sadly this "On your left" business isn't really working out for us. I actually do best with children who are obsessed with their bells so that I can hear the tinkling sound of it gently rising. For adults I would probably do best if at 200 feet away they started softly saying "On your left, on your left, on your left..." but I suppose this would make them seem a little crazy. Perhaps they could sing a song? I sometimes sing songs, but I don't really pass anybody. Maybe, in the end, the best thing for them to do is just silently avoid me. As they pass I'll probably startle and stagger, but at least by then it will probably be too late for us to crash into each other. Just, they should give me a very wide berth. I think that would be the best, all around.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Library machine comedy in action!
This is a true story in which joke week climbs from out of the grave to stumble forth again.
I was working on the automated check in machine and since we were in the general run up to closing I was pretty busy. One of my kind co-workers, walking by, saw a tangle of magazines coming through and so started to help out. She gathered them up and fed them carefully through, but the machine just spit them into the exception bin. There was no reason for the machine to be unable to process them, it just... didn't. Magazines are simply one of those item types that the machine has problems with.
My co-worker may have even tried one more time to get the magazines through, but whether she did or didn't, at some point, she turned to me, exasperated, and said "I don't know what it is, but I just can't get the magazines to go through!"
"Oh, don't worry about it." I said consolingly. "The magazines have issues."
I was working on the automated check in machine and since we were in the general run up to closing I was pretty busy. One of my kind co-workers, walking by, saw a tangle of magazines coming through and so started to help out. She gathered them up and fed them carefully through, but the machine just spit them into the exception bin. There was no reason for the machine to be unable to process them, it just... didn't. Magazines are simply one of those item types that the machine has problems with.
My co-worker may have even tried one more time to get the magazines through, but whether she did or didn't, at some point, she turned to me, exasperated, and said "I don't know what it is, but I just can't get the magazines to go through!"
"Oh, don't worry about it." I said consolingly. "The magazines have issues."
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