The map of the Internet

I imagine that many clever people have attempted to map the Internet in a variety of ways. But since I assume these are mostly analytical, mathematical, graphical and literal mappings I can't be be bothered to look too far into it. This is because I am thinking of a different sort of map of the Internet, an analogical one, a metaphorical one, my kind of map, a map that can help us to visualize and see. Let us translate the inconceivable Internet into a landscape we can begin to understand.

Yes, this is my spoken map of the Internet.

Feel free to use it to get around. I think it will help.

Let us begin appropriately for a creation like the Internet, one that is so incorporeal, and even more appropriately for a map, by slowly descending to the Internet from above. There it is laid out below us. It is vast and clean and sort of featureless from a distance. And the cleanliness is like a hospital from a dream, or a vast new city just built that no one has moved into yet. It is pristine because nothing ages or decays there. It is only as we drift down closer and closer that we see what this means; the endless piles and accumulation, not of the garbage dump, it is not fetid. It is fresh frozen, and ever accumulating without loss or compression.

Ah, now we make out the surface, that great strange sea, gaining in texture as we come near. Almost at a single moment the bright colors come clear: candy! The whole surface of the Internet is candy! Cheap, familiar, brand name candy, Hersheys and Kit Kats and Butterfingers and Almond Joy and on and on. Oh, there are chips too, sour cream and onion flavored Pringles and Lays and Ranch Doritos. All the sleek, perfect, opulent, colorful packaging. Eat all you like! You could never exhaust this fecundity of junk food.

"But, is there any good candy on the surface of the Internet?" You ask.

What do you mean? Look at all the colors! It is a rainbow! Do you dislike the sweet? The Salty? Have you forgotten how delicious a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup is? Eat a thousand!

Okay, that is the whole of the inexhaustible surface of the Internet. But an aerial view can only tell us so much. There is more, much more under this packaged candy strewn surface.

So we reach down and find...

Only more candy, pictures of candy, tales of candy, offerings of candy, directions to candy, candy.

This surely can't be all. And it isn't. This is why a normal map would just not do.

Without intention one cannot get past the candy, but pick something. Go ahead, anything. Did someone say Japanese Musicals. That will do indeed! Now we are looking for Japanese Musicals and suddenly we can see them, studded underneath among the endless candy. Reach for one. Ah, just candy. Concentrate. Try again. Japanese Musicals. Here is one, no, wait, it changes to candy before our eyes. Once more, concentrate with all your might. Yes. We have done it. We have broken through to the second layer of the Internet. Well done! Information, history, news, art, philosophy, analysis, archives!

Wait! No! Don't move! Arrrgghhh!

No, don't worry, it's okay. It's an important lesson. All paths on the second level of the Internet go up, almost like escalators, back to the candy level, and the paths are everywhere.

Concentrate again on Japanese Musicals. Let's get back to the under candy level. Good. Now the only way to move from here is again with attention, specific focus. It is better to get even more specific. Figure that if you are not going deeper you are going back up to the surface. Let's try Japanese Musicals of the early post war period. Yes, you will still find candy spilling down. You must ignore that. And this, you ask, what is this thing. Don't worry too much about it. It is a corpse, but they are far less menacing and horrifying down here where they don't decay, much more like wax dummies. Lots of these down here, much dead, much forgotten, all perfectly preserved exactly in place forever. Occasionally they have something useful on them, but mostly you just want to move on. Yes, there are indeed many corpses, and when you get even deeper down, it's mostly corpses.

So bit by bit we work our way down with early post war Japanese Musicals, poking ever deeper with our more and more specific searches. We're looking into the movie Tokyo Kid and director Torajiro Saito. We use translation pages so we can search further in Japanese. We have made it to the edge of the third level. Don't move. Don't even breathe. Everything is cliffs here, gaping holes, dead ends, things that will fling you back to the surface, and bridges out everywhere. The surface of the Internet is so shiny and sweet and full and endless, but by the third level one can easily see that everything here is under construction, partially done, unfinished, and abandoned. Everything now is about getting around. Sometimes we must even build the Internet ourselves just to get from one place to the next. We make our own ladders now. How deep does it go?

It goes much deeper, but this is the end of our map. A small guide. It is a map and not the thing in itself.

And yet, oddly, it also is the thing itself, for this is a blog post, and so of the Internet indeed. And I have taken you to the edge of the third level. Watch your step on the way out.

If I were King of the library: The Seventh Decree

It has been a long time since I did one of these Dr. Seuss "If I ran the Library" sorts of posts, but for the past few weeks I have been thinking about them again. I felt maybe it was time for something new in my little dream library, my fiefdom, but what? Then, this morning, in my role as supply procurer, I received a library catalog supplement, and on the cover was my answer. There, featured, was an old fashioned book pocket with checkout card, and a date/month stamp.
 
The Retro Library!

The Retro Library shall be gloriously, nostalgically analog! It will be its own discreet section of the library, cataloged purely in a beautiful, burnished antique wooden card catalog system. There will be hand checkouts only, in some arcane system we'll need some old person to explain to us. There shall be no computers, blocked WiFi, check your cell phone at the door, and, here's the kicker: no books constructed later than 1970 will be allowed. This means the librarians will have to be creative, passionate about collection, and fanatic, inspired book collectors (set them loose with a reasonable budget on the struggling, non chain used book stores in town. No, they cannot order online!). Those among my readers who are not library workers and not strongly acquainted with libraries will no doubt say "That is the simplest thing in the world! Surely that would easily describe the skills, ambitions, and talents of every public librarian there is!" Alas, but for those of us who know, the reality is less sunny. All that being forced to walk the cruel line between popularity and quality, buying from one big vendor, having so little room to experiment, has dulled their ancient skills. Here is their chance to take it back.

And in our Retro Library we need not stop with the collection, or the cataloging, or the checkout system. Our decor, our furniture, our shelving, shall all be pre-1970. So too will our phone, which we will keep under a towel in a drawer because it's a library and we need to muffle the ringer. Our dress code shall be pre-1970 (for staff, but if patrons want to dress up, more power to them). I am willing to put on a nice, baggy brown suit to pull a stint in there. I don't know if I'm willing to shush people, but I think I can work up to that.

So there it is, our completely retro library section. Put on a derby hat or some bobby socks or something, hop on a streetcar, and come on by! But not in the evenings or weekends. We'll be going with the retro hours as well.

Service animals

One of our local group homes is part of a pilot program involving domestic fowl service animals. Apparently these birds are cheaper to train than dogs, and they work well with severely impaired people, especially ones with limited motor skills. Some of the chickens, particularly the Dutch Bantams, who are supposedly very well suited to this work, are quite beautiful. And it's kind of neat to have a fancy chicken hand you a library card from its beak. Like so many things at my job the best approach is to act as if it's normal and pretty soon, it comes to you; it is normal! For good or ill just about everything is.

It is also a joy to see a group of disabled people working their way through the library with a small retinue of turkeys, chickens and guinea fowl, who are subtle vocalizers and the best of the three at quietly conveying their intentions. For some reason I wish someone had a duck, maybe just because I like them, but apparently ducks are poorly suited to this sort of work, too independent minded, and the wrong sort of beaks. Geese are considered too big, and apparently potty train badly. But even among what is known as "The Big Three" (chickens, turkeys and guinea fowl) the variety amongst the birds can be dazzling. Blue chickens? Green, orange and umber turkeys? Oh, and those daffy, brilliant guinea fowl with red eyes and bright blue heads looking sideways at you like they know just what you're thinking! Ah, how a small troupe of wheelchairs, attendants, and fancy birds in quiet procession never fails to make me happy that I work where I do, in a land of pure imagination.

Obverse

Is it that people fear to be imposing? They don't want to ask too much? Whatever it is I find that people's initial parlay with me at the front desk of the library is nearly reliably opposite to what they say it is. If a patron comes to me, almost in passing, and says they just have a quick question, I know that I will still be with them 15 minutes later explaining minute details of the Peloponnesian War. If someone asks me to briefly show them how to print something on their computer I rest assured that 20 minutes later I will be down on the floor with the whole computer disassembled doing soldering work on the motherboard. And if a couple of people come to the service desk and say they just need library cards, well, they probably do just need library cards, but the use of the word "just" somehow seems all wrong because creating library cards actually ranks pretty high on the list of irksome, laborious tasks I have to do at the front desk, but only if it is treated with a lack of sufficient gravity.

This isn't just idle grousing though. It runs the other way too. If a patron comes to the desk and sheepishly admits they have a huge problem that I probably can't help with because it's hopeless, they're probably going to be asking me what the name of that movie was with Orson Welles, you know, about the rich guy and his sled. All they know is that "Citizen" is in the title. Long, apologetic preambles are usually going to lead to questions about whether or not we have a copy machine, or what time it is. And people probably don't even ask things like "Do you carry non fiction books?" out of fear of overwhelming us.

I find this dynamic particularly true with donations. The more people act as if they are giving us the crown jewels and want donation receipts, profuse thanks, and perhaps a fancy, embroidered "Library Donor" satin jacket, the more I can be sure they are donating a torn bag of old, yellow Nora Roberts paperbacks that rats have been chewing on and that smell faintly of vomit. Whereas if we are treated like some sort of gods at the front desk, receiving the patron's pathetic offering, and they act as if they are barely even worthy of talking to us directly, we'll usually be getting a complete set of Jane Austen first editions, along with maybe some old letters of hers that will be fun to look at before we sell it all off to fund our addiction to 3D printers and projectors powerful enough to cast a 40 foot high image at a distance of 50 yards in full sun while only looking sort of washed out. Those babies are expensive!

So why are people so obverse? My theory is that everyone is so used to not being properly paid attention to that they've, er, we've, adopted a lot of unconscious, attention getting devices like this dissonance, this sudden change in tempo."Quick question: What is the meaning of the universe?" Wait, what? That's not quick. You need a whole library clerking blog to answer that! But this sort of device is such old hat it doesn't work anymore. We're already rolling our eyes at "Quick question" It's overuse has left only one place to go. 

Yes, I find it painful too. But, speak directly, honestly, and proportionately to me at the desk. These days it never fails to blow my mind.

So simple

Here is the rule:

A patron must have an I.D. of some kind, or a library card, to check items out.

Here is the incident:

Nervy Ms Grunewald, a unique and difficult patron who likes to challenge and contentiously engage with library policy, both when it affects her and when it does not, but also likes to get things to go her way, has not brought her I.D. or her library card. The clerk, who knows who Ms Grunewald is, won't check out to her without them. The manager backs up the clerk.

I found this incident very interesting. So I queried as many of my co-workers as I could. It was supposed to be an impartial survey, but within seconds, with each person, I was sharing my opinion, which just goes to show what a terrible reporter I'd make, unless I could be, like, one of those "New Journalists" a la Tom Wolfe or Hunter S. Thompson. As long as I am free to hallucinate giant lizards during my reporting then I suppose I can be an okay reporter.

Here is what I found out in my survey:


1. Roughly half of my co-workers would have checked items out to Ms Grunewald and roughly half of them would not have checked out items to her.


I would have.


2. Nearly everyone cited "trouble" in regards to their choice. The not checking out group said they feared Ms Grunewald would make some trouble for them if they broke the policy. The checking out half did not want the trouble in refusing the difficult and contentious Ms Grunewald. 
 

I agree with the second group here in the sense that Ms Grunewald never makes trouble over getting her way. I differ from both groups though in that trouble was no part of the basis for which I would freely check items out to Ms Grunewald.


3. Everyone was agreed that the policy dictated that they not check items out to Ms Grunewald, whether they actually decided to or not.


Except me! I consider our knowledge, in our brains, that Ms Grunewald is indeed Ms Grunewald, to be a fully adequate and acceptable form of I.D.  I believe I might have convinced a couple of my co-workers of the validity of this interpretation by posing the question "If your spouse, or co-worker came to you without a card would you need to see their I.D. to check items out to them?"


4. Finally, everyone was agreed that Ms Grunewald was awful and unlikeable.


Alas, I am alone again. Go Ms Grunewald!

The Samurai and the Zen cat

Working as I do at a library I come across books every once in awhile. Today, while processing requested materials, I stumbled upon a book called, roughly, Cats In Myth and Legend. Always in a state of deprivation for good cat stories I opened it with interest. Having only a small amount of time I chose a cat story from the "Trickster" section, a Zen cat story from Japan.

Alas, it was not good. Not good at all.

But there were some good things in its structure, and I thought "I can fix this story."

Maybe I can and maybe I can't. Who knows?  But I will endeavor to try.

The Samurai and the Zen Cat

There was once a mighty Samurai, a master of the sword, the greatest swordsman in all of Japan. So unstoppable was he with his sword that no one any longer dared stand against him. So he retired. He found a lovely, snug home on a clear lake surrounded by cherry trees, and he began a quiet life of reflection, practice, study, and peace.

This went well for a few short months.

But there came a day when the great Samurai's lunch needed a bit more tamari. He traveled to another room for it and, when he came back, he found a large, dirty, gray rat, sitting on his dining table, noisily munching on one of his soba noodles, and staring, with sharp little red eyes, at the Samurai Master.

The great swordsman took up his blade like it was a part of his body, and in a move that was faster than any human eye could follow, he brought it down upon the insolent rodent.

Only, the rodent was not there. Faster than the blade, the rat had scampered off with the soba noodle.

The Samurai was flabbergasted. No one and nothing had ever been quicker than his sword! Perhaps it was merely an off stroke? He tracked the rat down to a corner of the room (where it was now gnawing into a sack of rice), and, in a lunge famous for its elegance and simplicity, a stroke that he had once used to exactly bisect a fly, he sent his sword leaping through the neck of the rat.

Only, the rat moved! The blade split the sack of rice instead of the rat.

And so began a very unquiet week. The rat was everywhere, helping itself to the Samurai's very best food, chewing maliciously into his most treasured and beautiful belongings, and leaving its droppings freely in the food and bedding of the Samurai's once perfect little home. And all the damage caused by the rat was matched by the Samurai's failed attempts to exterminate the rodent. Walls were sliced, fabrics were slashed, and fine potteries were smashed by the master swordsman's errant blade.

Finally the Samurai accepted that he was overmastered by the rat. He needed help.

In the nearest town there was a Doctor who was known far and wide for his great learning. The Samurai was an old friend of him and respected him greatly. He went to him and explained his problem. The Doctor prescribed a very powerful poison that had no taste and no smell. The Samurai took it home and prepared it into the rat's favorite foods.

But no craft or guile could induce the rat to eat them.

So the Samurai went to see his friend the Hunter. "I am good at killing men." He thought. "But my friend is good at killing animals."

The hunter had just the solution. He raised hunting dogs and with care he chose the fiercest and most relentless one he had ever raised. The dog was a little Shiba-inu, but was said to be tireless in pursuit of his prey, an indomitable hunter.

The Samurai took the quiet little dog home, opened the door, and set him down. The rat dropped from one of its many warrens in the ceiling onto the kitchen table as if to taunt the dog. The Shiba-inu burst into action. There was a great flurry of animal parts, and screams, and howls, and gnashing teeth and claws. Everything standing in every room fell to the floor. The battle raged all through the house. The Samurai watched bewildered until, at last, the little dog was cowering at the the door, bleeding from a hundred wounds. The Samurai opened the door in pity, and the dog fled into the woods.

The rat eyed the Samurai, unperturbed.

"Maybe I need a different kind of help." Wondered the Samurai. 

The Samurai packed a small travel sack and journeyed into the mountains. He went to a remote Zen Monastery. He was brought to the Zen Master, and he told him his story. The Zen Master gave him an old, small, raggedy, rather sleepy looking cat.

"Oh no." Said the Samurai as politely as possible. "I, a very great swordsman, have been unable to defeat this rat, the cleverest poisons could not trick this rat, and the fiercest hunting dog was broken by this rat. This cat, with all my due respect, is barely bigger than the rat. I do not believe he can defeat the rat."

"And yet, this cat is what you need." Is all the Master would say.

So the Samurai carried the cat home. What else could he do? It took three days walking, and mostly the cat slept in his arms.

When the Samurai arrived at home he set the cat on the floor by the door. The rat dramatically dropped from the ceiling to taunt the cat. The cat looked glancingly at the rat, cleaned himself, and then took a nap. The rat eyed the cat warily.

And so it went. The rat ever with a fretful eye on the cat. The cat eating, and sleeping, and grooming, and stretching. He would look at the rat, but never would he make the slightest threat in the rats direction. The rat would challenge the cat, but the cat took no notice. The rat became more and more nervous and high strung. He reverted to eating in secret, always with an eye to the cat. His hair started falling out. He lost weight. Sometimes the cat would walk towards the rat and the rat would scurry away in a terror, but the cat would merely lie down in some chosen spot as if the rat had nothing to do with it, and the cat would have a nap.

The Samurai felt a house full of crackling tension he could barely place. The rat felt a house full of crackling tension and building terror. The cat mostly just slept and ate.

One night the cat was looking at the rat, without much interest, and the cat yawned, showing his pink tongue and his old yellow fangs. The rat, shivering in lusterless, patchy fur, half starved from nerves, finally broke down completely and went running off into the night, never to be seen again.

The Samurai petted the cat, and the cat purred.

It was the first time the Samurai had ever heard him do it.

What is a blog?

What is a blog?

You tell me, you're the person reading one.

Yes, I know, you didn't mean to, but here it is, a blog, and you are reading it.

So I ask again, what is a blog?

See, I thought you would know because I'm always all "blog this" and "blog that" and no one ever says to me "Whoa, whoa, whoa. Hey, wait a second. But what exactly is a blog?" And since no one ever asks me I just figured everyone knew.

So I was hoping someone would tell me because I get a little confused.

Here is what I was thinking a blog is:

A frequently updated collection of short, often somewhat personal essays by a single author, sometimes about library work.

Here is the Internet's official definition for a blog:

A personal website or web page on which an individual records opinions, links to other sites, etc. on a regular basis.

That's not terribly far off from my thinking!

But then I looked up the most reputable, major media lists of the most influential blogs, the most admired blogs, and the most popular blogs in the world and I found that what it all really came to is this:

A blog is sort of a magazine that comes out everyday and sometimes has moving pictures and sound. 

This is definitely getting pretty far afield from what I was thinking, but we weren't even done yet. I looked at the hundred most popular blogs for a bit more, I thought very hard, and, suddenly, I had it:

A blog is every single thing on the entire Internet.

Better than Europe

I have been to a few cities in Europe, mostly the fancy, famous ones, so there's that advantage in its favor. Going to the European equivalent of Dubuque might have given me a different, harsher sense of Europe. Also I was on vacation, something that makes a person temporarily richer and happier and more magnanimous in viewpoint. But even handicapping for all that, these European cities seemed, well, markedly better than our American cities. They had consistently better food, better art, better coffee, better architecture, less crime, less chains, better transit, and even a better sport, one that normal sized people could play competitively. Indeed it would have been a complete washout for the American Cities side of things but for our one, overwhelming superiority.

Graffiti.

The vast majority of graffiti I have seen in Europe is exactly of the nature one is supposed to think of in relation to graffiti, vast swaths of ugly vandalism, artless, full of easy hatred and pointless youth. People, with spray paint and a peculiar immunity to their own greatness, for some mysterious reason, have gone and written pointless things in artless ways all over, say, Rome, for instance. It is precisely this kind of graffiti that has caused cities and states across the world to develop draconian laws against it.

Indeed, this is such a powerful image of graffiti, an image of malicious pointlessness, that it can be hard to see what is happening in many American cities, particularly my own. 

We live in a graffiti paradise.

There, under the Franklin Avenue bridge that I cross on bike three times a week, are two new accomplished graffiti pieces. I don't know what they say, but, like the great preponderance of graffiti I run into, their expertise is utterly unmistakable. Full of 3D effects and complicated color and compositional invention, here is a sophistication of design and execution of complete reliability. No human on earth could begin to do such a thing without practice and vision and dedication. Even the second rate of these graffiti productions are a delight to me.

The Minnesota State Fair has a large and very competitive art show every year. I saw it. Sometimes this show is pretty good. This year it suffered from really horrible judges and was not very good. But either way, there are all these paintings and sculptures and drawings on the walls, and there are tens of thousands of viewers pouring through, judging, respectful, looking at all the art. Everyone in the show seems so earnestly professional, charging $1200 for their digital photographs and $2,000 for their watercolors, dreaming some famous artist dream. And, okay, good luck to them. But outside, in train yards, high on walls, hanging over the Mississippi bluffs, are complex confections of letter art and visual design, done at speed and without a hope of remuneration. People painting fine things without permission or sanction, all out of cans, all as if to say "Fuck you. I will show you something wonderful and complicated and full of skill and danger and you will think it's vandalism. You will arrest me if you can catch me. You will arrest me for art."

I just wanted to say I like that. Wild art in America. Apparently, sometimes, we do that pretty good around here.

My next book

Fall's most  feverishly anticipated new book is a Steampunk Mystery. I'm not sure of its title. Perhaps it is just called Steampunk Mystery.

Eighteen years in the future nanotech and advanced AI have brought on the robotics revolution. The world has quickly become addicted to the remarkable benefits of these dazzling machines that are making life more leisurely and luxurious for nearly everyone. "We're all landed gentry now" reads one ubiquitous advertisement. But programmer Lucy Baker has become increasingly aware that people like herself, who design the brains of these amazing machines, know less and less how their creations do the things they do. When her partner at a small, experimental robotics design lab is murdered in an astonishingly perfect crime, the facts point only to Lucy as the culprit, and she suspects that the line between AI and true creative intelligence may have been crossed in the worst way. Ill equipped to solve such a perfect crime with her meager little gray cells Lucy endeavors to create, while on the run, the greatest (and first) robot detective to solve it for her, and, hopefully, to save her life.

With limited access to her usual tools and options Lucy attempts to model her detective on the best one she can find on short notice, the fictional M. Hercule Poirot.

Under pressure and in hiding, Lucy begins creating what she thinks is her masterpiece, a work of Steampunk genius, created from desperation and from the deep, interior structures of Agatha Christie novels. Every test and diagnostic of her robot Poirot is off the charts and suggests a breakthrough in AI design. But when she initiates the irreversible start up sequence, instead of Poirot, she gets a bland, colorless, nothing.

And then she remembers to add the mustache.


Poirot is back!

Steampunk Mystery

22 City International Author Tour

Major Cities Promotional Print, Television, and Internet Campaign

"Steampunk Poirot" Tie-In Museum Exhibit Los Angeles, New York, St. Louis Contemporaries

Oprah Special Feature Book

Pre Selected Edgar Award Winner

Original Illustrations by Lucien Freud, Bansky, Cindy Sherman, Gerhard Richter, and Zeng Fanzhi

Also Possibly Available as an E-Book

What is a...?

What is a...?

 The library version.

What is a clerk?

A person to tell you why it is impossible for them to do what you want.

What is a librarian?

A person with a lot of free time who is content not to fill it.

What is a manager?

A person who is never around when you need them and always around when you don't.

What is a library?

A place where people of all walks of life, all economic levels, races, cultures and nationalities, philosophies, religions and persuasions come together in a public place and use the Internet.

Chaotic and Lawful

One of the many internal laws I have for this blog is that we never, ever discuss video games here. However, as the theme of today's post is the necessity of lawbreaking we will, appropriately, begin with a discussion of video games. But if you have no interest in video games you will not have to suffer through too much of it. Just grab a nearby railing or other solid, attached object (well, no, you will need a firmer grip than that), and I will talk you through it all as quickly as possible.

In the old style, grand adventure in some dark fantasy land computer game (derived from tabletop games like Dungeons and Dragons), there was an important element involving what kind of character you wanted to play as. This element was usually defined as your alignment. You had to decide whether you wanted to be a good or evil or neutral sort of person (or elf, or whatever), but your chosen morality was also divided along another line. You had to decide whether you wanted to be chaotic good, or lawful good, chaotic evil, or lawful evil.

Now forget gaming. Let's just talk about life. Let's talk about chaotic and lawful in the real world. I suppose if these two words smack of anything, lawful tends to skew towards good, and chaotic towards evil, but the interesting thing about chaotic and lawful is that they don't work that way at all.

These are interesting words, and an interesting way of looking at morality.

Lawful is not more good than chaotic. Lawful, that is, being lawful, is actually a moral limiter. The act of being lawful will always limit the extent to which you can be good, and it will also limit the extent to which you can be bad. It is limited by the goodness or the evil of a law, and thus puts your morality partly at the mercy of those people who write the laws and at the mercy of the moral quality of the law. The world of law can as easily force you into being better as it can force you into being worse. On the other hand, to be chaotic leaves your morality entirely at the mercy of your own vision, honor, and wisdom. Endless goodness and utter depravity are in your hands.

In those video games I always play as chaotic good. Swing for the fences I say.

Life, you may be surprised to find out, is more complicated than video games. I still gravitate towards chaotic good when I can, but there is a vast array of tiny laws, at large in the world and in the microcosm of my workplace, that I adhere to so that I can avoid trouble. Working at a library I might break one of our laws and renew your book a third time because you are in a hospital because you just lost your leg (chaotic good), but I might also ignore a completely screwed up front desk situation because I am assigned to be somewhere else and don't want an evil eye from a manager (lawful evil).

So really, when we are talking about being lawful in conjunction with being good or evil, with any real moral autonomy at all, we are talking about how we spin those laws, when we can, what laws we fall in line with, and whether we honor the good spirit or bad spirit of any given law. Laws are immensely interpretable, and it is with that interpretation that we can affect our virtue.

Meanwhile with being chaotic we have a free range to try for good or evil purely as we see fit. What we contend with here tends to be the consequences of our actions. It has always been my understanding that the story of Jesus is much concerned with this. If you want to swing for the fences in pursuit of goodness, morally, expect to get nailed to a cross. And when you look around you as you're dying you will find at least some of your company to be those who went deep into wickedness instead.

So what then do I advise?

That's what you come here for, advice, right?

I won't let you down.

Here is my advice.

Be careful out there.

Tiny houses

At the library I work at we have all sorts of books related to tiny houses. The tiny house movement was not just a response to America's super sizing culture, but it was also a response to our persistent cultural assumptions that everyone is fabulously wealthy, has their own personal architect, and wouldn't think twice about having to have a fleet of drivable floor cleaners and a team of maids to operate them. But not only can not everyone afford a one million square foot home, but many people, it turns out, actually prefer not having to choose amongst 20 bathrooms when they just want to take a quick pee.

As positive as this movement might be, the choice of the term "tiny" can be quite extreme in what it allows for. I have seen house designs, even pictures of actual houses that presumably people somehow manage to live in, that are under 10,000 square feet. Not having to choose amongst 20 bathrooms is one thing, but what does a person in a tiny house do when all four of their bathrooms are occupied and yet they have to go? Living more modestly and consciously and green and tiny is great and noble, but we are modern people accustomed to certain standards, certain comforts of personal space. We are not equipped to roll back the clock a hundred years to where we have only a few personal rooms per household member and most of the house staff is forced to live off premises. Luckily, as I peruse the literature, I find many of these tiny houses do not take things to such an extreme. And also fortunately I am a man of modest means who gets by on less than a million a year (it is possible!) and who also lives in a tiny house. Therefore I am here to give you some insight on how one can make it work.


1. Guest Rooms

Yes, our tiny house has just two guest rooms, and if we are entertaining there is quite a tussle for the one with the balcony overlooking the rose garden. Does all this make us less popular among our set? On the contrary. I think people take us less for granted and are more careful in the arrangement of their visits. Plus it makes it much easier to leverage out the long term unwanted guests. Furthermore it seems to keep down the number of mysterious drawing room murders that big crowds so attract. While it is engaging enough to see a brilliant detective at work, when it starts happening like clockwork every Christmas it all gets a bit tiresome.

2. Bathrooms

We don't discuss bathrooms, but, oh, fine! Six is enough. I know you will argue, but done properly and with unstinting thoroughness, six is enough. Please consider the ecology and global warming and all that stuff!

3. The Library

You know me well enough to understand that here I have not made any great sacrifices. A great  library with all the bells and whistles and first editions is the cultural soul of the home. Nevertheless combining the Observatory with the Library was a natural choice and greatly reduced our tiny home's footprint.

4. The Kitchens

Perhaps you will think me mad to say we have but the two kitchens. But then we just have Cook and Cook's assistant. With so many wonderful restaurants in our city we have been able to cut all the way to the bone here. These are different times. Why, my man Thomas rather fancies himself a bit of a study with the frittata and never minds if we ask for one in the middle of the night. This is not the Gentleman's Gentleman of my father's day and I think we are all the better for it. Nevertheless I recognize the advantages of city living, and my tiny house in the country does have a more flexible three kitchens.

5. Recreation

Laugh all you like at my two indoor paddle tennis courts, but I argue that the smaller, quicker game, a reduced version of tennis, is more engaging anyway, and easier to grow old with. Likewise the lack of an indoor Olympic Size pool. One can only swim in one lane at a time and I love the simplicity of my lap pool. Plus it makes for a clear separation from our recreational pool in the atrium. All this economy allowed for that charming little boat ride I put in off the recreational pool while still keeping the whole collection of features to a fraction the size of your average house.

6. The Studies

One for me, one for my wife, and a guest study. I somewhat regret we didn't go even more modest on this as guests rarely use the guest study, but my man Thomas quite enjoys making use of the guest study so fortunately it has not gone to waste. I know a lot of you are wondering how I get by on just the one study, but honestly, if I need a change my office is good enough, and I spend most of my time in my tinkering room (The Lab) anyway.


Of course, this isn't everything, but it gives one an idea on how to make these tiny homes work. Not all of us have the means or inclination for The Estate or The Manor House, but that doesn't mean we can't live simple, decent, and intentional lives that are also a bit more luxurious than one might think is possible. I'm not saying this humbleness is required to be a good person, but, if one has the inclination one may just find a little goodness pays some surprising dividends in happiness.

Faster than seven bikes

Living, as I do, a fairytale life, momentous events happen to me in sevens. For instance, I once broke my library's all time record by registering seven new library cards in one blow. This was a very famous event locally, if we can define "locally" as "within 18 inches of me". I also wrote about this event here on my blog, so, um, the Internet knows.

Well, it happened again. No, not seven more library cards. This momentous event happened while I was bicycling. 

I passed seven bicyclists all at once!

I know that for the vast array of cyclists out there, passing other people on bikes is part of what happens on bikes, no more notable than the rotation of tires, or passing trees. But for me, with my plodding, forever getting up to speed, oxygen deprived pedaling, on one of the 600 pound, three speed city rental "Nice Ride" bikes, for me passing joggers has counted as a notable, signal event. Passing an actual single bicyclist, on the rare occasions it actually happens, well, it makes me feel like I'm really getting somewhere.

So this last Tuesday, when, just after zipping onto the river bike path with my fresh legs, I flew past one person who seemed to be having problems with their chain, swerved around a group of three who were chatting, oblivious of the trail traffic around them, slipped by a couple trying to decide where they meant to go, and then, emboldened to a flurry of activity, at the very limits of my efforts, overtook an old man laboring along on his rusty 1970s ten speed, I knew I had achieved something special, something that may never happen to me again. I had passed seven in one blow!

A few of them were even riding their bikes at the time.

Potential

In my youth, which I think of running murkily from somewhere around age ten to well into my twenties, I was quite often informed that I was not living up to my potential. It was a common refrain in my school years, and had its strong echoes in my home and about town too. 

Then, suddenly, like, 30 years later, today as a matter of fact, I was driving home at night, and I realized with absolute clarity that I was living up to my potential. This is it! I have finally made it to my potential! 

Well, wow, it was a long haul, and I think there were a lot of times when I really didn't think I would make it, but here I am.

So, then, this is my potential.

Nice. I like all the natural materials.

So, uh, where are all those people who said I wasn't living up to my potential? 

The liars.

I am here. But they, faithless, have scattered, unenlightened, to the wind .

How to find a library book

Because public libraries are so well organized, straight forward, and easy to understand it hardly seems necessary to create a guide for you on how to find a library book. The filing system at my library is so simple that small children are selecting books within their first few minutes in the children's room, and new employee trainees are often turned loose with a cart full of books to be shelved under the assumption that they'll figure it out as they go.

Nevertheless, in my unending quest to fully inform you about my library's vast biodiversity, I feel it would be remiss of me to not include a basic tutorial on how to locate the item you want on our shelves. If, as I go along, you are constantly muttering "Duh, obviously." I can only beg your indulgence. Bear with all this simple stuff and you may glean a few extra tips on finding what you want. But, yes, it's all pretty ridiculously simple for the most part.

Here we go.

If you want a book it will be shelved upstairs under the author's last name. You need only know whether it is a regular fiction book, mystery fiction, romance, sci fi, teen, juvy, kid's picture book, kid's reader, large type fiction, large type mystery, large type romance, large type teens, large type kids, adult books on CDs, if you prefer to listen to your books, teen books on CD, and juvenile books on CD, each of which has it's own section. Did I mention western fiction. There are also western fiction and large type western fiction sections.  Just go to any of those 18 sections and look under the author's last name. Unless it is a collection of short stories, which will sometimes be by title instead of name, but mixed in with the ones filed by authors' names. This all will hold true unless the book is less than six months old. Those will be on one of the downstairs cubes, in no particular order, but according to whether it is a mystery, romance, fiction, teens or sci fi book. Though if it's really new and popular, which it probably is since you want it, it will be a rental book, which means you have to pay for it daily. Those are kept on their own cube. Of course, the book you want may not be in any of these places because it might be a "Good book you might have missed" or a "Mystery in the Stacks" or some other temporarily featured collection or maybe just on the end shelves to sort of pique your interest. So keep your eyes open as you are looking for your book because it may just be trying to catch your eye from some entirely random place in the library. If your book was recently returned it may still be on a cart in the back room, but you can't go back there. We may or may not be able to track it down depending on who we are and when it came in. Also some of the sci fi, teens, and juvenile books are in series, all of which have their own sections, so your book could be there, usually under the author, but sometimes under the name of the series. Of course, all this only applies to a portion of our books. If you are looking for a book that is not regular fiction, mystery fiction, romance fiction, western fiction, etc., you will not find it alphabetically under the authors last name, but instead you will will find it by a long stream of numbers punctuated with occasional periods and letters. Don't worry if one of these number combinations runs on to 16 or 17 digits as the first six or seven of them will usually get you to the right place, except, of course, when it doesn't, at which point you'll need to get very precise and detailed in your searching. These books with the long numbers are all in order numerically and alphabetically in the non fiction section, except the juvenile non fiction has its own section, and the easy non fiction has its own section, and the large type non fiction has its own section. The graphic novels non fiction has its own section too, which is in the middle of the fiction graphic novels for adults section, which I should have mentioned earlier, but can't really go into now because this explanation could start to get complicated. I'd rather continue to keep it simple. If you can't find your non fiction book it might be new, in which case it is on a cube, or it could be in a featured collection, like gardening, for instance, or it could be over sized, which, as you probably know, is at the end of all the non fiction and then starts its own section. You will be happy to know that the teen's non fiction is shelved mixed in with the adults, so you can just ignore the YA (that means young adult), but you can't ignore if the book is a reference book, because that has its own section. Also, if the non fiction book is about parenting it will have its own section in the children's room.

If you are wanting magazines, newspapers, movies, books with toys, collections of books for book groups, music CDs, contraptions to test how much electricity your appliance uses, video games, language instruction sets, or story tubs, each of those has their own subsets of organizational systems that you will find immensely intuitive and wildly diverse and incredibly easy to find things in. If you thought it was mere child's play to find your book, it is even simpler to find a DVD for instance. These are in open racks organized by the first letter of the title, ignoring The, A, and An. If you are not finding the one you want it's probably on the overflow shelves underneath, or alphabetically out of order, or you just missed it because there can be hundreds of them for any given letter, or it is only available as a rental, which is in a section with its own shelves, or it is a TV show, those are filed separately in a different area, or it is a non fiction DVD and so filed according to that number thing we talked about earlier, but only roughly by that number, and also with overflow shelves underneath, so look there too.

Naturally this is just the basics, and obvious to anyone who walks into our library, but it should be more than enough for you to find anything you need.

Still can't find it? 

Shall I run through it again?

One of those buddhist stories

Sometimes it is meditative and peaceful when I am working on the automated check in machine. This happens usually when the work flow is slow. I am a little tired but not cranky, the lights are low, few people are around. Just me and the machine in a space outside of time. We are pals, much in the fashion of Lennie and George from Of Mice and Men. I only pray that the machine never accidentally kills one of my co-workers and it falls to me to unplug it forever, murmuring as I do it about the dream library we plan to open on our own one day.

Most of my time on the machine today was sort of peaceful like that, but, rather abruptly, the gears shifted. People started returning tons of materials. The bins that the books empty into all began to fill up at the same time, causing a flurry of alarms to sound. The exception bin started to fill with empty DVD cases and items from distant library systems. Worst of all I could hardly turn my back for a second before some raggedy paperback jammed in the rollers on the line, causing the machine to back up into a vast, ungainly blockade of churning library materials. All this mishegas put me increasingly out of sorts, and after ten minutes of frantic activity I was fully engaged in one of my private high energy rages. I speed emptied another bin into boxes only to hurry back to the machine and find it chewing on a big yellow paperback. Furiously and feverishly I grabbed our reacher grabber tool, hopped on the stool, leaned over the machine, and ripped the book out of the chewing rollers. I flung the book away to the ground in irritation, pique, and urgency in order to clear the line and get things back in running order.

Emergency number 27 over, I walked over to pick up the book that I'd hurled away in a fury.

Buddhism for Dummies

I put it back on the machine. 

Om.

Ready at desk

Sometimes lately when I am at the front desk I like to stand there, looking alertly out upon the library, with a pleasant, welcoming smile on my face. When people come to me, as they do, for help, I help them, and then I return to the alert, welcoming posture.

I don't do it much, but when I do it makes me feel very daring.

Perhaps you are wondering why it makes me feel daring. Perhaps you have an inkling that this is the absolute best mien for any clerk at any service desk. Perhaps you suspect that this is exactly how one should be between patrons.

You would be right. 

And yet, almost no one likes it. Almost no one approves when I idly (but alertly) stand facing the library, ready to be of assistance. So few people really like it that I only do it when I'm feeling like a bit of a rascal.

My managers don't like it because I am not getting anything extra done. There's always a lot of extra to get done.

My co-workers don't like it because either I am not getting anything extra done, or, more likely, because I am not entertaining them. The hours get pretty long.

Patrons who don't need help don't like it because it looks like their tax dollars are going to waste. They may be in the library looking for a job, or because they have nowhere to go and there I stand, just smiling and raking in their tax dollars.

And even I don't like it because I get bored. I get bored and restless. I could be entertaining myself with reading, writing, surfing the Internet, chatting with my co-workers, or getting a few library things taken care of. But instead I am all there. It is hard to be all there. If it were easy to be all there, we would all be the Buddha.

The fact is that standing there all pleasant and ready for business doesn't look so good. It looks unmotivated, unbusy, slackerish. If I feverishly look up exotic coffees on the Internet, listen to my co-worker tell me about flea market finds, or look through a book before putting it on a cart in order, I am being completely non productive, but I look a great deal like I might be being very productive. I look like I am super busy and engaged.

Just look at this dynamic library with the workers all flapping around! That is some place! How do they keep up?

So naturally nobody likes it when I just stand there, openhearted, for the next person who needs help. Nobody! Well, nobody but the people who need help, who, I sometimes madly dare to believe, are the people I am standing there for in the first place.

How to get a library card

I know that the thought of getting a library card is almost overwhelming to most people. I too would be profoundly intimidated by it if I didn't actually live in a library. But using my empathy, along with my deep knowledge of library processes and culture, I am here to guide you through this difficult life passage.

Let us begin with:

1. Do you need a library card?

Why go through the exacting and painful procedure of library card acquisition if you don't even need a library card? Please answer the following questions:

     A. Do you have 50 million dollars and a squeamishness about the hoi polloi?

     B. Can you read?

If you answered yes to A. I suggest using Amazon et al for your library related needs, but it would be nice if you dashed off a check for a hundred thousand dollars to your local Friends of the Library just to show you're not a small person.

If you answered no to B. I am wondering...  how?

Other than these, yes, you need a library card. Why? A properly used library card has an estimated annual retail value of $473.89. And yet it costs nothing. Nothing! You are willing to drive across town to save eleven cents on a can of artichoke hearts. You are willing to virtually enslave third world workers for a t-shirt that costs a dollar less. Get the library card.

2. The equipment you need to bring to get your library card.

Don't panic. I am going to break down the required equipment into its most basic elements. You need bring with you merely the few items on this small, very clear list, and you are almost home free.

     A. Pants or skirt or dress or shorts. Any one of these will do. But, and here perhaps is the tricky part, you need to be wearing them.

     B. A top. See above. Men can if necessary omit item B., but that seems unfair.

Please note that I have yet to see a library with the posted sign: "No shoes, no shirt, no service."

     C. Picture I.D. The rules on this one are loose. You are not entering a foreign country. A seven year old High School I.D. will work. A group picture of your recreational softball team with the players labeled will work. A driver's license will work. A good tattoo of yourself will probably work, but it must include your full name.

Please note that if your picture I.D. includes your current address you are done here. Done. That is all you need! If you are going "Damn, I missed it. I just have the softball team thing", do not yet despair. You need only come up with one more item.

     D. A verification of your current address. Yes, this will have to be on some kind of paper. It will have your name and the address of where you sleep at least most nights. That's all we mean! Do you get mail? Bring a piece of mail. No mail? Send yourself a postcard. Write "Dear Self, I sure wish I had a library card! Love, me." Bring it in with your pants and stuff and we're almost done here.

Yes. We are talking about just four items. If you are homeless it can be a bit dodgy, and we can discuss that elsewhere. If there is no human way for you to get mail take any discarded piece of mail from anywhere, write your name and address on a bit of paper, and glue it over whatever name and address was on there. Worried about the ethics on that? Is it your real address? Then we are done. Good enough. No questions asked.

3. You have all the stuff. Now what?

You are almost home free.

     A. Go to whatever service desk you see in the library. Say "I would like a library card." Answer their questions and give them the stuff they ask for. You have fulfilled your responsibilities and now they must come through. They will.

If you are panicking about these "questions"  let me reassure you the questions are not like:

          1. When was Tolstoy's first novel published?
          2. Who won the Nobel Prize in 1962?
          3. Can you generally describe what is meant by "Symbolist Poetry"?  Please include five notable symbolist poets in your explanation?

No. The questions you are likely to be asked include things like the following:

          1. What is your birth date?
          2. What is your phone number?
          3. How are you doing today?

Please note that it is okay to say "Fine." to question three even if it is not true.

4. Sign your library card. That's it.

You mean, that's it?

Yep. You will have a library card to do with as you will. That's it.

Garrison at the fair

I don't know him. But he walks among us. I run into him occasionally. He knows me even less than I know him so we have nothing to say. But he is Garrison Keillor, Pulitzer Prize winner, a great man of letters. So I look. I watch. Celebrities, man. Anything they do will be a story. How strange.

They did nothing? Interesting. What was that like?

I am always surprised by my fellow Minnesotans' french disaffection. Garrison Keillor? "Eh." They say. "I'm not a fan."

I don't care if you're not a fan. He has been telling The World who you are for 40 years. Forty years! Yes, there are teams of geniuses telling the world who New York City is, but Minnesota? Think of it. No one in Georgia, or Wisconsin, or Arizona, or Vermont has that kind of voice. No one is around to tell the world who they are. But we are spoken. We have Garrison Keillor! 

Ah, maybe that's part of the problem. We're not so sure we want to be talked about. Easy for me, a transplant of just 23 years.

There have been others. Charles Schultz? The Peanuts is Minnesota, but you sort of have to know, it is a secret knowledge. And he was maybe too great anyway, and a man who moved away forever. Bob Dylan? No, he tells the world what the world is. He never belonged to us. Garrison Keillor is a great artist, and he is just our size.

There I am at The State Fair, The Great Minnesota Get Together. Yes it is. Garrison Keillor hosted his show at the bandstand on Friday night, thousands in the stands, millions still listening across the world on radio. But it is now Sunday afternoon, warm, almost hot, threatening rain, but relenting. Two hundred thousand people are there on that day. My wife and I sit on a low wall, watching, eating. Here comes Garrison Keillor. Like an apparition. It might as well be Snoopy walking through, no, not someone dressed as Snoopy, Snoopy. Or how about a young Judy Garland, the Prince of Purple Rain?

Earlier in the day we saw the State Fair Mascots (gophers called Fairchild and Fairborne). Symbols. This was the real deal. All legend on foot, Sunday at The Minnesota State Fair. A tall old man stooped enough to no longer be very tall. He is wearing a tan, linen suit. It is wrinkled. He moves slowly and deliberately. He is accompanied by a young woman who seems patient. He is odd and stately. They hardly seem to be going anywhere, just moving through. Sitting on our wall he is merely the hundredth interesting person to look at, but he is also Garrison Keillor. Garrison Keillor. In the great mass of the fair he is spotted by someone other than us. A man approaches him, puts his arm across Mr. Keillor's shoulders and has his picture taken. Garrison Keillor is gracious in it, though faintly pained if you look closely. I look closely.

The corner of Dan Patch Avenue and Underwood Street. You may have never heard of them. They are another people thronged intersection in the Minnesota State Fair. We sit on a wall at what is the absolute heart and soul center of Minnesota for those few moments that Garrison Keillor is there. How sweet to be at the center of something.

And slowly, he moves on. We are finished eating. We have seen the excellent seed art display. We sat at the center of Minnesota watching our modern Paul Bunyan in his later years. Anything else we could venture now would only be anti climax. It is time to leave the fair. We start our long walk to the car. Summer is over.

Butterfly whisperer

As you may know, from one of my jokes here, the children's room at my library has an aquarium full of caterpillars during the summer. The caterpillars eat milkweed, which is a food we humans cannot eat, and then they crawl along the ceiling of the aquarium until they are ready. They set up to transform. For a bit more than a week they hang there, and then, when they feel that all the light and earth and heavens and waters and creatures have properly been created, they emerge. It's a fabulous story if you've never heard it, but you have heard it. They come out as butterflies. They are lovely. They are so lovely that their very name, butter, flies, which should be faintly disgusting, becomes, by the metamorphosis of the merging, butterflies, dazzling, magical, beautiful.

The butterflies, shortly after their debut as such, have to be taken out of the aquarium and set free in the children's garden. The children's librarians, most of them very brave, do this regularly. They are not so much children's librarians as they are butterfly cowboys. Would you like to know where the Dr. Seuss books are, or you want to play the Wii, or you need pictures of flags, or you need a funny book about princesses? Ah, go to the children's room and talk to one of the butterfly cowboys.

One day, as I often do, I was mooning over the caterpillars and butterflies. One caterpillar was searching the roof for a place to hang. He could not decide. Poke, search, move on. The one butterfly in there was drying her new wings.

"Would you like to release the butterfly later this afternoon?" one of the butterfly cowboys asked me.

"Yes." I answered.

If an insect touches me I tend to brush it off in a startling paroxysm of violent twitching. I do not normally invite intimacies with insects. I was also very afraid of crushing the butterfly, and too I was afraid of loosing it disastrously inside the library. But "Yes." alone seemed all of the choices for my answer.

I nervously awaited my appointed time.

I made clear my anxiousness. Well, I made my anxiousness as clear as one who everyone thinks is joking can make it. I was told one reassuring thing. Butterflies are tough. Who knew? I mean, besides the butterfly cowboys.

I arrived for the butterfly release. I was alarmed that this was a somewhat ceremonial event and many people had gathered. Dazed I plunged my hand into the aquarium. My immediate nightmare that I would be hopelessly unable to grab the butterfly was dispelled as the butterfly went instantly and alertly into my hand. Butterflies are like cats!

I cupped my second hand over the butterfly to try and make a soft, light filled room. The butterfly calmly and affectionately explored my hand. Me and a train of people went out to the children's garden. I walked to the nearest flower, just in case the butterfly wanted a flower. I opened my hands. The butterfly flew. Everyone applauded.

Two days later I was walking through my neighborhood, making my way towards work. Passing some lavender I reached, as I do, to collect some to smell. As I did a butterfly, my monarch butterfly, or, so much more likely, one like it, flew toward me. It danced in the air, and then it flew on. I did not do much in that brief encounter beyond looking on delightedly. But I tell you this: I felt such warmth towards that creature, such unmitigated and unhesitating warmth, such as I have never felt, aye a thousand times more than I have ever felt, towards any of its kind in the whole of my life.