The Clerk Manifesto

Monday, January 19, 2015

Comments

Just in case you don't get to all the comments on my blog, there was quite an active discussion on a recent post. I smashed my "most comments in a blog post" record! The swear word referred to in the first comment is concerning my use of the word ***, as in * Ancient Mariner. The ***** stands for fucking which I will not write here because I only swear once every 100 blog posts.

35 comments:

Feldenstein CalypsoJanuary 14, 2015 at 11:10 AM

We only use swear words once out of every 100 blog posts, so today is a special occasion!
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Feldenstein CalypsoJanuary 14, 2015 at 11:13 AM

I only add 3 of my own comments to my blog posts once every 100 posts, so today is a special occasion!
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Feldenstein CalypsoJanuary 14, 2015 at 11:20 AM

This is all very interesting, but does anyone read the comments down here?
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Feldenstein CalypsoJanuary 14, 2015 at 11:32 AM

Just as a small point of interest, I am fast approaching my all time record for most comments on a single post!
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Bob DylanJanuary 14, 2015 at 12:26 PM

Hey, good work on all the comments. I know what it's like- I'm getting a lot of reaction to my upcoming album of Frank Sinatra songs.
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CaravaggioJanuary 14, 2015 at 2:19 PM

Hey, is that really Bob Dylan?

And congratulations on all the comments, all from different people, almost none of whom are actually you!
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Sunday, January 18, 2015

I like to complain as much as the next person, especially if the next person is, like, a huge complainer. But it is hard to find much purchase when I want to complain about my blog. I think this has to do with my super non-professional status. Everything I do here is just so glaringly optional. If I'm going to be carrying on about the difficulties of the brutal seven day a week writing deadline I'm on, I'm very aware of that sharp voice that will be there to shrug, and narrow its eyes, and say "So write a post every three days then." In the end I just don't have much to say back to that. "Oh, right, yes, Mr. smart guy, but then my blog will only be like, um, an every, um, three days blog, I guess."

Not that that sharp voice there isn't a bit of a jerk, because he totally is.

Professionally, what I am paid for is my job as a library clerk. And if I complain bitterly about having to work most days of the week at the library, or I complain about all the time it takes, or the hierarchy, or how boring it can occasionally be, there might still be a voice to say "So, don't do it. No one is making you." But I have plenty of answers to that: I have to eat. I need money. I have to make a living!

I suppose there are all kinds of clever, complicated ways to approach life in order to make an end run around the bulk assertiveness of money: pigs in the backyard, creative acquaintances with dumpsters, crafty engagements with craigslist, etc., but none of them are likely to improve my quality of life in any real way, nor do I seem terribly suited to them. Likewise there are, theoretically, all these spiffing jobs out there that, if I were just an amazing enough person, I could do in order to be super fulfilled in my work life. If I were to believe all the magazines and books that come through my library, and all the social media I'm always crashing into on the Internet, some 80 percent of everyone is doing incredibly valuable, engaging, fun, well-compensated work. The great jobs are out there. Go get them.

Many years ago I read a great book by Studs Terkel, called Working. It's basically people's accounts of their jobs and how those jobs are for them, how they feel about their jobs. I hope I don't get this foggy memory of the book too wrong, but the way I remember it there were like two people in the whole fat book who were just totally engaged by and thrilled with their jobs. The other two hundred emphatically weren't. I wonder how much has changed in the 40 or so years since that book came out. I don't know. I hope it's better for people. Mostly I suspect that feelings are pretty similar underneath, but everyone is selling themselves so hard these days, everyone is self marketing so passionately that it might be harder to get down to it.

What? You're more interested in my personal experience than my idle speculation? Okay. My job is a cruel grind and a modest pleasure. Good and bad and it puts me in the 99%.

My blog? Oh, that's not a job. It's more like a little fire.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

Suspects

One of my oldest library jokes, which probably isn't really a joke, says that library patrons will no longer be known by the antiquated term "patrons", rather they will be known from now on, to better reflect on their role in our library system, as "suspects". This is hard to count as a joke not because it isn't hilarious. It is. It's very hilarious. But rather because it is so functionally true.

Most of us here at this library are pretty nice and at least fairly good at our jobs. Only my crappy co-workers are out at the front desks getting all cagey and begrudging with the people they're helping. Some of us even really like the public. But behind the scenes, in private co-worker conversations, in spontaneous back room discussions, in glancing drive by comments, patrons are regarded with a grave suspicion. The stories about them tend to be dark, or outraged, irritated or wounded. I would hazard a guess that no more than five percent of the people who come to the library are any kind of trouble at all, but 95 percent of the discussion will be about that five percent.

It's easy for me to joke about because I don't much share this tendency. I'm not above loathing an occasional patron, but I tend to find the enormous swath of them all sort of dear and heartbreaking. And I think, as much as we can, we should give them what they want. We are the public library. They are the public.

So I find, on most issues that I have a say in, and ever so many I don't, really, I am more on the side of the patron. And often enough, when I am the instigator on some small new addition to our library, it involves something I think the patrons might like.

For instance, our counter of office supplies.

For years and years if a library visitor needed a stapler or scissors or pen or paperclip or envelope they'd have to come to the desk and borrow one. I proposed a little office supply area on a counter near the copier, one with all of the above tools and a few more besides. It was low profile enough to win approval without too much fuss, and I set it up. It went okay. And though I think on the whole my co-workers liked it, perhaps mostly because they no longer had to hand over the stapler six times a day to the same guy, I also heard a lot of suspicion. There was a good deal of worry that everything would just sort of disappear.

"Are we really going to trust the patrons with scissors, a stapler?"

I guess so. We did. We wrote on everything we could to identify it as property of the library and, about a year ago, put it all just out there. Unsupervised. Chaos.

Things seemed to go pretty well, and I haven't much thought about it lately. Until today. Today was a scissors census.

We usually have about seven pairs of scissors around for our diverse staff. Over time the scissors scatter and I have to hunt them down in the far corners of the library. But today I looked everywhere in the library, and I could not find any more of these scissors. They were gone! Six pairs of staff scissors were lost for good, all now needing to be replaced. They weren't scattered. We are down to only one pair.

Of course, that's not counting the patrons' pair of scissors. It is in fine condition. Sitting in it's accustomed place, a year later, along with all it's friends; the stapler, the staple remover, the highlighter, and so on. For them, the wild and unscrupulous patrons, I have not had to replace a single thing.

Friday, January 16, 2015

Well adapted

Another sub zero day for my morning walk. I'm no hero, no tough guy, no arctic explorer. I just have to get somewhere that's 3.5 miles away. I have no better way to do that than walking. I put on my endless layers of clothes until I am unbearably hot, and I step outside. It is minus 7, but I can't tell. It doesn't feel so cold to me. Maybe it's because it's not windy, really there's just a light breeze, and sun. I crunch along the brittle snow. Did you know that here in Minnesota we have over a thousand adjectives we can use to describe snow? Some of those adjectives don't make a huge amount of sense, like "juicy snow", some run to redundancy, like "cold snow", but still, over a thousand adjectives is a lot and goes to show how concerned we are about the snow. We talk about little else, and why would we? Snow expresses everything about us.

I walk through my neighborhood, breath steaming lightly. The world is white and grey/brown. All those sprawling, bare trees. The streets are lightly sprinkled with crows, cats, lost gloves. About half way to my destination (my car) I realize that I am not getting colder. No, it is minus 7 and I am actually sweltering. I spend too much time under the delusion that I couldn't possibly remove any of my clothes in such weather, but once it's clear to me that I can, I start peeling layers. My coat comes off. I tie it around my waist. One of my hats must be folded higher up. One comes off. As I cross the mighty Mississippi I expect bitter winds on the bridge, the need to add layers. But no, the icy winds are merely refreshing. My mittens, warm and wet, have to come off. Nearly at my car, my scarf comes off, radiating heat, and my final hat. I am now dressed for a pleasant fall afternoon. It is no act of hardiness, no hubris, no showing off. I am steaming. I am comfortable. The battle is over.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

The muse

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

When drinking too much lemonade gives you diabetes, make preserved lemons instead.

When preserved lemons give you canker sores, make Limoncello.

When you become an alcoholic from all the Limoncello, make lemonade again, but don't drink it.

When you have tons of lemonade you cannot drink start a small business selling your artisanal, organic lemonade in small batches at farmer's markets and local co-ops.

When the money starts rolling in from your lemonade company buy nice things and form meaningful relationships.

When your successful business falls apart because life is no longer just gives you lemons, and you have to actually pay for them, declare bankruptcy, have a nervous breakdown, and start drinking again.

Ah, but...

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Lore

It sneaks up on you. Only moments ago I was a dashing young library clerk artist, doing interesting things about town, working part time at a library. Then one day I woke up to find I was Old Man Library himself.

"I remember you." The patrons say. "You were here when I was a kid."

Yes, yes I was. Oh, the things I could tell you. In fact, I am going to tell you them now. All of them. Every single one! I am the fucking Ancient Mariner.

It's all the this lore. When you work someplace a long time you collect so much lore you can no longer contain it. It starts spilling out of you. There is no wrong or right, funny or sad, interesting or tedious. Lore just crams into you and it no longer fits. If the shelves are too full then the books will start falling out. And if one book falls it can trigger a cascade. And so it is with me and all this lore. No one is safe, certainly not the youngster co-workers who've been here for a mere two or eight or twelve years (whatever, they are all new), nor the patrons, nor the random people one meets around town. The lore spills. The lore has to come out. There is no stopping it!

Not so terribly long ago all the library staff here were entirely exempt from all late fines.

There was a round, short, bald man who used to do all the shelving in the kid's room. He was quiet and reserved and just a bit grumpy. Once he went into the break room and said to two of his longtime co-workers, to whom he had never said a cross word "What are you two bimbos talking about?"

An old timer once told me, at some long forgotten retirement party, that our original building was, at one point, 70 or 80 years ago, a pub, and that they could sometimes catch the smell of beer coming from the floor drains in the basement.

We once had no check out limit whatsoever, and the first one we created in the computer age was 500, implemented entirely to deal with the deranged, obsessive check outs of one single patron. For months after the new rule she had a constantly rotating collection of 500 items out until she made one mistake returning them late. This broke her financially, and she never returned to the library again.

We used to have small boating parties on the little wetlands pond out in the old break room's back yard.

The library adopted a hamster that was put through our book return. He was called Dewey and would sometimes run around the Circulation desk in a little hamster ball.

Patrons used to bitterly complain about checking out videos that hadn't been rewound! The worst of these people would then heatedly tell us that they did not rewind their videos in protest.

At least five couples I know of met working at our library and later married, all of them still together, but not a single one of these romances started in this century.

Fascinating, banal, funny, pointless, meandering, odd, creaky, empty and appealing stories. It doesn't matter! They must be spoken. They are Old Man Library stories. Lore. Lo, a commandment. I gave you eight of them here. Do you think that will hold me?

Ha!

As soon as I finish this up I'll go wandering. A curse is laid upon me. There must be some prospective listeners around. Everyone is a prospective listener. The shelves are full, the shelves are always full.

Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Charlie hustle

I am never, ever, ever late to my job.

Well, maybe once I was a little late.

Wait, let's skip ahead to the full confession. I am actually, realistically, late a full 50 percent of the time. On the other hand I am early 20 percent of the time. Also I am on time 30 percent of the time. But, and this is important, I am late leaving work 90 percent of the time. I never leave early. The way all this adds up, as far as I can tell, is that the library I work at owes me 60 percent of... something.

Something.

I can never tell exactly what the library owes me 60 percent of, so whenever I get a chance I sneak a paperclip into my pocket. You know, just to be safe. The accounts must be balanced!

No, I'm just kidding, my paperclip usage is scrupulously ethical. And I wish I'd stop kidding because it's making it very hard for me to get anywhere in this blog post. But I'm not kidding about the accounts being balanced. It's just that time cannot be balanced by any number of stolen office supplies. As far as the structure of my union job and general cultural mores go the possible compensations of money and goods are entirely off the table.

This leaves only time. Time is the great compensator.

But before we discuss my due compensations of time I must bring up one of the fundamental tenants of the clerkmanifesto: We here flatly insist that the 20 hour work week is full time work. Everything above that is uncompensated overtime. And so, by that token, the library also owes me 50 percent of, well, something again. Time, I guess, time. Add that to the 60 percent and the library owes me 110 percent compensation!

This is why, whenever you see me, I am on break.

Wait, one hundred and ten percent. I am not just on break, I am giving that break my all.

Monday, January 12, 2015

Customer satisfaction survey

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1. If we skew the survey questions in a direction that causes our survey to show that our client is widely beloved and respected we regularly get asked to conduct more surveys for that client.

Actually, so far that is the only lesson we have learned. But, then, it's only been 40 years.

And so, with this in mind, we have pre-filled out your survey for you! This is a courtesy, and you are free to change any of our answers in the event that they are not accurate. This will in no way void your automatic entry into our sweepstakes that could lead to a series of entries into drawings for, well, we've sort of covered all that already.

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Sunday, January 11, 2015

Meaning of life

Many of you read my blog regularly. Some of you read my blog occasionally, like, for instance, my co-worker Dave who has taken to prefacing all his comments concerning my blog with "As you know, I don't read all your blog posts...". But I think both of these groups, most of you out there, are aware that I regularly deal with weighty issues here. The meat and potatoes of this blog are heavy metaphysical ruminations, grand works to resolve world hunger, explorations of the nature of creativity, high tales of human adventure out at the very limits of human capability, and deadly serious analysis of the meaning of life.

Yes, I tell you the meaning of life most days here on clerkmanifesto. I feel that everyone should know the meaning of life. I am not going to be the one to keep it from you. If you have ever wondered "What is the meaning of life?" I am delighted to answer that question. It's just what I do.

So, what, you wonder, is the meaning of life?

Good question. Excellent question. But today we are going to have a change of pace. It can't be grand themes here all the time. Life is not like that. Sometimes, even if it's only every rare once in awhile, it is time to look at the little things in life. Sometimes the right thing to do is to examine the smaller parts of existence. Yes, tomorrow I will speak clearly once again on the meaning of life. I will answer all your questions about the nature of reality. But that is tomorrow.

Today I was doing the laundry. I hang my clothes to dry inside the house. As I was hanging a t-shirt I noticed that it was inside out. So I took the wet shirt and turned it right side in. The moment I completed this task I realized that the shirt was now inside out!

I raced to my computer to tell you about it.

Well, okay, this might be about the meaning of life a little.

Saturday, January 10, 2015

Arctic traversal

Some people say that true adventure is dead, that everything important in the world has been explored and every great feat of man against nature has been accomplished. But I know that this is not so! How do I know? Because I myself have just completed the first traversal of the Minneapolis Arctic. I have returned from an epic three and a half mile journey of daring winter survival and endurance. My solo adventure was much in the fashion of Scott, Shackleton, and Roald Amundsen. Though I grappled with frostbite, death, disaster, and failure, I have not only survived, but I have met with a success, and I herewith share the journal of my great adventure!

9:30 a.m. Prepare for departure. Predicted temperatures far, far below zero! I am swaddled so heavily in layers and varieties of garments that if I slip and fall I will be completely unable to right myself and will instead have to lie on the ground helplessly, waving my little protruding arms and legs feebly while starving predators nose me but find no purchase for their fangs.

9:37 a.m. Temperature hits minus 40 F! That's not the real temperature, it's the wind chill temperature. The air temperature is only minus 11 F, but it is traditional in accounts such as these to always use the most dramatic numbers available. And if those numbers aren't dramatic enough, lie!

9:39 a.m. Ferocious wind gusts spike the wind chill temperature to an astounding 183 degrees below zero!

9:45 a.m. My cheeks hurt! I decide to raise my balaclava up over my mouth to protect my cheeks even though this will cause the mouth area of my balaclava to get all wet and then icy. Already I am making sacrifices for survival!

9:51 a.m. As one would expect in the Minneapolis Arctic I run into very few people. I do see one other explorer with his dogs, but I know he is no match for me as he is too lightly dressed and his dogs are completely naked. I reflect sadly that they will probably all be dead by lunch.

9:53 a.m. Cars pass me by like space aliens. The drivers look upon me with an expression of sympathetic amazement. This may have something to do with the long icicles that are now hanging from my eyebrows. I do not wipe them away, rather I wear them as a badge of courage.

9:56 a.m. I no longer see the luxury homes along the river as houses, rather as precarious bubbles of warm gas.

10:04 a.m. Open water on the Mississippi! How cold does it have to get for the whole river to freeze! It has barely been above zero F all week, and yet before my eyes is a steaming patch of open water. Geese are gathered like dead things on the ice around it. They do not move and look like dirty chunks of ice blown off the river by the fierce winds. A particularly strong blast of wind comes (minus 207 degrees!) and I am almost certain that I see the geese cower. These cowering geese will be the last life I see on my journey north.

10:17 a.m. The powerful winds are blowing straight at me from the North. I wonder if, when I reach the North Pole, I will know it because it is the spot from which all winds emanate in a perfect circle of south.

10:29 a.m. Curiously only one part of my body is painfully cold, an obscure section of my neck buried under five inches of wool, cotton, and fleece.

10:36 a.m. I am nearing my destination. The traversal is almost complete. I seem to have sadly missed the North Pole.

10:45 a.m. I complete my journey. I am the first one to make a complete traversal of the Minneapolis Arctic. I am elated to be alive, but I am also haunted by my failure to locate the North Pole. I look about me, Pooh-like, for some kind of large stick lying around that might be the North Pole. My belated search bears no fruit.

12:30 p.m. I arrive to work at my library, exhausted and with mixed feelings. I see one of my co-workers who was born and grew up in Poland. This co-worker is standing behind the automated check in machine, at the farthest northern windows of the library. I say "Hi."

I have found the North Pole! The success of my epic journey is complete!

Friday, January 9, 2015

Homeogastronomy

The reinvention of cooking does not come along every day. So it is with some pride that I here introduce my own completely new approach to cooking.

I call it Homeogastronomy.

While Homeogastronomy borrows from the world's most recent reinvention of cooking, namely molecular gastronomy, that is, roughly put, the creative breakdown of ingredients to their essential elements, it uses only aspects of it, combining it with the theories of the alternative medicine known as Homeopathy, to create something that is not only new to the world, but one that will likely change the way people eat. Unique to Homeogastronomy is how this will change not just the way people might eat in the world's finest, most expensive restaurants, but it will also change how people eat at every socioeconomic level and in every home.

In short, Homeogastronomy will not just change how we think about food, but I expect it to solve nearly every fundamental problem related to food: adequate nutrition, world hunger, issues of food supply, and healthful eating.

Perhaps instead of continuing to make such bold, grand claims about the power and future of Homeogastronomy it would help if I provided a simple example. My example could be with virtually any food that exists, from truffles to apples to the finest grass fed lamb chop, but here we will start with simple rice, Homeogastronomic rice.

Homeogastronomic Rice

Prepare an eighth of a cup of rice as normal. It is only an eighth of a cup, so it might as well be the best rice you can find anywhere, organic, highest grade, the sky is the limit. Cook it in Evian if you like. A small investment here will reap great dividends later. From this simple eighth of a cup you will be preparing enough rice to last you a year.

Take a single grain of your cooked rice. Discard the remainder (or eat it if you like). Cut your single grain of cooked rice in half. Cut the half of a grain of rice in half again and continue doing so until the piece of rice is so small you cannot halve it anymore. Indeed, you should barely be able to see it.

Add your miniscule speck of rice to a quarter cup of olive oil, or any other cooking oil, or even water if you prefer. Any of these mediums will work. I prefer olive oil. Bring the quarter cup of olive oil to a low heat, just to where it is beginning to simmer. Remove from heat. Strain through cheesecloth or a fine mesh strainer. Add 3/4 cup more olive oil (or water or whatever you're using). Let cool gradually. Decant the room temperature oil or water into good quality glass vials. Store in a cool, dark place.

That's it!

What's happening? You ask.

The oil or water is retaining the memory of the rice you prepared. Though there will be no actual rice in your oil anymore, each drop of your oil or water will be roughly the equivalent of an eighth cup of rice! One of those little vials of oil will be enough to feed a starving family of four for at least a week! But of course no one will have to get by on just rice anymore. Similar Homeogastronomic recipes with shrimp, green beans, cashews and so on will allow the poorest people in the world to eat like kings, all with four drops of water or oil.

If you are thinking "Hey, but what if I like the toothy feel of chewing real food?" No problem. Thirty caviar eggs, made Homeogastronomically, will allow me to have a lovely, daily afternoon snack I could never afford in a million years, all perhaps on a real blini or water cracker. Problem solved.

Or what about this; the Doctor says it would be a good idea for you to eat more leafy greens. A couple of drops of Homeogastronomic kale, or chard, on a dish of real ice cream (if you still like food the old fashioned way) will put you quickly on the road to health!

It goes on from there: Truffles so cheap that it's like giving them away. A single farmer's field raising enough grain to feed an entire country. Food that never spoils. Dishes too complicated for the home cook to make all in a single spoonful of liquid. Perfect health in your pantry. And, of course, not least by any means, the end of hunger!

Homeogastronomy, try it once, then watch it change the world.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Enjoy it now

Currently my life is overwhelmed with a lot of things I don't traditionally like. I have frequent back therapy appointments, a long list of neglected chores to take care of, due to deep winter it's a daily half hour project just to get dressed, and, of course, there's always work. Work, work, work. Around every corner. Somewhere between a persistent irritation and an awfully dubious pleasure.

Faced with all this challenge, I have been flinging about looking for a good way through this period of time. Have you ever seen time lapse footage of a growing vine seeking to support itself? A thin tendril grows out, then it swings in the air above the plant like a circling whip. When it touches on something it wraps around, a coil, home.

The main support I have found to wrap around has to do with being in the present. I am no ferocious Buddhist, but one defining feature of this particular time is that there is nothing so notably bad about anything individually, rather it's a feeling that collectively things suck. So lately I have been stopping a lot, or just taking note: This isn't so bad. I am walking. I am shelving fiction. I am doing back exercises. "It's okay." I say. "What I am doing is okay." I am not averse, too, to comparing in favor of the present situation. "It is Tuesday afternoon." I might say at work to myself. "Tuesday is a much nicer day to work here than Wednesday. I'm glad it's Tuesday."

It's pretty simple stuff, but I'm kind of liking it. It's soothing.

Here, do you want to try it with me?

What are you doing?

Oh, right, you are reading this blog. Well, then, that's okay, isn't it? There are worse things. You could, after all, be reading someone else's blog.

Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Best blog post ever

I have written over 600 blog posts. Some of them were good, some maybe not so. To tell you the truth it can be hard for me to tell. Close your eyes and have someone put a strange object half an inch from your face. Now open your eyes. What is it?

Er, right, a ladybug. Bad example, but if it were a giraffe, or a motorcycle, you might not have known. You would have learned something important from my example. I had no way of knowing you were friends with an entomologist. I'm not blaming anyone.

Anyway, where were we?

Ah, yes, I remember.

I have written a lot of blog posts, which means I have a lot of experience. Which means I am ready now to write my best blog post yet! Think back to your favorite blog post ever, one you really loved. The blog post that made you say to yourself "I guess I can keep reading clerkmanifesto. Sometimes it's sort of interesting." Yes, that blog post!

Got it?

No?

You can't remember any of the previous blog posts?

Arrrgh! The Internet is so, so disposable! I have half a mind to start blogging in marble!

Okay, pretend there was a really great blog post. Picture just the sort of blog post you'd like to read. Today I am going to write a blog post twice as good as that. So brace yourself. Your mind is about to be blown.

Recently someone implied to me, by saying it directly, that they know I am struggling a bit with the blog when I write a lot about the blog. But I want to say here that this isn't about the blog, except in the sense that the blog itself stands in for the fundamental questions about the nature of reality. The blog is a mirror of the reflection that...

What's that?

When's the best blog post ever?

Why, I believe it's ending just now.

I know. The best things seem to go by the fastest.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Minnesota winter again

I try not to talk about the weather all the time here. I stick to when it gets interesting; giant storms, endless rains, tornadoes, thick silver coatings of ice, but, above all in my part of the world, the cold, the bitter, bitter cold. The cold is irresistible to me.

At the bottom of my blog post will be a bunch of labels, and if you click on one you get all my blog posts that used that label. I suppose the label "weather" will bring up a fair share of posts, many of which you will want to memorize and recite at parties. Most of those will be concerned with the cold. It is as it should be. Why live in Minnesota and have no interest in the cold. This is where it happens.

What happens?

As I write it supposedly feels like minus 25 degrees F or, get this Europeans (Hi Europeans, and really, everyone else in the world!) minus 32 degrees C. So for non Americans, it is a full seven degrees colder in Minnesota than it is for us here, which explains why Americans tend to live in Minnesota instead of other Nationalities, who mostly live in other countries. It is seven degrees warmer here for us, which makes up a bit for having to pay for health care and not getting 2 months off work every year.

But what, you wonder, is so fascinating about minus 25 degrees anyway, now working its way down to minus 30?

It turns my mundane neighborhood into a wilderness. The innocent streets are now ferocious and unbearable. Life has ground to a halt. Night has fallen. Between my house and my neighbor's house is a bit of the end of the world, desolate with the dessicated remains of grapevines and raspberry plants, stripped of even the faintest suggestion of life. Just the other side of my glass block windows, a few feet from me, it is 100 degrees colder than it is in here where I type. If I were to type these words a mere two more feet south the letters themselves would freeze in place as I wrote them. I would be unable to correct spelling or make simple edits, and you would have to put this whole blog post in a pitcher of warm water just to read it.

If it were a hundred degrees warmer outside than it is in here everybody would die! Miserable, gasping, burning death! A hundred degrees colder and mostly I just want to pop outside for a bit and feel the fierceness of the Universe.

Ah so bitter and fresh. Beautiful, freezing Minnesota.

We're also just loaded with maple syrup.

Monday, January 5, 2015

The forgotten

I have worked at my library for twenty years. The history of the place pours through my hands like sand. I don't know why I grasp at the unholdable sand like I do, but sometimes I have to. I am not alone. Fits come over us old timers sometimes, and we start pulling, like out of a dusty old box, the names of our long gone fellow co-workers. I'm telling you, this work stuff, man! Four, five days a week we lived with these people! They were our brothers and sisters, for a year at least, or two years, or ten. Do you remember the two Noahs? There was big Noah and little Noah. What about Pam? She always seemed so painfully hungover or something. Handsome Phil, everyone remembers handsome Phil, too beautiful for the County Library. Peggy? No, she was before my time, but I know a story about her. Barak (his real name!) who drank two liters of a violently orange beverage every day and was the first person willing to discuss video games with me. How can there even be so many people? I ran into a long time patron at a party and he told me proudly of when his daughter worked at my library, oh, 15 years ago. I pretended to remember the kid, but I just couldn't bring her to mind. Another one lost. If you'll allow me to convene an informal panel of my fellow old timers, perhaps, with us all working together, we could do some archeology on the memory of her. As a group it is just possible we can excavate her to mind again. Or maybe it is too late. So many lost co-workers, so many brothers and sisters gone.

There is a trick for keeping library books in a collection, and you should learn it. Our shelving space is always maxed out. For everything new we must weed the old. That doesn't sound very libraryish, but it's usually how it goes. And when it is time to weed where does one look but at the items that have not been used, the items that no one has checked out. So if you want to save Fish Whistle, for instance (and you do!), you can try and convince someone to read it (harder than it sounds!), but your safest bet is just to check it out yourself, flip through it, or do nothing but return it. And then it will probably be safe for another year.

And so it is with my co-workers. My memory is close to hitting its limit, maybe that's at 500 or maybe it's at 2,000, but it's out there. This list only grows longer. If I want to keep the memory of some of these former co-workers alive I have to bring them to mind periodically. That's always easiest to do with the assistance of some fellow old timer.

I go dig one up.

Hey, Victor, remember Rachel, Tanya, Jason, Brian? Dean, Carol, Linda, Sue, Roxanne, John?

Yeah, yeah, he was, wasn't he? What? Do I remember Carl?

Carl? God, why do you bring him up? Blah, Carl! I don't want to remember him!

Now I have to forget someone else instead!

Sunday, January 4, 2015

The cat blog

It may come as a small surprise to you that henceforth this blog will be entirely devoted to all things related to cats. Why have I decided to go to an all Cat Blog format? There is no single, simple answer, but because this is such a significant development, you, my reader, deserve to know. And so I list the reasons for this dramatic content shift.

1. I really do enjoy cats, their self possession, cuteness, grace, universality, and individuality.

2. I feel that while the Internet is famous for its attention to cats, most of that conception is a sort of platitude, an old joke, and that cats are not as properly and thoroughly attended to on the Internet as everyone thinks they are.

3. Despite the above, I suspect that kittens are capable of unlocking the door to fame. I won't do anything for fame, but I am willing to bandy in cats for a bit more of my share of it.

However, despite my becoming an all cat blog, I have decided that I should retain a certain amount of self respect here at catmanifesto, therefore I have imposed a few small limits on my cat content. These will be minor, and you may not notice them, but they will allow this blog to hold on to its dignity.

1. No cat images, video, gifs, or pictures of any kind. If I am going to have cats here all the time I will at least limit it to prose.

2. No mentioning of cats. If I am going to constantly be blogging about cats it will be less overwhelming if I do not mention cats ever, in any way.

3. No alluding to cats, prose about cats, or poetry about cats. No suggestion of cats or cat-like behavior. Like I said, there's going to be an awful lot of content about cats here, so keeping it, at least, word, allusion, and image free of cats will make it feel more spare, honest, and enjoyable.

Yes, this is a big change. For those of you who are long time readers of this blog I think the major difference you will notice is that the sparse comments section will now be filled with hundreds of "Awww"s. For those many, many, many of you who are new to this blog based on its new content, I say welcome, and that I understand the attraction.

Saturday, January 3, 2015

365

Last year I wrote a blog. And every day at 8:30 in the morning I would release a new blog post into the world. I'd watch it break from its little green pod, unfurl its tiny, colorful wings, and stumble off unsteadily into the day.

I can make them, but flying is their decision.

In the end I had written exactly 365 blog posts, starting with "My super easy New Year's resolutions", and ending with "I used to be disgusted".

365.

So naturally I am out of things to say.

But fear not. There was never anything to say. We make all that up.

It is not the journey, or the message, or the magic of creation. No one has ever needed to write. It is not for fame or self fulfillment. I do not do it to communicate, praise, witness, or entertain. It is not a habit. It is not a gift.

I just like watching butterflies walk.

Friday, January 2, 2015

A blog year in review

Although we are now safely ensconced in 2015, I wanted to take one last look back at the blog year that was, noting the major highlights and acknowledging the year gone by. It was an exciting year, and there is much to reflect on, but I have chosen to restrict myself to choosing the top five highlights from the year of blogging. And so...

The Top 5 Highlights From the Blog Year 2014

1. March 13, 2014.

I am alerted to the fact that my blog is very popular with musical legend Bob Dylan when he sends me the following email:

Reading your interesting blog. Am wondering what kind of pen you use. Do you use blue ink? Do you think I should switch to blue ink when jotting lyric ideas? -Bob

Several thousand very similarly toned emails, comments, and audio mix tapes follow.

2. June 3, 2014.

Clerkmanifesto wins the Pulitzer Prize for blogging. I know I should have mentioned this when it happened and that it's kind of a big deal, but I just didn't want everyone to make a big fuss.

3. July 19, 2014.

The controversial post where I reveal that the last 200 posts were a dream sequence, mirroring the plot of Finnegans Wake. Yes, I lost several subscribers, but I made a few James Joyce scholars very happy! All I really ever wanted was to make James Joyce scholars happy.

4. September 21, 2014.

The moose incident. I can laugh about it now, though on nights of the full moon I still find myself needing to spend a few hours in some kind of simulated bog environment.

5. December 28, 2014.

My goal of World Peace is achieved! Mission accomplished! Go clerkmanifesto!

Huh, really? Libya? Sudan? Are you sure?

Well, I'll look into it, but I'm pretty sure you're mistaken.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Surfeit of excellence

Seeking ever to improve my blog's readability, quality, and customer satisfaction rating I have taken this New Year as an opportunity to take a good look at how things are going here at clerkmanifesto. Most significantly I have reached out to readers like you. I have been asking what works for you and what doesn't work for you, and I have carefully listened to your answers.

One complaint has recurred in such a way as to dwarf all of the other concerns I have heard about this blog. Over and over people have gently complained to me that clerkmanifesto is too good. That's the phrase people use. "Too good." As in, "If I had to say any consistent problem I have with your blog, I guess it's that it's just too good."

"What do you mean?" I ask. "How is it "too good"?"

"The quality level of your blog is too high. Clerkmanifesto suffers from a surfeit of excellence."

"A surfeit of excellence?"

"Yes, look. I love the blog, don't get me wrong, but, here, it's like this: Not every Beatles song can be Hey Jude."

"Hey Jude?"

"Yeah, like each one can't be the most powerful, amazing thing you ever heard. You need duds like You Know My Name (Look Up the Number), or weird experiments like Revolution 9. Each day your blog post is a perfect masterpiece. I laugh, I think about things, I question my assumptions, I learn something new, I grow. It's stressing me out. I'm a nervous wreck!"

"Hey Jude is hardly the Beatles best..."

"Stay with me here! I'm trying to help you out, man!"

"Sorry."

"You need to fail sometimes. You need to throw an absurd, pointless blog post up occasionally, something that leaves me scratching my head, something that makes me stretch hopefully towards tomorrow."

"Something like this one?"

"Er, I guess, maybe, it's a start..."

"It's still too good, isn't it?"

"Frankly, well, yes, it's awesome. This is an awesome blog post"

"I think you bring an awful lot to it. It wouldn't be nearly this good without you."

"You're too kind."

"Okay, I'll see what I can do."