Trump

Trump.

I know exactly what you're thinking. You're thinking "Who?"

Donald Trump.

"Nope, still nothing." You think, and I can't blame you. Before today I would have had the same reaction.

And yet Donald Trump is currently leading the race to be nominated as the Republican Presidential candidate.

Someone no one has ever heard of or knows anything about could actually be nominated to be President. No media coverage, no cultural examination or discussion, indeed no one knows seems to have any information whatsoever about him. Is he married? Liberal? Conservative? I'd like to give you a bare bit of information about the man, but I'm coming up completely blank. I did a google search for him and found an English Professor at Saint Louis University with a similar name as the top choice in my search returns. I had to go to the second page of results to find the Presidential Candidate. It turns out he's like a real estate agent or something. Beyond that all I could really find is that he is a candidate, and there are a few articles about primaries he has won.

Why the silence? Is he not colorful enough? Is there something unpleasant about him? Does he have no policies I might be interested in? I mean, he's running for President! You'd think he would be of some interest to the media and to the American Public.

And yet there he is leading the Republican Presidential race.

And so I beg the American Media: Please give this Daniel Trump guy some coverage! I truly feel that if the American public can have a chance to actually look at the candidates, they will always make the responsible choice.

Prejudice

I like to think of myself as egalitarian, as a person who sees things as they are. Out at the front desk of my library I endeavor to take all comers without presupposition. And because I'm not racist or sexist or ageist or homophobic I have long been content with my open minded attitude as each patron approaches me out on that main desk of the library.


So it was a rude wake up call today to realize that that was all a sham. It suddenly, horribly occurred to me: I am prejudiced!

I am not prejudiced in regards to color or as regards to any of those illusions of race. I will not mistreat you if you are Korean nor will I do so should you have some disability. I have nothing against small children or old men or devout Muslims. And yet, here I am, prejudiced nonetheless! For today it dawned on me that when most people approach me at the front desk this is the thought goes through my mind:

"Oh no. They look crazy. This is going to be challenging!"

Though some of my co-workers would beg to disagree with me, I am wrong about this nearly all the time. In fact almost all of those people whose craziness I quail before turn out to be perfectly nice people who I enjoy talking to and helping. You'd think all these vast corrections, all this disabusing me of my notions, this twenty years of being wrong dozens of times a day, would make some inroads.

But no, there it still is, despite everything: 

"Oh no. This person is surely mad. This could be a tough one."

How terrible!


On the other hand, maybe I'm right, and I just happen to like crazy people.

Community

Dear Staff:



The free food table used to mean something around here, and though the food on it frequently disgusted and horrified me, I still took a kind of reassurance from it. It said that even if I forgot to bring food to work I would not starve, or, even worse, be forced to drive off during my precious lunch hour to procure food from one of the miserable restaurants and fast food joints around here. Instead I would be able to help myself to some of those sugar encrusted bacon saltines that someone brought in after either a culinary disaster or under a confused understanding of "generosity".

Well, who knows, maybe it was generous after all. And though mostly my main goal with the free food table was to resist eating anything that was on it due to my commitment to living past the age of sixty, it was still somehow good to know that that disgusting, profoundly unhealthful food was there. At least we made that gesture towards hearth and community, pathetic and misguided though it may have been. Unlike now. Have you seen what's been on the free food table lately? 

Coupons.

Coupons! Five cents a gallon off on gas at the station that charges seven cents a gallon more than anywhere else. An "introductory" offer for a wine by mail club. A certificate for a 35 dollar haircut. A 35 dollar haircut? I have a wastebasket and a pair of scissors, why would I pay for a haircut? And these really aren't even coupons. They're advertisements pretending to be coupons. Why would you put those on the free food table? Do you hate your co-workers that much? Surely in the past few days you must have made something like a Spam and Tabasco hotdish that didn't go over with your family like you hoped it might. Bring it in for god's sake, not these ridiculous coupons! You don't think people would eat such a dish, but we will! And even if we didn't it would give us all something to talk about besides who drives us crazy around here or our all too common complaining about wretched American politics. We already agree on all these things. What else is there to say?

So let's put out the vegan cucumber brownies and be a proper workplace once more. Trust me. I've been here for decades, and I can guarantee you that no matter how harmonious it seems between us all right now, we're always about two bare inches from completely hating each other. Workplace cultures are fragile, so you've got to attend to the little things, like the free food table. It all goes south so much faster than you can imagine.





 

Squirrel neighborhood

I live in a neighborhood of squirrels. It is the squirrels' neighborhood, and I and all my human neighbors are mere aliens, landed in our houses like spaceships, separate from the world as if the very outside air is hostile to us. I think I live in a neighborhood of humans, but that's an act of simple human prejudice. I look around and see house after house, I see cars, I see roads and sidewalks and all creations of people, and of course I think it's a neighborhood of humans. But I don't actually see many people. I see squirrels.

There in the trees and the grass, on the roads and the roofs and the high wires and fences. There is a squirrel sleeping on a branch and one coming out from under a shed. Any objective count will tell you it is the home of squirrels. The squirrels, who are far better at being objective than people, would also tell you that it is the home of squirrels, if they could talk, which maybe they can and maybe they can't. A census taker too would tell you it is the home of squirrels, but only if they deigned to count squirrels, which is really the key here.

Through the windows of houses I can see a few sad dogs looking longingly on. A cat or two wanders a porch. Rarely I pass a neighbor by, or see one sliding past me in the glassed in bubble of a car. Perhaps flesh to flesh contact with Squirrel Neighborhood would pollute that delicate driver. The squirrels wind under the wheels of the speeding car, only rarely making a tragic mistake. We won't count the squirrels that made a tragic mistake. Birds come in waves. Sometimes there is a storm of crows, sometimes a bucketful of thrushes on a single tree, but go ahead and add up all the numbers, count up all the creatures. We will count that guy we can just barely see through a window, making pancakes in his little kitchen. We will count this stoned looking raccoon, perched over a storm drain in the middle of the day, worrying us. We will count the bunny meditating in the grass ignoring the wind. We will count me and that cat and that old man and the weird thing he has at the end of his leash. We will count everyone. 

It is a lot of counting. 

And every time it's the squirrels that come out on top. The squirrels predominate no matter how we add it up, no matter how we stack or divide. They win even when we figure that we might have counted the same squirrel three or four times, which is easy to do. This is the world of the squirrel.

And so it's a good thing they don't seem to mind us. 

Librarian scribe

We at this library have nothing against the conveniences of modern technology. It is easy enough for us to provide printers for the public to use, and the public uses them a lot. Our cost is not in the equipment, in all those printers, which are a reasonable enough fraction of our budget. No, our real cost is in staffing enough people to handle all the constant system breakdowns of that cheap technology. Finding a good quality computer person, who understands the vast and complicated array of automation problems that an average large sized library is constantly under siege by, is a nearly impossible, very expensive task. Good tech people, simply put, are hard to find, and, if they're any good, one generally has to pay them far more than one has to pay an average librarian who, anyway, are scattered through our city like leaves in an Autumn wind.

And that is why at my library we are providing all the important cutting edge (minus five years) computer and printing services one has come to expect from libraries, but for back up we are digging deep into our ancient tools and providing old school solutions for the times when all our amazing technologies are suddenly not working, when they're mysteriously broken and offline.

Allow me then to introduce you to our librarian scribes. Our team of Librarian Scribes is available during all the hours we are open. Should our printers go down, as they do most days, simply hit the "Scribe" button on your computer and one of our librarian scribes, with their kit of quill pens and vellum, should be at your computer within five minutes. They will hand copy onto thick cotton paper stock whatever computer page you want printed, all at our standard cost of twenty cents a page. They can copy in three colors: onyx, viridian, and sepia. If your page includes illustrations, the cost for these illuminated manuscripts will be seventy cents per page. We can currently offer Courier, Times, and Verdana fonts, but cannot guarantee that each of these fonts will be available at all times, depending on the calligraphy skills of the Scribe on staff. Please contact our Scribe Department for which fonts are available at specific times.

This is the first big push out of our "Old library tools to fix new technology" program. We also hope to soon add the ability to look up information in books for those times when the Internet is not working. Look for further announcements in this space.

To be ready

Dear Reader,


Thank you for the compliment you left in my comments section. Unfortunately we receive so many compliments every day here at clerkmanifesto that I am unable to respond to them personally. This is why you are receiving an automated response rather than the personal, heartfelt thanks you so richly deserve.

Fortunately our work with Apple, Google, and The Department of State has allowed us to create a sophisticated response algorithm that can actually "read" your comment and respond to it according to our own directions and parameters. Capable of placing the context of over 14 million words and phrases I can set this auto responder to reflect my own deep gratitude, a gratitude that I would theoretically, but very likely, feel, had I been able to take the time to read your incredibly generous and thoughtful words in actuality. I can also in this way express my deep regret that I did not have time to read your compliment, though I hope you will be heartened to know that your words of praise are being statistically tabulated, and so I am in that sense "reading" your comments when I examine our month's end compliments and suggestions data readouts, as I do on the third of each successive month.

Anyway, I thank you again for your truly warm and generous words regarding my essay on


no data found


I particularly enjoyed your reflections on


no data found,


and very much hope that I can count you as a


"friend"


It was a privilege to hear from you, and I hope you will not hesitate to comment in the future.



Yours truly,



F. Calypso

Vision quest

I write a blog with ice water in its veins. A stone cold series of wry essays, all world weary, wizened, and illuminated by the trickster gods. Sweetness is the dash of exotic spice for us here. When you read clerkmanifesto you follow in the wake of the blade of the subtle knife. "How can I get through here?" You ask. The way I have cut through is fierce and swift and the pace is quick, even if much of the time I don't move much at all. See, you thought I moved there? No, what happened is you thought I was about to move so you moved. I am exactly where I started.

So it may surprise you to find that I, wry, of the tribe coyote, member of the crow family, am an absolute innocent.

I have close personal relationships with stuffed animals. I am happy to watch the same sweet romantic comedies dozens and dozens of times. And, perhaps most astonishing of all, when I walk the river valley, I talk to the animals. Like a child, naive, in anthropomorphic proclamations.

And I don't mean all that shaman stuff. I don't mean spirit turkeys and ancient naturism. This isn't vision quests. I am not a mighty hunter. No, this is the hundred acre wood and love of the cute. When I walk the river I walk a magical storybook for small children, and unbidden, in my mind, I say:

"Well hello to you today Mr. Bald Eagle. What is that stick you have?"

Or to the geese:

"It is ever so warm ladies, isn't it? You may run out of North today!"

And

"Mr. kitty! Hi. It's me! I don't know where I'm going either, but I pretend to, just like you."

Those among you out there who are sophisticates, and have seen a few things, you who know darkness and can see the works under the thin cheap glamour of our society, you may say "I knew it all along." I know just how you feel. I am you too. 

But I am friends with the wee bunnies as well, and the ducks, and Sir Woodpecker, and my cousin raccoons, and I have found, in long association of childlike, anthropomorphizing familiarity, that not a one of them has ever taken any real offense. They all have a secret love for nonsense, just like you.

A blog post about Clarence

It was a busy night out at the front desk of the library where I work. But as the evening wore on things slowed down enough for me to poke at my prospective blog posts a little. My front desk partner, who has read a small handful of my posts along the way, but has evinced nothing more than an occasional, very mild, interest, noticed my screen. "Are you writing a blog post about me?" He somewhat characteristically asked.

"You'll just have to see." I replied. "You'll have to read all my blog posts and decide if any are about you." I wasn't serious. I'm no more inducing him to read my blog than he is really suspecting that I'm writing about him. I like when people read my blog. I'm delighted to have you here right now for instance. But some curse on me has passed, and my fury that I would write a daily work under the direction of the gods and yet remain obscure has become something I more or less shrug my shoulders at. Just so long as you and I know that's what I'm doing.

And Clarence knew I was just kidding as well. He knew I really have no reason to talk about him in my blog. Though he has not read much of this, he has read enough to know I am not likely to ever be discussing him here in clerkmanifesto. After all, what would I say?

Peeled

I emerged onto the sidewalks of my city to once again find record warmth pouring out over the late Winter landscape. Seventy degrees today. I saw my neighbor walking his dog and he said "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

"Yes." I replied, mostly because I couldn't think of anything else to say. I wasn't actually sure about how beautiful it was. I hadn't yet adapted to the shock of the outdoors.

"Except for how weird it is." He added.

Yes, that, for sure.

When I stepped out onto the long neighborhood avenue looking North I thought "I can see so far!"

I have no idea why I thought this. Visibility was no different than it had been for most of the Winter. The snow was melted but for some strange, stray patches of old piled ice. The world looked peeled. I'm not sure it was such a beautiful day after all. Yes. It looked like someone had stripped the very skin of the world and now it was laid bare. Maybe that's why I felt like I could see so far.

The trees were freaking out, but the birds were singing.

Ah, the hell with it. If the birds are singing, everything's going to be okay.

Dear Neighbor: your cat

Dear Neighbor,


I have been noticing your "Missing Cat" posters that you put up along the river. Let me say right from the start that I have no firm news as to the whereabouts of your cat. But I'll admit I have a bad feeling about it, and I don't think any good news concerning your cat will be coming your way. If your signs and your cat were back off the river, in among the neighborhood houses, you might still have a chance, but I never see cats roaming around by the river. I'm pretty sure that's because the river foxes eat all the cats that foolishly wander that way. The river foxes are pretty well gorged on cats, but, alas, they are never too gorged to not make room for just one more juicy cat, like yours. I mean, it's not like these foxes can chow down on chickens. There aren't any chickens around here, and no fox in the world could take on one of those five foot tall river turkeys that hang out up and down our section of the Mississippi. So outside of a sluggish squirrel or two, I'm afraid your cat is it.

Sorry.

I did want to talk to you about your signs though. Your signs, which look to be common black and white copies on common black and white copy paper, are, no surprise, already falling apart. The poor resolution photo is of such an inferior reproduction that it could be any of a dozen cats that I might see on my daily walks. What I am really saying is that I don't think your missing cat signs really denote seriousness on your part. Looking at your two-hour old, falling apart, poorly made Xeroxes I get merely the pretense that you care about your cat, but I don't, in any way, feel that you care about your cat. If, by some freakish chance, your cat had not been eaten by foxes, or perhaps by a stray coyote, or even an ambitious raccoon, and I found your cat, I'm not so sure I'd even give it back to you. I might keep your cat, where it would be loved and cared for, and not wantonly lost and fed to wild animals. If I did find your cat, not that I'd likely know it was yours from your low quality black and white reproduction of a picture of it, I might choose to care for it myself. And if, tragically, I somehow managed to lose your cat, I would put up quality, proper signs, on coated, maybe even laminated, card stock, with good pictures in color, and possibly even a reward, rather than a handful of cheap xeroxes designed to fill in the few pathetic hours between the moment when your cat disappeared and the moment so shortly thereafter where you can forget your cat forever.

Anyway, good luck finding your cat. I'll keep an eye out nevertheless. And I hope you find this message to be of some assistance in your search.


Your neighbor,


F. Calypso

Construction equipment

When I was a very little boy I was immensely fond of construction equipment. The garbage men with their great turnover trucks were an epic weekly event to me, or was it bi-weekly? I feel garbage pick up came more often in the old days. But all things with mighty treads and scoops and joints and plows were a primal satisfaction to me.

When I was six or seven that love faded away and I haven't much thought of it since.




On my morning walks I usually cross the Mississippi River on a four lane road bridge. It might be two lanes instead of four. I can't remember because they have been doing construction on this bridge for so long I've forgotten how it's supposed to go. While I have painstakingly developed a part of me that can say "They must be doing a good job at something very important I do not understand, and it explains all this endless bridge work." there is still another part of me that looks at a bridge that has been half-closed for years, swarmed on by workers and machinery, and yet seems not a whit different from when they started, and is simply irritated. The worst part of the construction is not so much all the closed lanes and rerouting on top of it, but the fact that all passage on the wonderful National Park paths underneath it have been closed and unusable for years now. While I appreciate their caution- after all, two or three bridges upstream from this one the Highway 35 Bridge famously collapsed into the river far below, killing thirteen- I really think if they wanted to they could have left some kind of walking paths open below. After all, these are safely on the shore, usually out of the way from where they are working.

But no, they are closed. So over the bridge I go, day after day. Irritated, but holding it together.

Until, from out of nowhere, some primal child in me stirred. Something sleeping in me for 45 years awoke! And, whoa, look at all this stuff! The bridge is besieged by fabulous machinery, great landworks operations are underway. I walk high over the bridge and giant cranes tower above me, all sitting on platforms floating in the river. Darling, industrious tug boats putt about on the Mississippi ready to move the platforms around, or hold them safely in place. One barge carries some strange bird of a treaded vehicle, with an agile neck surely 20 feet long, dipping deep into the river to scoop up muddy riverbed on some mysterious mission. Perhaps it's to build one of the jettys that extend into the river where more cranes and equipment work from. And the workers are everywhere too on their glamorous jobs, usually yelling work strategy or sports news or literary theory to each other across the railings of the bridge, one standing on the sidewalk where I pass them, the other in a bucket held by some 60 foot tall crane, but sometimes simply strapped to a makeshift wooden structure tacked to the side of the bridge and hanging high and exposed over the water below. And besides all the things working off of floating platforms below there are specialized contraptions plying their trade from the top of the bridge too. One side of the bridge is always closed to all traffic so that large pieces of machinery can crouch over the sidewalk while their ungainly, multi-elbowed arms can bend out over the side of the bridge and do unseen things down below.

It's really quite a gaudy display of strange and oversized, weighty, and powerful implements, and though even the five year old in me wouldn't mind knowing what all they are actually doing, we are nevertheless mightily impressed.

But all good things must one day come to an end. And so when this bridge project ends in 2021 I am prepared. I will go back to looking at the birds and the trees and the quiet river. So soon! I hope I'm ready.

Walking willy nilly

Because of global warming it was in the sixties in Minneapolis today.

Now I understand that I am playing loose with the meaning of global warming. A day in the sixties, no matter where or when, is weather. Climate, the key element of global warming, is a far more broad thing than the incidentals of a single day's weather. But, seeing as everyone else is, I think I should feel free to play fast and loose with global warming and with climate change . My fast and loose with it is merely an innocent play on terms, whereas the current culture's fast and loose regarding all things Climate Change is a death sentence for you and everyone you know.

But that doesn't mean we can't enjoy ourselves on such a pleasant Spring-like morning.

It wasn't yet in the sixties, but it was already up in the fifties and my hoodie sweatshirt was superfluous. I was walking along on my four mile trek to work when I came upon a wet patch on the sidewalk, one with maybe a quarter inch of water at its center. Immediately my body tensed up. I slowed. Cautiously, and with perfect balance, I placed my foot steady and flat in the thin puddle, ready for any signs of a wild, icy slipperiness. And then it belatedly came to me: I don't have to worry about ice on the sidewalk! It's 54 degrees out!

Oh what a merry walk I had! 

Too bad we're all going to die from it.

A word

Sometimes one opens up clerkmanifesto only to be faced with a terrifyingly long blog post. "Seven paragraphs!" One cries out, "This could take me minutes to read."

"I hope it's not about soccer." One adds parenthetically.

But sometimes clerkmanifesto is terribly short. For instance today it is merely about a new word. I wrote one this morning by accident in the kitchen, while making the morning espressos.

Exaccident. That's the new word: exaccident.

It doesn't look great written,  but I think you will find it rolls trippingly off the tongue, exaccident. It means to do precisely what one meant not to do. You will find it is merely "exact" bleeding right into "accident".

As in "Damn, I exaccidently made a seven paragraph long blog post!"

Well, at least it's not about soccer.

Busquets

Unlike politics, smoke doesn't come out of my ears when I start talking about soccer. Nevertheless it is one of the subjects wherein I try to moderate my passion as I discuss it, except maybe with the teen librarian Marcus, who is in such a fever before any Barcelona soccer game (and it is always before a Barcelona game) that whatever I say is likely a blur to him anyway. Being, as I am, on a mission from the gods here, I feel a responsibility to illuminate things if I can, as opposed to merely giving voice to my obsessions.

But I have found if one looks at a subject fervently enough it is capable of bleeding out of it's borders. It mixes with other elements and creates complex structures. It begins to inform other aspects of life. And so it is with soccer. The other day I was able to tell you how I clerk at the library by making a comparison with how the great Messi plays soccer. And then this morning, as I mulled over how to tell you about a certain facet of front desk support at the library, the example of a slightly less famous Barcelona soccer player came into my mind as a perfect example.

Sergio Busquets is a defensive midfielder for the Barcelona team. He does not score goals. And though he is very well regarded in his field he is not a player who attracts wild international enthusiasms. He is not about dazzling tricks, beautiful shots, and astonishing dribbles. Rather he is the one dispensing the ball off to the people inclined to do those things. He is the person who mysteriously seems to know everything that is going on in the game, down to its finest nuance, and he sometimes even seems to somehow know what will happen next. With a subtle, largely unnoticed pass here or there, he guides the action forward, develops the lines of attack, and adjusts the very flow of the game.

He will not show up in most of the highlight films of the game, but if you pay careful attention to the game itself you will see that he was quietly at the back, setting those highlights up.

And so to the front desk of my library.

You are keen to check out a copy of that charming movie The Intern. You inquire about this movie with one of the people sitting there at that front desk. Let us call this person Louis. I will now tell you in advance that Louis is going to end up turning the library upside down for you to find this movie. And why not. What are we there for? Louis will enlist help and travel to every corner of our library. Louis will die before he gives up on finding you the DVD. Louis is totally your guy.

But Louis, just for today, is not our hero. 

I'll be playing that part while wearing my Sergio Busquets jersey that it would be nice to have.

So Louis then is in the back room tearing through recent bins of returned materials looking for that DVD you wanted. One of our co-workers has joined the hunt with Louis back there. Exception bins are checked, unordered carts are minutely examined, theories are proposed, and vast piles of items are emptied onto tables. The longer they look the more they want to find that DVD for you. It is a long and exhaustive search.

And while it is happening I am taking care of everything at the front desk. The security gates go off, someone needs a card, the copier is out of paper, a self check out station has stopped working, a patron wants to know if we have their hat in the lost and found. What color is their hat? It is like black or blue or brown, made out of a kind of material. It could be one of these 43 hats.

While Louis and his team are conducting DNA sampling in pursuit of your DVD there is a break in the front desk action. I check to make sure you are okay waiting. You really want this DVD and have the whole afternoon free. I commend your good taste.

Then, as I am providing directions to another patron, Louis and the manager who has joined the good fight with Louis, comes by the front desk following another lead.

"Did you check around the table where Andrea was working?" I ask quietly. "I think she was emptying a bin."

A few minutes later Louis emerges with the glorious DVD.  Everyone rejoices. You thank everyone in sight, other than me, because I am busy with a long line now and didn't really have much to do with it anyway. I just covered all of Louis's work for 20 minutes as well as my own, reassured you, and gave the small tip that unlocked the location of the much sought item. 

So that's playing it Sergio Busquets style. You don't have to know what happened. Louis knows. That's good enough.

My green award

As you know I hate to toot my own horn around here. But I'm pretty sure I'm going to be winning a big award. Like, a County award, or maybe a Library award, or even some kind of Green award. It's pretty exciting. I feel very humbled by all the awards I'll be getting for the amazing thing I've been doing.

So you want to know what's up?

I've been saving the library I work at a ton of money. A ton. They love it when you do stuff like this, which is why I'm almost certainly going to get an award, or a commendation, or something like that that involves a plaque. I'll admit I'm pretty excited about the plaque. I'm pretty sure someone just nominated me for one. I tried to keep my uniquely good work to myself, but at some point a person, me, in this particular instance, just has to say "You have got to hear about the amazing thing I've been doing!" And from there it sort of leaks out, no matter how much I want to simply enjoy the private satisfaction of it all.

The trick to my amazing innovation is attributable, of course, to synergy. I'm a big believer in synergy. I know it's a fancy word, but I'm pretty sure it just comes down to if I have to carry this here and this over there, why don't I take both of them with me at once. Synergy. I'm all over that synergy stuff.

So being the supply procurer for my library, and also being responsible for the bus schedules, has made me often wonder: how can I get these two jobs to work together for the benefit of my library? Synergy. I asked myself: What are the touchpoints of these two activities?

There are two: people send me stuff, and rubber bands.

As for the bus schedules, the transit system sends me as many as I want as often as I want at no cost to the library. With supplies, I get sent stuff, but it costs money. The bus schedules come in little stacks held together by rubber bands. Every year or so, from supplies, I need to order a bag of rubber bands. I think you can see where this is heading, but only because I laid it all out for you. From scratch it was much harder to figure out. This is why I will be getting the semi-prestigious award.

So yes, my library no longer ever has to purchase rubber bands. I simply order several boxes of bus schedules, discard the schedules, and pile the rubber bands together in their special place in the supply cabinet. The reason I might get a Green award is not simply from recycling the schedules, which we do as a matter of course, but more importantly because I have gone from a system where we used new, packaged rubber bands to one now where all of our rubber bands are entirely repurposed from previous uses, namely to hold together stacks of bus schedules. And so my library now uses entirely free, post consumer rubber bands.

I know! I wonder if my plaque is here yet. 

Quiet at library

Working, as I do, at a library, I answer a lot of questions, many of them accurately. Unfortunately there is one regular question that absolutely confounds me.

No matter how busy it is at the front desk of the library, no matter how many cards I am registering, items I am finding, co-workers I am covering for, machines I am fixing, tutorials I am giving, fines I am processing, disputes I am resolving, no matter how long the lines grow, no matter how ceaseless the flow of people, and no matter how thick the crowds get, there will come a point in any two hour shift at the front desk wherein a patron will saunter alone up to me at the front desk and say "Quiet day, eh?"

"Not with you here."  Comes to mind.

But I don't feel right saying that.

How about "Fortunately you have come. What can I do for you?" 

This would work if I could keep it free of sarcasm. 

I'm working on it.

Eagles in wind

Out onto the streets again for my morning walking commute. Saturday we saw record breaking local temperatures of up to 60 degrees, but by this morning they'd driven down hard. The twenties feel far colder after a spell of warm weather, and on top of that the wind is blowing so fiercely the weather service issued a warning. I'm not sure what the warning was, probably something about how likely one is to get something in one's eye. I have long lashes and am hoping that will be enough to protect me.

So, let's face it, I'm cold out there. The wind is blowing hard and my jaw has gone numb. But I have decided not to worry about myself. I suspect I'll be fine. It's the eagles. What about the eagles?


There are the bald eagles of Minneapolis, tossing wildly about over the river. The mighty wind ruffles their feathers. Without even a twitch of their broad wings they surge a hundred feet up into the sky. They tilt precariously left. They tilt precariously right. They plummet and then are thrown upstream at a hair raising clip. Is it fun? Is it cold? Is it terrifying, or is it a day in the park? How do the eagles feel about this weather?

This is one of the easiest things in the world to forget, it is easy enough to forget in considering any number of groups of people, but perhaps even more so, if it's possible, it is supremely easy to forget with animals. Indeed it is nearly automatic to do so. These are the dangers of science. 

So then...

How do the eagles feel about this weather?



It depends on the eagle.

Your reception at the Riverview Cafe

We were at the Open Mike Night at the Riverview Cafe again last night, and I finally figured out the key to the audience response. I think it took the first really bad performance to put everything in perspective for me. From there it fell into place. A young man took the stage and announced that he was going to perform some spoken word poetry, but first he would tell us a little about himself. Then he told us some not particularly interesting or illuminating things. Then he performed his spoken word poetry, which was in the nature of bad rapping without music.

The audience was completely silent and respectful. Well, except for my wife and I, who, cleverly, stood in the back with the drinks we just bought and talked amongst ourselves. But here's the thing: the Riverview audience is never silent and respectful. Even the best performers work through a cloud of chatter and noise.

And so here is your key, should you ever decide to perform at The Open Mike Night at the Riverview Cafe and want to know what people thought of you:

No matter what it will be noisy and people will talk during your performance. Don't let that get you down. But the more that people like you or are impressed by you the quieter it will get. However, if it gets fully quiet and respectfully attentive, it means everyone hates you.

My wife and I, sitting at the front table are exceptions and are harder to read. If either or both of us go to the bathroom we're probably not wild about you, and if we step to the back of the cafe together you're in real trouble.

Outside of that it's going to be difficult to tell, especially since we are, in all other cases, quiet and respectfully attentive. So if you wanted to know you'd have to ask us. And most likely we'd tell you.

Mellow like Messi

"Just" You ask "What kind of Library Clerk are you?"

"What's that?" I reply. "Have you read my blog clerkmanifesto? Roughly ten percent of my posts are all about what kind of library clerk am I. Twelve hundred posts, ten percent, so that's 120 essays on the sort of Library Clerk I am."

"Yes, I've read them." You say. "What fun! Tell me again please?"

"Okay."




The greatest soccer player who ever lived is Lionel Messi. The teen librarian Marcus, who among the one billion fervent soccer fans in the World is the only one I actually know, might say "How can you really say who is the greatest player of all time?"

To which I might reply "Like this: Messi is the greatest player of all time." But only because, well, sometimes I can get a little like that, which you might have noticed.

And here's how the great Messi plays soccer: 

Economically.

There he is, jogging easily up the side. There he is, studying the game, pacing himself, laying back, only doing just what is needed, a spectator, enjoying the Spanish sun, quietly stalking the game, resting up.

And then he is needed. He is called on. He is essential, and he rises up fluidly from a kind of snooze mode to perform absolute miracles and magic. Practice, training, time on the pitch, and two full games every week, but as for pure, heart stopping soccer, greatest of all time soccer, we get about 15 minutes of it every week.

That's just exactly how I clerk!

I hope that doesn't sound self-aggrandizing. If you think about it at all you will likely come to the shrewd conclusion that it isn't, really, self-aggrandizing at all. After all, clerking is not soccer.

"So," You wonder. "Is that how you write clerkmanifesto as well?"

Oh no. For that I run flat out until I collapse, panting and vomiting in the grass.

Wilco

On my comprehensive, extremely well thought out list of the hundred greatest albums of all time (which I haven't created yet) I would certainly include Sky Blue Sky by Wilco. It's sad and soulful and all those things I like best in music. And though if you roam about the critical landscape on Wilco you will not find Sky Blue Sky much revered, it should be noted that those are just opinions. I'm dealing with facts here.

But I'm not here to discuss the objective brilliance of Sky Blue Sky. Or maybe I am. We'll see...

On Thursday nights at The Riverview Cafe Open Mike Night the variety of performers do roughly 50 percent covers. But these tend to be very smart covers. If it were all just hit songs and best of pieces it wouldn't be The Riverview at all. There we get deep covers, old covers, even odd pop covers that you might think couldn't be covered. Americana is popular, like maybe an Oh My Darling Clementine. The other night there were three John Prine covers. But everything from Folsom Prison Blues to a First Aid Kit song might show up. Most weeks of the open mike we see one old guy perform, possibly a bit less ancient than he looks, whose slightly broken voice can surprisingly belt it out at times. He did what I long assumed were well crafted historic country classic covers, old standards from the heartland that I somehow missed over the years. Only this week did we find out he wrote all his own material. It can get like that at the Riverview, the covers sound like originals and the originals sound like covers.

One of our favorite performers, who looks a bit like Richard Dreyfuss as Richard Dreyfuss looks now, and who might cover anything from a Foreigner song to The Traveling Wilburys with enormous vigor, did a beautiful job on an older Wilco song called Passenger Side.

Hey, wake up, your eyes weren't open wide
For the last couple of miles you've been swerving from side to side
You're gonna make me spill my beer,
If you don't learn how to steer

Passenger side, passenger side,
I don't like riding on the passenger side

And this is just it about a good cover, they illuminate rather than reflect. Because these performers make such excellent choices I not only immensely enjoy the songs I hear, but they become new to me. I see them better. I can be especially slow to notice lyrics, but the way people do covers at the Riverview almost always wakes me up to them. And what a clever piece of character is there that Jeff Tweedy has written. Pathos, empathy, and sheer ridiculousness:

Roll another number for the road
You're the only sober person I know
Won't you let me make you a deal,
Just get behind the wheel

Passenger side, passenger side,
I don't like riding on the passenger side

Our Riverview cover was done in a high, reedy un-Jeff Tweedy sort of voice. Oddly enough it came right after our Richard Dreyfuss singer had done a close to dead-on Roy Orbison singing Traveling Wilbury's song, no small feat. It took me a couple of verses to even place the Passenger Side song and who it was by. But from the start I was well enough spellbound by how cleverly it was written.

Should've been the driver, could've been the one
I should've been your lover, but I hadn't seen...

Can you take me to the store, then the bank?
I've got five dollars we can put in the tank
I've got a court date coming this June
I'll be driving soon

Passenger side, passenger side,
I don't like riding on the passenger side


Such a great song. 

Just like you, the only thing I like better than wit and cleverness and pathos and foolery is when all of the sudden, it isn't. But that's Sky Blue Sky and comes a bit later in their career.