A quote I wish were by Mark Twain

No matter how clever your immortal and witty quip is, it will, in the fullness of time, end up being attributed to someone else.

But only if it's really good.

______________________________________

Hello clerkmanifesto reader. I offer here one last reminder, and then I will likely never mention them on clerkmanifesto again: 

We have recently started two new auxiliary blogs that you might like to sign up for. Here are the links:

The B Blog (erratic postings of more unhinged and less proper things not suited so well to clerkmanifesto, more details at the link).

The Best of Clerkmanifesto (highlights from the history of this blog, posted as I find them, more details at the link). 

200 Views of Rome: Tiger (Flying Tiger Copenhagen)

Oh the hell with it:

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

5 Stars

In the course of writing 200 reviews of Rome one becomes exhausted from all the superlatives:

 "The lavender gelato made me collapse onto the black brick streets of Rome, lying there weeping and babbling about a conversion to Catholicism"

 or

 "The swooping inlays of the marble were so exquisite that I insisted on tracking down the nearby family of the 17th Century artisan who crafted them to thank them for their ancestor."

So this morning when it came time for me to write up a new review of something in Rome I thought I might enjoy looking for something more plebeian and common. At least something calmer and less spectacular. Maybe something that I could criticize and make light of. And when my eye fell upon the store known commonly as Tiger, I knew I had found just the thing. This is a store with multiple branches, so a chain, and one that hardly even seems Italian (it's from Denmark I guess). It sells useful junk, like an upscale dollar store, as if Ikea were running it.

 So I rolled up my sleeves to write my desultory review, only to realize:

 I love Tiger, with a passion. It is a fantastic store, one of our favorites in Rome. Five stars!!!

Sometimes in Central Rome it can be hard to find stuff. There are little crammed hardware stores and gift stores and souvenir stores and food stores. And sometimes they all have the same things, same t-shirts, same salamis, same garish liqueurs, same exact postcards, and same papers for the same stationery. Interesting things are expensive, cheap things are cheap, and practical things can get a little tricky to track down. I'm not complaining. But Tiger is an awfully nice alternate universe. It's pretty big. Nothing in it is very far from junk, but none of it quite exactly is. And none of it is very far from dirt cheap, but none of it quite is dirt cheap, I mean, for what it is. It is full of practical things, but you could not really predict what any of those might be, and the versions of those practical things will be slightly more interesting than the normal practical thing. Those Band-Aids, for instance, or pushpins, will have a twist. The scotch tape will be blue. Of course there are scads of non practical things as well, some that might be useful, and some that surely won't, and some that will be very useful if you are just clever enough to think of something good to do with them. There are a lot of things that are like unique, inexpensive souvenirs from no specific place in the Universe.

 "I went a strange store and I brought these back for you! I don't know what they are. They're from Tiger."

 "Thank you. Where's Tiger?"

 "It's in Rome, near the cat sanctuary, but that's not the point. It could be a store on a space station as comfortably." 

 

I only now remember two things I got there, though there were many more. I got some blue tape and 3 mysterious balls of slime.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New for you!

I am delighted to present two new side features to the wonderland you know as Clerkmanifesto!

I know that sounds like the set up to the kind of satire I regularly employ here, but, no, really. This is genuine. You must believe me. Not one, but two new amazing side features. Really.

I bet you're wondering how you can sign up for them!

You aren't?

No, it's not a joke.

I swear.

Yep. Two new features, blogs actually.

They are:

The Clerkmanifesto B Blog

and

The Best of Clerkmanifesto Blog.


Besides their above names being links to them, the side board of this blog also now contains links to them.


Now I will answer your many questions that you never ask me so I make them up myself but I'm not bitter.


How will this affect Clerkmanifesto?

This will not in any way affect Clerkmanifesto, and the daily blogging will carry on, exactly as is, into the sunset, or to the end of time, wherever in the far distance they may be.

What are these new blogs?

They are two blogs related to clerkmanifesto. Both to be posted on a more random and infrequent basis than clerkmanifesto, but filling in some spaces that clerkmanifesto doesn't cover.

Should I keep asking questions? I feel finished.

No. Sorry. You have to ask some more questions and be very interested.

I'm really excited about these two new blogs! Tell me about the B blog.

The B blog is for odd things that don't fit in the careful, distilled, artistic perfection of clerkmanifesto. It's where I might go on at length about my dear Barcelona Soccer team, and Messi, or put in links to things I like, or take a picture of something, or rant without a calming wisdom, or swear extra, or even publish off kilter things from the history of the main blog. It's all less careful, wilder, and less concerned with getting things just right. You can read more about what it is here, on the blog itself. There you can also sign up for email delivery if it sounds like your cup of tea.

Done! I love it. I'm signed up to get the emails. Now tell me about the Best of Clerkmanifesto blog. 

This is simpler. It is pieces that I will occasionally post from the increasingly deep history of Clerkmanifesto that I particularly liked. So as it says, the best of clerkmanifesto, in so far as I find it to be the best. But, of course, I may not be the best judge of all that. You can find it linked here, or at anytime on the sidebar of this blog, and if you hit the link you will see more detailed information.

So it sounds like a more unhinged and diverse and messy (pun intended) clerkmanifesto, and then also a more perfected and peaceful one. Who might these be suited for?

Um, people who simply can't get enough of clerkmanifesto. Or, maybe I suppose too, people who like clerkmanifesto but would like to get a bit less of it.

That second part made me feel sad. 

I am proud to have a reader like you.

On the species

Charles Schulz, or maybe more properly Linus Van Pelt, once said "I love mankind... It's people I can't stand." It's cleverness impressed me deeply as an eight year old and I've always loved to muse on it, like it was a puzzle. Like I'd have to work it all out to get it straight in my head. I love mankind... It's people I can't stand. But every time I try and work it out in my life it somehow comes out opposite.

When I walk through the upper floor of my library, after shelving a cart of non fiction, I see all the lost souls out on our great banks of computers up there. It often gives me this strange, hollow, sad feeling. It looks like something out of a dystopian future from the eighties. Alone, killing time, feeding into isolated machines, sitting one next to the other but entirely disconnected from one another and everything around them, there they are; humanity. Mankind. Staring into screens full of pre packaged information, slickly produced video, pouring over strange forms to fill out, meaningless plastic things to buy, and the desultory comments of people just like them with just enough energy to type into their own computers. Nothing out in this sea can attract my eye. They are featureless, uninspired, beaten down, yet pulled on in some collective march to disaster and dissonance. They look like they're all doing some kind of extremely undemanding factory work on some assembly line designed by evil robots.

But then I invariably look at just one of them. I don't know why. Maybe I recognize someone, or someone asks me a question, but it breaks the spell. Now they come alive. Here's the homeless kid, smelly in his unwashed clothes, watching bad anime. He laughs. I hear he's trying to work things out with a community resource advocate. There's the daffy guy who writes books that are huge, unhinged, and unreadable. He talked the library into buying one or two of them for our collection through his sheer genial energy, nervousness, and persistence. I can tell you that he loves stamps. And there is that lady who is always, always there, playing that pointless game where you shoot colored balls at a ceiling of colored balls. But my god she's getting good at it!

And so it is: I love people... It's mankind I can't stand.

On the proper use of "literally"

We got an interesting new book a couple months ago at the library. I picked it up off the New Books shelf. It's a book all about OCD. I literally can't stop reading it.

Shelving

Shelving books at a library wears everyone down. Everyone. We never have had, and never will have, a great, long term shelver of books.

We could have an explicit rule that says "For every hour one is assigned to shelve books, we expect a person to shelve books for at least 30 minutes." The advantage of this rule would be that it is roughly accurate to what everyone actually does. The disadvantage of this rule is that, due to human nature, everyone would probably start shelving for 15 minutes, thinking "Surely no one expects me to shelve for the whole 30 minutes of my hour of shelving!"

On the other hand maybe if we had that 30 minute rule nothing would change. I don't believe most of us hate shelving. There are times when most of us like it. It can be our one chance to get away from everybody. How long can I, for instance, wander around the library working myself up into a lather about how no one else is doing any of the work I'm supposed to be doing, or thus may have to do. I need a break. Sometimes shelving is that break.

But one can't live on shelving.

Oh sure, every rare once in awhile we hire some amazing new person and they look like a real shelver. Naturally everyone is delighted with them. They are diligent, and industrious, and they like shelving. Give them a whopping three scheduled hours shelving and they spend three whole hours shelving. The manager, the one who only wants people to look busy, will adore them. But thinking they are just the sort of person they want to see around more in the workroom they will assign them to less and less shelving and more and more to tangential tasks, where they can observe and admire their industriousness. These once great shelvers will get a taste for these stray jobs. Everyone does. There's a feeling of responsibility, importance, and control of one's destiny that goes with them. Soon they will have taken something like organizing the incoming book donations, which got by for years with no one at all doing anything about it, and grown it into a mildly useful six or seven hour a week job. Now when it comes time to shelve for an hour they're just too backed up with book donation organizing to get to it right away. They need to empty these three boxes first. Then it's time for their fruit snack. Then they can get to their shelving. No problem, there's still about half an hour left. 

Which brings me to an older, cherished fantasy of shelving I still harbor: Every worker, at any level, who comes to the library, should do a small tithe of shelving.

I made a joke, as in joking on the square, last night, to a visiting branch manager that did not go well. She asked where our P.I.C. was, which took me a moment until I realized she meant Person In Charge. I said that we're more of an egalitarian library, not dominated by hierarchical structures. She became a bit more terse, and I instructed her on her way. She went and joined three other managers for two hours of a community program that required somewhere between zero and one staff members, closer to zero. It was an interesting program. Do I object to their gathering to chat, fuss around it, and then watch it for 90 minutes? No, no, no. Just so long as, since they're here, they put in an hour of shelving. This might seem like a lot, but it only takes half an hour, and even less if one works really hard.

How to give us money

Lately I have been finding money lying around at the library I work at. Here's some in the aisle where I'm shelving books. I have had pleasant dreams like this: "Oh, here's a bill, and look at all this change! Oh, don't mind if I do. Why, there's so much!" Walking by the reference desk there's a dollar on the ground. I give it to the Reference Librarian. "I guess they missed your tip jar." I say. Someone leaves a quarter behind at the front desk. "Where'd this come from?" I just throw it into our cash register. I never keep any of this money. Somehow that would feel wrong, like I'm not some sort of physical part of my library. Like I'm a visitor.

I am not a visitor. Among all the comments and actions of patrons that I bristle at, there are few that get to me more than if I'm asked "Do you work here?"

"No, I sit here at this official looking desk with a name badge just to soak in what it all might feel like. Can I pretend to help you?"

Hmph! "Do I work here". One might as well ask a stack of non fiction bookshelves if they are part of the library.

"No." They would say. "We're just visiting for the day and adopted this clever camouflage in the hopes that no one would ask us any ridiculous questions!!!"

"Well excuse me. Everyone in this library is so touchy!"

Good point.

So, okay, yes, I work here. I have two main jobs: Delivering witty, irascible quips at every possible moment, and collecting the money people donate. Oh, you'd like to donate some money to the library? How kind. No, we don't have a box anywhere. Just throw it on the floor.

Vegetables

A group of canned vegetables were sitting on a shelf and one of them was twisting around and checking himself out.

"Hey!" He cried proudly. "I'm one hundred percent corn, nothing else!"

Some fancy new can of Brussels sprouts swiveled to look at him. "But who cares? You're just corn." He said witheringly.

"Well I'm not corn. I'm heirloom asparagus." Bragged another can.

"Big deal! It's not like you're organic. I'm organic peas." Said some peas.

"Yuck. Peas! I..."

"Hey, hey, hey!" Interrupted a can of artichoke hearts. "Must we define ourselves by all these labels? Can't we just all be vegetables?"

All the cans stopped, and reflected, and they all saw how wise the artichoke hearts were. So they never moved, or spoke, or did anything for themselves ever again.

Michael McClure again, again

Aloud, over the week, we read In Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan. I wish I could fervently recommend it to you, long having counted it among books I loved. But I can only recommend it without my usual more fierce recommendation where I get militant and emotionally upset if you reply, noncommittally, "Maybe...". 

Nevertheless, there is still something wonderful about it within its scattering of flaws. Not least, after about 15 years of a culture well steeped in post apocalyptic fantasy/Sci fi narratives, where something vaguely like magic, or not, has emerged in a world that is suspiciously or specifically built on the ruins of our own, it is a surprise to find that Richard Brautigan seems to have fashioned one of these post apocalypse narratives in the mid sixties, under everyone's noses, about forty years ahead of time. Elements like the ever changing town of iDeath, that has rules we can't understand, The Forgotten Works, where old things are endlessly piled up, tainted and mostly useless, community factions, and a self contained semi rural community, fit neatly with probably a hundred books I could pull off the shelves of my library, if you'll just give me half an hour to look, and watch the front desk for me, and promise to check them all out and write a doctoral thesis based on my findings. When I read this book as young man the context wasn't available to me for understanding it as an adventurous genre take because the genre did not yet properly exist. 

This is an amazing trick. 

I hope somehow I am writing some kind of blog of the future now. Check with me in forty years.

Among the small pleasures of In Watermelon Sugar was getting to the end and seeing that it was dedicated in part to my own College English Teacher! 

I dedicate this post to my College English Teacher, who seemed to like my work quite a bit, based on almost nothing, and one day took me aside to say, with mysterious vision and passion, in 1987, "You must write a blog!"

Of course, blogs didn't exist. He must have learned that trick from his old friend Richard Brautigan. 

Sleeping

I have been on vacation for a week now, just at home, with my wife, nothing fancy. And I want to tell you how much, how wildly I have loved sleeping. 

Sleeping is great, the sweet, sprawling, luxurious perfecter of all things. I had a friend and roommate once named Chris who could only sleep four hours a night. He wasn't tired. He had so much time to do so much more than those of us who need eight, or eleven hours a night. He made large, dark, and intricate drawings. And yet I could ever feel his longing. Like those four or five hours of unconsciousness he was missing taunted him, lured him, remained unspeakably delicious and yet outside his reach.

And then there's cats.

I heard this joke recently:

One cat says to another "Sorry if I'm cranky. I only got 18 hours of sleep last night."

This then is just one more reason to treasure any moment with a cat- they have but half a year of wakefulness to give in the whole of their existence. So of course their attention is a treasure. And though they nearly sleep away their whole lives, who in their right mind would fault a cat?

The only real flaw I can find with the sweet sport of sleep is this: By its very nature, asleep and gone to the world, we miss out on it.

Dear Garrison Keillor

Dear Garrison Keillor:



This is a fan letter. But possibly more the "Cease and desist" type than the "Oh, isn't that nice!" type.

C., who I sometimes work with at the library, is a writer, and a few other things. He's deeply involved in the Twin Cities Arts community, and the Democratic Party, and, to tell you the truth I don't know what he's up to, but he knows a lot of people. But I'm sorry to report that he doesn't like you. 

I curiously meet a lot of people who don't like you. 

I'm not one of them. I ran into you with my wife, in the foyer of your bookstore. You sort of held the door for us in passing. I mean, what's not to like?

I said to C., who I quite like, as an aside to something we were talking about last week, referring to you, "Yeah, but sometimes he can be an incredibly good writer."

C. seemed surprised by this. Like such an idea never occurred to him. Look at this, a person, C., immersed in writing and the arts for more than 30 years, hailing from your very own hometown, Anoka, then moving to the same town you moved to, and yet the idea that you're an indisputably excellent writer was a completely new idea to him, not exactly outrageous or in dispute, merely foreign, baffling, like a response to "Bob Dylan has a good voice", or "Half the time Jane Austen is just making fun of people", or "Not reading clerkmanifesto regularly is a kind of nihilism and cowardice."

"Wait. What's clerkmanifesto?" You ask.

This! This is clerkmanifesto! Get on board!

Anyway, C. found the idea of you as a great writer so alien that it stuck in my brain, undigested, until, a week later I saw a quote of yours on the back of a book of poetry by Louis Jenkins. and not only did I think it was a terrific little quote, but it reminded me that I have read, or heard, something of yours on hundreds of different occasions and thought it was terrific.

So if I think you're a terrific, sagacious, wise, and funny writer, what's wrong with everyone else?

I don't think people like humorists. Oh, they like comedians, and they're wild about humorists when the humorists are being serious, but they don't really like humorists being humorists. It's because humorists have a troubling propensity for telling the truth, but they're always being so damn sneaky about it.

How else are you supposed to do it?

Anyway, I like to tell myself all this when I think about how I have 12 readers instead of 12 million. And I don't mind thinking it either when someone says to me "I don't really like Garrison Keillor. I saw him backstage somewhere and he didn't smile at me."

So I thought I'd share it with you, in case you had any doubts.



Warmly, and with respect,


F. Calypso

200 Views of Rome: Sant'Andrea al Quirinale

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟



5 Stars




In a magical world, slightly better and wiser than this one, where everything is pretty much exactly the same as it is now, except I am quoted far more often, and maybe have a tad less back and sciatica pain, you would be acutely aware that my opinion of Bernini as an architect is a measured one. And there would be no doubt some pithy quote you could trot out to assert that in the irresistible battle between Borromini and Bernini I am ever favoring Borromini.

So what's all this five star hoo-ha around a quintessentially Bernini designed church?

I don't know. Everything is complicated. In the real world I am rarely quoted, my sciatica hurts, and Bernini is given a church to build and it's...

lovely.

And why not? Bernini was a genius, a sculptor on a level with Michelangelo even. So if he wants to set down his hammer and chisel for a bit in order to design buildings, or produce a few albums where he sings standards from the Great American Songbook, or interrupts his obscure blog of blazing visions in order to write 200 reviews of Rome, well, more power to him. Who knows what sort of magic might take place. A jewel box might explode, light could pour down from a half real sun, everything might radiate at a perfect equidistance, and you could see all the stars of the sky, in the middle of the day, unfettered by night.

I love this church. I love its roundness and its elegant stage set fronting onto the street. I love its feeling of completeness inside. Such a spinning kaleidoscope of wholeness, all colors and rich and dazzle and calm. Unlike some churches I might be giving five stars to, this isn't for some featured painting or for some famous statues by, perhaps, Bernini himself inside, it's just for the space, the perfect little building, the sense that every piece of it is taken care of and it all goes together.

The best teacher I ever had, Marc LeSeuer, who lit the first fires in me for the Roman Baroque, all like it was a cool thing no one had heard of for the last hundred years, and maybe they really hadn't heard then, showed us slides of Bernini's work in St. Peters to illustrate. But I think what Bernini was trying to do there is lost a little in so giant a space. Here at modest Sant'Andrea everything is under his command, no longer a stage set, but an environment, something less looked upon and instead more inhabited and felt. There are not so many places in the world like this, not so many people who can do this. Borromini does it twice, at least, and better; Bernini, here, this once.

But does everything have to be measured? Is beauty to be ranked and catalogued? Will every last mote in the Universe be ultimately reviewed on the Internet? Must it all be a contest?

Alas. Yes. And lovely Sant'Andrea al Quirinale comes in third. I'm fine with that. So, I'm sure, is Marc LeSeuer. Borromini would be okay with it too, though a bit touchy at the very mention of Bernini. Bernini himself, long entombed, would, at the hint of the word of third place, be promptly tearing out his hair over it. To which I can only say, with no likelihood of being quoted "Well Bernini, if you wanted it that much, you should have finished it off with some statues!"

One hundred percent gravlax

I'm sorry, but I'm not going to be able to give it my all today. I'm making gravlax.

This is the part of the making gravlax where it sits in the refrigerator for two days.

I did the part already where I put copious amounts of salt and honey, some peppercorns and fennel seed, and a tablespoon or so of gin on two fillets of salmon as their bright orange flesh looked up at me smiling, blithely having forgotten their death. I did the part where I carefully sandwiched the fillets of salmon together, wrapped them tightly in plastic, and put a flat, heavy weight on the fish. I also did the part where I put it in the refrigerator to cure. So I am at the part of the process where I think about it all the time.

I am thinking about it now.

I am going out to the front desk of the library I work at.

"Can I get a library card?" Someone will ask me.

And I will think "Gravlax."

"Can you tell me if you have a copy of the new DVD Lion in?"

"Can you tell me how my gravlax is doing?"

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Did you just say 'Gravlax'?"

"Do you want to see some pictures?"

"Uh. Do you have pictures of your gravlax?"

"No, but we can look at pictures of other people's gravlax while mine is curing in my refrigerator. I can tilt the screen for you."

"I don't know. Okay, I guess. If no one is in line behind me."

"Nice, huh?"

"Wow. It's making me hungry. What are you going to do with your gravlax?"

"Thank you for asking. I am going to eat it."

"Do you have a copy of the new DVD Lion in?"

"Yes."







 

Eco-system

After spilling our collected kitchen compost onto our kitchen floor I went out for my accustomed walk. But realizing, after a bit of desultory rambling, that the whole day was mine to do with what I liked, I decided to go far and feed the mosquitoes. I ventured past all the pretty houses and flowering yards of my neighbors and plunged into the pockets of deep woods tucked into the Mississippi River bluffs.

"Come for me mosquitoes. Wax fat." And they did. In their lightness and clouds, their quiet hungers and mellow bobbing in damp airs.

Scourge of mankind, disease bringer, pestilence of the North and South and Center. Oh squishable, whackable mosquito! Mighty hunter, lover of water, vampire, magician. Who are we to complain? We are all admiration for killers; lions bringing down zebras, a pack of wolves stalking the caribou herds, the owl, wings spread wide and plunging on some unsuspecting mouse. Why must everything die all the time? The mosquito doesn't think anything has to die. She sees all the meat on the hoof just as we do. But she translates us into trees, and plucks our blood like fruit. We can surely spare a bare drop of blood easier than our lives. And she leaves us the gift of an itch, to remember her by. Then she goes and has a few hundred children.

The rest of the time she eats the nectar of flowers.

I sound so calm about it, but in the thick of the mosquito swarms I resorted to running on the damp trails, flailing my hands like a madman.

And what about the blood I lost?

It's okay. I found wild raspberries, a great bank of them. The ripe ones were black and small. They grew scattered, on a sunny hillside, and I picked a handful to eat. They gave me the strength of my blood back. Then I picked some more and ate them because I liked them.

One or two of them were just the right ripeness, and delicious, but those were the rare ones. Mostly they were just good, tart, tasty, but not delicious. Do you know what was delicious?

I was.

Just ask the mosquitoes.

A library interaction for study purposes

For training purposes only:

Transcript of a standard phone call for renewing books, received at the library, 1:14 p.m., June 28, 2017.

Edited for brevity.

Staff: (Brief greeting).

Patron: (Long string of irrelevant and useless information).

Staff: If you will read me the barcode number off of your library card I will do what I can to help you.

Patron: (Two requests for clarification of above, followed by) So you need my library card?

Staff: Yes.

Patron: (800 words narrating the search for the library card). Here it is! What do you need?

Staff: The long number on the back of the card.

Patron: (Repeats above phrase in questioning manner).

Staff: Under the barcode.

Patron: (Reads number incorrectly)

Staff: That is not a possible number in our system. Can you read it to me again?

Patron: (Reads number incorrectly)

Staff: (Carefully explains how the number can't possibly be correct).

Patron: (Reads number correctly).

Staff: What can I help you with?

Patron: (Relates exhaustive story with many trials and tribulations but no particular point).

Staff: So, would it help if we renewed your books?

Patron: (Long digressive story suggesting that they would love it if Staff renewed all their books but never saying so).

Staff: I'm going to renew your books.

Patron: Well, will you just renew (names book)?

Staff: Okay, that's renewed to (date three weeks hence). Anything else?

Patron: Yes, could you renew (names book)?

Staff: I could just renew all of them if you like.

Patron: That won't be necessary. I just want to renew (renames the two books above and a third book).

Staff: They'll be due on (Names date). I...

Patron: And (Names a fourth book). Oh, and I guess I better renew these: (Names all the rest of the books checked out on the card).

Staff: Everything is renewed to (Date).

Patron: Is (names book mentioned earlier) renewed?

Staff: Yes it is.

Patron: When is it due?

Staff: (Names same date that has now been mentioned three times). All of the items are due on (Names date that has now been mentioned four times).

Patron: (Names date that has been mentioned five times, but in a questioning manner).

Staff: Yes.

Patron: (Adopts a mysterious and uncomfortable silence).


Staff: Is there any thing else I can do for you?


Patron: Um. (Considers for a long time, and then replies sadly) No.


Staff: (Confused how to end a call when the patron doesn't say thank you). Okay then. Er, thank you.


Patron: (Doesn't say anything, but then starts to say something urgent just as Staff is hanging up).

End call.

Staff: (Looking around for co-worker to share tale of exasperating call with but finding only a co-worker who reminds them a lot of the Patron they were just talking to). Hi.

Co-worker: Do you know why there are no check ins coming through the machine?

Staff: Because it jammed ten minutes ago and instead of fixing it you just stared oddly at it while books bunched up and eventually everything shut down.

Co-worker: Oh. I thought there was something wrong with the book.

Staff: No.

Co-worker: Oh.

Staff: I'll fix it.

Co-worker: Oh.

An early start

I was checking in a book and sending it in transit to another library. It was called An Early Start for Your Child With Autism, and I thought "Maybe there's nothing wrong with being autistic, but I don't know why you'd want to train your child into it."









Not enough to qualify as a whole blog post? Fair enough. I have been saving a small bit of advice for you anyway:



When gazing up at birds in awe, keep your mouth closed.







Okay, one more. I learned this from my library's automation services department:



If you don't know how to do something, claim that it's impossible.

Dear Publisher, my feelings

Dear Publisher:


 
I hate you.

I can't believe I just said that. What a horrible thing to tell someone, especially a stranger who is simply trying to live a life of decency, service, and love. How could I say such a thing to someone trying to promote books and reading and make a viable market for authors? I feel terrible. I wish I could take it back. 

Actually, I could take it back. It would be easy enough for me to delete all this. And I probably should take it back. 

But I can't. Because I hate you.

"What did I do?" You cry.

Oh, you know what you did, you miscreant, you hoodlum. You said no.

All this hard work I have done as a writer. I have given everything I have. I have been funny, wise, clever, and persevering. I have thought things through. I have ridden the tornado of words all the twisting way to Oz. I have taken a moderate amount of native talent and uncompromisingly buffed it to such a sheen that you can see myself in it. If only you'd look, which you won't. You monster.

I have written great things, but who will find them without you and your ilk. Almost no one. I have composed beautiful, careful, wild, hungry, mad, and extraordinary pieces of literature. But you said no. No! 

Or at least you would say no, if I ever sent you any of them. 

I like to think I have a bit more sense than to do that, you bastard.




Sincerely yours,


Feldenstein Calypso
unpublished author

200 Views of Rome: La prosciutteria Trevi

🌟🌟🌟🌟☆


4 Stars




This was the best prosciutteria we went to in Rome. But maybe that's not saying much since there aren't a lot of them, even if their numbers seem to be growing. How about this: it was the best meat and cheese platter we had in Rome. That's a bit better. We had quite a few meat and cheese platters until we realized we weren't wild about them. This one was the best. One or two of the salamis were exceptionally good. I don't know why I said "one or two". It was one.

But despite all this "they're number one!" adulation, I was never fully convinced. I love salami. I can love prosciutto. There might be better versions somewhere than here. They might not go best on platters piled up with it, but it was good. I mean, look, I gave four stars. So sure, find the narrow street near the Trevi Fountain, just barely off from where all the crowds tend to mash together more than anywhere else in Rome. Here's the little 8 foot wide prosciutteria. Good luck finding a table. We found one. It was just big enough to seat two squirrels sharing an acorn. We counted ourselves lucky. We tried to be squirrels. Mash on up to the counter. You have to order at the counter because something about what kind of business they are. It may have changed by now. They suggested it might. They were pretty nice at the counter. Oops, I'm in someones way. Coming through. Everyone is in everyones way. Be like the squirrel. Get small. Sit here on this spool of thread. I can sit on a spool of thread. This is good salami. Isn't this good salami? Mmmmm. Yes. Yum. Excuse me, sorry about my knee. Is all the good salami gone. Yes. This one is pretty good too. It's okay. Sorry, excuse me. Should we go? Yes, let's get going. This is pretty tasty. Yes it is, let's never come here again.

And so, in the end, you ask "Should I go here?"

Yes, absolutely. No.

200 Views of Rome: Galleria Spada

🌟🌟🌟🌟☆


4 Stars



My take on the Galleria Spada, or Palazzo Spada, has no basis in any historical facts. But like any compelling fiction it holds some kind of fundamental truth within it. So let's go with it:

There were a bunch of really rich, powerful guys in Rome. They all knew each other. And they built (or modified) their fabulous Palazzi. They had loads of ready Catholic cash, and they also had really terrific taste. They decorated spectacularly. And so today we can go visit their many amazing palaces: Barberini, Borghese, Farnese, Altemps, and so on.

On the other hand there was Cardinal Spada. He wasn't quite as rich as all the other guys. And he didn't have as good taste either. But he really wanted to be one of them. So he did his best, in a desperate, pathetic sort of way. And all the big shots humored him.

There's Cardinal Spada now, buying a painting by a big name artist. It's the cheapest one he can find, and it's not that good. "Look everyone." He cries. "I got a Durer! I got a Titian!"

"Er, is that a real Titian?"

"The guy said it was, and it was on sale!" Cardinal Spada is so excited he throws a party for his rich friends to celebrate. The food's not that good and it's skimpy. The wine tastes funny. He can't afford quite enough servants.  But Cardinal Spada is so proud, and eager, and awkward.

Go to the other Palazzi and see a short list at each of them of great paintings by genius painters. But because there are only so many of those around they fill their wall space out with the best paintings by  slightly less famous and brilliant artists, and then they round that all out with curiosities, and paintings along themes, or of particular interest to them.

Not Cardinal Spada. He buys blind, by name, whatever is on sale. He buys in bulk.

Then he hires Borromini to do some work on the place.

Wait, Borromini! Greatest architect in the world?

Yes, he has him do a cut rate bargain basement illusion out in the garden. It's... cute. But I picture Cardinal Spada at pains to bring it up at every social gathering: "Yeah, just having Borromini do a little work around the Palazzo." Or "Great to get away to this party. My Palazzo is so dusty what with all that architectural work Borromini is doing around the place!"

So, you may wonder, is Galleria Spada worth a visit?

Yes!!! It's not too expensive, maybe 5 euros. I love its handy location in the heart of things, near Campo de Fiori. It's pretty quiet in there too, which is never a bad thing in Rome. The paintings can surprise you by how uninteresting they are, which is no small trick when you've got work by such notable artists. But you can just sort of blaze through the opulent, though by no means terribly interesting halls, and get to the little garden courtyard.

"Hey! Isn't the Borromini out here?"

"It is! That's what everyone comes here to see."

"Is that it over there?"

"Yes it is."

It's surprisingly unimpressive, isn't it?

"Well, he was probably working with a pretty tight budget."

"Disappointing, the pictures I saw on the Internet made it look more interesting somehow."

"Yeah, it's not much to speak of."

"Hey. It's really nice out here though. Look, a cat."

"I see it. She's a very friendly cat."

"Are these lime trees?"

"Maybe. It smells so good out here, doesn't it?"

"Yes, it does."