A library mission statement

Yesterday my wife and I were at a lecture at our local museum. It was about eccentricity in Japanese Painting. It was okay. But two things from it stick with me. One was about how in 17th or 18th century Japan, Zen Buddhism was very powerful and corrupt, and a new Zen school came in from China with a kind of back to basics focus, centered on the principle that desire makes you unhappy. It had great impact and influence. The other thing that stuck with me was a story, in a painting from this same period, about a wealthy, successful poet who goes to seek wisdom from some wacky sage who lives in a tree. After much travel he finds this prophet or sage or whatever he is, up in a tree, and the poet asks the guy in the tree what the meaning of life is. The prophet in the tree says something like "Be nice to people." This makes the poet pretty mad. He says "Do you know who I am? I came all this way seeking your wisdom and you give me some crappy platitude? Anyone could have told me to be nice to people!"

The sage says "It is very easy to say, but very hard to do."

All this got me thinking about how there is a great power in reducing back to the distilled essence of something. If you can get it right, at that simple level, all the energy that has sprawled out in its interpretations and applications comes back with massive power into a single, pre big bang like point. I am reading In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan and think it's just great. Part of why it is so great is because it does just this. He says "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much." and it is a key of power. It takes all the energy of a hundred years of madness about food, takes it all back to something almost absurdly simple, and unlocks a great door, and a wise and interesting book.

Walking around my Library, with, as I often do, Library thoughts swirling through my head, I thought, what would this essence be in the describing of our Libraries, these places with all their computer classes and programming and coffee shops and games and meeting spaces and wifi and outreach and technological gimmickry? I know we're not talking about fundamentally corrupt institutions with Libraries, were talking about largely wonderful institutions, but I often feel like the core of where I work does get a little forgotten in all its ever growing peripheries and expansions. I wondered what there would be in naming this essential core of a Library, what it would feel like. Here is my try:

Get as many good books as you can, put them in a place you can read and keep them, and make them as readily available as possible.

Ideas that are horses

Having burst into this day by drinking two large cappuccinos I have had no problem generating an excellent idea for today's blog post. Indeed I have generated at least seven ideas so far, and you would have loved each one. Really. Very insightful they were, passionate, rip roaring, funny, illuminating stuff. Unfortunately each one of these fabulous ideas has gone racing through my fevered and caffeinated brain like a wild horse on a rampage of power. There is the horse, and it is beautiful and wild and perfect. It runs by in a blaze of ferocious glory, and it's gone. Could I even have seen such perfection? I don't know because the only notes I have on my ideas look like this:

Liyuan Library, triumph of print!

Librarians and Journalists!!!

cell phones advancement to past.

great lives and not trying.

It doesn't look like so much there, does it? I have a vague sense of what each one was supposed to be about, an echo of the thrilling rolling thuds of their hoof-beats, a heart piercing flash of a vision of their rolled back wild eyes and me standing astonished among the dunes and wild grasses.

Ah, well, written or not, great or not, they would have all disappeared to the west, toward the sea. Whether I could have read my vision over again as bona fide art, or just remember them as fading, fearsome and mighty dreams, they go, and are gone.

And that is how it is. Life is the disabusement of our ideas of how things should be. But I do not despair. I don't even feel sad, oddly enough. I have my scraps of the tiny pieces of my ideas. I will go track down some of those horses on the dunes. And no doubt I will even manage to reconstruct a few of those pieces for you to read here. They'll probably be worse than their original, brilliant, racing visions, but that's how it usually is anyway. And yet too, they could be better than all my wild imaginations. Greatness. Though I sometimes do, it has never been for me to say.

Oh weather!

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to stand around talking about the weather until our toes start to hurt, turn blue, and, finally, detach. Weather is something everyone can share in, discuss at any level, and have real feelings about. But it is also non controversial at heart, hard to go on too long about, and is surprisingly grounding. My one regular email correspondence is at least one third concerning weather, always an easy "go to" subject of interest to us both. Nevertheless, on this day, our first really ungodly cold day of this winter season (the temperature here in Minnesota is at minus 4 degrees and will be getting colder), when people say to me "It's cold out!" I have felt compelled to reply "Not in here is isn't."

And it isn't. As I write I am experiencing roughly the same temperature as you are wherever you are, unless, maybe, you're reading this on a cell phone in a parking lot or garden or something. But then, even if you are doing that, it is probably in the 70s out in your parking lot, and not raining, just like it is in here, otherwise you'd probably go inside. But I think all this only actually illustrates the need for us to talk about the weather more. It would be way too easy for us to simply and finally lose all touch with the genuine, wild world we live in and all its wonderful local differences and variety. The only other solution I could think of besides talking about the weather would be to go out in it.

Did I mention that it's minus four out? We'll just talk.

Display cube madness

I have previously spoken of the librarian who chooses display books based almost entirely on the books being hardcover and the fact that they are very very close to where the particular display spot is. My bitterness about this seems to be a reflection of the fact that her functionally random choices appear to be quite popular and successful, with their fingers right on the pulse of the reading public, while my rogue choices for the same displays, chosen based on a ferocious love of the books involved and on nothing else, go pretty much nowhere. I am now sad to report that her school of display also seems to be in full force out on our themed display cubes. These display cubes are a series of large shelving cubes that feature spotlighted collections of books. I think they're supposed to make up for the fact that without them you'd have to travel several miles from the front doors of my library before you would get to any actual flesh and blood (paper and glue?) books. So I experienced a not unfamiliar shock of horror and recognition when I yesterday looked at the contents of the cube called "Great Lives".

I actually doubt that the "Great Lives" display cube is being stocked by the same librarian whose fiction choices so disturb and confound me, but there is little doubt that it is being stocked along those same theoretical lines. Do they teach this in Library School? Rule one: When stocking any kind of library display always pretend you are in a retail store and trying to sell stuff. Rule two: Conserve your energy! Whatever the source for this approach I am forced to admit that these books seemed to be selling, er, circulating, pretty good. The "Great Lives" display had the look of something doing a brisk business. Fortunately there were still plenty of "Great Lives" to check out. Herewith are some of our featured great lives:

Christopher Milne. Being the inspiration for Christopher Robin at age six may be a tenuous link to greatness, but I would like to grow my conception of greatness if I can. Who knows? I'm pretty sure Pooh thought he was great.

Brock Lesnar. Okay, despite what I said in the comments about Christopher Milne I would totally make fun of Brock Lesnar, a professional wrestler, for being on this cube of great lives. But I won't out of respect for my many, many readers who are great fans of Professional Wrestling. Nevertheless I cannot resist noting that in all the pictures on the internet that I reviewed of Brock Lesnar in order to become properly acquainted with him, he looks far too angry to be leading a great life.

Rob Lowe. I actually really enjoyed West Wing, which I believe is the last TV show I was able to watch in its entirety. Nevertheless, in this context of greatness, I am concerned with his history of legal troubles with former nannies.

Ralph Lauren. I don't like rich people. This probably sounds silly to you as a blanket (available in the Ralph Lauren , English Isles Collection) statement, but I feel it is a necessary corrective in our world. As soon as our world becomes less relentlessly groveling I will revisit this rich person/Ralph Lauren issue. As a side note though I found it strangely interesting that the Wikipedia page for Brock Lesnar is vastly longer than the one for Ralph Lauren.

Laura Bush. This is actually the one that so horrified me I had to write this whole, vast commentary about our "Great Lives" display. But with my outrage mellowed both by time and by the consideration required to write lucidly, I am able to look at the following mitigating factors without passing out. First, she was a librarian. I am thinking this might have leaped out at the selecting librarian as desperately appealing. And though I would figure this is the sort of commonality you would want to bury under the rug with all your old copies of Men are From Mars Women are From Venus I am able to understand the impulse. Two, the librarian had wildly overstocked the "Great Lives" with biographies of men, and where else were they going to find a woman of the stature of a Brock Lesnar!

Adolph Hitler. Yes. Adolph Hitler. Oddly I only even found this one after I was so outraged by Laura Bush and was merely collecting the names of an assortment of other "Great" people on the cube. Dave, my colleague, believes this to be the work of an evil prankster, but I don't believe it. It's not like the book was pro Hitler, and besides, our resident patron Nazi has not been around for months. Oh, and I just went to look it up and the book in question has had its status appropriately changed for being on the cube, which pretty well seals the deal here. As an explanation, I think the librarian who chose this was merely focusing on the "Memoirs and Biographies" subtitle of the "Great Lives" cube, and was also using the term "Great" more in its meaning as "Large" which also helps explain the inclusion of Brock Lesnar, who is 286 pounds!

When I was discussing all this with one of my most excellent colleagues she told me she was given the advice in Library School to never recommend things she loved, because when the patron didn't like them you would hate that person too much to be able to help them anymore. Setting aside just how horribly twisted that advice is, it does make me wonder, what does one say when the patron comes back and says "I loved reading about the great lives of Hitler, Laura Bush, and Brock Lesnar! Oh guide me more wise librarian!"

Cat jealousy

The library cat, kafka, belongs to himself and to the Library. But I sometimes get jealous of all his other friends. Though I am perhaps most responsible for this cat, many people have taken him on as someone to watch out for and take care of. Yesterday I found kafka with an old man in a corner of the newspaper area. I have known the man for many, many years. He is rough and a bit ragged, always striking me as one of those people on some edge of homelessness. I don't think I have ever exchanged a word with him, and I've never seen him check out Library material. He had laid out large sheets of newspaper in front of him, presumably not the library's, and was hand feeding kafka sardines, with those newspapers protecting our carpet. There was no shyness in kafka as he ate, and the two of them seemed peaceable together, and settled, perhaps even practiced, in their exchange. That jealous part of me wanted to find something officious, or something wrong about it. Sometimes it is hard to tell if we are succumbing, or being responsible. 

I crouched at a respectful distance.

"Those are water packed?" I asked.

The man nodded with a strange shyness. I nodded back and returned to shelving. Actually, I was a bit jealous of them both.

Good art bad art

As a person of strong opinions, aye, ferocious, sometimes terrifying opinions, I have had to step back on occasion and reflect on the idea of good art vs. bad art. To wit, is there really, in the end, good art and bad art? Is there an absolute, objective evaluation anywhere to be had, as it so feels like there must be, or is every shred of greatness and love or loathing held privately, one at a time, in each individual heart?

Well?

Oh, right, I must answer my own questions here.

I don't know. Over the years I answer it one way and I answer it another, but no way sticks.

On the one hand I become certain there is some weird god somewhere who can tell me there is an absolute difference between the loathsome Berenstain Bears and Dr Seuss, Garfield and Peanuts, Dark Knight Rises and The Godfather, Thomas Kinkade and John Constable, Heaven Is For Real and, well, anything, I am beside myself with choices here. And yet for each of these clear choices there are people facing the opposite direction from me. They stand rapt at their beloved Thomas Kinkade print, they obsessively pester the children's librarians for more Garfield or Berenstain Bears while the complete collection of Peanuts remains largely undisturbed these days, upstairs, in adult non fiction. They've read Heaven Is For Real seven times, and they failed to notice that Dark Knight Rises was profoundly bad. Oops. I mean, er, they really loved that Batman movie, Dark Knight Rises. Am I just supposed to say they're wrong? Well, I mean after I say they're wrong, are they actually wrong?

Oops, I think we're sort of back where we started.

Let's try another angle. Let's talk Libraries. What fun! Libraries are very much in on this discussion. After all, a Library is constantly forced to answer some version of this question. It it the job of a public library to provide materials strictly based on popularity, are we advanced scouts for popularity (it got good reviews, so we think it will be popular), can we advocate in hopes something we think is great will be popular? Is it our responsibility to decide some things are great and keep them in disproportion to their circulation and use?

Perhaps there is an answer with the critics. The really powerful critics, the deep ones, avoid the whole good and bad thing. They take the "bad" art, and, examining it, expose all its vacuous lies, its deception and meaninglessness. With the "good" art they start pulling truth out of it like its a magic hat. After that, you're on your own.

And maybe that's as close as we can get. There are things the closer you get and the deeper you look the richer and more profound and beautiful and wonderful they get, and there are things the closer you look, the emptier they get, until, eventually, you are staring into nothing.

Fell in love with a painting

On Friday, I fell in love with a painting.

I will resist comparing it, which is one of my weaknesses, as in, it is the seventh greatest painting ever, by the 43rd best painter. It is better than Caspar David Friedrich, but not so good as Caravaggio. It is the best painting of Mountains ever and the eighth best nature scene. Oh Bah! I say even as I attempt to place it somehow, shout its virtues, exult, advocate, justify, explain, place, convey, elevate. 

But maybe there is no more than this: 

I love this painting. 

Well, there is always a little more.

Very early in the morning I was walking through a temporary show of Japanese Art at my local museum. I had seen the show before, but this time it was so quiet, perhaps because it was dawn, of all strange and mysterious times to be in a museum, and I had seen the painting before and liked it very much, but this time was different. This time I looked at it. And then I kept looking at it. And then I looked at it some more. And the more I looked at the painting the better the painting seemed to get, the deeper I fell into it. The more I felt the air of it, cold and clear and slightly damp. The more real became the rising mist, the splash of water, the ragged stone and everlasting cliffs, the tiny great trees standing above an abyss of a mountain gorge falling forever below. I spied the rough little houses on the brief, high mountain plateau, bordering a fierce little stream, and I saw the path that climbed out of the plateau to disappear into the mysterious passes above. I walked the path.

What is the painting? 

South Mountain in China by Fukui Kotei. Oh, you have not heard of him? You have never heard of the great, immortal Fukui Kotei? Who has not heard of Fukui Kotei!? Whose education has been so neglected? What theft of spirit and magic, inspiration and illumination has been stolen so from those not hearing of Fukui Kotei and South Mountain in China? 

Don't worry. Or worry with me, for I hadn't heard of Fukui Kotei either, and still know little about him. And here I was thinking that we had heard of everyone great, knew all their stories, had our chance at them all. But it turns out the world is nothing like that. Another surprise for us both, forgotten delights everywhere. The painting is all ink, black, with two smaller areas splashed with white, both in the places where there are waterfalls. And all of it is on gold leaf. The painting is black ink over gold, and the gold has a way of being luxurious and dazzling in that way gold has, but it also has a fabulous way of receding, becoming even more tensionless behind and in the black than all the whites we are used to in this sort of work. And so the world it creates becomes somehow more present. Once you cross the border, the plane of the painting, and enter it, you are more fully in it. You are disappeared into gold itself. The whole thing is on two, continuous, six panel screens, almost six feet high and running right to left for well over 20 feet. Would you like to see it?

So would I. But I am not in the same room as it, and so we both must be deprived of that pleasure.

Oh you, me, with our fancy looking-glass internet, our books of all the art history, all our magical photography, and all the lies that everything is known. Here is one for us. This piece cannot be photographed, or, it can be, but little will be left of it. It must be seen, in body and space, and there is nothing else for it.

Why there are no great cat books

In a very recent post I spoke happily of kafka, the Library cat, and how he seems to be turning out very well indeed as he grows up. But some part of me thinks it sort of begs the question "And what cat doesn't turn out well?" Faced with that question I am at a loss. As far as my experience of them goes, all cats, in one way or another, turn out well. And so, with this, I think I have stumbled upon the answer to a riddle that has perplexed me for some years.

The riddle is this: Why are there several great dog books, but no great cat books?

Among the great dog books I can count offhand is The Dog Who Wouldn't Be by Farley Mowat, Uncle Boris in the Yukon and Other Shaggy Dog Stories by Daniel Pinkwater, The One Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith and, possibly, Call of the Wild by Jack London. Also the entire Peanuts ouvre, though Snoopy as a dog, after the first ten years or so of the strip, is a rather questionable proposition.

Among the great cat books there is nothing. We have maybe the Cheshire cat in Alice's Adventures, but we're already well into Snoopy territory there, and there's a couple picture books I like. One of my favorite authors of all time, Ursula K. LeGuin, wrote a series about cats with wings. I don't not recommend it. And after that I am at a complete loss.

So what's the deal?

Here is my theory. Dogs are more variable and impressionable than cats. There are great dogs and crappy dogs. There are nice dogs and mean dogs. This kind of variability is useful for storytelling. Also these dogs, while by no means devoid of their own personalities, have a kind of receptivity. They readily take on the qualities of things around them. Nazis, or Conquistadors can have dogs and they become evil dogs. Daniel Pinkwater or Farley Mowat can have dogs and they are no doubt winning dogs. Surely there are plenty of exceptions to this, and a story about a southern police attack dog during the civil rights protests who refuses to menace the marchers might make for a very nice story, but all that only reinforces my point. And my point is that there is a lot of room with dogs, a lot of room in dogs, for us to broadcast, project, and fill out our stories and visions. Dogs will happily blend in with all that. They will drink it up, roll around in it and cover themselves with it. Hold it out to them and they will come running, tongue wagging. Hold that story crap out to a cat and it will start cleaning itself. It will give you a look that at first you will think is contempt, but then you will slowly start to wonder if you have any idea at all about what was in that cat look. It is not interested in your vision of the world. It is confident in its own. It does not welcome your narrative, it is busy with its own. And its own narrative is one we can admire or even totally love, but it is difficult to plagiarize, exploit or borrow, perhaps partly because it is slightly alien to our ideal cadences.

Or so my new found theory goes. It may be right, or partly right. But then, on the other hand, I can only count, what, like five great dog books? Perhaps its just a matter of luck and alchemy. Perhaps it's mere chance that no one has hit it, just so, with a cat book. Perhaps we should not give up hope yet. It may, one day, happen.

The blogger calls on the gods

Sometimes I am walking around with my pockets stuffed full of blog ideas. It's a little like having my pockets full of cash, a nice, ready for anything feeling. Then I have a period where I'm writing all the time, and go through all the really appealing ideas, until I'm left with the equivalent of a pocket full of nickels. I also get left with all the really super long and challenging to write essay ideas, so, to continue the money analogy then, I have a pocket full of nickels and a couple large denomination bills in an obscure, foreign currency.

This is where I am right now. Nothing in my pockets of real use. But I do not despair when I come to this point. I merely put my order in with the gods. You wouldn't think it, but the gods are actually pretty good about answering, especially if you keep your requests modest. Here is today's order: I would like a very nice, neat little blog idea, nothing fancy, one that makes me feel quite witty, and takes about 12 minutes to write because I have to be at the Library front desk in 12 minutes.

I will wait here. I expect to hear soon.

The maturation of kafka

As kafka the Library cat bursts quickly through his weeks of adolescence, I can only conclude he is turning out very well. He is going to be, already really is, an excellent cat. Protected and domestic, he has his cuddly moments. He makes friends selectively, but easily (to become kafka's friend you need only to patiently desire with your whole being to be his friend. This technique works splendidly with most cats). He is fluidly at home in the Library and has developed the curious and enchanting habit of curling up with thick paperbacks clutched in his arms. This at least must partly explain his preference for the Sci Fi/Fantasy section which is full of these books that are thicker than they are wide. He purrs gently and often, is easily amused, and thoroughly self entertaining. But in addition to all his civilized qualities, kafka is also the wild animal of the stacks. He is a hunter and a prowler. The one pure beast among us. As the only touch of wilderness in the most civilized of all places, a Library, kafka is like a small oasis pond in a great, vast desert. Perhaps this is why so many patrons at first think he is an illusion.

"I could have sworn I saw a cat in here." They say to me. "Is there actually a cat in this Library?"

"How would you feel if there were a cat in this Library?" I ask back. 

"Happy."

"Excellent." I say. "Join the club."

The seven indicators that your phone call is never going to end

I love working with the public. In the context of helping them as a Library employee I find them entertaining, endearing, and interesting, albeit all in a sort of heartbreaking way. But just because I like helping people generally, or like helping most people, most of the time, doesn't mean that there aren't some people who are absolutely excruciating. The most prominent among this excruciating group are not, to me, the angry, belligerent people, but rather the slow, relentless, gentle people who only want to suck you into their world, in anyway they can, and keep you there until you suffocate or starve to death, at which point they will hang up and call someone else to pursue their never ending quest for destruction.

Because these people are stealthy, and, even at times, friendly seeming, I thought I'd give you some tips so you can spot them in your dealings. As they tend to be heavy phone users I have centered my identifying tips there. Once you have spotted one of these people you must do everything in your power to get away from them. Just how to do this almost impossible task must remain now a discussion for another time. Here we are discussing:

The seven indicators that your phone call is never going to end

1. They start with a pointless, irrelevant or unanswerable question.

You: "Good afternoon, this is the Lilyville Public Library."

Them: "Hello. Good afternoon to you. Is this the Library?"

This is a fine example. Also they may ask "Can you help me?" or "Can I ask you a question?" for an opener.

2. The cadence of their speaking is noticeably slow.

This is to get you to psychically lean towards them. They will then try to exploit this advantage to cause you to topple forward into their pit of endlessness, where you will spend all of eternity. Their slow cadence also makes the call last longer, which is one of their fundamental goals.

3. They act as if they have thoroughly prepared for the phone call, but are actually scrupulously unprepared.

"I have 11 books and two DVDs I'd like you to renew for me as they are due tomorrow...oh, you need my Library card?... Could you read the names of all the items I have out, and I'll tell you which? Some might be on my granddaughter's card. Oh, wait, this is the wrong card. Let's go look for my card."

4. They narrate meaningless details.

"Oh, you need my library card? My library card is very precious to me so I keep it in my special wallet. I am opening the wallet now. It has a red rubber band around it. The red rubber band is very tight and I'm trying to get it off now. I think it is the fifth, no, sixth card here..."  This is an attempt to hypnotize you and to turn a ten second task into a bad, joint reading of James Joyce's Ulysses.

5. They tell you long, irrelevant stories as if they are an intrinsic part of the process.

"Can you renew False Mermaid for me as well? My daughter wanted to read it, but her knee swelled up so badly that we had to go to the urgent care where her cousin Pearl works. Pearl's mother is my sister Cheryl who passed away seven years ago now. God rest her soul. She wasn't a very nice woman. But my daughter would still really like to read it if she could..."

6. They exploit your errors.

It is your job to give complete information. When they ask if there is a way to see a list of all fiction writers of Italian descent who ever published a book, and you say anything other than "No." like "No, I mean, you would have to do searches of Italian authors, come up with multiple lists and then search each of their collections of books. Even then it would be very partial and incredibly incomplete." They will seize any scrap in your comment as a reasonable pursuit in their unreasonable question. "Oh, could you do that then?" Will invariably be their response. Your impulse towards full disclosure will be used against you.

7. They will fake wrap it up, but their last question is never their last question. It is merely a ray of hope that they hold out to squash and darken.

"You have been so kind and helpful. Can I ask just one last question? You've been so patient and kind. Yes? Are you open this Friday? Oh, really? Are you always open Fridays? If I come in Friday could you set aside False Mermaid for me?  My daughter would really like to read it. Can you tell me the due dates for all my items again? No, on the other card. Do you need it again? Oh, I've wrapped it back in its red rubber band. Let's undo it." And so on. And so on. And so on.

Thanksgiving

I am not one for much celebrating of Thanksgiving. I am happy enough and quite thankful for any day I can spend at home with my wife. This will be great enough pleasure for me. Whatever turkeys roam about my neighborhood (and there are, oddly, a few) they need fear nothing from me.

But because it is Thanksgiving, and because I write so much about my Library, I started thinking a little bit this week about what I am thankful about at my Library.

There are many things I am unthankful for. There are so many complaints and irritations at my job, nice, deep, rich veins of folly, destructive hierarchy, self satisfactions, and complacency at my Library. And I am delighted to mine away at them. They are an endless source of blog material and correction and comedy, all that buried garbage of a Library at work, brought up out of the earth and set shining like jewels in the sun, if I can. But when I sit down to reflect on what I am grateful for here at the Library, well, not to get all mushy, there is no mining required. It is all around me, everywhere, and in plain sight.

It is not the purview of this quiet, holiday post to make some great list of my Library appreciations. It is not so interesting to me as a study, and I have no need to see for myself such a list either. But unbidden, I started thinking that list, and it was long and easily at hand, as are so many other things in my life for which I am grateful, and one person, for whom I am infinitely more thankful even than all the rest. And so you will hear no complaint from me today. No proposition for improvement. No tale of woe. No satire, visions, or fabrications. I am content as is, and even if, possibly, likely, there is no greater being out there to hear my exclamations of appreciation, I am entirely satisfied to tell you, and myself, and to shout it to the wind and let it fly and scatter.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

The one thing you cannot say on the internet

Perhaps it would be best if you think of this like a Zen Koan.

In all the internet, full of its hucksters, glory hounds, relentless and massive corporations seizing everything they can, amidst its endless, backwater, obscure dead ends, its trillions and trillions of shopping opportunities that are thicker than all the stars in the sky, its Greek Choruses, its ranks of silent watchers, and, perhaps most of all, it's millions of lost souls shouting their opinions at the tops of their lungs, there is one thing, and one thing only that stands unspoken. There is one thing that can never be spoken on all the internet, wherever it may be.

It is not an issue of sanctity. Not talent, respect nor fear. It simply cannot be spoken. It is an object of its nature. I would say it here if I could. Any number of commentators, bloggers, opinion makers and full time internet egomaniacs would do much to be the one to say it. There are people who would sacrifice everything to say it. Many have tried and fallen, forced back to screaming about politics or the best chocolate cake or the funny thing they saw that you saw too that everyone saw and loved and will forget forever, in a day, or an hour, or immediately. It would have been said if it were possible. It is not possible.

It has been said that the Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao. Shall we say that this is like the eternal Tao? Yes, we will say it is like the eternal Tao, but only so long as we can have the caveat that this is less spiritual, less grand, and vastly more trivial. Nevertheless it should also be said that it does manage to steal its own tiny, tiny piece of eternal wisdom.

And so what can you do with this one thing, this last and only thing that cannot be said on the internet. It cannot be named here. Perhaps it cannot be named anywhere. But it does exist. If you spread your imagination wide enough, you can, with the lightest touch, hold it in your hands. You can, with grace and wisdom, wit and a light touch, carry it in your mind. You will not be able to look at it directly or it will disappear like it never was there. But keep it with you. It has a purpose. Let it color everything you see here. The shadow it casts is an illuminating shadow.

How to be funny in public

Have you longed to be a comedian about town, a nut, a fool, a secret font of wisdom, hilarious? That is, do you want to be funny? I advise against it. It's a long, hard, cold road. Fraught with perils, it can be dangerous and nerve wracking. But if you reject my first advice I won't abandon you. If you just have to make people laugh, if the comedian persona has clutched you in its ferocious paws, I say "Go for it!" Clearly you have no choice. But heed my advice below.

1. Set jokes will be your doom. My father used to ask all grocery store cashiers if they took Rubles. I heard that joke thousands of times. Was it new to each cashier? Mostly. Was it a bad joke? No, no, it's fine as a joke for our purposes. Did he perfect it through such intensive repetition? Perhaps. But still I must speak against it. You cannot keep running the same material without becoming complacent, unnatural. You've got to stay hungry, and you must always be testing new material or you won't notice it when people start humoring you all of the time instead of just some of the time.

2. Know your audience. Professional comedians complain about tough audiences, but I laugh at professional comedians! Their audience is made up of a specific sub group of people who at least theoretically like comedians and are even willing to pay to see them. Your audience is anyone! Anyone! Sure, some of them are up for a laugh, but some of them are easily insulted, some of them have almost no sense of humor, and some of them don't even know what to do when a joke happens and will stare at you, bewildered. You will need to instant read your audience. You will need to pitch jokes to their level (which you had to deduce only a second ago). You will need to adjust your level of daring to their level of daring (all jokes are daring, which means they can also, in the wrong context, end up as mean, offensive, disturbing, and/or inappropriate). And you may even need to guide them along in receiving your joke properly, perhaps with a twinkle or a chuckle that lets them know that, no, the director of your Library doesn't actually fly about in her own fleet of jets equipped with bowling alleys, you're just being wacky. Sometimes this is enough to let them know they can laugh, which may be all the stronger for the relief in it.

3. You cannot joke all the time. Joking thrives on its relation to the serious, to the real. Real life is like cream and comedy is like the air and whisking. If you whisk nothing you have nothing. But whisk the right amount of cream and you get whipped cream, which, of course, is hilarious. Keep whipping the whipped cream and you get butter, which is excellent on toast and is the famous secret of French cooking.

4. It's okay to challenge your audience. While it is imperative to know your audience (remember point two?) that doesn't mean you can't challenge their limits. Plus, you can only know your audience so much, and throwing out a wide net of material not only keeps them off balance and amuseable, but also helps you refine your material and become better able to actually read your audience in the first place. Writing here I have little or no opportunity to read you as my audience, and so my comedy approaches have been especially diverse. And so too it's a nice approach if in this sort of situation you can present a lot of challenging or minor material in a way that lets it fail without too much notice. For instance, an early joke in this piece was "...I laugh at professional comedians!"  This was a joke far better than my usual standard, but also one that, if you missed it, you didn't stop and say "I didn't get that joke." You merely, possibly, didn't know there was a joke there in the first place. There is an added benefit here that once it's pointed out as a joke it's unmissable.  As to the absurdist humor in point number three, what with the meaningless analogy to butter, it was even more challenging as far as comedy goes, and usually if I did that kind of joke in person I'd have to laugh winningly to assure people that I'm not a lunatic, I'm just being funny. But here, in text, since I can know that at the least you are the sort of person who would actually read all of this post, you might be up for a slightly bizarre and challenging burst of absurdist humor.

5. Try to be nice. This is a tough one because it cuts out at least 30 percent of your material off the top. Professionals perhaps can't afford this one, or, possibly, don't need the restriction due to the depersonalized and formalized relation of their work. You, however do need this, because even though it may seem like comedy comes first, it doesn't. Humanity comes first. Warm laughs are beautiful. Hard, brittle, exploding and snickering laughs are, well, great, I won't lie, but great like fast food; crappy if you actually are paying attention, obesity and cancer causing, and horrible to the world. So be careful. Besides, for all that professional comedians like to go on about the aggressiveness of comedy, its violence (i.e. I killed them out there) they're mostly wrong. You do not want to be a master jokester in order to express your hatred of the world and force people to laugh against their will. Really, you don't. You want to be funny because laughing is fun and sweet, soul purifying, unifying, wise, healthy, and full of love. You want to be funny because it it a force for good! So, remember that out there. And go knock 'em dead.

Calla Lillies at the Library

When things go missing at the Library I have learned not to jump to the conclusion that they have been stolen. My pessimistic nature used to lead me down that path over and over, whether with supplies (which I am in charge of here), items on the request shelves (even more than I used to, the patrons heavily gravitate towards the idea that their request has been stolen), or simply the items on our shelves that are supposed to be in, but aren't. Too often these missing material mysteries were solved with no thief at the end of them. Optimists of the world rest assured that sloppiness, human error, freak accident, and incompetence will blow petty thievery out of the water any day of the week.

Nevertheless, something here at my Library has gone missing and I cannot resist thinking of theft, despite all my better instincts.

Pens disappear from the front desk all the time. No, this is not yet the theft part. I don't attribute missing pens to outright theft. At most it's a kind of kleptomania that I'm content to categorize as accidental. The rare occasions (very rare) where I actually catch a patron walking off with one of our pens (where the caught people just seem so innocent), always reflects this accidental nature. Well, either that, or the thieves are excellent actors. But whatever the cause of all this pen disappearance, after many years I finally decided to adopt the common and well respected fake flower technique, wherein one attaches a fake flower soundly to a pen and it prevents people from casually walking off with it. A bit less than a year ago I was in a craft store and found some very nice fake orange roses on sale. They were even fake bedewed! Investing my own money I bought them and taped them to, mostly, our more expensive pens, all the sharpies and gels. They worked great. Our pen attrition rate vastly slowed and the only, minor, problem was that the little kids loved to pick the very convincing fake water droplets off the roses. Still, time takes its toll on everything, as well as maybe some of that drop picking, and after a long enough time our rose pens were either falling apart or faded away, so I decided it was time for a new crop of fake flowers.

Feeling the expense was fully justified, this time I ordered through the Library. The easiest way to do this was through Amazon. I found it difficult to find the sort of thing I was looking for, but after exhaustive searching eventually I settled on some fake, white calla lilies.

I will spare you my ordering travails, or the story about how I only got half the number I asked for, but when they arrived I was certain I had made the right choice. It turns out there is something wonderful about these calla lilies. It's not just that they look real, which they mostly do, but it's their weird magical quality of feeling real. These fake calla lilies are irresistible to the touch. And that is why, when after we had had our lily pens out at the front desk for only a few days, and I went to the desk and saw a pen with only the remains of the tape that held the flower on, I felt as if I had been robbed. Someone had taken a calla lily!

Yes, yes, perhaps my fake flower was not stolen. Surely there is some other explanation. All my experience tells me that there is a hidden, non-theft explanation for the disappearance of the calla lily. But in my heart I feel that someone just had to have one of those lovely fake flowers. They couldn't resist its radiant charms, and they stole it. They are leaving all our pens behind, just as I hoped, but they are walking away with our  beautiful and (slightly) more valuable flowers.

Well, what can I say, I sort of blame myself. People are not totally terrible, but I have clearly thrown in their path an overwhelming and unreasonable temptation. As Henry Ward Beecher said: "All men are tempted. There is no man that lives that can't be broken down, provided it is the right temptation, put in the right spot." A beautiful fake calla lily, right out at the front desk of an institution where people are roughly free to take what they want, clearly, it's all too much.

What I'm up to

If you read yesterday's post, the natural answer to today's question about what I'm up to would be "Trouble."  But, no, I'm not up to too much trouble, really. In my role as the personification of the clerkmanifesto I have been busying about my local Little Free Libraries. Some time ago I embarked upon a project where I hand grafted masses of clerkmanifesto essays into old weeded books, hand painted the covers, and generally prepared bespoke clerkmanifesto books for dissemination to the community at large. I have some pictures (here). The only problem with these was that they were so laborious to make that, well, I still haven't finished more than a few. So, as an alternative, I have put together little themed journals of posts. These have gone much better. They come in series of about 20 and I am working on the second volume now. The first volume, called Forced to be Better, I have been distributing into Little Free Libraries. I put them facing out of the little library windows to give them a starting advantage and mostly let them find their own way in the world. In a corollary project I have been collecting any books I find that are on my list of loved books (here), and I have been putting them out into the wee libraries as well. All of this has been giving me a much closer acquaintance with the Little Free Libraries. This acquaintance has deepened my feelings about them without particularly altering my sense of them.

Because Sundays here are casual days, I thought I'd try just switching over to more of a list mode to express what I adore about Little Free Libraries, followed by the bit about their problems, or really, their problem, as, basically, there is just the one problem when it comes to Little Free Libraries (LFLs).

So, the things I love:

1. Their mushroom nature. Little Free Libraries have sprouted madly in my neighborhoods, overnight, in the rain, in the sun, in the wind, in the freezing fog, at dawn, at dusk, but always, always more and more and more.

2. Their individuality. There does seem to be a nice, unifying website devoted to LFLs and for a lot of money I think you can even buy a Little Free Library. But of the twenty or so I have pretty easily tracked down around here I don't think I've found any pair that even comes close to a match. To my surprise I have sort of fixated on latches, and have found Libraries with hook and eye latches, wood pegs in holes, wood slides and wood rotating latches. There have been magnets, metal bolts and ones that stay closed because they're hinged at the top. There was a rotating knob and something that fitted and clicked. And these are just the latches!

3. They're Quixotic! Who are all these people going "Today I will put a house on a stick and it will work as a free Library!"? What a ridiculous idea. Dreamers one and all. It will never work! But they just do it anyway!

4. It's Anarchy! Heck, I'm just a bit of an Anarchist myself, and yet, seeing real anarchy in action in the world I get all confused. I become respectful of some authority that isn't even there. Aren't there some rules I'm supposed to follow? Isn't someone going to come out of the nearby house and start yelling at me? No and no, or, at least, I don't think they are.

5. They're so homely. Oh, the little houses on a pole are generally pretty cute, or homely in the prettiest sense of the word, but open them up and what a bland looking bunch of rubbish. Yet again, look closely at all the rubbish and you may find a favorite book in some crappy edition, a lost classic, a hidden gem, or, of course, most likely, just rubbish, which brings us to...

The Negative:

1. What a bunch of junk! Yes, I'm afraid LFLs need a lot of curating. As I said I have started putting things in Little Free Libraries, but I think they need a good bit of weeding more even than the positive additions. Weed your LFLs! How do you know that you're not being disrespectful and getting rid of someone else's carefully chosen favorite book? I say trust your instincts. If your gut tells you that New Analysis in Practical Agronomy 1962 was dumped rather than placed in your local LFL, go with your instincts. The situation is dire enough that we can all live with a mistake or two. Just, if it looks like a homemade little journal, maybe leave it in there, and face it prominently out toward the window.

Out of the mouths of Library Volunteers

I like working with the Library volunteers, or, I like working around them. It's not simply the diversity of that volunteer population that I enjoy, but the way some of that diversity can lie hidden under the leveling qualities of all the mundane, but useful, volunteer tasks. I am nearly as likely to find that some regular volunteer lives in a group home and has developmental disabilities as I am to find one was a top surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. Presented with the both of them, and no prior knowledge, I may be hard pressed to say who is who. They both seem very good at putting DVDs in order. They both seem nice.

One volunteer here, who I see much less frequently these days, is very clearly developmentally disabled. I think she has Down Syndrome. She can't be much more than four feet tall. She is also very round. She charges around like a bowling ball, head down, a dynamo. I've always liked her a bit. Her communication skills are pretty limited and mainly revolve around an interest in free candy and coming up to me, putting her hands on her hips, peering up at me in dramatic mock admonishment, wagging a finger, and saying "You're trouble."

I have to admit there is a certain amount of allowance going on here from me. I am not one to normally look so warmly on teasing jokes about me unless they are truly acid free. But I do think this person is entitled to a lower, though not removed, level of responsibility. And if we can maybe come together here and agree to the many, many, glorious virtues of trouble, I am comfortable enough saying that, wow, she's really got a point there. She's got quite a point there indeed. And so there it is again. The surface tells us she is a disabled person who can barely put a sentence together, but search within that and we find a diviner of truth.

No cat news blues

I have been very eager to bring you the latest update on kafka, the Library cat. Unfortunately there has been nothing to report. No, seriously, there has been so nothing to report that I feel compelled to tell you how very nothing there is to report.

A few days ago though there was plenty to report. Young kafka, who everyday seems to be just a tiny bit less a kitten and a tiny bit more a cat, was not so long ago cutting his usual wide swath. On Sunday kafka mauled the thin skin of an old lady's forearm so thoroughly as to leave a couple guitar's worth of claw marks, including, when I arrived on the scene, at least three of which were trickling blood. I was almost violently sick with worry about what kind of trouble this could bring down on dear kafka's future. Fortunately the old lady was a familiar of cats who chuckled warmly at her savaged arm and considered it to be a kind of punctuation to kafka's affection. She suggested she had perhaps played a bit too rough. I was fully in accord with her, but am aware things could have gone very differently. Perhaps we can say kafka is down to eight lives.

And speaking of the peculiar nature of cat affection, on Monday, kafka sweetly presented the Library service desk with the generous and savage gift of a headless bird. Though naturally appreciated it raised the mystery of where kafka, who everyone thought had never been outside, got it. Young kafka's resourcefulness appears to be revealing in deep layers. Monday night, kafka, who is a bit of a gourmand, was reported to be eating a fish in the teen room. When we went to investigate, kafka had disappeared. He remained unseen all through Tuesday until, concerned, I tracked him down to a canvas bin, where apparently he had curled up and settled down for an quick nap that has now lasted for at least two, but possibly more than three full days and nights.

Actually, I'll go check on him right now. Don't expect too much.

He's purring. I pet him and he's quietly purring in his sleep. Still in the canvas bin he seems untired. I don't think he could possibly be tired unless all the sleeping has worn him out. To tell you the truth, I think he's just sleeping for the fun of it. I understand.

Secret war with librarian

I am in a long running secret war with whoever officially puts out the featured, display books at the ends of the fiction and genre fiction shelves. My opponent, a librarian, puts out moderately sharp looking (for the Library) hardcover books, regardless of content. I counter by putting out books based on sheer, proselytizing, passionate, fanboy love. I'm losing.

Yes, those nice, squared off, hardback, largely unstained copies of Elizabeth Berg and David Baldacci are flying out of the display holders, while my bent, rough around the edges, paperback Richard Brautigans just sit there, day after day, looking forlorn and ever so small. I think the Richard Brautigan book is waiting for Charlie Brown to come along and bring it back to the Peanuts gang, who will then call him a blockhead, and say "Only Charlie Brown could go to a Library full of wonderful hardcover books and come back with a stupid beat up paperback about Watermelons! Of all the Charlie Browns, you're the Charlie Browniest!"

So, style has its triumphs over substance. Aye, style clubs substance like a baby seal. But I vow that I will not be deterred. I will take this woeful little Richard Brautigan book downstairs, carefully apply a little 845 book tape, erase some stains that I can, polish it up a little, and it's not so bad. Quite a nice little book really. Endearing. And if you open it up, oh, if you open it up, and read just a little... well, look for it, it's always there.

The seven hidden reasons for visiting the front desk

Most people come to the front desk of the Library for the usual things. They want to pay fines, get cards, request a book, find out where something is. They want information, or to return something, or to inform us of something. But underneath all these business-as-usual visits there sometimes lurk secret motivations, and among our wildly diverse visitors can be found a dizzying array of hidden reasons for these front desk visits. While the mundane issues of Library transactions are the always, and sometimes only, issues present, these secret reasons lurk underneath so often that I can only list some of the most common ones here. Any more and we could be here all day! You don't want to be here all day, do you?

You do? Well, I am touched. Gosh. May I mention here that my prose is deeply layered, and if you would like to be here all day, you could read this over and over, extracting new meanings at each go. Memorizing, a la a poem, and then reciting this post to friends could also be satisfying in this regard. Just, you know, as a heads up.

And so with that taken care of I present you with the seven most frequent secret reasons to visit the front desk at the Library.

1. Sheer, unremitting, abject loneliness.

2. In the hope that somehow something good will happen, kind of like a free slot machine!

3. To get a general feel for the place. Want to know if our library is welcoming, cold, friendly, weird, or carnivalesque? You need merely ask for a pencil, or whether we have any F. W. Murnau movies, and you should get a fair glimpse of what you really want to know.

4. To establish oneself as a member of the Library community and not just one of the people who anonymously come in to play colored ball games on the computers.

5. Fishing, as in, when a person is sure there is a real reason for coming to the desk, but they just don't know it yet. They figure it will emerge at some point during their payment of a 10 cent fine in pennies, or perhaps during their inquires about the Library "closed" dates in the upcoming years.

6. People are just naturally drawn to where the party is. Woot.

7. Someone wants to let us know that they're up to no good and make sure we're okay with that.