Moulting

The library thrums with energy as I write. The people of my metropolis are in preparatory mode; a giant snowstorm is confidently predicted to begin falling in a few hours. By the time you read this, whatever snow there is to be will be lying quietly on the ground and will have ceased to concern any of us, but for now we are all glancing nervously out the windows.

What is the difference between five inches of snow and fourteen inches of snow? What is the difference between fall and winter?

Here is this about winter here: it kind of screws around for awhile and then becomes serious all of the sudden.

Today it got serious. I wasn't ready.

I went out walking. I was dressed properly enough. But my winter shell has not grown on yet. I am molting. I am vulnerable to everything right now. I am featherless, scaleless and barely have a skin. I feel everything unpleasantly, and the cold is no exception. I was shocked by it this morning. I fear the snow. I regret the things I say. I am going to be a different person soon, I am sure, but I don't know who that person exactly is yet. So I try to read the skies. I plan the future. I look for places to hide. I count the shovels. I cannot wear enough clothes. I lay low.

Here is this about winter here: it kind of screws around for awhile and then becomes serious all of the sudden. 

Just like me.

Dear Inappropriate Publisher

Dear Inappropriate Publisher:



The first rule one learns about approaching prospective publishers is that one must do one's research. Do not approach a travel publisher with a hard science fiction novel. Don't send a romance novel to an austere, tony New York literary outfit. And if one writes natural histories of the fascinating beetle kingdom, one should send that to a publishing house that made its name on fine books about the wild world, not to an imprint working with fake realistic novels about teen life.

This is good advice. I was keen to take it. So I checked out one of those fat guides to the publishing houses, and I looked carefully through it for publishers who work with the kind of material I write. And I looked. And I looked some more. With a sinking heart I realized that no publisher publishes my genre: unpopular short essays of blistering genius.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking "That's weird. Surely there must be one publisher who publishes unpopular short essays of blistering genius!"

But no, there isn't. I looked at all the entries. I looked around for it on the Internet and also came up empty handed, though I did come across an interesting essay by Orwell about P.G. Wodehouse.

"That's outrageous!" You cry. "Why, I would occasionally like to read a few unpopular short essays of blistering genius!"

Which is why, even though you strictly publish:

___  Books about dogs
___  Folktales of the world
___  Erotica for cats
___  Movie novelizations
___  Instruction manuals for people incapable of learning from instruction manuals
___  Soccer biographies in Spanish
___  The work of James Patterson
___  Hastily produced knock-offs of bestsellers
___  Glossy cookbooks of recipes featuring a minimum of 200 ingredients each
___  Toileting instruction manuals for toddlers
___  Earnest books
___  Gorgeously written works of University English Professors that win many awards only to be abruptly forgotten
___  The ghostwritten work of people on TV
___  Zombie vampire cowboy books


I am sending you along my work. I think you will enjoy it, and this is the only way you will ever get a chance to read it as it isn't the sort of thing that gets published.



Good luck in all your endeavors,



F. Calypso

R is for recommend

For two months I lost the thread of reading. Surely it must happen to any reader, and you are here, so you are a reader. Is it so? Every once in awhile do all the books you try fail? The stories and tales and paragraphs and thoughts all lie flat on the page? What a bunch of words and sentences. You poke them with a stick. "I remember these things flying." You say, "But just look at them, sitting there with all their vowels and punctuation, sprawled and listless. Aren't they supposed to do something? I remember words having feathers!"

For myself, as each book failed to lift, I made the mistake of driving deeper and deeper into genre writing, thinking how easy it can be for these addictive tales to get airborn. They all just seemed like a bunch of ill designed machines, and their flaws were the clearest thing about them to me. I began to doubt reading itself, but could not let it go. I just pushed harder at it. Desperate, I began to run after every book I came upon. I threw off genre and grabbed the quirkier early works of Booker Prize winners, innocent looking Juvenile Fiction, forgotten bestsellers. I sought out familiar looking things by new authors. I re-read. And I began to question my whole reading life: Did I make it all up? Words can't fly! That's absurd.

Marcus the teen librarian saved me. He said this one was good and it sounded good. He gave me his copy checked out from a library different than our own. It was a large type copy, an old trick to make an end run on a piece of popular, but not too popular, waitlisted library literature.

A regular part of our conversation includes a fair accounting of the books Marcus has just read or is reading. Since he reads what seems to be roughly ten books a week it's a fair sized listing, and I always feel slightly like I'm browsing, shopping, as he walks me through his even handed capsule reviews. He is always honest about the quality of the work he describes, and only upsells at the end, which invariably seems strangely amusing after a tolerant, cool, looking on the bright side assessment. But I know that feeling: "I'm reading it. You read it too, and we'll talk about it, even if just to figure out why it never does quite what it's supposed to."

But Marcus had a good one here. I doubt he even called it great, even as he spoke very well of it and found he never had to qualify as he praised. 

I was in quick.

"Yes." I said. "That's the book I want." And it was.

I know that feeling too from his side. One makes the catch. One sees it. One says "Hurry, let me get the book in his hands." Which, thankfully, he was able to do.

H is For Hawk by Helen Macdonald. It's a non fiction memoir about training a goshawk, about T.H. White, and about not understanding yourself very well even as you pay close attention. Do I recommend it?

That depends upon the look in your eye when I tell you about it.

To set your sins in balance

There is no working person in the world who does not have failings. Not personal failings, though they too are the burden of every human and the ultimate source for what I'm referring to, but rather specific failings in their working role, whatever their job may be. The greatest soccer player in the world, Lionel Messi, working at an astonishingly high level in an extremely refined, demanding, and distilled job, nevertheless has a tendency to sometimes disappear in games, to become floating and uninvolved. A fine comedian may be cruel. A barista may be pompous. A blogger might be vain. And a library clerk may be indolent. But none of these failings necessarily make that person bad at their job. One can still be great at a job despite their failings. Aye, one has to be great despite their failings because everyone, excellent workers and poor, has them. 

There is even a secret trick to it, an alchemy.

One is allowed their modest sin if it is set in harmony with a proper and complimentary virtue. Lionel Messi, as our first example, is capable of wizardry, that is, he is capable of divine physical moments beyond human comprehension. This unique quality is not a mere counterweight for his disappearances, rather it imbues it with tension and meaning. That comedian who is cruel may be utterly democratic. The pompous barista might be impeccable. The vain blogger may be honest.

Most of the workers I see in detail are library workers. Some are excellent at their jobs and some are not. Let us say my failing as a library clerk is indolence. I make my case that we should all only work half the time anyway, and that furthermore there should be a standard 20 hour workweek at most, but I know I can only get so far with that. My industriousness is rickety. I very much tend to drift into my own private, delicious, wanton idylls, and surely would still irresistibly do so working half the hours I do now. What I have for that failing is a sense of overwhelming responsibility. If it comes to me by way of a patron, or a crisis, through a problem with one of our items, a machine breaking, or a system in disarray, I will run that issue or situation down until its legs collapse underneath it. I at all times consider myself to be the library.

I have known a distracted librarian who is saved by passion. I have known uncreative pages saved by industriousness, overly sociable co-workers made whole by their attentiveness and kindness, and anti-social ones filled out by self-sufficiency.

When I look around my workplace, especially during a long day, it can get easy to see the shadows weaving around me, but sometimes there is light too. It takes such a paltry, pathetic amount of light to make a shadow, but, sometimes, enough light can make the shadows beautiful.

The many uses of our DVDs

As you most likely know, this address on the Internet mostly concerns itself with weighty issues. Heavy issues. Issues of theological importance and immortal significance. We here are visited by scholars, minions of the gods, and visionaries. The bulk of our audience lies deep in the future, out beyond the end of time, where evolved super advanced jellyfish-like space beings pour over each of my missives and cry out amongst the celestial heavens "Good one!"

But you may be surprised to find that even though I regularly deal with profound, immortal issues of epic significance here, most people, when they ask, request that I write more true library stories that end in puns.

I know. Yes, quite the surprise.

But, um, okay, sure. By weird coincidence I have one of those for you today.

This one is pretty advanced, so you'll have to pay careful attention.

Today one of my colleagues was commended to me. I was not irritated because it is a colleague I like. You might be surprised by how many of those there are. I sometimes am. Apparently this co-worker heard the far away alarm gates sound from where the library exits into the coffee shop. Looking up, my colleague locked steely eyes on a young person frozen in the screaming gates. The young man, wilting under this ferocious glare, and held spellbound, responded to my co-worker's distant summons. Making that long perp walk across the library this person removed from under his shirt one of our valuable rental DVDs. Then he approached the front desk to face the music.

He said that did not know the item was not checked out. And the reason he gave for carrying a not checked out DVD under his shirt?

He was cold. 

Ah well, it is hard to argue with the young man's logic; clearly the DVD was hot.

Old friends

I was on my accustomed morning walk, just north of Lake Street, when the little orange tabby cat, with its wee collar bell ringing, came running out of some side yard wilderness to greet me. He was a lovely runner, graceful and lithe and jaunty. "How happy I am to see you!" his run seemed to say, and so, seeing him, did my heart say as well.

Being much taller than the cat I crouched down and held my hands out, palms up. The small cat threw himself into them. We had missed each other for so long. I felt his cool fur, he my cold hands. He slid his head and ears along my palms and the knots and ridges of my joints. With enormous affection I petted him, and with a gracious luxury he encouraged it.  How we rejoiced in being together! What a homecoming. Tell me, how long has it been since we've seen each other? It must be forever!

Ha, I have never seen this cat before in my life.

But what could matter less.

Coffee in Rome

Here we are excitedly combing the Internet for reliable sources on where to go for the best coffee in Rome. And boy, are we getting a dismal earful. Gone is the joyous cacophony of gelato praise, with erudite understandings of what makes gelato great, and people willing to have unapologetic favorites that switch on a yearly basis as ever more exciting gelato shops open up.

No, alas, the dour coffee fiends of the world bitterly tut at the moribund Roman coffee bars.

It turns out Roman coffee isn't than good.

Oh, maybe it was, relatively speaking, twelve years ago when it got me hooked on coffee and all its smooth, bitter, silky intoxications. But coffee fetishists have bloomed across the world. They call it the third wave. And in most largish cities there is now a glittery array of people who not only actually know how to make a proper espresso and espresso based drinks, but have gone some way deeper in the minutiae of it all, handling everything from the intimate, personal acquisition of the beans to immaculately calibrated methods for extracting their finest qualities. Rome is still just out there bluntly pulling shots of improperly stored and improperly sourced coffee, charging not much, supposedly thinking badly of you if you order a cappuccino after 11 in the morning, and making it all just good enough.

But as much as I'm drawn to foodie snobbery, as keen as I am to know where the best cafes in Rome are, with the most perfect and exquisite shots available, it turns out that there are plenty of perfectly fine places, and one can get their four caffes a day at them, and it's all no big deal. I have much been to the famous places: Tazza d Oro and San Eustachio, and so I'll probably just go back to those and wherever else is at hand. Not much sounds bad: Ciampini, Gran Caffe La Caffettiera, Bar Nero, Cafe Peru, Canova, Giolitti, Canova Tadolina Cafe, Rosati, Cafffe Camerino, and Bar Del Cappuccino.  As much as I love coffee I'll admit I'm pretty happy just to have it meet a certain "good" standard. After that modest prerequisite, what I really like are the rituals and the air and the time and the drug of coffee over anything else. Yes, I can sip my coffee like it's fine wine, and a cafe where they can't even steam milk properly will throw me into a tiny rage, but I might be happy in the Coffeeland of Rome, where I can throw down espressos, stained with milk, throughout the day, and not have to worry about missing the greatest gustatory experience of my life because I am gazing so rapturously into the distance.









   

The first Rome post: Gelato

For some days I thought my opening salvo on all things Rome would begin with art. After all, for me it is the big three that set the seed and soul of all that I love about Rome: Caravaggio, Bernini, and Borromini, the painter, the sculptor, and the architect. Unfortunately they were all repulsively violent lunatics, and as I find my way towards coming to terms with that unsavory reality I thought I'd take a look a gelaterias for awhile instead.

Has anyone ever been beaten to death by a gelato? No, I think not. If you are attacked with a gelato most likely the worst it will come to is that you will feel chilled.

If you want to find out about the Baroque architect Borromini on the Internet you can, though a small amount of digging and piecing things together is required. If you want to find out on the Internet where the good gelato is in Rome you will encounter a mass of information greater than the lost library of Alexandria. And if you want to write a blog post about that gelato and dare to just sample minute fractions of the available information you will end up six hours later wildly hungry and clutching 16 pages of scrawled notes. For a trip vast months away I am trying to remember the names and locations of dozens of Gelaterias: Comme il latte, Fridgidarium, Otaleg, I Caruso, Gelateria Del Teatro, Fior Di Luna, Ciampini, Carapina, Fatamorgana, San Crispino, il Gelato di Claudio Torce, Paradice, Gelateria dei Gracchi, and Gelateria la Romana.

I think I just named 14 gelaterias there. But here's the thing: I'm sure I left some of the best ones off. And when you read about gelato in Rome you are warned about how a lot of bad, processed, junk gelato proliferates. Oh, no, not at Riva Reno, or Giolitti, or Grom, or Procopio, or Old Bridge, or Il Dolci di Nonna Vincenza, or Venchi Cioccogelateria, or Neve di Latte, La Gormandise, or Al Settimo Gelo, or Mela e Cannella, or Gelateria Dell Angeletto, but outside of these you have to really watch for authentic colors and good quality. 

In the Academy Award Best Picture winning film My Life in Ruins, our heroine, a tour guide played by Nia Vardalos, asks disgruntedly "What is it about tourists and ice cream?" But here's a recipe for you: bundle enough tourists together (Rome) so that you can financially support 520 gelato shops, and if just five percent of them are brilliant you end up with a list so insanely long that, even in a month of vacation, you will be defeated by riches before you start.

When I am defeated I will grab an espresso and go look at some art instead. I wonder where the best espresso in Rome is?

A minor incident at closing

I was on the periphery of the events. On a busy Saturday, at closing time at my library, I was taking the mighty check in machine to its nighttime mode, a not entirely uncomplicated process. I was also assigned as the late person, meaning that I had to get out to the front desk and deal with shutting down the library for the night.

My first indication of the incident was as I was turning off computers in the back room. One of my colleagues came through from the front desk, looking for the circulation manager. She said "I should get hazard pay at this job!"

I said "It's all hazard pay. Everything else we do is for free." Because I say things like that.

I made it out to the front desk to get the money and shut down computers and deal with stragglers and relieve my co-workers so they could go home. The hazard pay person was whirring around still looking for the manager who I was closing with. He was off locking doors. A last patron was standing at the main checkout desk. He was stalled in the middle of some problem and looked pretty irritated.  I pointed out the location of my manager to my colleague, and as I started various minor closing tasks said manager was introduced to the unhappy patron. 

I was busy and not following all of this closely, but it was hard to miss. The library was mostly emptied out and the patron's voice was loud and mad. The man was furious that he owed the library money. As far as I could tell he was furious because the fines were from a few years ago. When it was explained that fines don't go away via the process of not paying them he was angry because the books were returned, but he still owed fines! When it was explained that these were late charges for returning the books late he insisted the fines be waived so he could check out. He needed his book. The manager said he couldn't or wouldn't do that, but as the patron was just over the limit of allowable fines he could pay 60 cents whereupon he would only owe $10 and thus could check out.

The patron handed over the change and then bitterly said "I will never, ever pay that $10!"

The manager replied "I believe you." 

The patron stormed off toward an already locked door, was corrected, and managed to leave the library in a huff.

I collected the day's money, now fattened by an extra 60 cents, and went to turn off our last computer where that final transaction of the day had taken place. The patron's record was still up and a single item was checked out on his record: 

Anger-free: Ten Basic Steps To Managing Your Anger

All of us at the library wish him godspeed.

The Rome Blog

Dozens of people ask me everyday "What kind of blog do you write?"

And I like to answer "You must read it to understand."

And they say "No."

This, of course, is their prerogative, like supporting right wing politicians or stealing books from libraries or drowning sacks of kittens.

But as you know, the kind of blog I write, er, varies. There's:

The library blog
The prophet of the gods blog
The cat blog
The nature blog
The dylan blog
The pursuit of publishing blog
The cooking blog
The moose blog
The coffee blog
The books blog
The visions of fame blog
The lake superior blog
The art blog
The city blog
The internet is a rash blog
The god blog
The marketing blog
The blog about blogging blog
The memoir blog
The river blog
The writing blog
The weather blog


You are probably thinking "So few? I remember more."

But no, alas, that is all of them. And I agree, it is not many. So I am starting a new one.

You are probably thinking "Huh, usually he doesn't exactly announce new ones, just, one day he writes a post about a moose and I'm all like, 'huh', and then, like, he won't stop writing about mooses!"

I didn't know you felt that way about the moose posts. Maybe you missed the really good ones? They're totally here somewhere. Just give me a moment...

Anyway, even though it is unusual for me to announce a new major subject line for clerkmanifesto, I am doing it today. Sometime in less than a year my wife and I will be going to Rome for a (relatively) long time. Because I have already begun a good bit of thinking, musing, wallowing in, and dreaming about this, it won't be long before Rome starts to leak into the corners of this blog. You will eventually start to see little pools and fountains of Rome scattered throughout clerkmanifesto, and well before 2016 is over you can probably expect this blog to be entirely submerged in all things Rome.

Rome Rome Rome Rome, Rome. Get your umbrellas and galoshes! It's coming!

But why, you ask, the warning?

Yes, usually I just let it happen, but here I already know: I'm going to be going for baroque on this one.

Dear Editor, Pioneer Press

Dear Editor, Pioneer Press Newspaper:



I take no joy in being the bearer of bad news, but, alas, you are about to be scooped by your crosstown rival, The Star Tribune. They are on the verge of hiring the the most exciting new columnist since H. L. Mencken, or maybe Judith Martin. Acclaim, notoriety, scads of Pulitzers, and the talk of the town are all heading their way.

But I am not writing you merely as a stormcrow. I am in sympathy with your little brother, underdog, eeyorish position among our cities newspapers, and I am uniquely in a position to do something about it.

Hold onto your hat because you are in for a shocker!

I am that exciting new columnist imminently to be hired by The Star Tribune!

But the key word is "imminently". It hasn't quite happened... yet. I wanted to give you a chance.

I know what you're thinking: "These greedy geniuses! Always with the bidding wars and the driving up the prices! How much money does Bob Dylan need that he stars in unfunny computer commercials? What will Van Gogh even do with so much money that he sells his paintings for 100 million dollars?"

But it's not like that. 

As an artist who has long labored in obscurity and only recently hit my stride, it is not the fattest contract that I crave, it's understanding.

Anyone can see what a vital asset I would be to a publication. That's obvious. I want to be hired by people who appreciate me. So here's what I propose:

You, The Pioneer Press, and The Star Tribune, both send me a present. It shouldn't cost more than, say, $50, but it needn't cost anything. It could, for instance, be a piece of memorabilia from your newsroom. I will open these gifts without knowing which paper they are from. The winner of this little contest will be whoever gave me the gift I feel best understands me. Then that newspaper and I will proceed to rake in the Pulitzers and watch the circulation numbers, er, probably do nothing or go down. But I don't think that's my fault.

Anyway, I look forward to your gift, and I secretly hope you win.




Your possible future columnist,





F. Calypso

The bridge metaphor

You have probably heard of the runner's high. I don't run, but sometimes when I am on my walk, and I am very late, I sort of trot along for awhile. The closest I come to a "high" doing that is when, for a few seconds, neither my feet nor my ankles hurt. Curiously, though, I do frequently experience a walker's high, or more specifically, a blogger's high. When I'm out walking a few miles and ice isn't blowing in my face, the fresh air stimulates me. I take joy in the world around me. I become attuned to the Universe. I start to think of really good blog ideas. Then I get really excited by these blog ideas. I simultaneously compose them in my mind and try to memorize them as I go. It's a wonderful, very creative, inspired feeling. And the more ideas I come up with the more new ideas come to me until they are delightedly and nerve-wrackingly piling up on me.

This is where we come to the rickety bridge analogy. This blogging high is like climbing a high, rickety bridge. It's slightly terrifying, very precarious, and absolutely lovely. But the bridge is wildly unsafe, and each new blog idea takes the bridge even further beyond its load bearing capacity. I can't stop the thrilling rush of new ideas, and usually around the fourth or fifth blog outline it all comes crashing down.

Here I am among the shattered remains of the rickety bridge. It's usually about eight hours later that I do my salvage work on that fallen bridge. Here, this looks familiar. I think it might be part of the railing. what was I thinking when my hand glided along it? Here's a piece of something about a letter to a publishing syndicate. I wonder what that one was about. Was there something about a cardinal? Rome? Sandwiches? Surely there is a piece of this detritus I can still make use of.

Ah yes, I remember. Here's a big piece of it now. It was that blog idea about the rickety bridge metaphor.

Dear God

Dear God,




I know you hate being contacted in any way whatsoever, and that you routinely deny enhancements to your created firmament without comment, but I have a really good one. And without throwing stones or anything I kind of feel like it would be a nice thing for you to do after the whole "everyone eats everyone" scandal that did nothing for your reputation.

Don't panic. I am not proposing a major restructuring. It's more like a little gift. I think you'd be good at giving gifts. What say you just try it once, see how it feels, and if you don't like it we'll just stop with this one.

My idea has to do with time.

Seeing as you are officially all-knowing I'm sure I'm not telling you anything new when I say I have not been managing time well. It's sort of been slipping away from me. I'm not blaming you. And I'm not getting into anything big like mortality. This is merely about petty time. But I do suspect there are many others who have these occasional problems I do with time, and I believe pretty much everyone would enjoy this small, er, augmentation of your very, um, interesting, er, construction of the Universe.

I think it would be really nice if we could save time.

Let's say it's ten in the evening for instance, and the book I'm reading really isn't that good, and I might as well go to bed, but I don't really need to go to bed until eleven. What if I could just sort of bank an hour. I (or whoever) would say to myself "I'm going to bank an hour." And suddenly the time would be eleven, just like that. Then, the next day when I'm leaving my house to walk to work, and I look at my watch and cry "Shit!" because it's (invariably) 9:25, I could say to myself  "I would like to withdraw ten minutes." And it would become 9:15, and I wouldn't have to speed walk for the next hour.

Doesn't this sound great? 

Right, no, I understand it doesn't sound like much to you, what with your being all eternal and everything. But it would mean a lot to us, you know, people. If you can't do it you can't do it. Just say the word and we will stop it with all the stuff about your Omnipotence. But it is my suspicion that someone who can make earth and sky and cats (well done on the cats!), can probably handle this.

I know it has been awhile since you've, er, done anything creative. You know how it goes: on the seventh day God rested, and on every single day since then. So you might be a bit rusty. But as it is said in the Bible "Use it or lose it."

Besides, I really think the idea of you giving a small gift is a good one. I don't relish being the one to tell you this, but the only people who don't say they sort of hate you are, unfortunately, lying. But the important take away from that is that nothing is forever.

I mean, except, I guess, for you.

Just think about it.


Love always,



F. Calypso

Beautiful house

Dear Neighbor,


I could not help but notice what a lovely house you have. Not only is it beautiful, but it is so well kept up. That can't be easy because it is huge. You have a huge house! I bet you can put any sized refrigerator you want in that house of yours with no problems at all. My house is much smaller and appliance sizes have always been major considerations for us. But I don't envy whoever is in charge of dusting or vacuuming at your place. Maybe they can do it on roller skates?

Anyway, a big beautiful house like yours must be expensive. I mean, not only must it have cost a lot to buy, but the taxes and upkeep can't be any picnic either. I sure couldn't afford it even if I were being financially reckless. And your house doesn't have a reckless feel to it. So I am figuring you are probably at least mildly wealthy. Which brings me to my point.

Can you send me some postage stamps?

I have been thinking of sending some of my writing around to professionals in the publishing field, but I have hit a snag. I don't have any stamps. It would be a shame if I did not become a world famous writer merely from lack of stamps! I am the greatest writer of my generation, and that's not just my opinion, that's corroborated by, well, no one yet because I don't have any stamps. But once, on my blog, "Anonymous" commented "Nice post :-)" which I think pretty much says it all.

The truth is it's not about the fame and riches. I just want to share with the world.

You may be wondering why I am writing asking you for stamps just on the basis of your having a nice house. Surely there are many more, vastly richer people to beseech? Or, even more appropriately, what about all those wonderful granting organizations designed to help artists in just my sort of predicament?

Good ideas, but there is a catch 22. 

I need stamps to contact them. 

As you can see, you're my neighbor. I can just leave this at your door!

So if you would be so kind and generous and would just pop me over, ideally, a large, fat roll of stamps, or a stack of sheets of them, that would be great. You can choose your own commemorative style (although I wouldn't turn my nose up at those Peanuts' Christmas ones!). And if heating that wonderful mansion of yours is getting you down, even a few stamps is at least a start for me. Indeed, even if you put only one stamp in an envelope to send to me (costing you two stamps, unfortunately, total, unless you drop it by personally, or have one of your servants do it), it's something, and I would not speak harshly of you. Indeed, I would only thank you for your kind consideration, and your friendly, probably tax deductible (consult your attorney) patronage of the arts.

Thank you in advance so much for all your help.



Your neighbor,




 F. Calypso

Browniest

Some of my most powerful formative reading experiences took place deep inside the Peanuts arcana. It is hard to know what strange influence that had on my ending up living here in the land of Peanuts, the Twin Cities. But while many things I was fond of at age eight have faded away to nearly undetectable wisps, nothing has diminished that cartoon in my heart. I even walk in that world of Peanuts. It touches everything here: the dark, roughly sketched bare trees, the piled remains of dead leaves, and the sidewalks and stoops of the neighborhoods I walk through.

Today I suited up for my almost four mile walk. I was in great layers of waterproof clothes, or, at least, clothes willing to try and be waterproof. It was 34 degrees out and pouring rain. I stepped from my house reluctantly, the water drove down in loose slashes of pen and ink, and I walked. I sighed. I sighed greatly. I have never felt more Charlie Brownier in my life. 

In the strip we would get four panels of rain. I got an hour and fifteen minutes. It looked just like the cartoon. The rain today did a beautiful job of capturing Schulz's drawings of rain.

There's a raft of great Peanuts strips about rain. Just that image of the characters walking along in a drenching downpour is beautiful on its own. In one strip Charlie Brown is walking with Linus. Charlie Brown says "The rain falls on the just and the unjust." Linus ponders for a frame of rain, and then he comments "That's a good system!"

But I like better the one where Snoopy, sitting with Woodstock in the rain, says "Don't complain about the rain... we need rain. Without rain nothing would grow and we'd have nothing to drink. So never complain about the rain."

And then, as it rains harder, a miserable Snoopy adds "Whimper, but don't complain." 

Yeah, now he's got it.

The wind blew and rain lashed at my face. At some point the rain drops started to hurt my exposed face, like small, stinging insects. I only realized when I was coming close to my destination that it wasn't raindrops that were hurting, but rather that the driving rain had turned to bits of ice. 

Maybe somewhere there was someone more just than I whom the ice avoided. I would not begrudge them. Whimper.





 

Diagnosing the problem

A library patron comes to me with a problem. It's his second visit in a short period of time so we are now on familiar terms. In the first visit he could not log onto the computer because the pin number written on his card did not work. That pin number belonged to a different library system, but it was simple enough to change the pin he chose for us to match up with the one on his card. But now he was back. It still wouldn't work.

There wasn't much for it but to follow him out to his computer. He said he tried it twice and his wife tried it twice. His wife logged on just fine with her card, but they couldn't get him logged on no how. So I typed in his barcode to the appropriate box. I entered his pin, and he was all set. The couple were gobsmacked.

"How did you do it?" They asked. I demurred. What could I say. I hadn't even gotten to the tricks, the diagnosis, or the clever fiddles. I just typed in the barcode number and the pin, like they supposedly did, four times before me. That was enough to log the man in.

They seemed a tad outraged, but struggled towards grace. I was a bit suspicious of their typing and their account of their efforts, but I also struggled towards grace. They wanted to know what happened.

I don't know, never will. It worked. Usually we hope that will be good enough.

Losing respect

A patron came to me at the front desk of the library. She had been sent over by a librarian in the children's room. This patron has a record with us, but recently received a new card from another system so we have to look up this person with their ID, and then enter her new barcode number into our system. I know it sounds insanely complicated to a layperson, but, much like ankle surgery, it's ridiculously simple after you've done it once or twice. And most importantly it is something any person working at a public desk in our library should be able to do without the slightest strain.

So why have they been sent to me, to a second line, to conduct this impossibly tiny task?

As I have made clear in a few dozen of my millions of blog posts, I am like Santa in the deep, medieval, Old Testament sense of knowing who is naughty or nice. I carry in my head detailed lists of the competency levels, skill rankings, and laziness quotients of all my co-workers. When someone is sent to me for something ridiculous, such as in this case, then a list of which of the crappy librarians are likely responsible leaps immediately to my mind. Usually all goes according to plan and an easily predicted person is guilty once again.  Or, I mean, one is found naughty or bad, if you prefer a seasonal approach.

But today it turned out that a perfectly good librarian was responsible. What does this mean?
 
It is much harder for me to keep close tabs on the quality of the librarians' work than it is the circulation staffs'. Librarians work at a farther remove from me. In addition to that there are possible explanations for this breakdown. There could have been a miscommunication between said librarian and the patron. The patron who I got this from could have been confused in general. There could have been a host of mitigating circumstances I'm missing out on. And, of course, this librarian, despite being pleasant, and seeming to be generally intelligent, could secretly be a complete deadbeat.

I am keen to take all of this into account. I myself have made several million mistakes throughout my lifetime, much like anyone else, and I am not keen to be over-judged on them randomly. So there is no way I am putting this librarian on the deadbeat, naughty, bad list. It would be absurd, impulsive, and above all rash! She remains the considerate, reasonable, competent, and pleasant person I've experienced her as and have always assumed her to be.

But my eyes are open, and I am ready for corroborating evidence.

Ethnic diversity

Upon arriving at my library just past noon I saw the library director near the employee entrance talking with the property manager. And I kind of wanted to tell her the good news.

My library has been focused on improving the ethnic diversity of our staff for two years now. Because librarians and administrators don't go anywhere these days, ever, we have seen most of the change in staffing in the Circulation Department. I wanted to tell the director that last night we did it. There was not a single white Christian working in the Circ Department. One Hmong. Two African Americans. A Hispanic. An Afghan American Muslim. And me, a Jew, making it through by the skin of my teeth. Loads of diversity.

For many long years I could easily be the great exotic of any of our Circulation crews. Now Internationalism had struck. The melting pot had come. We were America in all its true and storied face. And as for our professional skill? Sixteen percent horrible, thirty-eight percent marginally adequate, and forty-six percent fine. So, same as always.

I wanted to relay the good news to the director, but she was busy, I had things to do, and besides, she hardly ever tells me anything. As it says in her 2 Corinthians 9:6 - "But this I say, He which soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he which soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully."

The end of reading

 



The end of reading arrived at a nondescript, large suburban library in Minnesota on the night of December 9, 2015, at 7:42 in the evening. Said library has long been one of the highest materials circulating public libraries for its size in the nation. Local library administrators had been forecasting the end of reading for fifteen years. They had planned accordingly. They looked like deranged cultists predicting the end of the world, never relenting in their mania of doom even as more and more people poured into the library to check out more and more of its never increasing collection.

But that wave broke. And what any doomsayer knows is that the predictions of doomsayers must all come true eventually. It's simply a matter of waiting.

Well here it is then, the end of reading. Run for the hills libraries. Close your doors now forever bookstores. Make up your own ideas for movies, Hollywood. Cap your pens novelists. And Amazon? You may want to consider diversifying your product line beyond books.

The poets and bloggers can keep going though. I mean, same diff.

At the large suburban library, on the night when the end of reading arrived, the million dollar check in machine sat idle for 37 straight minutes. When nothing has been checked out there is nothing to return. All the library workers were dozing in their chairs. Was the end of reading coming?

But lo. A noise!  What's that? The automated door opens! The roller and laser eyes engage. Three books are coming down the line! Hooray, three books are coming. Books to sort. Books to file. Books to push about on carts! Books to peruse. Books to fix. Books to stack. Books to display and feature and recommend. Three books!

Come librarians, come clerks and pages, come janitorial workers, and come oh you volunteer with a developmental disability. Come gather round the great check in machine who gives us work and has finally stirred from its deep slumber. Come and rejoice. Here come the books running down the line! Three books!

Hey, these aren't our books! These are low quality donations. These are unwanted books, foundling books, orphan books abandoned again at our door. Oh waily! Lo! This is all we are to receive, unwanted books all, for hard truth has broken through our gates, the end of reading has come.

Turn out the lights. Shut the doors and wrap them in chains. Burn the recommendation lists and the wooden displays to keep warm. Go home and bar your doors. The long cold has come and the Enlightenment is over. Forget the letters of the alphabet. You will need them no more. Close down your imagination. Put knick knacks on your bookshelves and keep your knowledge to yourself. There is no light left on in bookland, for the end of reading has come at last.





 

Dear Editor, Star Tribune Newspaper

Dear Editor, Star Tribune Newspaper:



I would like to present myself as your new daily columnist. Every morning you go into work and wonder "When will I hear from my new daily columnist?" Well, today is the day! It's me! I am your new columnist.

Hi.

I know what you're wondering. You're wondering "Where have you been? I have been just sitting here, waiting, while my subscribers have been calving off to the Internet like glaciers in the age of global warming."

Oddly enough I come from the Internet, where dozens of mildly interested readers follow my columns each and every day.

I know, this just gets better and better for the fortunes of The Star Tribune. Together we're going to change the world!

Oh, right. You are the esteemed editor of a metropolitan newspaper. You're not really going to want to be changing the world much at all. Don't worry, it was just a turn of phrase and the result of buoyant high spirits. Close to nothing is going to change in the world. We'll just get older. But we will have to figure out a good place to put all the Pulitzers were going to be raking in together.

So tell me when you want me to start. This is going to be great!


Your devoted new columnist,




F. Calypso