Bad jokes

It's ugly these days in the back circulation work room of my library. We have managers driven mad by the heat, vital machinery chronically breaking down, and newly transplanted staff fitfully adjusting to our branch of the library at the worst possible time.

So it's a good time to be off upstairs shelving.

Nevertheless, at the hour, on the hour, no matter where I am in my progress with my cart of books to be shelved, I have a new duty. It may be on phones or the desk or the machine. I may even be shelving somewhere else, but few of these duties will wait for me to finish my cart of shelving. So I come down the elevator with my half a cart of unshelved books.

More than usual lately I hear some wag say something like "Aren't you supposed to shelve books upstairs instead of bringing books down?"

I hate this joke. 

I think I am hearing this joke more because everyone is cranky and high strung right now, and jokes with just a tiny touch of meanness leak out more. 

And I hate it because I am a little cranky and high strung myself.

So, fine. I have finished shelving my cart of books. It is fifteen minutes to the hour. I could go downstairs, get a new cart and shelve most of it. But I think I'll just cool my heels here for awhile. And for fifteen minutes instead I'll write you, who never tease me with jokes that are as empty as the cart I will bring down, exactly as I'm supposed, precisely on the hour.

Peace among the volumes

Today I was upstairs shelving and a bunch of library managers passed by on their way to a meeting. I had an unaccustomed thought: This bit of shelving gig is all right.

I have, though not frequently, been in those important meetings. I have no more against them than I have against shelving, but they require a certain worldliness. You have to pretend to care, or not.

Shelving is just shelving.

And if you want to be a cool Siddhartha on a troubled summer day in the library, the quiet, unobserved, remote fiction stacks, with a cart full of books, is the place to do it.

Also I get paid a not unreasonable amount of money for every hour I am there.

It is said "Be careful what you wish for." And I suppose in some ways I wished for this. Wouldn't it be wonderful, I surely thought, decades ago, to get more than twenty reliable dollars for every hour I spend doing something simple and inoffensive.

Of course, I wished for a host of other things as well. Some came true and some still haven't. Some never will. But that only brings home the far larger point:

It's not what wishes come true, it's what you do with them.

Rome invades

As my month long trip to Rome inches closer I keep expecting it to subsume everything. For months and months it has held off, but now I am feeling the first tremors. It is sliding in to my soul.

I have begun counting in Italian. I am living on a diet almost exclusively made up of tomatoes, basil, and olive oil, though I have had a bit of prosciutto and fresh mozzarella as well. But perhaps the strongest element of all this invasion is a kind of displacement, a sense of a different reality surrounding me.

The last time my wife and I went to Europe we went to Venice. I made this video:

Morning in Venice, Italy

And it speaks a little to how I feel now about Rome. Columns flicker at my peripheral vision. I have to double check the ceiling of my library to make sure it isn't filled with frescoes. Is that a baroque fountain out there? No. It is merely a parked car. Do I hear a scooter? Yes, actually, I do hear a scooter. Where can I get some amazing gelato? Nowhere? What do you mean nowhere? Wait, where am I.

I no doubt invited this confusing condition by pouring over and designing maps of Rome for the last half year. I am indeed now engaged in the possibly hopeless attempt to create my own, entirely personalized guidebook. But if Rome were a less spectacular city, one less deep, like Venice perhaps, or Lisbon, or even Paris or London for god's sake, it wouldn't be this bad. Any other city and I would have exhausted the new discoveries. I would have begun to repeat things and memorize them. Not in Rome. Hundreds of hours of studying into it I still open up a map and have my jaw dropped; "Wait, that church has Giottos?" I cry out. Or "You mean this insignificant museum I never remotely considered is full of Roman wall paintings?" Or worst of all "Another gelato shop? There? Four feet from our apartment? How did I miss this!"

So I continue to prepare. And I hallucinate. And I assemble my guidebook in a fever. But I don't plan on letting it consume me. My plan is that when I get to Rome we'll just drink wine at some cafe, wiling away the day, ignoring every last thing I have learned.






                       

The rate of quality librarianship

I don't know what comes over me.

I have millions of readers all over the world. A not insignificant number of them are librarians. And yet I concluded a post just a few days ago like this:

"Fucking librarians."

That's it. That's how I ended it.

I understand. I was trying to be funny, ironic even. But at what cost? What about the delicate feelings of librarians? Dear, dear librarians, who only want to put a good book or two into the hands of a struggling mankind.

Why would I joke about that? Some of my best friends are librarians! Do I wish to hurt my dear friends? I assure you, I do not!

I recently saw a charming show with two excellent comedians, John Oliver and Jerry Seinfeld. In this show they, wittily, talked about the sociopathy of comedy. They talked about being the kind of people who will do or say anything if there is a laugh at the end of it.

I can only blame that. I can only blame that dark streak in my soul.

Because for more than twenty years now I have worked closely with librarians. And they are smart, industrious, dedicated, funny, passionate, well-trained, innovative, driven, noble, and amazing contributors to literature, books, libraries, the community, and human kind itself.

Well, at least about six percent of them are.

Maybe four.

Four to six percent of librarians definitely are.

And in this struggling world full of lost souls, that's not that bad. Not that bad at all.

Bruschetta

I am no great cook.

I don't have the patience for it, the craft, the instinct, or the exacting training. I am as inclined to follow odd ideas of my own that end delightfully as I am to follow odd ideas of my own that end miserably. And when I follow even the most perfect, acclaimed recipes I struggle, usually unsuccessfully, to not condense, shortcut, alter, or omit to their disservice.

But that doesn't mean I don't occasionally come up with something great. Something that makes me think "This is the best thing I've ever eaten in my life!" But I'm not sure that's ever really cooking, not like I've had at the best restaurants I've been to, like La Belle Vie or Heartland. I'm pretty sure it's not cooking so much as just getting out of the way. I'm pretty sure it's having ingredients that are out of reach of all but the most expensive restaurants, and figuring out a way not to ruin them.  

Is this cooking? Is this even proper? I don't know, but yesterday it worked beyond all my dreams of kitchen wizardry, mostly because of the tomatoes, and because of luck, and because of living in a city with one good bakery.

I made bruschetta, which isn't really proper bruschetta, but I have no other name.

I sliced Rustica multigrain bread. I drizzled olive oil over it and sprinkled salt. Then I took a large, beefy tomato I'd grown from a small, old Italian heirloom variety a friend had given me, and scattered just manageable chunks of it over the bread. I fit a few halves of fresh mozzarella balls in strategic places throughout. I scattered thinly sliced garlic on everything, squeezed lime juice over it, and then drizzled honey. I broiled it all until the cheese was melted but not quite running. The second it was out of the oven I threw on a good deal of torn up basil I'd grown from seeds and some chopped arugula I bought in the store. I let the greens wilt into the toasts.

It was the best thing I've eaten in my life.

Luckily though there is always more; for at some point in the tastiness of food, it is all one great big tie for first place.

8-3-91

You might be surprised to hear I do not like to say too much.

Oh, I like to say everything, but about that which is so pure and magnificent at the core of cores, about the secret fire at the heart of the most important things I'd rather not say too much.

On my blog now I have experienced my 50th birthday, but what is that? That is just time and the whim of the gods. And so, a couple of years ago I was able to cast news of it like it was nothing. Life is just a crude statement for all its virtues, sprawling, unwieldy, unspecific.

But today. Today is twenty five. It is the one. And it is love. And I hardly dare speak of it because, amid all the sprawl of cold laws and miracles, it, in the universe alone, is sacred.

Circulation staff only

My god! Look at my circulation co-worker over there! Are they shopping for shoes? There's work to be done! Why, when I was over on the phones station it was amazing how hard I worked. I was a blaze of fire! I processed an entire bin of incoming requests in six minutes! A whole cart in six minutes!

Of course, for the other 54 minutes I was, um, shopping for shoes.

And that's really what it comes down to. There is not a one of us at my library who is not, at least occasionally, dissatisfied with the productivity of everyone else. Tempting as outraged superiority can be, mostly this is an impulse to be resisted.

I have consistently found that when we measure the work rate of others we measure it against our own highest possible personal work rate. If I knocked myself out shelving five swollen carts of fiction books seven years ago as flood waters were rising in the library, and I was on a coffee high, that will forever be the standard by which all my co-workers must be measured in every single moment of every working day.

So let me say it again: We measure the work rate of our co-workers by our highest and most perfect work accomplishments, by the rare level of work we perform when we are motivated, engaged, well-treated, happy, lucky, and feeling like it.

Since we can't possibly measure our own work rate against ourselves we must measure it against others. And so we measure it against the worst possible work rate of our co-workers. Sue, for instance, spent an hour socializing and talking about her vacation with half a dozen people. So surely I am allowed to sit here and read this interesting book at my leisure.

We work at a library. Everyone is always allowed to sit and read an interesting book for god's sake! That's the first thing to keep in mind.

But I might also want to keep in mind that after Sue chatted with everyone endlessly about her vacation, she went and cleaned up the entire Children's Room, which was in total chaos, a freaking mess, on a crazy day, and she did it totally alone, while the librarian just sat there!

Fucking librarians.

Don't flinch

This is a very important skill. 

I wish I had it in my house when I was a child. I wish I had it in Junior High and in High School. I oddly had little need of it in College, but to this day it would be extremely useful to have in a wide array of the aspects of my general life. The only place I find I am reliably in possession of this skill is when I am working at the front desk of my public library. Perhaps that is only fair enough, as the front desk of my library is the place I developed this useful, possibly essential, skill. 

Don't flinch. Show no fear. Stay unruffled.

You ask a patron for their library card. They present it to you in their right hand. Their fourth finger appears to be newly missing. The hand is wrapped in a collection of bloody bandanas. Blood drips thickly onto your counter. 

There is no profit in creating a scene. This is not a war. This is not theater. This is not a horror movie. This is just a public library.

"On your way to the emergency room?" You ask quietly, as you deftly take the library card, careful to not bump the tender wound.

"Yep." The man grunts. "Just wanted to pick up a couple things to read on my way."

It makes perfect sense. Sort of. And what doesn't make much sense about it doesn't really come into play here. Move him through. Clean up the mess. Next.

A large family of exuberant new immigrants approaches your desk. A family of eight, though the exact number is a little hard to tell as the smaller ones are moving around so much. An anxious man, the Father?, approaches and speaks several urgent sentences at you. Among all he says there is not a single phrase, nay, not even a word or sound you understand in any way whatsoever.

Do you cry? Do you abandon hope? Do you hide under your desk? You do not. You look in his eyes and you say "I'm sorry. I did not quite catch all of that. One more time please?"

Just today an alarming looking, crudely tattooed man, in shredded clothes and vibrating with energy came to my desk, put his face 8 inches from mine and asked "What's your name?"

"Feldenstein." I replied.

"We have the same eyes." He said to me, though unlike my own hazel ones, his were sort of blue. They had flecks of yellow and green in them. I know, because his very eyeballs were only inches away from me. But then he added "We both have flecks of different colors and they change with light and mood." That was actually pretty accurate.

Through the good and bad I never recoiled. "What can I do for you today?" I merely inquired.

"Isn't there supposed to be a flower show here today or something?"

"Do you see all those potted plants you just walked through?" I said, pointing. "It's right over there."

He looked over and twitched wildly in surprise, like he'd been electrically jolted. "Well I'll be." He said. And then he headed off.

Next.

Got the look

 

I have never been one to concern myself greatly with my appearance. In the long strand of my life I have adopted a few different personal styles. Some have been dramatic, like my Italian skatepunk phase or my millionaire hobo chic phase. I like a little drama. But as to my appearance, like many things in my life, I have not been energetic or industrious, and I have been mostly happy to let things settle to a fallback quasi style that I'll call "pleasantly tousled". As long as I could keep my standard up to that minimal look of "pleasantly tousled" I could turn my mind and spirit to other pursuits.

But as to our appearance I believe we all have a secret, platonic ideal for ourselves. I believe somewhere inside of us we hold at any given time a vision of the ideal look we are aiming for. Some of us may work much harder than others at reaching our ideal, but deep down that ideal is in our consciousness. And because we live in such an image conscious culture, it is very easy to find an actual human model for our ideal, almost invariably someone famous. It is common to hold in our heads not just a barely expressible ideal vision of ourselves, but also some, mostly unacknowledged even to ourselves, famous person who encapsulates that ideal.

For instance, it only occurs to me now that until I was in my early forties, for me, that person was Charlie Chaplin. Like many things I write here this comes as a surprise to me. Until this moment I had no idea that Chaplin, through all those years, was my style ideal, even if It makes perfect sense to me now. 

However, I was aware that as I inched towards middle age I found a new aspirational style. And unlike with Charlie Chaplin, I was more or less aware that I was going, long term, for the look expressed best by one famous person.

So it is with some satisfaction that I report to you that this morning at my library I was out in the front lobby, and a long time regular of the library, an only mildly crazy man, said to me in his distinctive accent "Ah! You look like Professor Einstein."

It is a great pleasure to stumble into accomplishment.

Aphorism all by itself

My deep seated aversion to Twitter has been fully activated lately. This is because day after day I am thinking of aphorisms. Aphorisms! Isn't that just an old fashioned word for "Tweet"?

Of course I also have an aversion to the Internet and to those little phones that so many people like to creepily caress with their thumbs. 

So I cope.

And how I cope with writing aphorisms is I group them together in a more robust package, or I build a whole essay around the aphorism so that you don't even know that it was all for the aphorism, or I write a two blog standard's weight worth of introductory comments. 

When I think of all these aphorisms I am tempted to plop them down all alone as wee short blog posts, especially these days when I am just barely keeping up with my rigorous publishing schedule. But it feels like that would be tweeting. Did I say tweeting? I meant to say cheating. So I have instead employed one of my three methods for presenting aphorisms.

Would you like to guess which method I am using today?

No, alas, I only have one aphorism on me at the moment.

No, if you pour back over my previous comments you will find nothing of quotable value and you will find that the forthcoming aphorism is actually incredibly unrelated to these comments.

Yes! You've got it. You must have used your word scale. This, this is exactly two blog standard's weight worth of introductory comments!

And now for the completely unrelated in every way (I am seriously not kidding) aphorism. Like all my recent aphorisms it is inspired by our political season, but like any good aphorism it attempts to travel on from there.

I hope you find it was worth the wait:
 




When you fire into a crowd you will kill someone you would not dream of hurting.

Four aphorisms, three new

I am trying to limit my consumption of politics in this terrible season. Oh all this heat and madness and beauty! 

A week or two ago, mostly considering Trump, I wrote an aphorism:


If you invite a cannibal into your house, expect to be eaten.


And maybe the aphorism is my own answer. In aphorism I can remain myself and true and still share something. So at the end of the Republican and Democratic Conventions, and at the end of all I have read, I have three new aphorisms for you. 

Put their meanings where you will:





 If you tear down the temple in rage and frustration, you may get hit by the roof.





The longer you are the lesser of some evil, the closer you grow to it.





It can always get worse, but the more one dwells on that, the more certainly it will.

Are you my mother

A dear and old friend recently referred in a comment here to an eagle friend of mine as a spirit guide. And I thought "No, aren't the turkeys my spirit guide? Isn't the eagle more just like a personal friend?"

And then I was forced to reflect.

As I reflected what flashed through my mind were all the woodland city creatures I have met on my walks in the past few days. I thought of the wee finches who kicked up like a little tornado from a nearby fence and swirled happily about my head as I walked along. I thought of the stained glass yellow butterfly who danced about at my near side for the length of a block as I made my way. I thought of the grizzled and disdainful battlefield of an old street cat who sauntered up to me only to throw himself on his back, all kittenish at my feet. I thought of squirrels pretending to race me, bunnies hopping up and down in front of me like they wanted to show me something, and two enormous hawks who traveled so close to me I thought they were going to alight upon my shoulders.

And I thought of an old, classic picture book by P. D. Eastman, Are You My Mother. 

Are You My Mother is one of those books I grew up with in my house as a child and so read hundreds of times. I never really loved the book though. The ending, neat as it was, depressed me. I think this says a lot about my childhood and about my mother because the ending is this(spoiler alert!): After a lost little bird asks a dog, a kitten, a cow, a car, a boat, a hen, a plane, and a "snort" if they're his mother, he is finally reunited with his real mother and they are happy.

And so it is, somewhere inside me, as I meet all these half wild critters who briefly frolic with me like I have stumbled into fairyland, I am asking again and again, each one of them, "Are you my spirit guide?"

"Are you my spirit guide?"

And here we must part ways with our classic picture book by P. D. Eastman. Because here, in my magical, picturebook Minneapolis, the answer is ever...

Yes.

They must be Vegans!

I don't get out much. And when I do it is not with Republicans. At the library I work at I assume that pretty much everyone is somewhere politically to the left of any Republican, both because we are a socialist institution, and because I like to think well of people, if I can. So when I overheard someone at the public copier say, in what was surely a response to something involving Black Lives Matter, "I think all lives matter" I felt like I was suddenly connected with all of America.

It was exciting.

So instead of resisting, I decided to go with the flow. And when a patron came up to me at the front desk and asked "Can you recommend a good book? I like science fiction." I said

"I think all the genres are really good."

"Oh." The patron said, taken aback. "So, can you recommend a good book?"

"Any of them." I said enthusiastically. "All of our books are wonderful!"

"Er, yes, well." The patron said. "Good. But I really liked The Martian. I found it so entertaining and informative. Anything like that?"

"The Martian?" I said. "I loved it. Certainly we have books like that. Of course."

"Great. Which ones? Are they in?"

"Yes! They're all in. All of our books are like The Martian. Just go upstairs and grab any book. You'll love it!" 


I'm not sure my suggestion worked that well. Still, I think it is always worth it to try and expand the way I see the world.

Sun

Dear Sun:


I just finished a late morning walk and bike ride across the city. I think you saw me. There was nothing in the way of your seeing me. And you kind of kept staring. Which is okay, I mean, I know you can be like that.


Anyway, I wanted to tell you that I can understand why many cultures have made a god of you. You truly are mighty. You are the life giver. And though I know how it must irk you to have to team up with Water to get anything really going lifewise, it's still impressive stuff being the giver of life, even if you're only 50 percent the giver of life. I mean, if I were 50 percent responsible for something huge I would be simply proud of it. For instance, what if I were the source of 50 percent of all the joy in the Universe? That is a lot! I would be so happy and satisfied. I wouldn't complain about how Fred, over at the St. Paul Administrative Offices, was responsible for the other 50 percent of the joy in the Universe. I wouldn't try to evaporate Fred out of existence. I wouldn't try to burn Fred off of the face of the planet.


I guess what I'm trying to say is you've seemed a little angry lately. But even though I have done everything I can to cower away from you, that doesn't mean I'm not a huge fan of yours. When you set, that's incredible, and I told you about the rainbow I saw before, didn't I? And making trees grow, I mean, how wonderful is that?


So love who you are, Sun. This is your time to shine. There isn't a cloud in the sky. It's Summer. Don't be mad. Just enjoy, and maybe chill a little. Everything is going to be okay.



Your friend,


Feldenstein

Pie

Today, while I was working on the automatic check in machine at my library, one of my youngish colleagues came into the backroom from where she was working out at the front desk. She was exultant. She was astonished.

"A woman just gave us pies and pastries!" She cried out. "She just gave them to us! There's a cream pie, and cookies. They're from Perkins. She works there and they had these extra and she brought them in for us. Free!"

That's very nice.

And it is a kind and generous thought of this Perkins employee.

And it's sweet she considered us.

New, substitute co-worker, I am glad you are excited.

But I have to say, just here, my collegue, my young Padawan: People donate books to us as well. And, as with pie, some few of these books are astonishments and treasures beyond belief. But many started with scarcely any value and have only had that modicum of worth slowly leeched away in the disdain of time. 

So I'd hurry and eat your pie, for one day you may know the difference.

The pods

Because I grew up in shopping malls I have some idea of how to entertain myself in Department stores even when I have nothing to buy. With free time on my hands in a Target the other day I made my way over to the aisle with espresso machines. I just like to be near them. I find espresso machines comforting.

But like in an old fifties horror movie all the real espresso machines had been replaced in the night by pod machines. Aliens, floating in space, made their way to earth, and then, in the night replaced the real, messy, soulful, personal espresso machines with empty, glassy eyed, alien pod machines. These are machines where one buys pre-packaged espresso in environmentally evil and likely toxic and brain melting pods and uses them instead of ground coffee from a bag. This closed, pod system forces people to buy more pod coffee, which works its way throughout the nation until the alien takeover is complete. Apparently this saves people seven or eight seconds in their morning coffee preparation, or something.

Or let me put it another way, because when I'm really wound up about something wildly meaningless I need to invoke multitudes of analogies. These espresso makers are like if you decided it would be a good idea to open a bank account, and it looks like there are plenty of banks around, but when you go into any of them it turns out they all offer great interest rates and services but operate using their own, proprietary currency.

"My bank is fantastic! Do you take TCF Script? No? Oh, no problem. I'll just go shop at the TCF store."

And this is why soon I will be fleeing with my wife to Rome, where the invasion has been beaten back with large, powerful, Ferrari like espresso machines. For a mere dollar I can hang out near one of those noble, reassuring machines and fully enjoy the last, bittersweet time before the human race is conquered and destroyed forever.

Flag math

It was only a week ago that I put forward the revolutionary idea that things have been going bad enough in the world that it was time for us to put the flag permanently at half mast. I proposed that we should just raise it up for awhile when something good happens. I thought it might be more cheering and optimistic that way.

So I placed my idea out onto the Internet and waited for a response, but it is possible no one has been on the Internet for weeks. I heard nothing. The all devouring Internet mindlessly ate another of my ideas.

When I was a child in the seventies I often went to the beach. Once I was at a beach and was instructed by someone to hold a large shell to my ear.

"Do you hear that?" The person said. I listened and heard an even, slightly mesmerizing roar. "That" they said "Is the sound of the Internet."

So forget my idea that the flag be placed, in these perilous times, always at half mast. It is ancient history. And it was not just the ever guzzling and erasing Internet that displaced it. Events overtook my idea as well. I don't even know what the flag was at half mast for when I first wrote my starts-at-half-mast idea, but almost immediately a former Governor of Minnesota died and flags were ordered to be hung at half mast. How do you fly a half mast flag at half mast? Then, before anyone could figure that one out the President ordered flags to be flown at half mast for some shot police officers somewhere. Half mast at half mast at half mast.

If my idea concerning always at half mast was a wash, how can we at least give meaning to lowering the flag to half mast when the triggers overwhelm our ammunition?

Fortunately I have a simple solution. If a tragic event occurs and one's flag is at half mast, we must now lower it to quarter mast. If another event transpires requiring a flag lowering during that time one simply lowers the flag to eighth mast.

We have instituted this method at our public library already, and it is going well. With various shootings, the Republican National Convention, something involving mosquitoes, and Clinton's Vice Presidential pick we are now flying our flag at 64th mast.

On the plus side, the more tragedies we face, the more minor the adjustment, so long as one doesn't mind a little detail work with rulers.

Heat advisory

While my Winter blog posts are full of accounts of astonishing cold snaps, deep snow, and a city fallen under the brittle silence of the far north as it turns from the sun, I have a tendency to let Summer weather slide. Partly I do not feel that hot weather is our signature weather up here, and so does not warrant much special comment. Unlike the cold, I have encountered heat everywhere I've been. And it has only become the more inescapable as we have begun the great human experiment of choking to death on our own gasses. But the deep arctic chills of the Upper Midwest are more and more unique to us, a point of pride. Furthermore I enjoy and am interested in frigid weather, whereas I despise the heat, and, because I keep myself on a strictly limited diet of bitterness here, I try not to throw that precious allowance away on weather. Whenever I can I try to exult over weather instead. Such a thing is a feasible, interesting exercise with extreme cold, but a disaster with Summer.

But a smashing heat wave is bearing down on us with such force I am compelled in terror to respond. The blasted air has just begun to cook. Humidity boils the prairie grasses and the fetid remains of thunderstorms. Mosquitoes hatch and burst into flames. The black streets sizzle and ooze and all the normally placid northern people grow strange and dangerous. Death on the streets, flags at half mast, a city losing itself.

The Heat Advisory has begun. Or is it a Heat Warning? A Heat Alarm? A Heat Hysteria? In an unprecedented move my library will be staying open til midnight over the next two days so that people without air conditioning can come here and be bad tempered and try not to die. Good luck to them. Though I have long advocated for a 24 hour library I can't pitch in on this one. I have to go home at my usual nine o'clock time.

I have to ice my blog.

Houseguest

I don't know if it is my own, personal struggles with inner demons, my psychology. I don't know if it's some comment on things in my work life. And I don't know if it has something to do with the Republican National Convention and the ever presence of Donald Trump.

Maybe somehow it's all of them, but this morning this thought started ringing out, as if of its own accord, in my head:


If you invite a cannibal into your house, expect to be eaten.









  

Easy recommendation

A volunteer I am very friendly with asked me for a book recommendation. We were in the back room of the library with at least a minimum amount of time to attack the problem thoroughly, so I enthusiastically committed. I would find him a book to read or give up library work forever!

I asked a few questions about his reading tastes. In addition to what I knew about him I found that he liked books he could learn from. My favorite book this year so far has been Walkable City, a fascinating tour of urban planning and design. It's about what makes cities livable and appealing, the horrible ways we've messed it up, and the clever things cities have been and are starting to do. He loved it. It sounded great!

We didn't have it.

We only have one copy, and because I've been so fanatically recommending it it's checked out!

Fine. How about that charming book about the guy who decided to try and live off of wild harvested food, It's Only Slow Food Until You Try to Eat It? Charming, funny, illuminating, and with the magical good fortune any kind of bookumentary needs: momentous, life changing events coming along as he's writing the book. They even come along because he's writing the book.

No?

No.

Okay. No problem. How about H is for Hawk. I read it early this year, beautifully written, very int... OH! He's already sold on it. He heard something about this one. He wants this H is for Hawk. It sounds great!

It is checked out with a small waiting list. 

I refuse to speak ill of the librarians, except, well, this is their fault!

No problem. My volunteering friend leaks more information. He likes Young Adult fiction. Ha. Why didn't you say so. Wee Free Men. Charming! Clever! Great-Hearted! Wise! He doesn't usually like fantasy, but this sounds appealing.

We don't have a copy at this library.

Oh, glorious teen librarian, star in our librarian firmament, oh, alas, hang your head in shame today, no Wee Free Men? Well, no problem, you can't win them all. I'm sure he's working on resolving this issue.

Anyway, onto the next one. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I don't even ask if my volunteering friend is interested now. I just look it up in the catalog to see that we have no copies checked in.

Okay.

The volunteer says "Maybe I should just go ask in the teen room. They're good with recommendations."

Even now this statement hurts me in ways it is difficult to communicate. I pretend he hasn't said anything, which he surely wouldn't have had he been thinking clearly.

As I inquire about mysteries and begin to suggest Rex Stout he says he wants a sweet book. Some difficult, mortal things have recently transpired in his life, and he needs something on the gentle side.

A gentle book of sweetness.

What's with the trickle of information? But, okay.

Sweet.

Danny Champion of the World. By Roald Dahl. Easy.
 
It's in the kids' room. The juvenile fiction and our kids' room come through! It's actually there!

Is there a mistake?

Is a chapter missing? No.

Ha!



So then, is my volunteer friend happy with my choice?


I don't know. He graciously took my book, but I might've seen him heading off for the teen desk.


I should have tried harder.