Racist

There's always a Problem Patron Number One at any given time at my library. The current one is an early middle-aged African American woman with a forceful personality. I'm actually not sure who she is, not having run into problems with her, but I have heard the stories. Oh I have heard the stories! They are the kind of stories that only make me feel fortunate I don't quite know who she is.

There she is emerging out of the upstairs stacks well after the library closed. There were a lot of announcements about the closing, but there haven't been any for awhile because, well, we've been closed for so long. The door to the coffee shop was locked promptly at nine because it's not a proper exit and it communicates with a now closed coffee shop that doesn't actually belong to the library. But she is heading to that exit anyway, in the half dark, pointing and preemptively calling out at broadcast levels:

"Open that door! I am disabled and I WILL NOT walk all the way around the outside of the library so you will UNLOCK THAT DOOR right now."

I guess they did. I'm pretty sure they gently encouraged her to leave on time in the future. It didn't go well. Apparently our library treats her monstrously and we're the most racist library she's ever been to.

There have been other incidents as well. She threw open the gates of the library to enter early one morning, heedless of entreaties to stop. Another time she was talking very loudly upstairs. So loudly that complaints were coming in about it. One of our truly nicest librarians went over to ask her if she could if she could be more quiet. She was furious. She said she was being singled out because she is Black and other people talk loudly and nothing ever happens to them.

The fact of the matter is that race comes into it a lot. Every problem, every request of ours that she conduct herself according to our minimum standards and rules is met with a enraged rebuttal that all the complaints are because we are racist, rude, and unfair, and that they happen because she is Black. Then she usually threatens about how she will be calling all kinds of important people about this.

She is crazy, unfortunately. 

And I suspect she is part of a small group of patrons for whom no amount of reasoning will resolve the problems. But if she weren't quite so crazy I would tell her how she can't just go around calling everywhere and everybody racist. This is America. If she goes around indiscriminately calling people and institutions racist she could be wrong. 

She could be wrong as much as 20 percent of the time.

The truth is harder than you think

At my job, and especially with my bosses, there are certain things that it would be unwise and impossible to have honest conversations about. This is sad, but on the whole I understand and accept it. I am only able to do so however because I have these conversations in my imagination.

And here is one:



"I wanted to ask a question." I say one evening to my manager.

"Great. I am always glad to hear your questions because you are so frank and we can speak honestly about all aspects of working here." My manager responds.

So far it is going really well!

"First of all," I say. "You do realize that nearly every evening you assign a person to the phone station for two hours, and that person almost never has anything to do, for two whole paid hours, except to sit in a nice, quiet, private space and fool around on a computer." 

"I don't like much to think of it." My manager responds. "But I am aware of it."

"Okay then, here is my question."

"I eagerly await it."

"How come," I ask. "Even though no one does any real work during that time, and everyone goofs off there, how come even though I work three nights a week, I have, in eight years, never, not once, been assigned to that job?"

My manager looks frankly at me. "It is because I think you would enjoy it more than anyone else."

"Oh." I say.

"Do you have any more questions you would like to ask?"

"Not anymore," I mumble. "Thanks."

Hey Conservative Democrat

Hey Conservative Democrat,



I have a theory. It's about you.

You think that the Right will keep pushing further and further and further to the right until they fall off a cliff.

Then you can become the Republicans, like the kind from the fifties, and the liberal Democrats can be the old Democrats, and everything will be okay and you can concentrate on fighting those progressives, which you find easier and more comfortable to fight than fighting the Right.

Sure, I wish this for you too.

But the Earth is not flat.

The Right keeps going right, and right, and right, and right, and there is no cliff.

Everything just gets worse.

Including, alas, you.

King of the library: The tenth decree

Oh if I were king of the library!

I have mused on this a few times in the course of this blog. Eight times to be precise, and you can find the links to them over on the sidebar to your right.

But inspiration has struck again, revelation, imagination, dreams, visions, longings, hallucinations, castles in the sky!

I have a decree!

The Ninth Decree:

The main room of the library shall be elaborately redecorated according to a theme every year.

I understand that this needs a little explaining.


A vast rebuild of my library was done about eight or nine years ago. It was done in the style of cutting edge minimalism, on a budget, circa 1979 Berlin (going by a photograph I saw of their library). I'm not complaining, exactly, but it's a sort of design that over a very few years becomes bland. But because it is also minimal, with a vast gray floor and even vaster, soaring, white, unadorned walls, it begs for expression.

Now let me also say that, despite this main room being a featured and even essential space for my library, this is also an almost throwaway space. It houses the front desk, several little featured kiosks of mini collections, many many Internet computers, and our vast AV collections. It is a noisier space, leading to Teens, Children's, the work room, and the coffee shop, and it is a more social space where people pass through and get things done. It is not our study spaces, our quiet spaces, our main adult book collections, or our traditional library space. It is not our essential library. It longs for fun!

We will make it fun. It will have a theme!

For our first theme we will begin with: 

A Plush English Drawing Room. 

The massive walls will be draped in great banners of rich velvet, overhung occasionally with large Manor House type oil paintings; grave portraits, hunting scenes, rustic and bucolic cows, whatever. We can throw down some shabby oriental rugs, they only have to survive a year, and then we will carefully set up little two to three people conversation areas with heavy leather arm chairs and small, richly draped tables with charming table lamps. In the evenings waitstaff from the coffee shop will take your orders for cocktails at these very tables. A large, very quiet and well-behaved mastiff will more or less live on the premises. Amid all the DVDs and CDs we can probably squeeze in some nice towering oak bookshelves full of dated, leather bound classics and loads of oddball and obscurely fascinating period ephemera.

And that's merely for year one. So if you don't like it just go upstairs and wait a few hundred days.

 Future options include a pirate ship theme, a Science Fiction Spaceship, Enchanted Gardens with a central fountain, a Traditional Japanese Tearoom, the undersea world, Mayan Civilization, and  an African Safari. The possibilities are endless, and our space, while bland and a bit formless, makes the perfect canvas.

So it shall be. And so it is decreed, this day, etc. etc.


The King.

My PHD

For my PHD dissertation I decided to comprehensively catalog the male lead character types of the Romance Novel Genre. This study was inspired by my long years of working with the Romance section of my library. Meeting, as I do, in these novels, Firemen, Cowboys, Ranchers, Highlanders, Billionaires, Playboys, Cops, Vampires, Doctors, and Wolfmen, I've often wondered what makes them tick underneath. What characteristics do they share, and in what ways do they differ?

And so through intensive and comprehensive research I have, I think, finally sorted down to a list of all the fundamental character types of the Romance Genre Leading Man.

They are:

1. Powerful and accomplished, yet remote and wounded.

2. Roguish, yet with a heart of gold.

3.


Oh.

Okay then.

I guess that wraps it up.


PhD's are easier than I thought.

Hey Moderate Democrat

Hey Moderate Democrat,



Did you ever notice how when you fight with the Right you are even tempered, conciliatory, scrupulous, realistic, defensive and compromising? You give every benefit of the doubt, play fair, hold honor over victory, and let bygones be bygones. You bow to consensus, even if the consensus is fudged, are never too hasty, take the high road, and live to fight another day almost every single day. You are civil, patient, and keep a stiff upper lip.

Meanwhile, did you ever notice how against the Left, usually in your own party, you are dismissive, merciless, practical, nakedly political, marginalizing, willing to play hardball, and committed to winning at all costs? Did you notice that you are impatient, condescending, offensive, insistent on their sacrifice, and willing to forfeit your shared ideals that you somehow never seem to mention on your own?

You never noticed that?


Yes, I guess that would be uncomfortable for you.



Never mind.








 

Hey Republican

Hey Republican,


You probably think I'm going to make fun of you, that your very lack of a sense of humor about yourself makes you funny. 

You may think I'm going to call you a hypocrite for despising Politicians for adultery, greed, and draft dodging only to absolutely worship Politicians doing the same thing with even greater abandon and conviction.

I'm not.

You may think I will accuse you of being without ideals of any meaning, embracing and rejecting policies and Institutions and Countries and Rights with every change of wind and political expediency, rejecting all history, even your own. You may think I am here to accuse you of ignorance, supporting policies that purport to support one thing but support another entirely, or taking a convenient line from the Constitution or Bible as fundamental because of the source, and then heedlessly ducking or prevaricating on the rest.

You might think I am here to call you hardhearted, subservient, brainwashed, slavish, self-destructive, racist, sexist, or even, now, Un-American.

But I am not.

That is because I believe you already know all these things, deep down. I believe all these things talk to you, as an incessant murmur, ever bubbling up, from below.

But it is easier to yell at someone else than it is to yell at yourself, because you cannot make yourself go away.

So you wait for me.

But I didn't say a thing, and I have nothing to say.

I'm just here.

We're all just here, waiting for you to come back.

Internet acronyms explained

I read things, searchingly, on the Internet, until finally I find this blog and realize it was what I was looking for all along. But before I get here I read a lot of acronyms.

The Internet is full of acronyms!

I know what they mean usually, but that doesn't stop me from, by default, reading them with their secret hidden meanings instead.

You read on the Internet too. And sometimes, by accident, you are not here. Most people, on the Internet, are, by mistake, not here. And you encounter acronyms when this happens. Sometimes you don't know what they stand for. And sometimes you know what they stand for, but not their secret meaning.

I'm going to tell you everything now.

That's why you come here.



Acronym:   LOL

What it stands for:  Laugh Out Loud

Secret meaning:  I was mildly, quietly amused.




Acronym:  ROFL

What it stands for:  Rolling On Floor Laughing

Secret meaning:  It was funny enough that I almost could have laughed out loud.




Acronym:  LMAO

What it stands for:  Laughing My Ass Off

Secret meaning:  Same as ROFL except the person doesn't like the undignified idea of being on the floor.




Acronym:  /s

What it stands for:  (Denotes) Sarcasm

Secret meaning:  It is impossible to underrate the subtlety of an Internet audience enough.




Acronym:  AOL

What it stands for:  America Online

Secret meaning:  I'm more of a "Nineties Internet" sort of person




Acronym:  AMA

What it stands for:  Ask Me Anything

Secret meaning:  Ask me anything and I'll choose which ones I'd like to answer.




Acronym:  IIRC

What it stands for:  If I Recall Correctly

Secret meaning:  I could confirm this on the Internet, but I am forgetting that I am on the Internet.




Acronym:  FTFY

What it stands for:  For The Fastest Yodeler

Secret meaning:  I don't know the secret meaning. This acronym has always been an inscrutable one to me.

How to get off the grid!

Energy independence. Green energy. Living green. In these days of environmental degradation, global warming, and the wholesale destruction of our planet Earth, many of us desperately want to make a difference. We long to live an energy autonomous life, a life friendly to the planet and beholden to none of the multi-national forces that are destroying our home, our only home, this Earth.

But we tend to think it is too hard to make a difference.

It is not too hard to make a difference!

Over the course of just three years I have achieved 100% energy independence and autonomy. While I likely live no differently than you in terms of modern convenience, everything from the electric power I use, to the water I drink, to the sewage I treat, and to even to the fuel I burn is produced autonomously through modern technology and know how, and is in harmony with the world around me. I require nothing from and have no connection to any power company, conglomerate, or energy industry.

You can do it too!

Below I outline the ten steps that have brought me to this total energy autonomy. I am not saying you need to follow each of these steps exactly, but I hope that you will find this template useful in your own path, whether that be towards reducing grid consumption, or, like me, going 100% green.

My Ten Steps to Energy Independence and the Fully Green Lifestyle

1. Buy an Island

It does not have to be huge. Mine is less than 14 square miles of varied topography and there is still room for everything.


2. 17 Windmills

Yes, I have 17 full scale industrial windmills, each one more than a football field high. This is more than enough electricity for me, generally speaking, and I could get by with fewer if it weren't for my desalinization plant (see 3).


3. Desalinization Plant

While there is some fresh water on my Island, it is inconsistent in its availability, and tapping into it could upset the delicate ecology of my home. Meanwhile the sea is full of water. By merely removing the salt I have enough water for farming, teeth brushing, bottling, and running my cattle operation.


4. Go Vegetarian

I know I said I have a cattle operation, but really it's just a hobby herd of 20 head of cattle, plus the dairy herd. I know how much better a vegetarian diet is for both one's body and the planet and so I rarely eat meat, mostly getting by on locally netted seafood, greenhouse vegetables, and cheeses.


5. Offshore Oil Drilling

I am lucky enough to have oil deposits just offshore of my Island and so have sunk two wells and opened a "micro refinery" on the lee side of my Island. This provides me with enough fuel for my boat and my small, 16-seater plane, all this without fracking or playing by British Petroleum's rules.


6. Grow Your Own Tomatoes

I love tomatoes, absolutely adore them, and so I grow them myself, or, when busy, have my staff grow them, along with other fruits and vegetables, in a series of state of the art greenhouses that free me from Industrial Agriculture and the tyranny of seasons.


7. Nuclear Reactor

I have installed one small Nuclear Reactor because contrary to what you may of heard, greenhouses take up a load of energy. So oddly do meat lockers. The good news is that Nuclear Reactors are far safer than anyone thinks, and though I have to send the waste off on specially designed rafts into the Ocean (which is huge), I am working on a greener solution for that and am making great progress.


8. My Own Satellite

It took a few tries for my to get one up there, but a satellite is my way to stay in touch with the world without being beholden to its destructive tendencies. Having an online community of Green Activists like you has inspired me to do all that I have been able to do so far.


9. Recycled, Home-made Toilet Paper

I make my own toilet paper from my own recycled paper, local tree bark, and flax. I promise you it is better than anything you can get in the store! And greener! (Actually it does come out kind of greenish).


10. Turn Out the Lights

Just because I have 17 windmills, an oil refinery, and a nuclear power plant, doesn't mean I don't have to turn out the lights when I leave a room. That may be my biggest lesson for you of all:

Every little bit helps!

An anniversary

I have written here for five years now, plus a little. I have spent 59 total days in Rome. I have eaten taco salad every day now for four days.

I'm just saying I've done a lot of things for a lot of different lengths of time. I have done everything I have ever done for different lengths of time.

For instance I have worked at the same library for 24 years, and it has been good, and bad, and almost anything in between. I've drunk coffee for 14 years now, and I like it.

It occurs to me this all might not be interesting to you. Work that out among yourself, but I have something to say today.

I have been writing this particular essay for 689 seconds now. I kept track. I've been backpacking 39 times. I've read 4,322 books, but only if you count rereads.

But the best thing I have ever done, the sweetest, deepest, most important, and soul satisfying thing I have ever done, the smartest, most miraculous, and magical of all, I have done now for exactly 27 years, to the very day.

So I wanted to say thank you to the Universe, in case it is reading here, which I suspect it sometimes does.

Double the value of your home

I have stumbled upon a relatively inexpensive way to double the value of your home. Hear me out on this one. It will work. But it has a couple of provisos. The first proviso is that all your neighbors have to go in on it too, not every neighbor in your whole neighborhood. But all of them within a few blocks will have to do it with you. The second proviso is that your housing stock for the area has to be generally dense and have some architectural charm. Suburban sprawl on big lots, or too much bland fifties to eighties design and you're out.

But if you've made it this far...

Color. 

Yes, that's it, color. Bright, diverse, high key color. Pastel, primary, full on, painted color.

This is the trick.


Wait. Let me step back a little bit.

 At my house we are generally planning a trip to Europe at any given time. Right now we are going to Copenhagen for a short, four day trip. As soon as we had the tickets bought and the apartment booked I went to the library and got all our Copenhagen travel guides. That was too paltry so I got all the Denmark guide books too. And I still wasn't satisfied so I got the Scandinavia guides as well. And I soon noticed that they all had one thing in common: Nyhavn. Their big "This is Scandinavia" or "This is Copenhagen" picture on the cover was of one singular, same place. It was a shot of Nyhavn in Copenhagen. Nyhavn is a little stretch along one of the many canals there and the buildings are all painted in big blocks of bright color, red, yellow, blue, orange. It's super charming. No wonder it is the photogenic highlight of Scandinavian cities.

But now that I have looked at a lot of pictures of Copenhagen I am also aware that the only thing that separates this area from a dozen other charming streets and waterfronts is that all the houses are painted in bright colors. Because everyone painted these buildings in bright colors you can forget about staying here. It's all too valuable for the common person to afford. We're staying in an equally appealing place painted in plainer colors.

And it occurred to me Nyhavn is not the only one. This same device has been applied with wild success in Cinque Terra, Italy, the painted ladies of San Francisco, Burano near Venice, Capitola California, Santorini in Greece, Alicante in Spain and countless of other tourist destinations. And you can bet that the real estate in each of these places far exceeds that of any of its like, but less colorful neighbors.

But maybe you don't want to live in a tourist attraction with people all gawking at and photographing your house into the wee hours. So sell. Move to a similar house at half the cost, and bring your left over yellow paint. Hell, bring all your neighbors, painting your way across the country until you're all rich. 

Rich enough to live in Nyhavn.

I hear it's nice there, but expensive.

Global Warming

To be honest I don't pay much attention to all this global climate change stuff. Not only is it depressing, but having no descendants I guess it's okay if the world just holds together until my wife and I are finished with it. Then the rest of you are on your own. But that doesn't mean I'm not sad for you, or your children, or whatever. And I definitely don't like it getting hotter. I'm more of a cool weather person myself. So all told I guess I am against this Global Warming thing. I like glaciers. I dislike millions of people being killed in violent storms. I wish we could fix it.

So imagine my relief today when I read that 2018 is on pace to be cooler than 2015, 2016, and 2017! This means it is on pace to be the coolest year since 2014! It's finally over. Global Warming has been cured. Hopefully all the lost glaciers and ice caps will start forming up again and all the extinct animals will appear from out of their secret burrows saying "We were here all along, just keeping cool you know. Mmmm. Feel that breeze!"

Of course, the way the media put it was that 2018 is on pace to be the fourth hottest year on record, behind only 2015, 2016, and 2017. 

Oh these nattering nabobs of negativism! Can't they just accept that the global climate crisis is over?

It's over. Do the math.

Anyway, we've got bigger fish to fry. Maybe whales? They're probably not even endangered anymore and I bet they're delicious!

SJW

I recently posted something I wrote here about libraries onto a relevant page on the Internet. I thought it would perhaps be of interest there to some people, and perhaps it was. But after a few hours all I got from it directly was an angry comment inspired, apparently, by a joke in it about Forbes being an Alt-Right magazine that was taken with an all too deadpan literalness. In the brief attack that followed I was called an SJW.

For those of you not versed fully on Internet acronyms, SJW means Single Jewish Woman. While I must assert that I am Jewish, I am most delightedly not Single, and I am also not a Woman, though because of my high voice I am occasionally mistaken for one on the phone, mostly by old men and telemarketers.

What's that?

SJW doesn't stand for Single Jewish Woman? It stands for Social Justice Warrior?

Oh. Okay. I'll take your word for it. But you could see my mistake. A person inclined to use the derisive and sarcastic term SJW, is likely to feel pretty much the same about both Single Jewish Women and Social Justice Warriors; bizarrely hostile, uncomfortable, and all... shadowy.

But fine, Social Justice Warrior. I have now been called a Social Justice Warrior.

Well... that's nice. I don't understand. That seems like a good thing to be. I mean, I can try. I want justice for and in society. And I guess I can try to be a Warrior for good.

But it's supposed to be a hostile criticism.

How am I supposed to respond to such a thing?

Say you're walking down the street and a cat comes along and you bend down and skirtch it. Someone nearby sees this and says derisively, in a mean tone of voice "Well aren't you an FTA?"

"What's an FTA?" You ask.

"Friend To Animals." But they say it like it's bad. So you kind of want to say

"I am not a Friend To Animals!"

 Except you are actually quite friendly with animals and are pretty happy and proud to be so, so you don't say anything while this jerkface just walks away. And you're kind of worked up now but you have no idea what to do.

But then all of the sudden the adorable but now angry cat goes running at jerkface in a fury and attacks him! He just scratches the jerkface guy to hell.  I mean he savages him so bad that this guy just bleeds to death right there!

It's horrible!

And then the kitty comes over to you, purring and with bloodied whiskers glowing like jewels in the sun,  and you give him a nice long skirtch on his head. "What a good kitty." You say in a baby voice. "What a nice little Social Justice Warrior you are!"

And (almost) everyone lives happily ever after.

Sic semper tyrannis

Just when you think everything is okay at the library you work at, that is, that no one does much in the way of constructive labor, but we all somehow manage to get the job done anyway, something happens.

Something happened.

I was on the phones, which were occasionally ringing. But the other job on the phones is processing requests and there weren't any requests to process. When a bin of requested books fills up on the machine it gets pushed over to the phones. but no bins were filling up because the person on the machine wasn't doing their job. They were chatting with co-workers and working on some irrelevant tangential project of their own. Coincidentally then I was chatting with co-workers and working on some irrelevant tangential project of my own.

It is possible we were both bugging each other in our not working. But I had no tools to make the person on the machine work. Only the person on the machine had recourse to make me work. They could do this by the noble process of feeding our numerous delivery items onto the machine, especially things that were likely requested by library patrons, and soon they would have a full a bin of things to push over to me. If they really tried they could even bury me in multiple bins of stuff to process and I could do nothing about it but graciously accept it in good spirit. But they didn't do this. Instead they bizarrely broke the sacred, unwritten rules. They pushed over a barely half filled bin of requested books for me to process and then went back to not doing their job.

This was passive aggressive library speak for "fuck you".

Now I was only prevented from walking over to them and saying "fuck you to you too" by two devices:

1. I don't say "fuck you" to my co-workers. And

2. The person who did this was my manager.



So I did the only thing I could do in this sad and unjust situation. 

I wrote this.

Another adventure with Time Traveler Man

He fights for goodness and justice using his amazing ability to travel through time. He could just play the stock market and wallow in money but instead he is the virtuous superhero known throughout the land as:

Time Traveler Man!

When we last left Time Traveler Man he was dealing with the sticky problem of a wholly corrupt and entirely unstable President. A citizen was begging for help as the country slid into civil war and chaos...



"Time Traveler Man!"

"Yes, Citizen?"

"I know you said your time travel powers only allow you to travel a short distance in time and so you can't stop this President from being elected, but isn't there some scandal, or some short term way to bring him down?"

"I wish there was, Citizen." Replied Time Travel Man sadly. "Many scandals that you know of have been things I've exposed. The embarrassing Press Conference in Russia was through my careful arrangements. Scandals with payments to Playmates and Porn Stars. Overt lies emphatically exposed. But none of them has budged the Republican support for him."

"Darn!" Cried the citizen. "What would it take? Maybe if he started a nuclear war?"

"He did."

"He did?"

"117 times now."

"Wow." Responded the citizen quietly. "You've been busy."

"I've been busy."

Enobling library work

Just this once, in one of these library stories, let's start with the punchline:

"I don't know how anything gets done around here!"


Now that that's taken care of we can get down to our real message.

I was shelving in Non Fiction, which on the hour was supposed to switch to me shelving in Fiction. But I'd been reading and writing in the stacks so much that it was 20 after the hour by the time I had an empty cart to bring down for a new Fiction one. In the pre elevator room one of my colleagues was standing with a full cart of books, talking on their cell phone, having a particularly intense discussion with one of their children. I dashed into the elevator and pressed the down button several hundred times until the door finally closed.

Downstairs the automated check in machine was entirely abandoned. I suspected what this meant and confirmed it with our posted schedule; one of my managers was assigned to the machine. Only the managers would treat that responsibility so cavalierly and leave so much work for the people to come. This manager was off in their office while the machine either idled or cranked off towards some disaster. I went around straightening bins with the real motive of causing them to fill up so that the machine display would light up with lots of alarming red boxes.

The person on phones was doing nothing and staring vacantly into space in a vaguely alarming way, but, hey, I've been there. Another co-worker, I'm not sure where she was assigned, probably Non Fiction, was watching some inscrutable, corporate looking video with sound so low I doubt she could properly hear.

One other person was also shelving in Fiction with me, meaning I'd want to try to carefully choose a cart that kept us from shelving in the same place. But since I'd seen on the schedule who that person was I knew there was no way in hell he was upstairs shelving. He was either smoking in the parking lot or off on some secret mission of his own, and I could take whatever cart I wanted.

Upstairs in the elevator anteroom my co-worker was still there on the phone, just wrapping up the discussion. I rolled my cart out into the public area, behind where two librarians were aimlessly surfing the Internet, looking very bored, and I wheeled into the quiet respite of Fiction. I shelved for about ten minutes and then wrote most of this.

Maybe I really belong here after all.

Library pyromaniac

 A man came to me at the front desk of the library.

"I just thought you should know," He began. "Someone lit a fire in the Men's Room."

"Really." I said.

"It's out now," He assured me, "But there are scorch marks on the wall, some burnt stuff on the floor, and," He added significantly, "It smells terrible in there!"

"Thank you. I'll check it out."

It wasn't long before I had the chance to inspect our fire damage. He was right. There was a clump of what looked like burned through paper by the urinals, and there were some minor scorch marks down at the base of the wall.

But he was completely wrong about the last thing. I have had cause to venture into that bathroom many times over the years, though almost never to actually go to the bathroom in it. And I can say its smell has ranged from barely tolerable to horrifying. Now it smelled great. It smelled fantastic. It smelled like a campfire in the woods.

As the supply person for my library I buy deodorizing gels or sprays for our two poorly ventilated staff bathrooms. I have never been satisfied with any of them. But now I am thinking, what if I forget all the weird products alleging to smell of lavender and kiwis? What if I save the library a little money?

Why don't I just pop into those bathrooms every morning and simply start a small fire?

You might wonder: what if it sets off the smoke detector?

Right.

"Pay no attention to the smoke detectors everyone. I'm just deodorizing the bathrooms. 

Who wants a marshmallow?"

More adventures with: Time Traveler Man!

Welcome to yet another thrilling adventure of:

Time Traveler Man!

He's the superhero who can travel through up to 24 hours of time in any direction! And while gambling and speculation could make him the richest man in the world, he instead uses his powers to vanquish evil and uphold goodness, justice, and rightness.

As we join our hero today he is walking the streets of the great metropolis, looking for wrongs to right!

At that moment a citizen races up to Time Traveler Man. An emergency is clearly afoot. "Time Traveler Man, thank God I've found you!"

"Take a deep breath and tell me what I can do for you citizen." Time Traveler Man said calmly.

"It's the President!" Cried the citizen, still a little breathlessly. "A terrible, terrible man is the President and it's tearing the country apart. You've got to go back in time and stop it from happening!"

Time Traveler Man looked sadly at the citizen. "I'm sorry citizen, my powers are not unlimited. I can only travel back in time up to 24 hours. There is no way for me to go back in time nearly far enough to stop this particular disaster."

"But you were our last hope!" And as despair sometimes drives men to anger, so it was with this citizen. "What good are your powers if you can't fix this? You are no superhero sir, you are a gimmick, a pointless, useless..."

"Excuse me, citizen," Time Traveler Man quietly interrupted. "I do want to hear what you have to say here, but if you could just step over to the left, out of the way of the foot traffic."

Taken aback the citizen stepped aside with The Time Traveler Man. A bare moment after he did so a large and ugly plop of bird excrement fell from the sky right where he had been standing. The citizen looked at the grotesque greenish plop of poo on the ground precisely where he had been, then he looked questioningly at Time Traveler Man. 

Time Traveler Man nodded in acknowledgement.

"I withdraw all my criticisms and objections." Said the citizen humbly. "Keep up the good work, and, thank you Time Traveler Man."

"I do what I can." Replied Time Traveler Man. "Fight the good fight. And a C-note on Lamont's Swifty to Show in the third race at Saratoga would not go amiss." He winked, and then Time Traveler Man turned away.






The good deeds never end! Join us you never know when for more exciting adventures with... Time Traveler Man!

First shot fired in war on libraries

Because the public library is a beloved government institution, socialist, egalitarian, intellectual, democratic, and beautiful, I have long expected the Right to eventually come after it. I have worked in a public library for nearly a quarter of a century and the only great surprise of those years has been how long it took for them to fire their first shot.

But this week that first shot finally came. The alt-right magazine called Forbes (sorry, I meant to say "The mainstream magazine called Forbes"- such an easy mistake to make!) dug themselves up an obscure economics professor, in a graveyard, under a full moon, at midnight, handed him a crappy old gun they used to shoot at nuns in the eighties in Central America, and sent him off to fire the first salvo.

"Amazon should replace local libraries." He wrote, and, well, that about covered it, except maybe with the idea that Starbucks, with all their handy chairs and tables, would help too. Oh, there was a scattering of wildly unresearched paragraphs from the author, who was apparently completely unacquainted with modern libraries, but they were all as logically absurd as the premise. But none of that was the point. Coherent argument was not the point of this article. The statements were not supportable, it was not reasoned, nor was it even particularly intelligible. It wasn't even trying to convince anyone. This was merely a disposable lunatic sent to fire above a crowd to see what happened.

What happened was librarians were up in arms. They were outraged. They both passionately and calmly argued. They raged and refuted the absurd points of the article. The news story, such as it was, was more about the riled librarians' response than it was about the insignificant mosquito of an article.

But that, that response of the librarians, really was the point of the article. The conscious and unconscious strategy behind it was to rile, to encourage a mob to shout it down. It was an argument made to be irresistibly easy to refute. The point was to announce the argument in a way that produced as much noise as possible and then quietly back away. I'm pretty sure I read this morning that Forbes disappeared the article from its site.

And if it worked the way it's supposed to work it planted a little seed. Whereas before there was no question about the inevitability of the public library, no discussion about whether it should exist or not, now maybe there can be an argument. There can be sides. And perhaps most importantly of all there can be a middle ground. Donald Trump himself started as an absurd joke of a candidate that no meaningful Republican would take seriously. You might know how that alt-right triumph played out. The power is never in the arguments, it's in the attention.

Whether this absurd little article worked or not in the long run remains to be seen. But its first step was successful. Traditionally the next step will be a slightly more reasoned argument, one that runs along the lines of: "Hey, that article was off the mark, and I'm not out on that lunatic fringe, but maybe it has some points. Maybe there are businesses that provide some of what the libraries provide. Maybe we still need libraries, but not as much." This might get soundly argued down too. But that won't be the point either. The point will be merely to get the arguments out there. And when the next economic crisis happens, and local economies are stretched to the breaking point, politicians and their supporters will look to the libraries with a new eye. There will be arguments available then along a spectrum, however weak they are, that they can use to erode their libraries, save money, and, if necessary, close them down.

Maybe here is what we learned and can learn from this episode:

Librarians can get loud. That's good. But maybe don't waste it on defending our libraries from cranks. How about a little offense. How about:

Libraries are the last bulwark of Democracy! They need more money, more staff, more facilities and longer hours! Double all their budgets now if you want America as you know it to survive. This is not a partisan issue. It is Conservative and Liberal. It is Revolutionary and Regressive. Libraries are good for people who love America. If you love America you will support libraries.

We need more libraries, bigger libraries, and richer libraries, all night libraries, libraries on every block, fancy, marble, 200 story tall libraries with free lunches, quality leather furniture, vast millions of volumes, and Dale Chihuly Chandeliers. 

Or our enemies will win.




Now there, there's an argument I'm interested in.

Adventures of Time Traveler Man!

Welcome to another thrilling adventure of:

Time Traveler Man!

He's the superhero who can travel through up to 24 hours of time in any direction! And while gambling and speculation could make him the richest man in the world, he instead uses his powers to vanquish evil and uphold goodness, justice, and rightness.

As we join our hero today he is pointing a gun at the head of a vile and dangerous murderer, who, it so happens, hasn't murdered anyone yet.

"I'm innocent!" Cried John Lake. "You've got to believe me. I've never murdered anyone in my life!"

"I can't deny that," replied Time Traveler Man calmly, only slightly relaxing his carefully aimed gun. "But in about seven hours you will heinously stab poor Lou Watson to death. I'm here to make sure that doesn't happen."

"You can't kill me for something I haven't yet done! I swear to you, let me go and I won't go anywhere near Lou Watson ever again!"

"Ah, alas." Said Time Traveler Man sadly, leveling his pistol into a position of more immediate and deadly aim. "You've said that to me before."

"Wait!" Yelled John Lake. "I was a fool that time. You've got to give me one more chance. You've got to believe me! On my life I promise you this time I won't harm a hair on Lou's head."

"That, I am afraid, is word for word what you said to me the last time we met."

This fact staggered and disappointed John Lake. 

"Shoot" He uttered.





This has been another thrilling episode of Time Traveler Man. Tune in again sometime. You never know when because he's... Time Traveler Man, and who knows when he might appear.