Professional shelver

 

I had scheduled an hour of Non Fiction shelving in the late afternoon. There were two carts people had put in order and I grabbed one to take it upstairs. This was a mere 15 minutes into my shelving hour which I'm pretty sure was the fastest anyone had managed to get to shelving at my library all day.

I was making good time on my shelving when I came upon five volumes of The Diaries of Virginia Woolf. This was excellent news. Five volumes of anything is a super easy shelve! These were, in order:

Volume One

Volume Two

Volume Three

Volume Five, and

Volume Four.

Do you see the problem? If you're not a professional shelver you probably didn't spot it. It's very subtle.

Still no?

Volume Four should come before Volume Five. This is because Four is a lower number than Five.

If you're not a professional shelver this probably doesn't mean much to you. But for me, a professional shelver, one who reveres and lives by the craft, well, it was too much, all too much.

So I headed downstairs and curled up in a leather armchair by a large window looking out on the heavy rain. I brought with me a huge glass of sherry, and I opened a thick book of Wodehouse short stories. I settled in for four recuperative hours and slowly pet the cat.

If you must speak to me yet today, speak softly.

Bob Dylan's best friend

 

Bob Dylan and I were sampling orange cognacs. Well, drinking them.

"I like this Grand Garonne stuff better than the Cointreau Noir." Bob ventured.

I consulted some guide we'd printed out. "You're not supposed to." I said.

He gave me a look. The looks with that guy! I sipped and considered for myself. "I might even like it better than the Grand Marnier." I said.

He sipped it again and shrugged. Who cared really, it was good, smelled like oranges, seeped into your tongue, and intoxicated.

"I saw your book the other day." I said. I work at a library. I see a lot of books.

"Tarantula?" He asked, deadpan, referring to some poetry book he wrote like 60 years ago.

"I don't like spiders." I replied, refusing to be put off. "Chronicles, as if you don't know. You know, there's no "About the author" in it."

He shrugged.

"If they don't know who you are then what the hell are they reading the book for?" I proposed.

He shrugged.

"The book is the "About the author""? I suggested.

"I had nothing to do with it." Bob said, possibly lying, but who knows.

We tried another orange cognac in a grand, flat bottle, Grand Imperial maybe? Everything's very grand when it comes to orange cognacs. We both went back to the Grand Garonne, took a sip, and put on quizzical faces.

"I'm pretty much your best friend, aren't I?" I asked.

"No." He said.

I shrugged. Me shrugging too, we're so alike. "Then who is?"

He was glaring at me, but he wasn't saying anything.

"Aha!" I cried.

The right's run on Dr. Seuss!

As you may know the estate of Dr. Seuss decided to stop publishing, and profiting by, six Dr. Seuss books that contained racial stereotypes. This outraged segments of the vast right wing of American politics because of... reasons. Really big reasons you can read about... somewhere... else. And that would be the end of it if it didn't effect the public library I work at.

This, let's face it, fake, controversy has created a run on these Dr. Seuss titles at my library. Our one copy of If I Ran the Zoo has 21 people waiting in line to take a gander at its racist imagery. And to Think that I Saw it on Mulberry Street has six copies and 19 people waiting in line for them. Most of these people I'm sure just want to see what all the fuss is about (spoiler alert: it turns out there's a bit of racist stereotyping in the books, so... enjoy). But we at the library also do have our coterie of far right lunatics for whom we stock Sean Hannity books, and Atlas Shrugged, and Mein Kampf, and this group is also now curiously driving the sudden intense demand for Dr. Seuss books. 

It seems pretty sure these Republicans are doing it to "show support". That's their strange business I guess. I work at the library. All I can do is to try and help: 

"I'm sorry, all the Dr Seuss books with racist imagery have a long request line for them right now. Would you like the one about protecting trees instead? Or would you maybe like the one about how all people are the same and equal no matter the nature of their skin? Perhaps you would like this readily available one about listening to, believing in, and taking care of the helpless among us?"

No? Not interested?

"Are you sure? That last one has an elephant in it."

Still no?

Ah well, you can lead a horse to water...

The psychology of politics

I follow politics. I like to know how the world is working. I like to know how to dream for a better world. But sometimes I am overwhelmed by the sorrow and rage and have to set it aside for awhile. I am very knowledgeable about politics, but not particularly good in articulating it in common conversation. Sometimes I am pretty good at articulating it here. But here is its own planet and it has its own rules.

I almost never talk to Republicans I know are Republicans, but occasionally I imagine what I would say in an argument with a Republican or even with a conservative Democrat. Some of these things are pretty sharp, or smart, or cutting, or witty. But in real life I would never say them. Sometimes I would manage to say nothing, which isn't too bad. Sometimes I would say something too mean. Sometimes I would say something too nice.

If someone said to me they were a Republican there might only be one thing deep down for me to say:

Sometimes I hate myself too.

 

Jokie

 

 

 

 

 

I was talking to a bit of a narcissist about something in Uganda. He said "I'm not sure why, but I always seem to want to call it "Ugandia".

"I don't know." I replied. "You seem to put an extra "I" into everything." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The informational email vaccine analogy

 

 

 

At the library where I work sometimes things are done the wrong way. And sometimes when that happens someone, often a manager, will complain "But I sent an email about this!". 

Informational emails are great. They are important. I fully endorse their use.

But they are not 100 percent immediately effective. Rather they are like vaccines. Indeed, they are exactly like vaccines.

Like a vaccine any informational email will have an effectiveness rate depending on the subject and quality of the email. This will depend upon a combination of the clarity and sensibility of the issue of the email, how well written the email is, and how many people actually read their email. This can make one of these emails anywhere from 20% to 95% effective.

Like a vaccine most informational emails are safe. But they may have minor side effects like irritation or soreness around the site of the email (like, "I can't believe I'm getting another stupid email about this issue. I already know this!"). Sometimes there are also short term illnesses as the body builds up its resistance (like, "Ugh, we have to walk these all the way over there now! I'll just pile them up here for a bit first.").

In the end the ideal goal of any informational email is herd immunity, the state wherein the information of the email has been fully absorbed by the workplace. The path to this can be seen in the following scenario:

 "Hey. That doesn't go there."

"It doesn't?"

"There was an email."

"Oh. Was it that one I didn't read?"

"Yes."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Leopards ate our faces

 

 

 

 

 

 I had my cap on, and my mask. I took the elevator down. The doors opened up and a woman was standing there with her dog. Bundled up for the cool morning she had her hat and scarf wrapped 'round. The bottom half of her face was covered too by her mask. We may have mumbled muffled greetings, but what I thought was: 

Oh my god! We're all in Burkas now!

Little more than a year ago we all thought Burkas should be illegal and that the people who still wore them should be thrown in Burka camps!

We didn't think that?

I'm pretty sure there were tons of Republicans thinking that! And just about now when they look around I bet they're burning white hot with shame!

They aren't?

Well could someone tell them that they should be?

Word on the streets

 

While yesterday's post was full of pictures derived from graffiti pieces and from their layers of scribbling and peeling paint, it did not much partake of writing. And since graffiti's origins and traditions are in writing I have come here today to present to you the wild messages I found out in the world on this recent foray into the graffiti underworld.

Like all things one finds out at large in the World, some of them are fervently true, some hurt, some are false, some are unclear, and some will point the way.

What sucks is that we have to figure out which is which.

I ain't no freakin' monument to justice

 

About a year ago I got a camera and started taking pictures. If you have been following along here you have seen a few... hundred... million of these pictures. But the first pictures I took were of graffiti. They were mainly of graffiti on a train. I was very respectful. I said: look at these wonderful unheralded artists of the train tracks and underpasses! Like a devout documentarian my pictures detailed the complete works of these trainyard Kandinskys. I tried to get whole, clear, unblemished pictures of their vibrant pieces.

They were very nice and polite pictures. 

But a year of Pandemic will make a savage of a man. Or maybe it's a year of photography will make a savage of a man. Or maybe I just ain't no freakin' monument to justice!

So when after nearly a year I found myself, camera in hand, back at the tracks, with a new train but the same old bridge barricades, and new and old painting and scribbling to explore, I did not dutiful record it all like an Art Historian. 

No, I stole it all for myself, to do with as I will. 

I took it all, without regard...

And I made some pictures:

The good weather

 

 

 

 

It's been a challenging week. I've had a lot of really painful back problems all week. But because of a variety of other health issues around my house, and difficulties with the library involving the Pandemic, I had gone through too much of my sick time over the past half year to feel comfortable staying home from work.

So there I was, on a Wednesday in early March that was hinting broadly of Spring, answering the phones: 

"Good afternoon. Lilyvale Library, this is Feldenstein." I said brightly into the receiver.

"Wow, you sound like you're having a good day!" They said back.

"Oh." I replied. "That's just performative. I just play a happy, engaged, and helpful person in my role as a person working at the library."

They either didn't get it or buy it. "I'm doing pretty good today too."

"It is a fantastically beautiful day." I admitted.

Because, despite everything, it kind of is. 

The balance

 

My friend Richard asked me to read something his childhood friend wrote in the Star Tribune, our main city paper around here. Apparently this friend writes an occasional opinion piece for the paper. I was a little hard on it. Probably because I feel I should have a daily column in the newspaper to intoxicate the citizenry with, and I curse all who keep me from it. But it was a reasonably nice piece. It was about walking in the woods, paying respect, and how we who have found some dominion over the natural world, like with this vaccine for covid, should try to be worthy of it. 

Fair enough.

So I went for a walk in the snowed over swamp behind the library. And I thought: I don't believe there is a balance between good and evil. I believe that while solving the problems caused by our own malfeasance averts disaster, it does not make us special in the Universe. I believe that what makes us special in the universe is solving a problem where there is no problem, it is in the acts of committing good that is untethered to any evil.

Joe Biden undoing some of the damage of the previous president doesn't make him a good president. Fighting the battle of correcting our mistakes is a losing battle because one can only lose ground in failure, or conversely not lose ground in success, but one can never improve or advance. There is only attrition in it.

Many dots of hope have been reported from this new government like victories, but there aren't really victories there. There is no $15 minimum wage to report. There is no $2,000 stimulus. If a green new deal comes it will be 20 years late and a fraction of the size needed. We're still a country trying not to drown. Just because we're giving it a good go on trying not to drown, improved as it is, doesn't mean we're swimming.

It was a nice enough piece my friend's friend wrote. But I say that for all we have stolen from ourselves the vaccine is our right. 

If we want to be worthy of something we should aim higher. 

Readers

There is an old joke about the number of readers of this blog. It is that there is always one less reader than the last time I checked.

Ha.

There are 100 readers of this blog. Maybe even 200. But not right now.

That's my total of adding up all the dedicated readers who were ever once here as regulars and then slipped away into the other world. The other world is the vast anything that is not this blog and so definitionally beyond the purview of anything we could ever discuss.

By Internetland standards 200 is such a statistically small number as to be meaningless, like a lottery chance or the amount of an active ingredient in a homeopathic remedy, closer to zero than to something that will register or make a mark. But it's a number that nevertheless looks okay to me. It is just enough for me to remember everything here and everyone who has ever dropped by. We keep a catalog of everyone's footprint, their favorite drink, their cozy corner, their preferred subject, and when they mysteriously slip away we keep their spot, forever if need be, growing dusty and old in its undisturbed place.

I remember a passionate follower of the blog who once responded to some post, probably not so different than this one, many many years ago, to say he enjoyed my obscurity against all the other bloggers he followed who cashed in on their success and were ruined. 

Hey, I'm not ruined!

To that reader: your red leather chair you loved still awaits you. Have you been by? It looks covered in a deep layer of dust. Regardless, there it will sit, used or not.

Another time I wrote something that caused a reader to cry out "I am here. I read clerkmanifesto almost all the time!" And this reader enumerated the many things they liked about this blog, pointing only to the "Letters to the Publisher" posts as the ones they dreaded and did not enjoy. I thought of this reader during my very recent last two letters to publisher posts, eyeing their empty tea table in a favored spot in the sun, a cat sleeping under the chair, the tea long grown cold.

Maybe they're there, maybe they aren't. On February 6, 2015, at precisely 12:54 pm, under this post, a reader wrote: "You do have "fans". This fan chooses to remain anonymous yet loyal." I take them at their word then. There they are, right now, at their old study table deep in the great library, dark beer in hand, owl perched on the overwrought chandelier above them, reading along with us now, never forgotten. 

 

I would like to be a famous blogger!

You caught me. My defenses are down. I admit:

I would like to be a famous blogger.

One is not supposed to admit to a desire for fame. It is unseemly, a trait only for the child too young to know, or for the craven person who wants to be famous for fame's sake. 

Nearly every famous person wants to be famous, but they can't admit it, barely even to themselves. It's a terrible dance.

I asked my friend Bob Dylan "Do you want to be famous?"

"No." He replied calmly.

"Liar!" I yelled.

"Whoa. What's got into you?"

"I want to be a famous blogger!" I exclaimed.

"Like...?" He asked.

Oh shit. There aren't any.

So it's not my fault that I'm not!

"So it's not my fault that I'm not?" I asked Bob.

"I'm not sure you're taking the right message here."

"How about: The field is wide open?" I suggested.

"Keep working on it." He suggested gently.

I fell silent and thoughtful for a long time, which Bob really seemed to appreciate.

Bird identification

 

I was out for a late Winter walk and I came upon a bird standing in a stream.

"Is it a pigeon?" I wondered.

I didn't think it was a pigeon, but I did what I always do in such a situation. I took three billion pictures of the bird until it flew away. Somewhere along the way in that I identified the bird as a hawk... of...some...kind.

I'm super good at bird identification!

Here is what I have learned about bird identification for the, er, non professional birder:

There are always 10 or 15 birds around that are easy to identify, like where I live; bald eagle, robin, blue jay, turkey vulture, cardinal, turkey, etc.  Most people around here know what these birds are without needing to consult thick and detailed guides. 

For everything else you can just look your bird up anywhere, a book, the Internet, a phone app, whatever, and you quickly find:

 

A. Your bird does not exist.

or

B. Your bird can be one of two birds. 

So I don't even try to identify my birds. I take my best picture to my co-worker who is an avid birder. And I ask "What is it?".

Here is my bird:

He was super interested because he is an avid birder.

He commented on how nice a picture it is, which was very satisfying. He said incredulously "You took this picture?"

I contain multitudes.

He checked the computer.

"It could be one of two birds" he said. "Do you have any pictures of its tail feathers?

No. 

I focused on that red eye, which apparently offered us little on what sort of bird it is. 

Go figure.

The Cooper's Hawk is maybe a bit more common around here, but it was decided that mine was a Sharp-shinned Hawk. 

 

Cool. 

 

Sharp-shinned Hawk. I'd prefer the name "Red-eyed Hawk", but I guess that wouldn't always be accurate?

 

It turned out the pigeon thing was a the helpful clue. The Sharp-shinned Hawk is small for a hawk, thus the almost pigeon size. Not that my bird wouldn't take a stab at eating a small pigeon if he could get one, or so I learned. Also the pattern on the chest is just like the pattern of the Sharp-shinned Hawk in the Internet picture. Although, to be honest, it's a lot like the pattern of the Cooper's Hawk too.

Definitely a Sharp-shinned Hawk though. It was verified by a professional birder! And it's rather a top notch Sharp-shinned Hawk if you ask me, although what with my close personal relationship to this bird I may be a bit biased.