Dizzy Lizzy bites the dust

Elizabeth Hardwick, Critic, Novelist and Restless Woman of Letters, Dies at 91

It is extremely disrespectful, to say the least, to refer to Elizabeth Hardwick as a dizzy lizzy, but at least one year or more of Barnard students did call her that. I only ever called her Professor Hardwick, though she was not a full professor. She was an incredible teacher. Sometimes, she was in a tizzy. I can remember a classmate saying she had been drunk in class one day. However, I just thought she was angry, and disappointed in us. I have been called Dizzy Lizzy, but never by a friend, or as an homage to the Beatles.

I didn't know anything about her, really, except she was supposed to be good, if crazy. I guess I never really hung out with many English majors, or indulged in faculty gossip sessions. I mean, they were old people. I took two semesters of creative writing with Elizabeth Hardwick. Her assignments could be vague, and her assessments merciless. I wonder what happened to the young woman in the fall semester class. She wanted to be a journalist, and did not handle criticism well. Nor can I say it was always constructive criticism from Hardwick. Some people cried, including Hardwick. Now, I read the dates, and wonder how hard our classes were for her, in 1978. By that time, I knew who Robert Lowell was, knew when he died. But I did not know her connection to him. Senior year, I read The Armies of the Night, and did not care for it. (Strangely, I can't find a published version of the book in English on OCLC, so I gave in and linked to the Internet "resource", which doesn't seem like much of a resource to me. I must be doing something wrong, but it doesn't matter.)

In any case, I needed to note her passing. I was not a student she took under her wing or mentored. But she was essentially friendly to me, and that was pretty important to me. I am very happy to have the memory of her telling us of her love of the jazz clubs on 57th St. in the 1940s. She and her roommate went almost every night, and saw Billie Holiday every time they could. Hardwick talked about Holiday like she was a religious figure. At that time, I was going down to the punk clubs and bars in the village every chance I could, to see Patti Smith and the Ramones. I completely understood thinking music and musicians were more important than groceries. Writing and poetry, too.

Though I am not as quick or bright as Hardwick (believe me, she was sharp!), I think she did teach me a lot about writing. I am lazy, and take easy ways out. But Hardwick did teach me to edit and hone, even if it doesn't show much in this venue. She didn't completely discourage me, though she was very sad sometimes. I still seek some outlet for creativity, and she gave me some slight affirmation. Of course, my most recent outlets for creativity have been 1) learning to crochet and 2) setting three-quarters of our reference collection free, to circulate, multi-volume sets, local history, et al. Both things have been quite fulfilling.

An open love letter to Jennifer Crusie

Dear Jenny:

I can call you Jenny because a)I have know you since years B.D. (before my divorce, i.e., 1994). A beautiful young woman I once babysat told me about Getting Rid of Bradley (GRB) in a bar in downtown Watkins Glen, NY I think over Christmas break. My two beautiful grown nieces concurred: I HAD to read it.

Unbeknownst to the bevy of beauties, I had already begun to think of GRD (Getting Rid of Danny). Those of you unfamiliar with the Crusie canon, GRB is about a woman trying to break up with a boyfriend. So it was not that I wanted to kill my then husband; I was a bit worried he wanted to kill me. Turned out it would have been quicker, easier, cheaper, and tidier to have killed him. Or at least have put him in jail. But no, I was a nice woman, and I didn't want my darling, beautiful daughter to have a dad in jail. As it was, in the end, through his decisions, she didn't really have a dad.

So I was one of the many women who have turned to romance literature for fantasy and comfort. I started quite young (8?) on my grandmother's Emily Loring mass market paperbacks. But wait! I haven't gotten past a)!

b) I actually have met Jenny, and shared some laughs (see photo). I attended the Romance Writers of America librarians day in 2002, I think, in Washington DC. I always recommend that any librarian who can get to it should go. So I saw Jenny on a panel, then hung out with her at the cocktail party/literacy fundraiser. It's a treasured memory for me, though I doubt she remembers it. Up until recently, I could saw I owned every title published by Jennifer Crusie. She was one of the few authors I collected. The others are Thomas Pynchon, Sheri S. Tepper, and William Gibson--books I can reread, happily.

I was not at all pleased with Don't Look Down I didn't think I'd read another Crusie/Mayer collaboration. But once again, the cover caught my eye, and I needed something that wasn't a challenge. When I started it, the Boyfriend and I had a discussion of how Jenny was cheapening her brand (a favorite topic with us--think Harry & David corn chips or Old Navy outlet). He accused Jenny of just phoning it in. I did not think that was the case, but I worried that in reaching for a larger, different audience, she'd lost what made her fabulous. Well, the first couple of chapters were to slog, but then Agnes started cooking her sumptuous breakfasts and trying to write her food column. I started laughing. Then I marked pages. I tried to memorize some of Doyle's curses on Brenda. ("Call on the devil to save you, you limb of satan. God couldn't see you if he tried, you black-hearted whore.") I worried about the flamingos, the wedding dress, you name it.

Contrived and crazy. Anger management. The mafia goes Southern. More plots and dead bodies everywhere, plus of course, assassins. And guns. Chase scenes. Government-sanctioned killings--I didn't think we did that. It was a perfect companion for one of my bouts with insomnia. I did follow up with a good breakfast, though not one of Agnes level.

Jenny, forgive me for anything bad I have even considered. I'm so happy to have you in my life. I'll end with one more quote. "the Cranky Agnes Theory of Holiday Cooking can be summed up in two words: More Gravy."

I am not a stripper AND/OR the Annoyed Librarian

Library 2.0 owes it all to a stripper. | LISNews

I may be the last to jump on a bandwagon, but not the least...

Nonlibrarians (and I know you are out there), just ignore this post. And thanks for reading...

Paycheck to paycheck to pillar to post

Paycheck to Paycheck - Librarian

You know my favorite librarian joke? What's the difference between a librarian and a large pizza? A large pizza can feed a family of four. OK, it's an old joke, and one teen can eat a large pizza. But this graph from to Center on Housing Policy makes it clear that even two-librarian income families (working full time) can barely afford a house payment in most of the USA.

Note: "The annual income needed to qualify for a mortgage was calculated using the average prevailing interest rate, assumes a 10 percent downpayment (sic) and the use of private mortgage insurance, and includes principal, interest, taxes and insurance." I don't know about the entire country, but a less than 20% down payment here pretty much takes your offer off the table.

I know I often say that no one goes into librarianship for the money, fame, or glory. Seeking fame and glory probably would not be good character traits in a good front line librarian. (Another note: I am not saying anything at all here about library directors.) I am not grousing (this once) about the lack of year-end bonuses or over-time. I understand about most public librarians being salaried government employees, though I know many salaried government employees get both bonuses and over-time. But I digress.

I don't know much about the wage figures they use. The latest numbers online at the Bureau of Labor Statistics are:

Salaries of librarians vary according to the individual’s qualifications and the type, size, and location of the library. Librarians with primarily administrative duties often have greater earnings. Median annual earnings of librarians in May 2004 were $45,900. The middle 50 percent earned between $36,980 and $56,960. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $28,930, and the highest 10 percent earned more than $70,200. Median annual earnings in the industries employing the largest numbers of librarians in May 2004 were as follows:
Colleges, universities, and professional schools $47,830
Elementary and secondary schools 47,580
Local government 42,500
Other information services 40,000

The average annual salary for all librarians in the Federal Government in nonsupervisory, supervisory, and managerial positions was $74,630 in 2005.

About three in ten librarians are a member of a union or are covered under a union contract.

You may say, librarians should not live in the expensive metropolitan areas. Are the people there undeserving of public libraries? Oh, they should breed their own independently wealthy librarians! You may say that public librarians who want to live in expensive areas should just take a vow of poverty. I didn't know we took holy orders. I do know Episcopal priests get housing allowances synched to local markets. I know that some jurisdictions and programs give breaks to firefighters, police, and teachers. I have yet to hear of one for librarians.

I'm not poor. But I am experiencing some schadenfreude over the housing market. I don't want people to lose their homes due to foreclosure, but I would like to see housing prices "correct" to the point where I can afford something with two bedrooms. Of course, I think the Southern California market is going to go through the roof again in the wake of the fires. Good old supply and demand.

I feel terrible when I think of all the people I have encouraged to be public librarians. I still think it's a great job. I guess it's a great job if it's not the primary income in a household. I have little hope of this changing. ALA has rachetted up their PR and advocacy immensely in the last ten years. I think it has barely registered a ripple when it comes to impacting wages. I have to believe it is not because the work is not valued--the constant kudos are one of the great benefits.

Here I am, preaching to the choir, which won't change anything, either. But when I see these kinds of charts, I just have to mount my little hobbyhorse once again. In part, just to say "Look; I'm not crazy." But I have no answers.

On biblio, another note. I've started using GoodReads more for my lists of read and unread. No MARC records, but the other functionality is nice. Plus the friending thing is nice--I'm really enjoying MockTurtle's updates. I also put my mini-review of Ten Days in the Hills there. I think it will do for my shorter rants. Another experiment.

Not to worry

Just a short post to let you know we are fine here, in our little arm of San Diego next to the sea. The air is smoky, but so far my meds for asthma and bronchitis are doing the trick.

MPOW closed at 4:00 yesterday, Tuesday, and remained closed all day today. We hope to reopen 10-5 tomorrow. Meanwhile, Spot just gets cuter.

Thing 23--FINISHED!

I finished the InfoPeople 23 Things Challenge yesterday. You can see all my 23 Things here. I thought I'd copy the post here so you can see what I've been up to. The good news, besides being done, is that the challenge did reinvigorate my interest in the social web, and the biblioblogosphere in particular.

I'm happy that I've looked at some new and not-so-new technologies and ideas through the lens of "what can enhance my library?" I wasn't that interested in the "Library 2.0" bandwagon when it brushed past me in 2005-2006. Taking a good hard look at it now was useful. At least now I feel au courant with the buzz, as of last March. Looking more closely, I see the original 23 Things was "loosely based upon Stephen Abram's article, 43 Things I (or You) might want to do this year (Information Outlook - Feb 2006) and the website 43Things." I know nothing makes something dated faster than a blog post. Being au courant a year-ago-last-February makes me feel decidedly less au courant. But I don't care deeply, as I think my surfing and reading around were more current, and anything that let me sit back and spend quality time with Walt Crawford is good. (Of course, I saw the new C&I came out yesterday. I think I'll print it at work!)

I do intend to get back to biblioblathering! I have to note some recent likely candidates that have joined the great unfinished: A Distant Magic (Mary Jo, how could you?); The Lonely Patient, The Dog Whisperer (if he can whisper, I can skim); the two-volume history of the Kumeyaay (interest and intention but SO dry).

23. Summarize your thoughts about this program on your blog.

In checking to see that I had actually done all of the other 22 Things (one of the payments for going out of order), I had many chances to revisit what I liked, didn't like, etc. Plus what I didn't get to: if you want to know the only library use I found for twitter, email me.

The time constraints were difficult. I originally said I would set aside one to one and a half hours a week to work on this. Of course, there were some weeks when I just did not have a spare 5 minutes. There were also many weeks when I thought the Things were too interesting to leave alone and gladly spent my own free time to work on them. Not every student is going to want to do that. (Note: I have no idea how much time I should allot to training this week :D) My boyfriend did NOT approve.

I found my Learning Contract this week accidentally (it was in the Program Expenses file?). I had correctly identified time as my main obstacle, and told myself to find off-desk time, attention/focus, and access to the office PC. I have to report that these things did work a bit for me. My co-workers have been great about giving me time--now I know I can ask when I need it. My attention and focus have been pretty good. Once you have played with enough of these Things, you learn to stay on track. Or you make your boyfriend mad, don't meet deadlines, etc. ANYTHING that helps me with time management is GOOD. So that was an unexpected side benefit.

One of my thoughts is that I'd like to keep on mentoring others doing this challenge. I think a more active leader could really help. I hated hearing people say they were stuck on stuff or lost or whatever. Now that I'm done, I don't want to lose these skills. So I'm going to see if I can find a way to keep this going.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this course was I hoped it would be a way to get to know more people at MPOW. It was, but on a fairly limited basis. I think the decision to do our posting by email was a mistake. Subscribing to all the blogs with an aggregator really worked for me to see what others were doing--Outlook just doesn't have the same functionality for links, images, etc. Meanwhile, now I'm going to miss keeping up with some of 23 Thingers--I already have informal plans with a couple. The interactivity is my fave aspect of library 2.0. I would like to see more interactivity with my colleagues, as well as our customers!

When I read Walt Crawford's article (see Thing 15), I started to wonder 1)why did InfoPeople suggest an article so opposed to the "Library 2.0" bandwagon and 2)why were we all doing these Things?

I went back to the FAQ

There is a lot of buzz in the library press about Web 2.0 and its impact on libraries. The California State Library believes that Web 2.0, and the social software that it has given birth to, has tremendous transformational potential, perhaps second only to the introduction of the Internet itself. In recognition of the importance of Web 2.0, the State Library has made a special grant award to Infopeople for a series of FREE training events titled Moving Libraries Forward to Web 2.0.

I think staying fresh on new technology is important in our line of work. We need to know what our most "permaconnected" users want and need. In part because we need to serve them, but more because things trickle down from the early adopters. I didn't want to touch a computer when I was in college. I keep wishing I could find that boyfriend-with-the-incredibly-common-name who tried so hard to get me interested. YOU WERE RIGHT! I also thought iPods were kind of stupid less than three years ago. Now, you will take mine from my cold dead ears.

The fun aspect of 23 Things is important, too. Having fun helps us learn, and opens us up to innovations. Many of the 23 Things left me cold, and/or I never saw any compelling way to use them in libraries. But other people have. Great! Let's keep the candles burning.

So, let's make our online presence vital, let's reach out to our communities and start two-way discussions, let's look at new services, let's look at existing services in new and different ways. In the words of one of my top ten favorite biblioblogs, It's All Good.

Now I'm not going to touch a computer for at least ten minutes :D

you can run a red light

Well, now that I've been censured by both houses of Congress, I feel I have a bit of added weight to my opinions and general avoirdupois and/or gravitas. I mean who'd a thunk it? Way back last eon, when I was active in the anti-apartheid movement, I was told that the FBI had a file on me. I said, "If the worst thing you can say about me is that I oppose apartheid, well, all right!"

Meanwhile, for the last five years, I have been very vocal in my opposition to the war in Iraq. MoveOn was the only thing that gave me hope, though I think the Democratic leadership has crushed it. MoveOn also gave me wonderful opportunities to connect with other Americans, to go to congressional offices and speak to legislative staff. I wouldn't trade it. So, though I first thought I should keep my head down,
I am standing up and saying, hey, look who Congress censured--me!

When the big flap started two weeks ago, I couldn't believe it. Private citizens were being censured by the Senate for expressing their views in a newspaper ad? I may get my amendments confused some times, but I'm sure that's covered in the first ten. Those dearly held freedoms, right?

Nevermind. I am wrapping my brain around the idea that I am the enemy here. Me and my debit card and MoveOn. A middle-aged peacenik=an agent provocateur. Definitely. I don't usually discuss politics here, even if it does fall under blather. I try to keep my politics separate from my librarianship. But on the Venn diagram in my mind, there is the occasional overlap.

Reading Spook Country, I often thought about how the three narrators bring their own politics to the conspiracy that envelopes them. I related at different points to each of them, Hollis, a fading cult art rock star, Tito, a member of a large Cuban-Chinese syndicate, andMilgrim, an amphetamine addict and prisoner, perhaps.

Some of the constructs are elegant as only Gibson can be. Describing a rant on the Frankfurt School, "it had an appealing sci-fi campiness to it, staccato and exciting, with grainy monochrome Eurocommie star-spawn in tweed jackets and knit ties, breeding like Starbucks." Throw in "locative art" which combines GPS and VR to show River Phoenix's dead body in front of the Viper Lounge. And my favorite character name from Pattern Recognition makes a reappearance:Hubertus Bigend (possibly pronounced "bay-jend"). Gibson gives Bigend a Wikipedia entry, which Hollis looks up. Maybe Spook Country is the first novel
2.0. I read a few extracts on Gibson's blog, before I decided I didn't want to ruin the anticipation. Delayed gratification really worked for me this time.

Reading Spook Country was such a pleasure--and not just because I received a signed copy in the mail a week after it came out. (I am truly blessed in my friendships.) In some ways it reminded me of reading Thomas Pynchon before everyone and everything became post-modern. Spook Country is post modern in some senses. I saw that
the NY Times Book Review said that it is the first post post 9/11 novel. That's an interesting take. I'm sticking with some vast exploded Venn diagram/novel 2.0.

Thank you NYT, for the blue image of Gibson. Please don't go after me for copyright infringement. It's a thumbnail. For educational purposes, and didn't you make your site free? Not that way? Go ahead, censure me. I saw Across the Universe, which warped my brain. It was not to the sixties as Spook Country was to the Cold War (did I mention Cubans texting in Russian?), in my mind. Both works said more about the oh-ohs (my term for this decade we are in), though Gibson wielded the far mightier lens.

California has history?

Yes, we do. Long before the riots of 1969, there was a developer and a barbeque, and I'm just betting beer...I had to do a link:
Ocean Beach Historical Society

reminiscent of whom

Well, I've been on a bit of a carnival ride in my social software 23 things course. It does remind me of how I felt a few years ago when I discovered the biblioblogosphere. It was like I was no longer alone. There were other people whose ideas and thoughts were there for me to explore, AND I could talk to them!

Then I moved to California and became a branch librarian and my life changed. I could barely glance at LibrarianInBlack while on the reference desk, though I have staunchly kept her as one of my five Firefox home pages because she is a California public librarian! I should know what she says. But I often only get to read the subject and a snippet of a post. If there are links to follow, dollars to doughnuts a customer will come up with a question as soon as I start reading.

Therefore, I cringe to admit my Bloglines account has some 3,000 posts waiting for me to read. I keep trying to buck up, admit defeat, and delete some of the feeds, or at least clear the counters. But then I open it up and HAVE to read some Caveat Lector or Walt at Random or Tinfoil+Raccoon. I love Dorothea and Walt and Rochelle. And Meredith and the other Rochelle and way too many others to list. And this will NOT help me--I will just get seduced some more.

I keep wishing for better time management skills. However, the reality is that I spend much of my time as an extremely busy, extremely overpaid clerk. On top of customer needs, the fact is that I am not that speedy anymore. So that better time management desire translates into a need for more time.

Playing with web 2.0 stuff can lead to more time frittering, so I am trying for discipline. Unfortunately, for me, the techie toys are addictive. But I will be strong, and talk about a book.

It's the love of books that keeps me going. I finally got around to reading The Botany of Desire by Michael Pollan, after having recommended The Omnivore's Dilemma to everyone in shouting distance. It was fascinating, well-written, and fascinating. Science and history interwoven with philosophy and agriculture. One reader on LibraryThing commented, "I will never look at a potato the same way again". I feel the same way. But I won't think any plant the same way again. I look out at the hybrid tea roses off our balconies. I am sure they are shaping my view of the world. My only action is to occasionally deadhead them; my landlady and the gardener take care of the majority of their needs. But they may be training us in some way.

Pollan closely examines four plants and their interactions with humans: apples, tulips, marijuana and potatoes. Each section has revelations, none that I expected. Pollan is a gardener. I think he manages to get across the full spectrum of why we need plants in so many ways, and they need us. He probably makes the most cogent case I have heard for biodiversity, without starting with that intent or ever mounting a soapbox. I often read nonfiction to fall asleep, but I warn you, I found The Botany of Desire riveting. Thought provoking. Funny. Lyrical. Now there's a bunch of words that wouldn't make good tags!

(I also keep swearing to myself that I will clean up the tags on these the posts. Do you see how I get confused between de.licio.us conventions and Blogger? Plus these posts don't have subjects...didn't they warn us against indexing ourselves in that ASIS course I took??? OK, I fail some of web 2.0.)

(Some day, I'll stop using random lyrics or overheard comments and such as post titles. They are so utterly useless as jumping off or access points. Be grateful I don't list the songs that get stuck in my head.)

telling ideas

While weeding at MPOW, I ran across a bunch of Ursula K. LeGuin titles that had been identified as not circulating well. I kept and reshelved the obvious classics. In weeding, there's always those niggling worries--am I weeding the right things? Am I keeping things just because I like them? Our weeding has been a bit draconian lately. We got additional fiction last year due to some accounting weirdness. Our system has been moving to centralized ordering. Unlike many of our librarians, I am greatly in favor, because any time I can get away from ordering lists is good. Even though the ordering is all done online (and no, I do not miss typing orders or typed order lists at all!), it is still very time-consuming. I do feel I am the best person to select adult materials for my agency, however, I am also thinking that perhaps I can train one of the technicians on my staff to assist. I would particularly like help on the CD and DVD ordering. I am well aware that I am not knowledgeable regarding selection in those areas.

OK, back to Ursula. I retained the obvious classics, which I can easily defend. But there were a lot of titles with which I was unfamiliar, and some of them had very low circulation. (For those not in the know, the number of times a book has circulated in the last two years is considered a key predictor for how many times it will circulate in the future.) The titles I was considering were barely alive. I withdrew a bunch. Don't worry, there are still copies left in our system. Failing that, there's interlibrary loan, which I LOVE at MPOW. It's very quick and now that we are part of the San Diego Circuit, customers can order from local universities themselves, and the books come in our regular daily delivery. It has opened up a stupendous variety of materials. The academic libraries like us for our popular fiction; we like them for the depth of collections they add. I digress.

I couldn't help myself. I helped myself to one of the titles as I marked it withdrawn. I figured I would read it at my leisure--no due date on that baby! So into my to-be-read pile (the one at work, not the one at home) it went, The Telling.

The Telling is a recent entry in the Hainish cycle, which uses scifi to explore anthropological questions. Sutty is an observer from the Ekumen on Aka, a seemingly monoculture planet that is putting all its efforts into technological advances, a "march to the stars." Sutty finds the culture deadening and depressing on every level--the food, the music, the architecture, the lack of connection between people. She has recently experienced a similar monolithic state on Earth, during a period of political unrest.

The Akan government, The Corporation, has outlawed all old customs and beliefs. Sutty studied the Akan language and literature that the Ekumen had before her voyage, but it is all gone, as far as she can tell. Then her supervisor gets permission to send Sutty to a remote area. Sutty finds that the old Akan culture is still thriving in the mountains, with an underground network practicing the old, unique religion, the Telling. Sutty joins in a trek to the high mountains, where what is left of the Akan libraries is hidden. Sutty discovers an Ekumen error, and finds hope for a reconciliation of the warring ideologies that have ruined so many lives, including her own.

The Telling was an engrossing read. I feel bad for weeding it. It's long past the point where I could go back and save the other boohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifks I weeded and put them back on the shelf. They were boxed up and put on the truck to headquarters weeks ago. I am not at all clear on where they go from there. It is part of librarianship, deciding what to keep, and what to let go. There is no mythical place where we can keep it all. The reason for this blog is that I can't even keep half of what I read in my brain. And this only goes back a few years. And is transitory by nature. If I stop posting, Google/Blogger will get rid of it at some point, I believe. I should look at the Terms of Service sometime! Or if I decide to delete the blog myself, poof!

My daughter aka The Offspring has had a livejournal account for six years or so, I believe. I have really enjoyed and learned from the glimpses it has given me into her life. She has had some issues with lj, in particular over the pro-anorexia community. Yes, there are people in favor of anorexia, claiming it is just a lifestyle choice. Though lj has gone after some communities for not abiding by the terms of service, they are turning a blind eye to pro-anorexia. Here's a snippet about it:

The communities have also gained a response among "anti-pro-ana" LiveJournal users who have started communities such as Ed_ucate, a play on the common shorthand for eating disorder, ED. The purpose of these communities is to inform pro-anas about eating disordered criteria and the health effects of disordered behaviors so that they can make informed decisions and not spread misinformation. They also encourage accurate self-diagnosis using the DSM-IV-TR criteria. One of the effects of this response has been an increase in awareness about ED-NOS because many pro-anas are told that they do not meet the criteria for anorexia. Some communities also encourage members of pro-ana to go into recovery. However on August 7, 2007, at least two people speaking in an official capacity for LiveJournal declared that pro-ana communities on the site "do far more good than harm" and that "it's not illegal to aspire to be thin" in response to a user complaint that pro-ana communities violated LiveJournal's Terms of Service[5].

Pro-anorexia/ED has become somewhat of an underground crash diet amongst many teenage women who have not been able to properly stick to diets that have been healthy, or do not like the results they have had, thus they seem to falsely believe that emulating eating disordered behaviors will promote more weight loss, when really they are damaging their metabolic system and endangering their health. This is usually one of the common causes of upset amongst "anti-pro-ana" as, usually, this group of individuals have been diagnosed with the illness medically, and are long term sufferers of the illness. Thus when viewing the pro-anorexia movement, those with anorexia nervosa feel it is a belittlement of a fatal condition; hence the usually angry response that is produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pro-ana

When the Offspring told me she was planning to leave lj in response, I was kind of horrified. All those years of entries, pouf? I had to examine why I was horrified. It wasn't my journal that might be gone. She still has her site, with lots of artwork and her comic. But just at a glance, there are four of her lj posts in my Bloglines that I have marked as unread to preserve easy access. Most are of pix I really liked, but I see one is the precis of her favorite web comics that I never could get through. I guess I will now admit that I am never going to make it, since the post is from 2005. I've also discovered the oldest post I can find is 2003. So I can handle it if she wants to leave lj over their hypocrisy. I guess this is part of the 2.0 world. It's impermanent. It can go anywhere you go, or it can disappear.

I scanned all of the photos in my grandmother's album a few years ago, and placed them in an album on my family website. Big bro changed service providers, and the album went pouf. I have all the scans in two places. I don't know if I'll ever get around to reloading them though, unless they are somewhere where I have more control. Much as I love all the Web2.0 stuff I'm discovering in the class I am taking, I have to acknowledge that it is ephemeral. Links and bookmarks have to be updated religiously, or they die.

I want to go back and read more of Ursula and the Hainish cycle. It doesn't matter that much what library has it. The cooperation among libraries matters.

Recently spotted

spot
Originally uploaded by lislemck

Meet my newest family member, Spot. We adopted Spot today. He is a two-year old Chihuahua/rat terrier mix, and weighs ten pounds. He's pretty calm, though he does like to play!

Good and bad

Contrary to some opinions, I haven't completely stopped blogging here. I keep working and nibbling here and there. In the meantime, I've started two new blogs. One is about my medical stuff. It is partly to keep track of stuff, and partly as a forum for when I need a one-person pity party.

I was concerned that some of that stuff was slopping over here. Even though I know that I am the bitch goddess of this here universe, I still want to compartmentalize the bad stuff. I know yin-yang one mind one body and all of that. But I still have a desire to have parts of my life that don't always answer or talk back to "the disease." I'm really writing there for myself. It's not unmitigated bad stuff, but it's more bad than good right now. The link was up in my profile for a little while, but I took it down. If you really want to follow it, email me.

I'm doing the InfoPeople's 23 Things at work, so now I have another blog for that, 23 Lakeside Things. One of my goals for the course is to get myself more active online. Let's hope it plays out a bit here.

So for good, we have A handbook to luck by Cristina García. It is good. I had a customer call on the phone and ask if we had a copy. When I said we did and started to offer to put it on the hold shelf for her, she asked how long we were open. I said about an hour and a half more that day, and she said "I'll be right there." I did a quick check to see if it was a new Oprah book I had missed. Nope.

The customer, a mid-twenties Latina, came in. I asked her why she was in such a rush, thinking it was for a class. She told me she'd been reading a copy from our neighboring branch. She hadn't quite finished it and wanted to renew, but they told her that another customer had reserved it. So she called to see if we had it. She said she would return it as soon as she finished. I told her no worries, it's yours for 21 days. After she left, I put a reserve on it for myself. I figured I had to read any book good enough to have a twenty-something rushing from library to library.

NPR synopsis: The journey of life is made up of a series of choices. But how much do the elements of chance and luck have to play when making those life choices?

Author Cristina Garcia explores these ideas in her latest novel, A Handbook to Luck. In it, three central characters — one from Cuba, a second from El Salvador and another from Iran — all have their lives intersect in America as each struggles to find their place in the world.

Good luck and bad luck and making your own luck. Luck runs through the intertwining stories of Enrique, Leila, and Marta. Unfortunately, I finished reading it several weeks ago. I somehow didn't have time to blog it before we went to Maine for my nephew's wedding (hence the photo with The Offspring in kimono) and now it is fuzzy indeed in my mind. Witness the first-ever non-Bcubed synopsis on the blog. Usually, everything here is original, or as original as received knowledge can be. But other than an admiration for the well-wrought triptych of the main characters, and a telling reanimation of the late 1970s and early 1980s, much of it is gone now. But I think I will keep the image of Marta's brother, Evaristo. He ran away from their abusive stepfather at some early age--less than ten. He took up residence in a large tree near a plaza in San Salvador, where he watched all kinds of events. In time, he witnessed the police brutalizing protesters, and eventually murdering citizens during the Salvadoran Civil War.

I had the good luck that The Boyfriend pre-ordered the new Matt Ruff, Bad monkeys . I can't quite figure out why the MARC record calls this a hardcover. It's more like a softcover. But not really a paperback--somewhere in between. The odd size, 24x13 cm ( 9.5x5.25 inches), makes it feel almost like holding a manga, say a Tokyo Pop title. It is not a graphic novel, but it could be, like an America super-hero thing. It's like a carnival ride set with ethics and morals tests.

The hero, Jane Charlotte, is being held in the psychiatric ward of a prison. She has been arrested for a murder, which she readily admits to performing. Jane Charlotte reveals in the course of interviews with the prison psychiatrist that she is a member of a secret crime-fighting organization. The organization has a bureaucracy, with hilarious departments: Catering, Malfeasance, Panopticon, Black Helicopters, Scary Clowns. Jane is part of "The Department for the Final Disposition of Irredeemable Persons," or, colloquially, the Bad Monkeys. Bad Monkeys executes bad guys, using special weaponry that causes death by natural causes, stroke or heart attack, depending on the setting.

I read Bad monkeys on one of the flights to Maine. It was a wonderful airplane read--jokes, suspense, action. The only problem was I'd had about four hours of sleep the night before, so I kept nodding off. However, the gentleman on the window seat (I was on the aisle), had recourse to the restroom facilities four times during a five-hour flight. So, every time he woke me, I'd read a bit more of Bad monkeys, then doze off; rinse and repeat. So I started to get confused long before the ax-wielding Scary Clowns showed up. But looking over the book again, I have to doubt I would be any less confused reading it uninterrupted while fully rested. The turn-arounds, self deceptions, and fake-outs are so layered, that the reader is supposed to get lost. What a way to get lost. Escapism rarely offers such intellectual calisthenics.

The motto of Jane's organization is "Omnes mundum facimus"--we all make the world. Matt Ruff does such a great job of making his worlds (if you haven't read Set This House In Order, let me recommend it again). The joy is that reading his worlds informs how we live in this world. I already can't wait to read his next book! But first, when will I get the new Gibson (I'm number three on the reserve list)?

I just went and watched a spectacular sunset over the ocean in this world. Life is good.

Make that two old men and the sea and the pearl

SHELF CHECK #53 by poesygalore - ToonDoo - The Cartoon Strip Creator - Create, Publish, Share, Discuss!

No--we are not alone!

Doggone it

There was no way I could resist the title Walking in Circles before Lying Down I couldn't resist the cover art, either. I'd never heard of Merrill Markoe before--I never fail to amaze the Boyfriend with my obtuseness! Apparently, she is "a legendary comedy writer" (O: The Oprah Magazine) In any case, this was a fairly amusing chick lit romp. I wish it had concentrated more on Chuck, the main dog. Instead, the story is mainly about Chuck's owner, Dawn.

Dawn is from an jaw-droppingly dysfunctional family, and has two divorces to her credit. I still find it amazing how negatively authors and their characters tend to view divorce--it is still the best thing I ever did. Moving right along, Dawn gets dropped by her current beau, Paxton. She turns to Chuck for comfort, and Chuck starts talking to her. Dawn can also hear the dogs at the doggie day care where she works, which leads to a variety of complications. Dawn's problems and various plot thickeners made me want to walk in a few circles and go to sleep. It's all a little too over the top--Dawn's sister is a life coach whose recent amours include two men who have murdered their wives. But Chuck's voice and views kept me going. All in all, an ok read, if not riotous. I am contemplating reading another book by Markoe, The Psycho Ex Game. Do I get something if I win? Oh right, the very happy divorce!

Spell bound

Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen certainly has its charms (sorry :*) The Waverlys have always been an unusual family, with peculiar gifts and a peculiar garden. Though they have lived in Bascomb, North Carolina for generations, they are outsiders.

Claire Waverly has stayed at home, quietly running a successful catering business. Her recipes incorporate flowers, and have some strange properties. Their mother abandoned Claire and her sister Sydney to the care of their grandmother. Sydney ran off when she turned eighteen, and Grandmother has died, so Claire is alone in the old family home.

A new neighbor has moved in, and ignores Claire's protective borders. He is an attractive if abstracted artist, and quickly becomes fascinated with Claire. Then Sidney returns home with her young daughter, Bay. Sidney has run away from her abusive husband, but she won't tell Claire where she's been, or anything else. Both sisters need to confront the past and the future, and the Waverly magic. The romantic subplots are a bit forced. Cousin Evanelle Waverly and her gift for giving the exactly correct gift at the time it will be needed makes up for it. It's a sweet, quaint, comfortable if not quite magical read. This was another Advance Reading Copy--thank you Random House.

The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick held me spellbound completely. One of my customers recommended it to me, and I trusted her without even asking questions. It is wonderful.

I was rather surprised the book weighed in at 534 pages, or roughly 2.5 lbs. On the long side for juvenile fiction, if not quite Harry Potter (is the new book classified teen again?). On page 511, Hugo says he will create an automaton that can "produce one hundred and fifty-eight different pictures, and can write...an entire book, twenty-six thousand one hundred fifty-nine words. These words." I'm not sure if that is a precise inventory of The Invention of Hugo Cabret. It is mainly images--black and white--Hugo, clocks, clockworks, the station, the people he meets. It is cinematic in feel, which is quite fitting, though I don't want to give anything away... There are actual archival images interspersed with the fine, crosshatched, atmospheric closeups and pans.

The orphaned Hugo has been living with his uncle, who is the clock-keeper of a large Paris train station in the 1920s. However, the uncle has disappeared. Hugo has continued to tend the clocks, stealing food from the businesses in the station, since he doesn't know how to cash his uncle's paychecks, which continue to arrive. Hugo is fascinated by some mysterious drawings his father made in a notebook. The drawings show an elaborate machine, an automaton, like an early robot. Hugo believes if he can repair the broken automaton, it will communicate with his father. Hugo is caught stealing from a toyshop in the station. He makes friends with Isabelle, the goddaughter of the man who owns the toyshop, and they set out to solve the mystery of the notebook and the automaton. Its a wonderful escape to a Paris of magic and wonder.

Bursting at the seams

The vacation is over. We are back in beautiful San Diego, even if my body still thinks we're on eastern time. I've been waking up, wide awake, promptly at 4:00 a.m. almost every night. The kind of wide awake that definitely does not roll over and play sleep. So, I've been going to bed earlier and and earlier. And reading.

Now, before we left for ALA, I was sick, so I read. I also had to finish The Yiddish Policemen's Union --it was a compelling read plus it had 36 customer holds (reserves in SD lingo) so no way could I keep it out until we got back. Also, no way am I breaking my personal rule about never taking library books out of state. It always ends badly. So, three days and I finished it. Then there was a long airplane ride. Then I was sick some more. Then there was advance reading copies. Then there was fatigue. I mean exhaustion. Then another long plane ride...So this post, nu?

OK, I like to read Michael Chabon's work. I loved Wonder Boys, and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay was my best read of 2004. I really like Yiddish, too. So I was happy to spend time with the yids of Sitka. Apparently, Alaska is yet something else I know very little about. Five pages or so into the novel, I asked the Boyfriend, "Does Alaska have a large Jewish population?" He said something like "it's a fantastic construct." No duh, I said, and kept reading. And read and read about a film noir Aleyska. YPU is a murder mystery, with chess, music, kugel, slivovits, Orthodox gangsters, a Tlingit-Jewish sidekick, grey skies, heroin, a dead baby, a dead sister, a dead marriage--it's a wealth of an imagined world, with plenty of puns, jokes, satire, politics. A repeated refrain is "It's a strange time to be a Jew." A strange time and a strange place to imagine, to so fully realize. The hero says, "My homeland is my hat." Chabon's brainchild is a homeland, and all the alternatives, the negatives, the positives, rolled into an extravaganza.

Next up, The Control of Nature by John McPhee. My big bro recommended it. I have mixed feelings about McPhee. I like his writing. I think about going back and rereading Oranges. Unfortunately, like much nonfiction, McPhee puts me to sleep. The themes and stories of The Control of Nature really did interest me. The relationship of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers, the cooling of the lava flows of the Eldfell volcano on Heimaey, Iceland, and the debris flows of the San Gabriel mountains. All interesting, even if McPhee did not set out to talk about geology. Of course, the 20/20 hindsight on the Mississippi was painful. Our puny attempts to control nature are painful. And really, it was good to have something guaranteed to put me to sleep. I'll have to look for some more nonfiction. Oh, I can start working on that Kumeyaay history! Yeah.

Moving right along, there were three ARCs that I started that I didn't finish. One's title was Marriage. I gave up before the main characters got married. Another had a suicide theme, and another was about someone with breast cancer. I was looking to escape, but not in those directions. Finally, I started Away by Amy Bloom. Away took me away, to Eastern Europe in the 1920s, and then the Lower East Side (Yiddish theater!), and then Alaska. It was an interesting counterpoint to the Chabon. Lillian has lost her entire family, mother, father, husband, and child, in a nightmare of violence against Jews in her village. She gets to New York, and finds her way into a job as a seamstress in the Yiddish theater. In no time, she becomes the mistress of the young prince of the theater, who uses Lillian to hide his inclinations elsewhere, and his father, who truly loves her. She learns English and is beginning to see a point to her life, when a cousin arrives from back home, and announces that Lillian's daughter Sophie is alive and living in Siberia with neighbors who stole her.

Lillian must leave to find Sophie, but neither of her lovers will help her. A friend helps her to stow away on a cross country train. She gets to Alaska, where she meets an ever-more-fantastic cast of characters: Gumdrop, an African-American whore, Chinky Chang, a Chinese grifter, Constable Arnold Gilpin, and the recluses of the Telegraph Trail. At some point, the suspension of disbelief was complete, and I would follow Lillian in her maternal quest anywhere.

I have to post this! I have read yet more...

Going from pillar to post

My posts for the LITAblog are up here. The posting was much more smooth this year. Either WordPress has improved immensely in ease of use, or my skills are much better. I'm leaning towards the former.

Today, Boyfriend and I, along with Mom and Sis, visited Mount Vernon. I managed not to refer to it as Mount Vermin in public. I believe I last visited it at age 8, in the company of elderly cousins. Since then, they (the Ladies of Mount Vernon, as the owners are known) have created an adjacent complex with a very extensive museum, interpretive center, restaurants and gift shop. The gift shop was what I remembered most from my previous visit. I guess the importance of good museum shops has been explored by some dissertation by now. I know that many of the conversations I have been in about museums have been mainly about who has the best gift shops.

We did not dabble to long at the Mount Vernon gift shop. I did look for a Washington monument night light, to no avail. Maybe tomorrow. I still hope to get in a trip to the Library of Congress, whose gift shop is celebrated far and wide!

Celebrating good people, things

On Saturday, we had our big, big mural celebration event. It was wonderful, if I say so myself. We had a really good classical guitar player, Cruz Rodriguez, we had platters of fruit and cookies, punch, balloons, and a mural activity sheet for the kids. Best of all, we had lots of kids, a few teens, lots of parents and grandparents. We had lots of nonchild-affiliated adults, seniors. We had members of our Friends of the Library board. We had "our" artist, Mona Mills, ebullient as only Mona ebullients. We had Joan Embry, a local resident. We had indigenous people, Latinos, mixed race folk. We had everybody who was anybody. We had lots of fun.

The picture above is a celebration of dogs. The big black dog is Cimi. Cimi recently retired as a therapy dog. For the last few years, young people had been able to come into our library and read to Cimi, who provided a wonderful, nonjudgmental set of ears. Wen we were first discussing what to put on the mural, we thought it would be nice to include Cimi's contribution to the branch. Then Mona said, we need more dogs! There is a constant parade of people walking their dogs past our windows on their way around our lake. So Mona asked the staff to bring in pictures of our dogs. I think we had seven dogs added to the mural. One was my beloved Ladybug, who died while Mona was painting the mural. So that's her, up on the right, with the incredibly omnidirectional ears, and her purple heart dog tag. I usually go to visit her every couple of days, and ask her how immortality is.

Oh, I don't know if you could see them on the other pictures, but you can definitely see them in this shot. There are book titles woven into the mural all over. Added wonderfulness. Some from us staffers, some suggestions from our readers. We did a book display of some of the books along the window sill for the event--of course, some checked out immediately! All to the good.



Speaking of immortality, today's biblio is Farewell Summer by Ray Bradbury. I have to admit up front that I never read the prequel Dandelion Wine. When I did my intense scifi reading internship (age 12-16?), I read Fahrenheit 451, of course, and loved it. But then I read some other Bradbury title and didn't like it, so I didn't read any more. Same thing happened with Isaac Asimov, so my depth of knowledge there is quite shallow. At least I am deep on William Gibson and Sheri S. Tepper! (New Gibson coming in August! I read some on his blog as it came along--looks good!).

OK, I read Farewell Summer a while ago, but it in a pile to blog about, then went south mentally for a bit. Then it came up as overdue in my library account, and I said, "I still have that?" Came home, found it, said, "I didn't blog this!" So I am putting it in here because I did read it. I enjoyed it. I thought it did try to be very deep a little too much at the end, but who better? I liked the Civil War imagery. I liked the getting into the minds of the young people and the old people. I really liked that the hero/leader of the kids, Doug, doesn't usually have the big ideas for his group, but he still leads. Scifi bildungsromans will always be my favorite flavor. Hey, anyone know why it is bildungsromans (plural?) in the WorldCat tracings? Is it something from the German? It seems quite odd to me, but using fiction subject tracings as a learning tool does endlessly intrigue me.

Hey! I volunteered to blog for Lita again at ALA Annual. I will not say bad things about techies, not even inadvertently. I should type that about 25 times, but you know I'd use copy & paste...I will do another post with my ALA plans soon!

I also volunteered to be do something undefined regarding Library 2.0 for MPOW. Yeah! More to come.

Written on the wet part of the sand, at high tide, near the tide line

I am making some tentative arrangements for ALA Annual, this year in Washington, DC. I am thrilled to be attending once again on the beneficence of the County of San Diego. Here's the idea-rich conference sessions I am eyeing so far:

OCLC Symposium--Is the Library Open? Fri., 1:30-4:30

RUSA MARS Hot Topics Libraries2Go: Library Services for Handhelds Sat., 10:30-12

RUSA MARS Electronic Databases--Training That Works Sat., 1:30-3:30

Or

CLENERT Learning When There's No Time to Learn Sat. 1:30-3:30

LITA The Google Five Libraries Sat. 4-6

LITA Legal Challenges to Digitization Projects--Adopting Orphan Works Sun 10:30-12

LITA Top Technology Trends Sun. 1:30-3 (I'll let other bloggers cover tho'--they'll be there in force)

OCLC Blog Salon Sun. 5:45-8 The best ever party at the convention--2005 in Chicago!

OCLC Catalog of Art Museum Images Online Mon. 10:30-12:00

I've mislaid the rest of my notes for Mon. and Tues. Monday a.m., I'll be working in the ooth recruiting for SDCL. Singing for my supper, as it were.

In between, there will be time in the exhibits, and to hang out with new and old friends. ALA is going to lend me a scooter this year--think of the power! A swag trolley on steroids. Beep beep!...Lisle

Alternatives to sleep

Another/alternative attempt/s at normalcy

The Offspring is here! Six nights on her way from Penns Woods to Tokio. I am mostly excited with/for her, though she is as always pragmatic. She asked me recently why everything is always a crisis with me. I claimed it is not always everything, but it is how I am wired.

Monster (pet name after her age 2 Gojira obsession) and the Boyfriend both have made comments lately regarding my perpetual status re: survival. Not that I watch TV game shows. They are both phlegmatic by nature. Not me. You should see my medical records--neuro alone is over 4 inches thick. I actually fee a little sorry for the poor little residents (who I loathe should they come near). I am six years or so past being an interesting case...deepest apologies to the planet. However, deadline mode has always worked for me.

The Boyfriend borrowed Alternatives to Sex: A Novel a few months ago from his library. He read just the beginning. It did not hold his attention. I stopped by to return something, and thought it was something I had meant to read. You know, it looked familiar. So I borrowed it for myself.

The conceit is that the main character, William, is trying to resist his addiction to casual sex via the internet. William is a realtor, but even in the boom market one-year after September 11, 2001, he is not doing so well. So William tries to throw himself into his work. I completely understand the parallels between sex and real estate. Of course, I did live and work on the isle of Manhattan for nineteen years.

Have you ever played Sunday NY Times house? That's when you read all the real estate classifieds in the Sunday Times magazine section, pick your favorite, and then defend your choice to/with friends. Over drinks on Sunday night, if possible. I don't even know if the super duper deluxe real ESTATE listings are still in the magazine section. If so, how are they weathering the real estate disaster that even the endless boosterism of the San Diego Union-Tribune sees now. OK, I am going to stop being mean. I actually did read the book in its entirety. The fact that I can't focus on much at a time these days is not the book's fault.

I wish I could make a better report. I am finishing up my most recent spa medication, and reading a coupla-three things that are looking good. Will keep posting--promise!

PS: Blogger's spell check does not recognize "internet" ?!?#%^

Yes Virgina, there is a sanity claus

It has been expressed to me many (many many) times over the years that I am more than a touch odd. I tend to shrug it off as the ravings of so-called sane people. I love beauty, logic, order, serenity--I really do. Unfortunately, every once in a while, everything I know and hold dear gets wacky. I am one of those heretical ex-cataloguers with insurmountable control issues. I have gone head to head about series statements in the past. Fortunately, I went over to the bright side (public service), before I became an old, bitter, pessimistic person. No, I am a happy camper. MPOW rocks.

A little over a week ago, I had an adverse reaction to a medication. Worst of all, it was a timed release med. Hello insomnia, followed by sleep deprivation. What was most wiggy maybe was that I was completely sane throughout. Knew the date, the president, got the EMS folk discussing impeachment.

Definitely getting better. Started bibliotherapy. I have to right now do two quick book mentions. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation was an ok read. I thought at first it was time-travel romance. What happened to time travel romance??? Are there any new titles/authors?

Anyway, this is actually set in England now, and England and France during the
age of Napoleon.

Dude! Did you see the subject tracing Women graduate students -- Fiction. ? Some one was lazy and put in that, but not France, espionage, Napoleon ( he is an actual character). I don't see me dashing out to get the rest of the series, but The Secret History made me think about women and history in a useful way

OK, time to run, but more to come, I promise.


Whee, up on the Ferris wheel. Woo, I can do order lists upside down.

Easter (not related to Patti Smith)

I thought this was the best possible Easter greeting for boomers. My dear friend Mary sent it to me. (Thank you, Mary!) It is from her family. I ask you not to further its distribution. I have not put it on flickr--and if I find it there, I will hunt you down. I get to use my boomers tag again! What will be the date when boomer=geezer? Never mind. Happy Easter. I hope you are all prepared for the ceremonial roasting of the peeps! Love, E

Are You Out There?

I was innocently walking through the children's room. Actually, I was watching our artist paint our mural, which is turning out incredible (pictures soon, I think), and suddenly I spotted a book by Dar Williams on one of our new slat-wall displays.

Dar Williams? Are there two humans named that? Quick look at author bio confirms it is the singer-songwriter. I try to shed my fangirl nature, but I actually think Dar Williams is important. I encountered her and her music while I was in divorce transition. Actually, I saw her performance at a rather rinky-dink street fair. It was thundering and threatening rain, but she kept on standing on the little raised stage with her guitar, amplifier, and microphone. She was really pushing herself, explaining that one song was still a work in progress because she couldn't reach all the notes she wanted. Some of her songs really hit the nail on the head in terms of what my daughter and I were experiencing at the time: Are You Out There, When I Was A Boy.

Lights, Camera, Amalie is a middle school so-called "problem book", one of my favorite flavors. A good problem book can truly change your life. A few changed mine. Amalie's mother died while Amalie was very young. Her father has created an alternafamily of friends. Recently, he has been very ill, and the friends have been very active in co-raising Amalie. Suddenly, Amalie's mother's mother requests to meet her granddaughter for the first time. Amalie goes on the visit, taking a tape recorder and the oral history interview techniques she learned recently in her English class. Amalie is one smart girl.

Grandmom dies very soon after the visit. She has left Amalie a huge champagne Nebuchadnezzar that the grandmother filled with coins and receipts from over forty years of emptying pockets. When the money is counted (a story in itself), it comes to $2, 081.32. Of course, Amalie keeps the receipts, and they tell a bit of a story themselves.

Amalie sets out to make a movie over her summer vacation, using the inheritance. She wants to talk about endangered species. She enlists her friends, her dad and his friends, teachers, and it seems like most of New England. That's not true. If I have one bone to pick, the networking was just too easy. One person (or more) should have been mean and rotten and not helpful. A bit more conflict could have helped both the characterizations, plot, and maybe the dialogue.

This is pretty much a feel-good story, which is just fine. Amalie's inheritance from her grandmother turns out to be more than money. If reading books that slam home such themes is painful for you, then you shouldn't be reading middle school chapter books. But if you still enjoy reading something knowing how it is going to end long before the third chapter (and you romance readers know who you are), I can give you a good list. Amalie is not best of breed, but a good quality product. Dar Williams is a smart lady and this is a smart book. Now, I strongly suggest you go listen to The Babysitter's Here or I Won't Be Your Yoko Ono--more good stories, for all ages.

Referring to reference

I am at the point with the reference collection at MPOW that I fantasize about running amok with a machete through it. My very first duty when I arrived in the job was to weed it by one-third, down to one range, as part of a major branch space reshuffle. This was rather daunting, since I had no experience with the collection or the community on which to base my decisions.

My branch is out of space. Weeding is a daily obligation. (Jesus wept.) We did get reference down to one range last year, but it is sardine tight. Every new title the reference committee adds bring yet another search for something less than incredibly useful or necessary on some level. (I am on the reference committee, and I protest almost every new multi-volume set.)

How much use does our reference collection get? Well, do not walk over there expecting the following sections to be neat and tidy in perfect Dewey order: spirituality, legal, foreign language, military, cars, collectibles, antiques, music, indigenous peoples, history.

I am the designated shelf reader for reference. In theory, I go from 000 to 999 in its entirety every month, and it's all in apple pie order. In practice, all of the above-named subjects need daily maintenance. Of course, there are also the temporary but huge disturbances due to school assignments, i.e., endangered California animals and plants, the missions, black history, etc. So in fact, the section you need might be in some order at some point in the month. Of course, next month is always looming at the door.

Well, I tell myself it is a good upper body and mind workout for me.

One of the basic traits of a successful library worker is a desire for order. Create order, impose order, enforce order. It is what we do. Another highly desirable trait is accepting without daunt that creating order is truly and ever and ever a sisyphean task.

I was all excited to hear that RFID can assist with shelf reading and inventory. However, of the libraries I have visited that use RFID, none are using it for shelf reading or inventory. Is the library-vendor-marketing hype machine working overtime?

800 lb gorilla=electronic reference: I am not going to argue about whether all reference interactions can/should be handled with computer-based tools. Yes, I go there first, but mainly because the reference collection is roughly 45 feet from the reference desk. (Did I mention that I am not the author of last year's huge shifting plan?) Going to a database or a search engine has some attraction, since surfing does beat walking, mostly. But as we all know, not all content is online. Or it's there in a user-unfriendly format. Or this customer in front of me wants a big fat book with nice graphics and a good index, and does not want me to hand them a one-page printout that answers just the beginning of their questions.

On to how am I going find more space in the reference range: Purge some of the elderly local history materials? There's a bad idea. Move the science encyclopedia to the circulating collection? What! That thing cost how much and will be how useful when it is missing five volumes, including the index? Ah, government documents. Those are all online, right? Not necessarily in great formats, but the person who wants to read the County General Plan 2020 Hearings Commercial and Industrial Uses and Special Study Areas is willing to slog through much, no?

Our "gov docs" section makes me particularly crazy because we have shelves filled with binders filled with all kind environmental impact reports, quasi-governmental agency reports, and utility company stuff. And people actually do come in and want to review these, I kid you not. The local design review board sends them, a completely appropriate action on their part. Maybe they could design me some more space? Nevermind. Maybe I can figure out a way to shift that empty shelf over by over-sized books to the reference area? OK, it's across the aisle, which is a challenge, but I like a challenge, and it would mean like 48 inches of beautiful space!

Complete side track: I also need to reweed adult fiction, which I also pruned back to dead wood last year. My community reads a lot. I defy you to find a fiction title in the collection that has less than 10 circulations in the last two years. So so much for weeding criteria. I am convinced that some of my adult fiction customers borrow every title I buy, and then borrow it again six months later. And I do mean every title--they are not even genre-specific--catholic in their tastes, to say the least. Though we cannot have too many Westerns (who knew those were still being written?), or any flavor of mystery.

...OK, sorry to vent...Nobody said librarianing would be easy .

I feel bad about...

When I saw the new Nora Ephron come in as one of our one-week loan express books, I thought, "Oh that might be entertaining." I didn't give it a good hard look, except to note the call number was Dewey 814.54. A quick glance around the first Dewey Decimal Classification examples on the web I come across, and I find: "Errant essays", "You can fool all the people all the time", "Maybe maybe not second thoughts from a secret life", and other intriguing titles. Thank you Lucy A. Phillips Library, Snow College, Ephraim, UT. (I know, I say I won't get all caught up in subject headings so much, and now I am carrying on about classification...forgive me. I truly can't help it.)

I glanced at the title and cover, and thought I saw a pill bottle. Since staff may not borrow express books (a terrific policy if you ask me), when I saw it again around December, I put a reserve on it. I think I was 86 of 86 on the list. But that was ok. I like to get reserves in as little surprise presents. The serendipity of the timing appeals to me. I don't think there anything in Ranganathan, but I think the right books come to me at the right time. That's about as new age as I will get about library science.

I brought it home with me just before I came down with the creeping crud a week ago. Perfect, right? I'd read Crazy Salad and Heartburn before the last Ice Age. I knew about Sleepless in Seattle and You've Got Mail. Plus I'd read some Dan Greenberg. I lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 80s, so it was like reading romans á clef about the neighbors.

To be completely fair, maybe there wasn't a book on the planet that I would have found funny this last week. I wanted a book about neck pain, something I know and think about often. That probably wouldn't have tickled my funny bone either. Krikey, it takes me pages, but I wake up. She's talking about wrinkles! Maybe when I am over fifty, this will have import? Then I started ruminating about being what I call "the bottom of the boom." I am ten-fifteen years younger than the first intrepid boomers. Since I am ten years younger than my eldest siblings (twins, so the plural is correct), that difference inside the boom has always been clear to me.

Every school I ever attended was in terrible physical shape, and had more space than was used. That was because the Boom had been there. But the Boom was ebbing rapidly. When a sibling seven years older than I went to a bus stop in high school, it had thirty kids at it every morning. When my brother went to the same stop three years later, there was maybe fifteen kids. When I started four years later, there were seven. We discovered that the elementary school buses didn't stop there anymore. After we graduated, it wouldn't be a bus stop.

When I left elementary school, they renovated the school on an "open classroom" plan. (The main thing I noticed was that the library got moved from the ground floor to very spacious digs on the first floor.) Sometime in the following fifteen years, the school closed. It is now a Ukrainian community center. After I graduated junior high, that building was remodeled extensively. Then it was bull-dozed to make room for an extended-care facility. Do I have to tell you about the two high school buildings I attended? Guess what happened to my college after I graduated? Actually, it is still there, but when I saw it last year, only four buildings seemed familiar.

This is not Nora Ephron's fault! But sometime in the last twenty years, I had the thought, "At least once the Baby Boomers start aging, that too will become cool/attractive/admirable." Because, it's been all about them for most of my life--their music, movies, books (explaining why I've read both From the Terrace and Peyton Place), clothes, protests, life styles, diets, dysfunctions...I am not saying this resentfully, though I fear it sounds that way. I am thankful for the trail-blazing. I have noticed that people with grey hair now can be seen in ads and commercials looking all that. Great! I think it's long past the time we need to worship the cult of youth... Let's do it boomers, let's act our age!

Now, about my neck. It is made of spun sugar. The least little thing upsets it. Because I am a mean, bitter person, this morning while I was teaching PC Basics for Seniors before we opened, it took matters into it's own nerve endings and spasmed. Ouch! And still ouch six hours later. I feel very bad about it. I will even give Nora some credit for exposing the real truth about our purses, if that will help. (I have not said a word about people who live in rent-controlled apartments in the Apthorp getting what they deserve. Why am I so in love with that convention? I must myself grow up.)

So maybe Nora didn't make me laugh, and probably this post won't make anyone laugh. It's just more in my reader's-experience-subjectivity vein. If anyone can come up with a short tag for that, let me know!

Jingle jangle

Thank goodness (over and over) for the Wayback Machine. Saving my blog jewelry is not their raison d'etre, but what a help!

Of course, I couldn't resist looking up pages I authored in 1994 and 1995 while I was there. One of which crashed my browser and lost the first version of this post. I blame Anthony, the poor little recent high-school graduate who first got me started on the web. I am thrilled that Philanthropy News Digest is still going, with archives back to 1995, an RSS feed (not that I am subscribing), chat, commentary. Incredible. I used to call it Current Deaths, and it was a weekly nightmare--if you've ever photocopied newspaper articles en masse, you know what I mean. I was the hunter, gatherer, table of contentser for a weekly photocopied Current Awareness service. Then, at an SLA conference, I heard a speaker talk about doing a digital CA. I was immediately hooked, even if it did take two years to implement, and Anthony told me I was crazy when I said we should base it on a database. I got hooked on library conferences the, too. Let me tell you, SLA freebies should never be shunned.

OK, I've wrestled the new, user-friendly, intuitive Blogger interface to the mat for now...so being home sick for a week has been of some use...really, I need to eat lunch and spend some time on TitleSource 3. Too bad none of you can help me with my February carts!

Resistance is futile

Web 2.0, the machine is using us, form is no longer related to content...

My very first YouTube link. Welcome to last year, again. A little scary, this video by an anthropology professor, but fairly interesting ideas, even if some of them have been around far longer than 2.0 ideas.

Nowhere near as scary as Blogger insisting I change over to one of my gmail accounts for log in and to change over to their new, no longer beta Blogger. But I held my breath and did it. So far, it's not all that different. Being able to add tags is the biggest change I've noticed. Let's see if I can index my own posts with any consistancy or logic! I muddled around in the template a little, but didn't make many changes. It looks like they still expect me to put on my html hat ocassionally. Unfortunately, it's stuffed all the way at the back of the closet, wrinkled, dusty, faded, sad indeed. As I endlessly tell my PC Basics students, use it or lose it.

Agh, I've lost all my blog jewelry! Blogger swore they would save it. Now to find it and bring it home!

I did dust off LibraryThing a little. I still have some resistance to adding library books to "my library", but I still want some kind of a way to keep track! Now I swear I am going through all the 2006 posts so I can finally compile my "best of" list, just in time for the Grammys? Oh found a new-to-me blog via Rochelle, I think. May even add it to my blogroll is the dust on my Bloglines doesn't set off too much digital asthma.

Or picture this...

I had two MRIs on Thursday. I found these images Thursday morning via Utne Web Watch, which I skim on an inconsistent basis. But this article about an artist who makes art with MRI scans really helped me get through two hours in the tube with all the really loud noise. The technician was really impressed by how still I stayed. Imagine being willing to do MRIs to create art. Then I wondered who paid for the MRIs. I told the technician about the article, and she gave me her email address so I could send it. It is pretty amazing. The artist must be absolutely tiny, or maybe she had open MRI? In any case, the human body and the human mind are both incredible.

Picture this

This has to be quick as my children's librarian has called out with shooting pains in her neck on my supposed "late" day--which means I am scheduled to work 11:30-8pm. Oh well, flexibility is one of our hallmarks!

I stopped in at one of MPOW's branches that has self-check machines. Since ours is due to be installed literally last week (i.e., very soon), I thought I'd give one a spin. I grabbed Persepolis off a nearby display. (I always think of my daughter's shock one morning before opening when I was hastily restocking a picture book display. She accused me of not even looking at the books I pulled. She thought the books on a display were somehow recommended. I told her I look for shiny ones, like a certain raccoon I know.)

But I digress. Which reminds me of a phone reference I had a while back. Where does "but I digress" come from? I did not find a real answer. Anyone know? I'm figuring it must have a pop culture reference, but no way was I going to sift through all the hits I found...

I'd heard good things about Persepolis a few years ago, but never saw a copy available before. I am to graphic novels as peanut butter is to surfing. I have tried to read manga. The only series I was at all successful with was Tokyo Babylon, and I usually couldn't tell Seishirou and Subaru apart. I tried the manga of Nausicaa , but it literally gave me vertigo. So I hadn't tried a graphic novel in years.

Persepolis was a pleasant surprise, considering the content. I knew which panel to read next without excruciating effort, and I mainly could tell the characters apart. It is a very sad story, but with some real humor and dignity. It is a memoir of growing up in Iran during the Islamic Revolution.

I had a friend from Iran while I was in college, Leticia. Her father was a diplomat in the Shah's government. Tish never went home to Persia, as she called it, again after 1978. Her family finally managed to get everyone out and emigrated to Egypt. I wonder how she did--I haven't heard from her for years. She hated Arabic, and was none to fond of Arabs. I teased her, and told her Egyptians are not Arabs in the Saudi mind. But she and I did bond a bit over the status of women in Islamic countries. I can't imagine Tish in an abaya or chador.

Marjane Satrapi's memoir gave me a different glimpse of Iran. Her parents were in favor of the revolution against the Shah, who had caused a great deal of suffering to her family. So Marjane embraces the revolution, too. But none of them realized what the Islamasists would do. Some of the absurdities of schools and the constantly changing dictates and repression are very funny. But it becomes more and more difficult in Teheran, as more and more family and friends are jailed or leave. I spent the second half of the book just hoping and waiting for Marjane's family to get out.

The dog-shaped hole

This is definitely going to be one of those posts you may want to skip, and that's ok. I am not writing it because I want sympathy comments. I just can't work around it, and I have been working hard all week indeed. This was not a great week for me to go through a replacement list for the 636s. But yes, I have considered The Complete Dog Book, Puppies for Dummies, even Caring for your Aging Dog. It was in the the-cosmos-is-cruel part of librarianship, or is that life? Or death?

Then this floats my way. A week ago Saturday, I had my dog put to sleep. At least, I've decided that is my preferred euphemism. (Mind you, I had a typo there for days, "but" to sleep...what say you about typos, Sigmund?) I have been trying to write about this all week, and it's been rougher than I thought it would be. The whole thing has been tougher than expected to the nth degree. How has this impacted me as a librarian? Well, I decided not to tell my co-workers, because I don't like people who carry on about their pets dying. Then I ended up telling two of them, because crying in the office or the break room is sooo unprofessional, you know. But I keep on crying. Mostly I cry in the car. There's some poem in me somewhere about crying while in transit. Shades of the Path train to Jersey City. Older than that, I think, deep, but keeps resurfacing.

I have actually spent time in the middle of the night not being awoken by an aged dog, but considering changing my avatar. I can't change my avatar without going to a doll site. Of course, I no longer remember which doll site I used. I am too tired to think about finding a doll site, and playing paper dolls. I am not sure I can stand the idea of a dog-less avatar. Maybe I need an avatar that is more abstract? Less life-like? Which is pretty hilarious. I must out-weigh my current avatar by 50 pounds. Maybe I should ask the Offspring to design me something. But I don't want to tell her I am actually concerned that my avatar has a dog and I don't.

Being dogless seems so strange. Usually when I've had a hard day, I say time to go home and talk to a dog. She never rolled her eyes and said, "Subject headings again..." or "Do we really need to go over your performance review in detail?" No, she wagged her tail every time she saw me, so glad, and listened to it all. I don't expect any human to listen to all my petty grievances, paranoia, random illogic. But I am used to having that completely nonjudgemental pair of ears.

I feel like I don't know myself without a dog. I am not sure I trust anyone without a pet...It sounds silly, but people with pets enjoy taking care of others. They like to interact socially. I feel like I have no one to take care of. The Boyfriend usually takes care of me, if we face facts.

Having a dog connects you to reality and to nature. You can't get that wrapped up in yourself. You have to go outside minimum three times a day, and you have to go for walks. You will probably say hello to the neighbors and some other dogs and their walkers. You may see the sunrise, the sunset, the moon, the stars, flowers in bloom, birds. I used to see the ocean every day. This week, I had seen it only once. I saw the moon and I wanted to howl.

Tonight, I forced myself to walk down to the ocean and watch the sunset. I saw people and dogs, and I managed to enjoy watching a little terrier race around the rocks madly. There was a moment when I saw a dog and wanted very badly to pet it, to feel fur and muscles moving under it. The owner was in some hurry, plus I was afraid I would cry, so I didn't. Maybe soon I will pet a dog. I am not planning a "replacement" dog soon--I am not ready to make that commitment yet. On my way inside tonight, I saw hummingbirds flitting in and out of the birds of paradise near my door. I finally came up with a way to rig up my hummingbird feeder at his apartment, so I will do that soon. I will work on that connection to those tiny beings who will not know me. One step at a time.

Santa Crusie

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OK, Christmas didn't offer enough junk food. Look what came with the paperbacks--Jenny! I was enough over my snit about the camo calamity that I read it. It had guns and spies, but it also had some decent laughs. I have been trying to figure out what are the characteristics of Jenny's works that I do so like. OK, the heroines are sarcastic. So are the heroes. It may be the cheapest form of humor, but it does so work. OK, so main characters who are a bit disillusioned. Not exactly trusting. But still enthusiastic or passionate about some things, even if it is action figures, or china, or noir detective movies...these are people who have given up on much, but not on everything. Plus, the books are tasteful. That point was hammered home when I started the second novella in the volume, Christmas Bonus by Lori Foster. From fairly sublime Crusie to the unreadable ick. Oh well, "Hot Toy" was absolutely perfect to read on breaks.

Then a customer came in. She had decided she would write some chicklit, so she had borrowed an armful. When she brought them back, she told me this one was the pick of the litter, so I read it. I thought it was a waste of a decent title. My biggest question was when was it set? Part of the mechanics is that a twenty-something waitress can't get a new job after she walks off her current one due to sexual harassment. Apparently, low-paying service jobs, which are so abundantly available in San Diego (I mean I see help wanted signs everywhere!), are impossible to find in the Pacific Northwest. Leading me to think perhaps this book's events took place in the late 70s, which is why the "girl" (she really is too immature for me to call a woman) doesn't know she can sue...Oh well, the construct is flimsy anyway. I feel guilty about raking it over the coals. What did I expect. Just because the Pynchon is sooo heavy I can't comfortably read it in bed, and besides, it is complicated and I am tired...I will stop with the weasely excuses soon.