Rhubarb!

Harris Teeter had rhubarb!

RHUBARB!

I think the produce manager was a little alarmed by the two women standing in front of the case with their jaws about on the floor, looking back and forth from the pretty pink bunches to each other and saying things like "can you believe it!" and "holy cow!"

The produce manager, it turns out, had never seen rhubarb before, either, so the mystery of how the heck it got to Blythewood only deepens. Rhubarb doesn't grow in South Carolina. Heck, people in South Carolina have never even heard of rhubarb. And it definitely does not ship well. So why would HT have it, and how did it get there?

I'd be more perturbed by this, but I get to go home and make strawberry rhubarb pie.

More Things I Have Learned

This is our crazy busy season at the library. Things have been complicated by the fact that one staff member got shingles last month and that I am gone for half of this month at various conferences and meetings and oh yes, helping my mother move.

However, all this chaos has been very educational. Things I've learned this month include:

• If you buy one head of lettuce, one tomato, one cucmber, and twenty-two large bottles of salad dressing, the checkout lady at Wal-Mart gives you a very strange look. When you pay for all this with a business credit card, the look gets even stranger.
• Our patrons are an unflappable bunch. When a procession of library staff marches through the computer area carrying carving knives, no one even blinks. They do seem a little more aware of the staff member carrying the HUMONGOUS bowl containing enough lettuce for a hundred people, though. I wouldn't go so far as to say that they were actually startled, or even interested, by this, however.
• Librarians - or maybe just library school grad students - are a bloodthirsty bunch. If you post a message about a sword to a listserv, you get fifty responses in fifteen minutes. Some of them will be from other libraries wanting a nice big sword to hang over the circulation desk.
  
• Legal advice is better when it's free, but the little old ladies who frequent the library think it is best when delivered by a good-looking male lawyer. (Actual quote from an evaluation form: "Very informative and knowledgeable. Also good-looking.")
• The general public does not seem at all perturbed to see their librarian roaming around in a t-shirt with the logo of The Guild of Radical Militant Librarians. They are much more bothered by giant temporary tattoos of sparkly fairies with purple wings applied to the librarian's face.

I will be taking a brief break from the insanity here to head off to a conference in Charleston this week, where I plan to use my avoiding-work-while-looking-busy skills to duck out of the more boring sessions and go on a search for pants that fit. I will then head to Columbia to help unload boxes for my mother - and incidentally try and find a new home for that sword. Which leads me to one final lesson from this month:

• You really should clean out your closet often enough not to be completely baffled by the things you find in it. Like the bundle of swords and box of knives and daggers in the back corner.
  

[Foodie] Meme

Okay, this one made me laugh (I saw it at Married...With Dinner):

1. Pick up the nearest [foodie] book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag 5 other people* and acknowledge who tagged you.

So, here goes. I decided (since I am sitting at my desk at the moment) to ignore the thousand or so foodie books out front and see if there were any in the bags in the workroom. Which there was.

Unfortunately, there aren't any words on page 123 of Hello, Cupcake! And the page before it has a list of ingredients. But it's a fun book anyway. Even if it does have me craving cupcakes.


This meme reminds me of the essay question on the UC application, which gave quotes from certain pages in a particular book and asked you to write something using them all. And if you didn't like those quotes, you could use quotes from the same page numbers in the book of your choice. (And no, before you ask, I did not choose that essay option. I don't remember what the heck I wrote about, but I know it required a lot less effort than that.)

Headlines

I never thought I would see the day that Chesterfield County was in the national news. And I really never thought it would be because of this.

Things I Learned Last Weekend

• Purple frosting is harder to make than you might think.

• You can't expect a bunch of kids to sit still for more than thirty seconds. Just leave the movie playing and accept the chaos.

• When putting sprinkles on five dozen cupcakes, put the cupcakes in the sink first. Sprinkles have amazing and mysterious aerodynamic properties that cause them to end up everywhere if not carefully contained. (See picture above for the results of sprinkles properly contained.)
  

• The color pink has a sneaking fascination for every girl everywhere.

• There is absolutely nothing that should not be in a librarian's job description. Give "pony rides" to shrieking little girls? Check. Simultaneously keep an eye on ten preteens with bottles of colored sand and ponder the question of what on earth makes Patrick Dempsey so popular? Check. Bake and frost five dozen cupcakes? Check.

• There is a princess for everyone. (We had a Mulan, a Belle, a Cinderella, a Sleeping Beauty, two Jasmines, a Tinkerbell (we'll leave aside the question of whether she is actually a princess), and three generic princesses in attendance on Saturday.)

• Everyone should have a tiara. (Mine is purple - thanks G!)

• If you're going to bake and frost five dozen cupcakes, you really ought to do it more than twelve hours before Passover begins. And not schedule a Princess Party between the baking and sunset.
  

On being a historian

Well, the footnotes are done.

Now, if I can just get the historiography added to the introduction.

And do something about my tendency towards passive dating style in my citations. (Passive dating style. No kidding. I didn't even know there was such a thing, but if David Carr says my dating is passive, then it must be passive.)

And if The Historian actually accepts this for publication this time around, it might even be worth it.

Celebrities

From my friend Shay's blog (which is here):

I was recently asked the question: Name three celebrities (alive) who you would like to meet and three celebrities (deceased) that you would have liked to meet and the reasons why for each one.

First the alive group:

Shay and I agree on Vincent D'Onofrio, at any rate. The man is brilliantly talented, and also the cause of much useless speculation which keeps me entertained between meetings (and sometimes during them).

The ladies over at RBEB would think that Robert Beltran ought to be on my list - which he would be if only so I could ask him why on earth, with his talent, he appears on-screen so little. If I could actually act I would be flaunting that talent to everyone who held still long enough. (And now aren't you all glad that I can't?)

And then, er, how about James Billington? Okay, so he isn't a celebrity outside of my little world. But I mean, come on, the Librarian of Congress! I need to meet him and then hold him hostage until he agrees to name me as his successor, or something. Or maybe just toss him out the nearest window and casually take over his job. Do you think anyone would notice?

And three dead celebrities:

Do presidents count? Because I've always wanted to meet Martin Van Buren. I know, trust me to choose a president no one has ever heard of for my favorite. But just look at his portraits. There was a man who was not afraid to stand out in a crowd.

Katharine Hepburn. I don't think I would have liked her much, but I admire her tenacity. And I want to thank her for playing the only non-frumpy, non-bun-wearing librarian in all of moviedom, in Desk Set. (Not to mention for her performance in The Lion In Winter, which is one of my all-time favorites.)

And let's see. A third one. Er... uh-oh. I think I'm stuck. How about Jane Austen? Or Charlotte Bronte? Or better yet, her sisters. Or Charles Dickens. Or...

Yup, it's official. I am such a library geek. Sigh.

Hard Choices Ahead

We learned this morning that state funding for libraries will definitely be cut. We just don't know by how much yet. The legislature is cutting all state agencies by 2.5%, we think, and then the State Library has to figure out how to absorb those cuts.

With any luck we'll only have to close a branch or two, not cut staff. But we're going to have some challenges keeping new books on the shelves and the computers working without the full funding we get from the state.

Not to mention the little matter of my salary.

Privilege Meme

I got the meme from my friend Cami over at Heidelbergerin. It was developed for a research project (and copyrighted) by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University (see their project’s website here). They ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright if you use this meme.

Bold the true statements.

1. Father went to college.

2. Father finished college.

3. Mother went to college.

4. Mother finished college.

5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
(I'm not sure about this one - my mother was a professor in a junior college for a while.)

6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.

7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.

8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home. (Despite my best efforts, no. Although if I had been allowed to I would have brought that many home from the public library.)

9. Were read children’s books by a parent. (Not to mention economics textbooks, classics, and whatever else was lying around. The reading-to-the-kid thing was more about what the adults were interested in than what I wanted to hear. Which is probably why I learned to read so fast.)

10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.

11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18. (Art, horseback riding, oboe and clarinet, ballet...)

12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively. (Well, like I do now, yes. If you can get past the stereotypes of librarians, that is.)

13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.

14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.

15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.

16. Went to a private high school. (Not that it seemed much like a privilege at the time.)

17. Went to summer camp. (My parents had to do something with me while they were at Annual Training every summer!)

18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.

19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. (Sometimes. Most of them involved campgrounds, military guest housing, and staying with relatives, but anyway.)

20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18.

21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.

22. There was original art in your house when you were a child. (I'm not sure if the needlework my mother did counts or not.)

23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.

24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.

25. You had your own room as a child.

26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18. (I still don't have a phone in my room, unless I bring the cell phone in there with me.)

27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.

28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.

29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.

30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16. (I went to boarding school. How else was I supposed to get home?)

31. Went on a cruise with your family.

32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.

33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.

34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.


So what's that, nineteen out of thirty-four? I guess I must be privileged. Something to keep in mind the next time I turn green when someone with a better car or a better job or a better bank account crosses my path.

General Malaise

So let me start by saying that, while I admire the dedication of a doctor who will spend three hours examining a new patient, I am not particularly enthused that, two days later, everything still hurts from all the poking and prodding. If, after all that, he can't figure out what the problem is, I am going to have to start screaming and throwing reference books at the patrons.

Most of whom deserve it anyway.

I spent my morning today doing e-rate forms. This is the easy set, and it was still a pain in the butt. Why the federal government has to create this much paperwork for something as simple as funding my library's telecommunications I will never understand. Wouldn't it be a much more efficient use of everybody's time (not to mention money and energy and expertise) if they made it simpler? Like, only two sets of forms for each library instead of so much paperwork that it takes two file folders to hold it all?

I am also miffed at the people who manage the server that hosts www.blueridgepackards.org for changing the file management software and not telling me. And not making it intuitive enough that I could barge right in and update our website without having to spend an hour figuring out the new program. And for making me have to rename every single image file on the site to comply with their new software's requirements. Nothing like making me waste inordinate amounts of time when all I wanted to do was post some new photos from the fall tour.

On the plus side, I suppose I should mention that the roofer the Carpenters recommended is going to be at the house today - yup, two whole hours after I called him - and might even manage to fix the leak in the next six months. I still can't get an electrician to come do the work the house needs, but seeing as I managed to wire in the new range hood myself yesterday I might just give up and learn how to ground outlets myself. Which probably violates sixteen different codes, or would if Pageland had that many. I refuse to figure out how to disconnect my own dishwasher and install the new one, though. Henry is just going to have to get someone out there and get the new dishwasher out of my living room. (And how bad a sign is it when you're on a first-name basis with your plumber and his entire crew?)

RIP

The library world lost one of its best last week.

Dr. Olsgaard, you will be missed.

Meetings

Is it just me, or are meetings an astonishingly effective means of wasting an alarming amount of time?

The meeting I attended last Saturday (yes, Saturday - and no, I don't know what we discussed that could not have been covered in a meeting during actual business hours) consisted of fifteen people sitting around talking at each other. There was not a great deal of productive discussion because everyone was too busy throwing their point of view around to pay much attention at all to what anyone else was saying. Why we could not have put our ideas into writing and put them on a wiki or a website or the listserv and then actually taken the time to consider not only what other people were saying but what we wanted to say (and whether saying it at all was in fact necessary), I do not know.

Then there was the meeting I attended this morning. If we had just had wifi in the meeting room I could have accomplished a ton, but none of it would have had anything to do with what the meeting was supposedly about. I say "supposedly" because after about five minutes of stultifying boredom my brain shut down completely and I resorted to writing a to-do list, making art out of a roll of tape conveniently left on the table near me, and considering whether I could carve out a vacation sometime in the next few months. I think I said a couple of things during this meeting, but since I wasn't listening to myself I can't be sure. However, no one else was listening to me either, so it can't have mattered much. This particular group seems to meet mostly to repeat things they have already said, to state the obvious with various degrees of clarity, and to make themselves feel important. You would think I would have learned by now just how big a waste of time this is. Next month, I'm bringing a book.

Although even this morning's meeting was not as bad as one I attended earlier this week. (See? My job really is to fill out paperwork and go to meetings. Lots and lots of meetings.) We hadn't even made it half way through the day when I decided that this is hopeless. Not just the sitting through a meeting and expecting a solution from it. The whole task of being a library director in South Carolina is just hopeless. There is so much that we could be doing - if we had the people, or the money, or the space, or the infrastructure, or if things hadn't been done some other way for the past twenty years. But I as an individual am simply never going to be able to make enough of a difference to matter. Which was brought home to me quite forcibly somewhere around eleven thirty on Tuesday morning. This is not the fault of the person running the meeting, of course. It was just sort of the cumulative effect of the whole agenda.

So, what's worse than a meeting that is so boring you wish someone would start throwing rocks just because it would make a change? A meeting at which you realize that change is never going to happen, and that the job you do might as well involve beating your head against a brick wall for all the effect it's going to have.

Sigh.

A Typical Day in the Life...

So, this week has been interesting.

Let's take Tuesday as the perfect example of what is euphemistically referred to as a "typical" day.

At 9:00 I was greeted with a pile of mail and forms and other unidentifiable papers a foot high on my desk. After managing to deal with this (mostly by transferring it to other people's desks) I sent out a round of faxes to the branches reminding them of assorted things of various degrees of importance.

So far, so good.

At 10:00 I raced a requested book from here to one of the branches. While there, the day's newspaper was delivered. Said newspaper featured a prominent headline about a shooting. At a library branch.

Which I did not know about.

While I was still processing this information, a call came in from another branch, informing me that there was no heat, and the branch manager was in the process of freezing her tail off. She was, however, more concerned about her patrons, many of whom are elderly. Off I went to that branch to see what could be done. Two space heaters, one extension cord, and assorted phone calls to assorted people later, the temperature in the branch was no longer hovering at the freezing mark and the repair man had promised to come as soon as possible. Maybe even this week.

From there, it was back to the main library. On the way there I got an urgent call asking me to call one of the staff on her cell phone. Of course, I promptly drove into the black hole of the wildlife refuge, where there is no hope of a signal for my cell phone. On the outskirts of Chesterfield, twenty-five minutes later, my phone indicated that there might be hope of making a call. I called the staff member, who was having a minor health crisis, sorted things out with her, and arrived back at the headquarters.

Consultation with other staff members revealed that no one else had heard about the shooting either.

Back into the car for the drive to the branch where the shooting happened, where I had a conversation with the branch manager about why I had not been told about the incident, and why this would never happen again. We then agreed that she would call the police and arrange for them to patrol the library, while I ascertained whether any of the patrons had been injured or whether the bullet had hit the library. (If you injure a patron, I'll be mad, but if you hurt my library building I will have to kill you.)

According to the newspaper account, incidentally, this was not in fact a drive-by shooting. It was a pedal-by. We're working on making it into the bigtime, but so far all we can manage is a fifteen-year-old on a bicycle.

I then returned to the main library, to be greeted by yet another foot-high pile of mail, forms, paperwork, memos, and other paper crud on my desk, and a mile-long list of new emails in my in-boxes.

And this, my friends, is a typical day in the life of a library director.

Zoo

L and I took some time away from the conference in Columbia last month to visit the zoo. (Not that we couldn't have seen just as much wild behaviour among our fellow conference-goers, but the animals at the zoo were considerably cuter.)

Why is it that goats are such photogenic creatures? I'm not terribly fond of them as a general rule, but they do know how to pose.


We also saw the biggest gator I have ever seen, along with a cooperative grizzly who walked veeerrryyy slowly closer so that I could get his best side.

And of course, no trip to the zoo is complete without several minutes spent trying to figure out how to smuggle a koala home. No luck this trip, but one of these days...

Merry Whatever

Never mind how horrifying I think it is that half the county had its Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving - as it is now after Thanksgiving, the library has joined the trend and is sticking red and gold ornaments on everything that will hold still long enough. After much discussion, we determined that the ancient and now rather bedraggled tree for the reading area wasn't big enough, so D and J headed out on a tree-finding mission and returned with a nine-foot one, complete with fake pinecones. So I spent an hour this afternoon sticking little hooks on more ornaments than you would think a tree could hold, including (appropriately enough) little tiny books.

Why is it that the one person who doesn't celebrate the holiday is the one who has to make the decisions like "how big a tree should we get," and "should it be pre-lit," and "should we add the garland, or does that just make it look tacky"? Surely there must be someone else around here better qualified for this job than I am...

Harry Potter Party

We are finally joining the trend and hosting a Harry Potter party this weekend, as a sort of early Halloween celebration. D and I have had a grand time shopping for decorations and favors and figuring out just how much junk food thirty 'tweens can consume in four hours. We have cauldrons full of candy and glow-in-the-dark necklaces and temporary tattoos and plastic Harry glasses, and games and puzzles and plans for a costume contest...

Of course, the amount of fun we're having planning this makes me worry. (Because it wouldn't be me if I didn't.) If we're enjoying this, are the kids going to? Or are we going to have thirty sulky twelve-year-olds stuck in a dark room looking at a movie they're all seen twenty times, and wondering why these stupid adults won't just let them stuff their faces with pizza and then go home. And possibly making obnoxious comments from the corners and throwing popcorn at each other.

Since this is the first event we've ever done for kids in this age group, I suppose I should expect that we're going to make mistakes. But on the other hand I'm afraid that if we screw this one up we won't get another chance, because the word will go out that we're a bunch of boring old ladies without a clue. And there is so little for kids to do around here. There isn't even cow tipping, despite the vast quantity of cows, since getting to the cows requires transportation, and twelve-year-olds in the country don't have that. I want to give them a chance to have some fun, and to escape their parents the way we did when we were that age by meeting friends at the mall or the movies, and also remind them that occasionally the library can be a pretty cool place.

Which is a heck of a lot to have riding on a party involving kids in funny glasses and grown ups in really big pointy hats.

The Librarian's Workout

D and I have decided to write an exercise book. We're going to call it the Librarian's Workout. Among other things, it will include:

• Hauling boxes of books from one end of a building to another.
• When that gets boring, hauling piles of books without the boxes. Preferable large and awkward piles.
  
• Moving shelf-loads of books from the bottom of an eight-foot shelf to the very top, and then moving the books from a top shelf to the very bottom.
  
• Running up and down aisles with an armload of books, looking for the spot they belong while trying not to be away from the desk for more than thirty seconds.
• Escorting demanding patrons from one section to another, and then another, and another...
• Nodding and smiling at the demanding patrons while escorting them (this move for advanced librarians only).
• Beating one's head against the wall. Hard.

I realize that this job isn't as physically demanding as, say, construction work. But anyone who thinks that librarians just sit around and read all day is sadly deluded. By the time we were done setting up for the book sale last Friday, every one of us had aching muscles and assorted bruises and bumps. Weeding can give me sore legs and shoulders for days. And I burn more calories nodding and smiling at idiots than I would if I went out and bought a treadmill.

Which is probably a good thing, since some days the only way we can get through it without screaming is by the judicious application of chocolate. Sometimes in alarmingly large quantities.

Goodbye, Baby

I did it. I sold the Packard. So I am now packard-less girl, I suppose.

It's off to a good home with one of my several sets of adopted grandparents from the Packard Club, and J is about as excited as a kid with a new puppy at Christmas. Which is good to see, and I am glad someone is going to do the work it needs and keep it cared for.

But that didn't make it any easier to watch it rocket off down the road with someone else behind the wheel.

Hmmm

Why is it that the slowest driver on the road, the one who has fifteen cars stuck behind him going twenty miles an hour under the speed limit, always has at least three NASCAR decals on his rear window?

Just another baffling aspect of life in the south, I guess.

Things I have done recently that are not in my job description

• wash lettuce
• choose upholstery fabric that no one can object to
• move chairs and tables
• repair chairs and tables
• find a stuffed rat
• escort a Big Red Dog to story time
• tell a member of the prison work crew how to get a library card
• debate the merits of various heads for a scarecrow
• act like a jumping bean
• care for a (deeply perturbed) box turtle for seven days
• arrange for the removal of a petrified lizard (no, I was not going to do it myself)
• carry a dragon through three states in twenty-four hours
• bake more cakes than you can shake a stick at
• make friends with local clergy, unreconstructed rednecks, fourteen-year-olds, and convicted felons
• bully someone into cutting an access door to a crawl space, supporting a library policy, and finishing electrical work that should have been done twenty years ago
• learn about manga, wikis, yeast-free recipes, teen psychology, the Fourth Circuit Court, feral cats, storytelling techniques, county government, and how to spend $2500 on DVDs in forty-five minutes