Roger Green: a librarian's life, deconstructed.
In honor of National Library Week, April 13-19 this year:
Helpdesk support back in the day. Original taken from the show “Øystein og jeg” on Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK)in 2001. With Øystein Backe (helper)and Rune Gokstad (desperate monk). Written by Knut Nærum.
You have NO idea what librarians goes through with the general public, but sometimes, it’s rather like this.
My great frustration with reading this book is that I had a great deal of difficulty putting it down!
I had never read a Stephen King novel, but due to boredom, I ended up taking out from the library 11/22/63, an 800+ page tome. OK, it wasn’t JUST boredom, but also a near-obsession I have long had with the tragic events of that day, crystallized in my mind; my own long-running curiosity about the various conspiracy theories surrounding John F. Kennedy’s assassination; and what would happen if, somehow, the President had survived the attack. (I’m sure I’ll write more about that next year.)
When I checked out the book – allowed for only 14 days, instead of the usual 28, because it’s a recent purchase – the library clerk, who had read it, assured me that it wasn’t one of those King horror books.
Well, no, and yes. This is a pretty straightforward narrative about a man and a portal to a very specific time and place in 1958. What I always disliked somewhat in some going-back-in-time stories is how very precisely timed the trips were. If one were trying to stop JFK from being killed (or make sure that he was, so that the “time-space continuum”, or whatever, wasn’t wrecked), one would show up in Dallas, Texas on November 19 or so.
What would happen, though, if you had to live in the past for five years before intersecting with history? Would that be a good thing? What would you do with your time? How would you survive financially? (Your 2011 credit card, or for that matter, your 21st-century cash, would not be useful.) Might you involve yourself in other wrongs that should be righted? And would you find the past more enticing than the present? The protagonist says, more than once, that the past is obdurate.
There were monsters, though, in this book, including assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, and a couple of other folks. But the protagonist finds some redeeming characters as well.
My great frustration with reading this book is that I had a great deal of difficulty putting it down! Sleep? Work? Housework? These were getting in my way of finishing this fine, incredibly well-researched book. King addresses his sense of the conspiracy theories, both in the story proper, and the Afterword. Even though this is a fictional account, you will learn much about the forces that led to JFK’s death.
I hope it’s obviously HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
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Jaquandor’s take on the book.
The big thing, though, was that the Daughter had not one, but two dance recitals.
This has been the busiest June I can remember. I was in charge of the Friends of the Albany Public Library annual meeting, which involved arranging for the speaker, planning a dinner for 20, and getting a plaque made, the latter two of which had more complications than I need to go into here. But it ultimately went off successfully. The best part is that I discovered an old-fashioned drink called a sidecar; I loved it!
Our church is in covenant with one of the local schools, and one Saturday, that meant putting together a playground, which entailed, among other things, clearing a field of weeds and a tremendous amount of trash. Here’s a brief news story.
I attended a comic book show. Went to at least three parties, with another two this upcoming weekend. I’m not even counting visits to the dentist and eye doctor.
The big thing, though, was that the Daughter had not one, but two dance recitals. The first was at her public school, where she was a new recruit in something called Step. A couple of weeks later, her ballet school was having its annual recital. That school’s founder is one Madeline Cantarella Culpo. One of her grandsons is Michael Culpo, a Division I basketball player, while one of her granddaughters is the new Miss USA, Olivia Culpo; she is understandably proud.
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Why I am getting so much spam on this site, over 300 per day? The filter catches it, but it’s still tedious to remove. And most of it is of the bad spam variety, from companies selling electronic cigarettes, payday loans, or “pantyhose covered female foot fetish,” filled with suspicious links and unreadable text. Whereas GOOD spam is: “Helpful info. Lucky me I discovered your website by chance, and I am shocked why this accident didn’t happen earlier! I bookmarked it.” I know it’s a lie, but at least it’s pleasing to the eye.
What about all those OTHER blogs you do?
Let’s milk this seventh blogoversary gig: in response to questions I get about blogging all of the time, both in person and online, I decided to answer some of them.
Why do you blog?
I’ve noted that I was inspired by my friend Fred Hembeck. Beyond that, though, there was stuff happening in the world and in my life that seemed to be worthy of noting, if only because they were important to me.
Some people write letters to the editor. I have, but I’m not very diligent about it. Some people write to members of Congress. Ditto. What I realized that I can do is write something in a blog, then send THAT to a member of Congress. And I have, a few times. Plus the piece stays out there is in the blogoverse.
But mostly, it was so I could maintain a modicum of sanity.
What was your goal in blogging?
Initially, I had only two.
When my daughter was born in March of 2004, I said that I would keep a journal about/for her. But early on, that fell apart. So having the blog would be my public commitment to fulfill my promise. And I have written about her EVERY MONTH without fail, on the 26th, since I started this.
The other was to write the JEOPARDY! story so I didn’t have to repeat it all the time. The folks at J!-ARCHIVE have linked to those.
Why do you blog about THAT?
Because it interests me. I’ve said before that I write the blog, first and foremost, for me.
There’s a noted TV writer named Ken Levine (MASH, Frasier). Some people complain when he blogs about baseball; Ken’s an announcer for the Seattle Mariners and has served in the same capacity for other teams. What he (or his followers) usually say is something snarky such as, “For what you’re paying, you shouldn’t complain.”
I’m not one who does snark well. It’s not that I don’t feel snarky sometimes, but rather it seems to come off as mean-spirited. But my sentiment’s about the same.
If I write about sports or TV or politics or do a quiz, and you’re not interested, that’s fine; almost certainly, tomorrow will be something else. If I altered the eclectic balance and listen to other voices, my self-censoring would probably paralyze me from scribing anything at all. And writing this, as much as anything, is inertia. It is better FOR ME to write a quiz that you don’t like – but I do, because I usually learn something about me – than not to.
Quizzes are also quicker and easier. If I have written a blog post that’s taken two hours to put together, then I need something to cleanse my intellectual palate that I can do in 20 minutes or so.
Why don’t you link to anyone else?
Well, it had something to do with visual clutter. But I kind of do anyway. My old blog, which I stopped posting to when I got this one, is the place where I keep track of all the blogs I follow or want to refer to, and still update occasionally when I have time.
What about all those OTHER blogs you do?
They’ve all, directly or indirectly, evolved from the first. When my then-work colleague came back from a conference and said, “We need to have a blog!”, I was her firmest supporter because I had started my own only three weeks earlier; it became so. Subsequently, everyone was going to do a post once a week each, but that’s devolved to me writing something thrice a week unless I have an intern to do so. The good thing is that it’s become part of the job description.
I’m on the board of the Friends of the Albany Public Library, and since I can’t get to most of the midday events, I started that blog. I’m our office’s representative to the NY State Data Center, and at the spring meeting in 2007, someone suggested a blog, and I began Data Detectives in May of that year, probably the second favorite of my own blogs. Michael Huber of the Times Union, the Albany newspaper, I’d known for years, and he started nagging me to blog there; after blowing him off for about a year, I started Information without the Bun in January 2008.
I also participate in other people’s blogs. ABC Wednesday, which Denise Nesbitt, started about five years ago, I stumbled upon only sometime in 2009; seems longer. Huber invited me to participate in Getting There, about local transportation, in October 2011. Finally, I was doing the Flashmob Fridays comic book thing, but that, alas, is defunct.
How do you keep up with so many blogs?
So there it is. 2,570 straight days of blogging. I’ve pretty much decided that when I get to 10 years, I’ll back off to thrice a week. But that’ll be 2015, and if all those apocalyptic forecasts come true, I won’t have to worry about that anyway.
For budgetary reasons, the main library now closes at 6 p.m. on Thursday nights, and none of the branches are open either.
Since this is 3/3, no matter whether you’re a 3 March person or a March 3 individual, I thought I’d ask what your third place is. The third place is a term used in the concept of community building to refer to social surroundings separate from the two usual social environments of home and the workplace.
My third place – shockingly! -is the Albany Public Library. That’s where I tend to go when I’m waiting. If I’m finished with my dentist appointment downtown, but the next bus out to Corporate Woods doesn’t come for a half-hour, I’ll go to the library, e.g.
But my third place schedule has been severely disrupted. My favorite time to go to the library was on Thursday nights, after work and before 7:30 choir rehearsal; I would get quite a bit of blogging done there on the computers, maybe a couple of pieces. But, for budgetary reasons, the main library now closes at 6 p.m. on Thursday nights, and none of the branches are open that evening either. I’ve stolenborrowed my daughter’s little pink laptop and gone to a Starbucks one Thursday evening and another coffee shop on Lark Street in Albany another, but it’s just not the same.
Do you have a third place?
Graphic from MCHABIB.com.