Random Public Library Moment (what? I have a blog? Oh yeah.)

I knew it had been a while since I'd posted here, but over a year? Zoiks. Greetings to the 2 people still out there paying any attention.

Two young men and their grandfather came up to the reference desk on a busy Saturday afternoon looking for car repair manuals. First I got the make and model, then I asked what system they were working on. One of the guys lifted his hand above the edge of the desk-- he was holding the (somewhat oily) master cylinder. In unison they all said, “The brakes.” I printed out what information I could find from a repair database. When I asked if that was enough, the grandpa said, “I hope so—but if not, we’ll come back with the other part.”

They didn't return that day. I hope that means that my information helped, and not that they gave up on their '96 Buick Regal. I was half-hoping they would be back with a series of parts to research, laying them out in exploded-view on the terrazzo floor in front of the reference desk.

way to break typecasting

Overheard in the puppet castle:

PRINCE (played by a large hen): Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!

RAPUNZEL (played by Piglet): Okay!

RAPUNZEL lowers herself ears-first out the window to the waiting Prince. Prince latches on to an ear with his beak, and RAPUNZEL pulls him up into the castle.


Also observed: a toddler force-feeding a tarantula to a pterydactyl. Yum!

encounters with Jesus

I met Jesus today. He's about 3 feet tall, and I caught him climbing on the dragon in my library. To be fair, the dragon looks like a fancy playground piece, even though he was designed to hold and display books. Later his mom called him back from lapping the children's area, then from splashing out a complicated Morse code message using the drinking fountain. He just left, run/walking at a good clip down the aisle, elbows pumping energetically.

Yes, Jesus is an Hispanic three-year-old.

But how different was the real three-year-old Jesus? Traditionally he's painted as a serene, wise-beyond-his-years child, but that's later in childhood. I don't assume to know how God Made Man behaved through his Terrible Twos and Threes, but I'd like to think that he had some of the energy and high spirits of today's little Our Savior of the Dragon's Back.

And with millenia of Christianity all over the Western world, why is it that only Spanish-speaking countries name their children Jesus with any regularity? I'm sure it says something deep about cultural differences, but I can't devote the brain power to it tonight.

Random Public Library Moment

I've been on a little self-inflicted computer break this month, and rather than catch you up, gentle reader, with photos and tales from my lovely backpacking trip along the North Shore, I will go the lazy route: Cheap Laughs!

When learning a language, cognates are a beautiful thing. Even if I didn't study for that junior high German quiz, I could guess what an Autobus was and what Hans was supposed to do with it. Beware, however, of the false cognate. A classic example is the Spanish word embarazadas, which sure sounds a lot like "embarrassed," but actually means "pregnant."

False cognates can also mislead you if you're browsing through the Russian children's DVDs at the library. If you for some reason read the back of this box first, you would know that it's the story of a good Communist boy's magical adventures on a flying carpet, circa 1956. Read the title first, and you might have different expectations. I know did, although I must say my first reading of the title didn't quite jive with the prominence of the leering, bearded genie.

well, I tried.

Some things are better than you remembered them as a child, like mustard. Or beer, not that I had extensive experience.

Some things are worse, like Nancy Drew books. Seriously, have you gone back and read any childhood favorites lately? It's a risky business. But that's another topic.

And some things are about the same. My biggest food hatred as a child was beets. I would sit at the table for hours, all alone in front of a fast-cooling plate of beets, rather than eat those accursed things. Hating beets is actually one of my earliest memories; I remember sitting at the table of a house we left when I was three, trying to work up the mental and gastronomic strength to take a few beet bites. Now I'm an adult, and I sometimes choose to eat various things I used to avoid: broccoli, for example. So when my CSA farm sent some beets this week, after the initial shudder I thought, sure, why not? I've hated and avoided beets for so long, maybe something has changed in the last 28 years or so. So on my sister's advice, I sauteed them in olive oil, salt and pepper along with some other fresh CSA goodies. And I ate them.

Verdict? Blech. Yuck yuck yuck. I declare my intense dislike of beets officially a lifelong trait. Sure, it's fun to pee magenta, but for me the thrill is not worth it.

chalk up

Friday afternoon I joined a few workmates from REI and went climbing near Taylor's Falls at Interstate State Park. I used to think that the name looked out of place on the state park map, too much like infrastructure and pavement. But once I visited, I realized it's not interstate as in highway, it's interstate as in between states, since the park is on both sides of the St. Croix River. We were climbing on the Wisconsin side, for those in the know.


Hello, Minnesota!

At last, climbing on actual rocks! I've been gym climbing in the past, but not lately, and never in nature that I can remember. It was incredibly fun, not to mention satisfying when I hit the top. I'm afraid my new climbing shoes may gradually be followed by my own harness and other spendy gear. Major props to Jeff and Amanda for being such good climbers, teachers and belayers.









Shiny, happy climbers on a rock

Random Public Library Moment

I wish I had a camera handy for this one. But I didn't, so description will have to do.

We've got a bulletin board in the children's area of my library that we use for a kind of question of the month that kids can answer and post. For example, in April the bulletin board looked like a baseball field, and kids wrote their favorite position on a baseball. This month we have big, tall multi-scoop ice cream cones, each paper scoop bearing a favorite ice cream flavor.

As I was posting a few new entries, I noticed a smartass scoop that someone had snuck in. Their favorite ice cream flavor? "My Boobies".

See, that just doesn't make any sense. They should take a lesson in public smartassing from the person who added another one a few days later: "Bootilicious". At least that one is uses a hip-hop influenced reworking of flavor nomenclature. What that flavor would mean for Baskin Robbins, I shudder to think.