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.

Happy National Library Week!

In honor of National Library Week, here's a trip through Hollywood's great library moments. Sexy!

http://www.ew.com/ew/gallery/0,,20190897,00.html

what is this, a key party?

Sheesh, I'm home sick for a few days, and the whole place goes wonky. The Powers That Be in my library system decided that managers in the system could do with some cross-training by switching to different libraries for a while. Sounds like a good idea to me; get some fresh ideas and perspectives stirring around. However, They have decided to switch out all three of our senior managers at once. Um, is that normal? I, for one, wouldn't relish the idea of being a new boss in a large building and having nothing but other new bosses to back me up. A few possible explanations occur to me:

1. TPTB didn't notice until the email went out, which was, of course, Too Late To Back Out.
2. TPTB are conducting an experiment in management. The security cameras have been retrained on staff areas instead of the public floor, and the footage will be streamed live as a reality show on Xtreme Managrz, the radical leadership website.
3. TPTB simply don't care what we think.

There are doubtless other options as well, but those three seem like the most likely to me at the mo.

fun with cataloging

Like I've probably said before, catalogers are a strange breed. It takes a certain type of person to savor the challenge of categorizing the whole of human knowledge, one Library of Congress Subject Heading at a time. I think you need to be either completely humorless, or find a wry, twisted humor in nearly everything. Mostly I'm guessing it's the latter.

My latest discovery involves the graphic novel series Noble Causes, which features a very dysfunctional family of superheroes. First I was entertained to see that one of its headings is
Problem families -- Comic books, strips, etc. Often times catalogers will get specific to the point that the category is no longer helpful- after all, if every book has its own unique subject heading, what's the point? For example, Germany -- History -- Night of the Long Knives, 1934 -- Drama. I have no idea what the Night of the Long Knives was, but it doesn't surprise me that we only have one drama about it. But I digress. Just as I was about to scoff and add Noble Causes' Problem families -- Comic books, strips, etc. to the useless list, I noticed that my library actually has 17 items in that category. Huh. I guess lots of comic book authors/artists have been putting the 'fun' back in 'dysfunction' lately.

Then of course, there are categories in which less is more: Deviant behavior -- Handbooks, manuals, etc.

Just one entry there. And that's probably okay.

push the button, Frank*

Today I received the fourth in a series of emails at work regarding duress alarm training. For the sake of elucidation, I have photographed the underside of my reference desk:

That whitish thing is the duress alarm. It is a recessed switch to help us avoid accidentally triggering it while trying to adjust the motorized desk (which happens anyway, but maybe not as often as it could). In the event of major unpleasantness, which we experienced last month, you put your finger in the hole and pull toward you, and county security, police, SWAT team, what have you, are notified that the library, and your desk in particular, is experiencing duress. An excellent feature to have in a public building. But honestly- how much training does it take? Mind you, this is not training for what to do in the unlikely event of a [fill in duress-inducing situation here]. This is training for the alarm itself. If I don't see the need for the training, does it mean that I don't need it, or that I don't realize how badly I need it? Would I enjoy the training as ironically good fun, or would I later mourn the loss of 30 precious minutes of my life? I may step up and do it just to find out.


*kudos to you if you got the reference. If not, educate yourself.

one third of my allotted time

This is getting to be old news now, but once again I've been hobbled by lack of visuals. Last Tuesday my library system and my local NBC affiliate were brave/foolhardy enough to put me on live daytime TV for 5 minutes to talk about Teen Read Month and show off a handful of books. It was on Showcase Minnesota, the local show you end up watching if you don't bother changing the channel for the hour between the Today Show and Today Show: Hour 4 (sounds like a hostage situation to me). Here's the blurb on their website; don't skim, you'll miss it.

Besides taking an amount of time and energy to prepare which seems out of balance with the shortness of the actual airtime, I had a lot of fun. Got to see the studio, experience the behind-the-scenes world of local (but big market) TV, and schmoozed with the stars. Okay, I sat in the green room with a slightly cantankerous salon entrepreneur named Rocco, but that's enough Tuesday morning excitement for me.

Until I manage to get a YouTube-compatible file in my hands, here's a link to the clip that a friend kindly recorded for me. Thanks, Winston!

Showcase Minnesota- 9 October 2007- Teen Read Month segment

The Universal Language of Muzak

If you've ever called a Hennepin County Library and been put on hold, you're familiar with our hold music. More accurately, our hold song. We only have one. No matter what time of day or what library you call, the hold song is always exactly the same: about 1 minute long on a continuous loop, sounding like the bastard love child of two timeless classics: "Guy at Bloomingdale's Playing Piano Under the Escalator at Christmas" and "The Song That Never Ends." I see-saw between hating it and loving it deeply and ironically. For all the time and money we invest in being on the cutting edge of technology in our field- Library 2.0 is the latest buzz term- couldn't we at least offer our customers, I don't know, *two* hold songs? Add a little excitement and unpredicability to the phone call? It's just a thought. But for now, we just have the one hold song, and I had started to think of it as all ours; after all, I'd never heard it anywhere else.

Until today.

I've spent quite a bit of time the past few days on the phone with the nice tech support folks in New Delhi. (I just went wireless. Where am I blogging from right now? My living room? My kitchen? The bedroom closet? Only I know! How's that for excitement and unpredictability?) They put me on hold, and over thousands of miles of wireless aether, I heard a familiar strain. It was a remix of the HCL hold song! I couldn't believe it. Instead of solo piano, it was sort of a Light (make that Lite) Rock version with an even slower tempo, but the banal melody, the barely distinguishable A and B sections, the short loop- it was all there.

Is this Cisco's theme song, to be found universally in all their phone systems? I wonder how many other versions are out there? Is there sheet music available? If/when I get a piano, I am going to teach myself this song. It'll only ever be useful as a one-hit joke at library staff parties where there's a piano available, but someday, someday that scenario will come true, and I'll be ready.

gazing fondly at my sweaters

Don't get me wrong: I like summer. I even like my crazy summers at the library. But I'm ready to be done now. Done with the much-too-frequent 90-degree days, and trying to exercise my furry dog without giving her heat exhaustion (seriously- she falls down), and with said craziness at work. I'm sort of counting down to Friday, the last official day of our Summer Reading Program and the beginning of a little breather.

Then maybe the weather will get cooler, and I can pull out the warm clothes. Or buy some of the new fall stuff that's started coming in at work. REI, that is. The library currently doesn't have a women's casual wear section.

For the sake of visuals, here's a random comic I found online:

So...you're not a Tampa Bay fan, then?

Working in a public library, I regularly experience irregular things. It's part of why I like my line of work so much. These Random Public Library Moments (RPLM's) could come from any source, for any reason, at any time. After all, it's not only a public building, but the kind of public building that draws a wide variety of people for an even wider variety of reasons, and sometimes for no discernible reason at all. My favorite RPLM's to date were my interactions with a lady at the Centralia Timberland Library who thought she was Mrs. Hugh Hefner. Did you know that he's the real Elephant Man? It's true. Did you see Mask? That was him. Ask Cher, she'll tell you. And it only got better from there.

My favorite RPLM last week was much less elaborate, but still entertaining. We have a little survey question posted at the Children's Info Desk that changes every so often. Kids can take a little piece of paper and write down their answer, and we tack them up on the bulletin board. Currently, the question is: If you were a pro baseball player, what position would you play? Any guesses on the most popular answer so far? (See below) In the "less common response" category falls this one:



Excellent sentiment? Yes. Odd placement? Um, yeah. Unless it's a deeply masked jab at the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, but I'm really stretching here.

The most common answer is pitcher.

what do they teach in Sunday School these days?

For those of you who work with children, you know that one of the most challenging and entertaining aspects is that when you're fishing for response A or B, they often throw you C. In storytime I've learned the hard way to NEVER ASK QUESTIONS ABOUT PETS. Also, try to avoid saying things that could lead to talking about pets. Or recent scars. Or pets. If you do, you'll never get a chance to do anything else until you first exert a lot of energy talking them down. Allow me to illustrate:

LIBRARIAN: There once was a squirrel named Sammy.
CHILD 1: My dog likes to chase squirrels!
CHILD 2: I have a dog named Buster!
CHILD 3-25 concurrently: I have a _____ named ______; I have [number] pets; I had a ____ but it got run over by a ______; etc.
CHILD 26: Look at my scab! I skinned my knee on the playground and it was bleeding and we went to Wendy's.

In my storytimes at least, nearly all roads lead to pets and recent scars; they are the choice C to most A's and B's. But sometimes things diverge in less predictable ways. While Sunday School at my church is on a break for the summer, the assistant pastor gives a little children's message before the main sermon. A few weeks ago was Pentecost, celebrated by Christians as the day when God sent the Holy Spirit to empower and counsel His church after Christ's resurrection. In theological terms it's a very big deal, but not much of a commercial holiday. To illustrate this, the pastor asked the kids, "what are some holidays we celebrate here at church?", thinking they would come up with Christmas, Easter, etc. One little boy piped right up: "PASSOVER!" Had he been reading stories about Moses and the Exodus with his family? Did he actually remember that we hosted a Passover seder a few months back to look at how many of the elements foreshadowed Christ's work on the cross? Who knows. For whatever reason, the first holiday that occurred to a little blonde Lutheran boy was Passover. And that tickles me.

As a side note, the most recent kids' message involved an apple, and one kid was much more concerned with which kinds of animals like to eat apples than with how said fruit illustrates the Trinity. So there you are: it's all about pets.

the ankle monitor comes off at last!

There's still some paperwork to sign, but I have now passed my probation! I bet you didn't know I was on probation. If you're wondering what my offense was, it involved getting hired by Hennepin County Library. Apparently, the County considers getting hired by itself something worthy of punitive measures.

Okay, so maybe my probation was in the probatio, "testing time" sense of the word. But since my library shares a building with the district courts, I couldn't help but wonder if maybe I would show up to work one Saturday morning, someone down the hall would hear that I was still on probation, and I'd get press-ganged into wearing a reflective vest and picking up trash all day. Well, no more living in fear! And better yet, no more curfews and keeping my nose clean! It's back to my old, degenerate self now. Or not.

I may officially and fully work for The Man now, but don't worry: I'm keepin' it real.

"best forgotten by" date

One unfortunate difference between my old job and my new one is that the bureaucracy and politics in my life have about tripled. That's to be expected in a big system, I suppose, but it's amazing to me how much mental energy is wasted by people worrying and/or complaining about issues big and small- not to mention the people causing issues big and small for petty reasons. The phenomenon certainly isn't tied to my line of work; a friend of mine recently told me that the hens in his office are all clucking about the unwelcome changes forced on them by new printers. So I've devised a method of screening what scuttlebutt is worth my time. I'll ask myself, will this issue outlast the milk in my fridge? When that last inch I never manage to use goes sour, will this latest drama still have any bearing on my life? If not, I'll save myself some time and blow it off now.