January 17, 2014: A Book Moves Somewhere and I Know it

 

A Book Moves Somewhere and I Know it

I have not been getting enough sleep lately. Late at night I go downstairs into my bitterly cold basement, turn on a small electric heater, and wrap a giant faux sheepskin blanket around me. For some reason this makes me feel like Victor Hugo, so, naturally, I write. Blog posts, yes, but I try to make them as good as his poem The Ocean's Song, which is not as high a bar as one might think. And then I go to bed and get six hours of sleep. 

It is a well known scientific fact that I require 11 hours of sleep each night to function properly. So I am spending a lot of time in a strange hallucinatory daze at the library. This daze makes me a less efficient worker, but it also gives me access to strange and heightened clerking abilities. So, though most of what I am capable of at work in this sleep deprived state is, 

1. reading books 

2. leaning on things, and 

3. staring into space, 

I am also at my peak of what I'll call Heightened Library Awareness, or HLA. This is a skill that leads to feats that, from the outside, can look a bit like magic, but really just has to do with the power of the human mind.

I'll explain.

There was a book that I loved when I was younger called The Tracker. It is Tom Brown's story of growing up spending a lot of time in the Pine Barrens, in the woods, and it is about learning about tracking, and the wilderness, from an older Native American teacher. What I am thinking of now is the quote on the back. Tom Brown says:

When somebody moves something in your house, you notice it. When somebody moves something in the woods, I notice it.

Well, when somebody moves something in the library, I notice it.

Tom Brown, in this entertaining book, recounts some amazing abilities. He is able, for example, to observe a few scuffs in the dirt, then a mark on a tree, and perhaps a bit of grass out of place, and from that he can construct a detailed account of the travels of a small bird, one that ends in finding it on, yes, that branch there. 

It is not only what he has learned, but his deep presence and familiarity with the woods.

I am very familiar with this library. I am interested, and I am here a lot. Sometimes I'll hear people discussing books, and a book will come up that I've never read, but nevertheless the cover will appear vividly in my mind, the author, perhaps along with a blurb from the back, and its precise location on the shelves. Sometimes a patron will come to the front desk and say "I just have a quick question." and I will know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, what the question is.

But it is only when I am exhausted, with my conscious mind too bleary to put up a fight, that my strongest HLA, heightened library awareness, comes through.

A woman comes to the desk.

"It's in the Board Room." I say. "Go upstairs. Left, and left again."

Not believing I can know the answer to her question before she asks, she asks. "Where is the PACA meeting?"

"It's in the Board Room." I say. "Go upstairs. Left, and left again."

I am walking through the library in a daze, on some vague mission to get a few Mo Willems books from the kid's room, when a man at a computer waves an arm to flag me down. I don't even look. "After you hit print, select "shrink to fit page" on the lower right." I say it not even breaking my shambling stride.

"How did you know that?" The man calls after me. "How did you know that!"

I'm in the back tending the machine, or leaning on the machine, or whatever. A couple co-workers come back because a book that a patron had on a table got "cleaned up" and put onto the machine. No one remembers what the book was. It could be anything in 25 bins. I walk to one bin and pull out a paperback. "What about this one?" They laugh. I am being silly again. "No, no, try this one." I say. Me and my comedy routines. One co-worker heads back to the patron for more information. I stand there in my stupor saying "This one. This one." 

It ends up being that one indeed.

Even writing this my co-worker Dave asks to use the computer for a minute. He needs to put something to mending.

"It's stained." I say. And though you cannot see that until you open the book, it is.

So how do I do this? How do I know all this?

I've seen it all. Over and over. And I am so tired. Too tired to pretend I don't know exactly what's going on in this place just to be polite. I will tell you this though. All of these magic tricks put together are probably not worth being able to get a whole cart of books shelved without staring into space drooling for 45 minutes.

I have got to get some sleep.

January 16, 2018, Customer Feedback

Customer Feedback, from January 16, 2018

It is time for our annual customer feedback review. If you would be so kind as to fill out this year's Customer Feedback Survey Form we can immediately begin to make the changes to this blog that you have been longing for. Unless you think this blog is already perfect, in which case we won't have to do anything. Which would be nice, because we're really very, very tired.

So tired...

Deeply tired...

Anyway, please do fill out our form:

Clerkmanifesto Customer Feedback Survey, 2018

My number one concern with clerkmanifesto is

A. None. I think it's perfect! Or like, perfect 30 percent of the time.
B. I'm concerned with how tired you are.
C. Ho boy, concern. Plenty of concerns! Pull up a chair. But I mean it in a good way.
D. There must be some mistake. I'm supposed to be here doing the Taco Bell Customer Survey.
E. The narrow and highly particular range of options on your multiple choice surveys.


I read clerkmanifesto

A. Yes.
B. Er, will I still receive a coupon for one of Taco Bell's delicious chimichilangalaquas?
C. EVERY SINGLE FUCKING DAY!!!!!
D. Answer "C" is making me uncomfortable.
E. Sorry I'm late. Has the survey started yet?


My favorite part of clerkmanifesto is

A. When you pretend you're joking.
B. "Favorite" is a very strong word in this context.
C. Its profound obscurity.
D. Is this clerkmanifesto? It's kind of cute. Where are the pictures?
E. I'd really rather not be pinned down to a single letter choice answer. Oh, foiled again!


My least favorite part of clerkmanifesto is

A.When the hilarity dies down and I am left sadly and wistfully looking at my computer wondering painfully what it's all about.
B. The free kittens. But not so much the crippled ones. I know that doesn't speak well of me but I must answer honestly.
C. When it awkwardly inserts mentions of its corporate sponsor Taco Bell.
D. When it starts going on about how great it is, even if it totally is great, maybe the most amazing thing ever written for the Internet, a work of towering genius and a shining light in a dark world. It is a masterpiece of beauty, vision, and wisdom, and a gift, truly a gift to humanity like no other. I am ever humbled and inspired by it.
E. Yeah. Same as "D" for me. Or maybe "A", although I thought about "B" too for awhile. What was "E" again?



In conclusion I just really want you to know that

A. A customer feedback survey that is functionally impossible to fill out or submit is hardly likely to be a great font of improvement for your little blog.
B. You are undercharging for clerkmanifesto the blog, but overcharging for your wonderful (but expensive) Clerkmanifesto Tea Cosy.
C. Answer "A" is not a nice person, in case you wondered.
D. Your failure to institute any of my suggestions from your last eleven customer feedback surveys only makes me more optimistic that this one is finally gonna be it!
E. All my favorite answers were "E" up until the last one when, oh, curses! Foiled again!

August 2, 2016: Circulation Staff Only

My god! Look at my circulation co-worker over there! Are they shopping for shoes? There's work to be done! Why, when I was over on the phones station it was amazing how hard I worked. I was a blaze of fire! I processed an entire bin of incoming requests in six minutes! A whole cart in six minutes!

Of course, for the other 54 minutes I was, um, shopping for shoes.

And that's really what it comes down to. There is not a one of us at my library who is not, at least occasionally, dissatisfied with the productivity of everyone else. Tempting as outraged superiority can be, mostly this is an impulse to be resisted.

I have consistently found that when we measure the work rate of others we measure it against our own highest possible personal work rate. If I knocked myself out shelving five swollen carts of fiction books seven years ago as flood waters were rising in the library, and I was on a coffee high, that will forever be the standard by which all my co-workers must be measured in every single moment of every working day.

So let me say it again: We measure the work rate of our co-workers by our highest and most perfect work accomplishments, by the rare level of work we perform when we are motivated, engaged, well-treated, happy, lucky, and feeling like it.

Since we can't possibly measure our own work rate against ourselves we must measure it against others. And so we measure it against the worst possible work rate of our co-workers. Sue, for instance, spent an hour socializing and talking about her vacation with half a dozen people. So surely I am allowed to sit here and read this interesting book at my leisure.

We work at a library. Everyone is always allowed to sit and read an interesting book for god's sake! That's the first thing to keep in mind.

But I might also want to keep in mind that after Sue chatted with everyone endlessly about her vacation, she went and cleaned up the entire Children's Room, which was in total chaos, a freaking mess, on a crazy day, and she did it totally alone, while the librarian just sat there!

Fucking librarians.

March 27, 2017: Ten Questions with Bob Dylan

Ten Questions with Bob Dylan, from March 27, 2017:




Recently Bob Dylan posted a new interview on his website. This is rare enough that the St. Paul daily paper, The Pioneer Press, put news of it on its front page. Minnesota, after decades of stand-offishness, has finally accepted Dylan as its proud own, like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Charles Schultz, two other artistic legends who fled Minnesota for other places. "Bob Dylan Posts Rare Interview on his Website" was the title of the article, or something like that. Even I consider that questionable as front page news, but a new Bob Dylan interview is indeed rare. And don't think I didn't let Bob know it.

"You know, it's one thing when you aren't doing any interviews." I said to Bob over cocktails. "But it's kind of cold that you won't do an interview on my blog when you're happy to do one on your own, already sufficiently popular, website!"

"Oh man." Bob complained.

"The guilt and shame hurts?"

"No, what do they put in this drink? It's making me so weird." Bob said.

"Too much green chartreuse, I think." I replied. "Super pretty though with the absinthe and dry ice."

"Absinthe!" Dylan exclaimed startled. "Are you sure it's not driving me mad?"

"No, no, bunch of myths about absinthe."

"Go ahead. Do yourself an interview. Ten questions." Bob said, magnanimously.
  
"Wait, let me get out my post-it notes."



                                   Ten Questions with Bob Dylan



Me: What are your favorite blog posts on clerkmanifesto?

Bob: Uh, I like the ones mostly about library policy and procedures, I guess.

Me: Really, what about the ones with you in it?

Bob: The only ones I don't like are the ones with me in it.

Me: But they're really good. They're funny. Plus no one believes they're real anyway.

Bob: Why wouldn't someone believe they're real?

Me: For someone as crusty and knowing as yourself you can suddenly get so disarmingly innocent.

Bob: Bah!

Me: How many questions have we used up so far?

Bob: I think with that one you're at, like, 8 or 9.

Me: Let me check my notes. It's three! It's only three. And you're at one. So it's three to one.

Bob: Okay, my turn. What's your favorite liqueur?

Me: St. Germaine.

Bob: Bartenders ketchup.

Me: I like ketchup. Ketchup is amazing.

Bob: You go.

Me: What do you think of Messi, the greatest soccer player of all time?

Bob: I think you get these fixations. And then you think everyone should have them.

Me: No. He's really that good. Besides, what about you?

Bob: What about me what?

Me: Three more discs coming out of you singing songs from the Great American Songbook, or whatever.

Bob: These are classics. Some of the greatest songs ever written!

Me: They're fine, but around the time I was born, which is a long time ago already, you had single-handedly begun the process of ripping open the soft belly of the Great American Songbook, gutting it, and reinventing what a person can do with a song.

Bob: Really, I did that?

Me: They gave you a Nobel Prize for it.

Bob: Oh yeah, that. (In a smaller voice) I was too busy to go get it. (Bob starts giggling).


I gently teased the remains of his cocktail away from him as he giggled some more. Then I drank it myself. Then I started giggling a bit too. It took a while for us to resume.


Bob: I think that was ten questions. Five each?

Me: Close enough.

July 6, 2016: Country Folk Blues

Country Folk Blues





My wife saw him first. He emerged from the Metro Mobility Bus, struggling slightly with his guitar. Metro Mobility is the door-to-door bus that helps the infirm or disabled get around these twin cities. It was good news to see him, this old man, walking slowly, but ably enough. It meant that The Open Mike Night at the Riverview Cafe would be a good one.

Fairly speaking, Open Mike Night at the Riverview Cafe is always pretty good. And despite the old man's auspicious arrival, this Open Mike was one of the least interesting I have seen in awhile. Always suffering from an old white man syndrome, Thursday's Open Mike was at its worst in this regard. I don't have anything against old white men, especially as I'm working my way to aging into one, but we were wall to wall with them here. We might have been two hours into the show without an exception to the demographic, and for the whole of the night "fiftyish" would have qualified any singer as a mere babe in the woods.

That might not have been so bad if it weren't for a problem of musical sameness rearing its head too. Start to finish was crowded up shoulder to shoulder with songs of deep Americana: Country Folk Blues. Dirge music, rust belt Union Songs, sad tales of broken down cars, lost dogs, and love gone wrong. This was dusty stuff, and though a notable proportion of the songs were written by the performers themselves, there was nothing in them to show they weren't all songs from the 1930's. I'm not saying this music doesn't interest me, but a little emotional variation, an occasionally different genre or tempo, can exert a powerfully refreshing quality on the listener's ability to absorb, to feel, and to see.

Poignantly, things started steadily improving only as the crowd thinned down, better music to a smaller crowd. We were a little looser with wine and beer, more forgiving, and clearly bettered by a dwindling count of audience members who were anxious about their own upcoming performance. By the time the old man came on I doubt there were more than a dozen of us out watching on the cafe floor. The old man hooked his guitar up just like everyone else did. The night's host set the sound for him, and the old man sat down and played. It was every bit Americana; Old folk blues just like we'd been hearing most of the night. But here it was suddenly revealed. Split open. This was how it was supposed to be done. The lyrics were all heartbreak, but so was his voice, beautiful, cracked, burnt hard in an old fire, but clear. No dirge these songs, because on the refrain that voice of pain and age and sorrow turned. It soared up piercing and giant and sharp. The feeling filled up all the pain so high that for a brief second it floated into heaven, up to that place where something catches in you and your heart leaves the room. For one weird, soaring moment it leaves the world and it leaves all of time.

Then it comes back, drifting down. The old voice again. The old man, no polish or fame. No following. Everyone taking it for granted. This is how art usually is.

Nothing to see here. 

He finishes up. We applaud. He unplugs his guitar and shuffles off. Just another one of the night's performers. Maybe in another world, a world more just, roadies are packing up his guitar for him. The limo waits for him backstage at Carnegie Hall or at the old Ryman Auditorium. Maybe in another world he got everything he deserved, and so did you, which, at the very least, is a little more than you have now.

April 8, 2016: Unstuck in Time

Unstuck in time from April 8, 2016

Unstuck in Time

I have a special fondness for time travel stories. They're such wonderful vehicles for talking about fate, free will, and the nature of stories themselves, after all, stories are made out of time itself, and yet they are completely free to travel unfettered around in it as well. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut has a fine understanding of this. So fine, I suppose, that it is actually where I learned this.

In Slaughterhouse Five, the main character, Billy Pilgrim, is unstuck in time, and moves through different episodes of his life in a non linear manner. I have been thinking about this a lot lately as this is what seems to be happening to me these days at the library. I have worked here for more than two decades. One moment I am downstairs watching the O.J. verdict in a break room that no longer exists and the next I am showing people how to use our programmable paper books which don't yet exist as I write this. For a few minutes I am buried in an endless crush of book returns that I could never hope to get caught up on, and then I am watching our big check in machine toil away for me, taking care of the job handily, as I sip a cappuccino.

Then I am at the front desk with some co-worker. There have been hundreds of them. I turn to this person and ask how long they've worked at the library.

"Almost six months now." They answer. "Why do you ask?"

"I just wanted to know where I am in time." 

 I remember when they'd worked here for eight years.

July 28, 2018, Enobling Library Work

Enobling Library Work


July 28, 2018



Just this once, in one of these library stories, let's start with the punchline:

"I don't know how anything gets done around here!"


Now that that's taken care of we can get down to our real message.

I was shelving in Non Fiction, which on the hour was supposed to switch to me shelving in Fiction. But I'd been reading and writing in the stacks so much that it was 20 after the hour by the time I had an empty cart to bring down for a new Fiction one. In the pre elevator room one of my colleagues was standing with a full cart of books, talking on their cell phone, having a particularly intense discussion with one of their children. I dashed into the elevator and pressed the down button several hundred times until the door finally closed.

Downstairs the automated check in machine was entirely abandoned. I suspected what this meant and confirmed it with our posted schedule; one of my managers was assigned to the machine. Only the managers would treat that responsibility so cavalierly and leave so much work for the people to come. This manager was off in their office while the machine either idled or cranked off towards some disaster. I went around straightening bins with the real motive of causing them to fill up so that the machine display would light up with lots of alarming red boxes.

The person on phones was doing nothing and staring vacantly into space in a vaguely alarming way, but, hey, I've been there. Another co-worker, I'm not sure where she was assigned, probably Non Fiction, was watching some inscrutable, corporate looking video with sound so low I doubt she could properly hear.

One other person was also shelving in Fiction with me, meaning I'd want to try to carefully choose a cart that kept us from shelving in the same place. But since I'd seen on the schedule who that person was I knew there was no way in hell he was upstairs shelving. He was either smoking in the parking lot or off on some secret mission of his own, and I could take whatever cart I wanted.

Upstairs in the elevator anteroom my co-worker was still there on the phone, just wrapping up the discussion. I rolled my cart out into the public area, behind where two librarians were aimlessly surfing the Internet, looking very bored, and I wheeled into the quiet respite of Fiction. I shelved for about ten minutes and then wrote most of this.

Maybe I really belong here after all.