This Is My Job

I am a teen librarian. It was never my intention to be a teen librarian. I applied for, was offered, and accepted an adult services position, but my boss reassigned me after I'd been here about 6 months. Sometimes I dislike teen services. Teens aren't always my favorite people. I didn't even necessarily like them when I was one of them. Being a teen librarian, though, means that it is my job (my JOB) to go to meetings and say, "Hey, I'm thinking we should have a chocolate party." " So, what I think we should do is plan a mystery based on the kidnapping of Harry Potter." "Here's what I've got: Ninjas." And then we do that.

This year, one of our summer reading program activities is making altered books (the fantastic idea of my co-worker). We take book donations, we rip out pages, we paint them, collage them, fold them, glue them, make them into journals or artworks, and I get paid for it. So, today I started practicing my altered book skills. I was using whatever I could find around the library, and the only paint I could find were these terrible water color sets that are part of these terrible art sets we bought for a previous teen program. I took some of the water colors and set myself up at the island in our workroom, and I went to work painting my practice book. The thing I loved about it (other than the fact that I was getting paid to paint a book) was that no one thought it at all strange that I was painting a book in the middle of the workroom. I had a conversation with a co-worker about her outreach patrons and the Hispanic Outreach Coordinator was wandering around and some people from Circ came in to drop things off and not a single person said, "MBC, why are you desecrating books?" Who needs to ask? I'm a teen librarian.


This is my teen pregnancy page. You can't see it well (I had a terrible time getting any kind of photos of these pages), but there are babies and rattles and a screenshot from Juno in the collage and then there are three books about teen pregnancy that pop up on the red bar.


I was working with whatever I had at my desk and what I had at my desk were photos from some of my trips. The picture is of me with a statue in Iceland, layered over drawings of robot parts.

I've Got Nothin'

I got home from work at 9:37 pm tonight. A smart person who has been at work for 10 hours will come home, relax a little, and go to bed. An unsmart person will come home and make six tiny carrot cakes in her adorable bundt cake pans. I'm too tired to take a picture of my little cakes o' nutritious joy (I used the Jane Brody recipe) or to write anything about cakes or about any other topic, because it is now approximately 12 billion o'clock and I have to go to bed.

A Day in the Life of a Reference Librarian

We're conducting a reference tally at work right now, which means that we keep track of all the interactions we have at the reference desk. Because of this, I know that today in the five hours I spent on the desk, I answered 84 questions. Reference tallies attempt to quantify the work that's done on the desk, but they don't accurately reflect what's accomplished, because there aren't spaces to record how many times we have to tell someone to take his cell phone out of the quiet area or that ponies aren't allowed in the library or that if he keeps stealing the office supplies off the desk, I'm going to staple his hands together with that stapler he keeps taking. And librarians are usually working on several projects at the desk and having crazy conversations with patrons--like the one I heard my co-worker having yesterday with a man who was asking her if she goes to Asian shops to find clothes that fit her (she's small) and the one I had with a woman about subliminal mind control (you always have to watch out for it, she informed me)--so we're usually busier than the stats might indicate. So, here are a few stats and a little extra information about the life of a reference librarian.

A Selection of Today's Patron Interactions

Find or direct patrons to the following materials:
"Don't Go Breakin' My Heart" performed by Jesse McCartney
Naruto
The Weight Loss Solution
Dandelion Wine
Total Money Makeover
Fairest
No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency
The Wizard of Ooze
Eclipse (2)
Merit Badge books
Reviving Ophelia
Any book about Stephen L. Richards
Tax Forms
Fiction books about ballroom dancing
Young adult fiction that features characters with disabilities
Mariposa Barbie movie

Find the following information for patrons:
Local English classes
Local job sources
GED classes
Contact information for the county court
The order of Jennifer Chiaverini's series
Tenant/landlord legal forms

Help patrons with the following services:
Netlibrary
Logging onto the computers (18)
Purchasing headphones (3)
Using the computers (3)
Reserving study rooms (4)
Posting information on our community board (2)
Updating patron information (3)

Discuss the following with co-workers while on the desk:
-Why is a 2001 Tonga guidebook is selling for $100
-Who is the poet John Ciardi
-Are the men chosen to play the Cullens in the movie adaptation of Twilight attractive and/or vampire-like
-The new anxiety dream involves a phone call from Donald Trump, not just nudity
-How to contact Summer Reading Program sponsors
-Potential benefits of a giant sun lamp for the reference desk
-My co-worker's dating life
-People in San Antonio are nice

Work on the following projects in between helping patrons:
-Accept/reject donations for my collections (reject self-published medical books, accept gingerbread cookbook)
-Shakespeare reading map - celebrate that I have finally found a full-length drawing of Shakespeare so that my graphic design woes will end
-Purchase new cake decorating books and soup cookbooks
-Finish Teen Tech Week flier
-Update Award-Winning Teen Books booklist

Tomorrow I don't work the reference desk at all. Happy day.

Pretty People

I have been laboring under the delusion for several months now that

James Marsden
(seen here in the movie 27 Dresses)

was
Jason Marsden

The names are similar. The faces are not dissimilar. (Although this is an old picture of Jason Marsden). I wondered, though, how James Marsden became so popular, because I remembered him from his roles in a number of extra cheesy sitcoms and shows that nobody else has ever heard of. I was, apparently, the only person in America who watched Eerie, Indiana or Almost Home (the network's attempt to save The Torkelsons, another show for which I was the only viewer--and having just watched the YouTube video clip, I'm feeling very embarrassed for myself that I was such an avid viewer).

I did my James Marsden research this week, though, (you've got to do a little background checking before you add someone to the Imaginary Boyfriend List) and discovered how he moved from bad sitcom land to major movie success: different person.

February

February was so long that it lasted into March -Dar Williams

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn,
and moreover my mother told me as a boy
(repeatingly) 'Ever to confess you're bored
means you have no

Inner Resources.' I conclude now I have no
inner resources, because I am heavy bored.

-John Berryman
excerpt from Dream Song 14

It takes all my strength in February not to post the same thing every day: I'm sick of February.

I do not care for February. Winter lasts too long, and in February I'm desperate for the season to change. If I lived in a country like Iceland with an even longer winter, where it's colder than this and dark most of the day, I'd be arming my neighbors, forming a militia, and invading somewhere warm. I'd kick everybody out of Miami and set up a little Icelandic winter community in which we would all sip mint juleps and laugh (in a mean-spirited way) at the people living in Minnesota and Wisconsin. And I don't even like Miami. That's probably why Iceland doesn't have a military--too tempting to stage coups every February.

I'm bored in February. Not because I don't do anything, either. Plenty of things happened this weekend. Chou was in town and came to visit (yay!). I went to dinner with friends. I attended a conference. I participated in a humanitarian aid project. I saw a movie. I had a mad hot dance party with the marmots (Madame 3-yr-old's got some killer moves). I read two books. But I feel like I'm about to jump out of my skin in February. I'm bored and restless and I want something to HAPPEN. I don't know what that would be. Maybe spring. I'd really like spring to happen.

Je suis bad at French.

Today at work I was using my vast chick lit knowledge to replenish a sad, depleted, romance book display. A man with an accent approached me and pointed to an Alexandre Dumas book on a different display.

Mr. Accent Man: This is Mr. Dumas (he pronounced it Du-Mass)?
Well-Versed in Chick Lit Librarian: No, Dumas (Du-Mah).

Apparently this was a test. A few minutes later at the reference desk, the man approached me again and, in French, asked me if I speak French. I did not disgrace myself or my three French teachers by attempting to answer in French, because I absolutely do not parle the français. I can recite most of a poem by Jacques Somebody or Other and I can read and understand a few things, but mostly my French training was a disaster. I had three French teachers.

Teacher #1-COMPLETELY insane. I'm not sure why any school board ever thought this woman was fit to be in the company of children. Mostly I learned about the Moulin Rouge and French prostitutes in her class.

Teacher #2-One of the meanest women alive. She looked exactly like a short, round potato with legs and she was very fond of telling my class that when we got out into the real world no one was going to be easy on us like she was. She was not easy on us. I think her true calling was the military (possibly Hitler's military) and somehow she missed it. Perhaps because she looked exactly like a potato.

Teacher #3-If we drew a snail on our test papers, she gave the class extra credit. She had a thing about snails. She also taught us how to sing "Achy Breaky Heart" in French. She did not resemble a potato or any other vegetable.

French pronunciation is a little bit interesting to me at the moment, because I'm reading Bill Bryson's book, Made in America: An Informal History of the English Language in the United States, and it's full of fascinating stuff about foreign words that have been Americanized or used in strange ways for place names, like Versailles, Indiana (pronounced Ver-sales) and
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho (heart of the awl? what?). There's also great stuff about old British pronunciations that have survived in the South (explaining why my sister who spent her formative years in Kentucky pronounces pen as pin and why some of my relatives say warsh for wash and cheer for chair). And the parts about contractions! The contractions are fantastic. Newark is a contraction of the original place name New Ark of the Covenant, and good-bye is the contraction of God Be With You (Godbwye), and there are more! There are lots more. I'm stopping now, but isn't it so, so interesting? Oui! C'est très intéressant.

Even at My Favorite Grocery Store

I LOVE the grocery store. I love all that food stacked up together. I love that I can choose anything I want and take it home with me. I love knowing that the food I select will become soup or pie or a soothing, just-got-home-from-work-and-I'm-exhausted toast snack.

However, I have distinct preferences in grocery stores. There is my preferred grocery store and my unpreferred grocery store in town. One of the reasons I dislike The Bad Store is because the employees force shoppers to use the self-check units. I don't want to check out my own groceries! You'd think I would, because I also don't want to talk to anyone in the store ("yep, I'm having a super day" "they're parsnips" "no, I understand that the plastic bag is free, but I don't want it"), but I'd rather talk to grocery store employees than do my own checking out. I always think, "Why am I checking out my own groceries without getting a discount when the store is PAYING that guy in the apron to check out groceries in the manned line?" I spent the good part of one summer when I was living with my parents trying to convince my mother that the self check unit was not her friend. She was resistant to my teaching.

At The Good Store, there are no self check units. And the customer service is way better*. And they have paper bags. And they have plastic bag recycling. And their chocolate-covered cinnamon bears cost considerably less than they do at The Bad Store. And they contribute to the Summer Reading Program. I like all these things.

*The customer service was way better, until my experience shopping last week. I couldn't find polenta. I asked two people shelving grocery items for help, and they each sent me to a different aisle. I did not find polenta in either suggested location. I went to checkout and the cashier asked me (as I knew she would), Did you find everything okay? And I said NO. Because I assumed, you know, that they ask because they care and have some sort of special customer care procedure that would involve retrieving the item for me or checking to see if they carry the item or giving me the number for a local support group of other people who can't locate grocery store items. Something helpful.

Cashier: What were you looking for?
MBC: Polenta.
Cashier: Huh. I've never even heard of that.
MBC: It's a lot like cornmeal. It usually comes in a round plastic container. Sometimes it's shelved near pre-cooked, packaged polenta.
Cashier: Have you found it here before?
MBC: Yes, but I can't remember where I found it.
Cashier: Huh. I don't think I've ever seen anything like that before.

And that was it. That was my experience at The Good Store. I can only imagine that at The Bad Store I would have had the same conversation and then the cashier would have licked my fruit , kicked me in the shin, and sent me off to check out my own groceries.

I Know a Guy

Marmot Dad has connections. He meets the famous. Last week he met Donald Davis, a wonderful professional storyteller, and he let me meet him, too, which was so nice of him. I'm compiling a list of people I'd like Marmot Dad to meet, so that I can hang out with them. When I started pitching my list to Marmot Dad, he called me a stalker. Harsh.

He did say that Billy Collins might still be a possibility. This is the first poem in Poetry 180, an anthology (the poems are also available online) created as part of a Library of Congress project. There's a second anthology, 180 More, which is also very nice.

Introduction to Poetry

Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem's room
and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author's name on the shore.

But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means.

Paper Princesses

Saturday I was making paper dolls with my nieces. It's nice to do crafts with a 3-yr-old and a 5-yr-old, because they don't care if I make their dolls' legs different sizes (Madame 3-yr-old's doll looked like she may have been suffering from elephantiasis) or accidentally give the dolls 6 fingers or run out of room for hands altogether (Madame 5-yr-old's doll had only one hand and no shoulders).

I made some beautiful clothing out of construction paper for the dolls--coveralls for their gardening and car repair chores and bathing suits for their trips to the beach and sun hats for those sunny sheep dog championships--but what the marmots really wanted was for their dolls to be princesses. It was decreed that the dresses I constructed were too short; the skirts should reach the dolls' feet. And they needed crowns. As I was cutting out spiky, golden crowns, Madame 5-yr-old mused aloud (for her doll), "I wonder who the prince will want to dance with at the ball. Me or Madame 3."

MBC (looking out for Madame 3's best interest): Maybe there will be TWO princes.
Madame 5: I wonder who the HANDSOMEST prince will want to dance with.
MBC: Maybe there will be TWIN princes.
Madame 5: I wonder who the HANDSOMEST twin prince will want to dance with.
MBC: Maybe there will be IDENTICAL twin princes.
Madame 5: I think the handsomest prince will want to dance with me.

Not likely, actually. One-handed girls with no shoulders, no necks, and shoes permanently attached to their feet (I didn't feel like drawing toes; it's hard) rarely get the prince.

The marmots LOVE princes and princesses. Disney princesses, which is a little disturbing. A while back, Madame 5-yr-old was intently watching a Disney movie, taking mental notes. She was particularly interested in the kiss at the end. She watched. She furrowed her brow. She watched. She studied. She grabbed Madame 3-yr-old by the face, pulled her close, and gave her a big, Disney smooch.

Glad it wasn't me. And I pity the prince who will have to dance with either of those poor paper dolls.

History (Mine and Ben Jonson's)

I attended a perfectly nice high school with a rigorous academic program and I had many very fine teachers. However, the sports program was also important, which is how I ended up with a number of teachers who were hired for their coaching skills and not their teaching skills. I know that many coaches are also great teachers, but mine were not. My most memorable coach/teacher was my driver's ed instructor (football coach) who called all the boys meathead and all the girls petunia. Oh, and my health teacher (football coach) who made us watch NASCAR because "you have to be in really good shape to drive those cars. Those boys are lookin' after their health." My European history teacher was a baseball coach. Somehow he made European history the most boring subject I've ever studied, which is absurd! European history is fascinating.

Did you know that Ben Jonson killed Gabriel Spencer in a duel? Apparently, Elizabethan actors were skilled fencers and it sometimes got them in trouble off the stage. Ben Jonson was released from a death sentence by reciting the "neck verse," a remnant of the medieval legal system that allowed the condemned to escape the gallows by reading from the Latin Bible.

Why didn't Coach teach us that?

I learned it, because I've been reading A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, 1599. I'm also reading several chick lit books at the moment. They're teaching me lots of stuff I didn't learn in school, too. Like how to seduce a Scottish man.

Get Thee to a World Heritage Site

I was chatting with my boss yesterday. We were discussing the economic stimulus package and our plans for the money we'd be receiving (assuming we actually send our money back into the market like good patriots and don't horde it in the bank or something). I said that I would be happy to put my money toward the MBC World Travel Fund. And then my boss said, right out loud without even considering that it would make me cry and that I'd feel obliged to start praying for her immortal soul, that she has NO desire to travel. Wha? What? How is this possible? I wake up every morning and have a little talk with myself about how it's not yet time to quit my job and spend a year in Europe. If Gollum and I were ever to hang out, he would crouch in one corner crooning to the Ring of Power and I would crouch in another corner whispering sweet nothings to my world atlas. Doesn't everyone want to see all of the UNESCO World Heritage sites before they die? And if they don't, what's wrong with them?! Don't they know that everywhere else in the world has better bread than we do?

By the way, this is a Valentine's Day post, because visiting the Bedouin marriage fair in Morocco is on my short list for travel destinations. That's romantic, yeah? So, Happy Valentine's Day. Go kiss someone who likes to travel.

Better Than Carrier Pigeon

Just in time for Valentine's Day, Rebekah introduced me to the Bureau of Communication, an excellent fill-in-the-blank way to send messages. I now share it with you, so you can send all your declarations of romantic intent, acknowledgments of occasion, and other important Valentine notes.


In case you look at this airing of grievance closely, I did NOT forget her birthday. Just so we're clear.

Tuey Talks

Tuey has recently begun speaking. None of his words are understandable unless you know and love him, and even then it takes some immersion in Tuey World before his language makes sense. Based on my recent conversations with Tuey, these are the thoughts foremost in his mind:

1. I hit my head. This is my head. I hit it. Right here I hit it. On my head. It made me sad when I hit my head right here. This is my head.

2. I have a spoon. I would also like that spoon in your hand. Please give me that spoon. Please give me that spoon right now. I pound my spoon on the table until I receive a second spoon. I have two spoons. I cook with my spoons. I cook in this pot with my spoons. I have a spoon.

3. The stove is hot. This is the stove. It is hot. Please do not take my stool away from the hot stove. No, no, no! I want to stand near the stove. It is hot.

4. This is a turtle. (Turtle is his best word.) Turtle. Turtle. Turtle.

He also frequently mentions his bellybutton, his hair, socks, being stuck, and going places.

I found this conversation from Madame 3-yr-old in my journal. She was 17-months-old and it was the first full conversation she and I ever had.

Madame (handing me a bar of soap): Eat.
MBC: We don't eat soap.
Madame: Aunt. Eat. Hoap.

I still don't know if this was a joke (your MAMA eats soap) or a command (You EAT this soap). I'm leaning toward joke.

Five MORE Things About Me

Chou tagged me to write five things about myself. As I've demonstrated frequently, I don't mind talking about myself at all, so here goes.

1. I like to take the "secret slow way" when I drive. I think my sister coined this term. It means to take a back way that's not actually a shortcut. Taking the secret slow way is never faster than the direct route. I'd rather add 5-10 minutes to my route than drive on major roads.

2. I love the author bios in the back of books. I usually read them before I begin a book. If I don't, part way through the book I end up frantically leafing to the back to find out who came up with this and to determine if we would be friends.

3. I feel awkward on the phone. If I'm calling someone (even if I'm returning a call), I always (unless it's my mom) feel like I'm interrupting. You're probably thinking, erroneously, that if someone really doesn't want to talk, s/he won't answer the phone. I had to call someone to give him the address of a party once. I barely knew him, so there's no way he had my phone number in his phone. I call, I tell him I have the address, I start to give it to him. He stops me and says, "Could you call back in about an hour? I'm operating heavy machinery right now." Yeah. He was on a forklift. Why answer the phone? He didn't recognize the number, he couldn't really talk anyway, why not just let me leave a message? Why? Why?

4. I skip ahead in books. If I think something bad might happen or the plot becomes too intense, I skim the end of the book so that I know what's going to happen and can emotionally prepare myself. I even did this with the last Harry Potter book.

5. I dislike chain restaurants, and I love independent restaurants. I don't want food to taste the same and restaurant decor to be the same no matter where I go, and I'd rather support people who live in my state or in the community I'm visiting than a giant corporation. The single librarian posse went to a hip, independent place called Pizzeria 712 this weekend. The food was delicious (I had gouda, potato, rosemary pizza; a sweet potato, bacon, spinach, walnut, something or other dish; and panna cotta with berries), the restaurant uses sustainably produced foods when possible, and the prices were reasonable. I'm a big fan of all three of those things. If you live in Utah, go try it.

I'm supposed to tag five more people to write about themselves, but about half my blogging friends have recently been tagged to write variations of this tag and I suspect the other half of being too recalcitrant to comply if I chose them, so if you feel like writing about yourself, consider yourself tagged. Am I bad at this game? I think I am.

Some People Are Nice (Not Me)

I was feeling cranky today, and none of our patrons were doing their part to make the case for humanity. They were all aggravating and belligerent. I was pretty sure I was going to have to build myself a castle on a mountaintop away from society and protected by guard dogs and trained monkeys with tiny pistols and a moat full of boiling oil and sharks (sharks resistant to boiling oil) and accessible only by a secret cable car used to transport delicious cheeses and good reading material to me, where I would build a giant magnifying glass-type apparatus to destroy segments of the population when they bothered me, when in walked our old custodian. He no longer works for us, because the Library hired a new cleaning company, but he'd returned to visit. I've mentioned him before and the fact that we're friends even though his English is limited and my Spanish is almost nonexistent. He approached the reference desk, chatted with me for a minute (we really only have 3-4 conversations that we recycle), and told me that he had a box for me. He went out to his car and came back with a large, white bakery box full of pastries oozing dulce de leche. He handed it to me and said something long in Spanish. I shook my head to indicate that I didn't understand. He thought for a minute and said, "Because you are so beautiful." Then he told me to share with my friends and left to find the Spanish librarians. Well, shoot, that'll take the fire and vinegar right out of you. Sooo, I reckon I won't wipe out humanity today.

Valentine's Day and Love and Gifts and Stuff

It's one week until Valentine's Day. Lots of people (read: women) have issues with Valentine's Day. I do not. I think it's a perfectly nice holiday. Single women especially seem to struggle with Valentine's Day and think they need to be in relationships on that day. But here's the thing--even when you're IN a relationship on Valentine's Day, most men have a severe disadvantage, because they haven't watched enough BBC adaptations to know just what's expected of them. I have many more pro-Valentine thoughts, but I'm tired and I'd rather eat toast and experiment to see how far I can slide across the kitchen floor in my stocking feet than blog tonight.

Here's a list of lovely Valentine's Day gifts, though.

1. Several airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and British Air, offer gift certificates in denominations of $50-$5,000. The PERFECT gift. I secretly long for plane tickets at Christmas every year, but this is a much better option.

2. The Utah Shakespearean Festival also offers gift certificates. They're available in any denomination.

3. Costco sells discount gift certificates for one pound boxes of See's candy.

4. I've mentioned heifer.org before and I still think it's an excellent gift option.

5. A friend recently sent me this link to an organization that sells recycled paper jewelry made by Ugandan women.

I'm sure Roger Hamley would give me gifts like these if he knew me. And if he lived in the 21st century. And if he were real.

Babies and Birthdays

This is the newest baby in our family. She belongs to my brother. I can't tell you much else about her, because I haven't met her yet and asked her about her political leanings or hobbies. Doesn't she have a sweet face?

Most of the babies in our family are born in June. All 3 of the new baby's siblings have June birthdays. In fact, the twins and I share a June birthday. My brother's birthday is in June, and my other brother's wife has a June birthday. My sister's new baby is due in June, and Madame 3-yr-old was born in June. So we're going to have a lot of celebrating in June this year.

If you can only make it to one bash, though, I recommend that you try to attend Madame's 4th birthday party. She has big plans. My sister was fretting over how she would have everything ready for Madame's birthday, if she was in the hospital giving birth at the same time. I offered to help. And then I heard Madame's plans. I may be inadequate to the task.

Here's Madame's vision for her party:

1. She and all her guests will decorate gingerbread houses (in June).

2. There will be a pinata. It will be shaped like Santa Claus. The pinata Santa will be in a sleigh pulled by eight tiny reindeer.

3. There will be a cake. The cake will depict the Holy Family. (Madame has this thing about the Holy Family. When Madame was still tiny, Marmot Dad's mother unearthed this large, plaster nativity set and gave it to the girls. They took the set to the playground and let Joseph and Mary take turns going down the slide. Joseph careened down the slide, hit the ground, and let off a huge puff of plaster. "Ohhh, poor Joseph!" Tiny Madame cried.)

I can hardly wait to see the festivities.

Willing Suspension of Disbelief

I'm no good at the willing suspension of disbelief in movies. Shocking, I know.

I went to see the movie August Rush with some friends tonight. Afterwards The Very Nice Guy gushed about what a fantastic movie it is. This was his third viewing. He's going to buy the DVD. I smiled my I-Am-a-Ken-Doll smile and kept my mouth shut. Then someone else told me about her favorite, precious moments in the film. This is when I realized that I must find new friends immediately and that I had to get out of there right away before people started pulling out Care Bears, holding hands, and singing Disney tunes. Ausgust Rush is a schwarmy movie. And it's based on two people who meet for about five seconds, realize that they have some kind of magical, undeniable, fated connection, which leads to a one night stand. Urgh. One night stands are not romantic!

Even in movies where my eyes aren't already rolled into the back of my head, I have difficulty letting go of reality. When I saw Becoming Jane in the theater, there were girls behind me WEEPING when the romance started to end. Jane Austen never married! What did they expect?

And now that I've railed against silly people and their reality issues, I'm going to go read a stack of fiction books and update my imaginary boyfriend list.

I Recommend GOOD RADIO

It keeps snowing and snowing. It won't stop snowing. I blame that groundhog, who I'm going to have to hunt down and barbecue. That's not today's topic, though.

In graduate school I worked in a jail library. I believe in jail libraries. Working at the jail felt like the fulfillment of public librarianship idealism--providing information and services without bias, serving the disenfranchised, putting something into the hands of a population that was underserved in society in so many ways. While I worked there, I was doing a project on libraries, literature, and arts programs in prisons, so I'm surprised that I never heard Act V, an episode of This American Life that originally aired in 2002. It's about a prison production of Hamlet that looks closely at what's brought to a play about a character considering murder, when it's performed by actors who have murdered. I listened to it this weekend and it's one of the most moving things I've ever heard. At one point, an inmate who plays Laertes is being interviewed about how he relates to his character, and he responds, "I am Laertes." It gave me chills. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I Like Hippos

Sorry if you've actually seen me in the past five years or so, because, if you have, you will have heard everything I'm about to say. I was chatting with friends tonight, though, and we started discussing my deep and abiding love for hippos and I was so filled with joooooy, that I thought I should share.

I love hippos! The very best thing about hippos? Their ears. They look like little flugelhorns. Great big, able-to-crush-you-to-death animals. Little, tiny ears. And they spin. Unfortunately, they also kill more people each year than any other animal, even though they're vegetarians.

This is a picture of a baby hippo, Owen, who was orphaned in the big tsunami a few years ago and made friends with this tortoise in an animal shelter.

The Marmot Family and I went to the zoo several years ago, where I saw the saddest hippo ever. There was only one hippo, and he was submerged in the water, and he wouldn't come out, so I couldn't see his dainty, flugelhorn ears. And he didn't do any spinning. I think maybe he'd been drinking.

My brother's wife had a baby tonight. (Congratulations!) I hope that immediately after introducing her to the most important things in life--family, religion, and the like--that they teach her all about libraries, hippos, sheepdogs, and airports--the good things in life.