Informing in Public

Today was a very Portland day - skies of various shades of grey and various levels of moisture falling from the sky. I continued my afternoon in a very Portland fashion - taking public transport to the Central Branch of Multnomah County Library. For a project on collection development, my partner and I are looking at how to provide an awesome collection to community-based recycling nonprofits in Portland (yes, we found that niche and we are working it). Central boasts a Foundation Center sponsored Nonprofit Resource Center. While it was a much smaller section of the reference section than I expected , it was still a wonderful grouping of otherwise very expensive grant materials and other guides. If you are a nonprofit in Portland, check it out. The librarians at the nearby desk are a great resource as well.

I should qualify that the section was probably smaller than I expected because I have spent far too much time in academic libraries, especially private institutions where the acqusitions budget is generous and consortia/ILL borrowing is plentiful and free to staff. For a library tech/future librarian, I'm a horrible public library user. My local library is a quick walk away, but I rarely go. The hours don't work that well for me and I really don't feel the need to go since I realized that ILL will borrow from that very branch if I need it. I feel I should be using the local library as a way to show my support since I don't pay property taxes or however public libraries are funded in Oregon... see, I don't even know that! Brushing aside a lame excuse like "the wrong hours", I really wasn't a fan of the public library atmosphere. The short video I posted a few days ago lists liking people as one of the main requirements of being a librarian. But I'm sort of ambivalent on that matter. I like the people at my academic library and I don't think I could cope with the variety of life that needs and uses a public library. I often think of public librarians as having the same sort of calling as a priest. They're willing to go out there and give and give to a insane range of people and cope with situations that would challenge a social worker. I admire the members of my cohort who have already decided to pursue this sort of work. It's just not work that I could see myself doing.

But I do need to say that it truly is important work. My first library job was in a small public library. My mother took us weekly to our local branch (where I'm pretty sure I checked out the same biography of Sitting Bull 30 times between the ages of 7 and 12. I had a mad fascination for him and Custer), just as her mother took her. My absolute fear of people (and my mother's own avoidance if possible) lead me to learning as much as I could about how to find and use materials myself. I think that experience informs how I interact with new ideas and technology today - poke at it and play with it and eventually it will reveal its secrets. As an adult (of sorts), I'm more willing to admit that I don't know and to ask for help. But I still completely emphathize with the reluctant patrons mentioned in my course readings, having been terrified on both sides of the desk.

One more down....

First, Armitage reading his poetry, including "Kid". I love the Yorkshire accent.




This might turn into a week of posting! Straight! With actual content (sort of..)!

I spent the evening holed up in the local branch of the local bookstore reading an interminable article from 1996 that called for librarians in the nascent days of the digital age to rebel against the oppression of the big publishing houses by taking back control over the publication and storage of scholarly work. Sadly, we're still paying obscene amounts of money to journal vendors for print and online copies of journals. Digital repositories aren't filling. The author of the article (I'll find the citation when I'm more awake and add it in) argued that libraries who undertook to challenge the presses would have to somehow replicate the prestige and the clout brought by publishing in specific titles. Unfortunately he didn't give a how and I think that's where the field is a bit stuck. It's easy to argue against vanity printing and to point out the success of small digital repositories in very specific fields. But how to suddenly recreate the name and pull of a Big Name Journal? It's not going to happen overnight, but the technology is changing overnight. The underlying basis for the clout, not the clout itself, needs to be challenged... not that I have a great suggestion as to how (which is just as useless as the above argument).

ETA: The article in question: Atkinson, Ross. 1996. Library Functions, Scholarly Communication, and the Foundation of the Digital Library: Laying Claim to the Control Zone. Library Quarterly 66: 239-265.

After finishing the article, I met up with a young woman who has applied to VC. She was lovely - bright, confident, articulate. I look back on myself at that age and can't imagine having that powerful a sense of self. I like to think I'm somewhat together now - note that I had a comfortable conversation with a complete stranger and lived to tell the tale. I just wonder sometimes what I missed out on because of my reticence, my shyness. Silly to wonder, really, but there it is.

Prawo Jazdy

This makes me inexplicably happy.

There's something appealing in the image of a man resembling my father's cousins tearing down the back roads of Ireland with his rebellion in his pocket.

Do you like books? People? Good!

The brilliant Stephen altered me to this fine educational film.




Love of books! Love of people! Love of cross-indexing!

A few things struck me about this film. Most of the librarians here are women. They're reading stories to children, locating books for teenagers, and whipping up catalog cards by the thousands. I believe there are two male librarians in this film. The first is asked to compile a scientific bibliography (about radar) and the second is a library administrator. Yes, this is 1946 and the glass ceiling was a bit lower. But I still see some of this today in the library world - more in terms of administration than in the bibliographers. Of course I lack more than anecdotal evidence to support this assertion, and there are a great number of fiercely intelligent and admirable women in leadership positions in the field, this still bugged me. I'm not even sure if that's even a complaint, because in this world of books and people, I'm by no means alone. For LIS 510, we read an article featuring a study on typical users of libraries. The typical user? Overeducated, middle-class, white and female. Yes! I am deep within my world, with my sisters in overachieving. But I wonder if I need to stop more often to think about what it must be like to not have 10 years of various library work experience, to be one of the few men in the program. What must it be like for my friends who are doing this program with kids at home? From the East coast? I need to remember what it was like to be a freshman too scared to use the reserve desk. I need to remember what it was like to sit and wait for that article that I needed yesterday. What is it like to be lost? To be displaced? To be angry? What is it like to be the person on the other side of the desk?

The second thing I noted in this film is that the field really hasn't changed all that much. If you ignore love of books (and I've yet to meet a librarian who isn't somewhat of a reader) and instead focus on the qualification of loving knowledge and lifelong learning, you're in 2009. Learning and people are still at the core of what we do as librarians. While shelf-list cards have bowed to MARC, the goal of technical services is to still create a tool to allow the users to come into to contact with the collection, with "the stuff". That attitude towards service, to trying to get out there to find what the patron needs so they'll come back and get more knowledge featured prominently in a class lecture a week or so ago. Documents change. Service types and tools change. But we're still trying to get the user to their blue book on television as best we can.

Armitage

I read this today in Simon Armitage's collection Shout while taking a procrastinatory bath. It's not the subject that attracts me here (though it helps), but rather the energy, the pushing rhythm that leaves you breathless at the end.


Kid
Simon Armitage

Batman, big shot, when you gave the order
to grow up, then let me loose to wander
leeward, freely through the wild blue yonder
as you liked to say, or ditched me, rather,
in the gutter. . .well, I turned the corner.
Now I've scotched that ' he was like a father
to me' rumour, sacked it, blown the cover
on that 'he was like an elder brother'
story, let the cat out on that caper
with the married woman, how you took her
downtown on expenses in the motor.
Holy robin-redbreast-nest-egg-shocker!
Holy roll-me-over-in-the-clover,
I'm not playing ball boy any longer
Batman, now I've doffed the off-the-shoulder
Sherwood-Forest-green and scarlet number
for a pair of jeans and crew-neck jumper;
now I'm taller, harder, stronger, older.
Batman, it makes a marvellous picture:
you without a shadow, stewing over
chicken giblets in the pressure cooker,
next to nothing in the walk-in larder,
punching the palm of your hand all winter,
you baby, now I'm the real boy wonder.

A bag of rock salt

Like most people who claim to be of the geeky persuasion, I have a difficult relationship with George Lucas. The Star Wars Trilogy - the Original - ranked among my favorites growing up. I saved for the VHS box set and to this day will put them on when I'm sick or cranky or when background noise that's not Absolutely Fabulous is required. I listened patiently to his ramblings when required to watch The Power of Myth for a course on Arthurian legends. I just ignored the prequel trilogy (except for the third, which I saw with a friend while studying in London on a hot summer's day).

But now he's gone too far.

Because I ignored most of the prequels, I missed out on Jocasta Nu. Happily she was brought to my attention via a lecture on reference interviewing for my program.

She is the ultimate in old librarian stereotype. Let's run through the list:

• Old woman with possibly witchy tendencies
• Disapproving mouth and attitude
  
• Tight bun, complete with sticks for stabbing out your eyes once you realize, Luke, she is your mother
• The belief that all of the knowledge of the world (that matters anyway) is contained within her own collection and you are wrong, sir!
  
• The willingness to say "Nope, nothing doing" after a 10 second interview.

Fantastic! I mean, it's not Lucas' fault entirely that he's relying on one note characters to not really progress the non-existing plot forward. Is it?

Annoying, but I won't kill him with a shovel at midnight.

Keeping It Positive

In an effort to remain on the happier side of thing, here is a semi-annual list of things that are currently made of awesome.

*Nerdfighters

*The Elegance of the Hedgehog

*The glorious sunlight

*The run/walk I took with my husband in the aforementioned sunlight

*Amy Ray

*Postcards waiting to be mailed

*Nearly completed search assignments

*Getting a week ahead in reading

*Siblings visiting in April

*Dinner and hugs with good people

*Dickens (always Dickens).

James I

The Husband and I are in the middle of what I like to call "Everyone Makes a Films About the Tudors, with bonus points for extra Glenda Jackson". So far we've seen all of The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Elizabeth R, Elizabeth (Dr. Who and James Bond chat on a beach!), and Elizabeth:The Golden Age. A few weekends ago we watched Anne of a Thousand Days and Mary, Queen of Scots. So much delicious period British drama.

The latter film got me thinking about James I, Elizabeth's successor to the throne and the Golden Age. He just seems ripe for dramatic adaptation, especially in a post-Freudian world. He had what I would consider a troubled childhood - mother exiled, father murdered, and you're King of Scotland by the age of one. He composed works on the ideology of monarchy, survived the Gunpowder plot and Spain. And then it all falls apart with Charles I.

But who to cast? Do we start with his youth or his ascension to the throne? Guy Fawkes would have to show up so people could go "Oh, that's that guyyyyy!" Do we go till his death, with some foreshadowing of the Civil War? Someone really needs to work this out for me. What has Alison Weir been up to lately?

The Morning After

There's a striking resemblance between a hangover and the heaviness that coats the morning after an anxiety attack.

There are the physical ailments. The skin on your cheeks is dry and itchy. Your eyes hurt - you're not sure how, but they do. You're probably dehydrated, so your head aches. As you drag yourself out of bed, you start contemplating international sanctions against alarm clocks, especially alarm clocks positioned on the other side of the room. You stumble into the bathroom to start the shower and make the mistake of looking in the mirror. Your hair is a gnarled mess. Your fingernails are essentially gone. You're half-dressed in whatever you were wearing last night. Your breath tastes terrible and your glasses are smudged. A long hot shower is all you want right now, followed by a soothing cup of milky coffee and toast. But you haven't the time. There's a bus to catch, a job to do on the complete other end of the city.

There are the emotional ailments. Your recollection of the previous evening comes back in bursts. You move alternatively through embarrassment and faint fear. You feel not necessarily fragile, but raw. The covering over your organs seems thinner, more transparent than useful. You don't want to be nudged too hard or all of the black bile from last night will come tearing up your throat. You want to apologize to anyone who saw you or dealt with you, but that would be too much. While brushing your damp hair your steel yourself for the day. You're not going to think about it. You're going to move on and pretend it never happened. Yes.

Thus resolved, you drag yourself out the door. You turn a deaf ear to that voice in the back of your mind and walk out into the cold morning sun which, even behind the clouds, makes your head ache all the more on your lonely trek to the bus stop.

Living in an Exponential World

So, I'm a little late to this video, but it's still fascinating. I think it really illustrates the problems that libraries are facing in an increasingly digital world (and it's not just Google) but also the new technology and types of users we'll be seeing. Once it's laid out before you, you can see just how rapidly our world is changing with each new development in technology. I remember the last day of residency and Stuart having to explain why the courses aren't as technologically based as he would like at times - because by the time we would graduate, our first year and a half would be worth next to nothing.

Makes me wonder what exactly it is that I'm getting myself into.

Onwards

I've been avoiding an update here as I couldn't think of anything appropriate to follow up the post on Sally. Talking about doing statistics in Excel or writing a book review on an Austen encyclopedia seemed inappropriate (though the Austen is Victorian... ish). But I know I just need to get something out here and then I'll be fine. So here goes.

Life has hit it's usual rhythm of the quarter. Sundays are spent tidying up assignments and then waiting for the last possible moment to hand them in (still need to put off seeing that green checkmark for as long as possible). The apartment is unearthed from a week of clutter in between. I am amazed at the sheer amount of stuff AK and I manage to bring into the apartment on a weekly basis. Today we gathered up all the soda cans and bottles that have been packing my entryway and turned them in at the story. We earned an obscene amount of money, but I don't think that will encourage him to take stuff in on a more regular basis. My friend Maria is due over in an hour or so with her child. Lasagna and Rock Band are promised enticements to bring them out to suburbia. Tomorrow we pay a very nice lady to do our very complicated taxes and then I file FAFSA and hope that I look suitably poorer this year than last.

All very grown up activities on the list (except the Rock Band). I was speaking with a friend of mine online the other day about how I keep wondering when I'll feel properly grown up. The years I've spent living on my own or with AK have taught me a lot. There's a change in how I act or think about things that markedly different from how I was 4 years ago or more. But when will things be right? When will life fall easily into place? When will I stop burning the bottoms of cookies, remember to floss twice a day, and cease spending hours on WebMD convinced that I'm about to die of some horrible intestinal cancer instead of just having an upset stomach? When will that clarity arrive so I can put aside all of this useless internal mess and be properly grown up? Turns out the answer is never, which is irksome but perhaps to be expected. A professor of mine once said that her 20s were awful, her 30s difficult, and her 40s magnificient. I'm just not sure I want to wait that long (again, part of the problem).

The wait to become a real librarian feels similar. I'm waiting for the day I'm a professional and suddenly the wisdom of the ages and Dewey will be open to me. But things seem to be moving along slower than that (not that I want to be job hunting in this economy). I've registered for ACRL in March, which is both an extra trip to Seattle (one I think I'll be repeating a week later for residency). My first Profesional Library Conference - a chance to pass out business cards, to gather up some swag, and the possibility of embarassing myself in front of roomfuls of potential future employers. Good times! I'll be travelling and sharing a room with the incredible Bonnie, so that should help things along. It's lovely to have someone currently in the field who is also a good friend.

So, that's a post started and done. Let's hope I can go on from here.

Sally

From the Royal Holloway English Department website:

Professor Sally Ledger

It is with enormous regret that we must announce the sudden and tragically early death of Professor Sally Ledger. Sally joined the Department of English in Autumn 2008 as Hildred Carlile Professor in English and Director of the Centre for Victorian Studies.

Even in this short time she had established herself as an indispensable presence in the life of the Department. This was not only because of her outstanding scholarly distinction ─ exemplified in her recent book on Dickens and the Popular Radical Imagination as well as preceding studies of Ibsen, the New Woman, and the cultural politics of the late nineteenth century ─ but also, and at least as importantly, because of her vibrant personal qualities: her warmth, her infectious sense of humour, great good sense, and sheer intellectual energy. Under her leadership, the College had already taken important steps towards becoming the leading centre for Victorian Studies in the country.

Before joining us here, Sally was Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at Birkbeck, University of London, where she had worked in the School of English and Humanities since 1995. As a PhD supervisor and mentor of junior colleagues, Sally was second to none. A rising generation of scholars will be for ever indebted to her for showing how exemplary interdisciplinary scholarship, collegiality and sense of the value of sociability and family life could be combined.

Her colleagues past and present, and indeed the world-wide community of nineteenth-century scholars, will be as shocked and saddened as we are by this news, and will join us in sending our most heartfelt condolences to her husband, Jim Porteous, and son, Richard. There will be a further announcement in respect of the funeral arrangements and a memorial service for her.

Edited to add: A beautiful remembrance from Birkbeck.

I can't call Sally a mentor. Even friend might stretch the point. But she was an amazing professor, always enthusiastic about her work and the work you brought to her office hours. She helped give shape to my dissertation, listening patiently while I tried to explain just what the hell I was trying to do with H.G. Wells. I still remember running into my first day of class at Birkbeck late (thanks Circle Line!) and her welcoming face. She was the model of what I thought an academic should be - cogent, energetic, dedicated, insightful, and with a remarkable ability to be so human and so real. I regret not keeping up with her or anyone else at Birkbeck really, for slinking away without my Distinction. I regret never telling her what I've just typed.

Windy City

It's not even ten p.m. yet (as I start to type) and I'm exhausted. The wind has been raging outside my apartment all day, shaking the windows and whistling through the trees. This morning I managed on a longish run/walk with a good friend. The mile warm-up was brutal. My feet were heavy, my lungs on fire. The wind was cold and tenacious, not quite pushing me off track, but not exactly at my back speeding me along. But the next few miles were easier. My legs and spleen relaxed, my lungs adjusted to the cool air, and I eventually found myself cruising along as if I was still on my 15-20 mile a week training cycle.

The first mile and a half of any run is the worst. All I want to do is slow down and walk, just for a minute, and then I'll totally start back up again. If I stop in that first mile, it's over. I'll get a nice long walk in, but not a run. But if I can break through it, if I can convince my body to hold out for the sign that marks the I can go for as long as I want. I'm still not sure what it takes to get through, to get over the hump. Knowing that would make my training so easy - I would just do "X" and find myself an Olympic Marathon contender. A year after I started running for real (as supposed to a random mile here and there marked "cross-training"), I'm still at a loss.

Work, schoolwork in particular, requires a similar sort of mental bolstering. Certain assignments and topics are instantly attractive. These are the classes where the recommended reading is always done and my papers are masterpieces in attention and scope. But the rest sort of lingers in the background. My overachieving ways used to be the spark - I have to do this assignment because it's part of being excellent and a nerd, but I will wait for the very last moment, because I am either not interested or (more likely) terrified of beginning something I don't understand or something beyond my perceived capabilities.

Too much of my life has been governed by fear - fear of failure, fear of disappointing others, fear of being alone. The only way to get over all this is to face it head on. And I have, after a fashion. I have not left anything till the last minute for this degree. I actively email professors or fellow students. I have a fancy agenda where everything gets scribbled down. And yet here I sit, with plenty to do and no motivation to start. Part of it is sleepiness (long run, little food, too much work). Part of it is a fear to start because nothing will be as good as the grades I got last term. Part of it is just pure laziness. I know I sometimes come across as that hardworking, organized girl (at least this is what people tell me), but I don't feel all that dedicated. I have a lot I want to do and would like to do, and then I find myself in bed with a novel or writing a pointless blog entry about how I feel I'm not getting enough work done.

Taking a quick look through my LJ indicates that some things never change.

Boxes upon boxes

I'm in the process of sending my old notes from VC into the big dumpster next to the club. It's a fair amount of stuff because I apparently kept everything with the thought that this accumulated knowledge, this tangible wisdom, would be useful one day. It's not, of course, and my handwriting is only part of the problem. I pulled out graded essays (not many of them left actually) and one or two notebooks that seemed worth keeping (Darlington, Dickens...). The rest is either pitched or awaiting another trip to the dumpster. I did the same to my Birkbeck box. I kept the beautiful color-coded dissertation notes (too pretty to let go of yet) and the expensive roll of photocopies from the Newspaper Reading Room and the small notebooks from my electives. That's it. All together in a small box that once housed just part of my music and history notes.

I don't think I'm going to wake up tomorrow and regret this decision. Honestly, the notes were packed up individually after the courses were over and transferred to a desk drawer. They were then boxed up when I left VC and that box sat in a basement for a year, traveled across the country, were placed in a closet, and have sat there ever since. There's a larger box beneath the small academic box and the small box of childhood items my parents mailed to me several months ago (all the newspaper clippings of me being a "gifted" child, my high school diploma etc.). It's filled with high school and middle school notes and letters, the bits from the writing courses I took at CTY. I can't quite bring myself to sort through those boxes or the trunk in my closet in the bedroom that holds every journal I've ever touched. Mementos are harder to part with than notes scrawled in a class. They're too much like flesh. But what I've done is a big chunk gone, a heavy burden lifted. I still couldn't read the undergraduate thesis again - to think I put nearly 17000 words together in three weeks! I can't read the graduate thesis either. So much effort into researching and such a painful stalling with the writing!

I really feel that in this program I am so much more invested in my work. I'm proud of my work. I've stopped worrying that everyone in the course can see what I've created because now I actually put the time and the care into crafting something great. I do have a handful of what I consider excellent papers from VC and from Birkbeck. I just had problems finishing up. I left everything to the last minute. It's not been that way at UW at all. I'm on top of things and finding I'm actually retaining items. The drive to hold onto the manifestations of knowledge isn't so great when I feel that I've actually retained most of what I'll need.

I have a number of empty binders that can take on the notes I create in this program (makes sense to keep them now since I'm already seeing overlap between core courses). In due time they'll see the bottom of a dumpster. But I don't think it will be that bad.

Residency

Residency for my second quarter of grad school was amazing. I managed to get a room in a inn/hostel right near campus - I cannot express how fantastic it was to wake up in the morning, grab a free breakfast, and then leisure stride to class instead of fighting commuters on the buses. The PDX crowd was out in full force and it was just so much fun. Lots of talking and getting to know better people who I typically just spoke to on message boards and Facebook. There's a disscussion on how to revamp the residencies. The horried weather that necessaitated flying to Seattle also meant that the iSchool tried out some sychronous broadcasting techniques so the people who were stuck weren't at a disadvantage. While I wasn't pleased to shell out money for a flight, I wanted to be with my classmates. I wanted to be with people and to talk and connect with them. I chose my program because there is a residency component and I knew that meant I wouldn't ever just be staring at a screen wondering who was on the other side. Money and time are such a consideration, especially in this economic climate, but I would hate to see the residencies go.

Courses for this term look good. Research Methods seems incredibly useful and not terribly challenging in format - essentially if I keep up on readings and lectures and carefully follow instructions, I should be fine. I'm a little worried because it is math, but it's math happening behind the scenes in Excel. Collections et. al is rather dreamy. Book reviews, and collection discussion, history of the book, fantastic! I really came to love my IB course, but at the time it was so incredibly frustrating and stressful (but absolutely worth it). Maybe I feel more relaxed and excited this time around because I've already figured out how a quarter works, how to use the technology, and how to slip back into the groove of academics At least, I hope that's the case.

The husband remains in SD/Vegas and I'm quite ready to see him after three weeks apart. For now the history of the book and research ethics calls to me...

Big Blue

In 1988/1989 (I was very little so I don't quite recall), my father was working for Grumman Aerospace on Long Island. He started to see the writing on the wall (the end of the great defense contracts) and since he had two small children he began looking for a new job. In June 1989 he gained a job at IBM in upstate New York (or what passes for upstate for Islanders/City folk). We moved from his hometown to the town where my parents live now. After many years that were quite difficult at times, my parents bought a house, and saw their two eldest graduate from high school, college, and post-graduate degrees. My little sister is now in the same high school, taking the same accelerated courses I trudged through nearly ten years ago. Things weren't perfect, but stable with the addition of a second job my father has been working for nearly 15 years.

This afternoon at work the campus gathered for the annual Christmas luncheon, postponed till the new year due to the unusual wintry weather the descended upon the Pacific Northwest. The President spoke, sharing with us all how great the university is doing in terms of enrollment and funding, that we could take comfort in these tough times in knowing that we are cared for and that the university is well positioned for whatever is thrown at us in the coming year.

The red light was lit on my phone when I got back to my desk following lunch. It was my sister. She had that quality to her voice, that slight tremble that instantly set my heart racing.

After nearly 19 years, my father's job at IBM has been outsourced. Once he has trained his replacement, he has the option of trying to find another job in the company (competing with the 5000 others who have been let go as well) or he's out. He just started nursing school in an attempt to get out of the sinking ship with something (I can remember layoff threats back in elementary school).

My sister, the nurse, is planning on helping out the parents and taking on overtime. I'm a wage slave with all my free time focused on grad school. The husband and I are getting by, but we haven't much to share. I feel useless and helpless, as the family of 4999 IBMers already do.

Keep my family in your thoughts.

New York State of Mind

I'm typing this from my parents' couch in New York. It's been absolutely freezing here the past few days, the sort of cold where the snow creaks under your shoes and you not so silently curse the dog who has dragged you out and can't quite make up her mind if she wants to go left or right.

I've read a lot of Dickens, spent quality time with the Little One, knitted nearly half a dozen dish cloths, and spent too few hours in front of the fireplace. I'm slowly falling in love with Mavis Gallant and itching to get to my copy of The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Looking back at my Goodreads, it doesn't seem like I'll be getting too much reading in next quarter - at least not novels. Short Story collections seem to be the way to go or re-reading old favorites or new favorites.

2008 has turned out to be one of the better years of my life, a distinct turn around from the past few years which weren't exactly terrible - I've always had food, shelter, money, and awesome people around me. 2003 onwards seemed to be one long period of growth and stumbling and picking myself back up. When I ran into a professor of mine following a bad break up in college, she remarked that her 20s were difficult, her 30s calmer but still difficult, and her 40s rather excellent and chill. I'm hoping that I'm trending towards stability. This past year I've just felt more together, more whole, more calm than ever before. While the impending recession could make things difficult, I'm remaining hopeful.

Here's to a safe and prosperous 2009 for you all.

Christmas

It's been a fairly typical holiday for AK and me - meaning we pretty much lazed around the house or worked on individual projects. Our nod to the season was a walk in the fiercely melting snow (a second walk was cut short when we both sank up to the ankles in melted snow), a tree drawn in washable markers on the sliding glass door, and the surprise win of the Lakers over the 19-in-a-row-win Celtics (and Phil Jackson shaved off his beard! neither of us can cope with this fact). We didn't do presents this year because we're both horrible about asking for gifts and the procuring them in a timely fashion. We pretty much stick to the "Oh, I saw this and now it's yours five minutes after I've purchased it" school of thought when it comes to birthdays and other major gift giving events. This isn't necessarily a stand against commercialism and the acquisitive nature of society, since we do buy stuff. I am never left safely alone in Powell's (even when doing class research there I had to try to focus on the "serendipitous exchange of information" instead of what was newly remaindered) and AK has a serious problem when it comes to fencing shoes. Expressing love through gifts isn't something I inherited from my bargain hunting grandmother (it all went to the twin sister). I'm better at feeding people or finding them books or other bits of info (there's a bit in the JFW podcast mentioned below about how librarians express love through neat bundles of information and I am someone who routinely brings home articles on fencing or interesting bits for her husband in neat pdf form).

While walking today I talked with AK about a number of conversations I've had/blogs I've read lately about people "de-cluttering" - clearing out the garbage and excess possessions in their lives. One blogger I've been following calculated that in a little over ten days, she and her husband took nearly three-quarters of a ton of stuff to the dump or Goodwill. It's difficult for me to wrap my head around that amount of stuff. I get cranky and stifled sometimes when I look around our apartment and realize that it would take me more than a few hours to pack everything up and ship it out (a product of living primarily in dorms, even over the summer, for five years). The husband does hold onto stuff for a while, but it's never gone beyond the level of "Let's take and hour and recycle the soda cans and this room will be normal". What else is going on if you have that much excess in your life?

Maybe what it comes down to is that I find stuff to be overwhelming and often expensive. Some stuff in life is necessary. Some stuff in live makes the act of living more enjoyable. And some stuff seem just to be there for the gathering and collecting. There are a number of pursuits taken up by friends (often of a geeky nature) that seem wholly about acquiring things. Not experiences or knowledge or personal growth, but stuff. If you're into BPAL, you buy and trade imps of scent. If you're into roleplaying, you buy a number of expensive hardbacks. Boardgames have expansion packs. Films keep coming out with special editions or high def versions. Some knitters have stashes that are probably half the size of my local (tiny) knitting store.

Yes, you can certainly get pleasure from a scent and personal growth from problem solving games. These are not empty pursuits. But where's the limit? At what point do you stop enjoying the objects and are just gathering them to have them? Lately I've been clearing out some old magazines and books, including back issues of Victorian Studies. Did I subscribe to this journal because I really cared about the content or because I wanted to be the sort of person who subscribed to the journal? The clothes make the man and the possessions the person. The Ipod and trucker hat makes the hipster. The limited edition BPAL and SF hardback make the geek. What I'm trying to figure out is what exactly makes the M and am I made out of stuff I actually value, stuff I actually need? Do I need all my old notebooks from college? Do I even need the photocopies of my readings from this past quarter (I should probably finish the degree before I start pitching things). At what point do you stop owning stuff and it starts owning you?

This is perhaps not the merriest of Christmas themes, but I'm in the middle of Dickens' "The Haunted Man" and it's not exactly the most cheerful tale I've ever read.

Snow snow snow snow...

Sometime today I believe Portland broke a 40 year record for the most snowfall in December. Outside is just unending white, with that sharp wet smell I associate with fall finals as an undergrad (often a blizzardy time of year). I've baked a few half-hearted batches of Christmas cookies (adjusted to the particular tastes of AK), finished a book, made great progress on Nicholas Nickleby, and bought my texts for next quarter (a most expensive expedition). Since his work is still closed, AK has turned nocturnal again, slipping his cold feet under the covers just as I'm ready to stumble into the kitchen for a pot of tea. I shouldn't complain, since it was in just such a wintery situation that we decided that being together in the long term wouldn't be such a bad idea (he coached late into the night and I was fighting with the dreaded undergraduate thesis).

Things seem to be improving outdoors, and I say this after attempting a four mile walk this afternoon where a friend and I managed to completely cross paths, each arriving home cranky and exhausted two hours after we left. The snow has taken on that dense slushiness that forewarns a great thaw and that also seeps deeply into old running shoes that anyone might be using instead of snow boots for traction. Hopefully all will be approaching well in time for my flight to NY on Friday evening. Trips home are always complicated - I want to see my family, but they also drive me insane. I own that this is by no means an original complaint and I do love my family. I've just lost the ability to understand them. It's mostly my fault - I've moved on from them willingly, both emotionally and geographically. For a very long time I wanted to be someone different. I had a very specific vision of this new person: skinny, well-read with an appropriate quote at her fingertips, well-dressed, possessed of a strong voice that was vaguely sweet and which lacked even a hint of Queens, an Important Job with an office that had a door, a couch, and some art on the wall. Nothing of substance, as you can see, but that's as far as I could see as an awkward eighteen-year-old who was very conscious of her jeans, her hips, and her lack of Milton.

Right now, I think I can say that I'm happy. I have a cup of tea, a desk, and a rather welcoming postcard of Elizabeth Bishop (she's caught mid-sentence and seems so enthused by what I'm producing that I'm inspired to keep on going). It's trying to convince my parents, who aren't quite sure what a librarian or a fencing coach does for a living and who haven't seen how comfortable and happy I am in this small room, that I'm approaching content. At least the Little One (14, but that's what I'll always call her) is excited by arrival. I hope I don't disappoint.

Notes and Nigella

Okay, so this isn't the promise paean to JFW (as I'm now calling her, because we're clearly on a initial basis). Winter has visited its fury upon the Pacific Northwest and after a few days of cabin fevery, a frustrating day at work, and a two hour bus ride home, I'm a little too worn to do the task justice.

So how does a budding librarian shake off the cares and worries of the workaday world? By organizing her Documents folder and by reading Nigella Lawson cookbooks, of course!

My virtual and actual desktop both look rather similar at the end of a quarter/semester - covered with random copies of documents in various states of completion or usefulness and other detritus (for the actual desktop, this includes about 4 tea mugs and several empty gum packets). There's something soothing about tidying away your materials at the end of a project. You're replete with the smugness of completion and the knowledge that, should you choose, you never have to look at any of this ever again in your entire life. The hardest part of this program was realizing that my classmates would actually be looking at my work. My style as an undergrad was one of last minute flair and very little editing, so you can understand my apprehension. I gave myself plenty of time this quarter and while it all wasn't perfect, it was pretty damn good and I probably won't burst into tears when I take this all out again in three years for my portfolio.

I must admit that I am taken, every so often, to look back on old papers or assignments - I did this lately in order to show a friend what I thought an art history research paper looked like. I do this sort of archeological dig with my paper and online journals. It's a check to see how I'm growing and developing as a writer and as a human. While I appreciate my enthusiasm for the portraiture of John Singer Sargent in my Junior year, I wonder why it took three paragraphs to get to a thesis statement. The less said about my first research paper on Owen and Sassoon, the better (thought Craiglockhart is still one of my favorite words to say). My paper on L.E.L. and Felicia Hemans still sounds rather tight (even my bitchier sections on Greer and Armstrong still sound convincing). Will I feel this way about my discussion of context in IB? I've never really been concerened with readibility (at least for posterity - if it sounded okay when I was printing it and waiting to run it across campus, I went with it), so it's satisfying to see my prose coming together into something better. I have edited our more needless words (per Strunk and White) for LIS 510 than I have in my two previous degrees. Concision and clarity usually took a back seat to turns of phrase and enthusiasm. Yet, I'm still not sure if this is where I want my voice to go. We'll see.

How this ties back to Nigella Lawson? I could sit and read her cookbooks all day. Her prose is amusing, original, and frankly the next best thing to sitting down and eating something warm and freshly baked is reading about warm and freshly baked things (also, easier on the thighs). Her previous Christmas Specials (provided by an anonymous hero on Google Video) have provided background noise to a number of projects in the past few weeks. I love this woman. She's smart, she eats, she reads late at night with a snack at hand and seems rather happy, thank you. I was a little annoyed the other night (while reading in bed with a snack at hand) to see this rather dissapointing view of Nigella as a role model for women. Okay, she comes from the top of the Tories (this was a Torygraph poll afterall), her brother got her a sweet job, and she's married to an eccentric millionaire. She's not perfect and I don't think she really gives off that vibe - it's all quick because she's clumsy and lazy and would rather be off writing or reading a novel. She's suffered more loss than is fair and still manages to remain a powerful brand name. Stop hating.

And with that, I will retire with this cup of Lady Grey.