An extensive time at the Information Desk on a quiet afternoon yielded four conversation with long-time patron friends, and each one expressed pleasure at the interaction. And that's what life is all about. Finding your niche.
I'm sure many people wonder why I don't retire - and one of these days I surely will - but to have been given the gift of a natural fit, occupation-wise, I consider such an enormous gift and I'm not ready to relinquish it.
When a patron comes in and says, "I need a book for this weekend - you always know what I like" - to me it's the Oscar of the library world!
And beyond the matching books and people is the life line of birth, illness, joy, successes, children, marriage, divorce, death. The confidences ebb and flow. It is the bar-tender phenomenon because I don't know these people beyond the desk. And yet I have a stake in their happiness.
In looking back, what could be better than lending someone a book, your ear, your heart?
Friday, April 29, 2016
Monday, April 18, 2016
feathered friends
I am always amazed when I compare the "Judy, Judy, Judy" song of the tufted titmouse to the actual body of the bird! It is such a teeny little creature, but it just belts out it's reverberating song through the entire woods. Talk about a PA system! What are we mortals missing? If we all had vocal cords like that we could do away with things like "Match.Com"!
And my other avian observation of the morning - a large crow kept landing across the street and pecking, very skittishly, at a filled white garbage bag waiting for pickup at the curb. I had never seen that before and I always thought that birds' sense of smell wasn't highly developed. Even vultures I thought relied heavily on sightings. And whatever was inside the garbage bag was all wrapped up tightly. Was there advanced avian word out that the Japanese neighbors had exotic leftovers?!
Other than that, I'm just kicked-back lolling in this spring-shot morning.
And my other avian observation of the morning - a large crow kept landing across the street and pecking, very skittishly, at a filled white garbage bag waiting for pickup at the curb. I had never seen that before and I always thought that birds' sense of smell wasn't highly developed. Even vultures I thought relied heavily on sightings. And whatever was inside the garbage bag was all wrapped up tightly. Was there advanced avian word out that the Japanese neighbors had exotic leftovers?!
Other than that, I'm just kicked-back lolling in this spring-shot morning.
Thursday, April 14, 2016
frock time
We had a tea for our library volunteers yesterday, always a delightful Spring ritual to thank all the lovely people who oil our organizational joints throughout the year! And as we were preparing for it I quoted this poem to the colleagues I was working with - a poem from my mother's 2nd grade reader with the brown cover and the pages that were shiny and cracked with turning -
You're going out to tea today
So mind your manners well,
Let all accounts I hear of you
Be pleasant one to tell.
Don't spill you tea
Or crumb your bread
And don't tease one another,
And Tommy mustn't talk so much
Or quarrel with his brother.
Say "If you please"
And "thank you, ma'am"
Be home at eight o'clock
And, Fanny, do be careful
That you do not tear your frock!
At least that's how I remember it being quoted to me! I suppose I read it for myself one day too, but I can hear my mother's voice reciting it over and over upon request.
Just the language of manners, frocks, pleasant accounts.... ah, another era...one I know that had its own problems, but oh the civility of it all!
You're going out to tea today
So mind your manners well,
Let all accounts I hear of you
Be pleasant one to tell.
Don't spill you tea
Or crumb your bread
And don't tease one another,
And Tommy mustn't talk so much
Or quarrel with his brother.
Say "If you please"
And "thank you, ma'am"
Be home at eight o'clock
And, Fanny, do be careful
That you do not tear your frock!
At least that's how I remember it being quoted to me! I suppose I read it for myself one day too, but I can hear my mother's voice reciting it over and over upon request.
Just the language of manners, frocks, pleasant accounts.... ah, another era...one I know that had its own problems, but oh the civility of it all!
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Safety
if I was a jewel
my dad was the box
lined with the softest cotton
if I was a seashell
he was a rounded mound
of sand that kept me
from washing out
to sea
if I was an egg
he was the woven strands
of hair, grass and twigs
hollowed out
holding me
if I was a child
he was always there
at the edges
quietly
encircling.
and so today.
my dad was the box
lined with the softest cotton
if I was a seashell
he was a rounded mound
of sand that kept me
from washing out
to sea
if I was an egg
he was the woven strands
of hair, grass and twigs
hollowed out
holding me
if I was a child
he was always there
at the edges
quietly
encircling.
and so today.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
the dilemma of Mr. Clean
I just checked in my mother's diaries to see what she was doing on this day in 1954 and 1958 and each day she was doing spring housecleaning. Just like clockwork her household rhythms ticked along across the years.
I have never done spring housecleaning.
I hope that confession doesn't cause any seismic changes in the universe.
It's a concept that I applaud heartily but I think at first I was working full-time, then was having children full-time, then working again full-time and now working half-time and completely sold on the concept of leisure time whenever possible!
And while I would love to once more experience the delight of a room completely aired and washed, dusted, polished, shined from stem to stern if I have to make that delight happen, it's going to remain just a concept.
I will do the day to day order, but beyond that life is too short to be tied to a mop!
I have never done spring housecleaning.
I hope that confession doesn't cause any seismic changes in the universe.
It's a concept that I applaud heartily but I think at first I was working full-time, then was having children full-time, then working again full-time and now working half-time and completely sold on the concept of leisure time whenever possible!
And while I would love to once more experience the delight of a room completely aired and washed, dusted, polished, shined from stem to stern if I have to make that delight happen, it's going to remain just a concept.
I will do the day to day order, but beyond that life is too short to be tied to a mop!
Friday, April 8, 2016
salvation of bleach
My mother must have commented to me sometime - perhaps many times - that a dingy dishcloth was the sign of a "careless" housekeeper! You know the drill, a cloth that normally has white squares eventually turns a uniform gray must be Cloroxed to retain its genteel status - not to mention that of the housekeeper!
That maxim hounds me! Often I used disposal cloths, but when ever I rotate back to actual cloths, eventually I'm pressed into Clorox action! And today I was just wondering to myself why that was such a big deal to my mother? She was far from an obsessive cleaner - though she certainly keep a tidy house it was rarely "clean down to the shine" as I knew some of our relatives homes were. She didn't clean her keyholes with Q-Tips, for instance! But gray dishcloths met with her full disdain! Perhaps it was a Grandma Weaver dictum passed down from her mother and so on. I wonder if gray dishcloths were an issue on the Mayflower?
I guess we all have our quirky standards of muster. What I tolerate easily would appall other and vice versa. And somehow we all survive!
Ain't life grand?!
That maxim hounds me! Often I used disposal cloths, but when ever I rotate back to actual cloths, eventually I'm pressed into Clorox action! And today I was just wondering to myself why that was such a big deal to my mother? She was far from an obsessive cleaner - though she certainly keep a tidy house it was rarely "clean down to the shine" as I knew some of our relatives homes were. She didn't clean her keyholes with Q-Tips, for instance! But gray dishcloths met with her full disdain! Perhaps it was a Grandma Weaver dictum passed down from her mother and so on. I wonder if gray dishcloths were an issue on the Mayflower?
I guess we all have our quirky standards of muster. What I tolerate easily would appall other and vice versa. And somehow we all survive!
Ain't life grand?!
Spring, wherefore art thou?'
Okay, its April and I'm just now hearing a forecast for rain/snow showers overnight and snow showers in the morning.
What is wrong with this picture?!
This morning the landscaper who did our front stoop a few years ago came back to do the spring pruning and in the twenty minutes that I stood out talking to her I was chilled to the bone! That after we have already run the a/c once in March! Now not only are there climate changes there is climate madness!
I know all too soon the DC area will lapse into it's summer sweats... which is all the more reason why I hope the exquisitely balanced temps of spring will soon return.
Because the good Lord knows we know little enough about balance of any kind in the Washington area as it is!
What is wrong with this picture?!
This morning the landscaper who did our front stoop a few years ago came back to do the spring pruning and in the twenty minutes that I stood out talking to her I was chilled to the bone! That after we have already run the a/c once in March! Now not only are there climate changes there is climate madness!
I know all too soon the DC area will lapse into it's summer sweats... which is all the more reason why I hope the exquisitely balanced temps of spring will soon return.
Because the good Lord knows we know little enough about balance of any kind in the Washington area as it is!
Monday, April 4, 2016
On the board
How far would you have to go to find a blackboard?
I was just remembering those wonderful items of the past! And remember the teachers' marvelous loping penmanship. Currently my boss (early 30's) has never written in cursive. I find that fact too astonishing to contemplate. Further, though he would print them, he rarely, if ever writes notes of any kind to people. And a letter? - forget about it!
As a child I was in love with blackboards. I never tired of watching teachers fill the panels with poems, songs, assignments, facts to learn - all of which we would copy painstakingly in our brown, lined notebooks. Most of those songs I remember in full to this day, so somewhere along that path from teachers hand - to blackboard - to child brain - to brown notebook the process took! Just now as I was preparing chicken for dinner I was singing "The Boy Next Door Has a Rabbit To Sell" - brought to you by the good people of Hinkletown Elementary School!
The blackboard was the total vehicle of communication. It was the teacher's hallowed territory but on rare honored occasions we could use it for fun. On rare painful occasions we (I) could write "An Idle Mind is the Devil's Workshop" 100 times before going out to play at recess. (Though I raced through it, I think I got five minutes of recess that day.)
And school chores involved taking the erasers outside and "clapping" them together, scraping them over each other to rid them of excess dust. We were strictly forbidden to "clap" them against the red brick schoolhouse for obvious aesthetic reasons.
Now we live in a world technological gadgetry and communication happens in vastly different ways. And while I rue the passing of blackboards, I absolutely mourn the passing of writing.
I was just remembering those wonderful items of the past! And remember the teachers' marvelous loping penmanship. Currently my boss (early 30's) has never written in cursive. I find that fact too astonishing to contemplate. Further, though he would print them, he rarely, if ever writes notes of any kind to people. And a letter? - forget about it!
As a child I was in love with blackboards. I never tired of watching teachers fill the panels with poems, songs, assignments, facts to learn - all of which we would copy painstakingly in our brown, lined notebooks. Most of those songs I remember in full to this day, so somewhere along that path from teachers hand - to blackboard - to child brain - to brown notebook the process took! Just now as I was preparing chicken for dinner I was singing "The Boy Next Door Has a Rabbit To Sell" - brought to you by the good people of Hinkletown Elementary School!
The blackboard was the total vehicle of communication. It was the teacher's hallowed territory but on rare honored occasions we could use it for fun. On rare painful occasions we (I) could write "An Idle Mind is the Devil's Workshop" 100 times before going out to play at recess. (Though I raced through it, I think I got five minutes of recess that day.)
And school chores involved taking the erasers outside and "clapping" them together, scraping them over each other to rid them of excess dust. We were strictly forbidden to "clap" them against the red brick schoolhouse for obvious aesthetic reasons.
Now we live in a world technological gadgetry and communication happens in vastly different ways. And while I rue the passing of blackboards, I absolutely mourn the passing of writing.
Sunday, April 3, 2016
blow, blow your horn
Last night we had what my Grandpa Weaver would probably have described as a "tempest"! The wind roared like the derecho we had some years ago here. It's a sound that literally sets your small arm hairs on end! Branches and twigs were pelted against the front and back exposures of our town house but there was thankfully no damage. Lots of people in the area lost power, but we're some of the lucky underground cable people.
But each time this happens I realize once again how hollow my normal sense of security really is. We build shelters to shield us from the elements, but really whenever we even glimpse the edges of the forces of nature we realize we are at the mercy of the universe - completely. Earthquake, wind, rain, snow, sleet, hail, fire bring us to our knees.
Still, I must side with the optimistic outlook of my childhood and, "Open all the windows, open all the doors, and let the merry sun shine in!" Because after all the good, the bad and the ugly there is still the exquisitely dazzling everyday unfolding.
But each time this happens I realize once again how hollow my normal sense of security really is. We build shelters to shield us from the elements, but really whenever we even glimpse the edges of the forces of nature we realize we are at the mercy of the universe - completely. Earthquake, wind, rain, snow, sleet, hail, fire bring us to our knees.
Still, I must side with the optimistic outlook of my childhood and, "Open all the windows, open all the doors, and let the merry sun shine in!" Because after all the good, the bad and the ugly there is still the exquisitely dazzling everyday unfolding.
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