Monday, October 17, 2011

As the Undead Roam the Stacks - A Library Halloween Story

I stood in the 780s staring at a row of books that according to the card catalog didn’t exist. Martial Arts for Paranormal Crime Fighters the first title read. Karate for Shapeshifters, Kicking Zombies Back into the Grave, and the reportedly bestselling Vampire Hunting in Stilettos: the 21st Century Chick’s Guide to Dealing with the Undead followed.

I’d discovered the books only the day before. Karate for Shapeshifters ran 330 pages with illustrations. Fully indexed, with a table of contents, even the title page looked legit. Printed on good quality acid free paper with a sewn binding; they didn’t make them like that anymore. I looked at the spine; Dewey number 758.132, karate with paranormal content, which without reading the book seemed to be correctly cataloged. If the books were a joke, it was a pretty elaborate one.

I peeked over the mezzanine railing watching the well dressed business man browsing through the mystery section. His three piece suit and Italian leather shoes made him suspicious. No one came into my library looking like that. But his gleaming white teeth precipitated my mad dash to the mezzanine and search for Vampire Hunting in Stilettos. Sharp fangs sparkled when he smiled and they didn’t come from too much flossing.

Three floors below the elevator began clanging, its morning ritual as it cycled through the building’s floors. It sounded like a swarm of drug doping bees lifting weights. Behind me the elevator arrived on the second floor. The rollers, flattened from infrequent use, thumped rhythmically as the doors opened.

“Finally,” a female voice said from the elevator. “I just can’t get the hang of pushing those buttons.”

Medium height, her grey hair pulled back in a tight bun, a pencil stuck out of the woman’s bun like a sword strapped to her back. Her white, pleated, high-collared, starched blouse buttoned up to her chin, a large silver Celtic knot broach held it closed at her throat. A long black skirt hung to her ankles, black leather oxfords peeping out from beneath it. The fact that I could read the elevator buttons through her torso was just a little disconcerting.

“Good morning, Emma” I said.

Her eyes flicked across me and glanced around the stacks, gazing lovingly at the books. “Really Jen,” she said, “I wished you’d get rid of that thing. Librarians don’t wear,” she hesitated. “whatever that thing is in your nose.”

“It’s a stud,” I said.

“Right, librarians don’t have studs in their noses. Or tattoos for that matter.”

“Yeah, and they don’t roam the stacks sixty years after they died either,” I said. The wolf tattooed on my forearm dug its claws into my flesh. It didn’t care for the Ghost of the Librarian past. Or maybe he was afraid I’d slug her, I wasn’t sure.

“Well, in my day,” she sniffed, a sound I’d only read about people making in novels, Victorian novels to be exact.

“This isn’t your day anymore,” I cut her off, not wanting to hear the same lecture about appearances from Emma that I got from the library board every day since I’d taken the job.

Emma had been the first librarian to ever preside over the Library. She’d been hired straight out of library school in 1890, the year the library opened its doors. She’d ruled the place for 60 years, finally dying at the circulation desk in 1950 at the age of 82. She’d fallen face first into the ink pad, the date stamper clutched in her hand. Rumor had it her last word was “shhhh.” Like the book in my hands, they didn’t make them like Emma anymore. At least that’s what the library board said.

She peeked over the railing, looking at the business man in mysteries. Her pale gray eyes flicked across the room settling on a spike haired punk standing by the video games. She sniffed again. “Vampires in mysteries, zombies in the whatever those things are,” she added pointing at the game display.

“Don’t forget this one, “she said pointing to a book at the end of the shelf. The Superhero Librarian’s Guide to Saving the World the title read. “I found in invaluable in my day, especially when the undead start roaming the stacks.”

I pulled the books off the shelf and rose to carry my stack down to the desk. The elevator doors opened behind her, and Emma stepped into the elevator. “Oh, and dear,” she said, “I keep the cape in the file cabinet.” She smiled at me, “You’re going to need it.” The elevator door rolled closed in front of the Ghost of the Librarian past. “Happy Halloween,” she called as the elevator descended back into the basement.

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

The Feral Librarian

The Feral Librarian

She sits,
tongue hanging out,
shreds of cloth from devoured patrons stuck between her teeth;
the patrons who used books as hot pads,
who turned down the corners of pages to mark their place.

Her eyes dilated,
search the room for the next victim.
Her nose twitches sniffing the air;
smelling for fear,
misshelved books,
the scent of those who dunk their books in coffee,
or use them as spaghetti plates.

She’s on the hunt.
Beware.

by Priscilla Berggren-Thomas


Ben and I were playing fetch at the library this morning. Actually, I was crawling around on the floor trying to convince him to run after the toy I’d just thrown, while he was trying to chew on my hand, as he was sure that made a much better chew toy. Ben is my Golden Retriever puppy, one in a long line of dogs who have shared my life and kept me sane. It’s true that most days I prefer dogs to people, especially at the end of the day when I need someone to lick my wounds and make me smile.

Prior to becoming a librarian, I actually attended seminary. It’s tough being a dog lover in seminary, where you are supposed to be dedicated to loving humanity. All those soon-to-be pastors looked askance when I let it slip that I really preferred dogs to people. But a dog’s mind makes so much more sense to me than a human’s does. And there’s a good reason for that. You see, I was raised by wolves. Well, maybe not wolves exactly, but an assortment of dogs; mutts, Golden Retrievers, Irish Setters, Newfoundlands, Great Pyrenees, even a Border Collie. They taught me about being part of a pack and how to keep all the human angst in perspective. They are also probably the reason I’m a librarian and not a pastor. A feral librarian maybe, but a librarian none the less.

I’ve learned a lot from dogs. Like Finn, my first Golden, taught me about the importance of sticking with your friends. He was eight weeks old at the time and we were driving across Wyoming. Both Finn and I had to go, but Bruce was behind the wheel and kept putting off stopping. That’s when Finn crawled on top of Bruce and peed on him. I’d been married to that man for five years by then and hadn’t managed to get him to stop the car when I wanted to stop. Finn in a matter of minutes worked a miracle, because even if Bruce could ignore me, he could no longer ignore the dog.

Finn also taught me about perseverance. He loved refried beans, and if I wouldn’t feed them to him, he’d just help himself. It didn’t matter if the can was unopened. He could pick out which can had refried beans in it. He’d get it down, puncture hundreds of holes in it with his teeth, squeeze it flat and eat all the beans as they oozed out of the can. I’d come home to little tin disks laying on the floor, all that remained of the once whole cans of refried beans. I’m not sure there’s anything I want quite that badly, but when I do, I think about those little metal circles and that dog’s powerful nose and jaws.

Finn also taught me about letting people know when enough was enough. We used mouse traps to teach him to stay off the counters (in an effort to curb his refried bean habit!). We also hung them from the Christmas tree to keep Finn away from the tree. It worked for about a week, and then he decided to teach us a thing or two. I came home from work one day to find the mouse traps all pulled off the tree, two of them totally chewed up, five branches chewed off the tree, about six ornaments had been eaten and all the water drank out of the basin. Finn lay in front of the tree with a look of “I showed you” written all over his face.

Needless to say, when I first read Marley and Me by John Grogan, I thought Marley had nothing on Finn. But by the end of the book I had to admit, it would have taken three of my dogs to create all the havoc Marley did. I think that’s one of the reasons we love books like Marley and Me. They help us feel like we don’t necessarily have the worst dog in the world. Finn did have to repeat dog obedience. He loved carrying his own leash, which made the instructor furious. I thought it was cute, which made her even more furious. Come to think about it, maybe I was the one who needed to repeat Beginner Dog Obedience.

Books like Marley and Me also help us remember all the love and joy and yes, lessons that come into our lives with a dog. John Grogan started a trend. Once he wrote the adventures of Marley, our need for dog stories caused an outpouring of writers’ tales about their dogs. Celebrity authors like Dean Koontz got into the act with A Big Little Life a story of his Golden Retriever. Judith Summers wrote about her Cavalier King Charles Spaniel in My Life with George. Ed Breslin wrote Drinking with Miss Dutchie about his Black Lab who helped him with his struggle with depression and alcoholism. And Jon Katz wrote about his troubled Border Collie in A Good Dog.

Of course, everyone always asks if the books have sad endings. I’m afraid most of them do. Their about dogs and even if they live long sweet lives their lives are shorter than ours. They almost always leave us behind.

That’s why I have Ben, because J.J., the Newf, and Dexter, my old Golden, are both over thirteen years old. Their days with me are measured in months now, rather than years. Ben is here to ease the pain and to give me new stories and lessons. And he’s in training to be a reading dog at the library, which might help us all be a little less feral.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Don’t try this trick at home

The locust bloomed last Tuesday. I swear there wasn’t a blossom in sight on Monday, but when I drove home Tuesday evening, the valley was covered with white sweet pea-like blossoms. And the scent! When the black locusts bloom, I think this must be heaven. It’s enough to make me believe in aromatherapy. Just like the way the sun slants through the library’s windows made me finally decide there might be something to feng shui.

Our senses have such a strong impact on our moods. Scents that trigger memories of places we’ve been, the way light plays across a room triggering feelings of happiness or sadness, the spiritual experience of a great meal. We forget sometimes, wrapped in words and thoughts, about the fact that we experience life not just with our head, but our body; not just by what we see, but what we taste, smell, hear, and feel. The best writing transports us to another world for that very reason. It stimulates our senses, inducing a cascade of emotions.

For me reading is like a reality show that starts with the disclaimer “don’t try this at home.” When I read good writing, it seems so simple, so easy. I think, “I could do that.” I mean after all their just words strung together to tell a story. But then I try it, I realize I’m at the “See Dick run” stage. The beautiful descriptions of Dick’s long colt like legs stirring up the dust as they lope across the school yard, just don’t come that easy for me. I can’t think of what to compare Dick’s freckles to, other than – well – freckles.

Those beautiful twisty, curvy metaphors take work. Like Wallace Stegner’s “Floating upward through a confusion of dreams and memory, curving like a trout through the rings of previous risings, I surface. My eyes open. I am awake,” from Crossing to Safety. And I can feel the night coldness when I read Sharon Shinn’s line from Mystic and Rider, “She liked the deep stillness of an untenanted night, the pervasive cold that seemed to take corporeal from and lean against her like an affectionate child.” I want to write that line!

And it’s the details that count – not that Dick ran, but how he ran. In the opening paragraph of Brad Kessler’s Birds in Fall he doesn’t say they plane was in trouble, he writes “We were eighty minutes into the flight. Orion on our left, the bear to the right,” and I’m there looking out the plane window. Or in Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann, she describes a flock of sheep discovering their dead shepherd, “The shepherd was lying in the green Irish grass beside the hay barn, not far from the path through the fields. He didn’t move. A single crow had settled on his woolly Norwegian sweater and was studying his internal arrangements with professional interest,” and it isn’t any dead shepherd or scavenger, but a very particular shepherd and professional crow.

And there are those incredible first lines that keep you reading. “The best day of my life happened when I was five and almost died at Disney World,” Libba Bray starts Going Bovine (what a title by the way!) And continues, “I’m sixteen now, so you can imagine that’s left me with quite a few days of major suckage.” Or John Green’s “The morning after noted child prodigy Colin Singleton graduated from high school and got dumped for the nineteenth time by a girl named Katherine, he took a bath” from The Abundance of Katherines and he’s hooked me. I need to know about a guy who’s dated and been dumped by nineteen Katherines.

Yes, I keep trying to do these tricks of writing at home, and I keep reading these lines, hoping I’ll someday write one as good. It’s just a lot harder than it looks.

Friday, April 22, 2011

The Uninhibited Reader

I’m reading a book called Naked, Drunk and Writing. It’s one of the glories of aging that I no longer feel a need to hide the cover when someone asks me what I’m reading. Age lets you shed a few inhibitions and writing requires that you do. Not that I am naked, drunk and writing, you understand. But being willing to not pull any punches always makes a writer’s prose better. It’s like the fantasy novel I’ve been working on for years now. It got better after I stopped trying to keep my protagonist from killing anyone. It’s a fantasy after all. The bad guys have to die.

It’s also why we love memoirs, I think. The willingness of an author to bare their life and soul on paper is like picking at a scab. You just can’t stop going back and doing it. Or, in the case of the memoir, reading it. Whether its dumb choices, crazy addictions, or bad marriages, we love when people expose themselves, warts and all. Not just because we live in a voyeuristic culture, but because we want to learn from other people’s self exploration. We want another’s soul journey to help lead us, or embark us, on our own. Of course, there are some stories that are more soul bending than I can handle. People are always asking if I’ve read Lucky by Alice Sebold, but I have to admit Sebold’s story of being raped and left for dead is just more than I can handle. I feel the same about Mary Karr’s The Liar’s Club. I know its great literature, but I just can’t manage to get through it. I’m afraid I want my soul exploration with a side of humor.

Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an Iowa Farm in during the Great Depression by Mildred Armstrong Kalish is much more my speed. Kalish and her siblings antics growing up on a farm are fun to read. Plus is really makes you appreciate the ease with which we can have a chicken dinner in this day and age.

I’m partial to stories of spiritual searches outside of a particular religion. Barbara Brown Taylor’s memoir Leaving Church, the story of her giving up her work as a Episcopal priest, is a favorite of mine. She continues the story of living spiritually outside of a church in An Altar in the World: a Geography of Faith. Sue Monk Kidd’s feminist awakening in Dance of the Dissident Daughter was me a life changing read for me. Her follow-up, Traveling with Pomegranates, a joint tale by her and her daughter, may not be quite as earth shaking as Dance, but as a reader it was great to be able to tag along on their journey. Mystery author, Nevada Barr’s spiritual autobiography, Seeking Enlightenment Hat by Hat is told through the hats she wore to different churches.

I love memoirs by writers about how they became writers, or stayed writers, or try to write, or pull their hair out writing. They’re usually inspiring, funny, and well written. Stephen King’s On Writing is one of the best. I can still picture him writing over a hot dryer as he worked in a laundromat. His realization that he wrote more when he had a menial job than when he had a professional one, still sticks with me. Lisa Scottoline’s and Anne Lamott’s reflections on life, including their early writing careers, were great reads for someone who wants to write. You can read about that in Scottoline’s Why My Third Husband will be a Dog or Lamott’s Traveling Mercies.

I’m always looking for new memoirs to read and I have to admit I do judge books by their covers, or at least their titles. Why else would I be reading Naked, Drunk, and Writing? It’s the funny ones that catch my fancy. That’s why the following are all on my to-read list: I’m Sorry you Feel that Way: The Astonishing but True Story of a Daughter, Sister, Slut, Wife, Mother, and Friend to Man and Dog by Diana Joseph; Animal Magnetism by Rita Mae Brown; Seeking Peace: Chronicles of the Worst Buddhist in the World by Mary Pipher; Confession of a Counterfeit Farm Girl by Susan McCorkindale; Hit by a Farm: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Barn by Catherine Friend; and I Loved, I Lost, I made Spaghetti by Guilia Melucci. Unfortunately the list grows longer and longer and time, alas, grows shorter. So I better get reading!

Monday, March 14, 2011

Directions

I’ve been ruminating on how instructions and directions are given these days. While Bruce and I were in England last May, we kept driving around a lot of traffic circles, or round-abouts as the British like to call them. Partly because there’s a round-about ever mile or two in England, but mostly because once we got in one we just kept going round and round trying to figure out where to get out! And even when we did finally get out, we were usually heading in the wrong direction.

In England road signs just didn’t say what I was expecting them to say. To start with, they were usually right after the turn, which wasn’t quite enough warning for us. They also rarely told the road number or the direction. Instead there was an arrow and the name of a town down the road. It wasn’t always the next town, or a very large town, which meant it often wasn’t on the map. So the signs really didn’t help if you had no idea where you were going. They were designed for people who already knew where they were.

Instructions are often like that too. They are written by people who already know how to do what the instructions are designed to tell you how to do. As I see it, that means instructions and directions are written for people who already know how to get where they are going, or how to do what needs to be done. They aren’t written for those of us who are lost or learning. I like to think of us as the explorers in life, but maybe we are just the terminally clueless.

This all came home to me when I was downloading the Adobe software needed to be able to check out the library’s downloadable media. I followed the directions from the online catalog and a window popped with a choice of selections. I could check “authorize software now (strongly suggested)” or “use software without authorizing (you can authorize later).” Authorizing required having an adobe account, which I didn’t have, so I decided to download and authorize later. Of course that was a mistake, because even though I later went in and created an adobe account and authorized the software, it wouldn’t work. It seems to me that it really shouldn’t say “authorization strongly suggested,” when in fact it won’t work if you don’t authorize as you download. The message should be more like “listen up; you need to do this now!”

Sometimes, I wonder if we are so concerned with having a choice and not sounding like we are commanding someone to do something that we can’t bring ourselves to say “you have to do it this way.” “Should, have to and need to” are some of my favorite words. As in “you should, I have to and we need to.” A friend told me once “Priscilla, if you didn’t say ‘should’ you’d have nothing to say at all.” So, I’ve been trying to be good and not ‘should’ all over myself and everyone else. But really I’m beginning to think there are times when we just ‘should.” It’s like watching college students run around in tee shirts in zero degree weather. I think about saying “wouldn’t you be warmer in a coat?” And then I think what I really need to be said is “put a coat on!”

So here’s my ‘should’ for the day. If you are downloading the Adobe digital editions software to use the library e-books, Adobe may ‘strongly suggest’ you authorize the software at the time of downloading, but I’m saying you “should, have to, must” do it. It’s not a suggestion, it’s a requirement. Otherwise it won’t work!

Thursday, January 13, 2011

A Room of One’s Own

I’ve always wanted to live in a house that had its own library. In England last May, we visited loads of estates and country homes. It was the libraries that fascinated me; huge rooms lined from floor to celing with book shelves, cozy nooks, window seats, and overstuffed chairs to curl up in. Ladders lined the walls so you could climb up and reach the books up by the ceiling, which was always a good twelve to fifteen feet up. If you grabbed a book, you could hide in a corner, curled up in a chair, facing a window that looked out across the gardens, the moors, or the sheep fields. Virginia Woolf wrote that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”. It’s not just for writing fiction though, or even just for women. Everyone needs a room of their own; a place to curl up with a good book and your own thoughts; a little solitude, a sanctuary.

At the moment, coming into the library early in the morning is as close as I’ll get to having my own private library. While the building is dark and empty, I get to commune alone with these my friends, the stories of the world, the minds and lives and imaginations of people stretching back for centuries. I can walk among the shelves, running my hands over the spines of books, looking for old friends to sit in front of an evening fire with, or new ones who I long to get to know. A book is like a room of one’s own, a place of refuge, learning, and self-discovery. They can take you to another place or time, submerge you in someone else’s experience and thoughts, or open you to new ideas and ways of being.

So, for a cold winter evening of finding refuge in a good book here are some suggestions. There’s always Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own. It’s not an easy read, in my opinion, but thought provoking and interesting to see what’s changed since she wrote it and what hasn’t. Or try a classic. There’s been a rush on To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee lately and it’s no wonder. It’s one of those books I can read every once in a while and it still grips me. Or for a little light mystery try Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. I love this mystery where a flock of sheep figure out who killed their shepherd and then have to find a way to make the humans understand them. I’m partial to sheep, of course, but it’s still a fun read.

All Creatures Great and Small by James Herriot is a favorite of mine, but be prepared to be caught laughing out loud at the antics of this Yorkshire veterinarian and his neighbors. For something newer there’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress by Rhoda Janzen, the story of Janzen’s returning home to recuperate after a car accident. As an academic who left her family’s religion behind, Janzen finds herself once again immersed in Mennonite culture. Her account of going home, even if only temporarily, is hilarious.

For some good non-fiction, Wendell Berry’s classic The Unsettling of America is worth the effort. It’s not an easy or fast read, but Berry’s thoughts on American agriculture are as timely now as when they were first written in 1977. Maybe even more timely. Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness by Ariel Gore is an interesting take on the new “happiness” industry. Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America by Barbara Ehrenreich is also worth a look. For something totally new, (and no, I haven’t read it yet) reading I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor’s Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity by Izzeldin Abuelaish seems like a really good way to spend the winter.

So even if you can’t have your own private library or a room of your own, find a good chair, a warm spot and a good book. It will be almost like having “a room of your own.”