Writers are my Heroes (and Heroines!)

                Writing sucks! People who think it’s easy haven’t written a 300 page novel, only to have to tear three quarters of it out and start again. And the problem isn’t throwing out all those beautiful pages. The problem is, knowing which ones to keep and which ones to throw out. A novel is like an ever evolving life form. Except in this case, the author is trying to decide who’s the fittest and who isn’t. If they are wrong, then that’s a year and 200 pages into the trash. And it’s start all over again!

                That’s why I love authors. Because no one in their right mind would torture themselves this way unless they had a story they just had to tell.  Authors give me hope that it’s possible to go back to a manuscript every day, beat myself over the head a little more, and still have a story that won’t go away, that has to be told.

                Grant writing – although not nearly as glamorous, fun, or high profile, is a lot the same. First, it is an incredible amount of work. Second, you need to really believe it what every project you are trying to get money for is worth the effort. Third, you send the grant out into the world unsure if it will be accepted. And then when it is, you realize that’s only the beginning of all the work coming your way.

                When ever I get a grant accepted, my first thought is yippee, and my second thought is “oh crap, now I’ve got to do the work!” So, here’s my number one rule for getting a grant – make sure it’s something you love and want to do. Hence, the reason the library received a grant from The Bernard Carl and Shirley Rosen Library Fund of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County to hold a series of fantasy author visits.

                I’ve now spent hours/days/weeks making all the arrangements with authors, the school, travel arrangements etc. etc – but the fun is almost ready to begin. We have four fantasy authors coming this fall. They’ll spend a day at either the Homer Intermediate, the Jr. High or the High School. Then they’ll do a writing workshop for youth here at the library, followed by an evening program open to the whole community.

                So here’s the lineup:

                Frederic Durbin, author of The Star Shard will be here Thursday, Sept. 27^th

                Laura Ruby, author of The Wall and The Wing and Bad Apple will be her Wednesday, Oct. 17^th

                Julie Berry, author of The Amaranth Enchantment and The Rat Brain Fiasco will be here Friday, Nov. 2^nd and 3^rd

                Tamora Pierce, author of Trickster’s Choice and Terrier will be here Wednesday, Nov. 7^th.

                Check the library calendar and the Fantastical Worlds page for an exact schedule. All writing workshops will be held at 4:00 pm and are free, but space is limited so pre-registration is required. All students who participate in a writing workshop will receive a free copy of one of the author’s books and be able to post their own stories to the Fantastical Worlds Wiki. So come to the library for a fantastic fall and help support those people who do the hard task of telling stories for us!

Sticking to stories

             I attended a workshop on Early Literacy yesterday. Eventually the conversation came around to Common Core Standards. Basically the speaker said, what children need to succeed is not just reading and writing skills, but information. So curriculums now are emphasizing content, not narrative; non-fiction, not fiction.  Now, I’m a librarian, a dealer of information in an information age – and I really have to take issue with the idea that narrative, fiction, and story are no longer important. That it’s only content that matters. That all we need are the facts.

                Here’s the issue for me. In a previous life, I worked in animal breeding and genetics. You know, the people who select cows for more milk, sheep for more wool, and pigs who grow faster.  So, what does breeding cows to give more milk have to do with reading fiction? Over the years, cows nowadays give a lot more milk than they did even twenty years ago. And our understanding of genetics and the technology to manipulate genetics has exploded. But here’s the problem, sometimes the questions isn’t can we change something, can we make it better? The real question is, do we know what better is?  Because knowing how to do something, is different from knowing what to do.

                In the fifties, short legged Herefords were all the rage. The “better” cow, if you will. Until breeders discovered every time they selected animals with short legs they were increasing the frequency of a lethal dwarf gene in the population. In the sixties and seventies collies with narrow heads were considered the standard, until breeders realized there was a relationship with narrow heads and encephalopathies. In the eighties, long legged Suffolk sheep were consider the “best,” until breeders realized that trait was linked to “spider leg syndrome,” a lethal metabolic bone disorder in lambs.

                Making something better, whether it’s family life, a computer program, or the amount of milk a cow gives, isn’t just a question that requires information. It requires defining “better,” and defining better requires philosophy. It requires the ability to think and reason for one self. It demands wisdom from us.

We don’t gain wisdom through acquiring information. It doesn’t come through knowing how  things work, or how we can change them. Non-narrative non-fiction may give us the information, but wisdom, philosophy, the ability to critically analyze issues, comes from understanding stories.  

True understanding comes from paying attention, from understanding relationships and connections, whether between people, or between people and the world they live in. Real knowledge requires having a philosophy of life, having values to live by. We need to be able to make critical inquiries, discern potential outcomes, and then make hard decisions that we can all live with.

Those are skills that come from stories because if there is one thing fiction or narratives teach, it’s that we live in relationship, and those relationships matter. Stories teach us that actions have consequences, that choices make a difference. Fiction teaches us that people grow and change and that they should, that the choices we make today are different from the choices we may make tomorrow, and that’s okay. As long as we are growing, as long as we are learning, as long as we are striving to figure out what “better” really means, we are on the road to wisdom.

We risk losing a great deal when we believe facts and content are more important than story. There are so many important and necessary things to be learned about living a good life that come through stories. Things like how to make friends, how to be a better friend, how to make hard decisions, how to live up to our values, how to develop values. What will we lose I wonder, when we emphasize content over thought, caring, relationships, values; when we forget that understanding how something works, isn’t the same thing as knowing the right thing to do? That just because we can do something, doesn’t always mean we should.

So, I’m sticking to story, my story, your story, all the stories that line the shelves of every library in the world. Because that, I believe, is where true knowledge and wisdom lie.

The Year of the Author

It stands to reason that to a librarian, writers are like rock stars. One of the best parts of being a librarian is getting to meet authors. I think it was Alice Walker who said you can’t be a good writer and a bad person. I’m not sure that’s totally true, but the authors I’ve met or heard speak have all been articulate, funny, and generous with their time.

At the Public Library Association conference, I heard romance writer, Elizabeth Boyle, tell about getting her first novel published. She’d entered a contest, sent her first three chapters in, was selected as a finalist, and only then found out she was supposed to have the whole novel already written. She had a month to write the novel and checked to see when the last possible Fedex pickup was in order to make the deadline for the contest. Writing down to the wire, her printer died an hour before the Fedex pickup. While she sat at her computer crying, her husband walked by and continued on to the kitchen. Ready to tear her hair out and write her husband off as totally unsupportive, she heard him on the phone.

“I want to cash in my miles,” he said, “what time does the last plane to New York City leave on Sunday night?” Her husband hand delivered her manuscript and Elizabeth Boyle won the contest. With a husband like that, it’s no wonder she’s a romance writer.

For Phillips Free Library, 2012 is going to be The Year of the Author. Thanks to a grant from The Bernard Carl and Shirley Rosen Library Fund of the Community Foundation of Tompkins County, we’ve got three fantasy authors coming in the fall. But before Anne Ursu, Laura Ruby, and Tamora Pierce come, we’ll be celebrating poets in May and June.

On May 31st, we’ll have a book launch party for former Phillips Free Library employee, Austin MacRae. Austin worked here while finishing his Masters Degree in English at SUNY Cortland. Now his first book of poetry, The Organ Builder, is being published by Dos Madres Press. Join us at 7:00 pm on Thursday, May 31st for a reading, book signing, and reception. Celebrate poetry and Austin’s accomplishments here @ the library.

Then on Wednesday, June 6th, we are kicking off the summer reading program with a poetry workshop and open mic. The workshop runs from 5:30 until 6:45 pm. Using the teen and adult summer reading themes of--“Own the Night” and “Between the Covers ,” poet Rachel Guido deVries will offer ways to use our dreams, hopes, and life experiences as a starting point for poems. Whether you dream “between the covers” while sleeping, or dream “between the covers” of a book, come write of love, life, and star-spangled skies. Writing prompts will offer ways “in” to ideas, emotions, experiences that are waiting to emerge. Come and open your imagination’s door to creativity in this workshop.

At 7:00 pm, following the workshop there will be a short reading by Rachel Guido deVries, followed by an open reading for all workshop participants and other local poets and writers. Bring your poems to share. Refreshments will be served.

So, come celebrate the Year of the Author, and the Months of the Poets @ Phillips Free Library.

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.

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.

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.

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!