Modern Times and the National Library of the Czech Republic

I was struggling to write a post about Interlibrary Loan for the library's blog—the struggle being that I had to work in a couple of seriously flat paragraphs written at my request by the interlibrary loan librarian; but it goes up over my initials and I wanted to at least split the difference between what she wrote and my voice—and wandered off to watch Worldcat grow. The third title to add itself before my very eyes was being entered by

NATIONAL LIBR OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC
Book

Title Moreplavecka odysea :
Author Pavloskova, Karin,
Publisher Knizni klub,
Pub. Date 2005
Language Czech

It gave me goosebumps. Sigh. I do love this aspect of the modern world. It's too bad the cost of technology is so high in global ecological terms, and we probably can't sustain it...

I watched a while longer. Here's another

Contributed by: NATIONAL LIBR OF THE CZECH REPUBLIC
Book

Title Two Prague stories /
Author Rilke, Rainer Maria,
Publisher Vitalis,
Pub. Date c2005
Language English

As long as I'm writing about the workplace, I could tell you I found myself crying over hardware this week for the first time in about twelve years. Finally around 4 PM on Friday I received a soothing phone call from one of the city's IT guys. It almost sounded like... well no... we are still awfully likely to open the new Southside Branch Library on March 23rd either with 15 defective public use PCs or with no public use PCs at all if we have to send them back.

But the city guys who control our tech environment are maybe finally paying attention to the situation they've gotten us into. Suddenly decompressed from my misery, I floated downstairs and momentarily I loved every library patron in sight: the street guys, the trio of teenage girls walking around me, the tourists, the book addicts we see every day, stroller families, oldsters, and all.

22 February 2007
Last night I walked to the shop to keyboard a poem about aging I'd dashed off unthinking except for rhythms and sympathetic syllables. I woke up the old Mac and typed in the lines, and then I locked the place up again and started east down Second Street toward my little house. The evening was black and cool and the old street lamps' light reflected a little from the damp asphalt and from parked cars' windows. Ahead of me three-quarters of a block the weak light illuminated something low overhead, a white winged creature now soaring, now fluttering in place like a great, silent moth, now soaring again. It was an owl, probably a barn owl or maybe a snowy, bright, scrutinizing the quiet empty streets for a glimpse of dinner. I slowed my steps and then stopped to watch, but when I did the owl seemed to fix its attention on me and turned out of its way to fly to where I stood. I stood transfixed as it drew near and then stopped overhead, fluttering in place perhaps 50 feet directly above me. Hello, I said, and I grinned upward at it, and after another flutter or two the quiet bird turned its attention toward an unlighted side street and fluttered off. I like to think I communed for a moment, was visited and greeted and blessed. But then I wonder whether owls seek body heat, and whether my upturned face looked to it like a little white animal peering out from between my great long overcoat and woolen hat. No matter. I carry in my memory the gentle image of that small pale angel flapping overhead like the Holy Spirit, my welcoming face open and loving below, the two of us exchanging something.

23 February 2007
I'm thrilled to report my arrival tonight at a point halfway and a little beyond in Holroyd's Lytton Strachey biography. A small magic has occurred with relation to this. You will recall yesterday's description of my encounter with the owl. This evening then I got quite a jolt when I read on page 549 a piece of a letter wherein he asks a friend to have an "owl stuffed with wings outspread, so that I may hang it up over my bed and confuse it with the Holy Spirit in my last moments."

!

****

I want you to know that I'm getting very good at finding just the book any customer describes these days. My latest triumph: the young man who just opened the skateboard shop next-door to the old Golden Egg (the lawyer moved away) came in this afternoon and asked for "that Hunter Thompson book with the cover that looks like a pack of Camels." I brought him Tom Robbins' Still Life with Woodpecker. "Thats it!!" he cried.

24 February 2007
My Saturday helper came in today. It's a dilemma. She's a nice girl. But her family is very poor and she works here to earn their gasoline money. I wanted to let her go the first day: she hates working with books, and so I hear lots of heavy sighing every time I give her something to do; she hates people, so I can expect no customer assistance; alphabetizing is not on the menu, so I've been having her organize the romances by color (series)--pretty simple, but her lower back hurts too much if she bends over and her upper back hurts if she squats properly. She comes in on Saturdays at noon having had nothing to eat yet--or, as today, having eaten only half a donut--counting on my snacks. I talked to the school counselor who had asked me to hire her, and she asked whether I couldn't hang onto her if they got her into some program where they paid her wages and worker's comp. I said OK. I regret it, but I'm torn. I want her to eat ... but I'd like to have an employee who wants to be here--who likes books, at least. But if the special program pays, I suppose I could find her something antisocial to do for four hours a week. Eventually I'll have inventory software and a barcode reader. Nothing makes her happier than being allowed to sit at the computer.

The business week started out dreary and saleless, but Thursday-Friday-Saturday have almost made up for the quiet days. Many friends pop in and out the door, and that's a good feeling. Maybe next month I can get a phone line at home and finally resume blogging for real. It's funny, I go around the house talking to you all in my head but never able to grab up the Powerbook and go with it. Then I don't write anything when I do have the chance, because I think I've told you already. Ha!

Doppler effect

The pain in my right hip
first whispered to me fifteen years ago.
Attention!, this pain, who is female, said.
I pretended she wasn't there
and went on about my business.
I chose to exercise my pain-ignoring skills
in one more instance
even as her whispers grew to shrieks.

I stepped out one night a week back
onto the concrete back stoop
forgetting the ice sheet
and slammed down hard on my right hip.
I lay there alone under the porch light, wrist throbbing.
Is this it? I wondered, I'm only 53
and the child is coming back into my face
after some unfortunate years.
It's too soon, too soon.

But then I stood and walked
and considered the hairline fracture
widening over time, like Grandma's.
Her sister Great-aunt Ila flew out
from Minneapolis that year
and the two old ladies with their broken hips
were chauffered in matching wheelchairs
around Descanso Gardens.
After twenty more years they died
ten days and fifteen hundred miles apart.

Pain chortles: I have your attention now.

I walked up to the shop this evening to see if I could make a few minutes to keyboard some stuff. But the stuff waiting to be keyboarded is too much for me, though I made a start.

I'm exhausted, folks; the shop is taking off bigtime: yesterday, listen, yesterday I had a $421 day--and I'm scrounging to keep the shelves filled. My Ann Arbor supplier is shipping boxes full as fast as he can, but they still take 10 days to get here, and so I"m digging deep in the overstock/dump stock. And running running shelving shelving. Got my morning employee, Rory, but he's a painter and musician and spends his two hours a day painting my "signage." Which should be complete the end of next week. And my Saturday sidekick isn't really going to work out, not really loving books all that much. Wish Amber would come back.

In other news, this building just sold. You heard correctly. And rent's going up. I've decided I have to buy a shop on Main Street. So let's concentrate on that, shall we?

"How Many Books Did You Bring?"

On my way to visit mom for about three days. Both my mother and my sister are in the habit of asking me how many books I brought with me when I visit, and I am in the habit of lying. They don't approve of my proclivities. Here is the truth:

I am bringing a) the two books I am already in the middle of: a mystery by Howard Engel and The Concept of the Buddha: Its Evolution from Early Buddhism to the Trikaya Theory by Guang Xing, which is nearly as unreadable as it sounds; plus b) Kate Atkinson, One Good Turn; a mystery by Theresa Schwegel; an old paperback of Edmund Crispin's last mystery; and Paul Monette's Last Watch of the Night for after I decide that Guang Xing is simply not distracting enough for the circumstances of the visit. Total of six. (Just in case, you understand. Of course I won't read them all.)

Oh. I don't list or count the purse book, of which there is always one but which only ever comes into play if I am unexpectedly stuck someplace like Discount Tire, and is not of great interest by definition; if it were interesting, I'd have read it and replaced it with something else already.

Next week I'll work out how to have some sort of 'what we're reading' in the sidebar.

Catchup

Here are photos of the bookshop as it exists at the moment.

A not-so-small magic accounts for the new aisles: I took back all the shelving I'd hope to negotiate possession of (from the old large building), and this left me with most of my books on tables and on the floor. I was lamenting the situation to a friend as I made several photocopies for a stranger who'd just walked in. He overheard me and said he'd just closed his video shop in another town and would I like to buy his shelves for a very low price?

And so I did.


Five more tall pine shelves are being built as we speak, and before long the walls will be covered with them.

Everything's still in progress. The kids' corner is dim and uninviting. Probably I will move it to the sunny front window area.




And the Romance nook. Sigh. Well, they're all on the shelves, but I need better lighting, and a little decor ...




PoetThomas made me these temporary window signs.




New employee Rory, a musician and artist who just moved here from Canada, is in the process of painting my official "signage":

Migrating Northwest

Ever so slowly.

By the fall, I will be closer to the ocean. Meanwhile, nearly comatose with fear of change; and thinking nearly every minute about work, as I have done for about the past 20 years... that work which will no longer be in the center of my life beginning about the middle of July. The center of my life will be the sound of waves on the shore. And if it's not enough, whew, then what.

Since I offered to make this blog, I have been north to meet with my teacher; and south, to meet with sandhill cranes; and have weathered (ha ha, inadvertent pun) about six weeks of unlikely unlocal deep snow winter; and for the first time, after 22 years, am having anxiety dreams about the workplace every night.

Boy, I really don't know about this. But ok. Here is a place for the community of people who kept in touch with Bookinista to keep in touch with each other.

Hello out there.