A Subscription Deferred

It was while transcribing audio of a long, business-fueled meeting last Saturday night for a Santa Clarita-based journalist who still throws me work after all these years that I started thinking about it again.

Having moved 17 times in my life, with no real solid sense of home, I started looking for one in print, something that changes with each issue, but comes from a foundation that has always been just that way in its aims. I've been reading since I was 2 and haunting libraries about as long, so surely there must be something.

Toward the end of this past summer, I found the July/August issue of The Atlantic sitting in the magazine section of my local Ralphs supermarket, directly facing plastic spoons, forks, knives, and paper plates, with napkins just a little further down.

The left-side flap glued to the cover intrigued me: "On the Nature of Complicity: Trump's enablers and the judgment of history" by Anne Applebaum." "The Looming Bank Collapse" by Frank Partnoy." "The Miracle of the Supermarket" by Bianca Bosker." "Can an Unloved Child Learn to Love?" by Melissa Fay Greene."

This magazine seemed to be a printed representation of how my mind runs. It jumps around like this issue does, but it seeks deeper insight than just the click-of-the-minute on Facebook and Twitter. I always want to know more than just what CNN blares on the front page of its site.

$9.99 is a little steep for one magazine, but it was my first time with it. I bought it, and dug into it right when I got home from Ralphs. And in those first minutes with it, I immediately found home.

There was a profile of Kevin Kwan and his supersonic fame from Crazy Rich Asians. Amanda Mull wrote a piece about it not being so criminal nowadays to have a cluttered house. James Hamblin wrote about the dangers of overvigilant hygiene. And that was even before the main pieces listed on the cover, which were not only exactly what had caught my interest by their titles alone, but they went far more in depth than I could have imagined, including Bianca Bosker writing about the formerly glorious Fairway Market in New York City, and Melissa Fay Greene discovering what has become of "tens of thousands of children warehoused in Romanian orphanages" thirty years ago.

Out of all the magazines I've read this year, this issue of The Atlantic is the only one I've kept, the beginning of a new home for me. 

It may well be the latest (and hopefully last) stretch of the process that apparently started for me in 2007, when I worked under John Boston at The Signal newspaper in Santa Clarita, as associate editor of the weekend Escape section. John had worked at The Signal for 30 years, arriving in Santa Clarita in the mid-1950s and finding such a welcoming home for himself that was never present before that. He became Santa Clarita. He knew all of the valley's history, and what he didn't know just hadn't happened yet. I was deeply impressed by that, what with my fierce passion for, and love of, history. But he was also enormously kind, with time enough for anyone who wanted it.

When I wrote what was at first to him an underwhelming humor column for Escape, he sat with me in the paper's conference room and went over it with me, suggesting how I could strengthen it. He liked the concept, but thought it could be even better. As a young writer in his early 20s, I was devastated that he didn't like it from the get-go, and I listened to his suggestions through that dark veil of disappointment. He told me to rewrite it at home that night and email it to him by the morning. When I got home, I didn't care what would become of the column. I rewrote as he suggested, moved some sentences around, deleted others, but I don't actually remember what I did or how I did it. I just did it, and paid no attention while I did it. The next morning, I found an email from him that began "JIMINY CHRISTMAS, RORY!" and went on to say how, when he first went over the column, he honestly thought there wasn't a whole lot else to my column, but the rewrite I submitted propelled it into the stratosphere.

Is it any wonder I wanted to be like him as a writer and as a man? He subscribed to The New Yorker, so I asked him if I could have the issues he was done with so I could read The New Yorker, too. He swore by Tootsie Roll Pops, so I had my own bouquet of them, too. It was similiar to how, when I was 11, I read Andy Rooney's books (I had seen him on 60 Minutes over the years, but didn't pay close attention) and was amazed that one could write about woodworking and restaurants and tools in the garage. I wanted to write exactly like Andy Rooney, and I tried, but then found I couldn't write exactly like him because I wasn't him. But John Boston was right in front of me, and even though I knew I couldn't write like him, I just wanted to be influenced by his sure sense of time and place that made him the true embodiment of Santa Clarita back then. I could strive to be the great good, gentle soul that he was and still is (that reminds me that I should call him this week).

Perhaps The New Yorker through John Boston was my first attempt to find a home in print. Both my parents were native New Yorkers, so it made sense, but I never latched onto The New Yorker. Many great articles individually, but to me, it felt too rigidly-produced. A certain time and a certain place seen only through this lens. I needed an expansion of exploration and the human spirit, even and especially in its struggle toward, and sometimes against, the light.

I read The New Yorker here and there for a year or two after John Boston left The Signal (Eventually I did, too), but then I fell away from it. Another move. And then another, and still more, which comprised five years in Las Vegas, where all that matters is trying to survive the summers and winters there (even autumn is starkly bitter in the desert), and sometimes just the day to day.

Living in Ventura, and especially the present hard year, brought back all these memories and made me think about seeking a home, even in print, that I could rely on. I felt it so completely with that July/August issue of The Atlantic, and I also felt like I had John Boston back as a regular presence in my life through those pages because he was always that interested in so many facets of life, always that engaged. I'm long done with journalism, preferring to focus on the books I want to write, but if John ever decided beyond the novels he likely wants to make the swan song of his life that he wanted to start another journalistic venture of his own (at least two didn't pan out), I'd join him. I would gladly go back into the sharp-bladed grind of deadlines for the chance to work with him again, to learn still more from him.

There's very little room in my reading habits for surprises. I know what interests me, and I know what I want to read. The Atlantic is the last platform for me that can provide those surprises, every page I turn to possibly containing something I either knew nothing about, or something I know about examined in a way completely new to me. It also helps with my attention span of late, because there are always very long articles and essays in The Atlantic, and sitting on the computer, on Facebook, on the Internet entirely as I have over the past few months has not helped. In fact, there's an anthology from The Atlantic called The American Crisis: What Went Wrong. How We Recover. that the Ventura County Library system finally got tired of me bugging them to buy and they finally bought it and had it sent to me through Zipbooks, where patrons can request titles and very possibly, it's sent to you directly through Amazon. When you're done with it, you bring it to your library of choice and they'll eventually enter it into the system and put it into circulation. 

Many of the articles featured in the anthology were abridged since the articles as they had appeared in the magazine were originally so long, and that anthology had a lot of ground to cover. It was the first time in quite a long time that I had not flinched at the sheer length of those articles and essays. I was so absorbed in all they had to say, all they had to explain, that I didn't even notice the page numbers fluttering by, as I sometimes do. That's also how I know I need more of The Atlantic in my life.

The audio of that business meeting ran a smidge over an hour, and I was about halfway through it last Saturday night when I stopped yet again. Parts of it bored me, so there was a perfect right to take a break here and there. And it was then that I decided to wander over to The Atlantic website, where I became curious about that big red "Subscribe" button at the top right of the front page.

$59.99 for a 1-year print and digital subscription. Admittedly, a few weeks ago, I paid $54.99 for a two-year subscription on ItsYourTurn.com, where I play Battleship, which is called Battleboats there. But with that subscription, and the year I still had on my current subscription to ItsYourTurn, that extended me to November 29, 2023. And I go there every day, playing nothing but Battleship, so $54.99 stretches infinitely.

But $59.99? I could do it for ItsYourTurn, but I'm also still only working a part-time job while trying my hardest to land a full-time one. The price includes access to the digital side of The Atlantic, including the archives, but if I spend hours on a computer beyond my job search, my book reviews, the transcriptions, and my own writing, it's usually because I've discovered a web comic that I want to read all the way through from the beginning. This time, it's Terminal Lance, the Marine Corps comic. I did the same with Girls With Slingshots many years ago, and even bought the entire run in print. And I also did the same with Questionable Content, around the same time as Girls With Slingshots, which I still read today.

But The Atlantic's archives? It's tempting for a few topics here and there, but not extensive screen time. It reminds me of when I bought The New Yorker's entire archive in the late 2000s, which came on a hard drive that you hook up to the computer. I was that interested back then, but ultimately, I couldn't do it. Reading is more comfortable to me in my recliner than on this computer chair. 

So $59.99 for 10 print issues for one year, and the archive of which I might use only a little bit. I wasn't sure. But then I saw the Academic Rate option: "Students and Educators save 50% on an Atlantic subscription." Well now! I work for Ventura College! I have a college email address! I'll use that!

I clicked on the Academic Rate ($29.99 for one year) and then I left it in that tab on my Chrome browser and got back to the transcript. A little while later, I thought again about The Atlantic subscription, but wondered about something in the Ventura County Library system, and I went to the catalog. 

Before the pandemic, magazines were readily available at all libraries, including the weekly issues of People that my sister swore by, and which she hasn't had since early March, as the libraries were first closed down entirely and then opened up only for patrons to walk up to the entrance to pick up holds brought out to them by library employees. What about the magazines?

I looked up People first, because my sister would have a lot more to catch up on than I would, as she had been checking out every weekly issue before the pandemic. And there it was at different libraries: All the issues that she had missed, and even ones stretching back to 2008 if she so wanted. But more importantly, I noticed that there were many issues checked out. They're letting patrons check out magazines! Put them on hold like books, like DVDs, and you can have them too! I wasn't sure they were, what with magazines taken out of doctors' waiting rooms and such with the risk of transmission through the magazines. I didn't know if it would be the same with libraries, but apparently not.

So I put the latest two issues of People on hold on her card to get her started (we'll probably pick them up this coming Saturday), and then I went to look for The Atlantic.

Same thing! I can read all the issues available thus far, and then decide if I want to go for the academic subscription, or just wait for the library to bring in each issue. I have a comparatively minor interest in Harper's Magazine because Edmund G. Love published his article "Subways are for Sleeping" there, which became the full-length book of the same title that I spent $34 to claim lost at the Valencia Library, back when it was part of the L.A. County library system. I wanted it for myself, having read that particular copy from the Norwalk branch often as a student at College of the Canyons, usually in lieu of doing my math homework in the cafeteria there. And I found that the Ventura County library system has Harper's, as well as The New Yorker. So I have my magazine subscriptions now, freer than I thought it would be, and I can exhaust those first. The New Yorker doesn't have an academic rate, and is way too expensive besides (best to stick with the library system's holdings in this case), and neither does Harper's, though they're more reasonable for a subscription if it ever came to that. But as it will take time to go through all these holdings in the system, I'll see what transpires in my magazine reading over the next few months, also if the library system continues to get these magazines or they give them up. Then I'll see what I might do about The Atlantic. I'm just happy to have the chance to read them freely, and really, it would be more appropriate to consider a subscription after I land substantial work.

Pandemic Disappointment

I found out yesterday that there's a new Steinbeck biography coming out called Mad at the World, the first in 25 years as the marketing claims.

After filling out the "Tell Us What to Buy" form on the Ventura County Library website, to urge the powers that be to buy it, I suddenly remembered an old friend I hadn't seen in a while. It resided comfortably at the Ojai Library, possibly my favorite library in Ventura County (it feels like a wood-paneled reading room without the wood paneling, although its ceiling beams are crucial to that atmosphere), and one of my all-time favorite libraries, alongside Lied Library at the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV), the Boulder City Library well removed from Las Vegas, and of course the Ventura College Library (more formally the Evelyn and Howard Boroughs Library).

In the Ojai Library, my old friend used to face the first window before the side entrance to the Ojai Library because that's where biographies once were. It was a paperback edition of John Steinbeck, Writer by Jackson J. Benson, that I occasionally bumped into in past years elsewhere, but never fully read it. 

The Ojai Library not only invites you to explore what's deepest in your mind, but gently encourages you to give a try to that which you put to the side but can't completely dismiss because it's part of you. Before the end of last year, when my mother, my sister and I were in Ojai, I vowed to take it home with me and try it again, instead of eyeing it hopefully and then walking away like I usually did, certain that I already had too many books to carry home with me on the bus. I wanted a souvenir of Ojai to take home and this was it, and generally, whenever I checked out books in person from that library, I always read them because I didn't want to lose the magic I felt they had by dint of living there.

Here's the thing about institutions, such as libraries, that are closed during the pandemic: The people who make them what they are get busy. They reorganize. They streamline. Projects that were pushed to the netherworld because of the sheer number of things to do every day to keep a library open to the public rise and demand the attention that they know is now there.

For libraries, this also means weeding the stacks, taking a good hard look at what's gotten dusty, waterlogged, warped, but stayed on the shelves because that's what the library had. Take a book still readable in those conditions off the shelf and the hole it creates might not be filled. It's budgets, how many new books can be bought in the fiscal year, and a host of other factors. Sentimentality comes into the weeding, but there's no place for it if the library is to remain vital and approachable.

That's the reasonable, public-facing explanation. Sadness is left to patrons like me.

It's not that John Steinbeck, Writer is bad; it was always just the sheer length of 1,184 pages that I didn't have the patience for throughout the years, much as I admire Steinbeck and want to know more about him. The same thing happened that time before the end of last year. I didn't get through it. Now that I've taken up reading a lot more than I used to (and not just because of the pandemic; this has been going on before that), I figured that it was time to seek out my old friend, that somewhat waterlogged copy sitting elsewhere in the Ojai Library, away from that particular window, but still there.

I thought it would still be there. I looked it up in the Ventura County library catalog, and I was crestfallen. All there is of Jackson J. Benson is his biography of western writer A.B. Guthrie, Jr. and his anthology of critical essays about Steinbeck's short novels such as Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row. My old friend, one of many things that made me feel at home at the Ojai Library, is gone. Weeded. Every time I went to the Ojai Library, before biographies were moved, I looked for it as I passed by that first window, and sometimes that was all I would see of it. But it comforted me that it was there, the possibility that I might try again. With this pandemic, there are a lot of "Had I knowns..." in the world and of course, had I known, I would have sat down and finally read it the last time I checked it out of the library.

I decided to do something to honor it. From what I can tell so far, Interlibrary Loan isn't available again yet in Ventura County. I'm sure that not every participating library is at full strength yet for that. I wasn't going to wait, though. So I went to AbeBooks and found a fairly reasonably-priced paperback edition of John Steinbeck, Writer, under $10, which, for a 1,184-page book is pretty damn good.

This time, I will sit down and read it. Not because I paid for a copy, but because my old friend deserves it as a fond farewell. Should the day come when I can once again go inside the Ojai Library, I'll miss seeing it. I hope it got at least one more try with someone else.

Where Are You in Your Mind?

Last night, while trying to get to sleep, I fretted about having so many ideas for nonfiction books and adult novels and YA novels and picture books and still more, and yet I haven't made much headway on any of them. Not out of laziness or ambitions being bigger than my abilities, but I guess it's the paralysis of choice. At least in the way I saw it before thinking about it more this morning.

I wish I could live in a library. Not necessarily a public library. Probably a college or a university library on a sprawling campus (the best kind), with enough space for regular exercise, walking and perhaps eventually even jogging, and a supermarket nearby, maybe some fast-food joints, a bookstore here and there (not only on the campus) to see what's being sold in the area based on what's continually in stock, and perhaps a movie theater or two. In this, I think about Lied Library on the University of Nevada Las Vegas (UNLV) campus, which is all on Maryland Parkway, which I consider the most vibrant corridor in Las Vegas, which, if continued to be developed properly, could be one of the great hopes for the city perhaps being known a little more for something else than what it already is and always has been. Further down is the Boulevard Mall, which includes 99 Ranch Market, Goodwill, Ross, Seafood City, which is the local Filipino supermarket, and a Wing Stop Sports bar which, if you know Wing Stop, is much larger than your average Wing Stop, with lots more individual tables, TWO soda dispensers, an honest-to-god bar with alcohol, which is considered amateurish by Vegas standards, and big flatscreen TVs all around. I would have wanted to live at Lied Library, if not for the extreme desert heat and cold that I endured for five years. But that library, my god. Not only was there always more than enough room to walk the UNLV campus, but in the two times I was there as a substitute library aide at Paradise Elementary, which is also on the UNLV campus, I got lost on my way back from Lied Library to the school, before starting work there at 10:30 a.m. Both times, I didn't think I'd get there on time.

The stacks inside Lied Library are so massive that they're located on three successive floors, four if you count the serpentine design of the Leisure Reading section on the first floor, which I never noticed until the final time I was there, as part of our family's farewell tour of Las Vegas, which was cut short at the Wynn on another day when the movers called and said they were going to come to move us out on Sunday, and it was Friday. I was impressed by the sheer number of interesting titles in the Leisure Reading section, which, being in a university library, was far more extensive than Ventura College has in its Leisure Reading section, but it's no less interesting here.

The stacks with call numbers A-HJ are on the third floor, HM-PR on the fourth floor, and PS-Z on the fifth floor, all under the jurisdiction of the Library of Congress classification system. And with what they have, with all the presidential history books I could ever want, translated novels from different countries, every subject that could pop to my mind on a given day (from architecture to music history (especially 1970s music) to various biographies and memoirs and still more), I could easily spend the rest of my life there if such a thing were possible.

And yet, there are other libraries throughout the country, too, such as the New York Public Library (the main, famous one) and other university libraries which very possibly hold as much, if not more as Lied Library. Chances are many of them do, though. It would serve to make me indecisive, but there are considerations which limit me, such as weather. Nothing on the east coast since it gets too cold in winter. Same with the Midwest and in the Great Plains, tornadoes and such, so I wouldn't want to root myself there either.

But that's what it comes down to: Roots. I don't have any. We moved so many times throughout Florida, twice in Santa Clarita (although we did end up in Saugus for eight years, after our first year in Valencia, but there wasn't much in Santa Clarita that made me feel rooted, although I do miss Stater Bros. supermarket), and five times in four years in Las Vegas, owing to various bleak circumstances, such as neighbors next to us and above us smoking constantly and the smoke seeping into our apartment, which caused us to move out after that year), as well as last year at Via Ventura here in Ventura, which ended with our dogs having a massive flea problem because they never properly treated the grounds, and now at the new Island View Apartments, behind the Ralphs supermarket. It's interesting, what with a fourth-floor rooftop deck that takes in a lit-up view at night of Oxnard and Camarillo, further to the west, that's far more impressive to me than the Las Vegas and Los Angeles skylines.

Therefore, to be connected to a place? To know it intimately? To feel a sense of civic pride in it? I don't know how that works, nor do I think I'd want to learn. Not that I think we'll move again so quickly, although I hope we don't, as it would be interesting lately to be in one place for more than one year, and by that I mean one apartment complex, but we didn't have a choice from Via Ventura to Island View. We had to get out of Via Ventura, which looks progressively worse and more desperate to bring in tenants since we left. Maybe there's a chance with Island View. There are a lot of problems within the apartment, which are actually much better than what we came from at Via Ventura and before that in Las Vegas. But they do take their sweet time in addressing them. When the Santa Ana winds howled through recently, an incredible draft blew through the gaps in the front door, which made the vertical blinds in front of the sliding patio door billow and I really felt it, since I sleep in the living room, my bed there and my bookcases nearby, towards the back door (it's a two-bedroom apartment, so my parents have the master bedroom, and my sister has the other bedroom). I like it because my TV serves as the living room TV and I've got the kitchen right there. What more could I want for a room? But that front door, which is actually considered the back door by the complex, since what is actually our front door, with our number on it, faces a hallway that leads to doors that open into garages also for rent by residents, needs weather stripping. I'm guessing right now, even though the manager of the complex came with the head maintenance guy last week to look over exactly what we needed adjusted and repaired, they'll run out the clock leading up to Thanksgiving and then let it sit until after Thanksgiving. Hopefully they'll address it afterward, but it's been sitting for so long. Even so, still better from all that we came from, including a bungalow in nearby Henderson, Nevada that had shoddy, stringy carpeting, black mold behind the washer and dryer, and a leaking air conditioning unit from the ceiling that not only required us to put a bucket underneath to catch the drops, but which broke down before the hottest day of the year that year, after a few times in which the shitty maintenance crew there insisted that nothing was wrong with it. It seems to me that matters of shoddy maintenance, as well as delayed maintenance, seem to only exist in the western United States. Never had that in Florida. Can't go back, though, what with hurricanes getting worse, and as a native Floridian away for so long, I've most likely lost my immunity to the humidity.

Anyway, through all of this, it took many years to realize that books, and moreso libraries, have always been my home. I seriously considered a career in aviation, first as a commercial pilot, and then an aircraft mechanic, and then a mechanic for Air Force One, before then trying journalism, which, even though I'm proud of what I did there, I left because I didn't want to live on an ulcer farm. And it was afterward that I realized how much libraries have been there for me. I started reading when I was two years old, and I particularly remember, before Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida in 1992 (we lived in Coral Springs, and only got the feeder bands, but they were fierce), worrying about not being able to return The Little Mermaid soundtrack on audio cassette to the Coral Springs Library, since they had closed right before it was due, and any fines that might accrue because of that. Fortunately, I don't think there were any after they reopened. I also remember ignoring my math homework from Broward Community College on Friday afternoons when I was in the Southwest Regional Library in Pembroke Pines, diagonally across from the then-tiny campus, in favor of looking for movies to watch on the weekend, which was how I discovered The Fabulous Baker Boys, starring Jeff Bridges, one of my favorite actors, which became one of my all-time favorite movies. In fact, since my dad dropped me off early at BCC before he went to work as a computer and business education teacher at Silver Trail Middle just down the street, I was always there before the library opened at 7 a.m. and spent my entire semester there before we moved to Southern California. Subsequently, I failed that college Algebra course and had to retake it when I registered at College of the Canyons in Valencia.

There are lots of other stories like that, and libraries have always been my one true home like that. Oftentimes, in my head, in my imagination, I go to those libraries I've loved. I spend time in the stacks at Lied Library, I walk through the Whitney Library on Tropicana in Las Vegas, proud at how they always consistently met the needs of that at times-downtrodden community, and reluctantly ignoring the awful, distracting tile flooring at the main Clark County Library on Flamingo, also in Las Vegas, to admire their paperback collection, as well as their eager interest in so many other subjects in the hope that others will be interested, too. I also look at photos on Yelp of the New York Public Library, as well as photos from inside other university libraries and imagine myself there. In each one, I feel like I'm home. It's why I like living in Ventura. The Ventura College Library is my favorite place in Ventura and between that and the holds I always have from various locations in the Ventura County library system, I'm never short of books.

All this helps me to not panic so much over all that I want to write and haven't begun yet. Those works can be a second home for me. Characters to meet and follow, ideas to expand on. Places in my imagination to explore, unusual things I've thought about that I wonder if others think about, and the only way to find out is to write them and see who reads them. It's more difficult, more challenging than simply opening up a book and reading, but I want to try. Our main computer here in this apartment doesn't feel as much in a dungeon as it was in that apartment at Via Ventura, so that's a start. Plus there's a lamp next to it and it actually becomes cozier at night. So there's some encouragement. Just try. Get up and try. And with enough effort, these stories I want to tell can come to feel like my life with books and libraries. Another place in my life to fondly call home. And I know it will never move.

The Library for Wandering

I have here two lists, written on ramen noodle sticky notes (yes, really. I got them for cheap at the Box Lunch store at The Oaks mall in Thousand Oaks). One is of three books I had intended to check out from the Ventura College library when I go there next, such as another academic analysis of Don Quixote titled Don Quixote: The Knight of La Mancha, and Peanuts and Philosophy, part of the publisher Open Court's series of pop culture and philosophy books.

The other list takes up three and a quarter ramen sticky notes, and are other pop culture and philosophy titles from the same publisher available at the college library that I thought I might also be interested in, such as The Princess Bride and Philosophy, Monty Python and Philosophy, Facebook and Philosophy, and 12 others.

I realized that this is all wrong.

I checked out Futurama and Philosophy from that list, and couldn't get through it. Some of the essays were thin as it is, but I realized that this isn't the way I want to learn about various approaches to philosophy. I already have a stringent, though wide-ranging, list of books I want to read from the Ventura County public libraries. They're all holds that I pick up at the Hill Road Library, which is convenient for that, but not so much for browsing. I'd do that at the E.P. Foster library downtown, but despite being curious about their separate science fiction section, I haven't been there for a while because I know what I want to read at the moment.

In my pursuit of science fiction, I thought I'd simply look it up in the Ventura College library catalog and go page by page, checking out every single book over time that has even the slightest whiff of science fiction. The first one was The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, apparently an enormous presence in Chinese science fiction.

Huge mistake.

I can't dive in like this. I need to start small. I need short stories. I need anthologies. I need to find out what within science fiction interests me and pursue that, while occasionally stopping in for those that don't quite interest me, but might still be worth a read. I can't be going into (currently) heavy novels like that one and just expect to fall in easily. I need time to know what feels right for me. And I have two anthologies, one that I bought from The Open Book at The Oaks mall, and the other Infinite Stars, an anthology of space opera and military science fiction that I checked out from the Hill Road Library, a copy sent to me from the Ojai Library. I'll start with those, finish the latest issue of Asimov's that I bought at Ralph's last month, and go from there.

Being that my Ventura County library stacks are already well-planned, I shouldn't be doing the same at the Ventura College library. I need at least one library that I can simply wander, and I should be taking advantage of this particular library being open again for a new semester, open to me. Yet, I did notice that there's a science fiction and fantasy essay collection from Ursula K. Le Guin called The Language of the Night in the college library that I want to seek out. And in the philosophy realm, I have been curious about Epicurus for a long time, and the college also has a few books about him. That's where I should be going.

But as to the other three slots available on my card, I need to feel free. Just take it all in. Examine the stacks closely. Find out what I spark to that I may never have considered before. Yes, I want to read Robert A. Caro's epic biography series about Lyndon Baines Johnson, and I know that the college library has all the volumes available. I bought the first volume from Calico Cat Books before I was able to get a college library card, so I need to read that first. So maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to start on those soon enough. But I should be going in again without a plan, like it was the first time after I had plucked The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See off the top of the Leisure Reading stacks, after waiting for months to read it (I had it on hold at the Henderson Libraries, and then we moved). I had no idea what the rest of the library contained, no idea what else I wanted to read, and I simply wandered. I need to do more of that. This is one library that requires that kind of time, to tour my mind through these stacks and just be. Just let go and be carried by the books.

Besides, this is the first time anywhere that I've lived that I've had access to a college library. Despite my feverish love for the formidable Lied Library at UNLV, we didn't live near enough to it to go all that often, and in fact, we didn't. The usual traffic from Henderson to Maryland Parkway, plus the seemingly permanent construction zones along the drive, as well as the campus charging for visitor parking, didn't make it worth it. This one just takes a short bus ride. That's it. And once off the bus, you face the library building dead on. Pure convenience.

It's time to start truly living in these stacks. I can't wait to feel at home again by this.

Four-Day Fantasy Bliss

Today, I volunteered at the Green Valley Library, an unusual day for me to do it, because the library's closed tomorrow, Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It's always closed Sunday and Monday because that's how it's been ever since I got here, and probably even before, during the economic crash which caused two branches to be closed (the Malcolm branch and the Galleria branch, inside the Galleria at Sunset mall), and then hours were scaled back. More recently, albeit many, many months ago, hours were taken from the Green Valley and Gibson branches in order to open the Paseo Verde branch, the flagship branch, on Mondays. So instead of the Green Valley Library opening at 9:30 a.m., it opens at 10. There were other changes in the operating hours, but I've long forgotten what they were.

Normally, I volunteer on Saturdays, but that was impossible this week. And yet, I wish I could. I wish I had keys to the library, access to the alarm codes so I could spend the 4th of July weekend there. The library would be entirely empty and only for me. I would probably have breakfast on the way there, and bring lunch with me. Of course, I could spend all day and all through the night in the Green Valley Library, but I do have family in humans and dogs and birds alike, so I couldn't be away for that long. I'd let some time pass before returning, to build up the anticipation again.

I'd walk in through the back door, put my stuff down behind the circulation counter, and shelve whatever still needs to be shelved, any holds that might be left on that cart and certainly books sitting on the carts nearest the fiction side of the library. That would take all of 20 minutes to a half hour, depending on the workload.

I wouldn't turn on any of the computers. That wouldn't make any sense to me, because I'd be there for the library, not for the accompanying technology. I love the DVD section, the nonfiction DVDs on one side and the movies and TV shows on the other, and of course the audiobooks, but I would only want the books, and enough light in which to read whatever I'd want, whatever I could find. It would be the perfect setting in which to read Country, Danielle Steel's latest novel, which I only want to read because part of it takes place at the Wynn here in Las Vegas, and I want to see how she portrayed it (It has absolutely NOTHING to do with my mom being a huge Danielle Steel fan when I was growing up, and me reading a good number of her novels in turn, out of curiosity). But on the Claim Jumper shelves, which has copies of books that have a long number of holds, these copies available only at this particular library, there's no copy of Country. Disappointing, but I move on.

There's a shiny, squashy brown leather armchair in front of the new books for children, next to the separate children's area. I think I'd spend most of my hours there, as it's very close to the reading recliner I have at home. But most important to me is getting to know the collections completely, all the books I probably have missed while restocking the various displays in the library as a volunteer, all the DVD titles I haven't seen yet that could be intriguing for some other time, and knowing all the picture books there truly are in this library, because those shelves are packed tightly There are some books that when you pull them out, two try to come out with them, either on one side or on opposite sides.

I'm not sure what books I would want to read. Part of me would just want to read in the spur of the moment, and another part of me wonders what Nero Wolfe mystery novels they have that I might have missed. There was an omnibus I had read, but I think that's the only major one there. And yet, there are also the Robert Goldsborough continuations, of which the library has a few. Perhaps it would be time to try them again. But there's also presidential history, and one or two movie books I haven't gotten to yet, and Bob Stanley's history of pop music ("Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!: The Story of Pop Music from Bill Haley to Beyonce") and....and.....and.....

Then there's also the thought of what books would be in the spirit of spending four days alone in this library, books to represent in print the blissful peace I'd feel, great comfort, quiet eagerness, amazement at how many books there actually are when you have them all to yourself. I'm sure the books and other materials would want some rest during these four days, time to themselves, but I think a caretaker like me would not be a bother. Not every book gets attention when patrons are browsing. I would do my very best to give each one attention, even if it's only in lingering passing, to at least notice it. Overall, they make up a relatively hefty collection, but in getting specific with them, they're merely themselves, one after the other, each one with different stories to try, and ideas to explore. For example, I have my religion. It's books and libraries. But I'd want to see exactly how many books there are about Buddhism in the library, which I've been curious about for anthropological reasons. Also because there are times when I do feel monkish, when I would love to have a library as a monastery. I did that once, at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, when I was doing research for a book that may never happen. It truly is an American monastery and heaven for a movie buff like me. I would want to see if I could capture that same monastic feeling in a library that truly serves a whole community, not just a piece of one. I think I could. Sadly, I can't live in a library (although my room sometimes come close), so this would be the next best thing.

(Speaking of that, I can now reveal this: Two weeks ago, I was hired to be the new library aide at Cox Elementary, which is in the general vicinity of my neighborhood and is very much the next best thing. I finally get to do what I want to do! I hope that this will lead to doing even more of what I want to do, which is simply to contribute everything I can give to libraries through my work for them. I should think a year and a half of volunteering at the Green Valley Library while waiting on a position there (the part-time shelver position would be enormously convenient because it would boost me to nearly 40 hours a week), and the year and a half I spent as a substitute everything in the school district, including a great many stints as a substitute library aide show that already. My new job will show it even more.)

In reality, I will never be able to get into the Green Valley Library during this July 4th weekend. My imagination will do it for me throughout the days.

Still Here

Still here. Still living. Still in Southern Nevada, this time a resident of Henderson for two weeks now. I should write more, and I will, eventually. Nothing's keeping me from it. I'm just exploring my new home, figuring out what to write about it, what to wonder about, what to exclaim about, what to think deeply about. There's a lot, and it will all come soon. Actually, it feels easier writing here than it was when I wrote in the mobile home park in Las Vegas. Life feels easier here, even while still waiting for a job to come, even as I continue to send out resumes. It's a little worrisome, but it doesn't poke at me constantly. It's because of this place, this apartment complex, this neighborhood, the fact that the Green Valley Library is on the same side of the street as this apartment complex, and I've walked there and back twice in two weeks and loved it both times.

More to come soon.

Home is a Library That Knows Me

I like the Whitney Library because it has books, just like I like any library that has books. Any library is my temple because of that. But most of the books I check out from the Whitney Library are from other branches, books that I've put on hold during the week, before my usual Sunday visit, the result of deciding what I want to read the following week, what I want to research for the books I want to write, what would excite me, what would make me curious.

Whitney is an ok branch. It has a much, much larger children's section, an entire room of its own, which I've never seen in any other library I've been to, not even in Florida. It's still part of the library building, but it's its own world, with shelves of picture books just the right height for little kids to find the books they want. There's also a much smaller teen section that also has its own quiet feel, even though it doesn't have the benefit of being as removed as the children's section is. It faces part of where the most foot traffic is, a stretch between the entrance of the library and the fiction and nonfiction sections. But it is quiet enough for any bookish teens to find a sanctuary there for themselves.

Yet, this isn't my library. I don't walk in and feel truly at home. It's necessary for me, it's valuable, but it's basically a weekly refueling stop. I go in, I get the books I want, I sometimes find a title on one of the fiction shelves that I put on hold on my library card for next week, and I leave. There's no connection, no sense of closeness. Even if I spent more time than just the usual half an hour, I don't think I would find it. The closest I've felt to any part of the Whitney Library is a multi-volume set of American surnames, of which I paged through one volume to see what would make a good presidential surname for one of the novels I want to write. If I was to spend more time at Whitney, it would only be for more time with that set.

I have visited my home library twice, though. Once when we were tourists of Southern Nevada, and on New Year's Eve, which was also Mom's birthday. She wanted to visit Boulder City again, which made me deliriously happy because I consider Boulder City my true home. I love Las Vegas, I love that dreams can become reality there, that the strangest visions you might sometimes have are probably somewhere in the city. But inasmuch as I want to write for the tourist publications I've seen that tout and brag and crow about everything there is to do in Las Vegas, I'm not the kind of person who always enjoys the tumult of the Strip, the crowds, the thousands of slot machines, the millions of ways in which you can either spend or lose your money. I do know that the Strip moves more slowly than the media would have you believe, but it's not slow enough for me. Boulder City is utter peace. Boulder City moves gently. It doesn't rush for anything. It doesn't create the latest hype. It doesn't try to get you to go here and go there and eat here and play over there. In fact, gambling is still outlawed in Boulder City, as it was when it started as the first planned community in the United States, built by the government to house workers who were building Hoover Dam. No gambling, no drinking, no untoward behavior that would get you kicked off the reservation, sometimes for a day, sometimes for good, depending on the severity of what you did. Boulder City isn't that strict anymore, but development of any sort is slow because that's the way the city wants it. I love the downtown area because instead of passing by the antique shops and restaurants and candy stores you see, you mosey on by. You take your time. You enjoy what you see, and become curious about what more there is. On its own, the Boulder City Cemetery is peaceful enough, but that kind of peace is spread out through all of Boulder City. It may happen earlier, depending on the years ahead, but when I retire, I want to move to Boulder City. I don't mind how quiet the town is. I don't mind that everything pretty much closes up shop by the early evening. All I need are my books, my writing, and the promise that those stores and the downtown area entirely will be open the next day for me to mosey on through if I want.

That includes the Boulder City Library, which is part of the Las Vegas-Clark County Library District, but also has its own website. Its rules are more stringent than any other Las Vegas-Clark County branch, such as a maximum of four people at any table, but it makes for a far more pleasant experience, such as the one I had on Mom's birthday, with the library our last stop before we drove out of the city to search for the Hacienda Hotel and Casino, near Hoover Dam.

When you walk in, you enter a small rotunda that has pictures of Boulder City's residents, men who worked on the Hoover Dam. There's a picture of one man scaling one of the many rock walls, another slightly colored of a man standing there with construction going on behind him, and my favorite, three men having lunch. Then, hung on a wall across from where you stand is an enormous quilt portraying a tall bookcase, created by a quilting club in 2004, each section done by a different member.

When I walked into the library proper, I knew exactly what I wanted: The Nevada Room. I believe the Boulder City Library has the only room devoted to Nevada history. In this room are books about Nevada, Las Vegas, Boulder City, Hoover Dam, and the Southwest in general. There are maps and documents to carefully examine, and reference books to peruse. There are two long tables, a collection of chairs, and framed pictures on the wall showing off various aspects of Nevada's history. When I first saw this room as a tourist, I wanted to read every book I found there. I still do, and though I can't physically check out each book from that room at the Boulder City Library, I know that when I look them up in the library catalog, chances are that Boulder City will be the only branch to have that particular book.

First, however, I wanted to find one book to check out. I was returning Tooter Pepperday by Jerry Spinelli, which I had finished reading the day before New Year's Eve. I knew what I wanted to check out, but it was all more than one book. There were a few Nero Wolfe novels by Rex Stout that I knew the Boulder City Library had. Oscar Levant published The Memoirs of an Amnesiac in 1965, and I knew Boulder City had what felt like a first edition when I saw it. You see, Boulder City is a safe haven for old books. It's hard to find a book that's over five years old in the Whitney Library. Not in copyright, but in whatever edition it is. For example, the copy of The Betsy by Harold Robbins that I checked out from the Whitney Library was from Boulder City. It was published in 1971, and this copy looks like it was from 1971. But it's well cared for. Books seem to be stitched up there when they need to be, new binding applied, new plastic covering given. Every word, every sentence, every page is important here.

I walked passed the Young Adult Fiction section, which is in an alcove next to the entrance. There are long shelves of books there, and while I was looking for The Memoirs of an Amnesiac, I stopped to look for any of Jerry Spinelli's novels, and smiled when I spotted Love, Stargirl, which was part of a box set I bought from Amazon that included Stargirl, the first novel, and a free journal. It was the first time I bought a book before I finished it, Love, Stargirl having been checked out from the library. I knew I needed both books only halfway through the sequel.

The biography section, on the opposite side of the library, didn't have The Memoirs of an Amnesiac. When I looked it up just now, I found that it's on a holdshelf for someone else.

I went to the fiction section, which was a revelation because I didn't have to squeeze past any shelves! I could comfortably walk past them, unlike at the Whitney Library where you have to decide if it's you or your tote bag full of books that's going to go through. Here, I reached the Nero Wolfe novels without having to tell my tote bag, "I love you! Never forget me!" Not to mention that I didn't have to bring my tote bag this time because I had reached my 50-item limit on Monday, as always.

I still have Fer-De-Lance, The League of Frightened Men, The Rubber Band, and The Red Box to read. I ordered them toward the end of my trying years in Santa Clarita, and moved them here with the rest of my books. I'd rather see where I get with those four. I've always liked the series, but I only have a yen for certain books at certain times. This week would have been Nero Wolfe's time if ghost stories hadn't gotten in the way, which I want to read to see how ghost stories were told throughout literature as I plan my own novels that are in the same realm. I'll probably be influenced by a few of them, but I mostly want to figure out the blueprints for these books, how these authors did it, what kind of devices they employed.

As I walked past the "A" authors on the far left wall of the fiction section, I spotted Timbuktu by Paul Auster and immediately reached for it and pulled it down. It's about a dog named Mr. Bones and his dying companion, Willie G. Christmas, as they try to find Bea Swanson, Willie's former teacher and greatest influence in his life, so that Willie can give Bea the key to the locker at the Greyhound station that contains all his manuscripts, and so that Mr. Bones can have a home instead of having to fend for himself after Willie dies. I first read it in September 2008, as I found out earlier today on my Goodreads account, and even though I hadn't thought about it since then, it must have stuck in my mind, because I wanted to check it out to see if I wanted it in my permanent collection. Was it really that good then? That first time, it must have been.

I carried it with me as I finally approached the Nevada Room. Timbuktu was my top choice, but maybe there was something in here that I'd want more.

The Nevada Room has silent reverence toward the state it represents in the books it holds. You come in here and it feels like you can know all of Nevada just by touching the books, not even picking one up and skimming the pages. I wouldn't go so far to say that there are spirits roaming this room, but there is a definite sense of history that would excite any Nevada knowledge seeker, like me. If ever I use this as a quiet research room, I know it'll always be welcoming and exude less expectation than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Margaret Herrick Library did. No one's above you in this library and in this room. It's all yours, to seek out whatever you want.

I found an anthology called Literary Nevada that I went to the computer across from the check-out desk to put on hold because I knew by this time that I'd check out Timbuktu. I wanted it again. The only other book I wanted from the Nevada Room was Walking the Twilight: Women Writers of the Southwest, another anthology, and I put that on hold too. Later, when I checked my account before we left, I found that the copy in transit to the Whitney Library was the one I had held not even an hour before. There's a lot of other books from the Nevada Room that I want to read, and I know I don't have to memorize any titles. I'll find them in the catalog and they'll quickly be familiar again.

Mom loves this library as much as I do, and it's mainly because of the magazine collection they have. I didn't count, but I estimate that the library subscribes to at least 70 magazines. At the Whitney Library, the magazine room is barely a cubbyhole and it only seems to have the current basics, such as People. Here, you can find so much more, including "Aviation Week and Space Technology," "Trains," and others I've unfortunately already forgotten, except for one.

I knew this was my library because of its peacefulness, because of its appreciation for old books, because it still has its card catalog, even though they prefer the online version. But it also does what any library worth its weight in book gold should: It knows you. The librarians may not know you all that well and the only moments you may spend with them, at least at the Boulder City Library, is when you check out books (At Whitney, you use a self-checkout system and a human is only there if you have any questions regarding your library card. For anything else, you go to the reference desk). But the library knows. The library knows what you gravitate to as soon as you arrive, what you like to read, what you're looking for.

I went down the rows of magazines on the left side of the tables and chairs in between both parts, and then the magazines on the right side. I was surprised to find "New Mexico Magazine," which, until this moment, I didn't even know existed. I took it to the table where Mom was, sat down, opened it up, and took out my phone to put names of some of the writers in the magazine and book titles into a text message in my phone to look up later.

New Mexico Magazine. In the past couple of weeks, I've let subscriptions to "Oxford American" and "Poets & Writers" run out because they didn't feel like they fit me anymore. I like the writing in "Oxford American," but I'm not in the South anymore. Not that that's any reason not to read Southern writing, which I still do, but that's not me right now. I want to travel throughout New Mexico in the years to come. What better way to begin learning more about the state? I'm thinking of subscribing to it. $19.95 for 12 issues sounds like a good deal, better than what I'd have to pay to renew my subscription to "The New Yorker" if it was expiring now instead of September 2014.

After Mom was done with the magazines she was reading and we headed to the exit, we stopped at the new books which take up a few shelves directly across from the check-out desk. Mom was confused before because in the fiction section in the back, there were signs that said "Coming Soon" and she mistakenly thought that those were new books that hadn't been cataloged into the system yet. All of them. She hadn't noticed that under "Coming Soon" was a pair of handcuffs, and some other images related to murder mysteries.

The Boulder City Library is doing a Winter Mystery Reading Program that starts in two weeks, and it was advertised all throughout the library. This is Boulder City's own program. No other Las Vegas-Clark County branch is doing this. That's one of the signs of a strong community, that the library creates programs like this and actively promotes them. For this, there will be book discussions, and movies, and a Clue-themed party. If I was living in Boulder City, I'd go to all of it.

While looking at the new books, I found that the library knew me very well because sitting next to a book called Don't Know Much About the American Presidents by Kenneth C. Davis, which I put on hold after I got home, I spotted Fifteen One-Act Plays by Sam Shepard, one of my heroes. It was an expanded edition of The Unseen Hand and Other Plays, likely including more plays, possibly his latest works if there have been any. Presidents and Sam Shepard side by side, as well as another book called A Slave in the White House by Elizabeth Dowling Taylor, about Paul Jennings, a slave that was born on the plantation of James and Dolley Madison, who later became part of their staff at the White House. This is the library I want for all time. This is the library that knows me well. The Boulder City Library is not a refueling stop for me; it is the sanctuary I've always wanted. I know that we're going back to Boulder City possibly in the next few months, if not sooner, but I don't know how often I'd be able to get to this library otherwise. Boulder City is only 12 miles from where we are in Las Vegas, but it feels like another world, another life, with a lot of hills to drive over, and a higher elevation. You can't see Las Vegas from anywhere in Boulder City. I don't feel pressured or rushed by anything in Las Vegas, but if you ever want to breathe more easily, Boulder City is where you go for a while. I'd rather be there forever. I would never be bored there. And to have a library that knows who I am, and what I want in my life, is something I cherish and hold close. After this library visit, I can't see the Whitney Library for more than what it doesn't have compared to Boulder City. That's not fair to Whitney, I know. A library with a lot of books to choose from is still good and necessary. It's what I live for. But after we left the new books, before we reached the door, we saw on a bulletin board easel that the library was asking kids to make snowflakes that would be sent to the kids at Sandy Hook Elementary. That is what community means. I know it's at the Whitney Library too, though not as easily found, but it's much stronger in Boulder City. I belong there for that reason, for many reasons.

Mom's main concern is that if we move to Boulder City, what we feel about it will diminish because we'd be there every day. I don't think so. For one, it's the one place in Southern Nevada that truly feels peaceful. But also, I've never lived in a small town.

A few weeks ago, I met another neighbor in our mobile home park, a 60-70-something woman who had lived in Minnesota all her life and moved out here for the freedom to do whatever you want because in Minnesota, she was surrounded by people who wanted to do this and do that and why don't they meet there and go to that restaurant later? Not family, not all the time I'm sure, but neighbors always in each other's business.

Boulder City has the same sense of separation that Las Vegas and Henderson do. People go on about their lives and you're doing this and they're somewhere else. For friendliness, you can't beat Boulder City. For me, Casselberry was a suburb outside of Orlando, Coral Springs and Pembroke Pines were just small cities. I feel like I can walk around downtown Boulder City and find something different that interests me every time, while always having the opportunity to go back to what I love.

There are disadvantages, such as supermarkets and bigger shopping centers not being close by. If you need to go to Target or Walmart, you have to drive for a while. The only movie theater nearby is two screens at the Hacienda Hotel and Casino and that's closed and opened a few times already, with this latest attempt seeming to be the most successful.

It's a balance, though. You have to decide what you want, what you can live with, and can live without having as often as you've had it. I don't think we'll be moving there soon, or for many years. Henderson seems more what we need right now if we move again. It's a little further from the Strip and downtown Las Vegas, but it has almost as relaxed a lifestyle as Boulder City, but with a lot more traffic and shopping centers.

There's time, years and decades, in fact. But whenever I go to the Whitney Library, or to the main Clark County branch, neither can compare to my home. It's everything I could ever want in a library.

A Library Stocked with Disappointment

I had been to the Canyon Country library before last Saturday; two or three times.

When Dad went there on the way home to give work and collect it from one or two students who couldn't attend La Mesa for a time for whatever reason, I, tired from spending the day as a substitute campus supervisor, would wander and then stop in front of rows of shelves containing books of essays and books of plays. I would beam at the back wall full of shelves of novels, wanting to eat it all. I would look for names I never heard of and see if I'd want to know them and their chapters and their characters and their views of the world.

Because the library in Valencia closed on December 7 for two months for renovations (more computers, a dedicated teen area, new furniture), and because the three other libraries in the Santa Clarita Valley, including Canyon Country, are closed on Sunday (Valencia was the only one open from 1-5 p.m.), I have to go to the Canyon Country library on Saturdays, which, as it turns out, is not such a jarring change. Granted, it was a little strange not having to access the library website during Saturday Night Live at 12:30 a.m. to renew books and see what I need to return in order to pick up the books I have on hold, but I really enjoyed today. I got up and it felt so much more easygoing. I still have that book project sitting heavily on me, but I didn't feel it as acutely as on past Sundays, when we'd go to the Valencia library towards 3 p.m. (mainly because I sleep late well into the day, and because Sunday has always been a laid-back day for the rest of the family), attend to other errands, go to Ralph's to either shop fully or just pick up a few items, and likely get home a little before or a little after 7 p.m. The pressure would build as soon as I got home. I'd be too aware that I had to put together yet another Freelance Daily newsletter (compiling three days of job listings from Craigslist and other websites for the freelance writer subscribers), and while working on the newsletter, my mind would be nagging me about the essays I still had to write, about the books I still had to read, which are now down to one, a biography on Carole Landis.

That's the only thing that I really like about going to the Canyon Country library on Saturdays: To feel at ease even with an enormous workload. Sunday now feels like the kind of day where I could jump into the air and float, if it were possible. I could walk above the couch and play limbo with the top of the doorframe leading into the kitchen, and amble across the neighborhood pool just over the left patio wall, looking down and smiling at the view.

The library itself doesn't give the same pleasure. Spending only a few minutes there, there are no problems. One of the times I was with Dad, I found a few plays I wanted to check out, borrowed his card (mine was naturally full), and used the self-checkout computer. This branch has four of them, and I can see why. Those clerks who have to work the front desk wish they didn't have to. They don't like to work, they're not helpful, and they don't look beyond the obvious places.

I returned 12 books in order to pick up the books I had on hold (the limit is 50 items). I found 10 of them, checked them out myself, and went to one of the only computers that are solely for the library catalog. I had 48 books checked out (owing to instances where I may not be interested in one or more of the books after I start reading them, but mainly because I really, really, really love books), and thought I had miscalculated again, even though I was certain I had correctly counted 12 books in my bag. There was one I apparently hadn't picked up, and I went to the front desk to see where it was. This girl, who must have been 18 or 19 or 20, maybe even 21, didn't care about helping anyone. It was obvious. I said straight out that I had a book on hold that wasn't on any of the hold shelves, and that it wasn't Oliver Twist, as that was also available to pick up, but I wasn't ready to pick it up that Saturday (I'll pick it up next Saturday). She kept asking if it was Oliver Twist I wanted to pick up, and I kept saying that it was a different book, finally showing her the title within the pages of my account that I printed out from home. She looked at my account after scanning my card, and went to the hold shelves, even though I had already been there and hadn't found the book. She came back, telling me exactly what I had told her: The book wasn't there. She then explained that she couldn't do anything else, and to call back in a few days to see if they had located the book, because the books on the carts near her were the only other holds to be put on those shelves. There was nothing in the backroom.

Big help. I put my card back in my wallet, thanked her, even though I didn't mean it, and I went to the table Mom and Dad were sitting at, Mom not at all pleased with this library and for good reason, with many pushy people there, and other people of uncertain character. If a bag was left on a table, they might look inside and take whatever attracted them. I only realized this after I came back a second time and Mom told me she moved my bag next to her for that reason, as there were some people sitting behind her and Dad who looked like they had that exact idea.

That second time out on the library floor, I decided to look again at the hold shelves to see if the front-desk paperweight had truly not found the book. She hadn't, and as it turned out, neither did I. I honestly didn't think to look above the first shelf when I picked up the other books. Two of the books I intended on checking out were sitting there, and I realized that they'd probably also put future holds of mine there, as there hadn't been room on the first shelf with my other holds. But the girl couldn't see above the first shelf? I don't expect anyone to fake enthusiasm they don't have. If a waitress at, say, Red Robin, is having an off day, I don't mind there not being a smile, as long as the order is correct and the bad day doesn't splatter on me. But at least that waitress would be doing her job, just like I expected that girl to do her job. That's what she's there for. She should do it and be dissatisfied about her life later. How hard is it to look above that first shelf? I have a good excuse in that this was my first time picking up any holds from this branch. I didn't know right away. The reference desk was no better when I asked for specific directions to the Newhall library for Mom. Same attitude there. So much resentment in the building that you could choke from the fumes. Even the books feel it. They look so depressed, including my favored back wall. There's one librarian who shelves the books wearing red gloves. I understand the hullabaloo over the swine flu and am all for assuring one's safety in health, but I don't wear gloves when I look at the books. What has traumatized her so about them?

My sister had an excellent suggestion earlier this evening for next Saturday because of the family plan to see what the Newhall library is like: Go inside, pick up the books on hold, and leave. Don't linger any longer than necessary.

I agree. I can't spend as much time in that library as I can in Valencia's. If we aren't halfway out of California to Las Vegas by February 1 when the Valencia library reopens (meaning that no one's called Dad yet, offering him a job, or we're not yet in the process of planning that move to Vegas, or in Las Vegas looking at houses), I'm going to kiss the floor at its entrance. I'm not going to be so annoyed by those librarians who take too long to check in items, or those who don't understand what I'm looking for (I'm not vague in asking for what I need. I always want my books quickly). At least they're doing their jobs. At least they're efficient, even when I get that one librarian who doesn't understand that I already looked in my box of holds for that book and it's not in there, and actually goes to the box under the counter nearest to the self-checkout computer to look. I miss her, I miss them, I miss books that look like they're living a good life on those shelves.

Well, This is New

I've never felt the urgent need to maintain a blog before, as there's been enough insights from varied minds to keep me mentally nourished, such as from Ken Levine (http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/), the master sitcom writer and Erin O'Brien (http://erin-obrien.blogspot.com/), whose brother John wrote "Leaving Las Vegas," among other stunning books, and who's a talented writer in her own right. With them, and others like Pete Vonder Haar (http://www.whiterose.org/pete/blog), a fellow writer for Film Threat (http://www.filmthreat.com/), what could I possibly have to say that would make a blog worthwhile?

As expected, an idea came a few weeks ago that I've not yet worked out logistically (i.e., too lazy so far to make it happen, though seeing the blog alive should motivate me), but I hope will become the crux of this blog. If not all the time, then I hope the posts without it will retain the theme.

Three Sundays ago, my family (parents and sister, whom I will most likely write a lot about) and I left the Valencia branch of the County of Los Angeles Public Library system and on the ground were what stands now for due date stamps on the back of books: Printed lists of what has been checked out and when those items are due. It came with replacing the then-aging countywide computer system, which had librarians scanning in books to be returned and writing out various numbers on slips of paper corresponding to libraries that those items would be sent back to. A lot of paper used and certainly plenty of pen ink.

With this new system, there is still a lot of paper used, but now all the librarians at the checkout desk have to do is scan the book and a piece of paper prints out detailing which library the book goes back to, and to whom, if anyone. Much easier, less time taken, and I admire the convenience of it.

Those printed lists of what is checked out (the self-checkout computers also obviously do this) are useful if you're not me. That is, you don't access the library catalog from home every day, reserving book after book and causing wild frustration during the week (I imagine) to the librarians who were at least enterprising enough to remove my books from among the shelves where other people's books are sitting, waiting to be picked up, and put them in a large box under the counter at the far right side of the check in/check out area.

But outside on that Sunday, I noticed a few of those printed lists on the ground. I picked them up, learning that someone had checked out books on Indian cooking, while another, most likely a teenager, had checked out what looked like every "Yu-Gi-Oh" book the library carried. This was fascinating to me: A record of reading habits. How many books? How few? Short lists? Long ones?

I told my sister, upon picking up a few of these, that I wanted to start a blog showcasing these. Not to criticize, as I believe that whatever gives you pleasure you should embrace, but perhaps to make a little fun of some of the choices, and also maybe to imagine the person who checked some of these items out. "Little Children" and one of the discs of the first season of "Charmed," you have to wonder just a little bit.

We have a multi-purpose printer here at home that also can send out faxes and scan things. The most workable method for me is to tape these "scraps of literacy," as I call them, and hence the blog title, to sheets of white printer paper---making sure they're absolutely secure and don't cause us to have to buy a new printer---and running them through the scanner function.

I have a few short ones that I plan to practice on and hope that they work, including that one containing the above-mentioned DVD titles. Now, it should also be known that these slips of paper do not contain library card numbers. A matter of security, and a good one, particularly when people just throw them on the ground and move on.

In the weeks following my discovery of this, the grounds near the entrance of the library and up to the automatic doors have been disappointingly clean. Every Sunday, I hope for at least a few more on the ground, that maybe whomever cleans that wide area either forgot or wasn't there on Saturday or that morning (the library opens at 1 on Sundays and closes at 5). But I'll work with what I have for now, because I'd like these to be the centerpieces of this blog.

As for other possible "scraps of literacy," I read often, watch lots of movies, and there's certainly a lot to write about in this world of mine, so I plan to include all of that in here too. Most likely short pieces unless there's something really on my mind, another meaning to "scraps of literacy," and I hope my writing here is always literate enough.

I'm also constantly enthralled and fascinated by the night. Those hours within the darkness are when I spend the most time up and about, except for when I serve as a substitute campus supervisor at La Mesa Junior High, where my dad teaches business education. Nepotism with a twist: I'm good at it. However, though I do get on well with the students that the office and administration call for at various times in the day, it's not quite the same as the set of students I knew when I was a tutor for the AVID program, basically a useless stab at trying to turn kids toward going to college after they graduate high school. Never mind the car mechanics needed and various other jobs in the world that are also important. You help kids with problems they have with various subjects, there's a chart they draw out to try to figure out those problems, and that's all I could say about that without mustering further disgust. It's never been helpful even in its own aims. Seems more like a power trip for those teachers engaging in it, a way to teach without having to put forth the effort needed to be a really good teacher. Just sit behind the worksheets and methods laid out by others. Never mind the inspiration that could come from actual effort.

I'm sure I'll cover that in further detail in future entries, but for now, I will say that I did quit out of that personal disgust. I didn't want it anymore and it bored me to the brink of stupidity. It's thankfully not possible for me to step off that cliff. So I took a job as a substitute campus supervisor when needed. And the first time I did it, I met again many of the students I had helped as an AVID tutor, who seemed to like me more than their own teachers. They wondered why I was a campus supervisor now and I explained to them why, lightly, without getting into the bolder details of my dissatisfaction. I credit the genes I was given, as my dad has the same talent for engaging people, but I've no desire to follow him into teaching.

You may find in future entries my tendency to wander like this at risk of losing the point I intended to make. Here, it's to say that the hours kept by some of the campus supervisors are not friendly for a night person like me. One has hours of 8 a.m. to 2 p.m., my favorite set because school ends at 3:10, and I have some time to stretch out on the couch in the teacher's lounge upstairs from the library. I go in with my dad in the morning and leave with him as well in the afternoon, so that means getting up at about 5:40 a.m. I'm going in again on February 12th, the day before a four-day weekend for the William S. Hart Union School District, encompassing all its schools. Good enough for me, though the hours I'll inherit this time are 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Five hours instead of the six I love so much. But a paycheck is always appreciated, so I'll happily take what I can endorse, after the district has taken various things out of it, the little, niggling, bothersome taxes that make you wonder what they actually use the money for, and if they actually use it.

But perhaps that's a little too cynical at this moment. I shall save that for later. I've no qualms about the job, certainly not with what it entails during the day, yet another string of thoughts suitable for another time, another entry.

I hope you'll join me and stick around, curious about what happens next. Maybe spontaneous combustion. I'm easy.

And now to figure out the scanning function on this printer.