Then & Now

I just bought the new Atlantic 60th anniversary CD at Starbucks, where I seem to do all my cd shopping these days. I bought this one because it has the Les McCann & Eddie Harris performance "Compared to What" from the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival. I first heard this cut in college, thanks to my jazz-loving boyfriend at the time and bought the album (Swiss Movement)after we broke up, for the same reason I picked up the Atlantic CD: this performance is a driving force of energy, building with each chorus to a crescendo of a indignation that is still topical ("The president has got his war, folks don't know just what it's for") and still thrills me everytime I hear it. The details may have changed (Iraq, not Vietnam) but the lyrics' incredulous anger, McCann's pounding piano chords driving the music forward, Harris's raucous sax shooting up into the stratosphere, their energy ratchetting up through each round of misdeeds and stupidity called out. Someone has to speak the truth and they do it here.

How is it that a performace, captured in a particular place at a particular time, still resonates nearly 40 years later? I heard Werner Herzog in an interview on the radio the other day say, "The poet must confront the truth." He was describing the basis of his own work but it applies, I think, to all art. That may be why this piece is still exciting to me when most music I hear today is, well, boring--limp, pallid, forgettable, banal. Popular music, classical music, church music--a lot of it is a snooze. My intention here is not to rant on the low state of music today. Boring is a very subjective judgement. I'm just surprised and pleased that something I liked years ago, I still enjoy listening to today. And the problems--they still exist too.

Empty Nest

A close friend is getting ready to send her youngest child off to college. She's also thinking about what she wants to do with her life now that her children are no longer her full-time job. Aside from the necessity of having to earn a living, she could do just about anything she wanted to do. But she seems to be stymied by the sheer number of choices, of possibilities. A huge chapter of her life as an adult is coming to a close but the next part is not yet ready to begin.

I can understand her hesitation. My partner of 13 years died two years ago. Although the rational part of me knows he is gone, the emotional part is not yet ready to accept it. I miss him at the most mundane times, when I'm listening to the radio or reading the newspaper or driving home. I miss telling him about my day and receiving his helpful advice. I miss hearing his compliments (even when they were generous). I miss listening to his invariably well-informed but skeptical opinions about whatever is the current political scandal. I miss the traveling we did together and seeing the world through his eyes. I know this chapter of my life has ended but I'm not ready yet to move on. I don't feel I really understand this part of my life yet and until I do, I'm not ready to go to the next part.

Change can be good when we move toward something--a new job, a new relationship, a new life. I had always looked forward to the changes in my life. Moving to a new city or taking a new job was exciting and invigorating. But sometimes we have to hang on to the past a while, to assimilate it, before we can be ready to move on. Sometimes change is only running away from the past. Act too soon, too thoughtlessly and you run the risk of living from habit rather than from choice.

What to do next? Sometimes sitting still and dreaming is enough.

What's left behind

The library I work for is undergoing renovation. What's been most interesting to me as the building goes through stages of disintegration is what's left behind. . .the detritus.

Dippin' my toe in the social network

A tech-savvy colleague talked me into setting up a FaceBook page. "Blogs are so old," she asserted. "Everyone's using FaceBook now," which is, I gather, an version of MySpace for us older folks. Sure, why not? I'll give it a try. . . . A week later--it's amusing, diverting, a good way to kill a couple of hours in the evening. I catch some of my colleagues in their more zany moments. But, like the song goes, is that all there is?

Maybe I'm being stodgy here, but privacy is a concern. I like being anonymous, getting lost in the crowd and all that. We constantly hear admonitions about guarding our information from identity thieves, so I'm leery about hanging it all out there in Cyberworld. Has it become a more beneign place? Since when? And then there's the whole personal vs. work identity thing, especially when we're using these social networks (as we do in my workplace) for both professional and personal communication. When the personas co-mingle, it can get confusing keeping them separated (like relatives who don't speak to each other). Am I being old-style with my split professional-vs.-personal identity?

Or maybe it's beside the point because everyone's moved on to the next new thing. Which means I get the pool to myself.

What I like about being a librarian

What I like about being a librarian, part I

What I like about being a librarian is knowing about everything. . . or
knowing where to look. . . or knowing how to find out where to look.

"We're going to the opera tomorrow," my mother in Detroit offers on the
phone the other day. "Oh," I say, "What are you going to see?" "I don't
know," she says, "I'll have to find the tickets." "Don't worry," I say
without thinking, "I can look it up online," knowing I could find the
schedule for Michigan Opera Theatre (and the cast, ticket prices and
parking information) faster online than she can find the tickets buried
on her desk. Or my friend visiting New York City, who calls me on her
cell phone so I can look online for the addresses of the Houston's
restaurants, where she wants to go for lunch.

How many times have we heard, "Oh it must be so nice to be a librarian!
You get to read books all day!" Well, not exactly. I read books at home.
At work I read email, blog posts, journal articles, spreadsheets,
procedure manuals, memos, catalog entries, book reviews, reports and
(mostly illegible) notes. I browse, scan, peruse, glance over and
generally careen through mountains of text every day.

Has the Internet changed how we do our work? No doubt about it. For the
better? Yes, in this case--more is more is more.

What I like about being a librarian, part II

What I like about being a librarian is the trust customers have that we
will be able to find the answers to their most urgent questions--How can
I get custody of my child? What does [long complex medical term] mean?
How do I get an opossum out of my garage? Their trust is humbling and their
appreciation, when I help them, is very gratifying.

For all the difficult, demanding, impatient customers I encounter on any
given day, there are just as many (or more) who are appreciative, happy,
satisfied. Of course, we all know the full moon skews that balance a
little. But the satisfied customers, their confidence in my ability to
meet their needs rewarded, provide the my ego with the little, immediate
strokes it needs to keep going--much better than waiting for those
few-and-far-between ones from the powers that be.

Risk and Generosity

I had the opportunity to attend a high school graduation this weekend,
something I haven't done in a long while. After much blood, sweat and
tears, my friend's daughter graduated Houston's High School for the
Performing and Visual Arts, one of the city's most competitive magnet
high schools. What was so impressive about the graduation ceremony was
not only the performances by the music, dance and theatre graduates and
slide shows by the visual arts and theatre tech kids (being, after all,
an arts high school), but also the effusive and warm response of their
peers in the audience. After all, they all have been in the spotlight at
one time or another during their high school careers and appreciate the
risk-taking that making art requires, the vulnerability and exposure
resulting from putting your passion out there on the stage or in the
gallery for everyone to see and to judge.

Why did I find this so inspiring? Well, in a workplace undergoing change
(and where is this not happening?), I see colleagues who are passive and
reluctant to make suggestions or question assumptions. It seems safer to
sit back and complain than to risk having your ideas slapped down.
Something these students have learned that we seem to have forgotten is
that it's easier to put yourself out there on a limb when everyone else
is doing it too, that risk-takers need company. So, I invite you
potential risk-takers lurking in the shadows to come out and join me. I
could use some company out here on this limb. . .

HSPVA: http://www.hspva.org/dhtml/

4 Rules

Yale librarian Todd Gilman's "The Four Habits of Highly Effective Librarians" (published in the Chronicle of Higer Education, 5/23/07) has been making the rounds of library blogland, and rightly so. He makes the point that "many of us librarians are our own (or one another's) worst enemies and that if we were more adept at working together, we could improve our lives and those of our colleageues." Borrowing from Steven Covey, he recommends four traits (or "habits"): 1. openess; 2. responsiveness; 3. collaboration; and 4. communication. I've pinned the list over my phone as an aide-memoire, to keep me from sinking into the slough of despond* when nothing's going well, or even going at all.

I also find motivational speaker Deena Ebbert's FISH! philosophy useful for the same reason (and it's also posted by the phone, where my despond usually takes place): 1. be there; 2. play; 3. make someone's day; and 4. choose your attitude. Number 4--choose your attitude--is especially important. We go through life making choices. I've learned (the hard way, of course) that the attitude I choose affects how the rest of my day goes, how I deal with problems and how people respond to me.

It's not just a bunch of blah-blah. Life is tough enough, so . . . choose your attitude.

Gilman's article: http://chronicle.com/temp/email2.php?id=hzkjQFgJVFwvCjYJVQsyhZdxwxrkjPTq
FISH! principles: http://www.charthouse.com/content.aspx?nodeid=1076
*a state of extreme depression, from Pilgrim's Progress (by way of Merriam-Webster)