This all started with YouTube.
Those who know me understand that among the many and varied adjectives that could plausibly be used to describe me, “tech-savvy” is not one of them. The material world and I have issues even at the most basic of levels, and when you add computers into the mix those issues just get compounded. I use computers all the time, but I don’t really understand them. They’re just magical black boxes where the internet is stored, and if I don’t have to think about them any more than that, then I am happy.
So when I somehow managed to mute everything on YouTube, I was confused.
And I do mean everything. Every YouTube video I accessed, whether from the site itself or from other sites that linked to it, from every browser on my computer, was silent. I clicked on the volume button next to the videos, but nothing happened. I checked the sound on the computer – everything else still made noise.
Aha, I said. I’ll reboot. That works more often than not. I don’t know why – cars don’t magically fix themselves when you turn them off and turn them on again, but in my experience computers do, roughly three quarters of the time.
This was one of those exceptions.
Maybe it’s my software, I thought. I therefore took the opportunity to update my main browser and Flash, thus quelling the little “Update Me Now!” reminders that have been popping up for weeks now. And still no sound.
At this point I had plumbed the full depths of the puddle that is my technical knowledge, so I asked for help. And the UCF came through! Random Michelle and Phiala led me to the solution (apparently you have to click on the volume button and drag it to the right – who knew?) and I was in business again.
Somewhere in there, though, the discussion morphed into a general conversation about anti-virus software. I have no anti-virus software – this is one of the nice things about owning a Mac. Most virus writers don’t bother writing for Macs. But apparently this is changing, and so I took Michelle's recommendation to download an anti-virus program.
I set it up.
It asked me what I wanted to do, and I figured that well, in for a penny, in for a pound, why not have it do the “Full System Scan.” Might as well get it all fixed up as a baseline.
I began to get suspicious after about twelve hours.
The program scanned through the hard drive fairly quickly and found a few files that had viruses in them – all of them at least three years old, and none of them put there by me, so I could feel sort of virtuous that way. This particular screw-up wasn’t mine! Yay team!
Then it moved on to the Time Machine – the automatic back-up system that comes with Macs these days. Time Machine is wonderful. You plug in an external drive, answer a couple of questions, and it automatically backs everything up for you. I’ve used it to restore things. It’s great. It does exactly what it says it will do, and how rare is that? I figured, might as well get the infections gone there too.
And the program duly found the same infected files on the Time Machine.
A dozen times.
Eventually the little light bulb went off in my head. Time Machine automatically backs things up every hour. Every time it does that, it creates a separate, new master copy of the hard drive. This means that the anti-virus program has to scan that too, which takes almost an hour.
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick, it’s a race!
I thought about just letting the two programs fight it out, but that seemed counterproductive. So I told the Time Machine to stop making backups for a while, and I went to bed.
It’s been almost 24 hours now, and the anti-virus program is still chugging away, finding the same small group of infected files, over and over and over and over again. I suppose I should tell it to stop at some point – they’re just backups, and eventually the Time Machine will delete them itself – but part of me just doesn’t have the heart to call off the dogs after all that work.
Go, little anti-virus program, go!
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Monday, May 28, 2012
For Those Who Served
It occurs to me that since it is Memorial Day, I should post some of the photos of people in my family who have served in the military.
I’m not one of them. I remember being somewhat surprised in high school to discover that this was not actually required of me, and how quickly that surprise morphed into gratitude. I’m exactly the kind of sarcastic misfit who would end up court-martialed by week three of basic training for answering questions honestly and in exquisite detail when everyone involved – including me – understood that the proper answer was “Yes, sir!” or “No, sir!” without any further additions.
So I’ve always been glad that I had the option to remain in civilian life, and thankful to those who made that possible.
This picture is probably from 1945, at the end of WWII.
If I’m not mistaken, that’s the Arc de Triomphe there in the background, so Paris must have been liberated by then. Clearly the Germans were no longer a problem, at any rate. The guy on the left is my Great-Uncle John – my grandmother’s brother – who spent his entire working life in the Army.
This is a more formal portrait of him.
I never got many stories about John, though the one that I did always amused me. Sometime well after the war his job became infiltrating US bases to test their security. He’d walk into the place in full uniform – not a difficult task for any even semi-competent spy, really – say hello, chat with people, and walk out with as many confidential documents as he could grab. Family lore has it that he was never caught.
[UPDATE 5/29/12: A conversation with my mom revealed that it was not my Great Uncle John who was the security tester - that was a family friend. Oh well. It was a great story anyway. She also said that he was stationed all over the world during his time in the Army - from Taiwan to Germany - and retired as a Lt. Colonel. He briefly worked for Pan Am after that before passing away fairly young.]
My dad was in the Navy, though. This is him, newly enlisted, in 1958.
He signed up during the Eisenhower Recession of the late 1950s and ended up serving as a radioman on a repair ship – an ungainly WWII-era ship that served in every war the US Navy was deployed to in the three decades after it was built and was eventually sold to Taiwan in the 1970s. For his term of enlistment the ship stayed pretty much on the East Coast of the United States, though they did get to Cuba for a visit – he took a number of photographs that, unfortunately, were damaged by being stuck together in a pile for years. By the time the ship returned to take part in the blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I think my dad was back in civilian life.
Every once in a while he will tell stories from his days in the service. The only time he saw the northern lights, for example, was aboard that ship. On a practical level, his Navy service endowed my father with an ability to fall asleep instantly in any position, a skill he retains to this day.
This is my Uncle Bob, who was in the Army during the early 1960s. It was taken in 1963.
I know even less about his service than I do my dad’s and my great-uncle’s. I know he was discharged in 1964. This was before Vietnam was all that much of a deal, so I don’t think he served there. I suppose I will have to ask him about it.
After he was discharged he came back to Philadelphia and took a number of photographs to celebrate his newly “unemployed” status (seriously – that’s what it says on the back of one). This one is with his grandmother, my great-grandmother.
Every Memorial Day we are urged to remember those who served, and this is a good thing. All too often, though, they become a faceless blur. It is always good to remember the people behind it all, in their specific individuality.
Happy Memorial Day.
I’m not one of them. I remember being somewhat surprised in high school to discover that this was not actually required of me, and how quickly that surprise morphed into gratitude. I’m exactly the kind of sarcastic misfit who would end up court-martialed by week three of basic training for answering questions honestly and in exquisite detail when everyone involved – including me – understood that the proper answer was “Yes, sir!” or “No, sir!” without any further additions.
So I’ve always been glad that I had the option to remain in civilian life, and thankful to those who made that possible.
This picture is probably from 1945, at the end of WWII.
If I’m not mistaken, that’s the Arc de Triomphe there in the background, so Paris must have been liberated by then. Clearly the Germans were no longer a problem, at any rate. The guy on the left is my Great-Uncle John – my grandmother’s brother – who spent his entire working life in the Army.
This is a more formal portrait of him.
I never got many stories about John, though the one that I did always amused me. Sometime well after the war his job became infiltrating US bases to test their security. He’d walk into the place in full uniform – not a difficult task for any even semi-competent spy, really – say hello, chat with people, and walk out with as many confidential documents as he could grab. Family lore has it that he was never caught.
[UPDATE 5/29/12: A conversation with my mom revealed that it was not my Great Uncle John who was the security tester - that was a family friend. Oh well. It was a great story anyway. She also said that he was stationed all over the world during his time in the Army - from Taiwan to Germany - and retired as a Lt. Colonel. He briefly worked for Pan Am after that before passing away fairly young.]
My dad was in the Navy, though. This is him, newly enlisted, in 1958.
He signed up during the Eisenhower Recession of the late 1950s and ended up serving as a radioman on a repair ship – an ungainly WWII-era ship that served in every war the US Navy was deployed to in the three decades after it was built and was eventually sold to Taiwan in the 1970s. For his term of enlistment the ship stayed pretty much on the East Coast of the United States, though they did get to Cuba for a visit – he took a number of photographs that, unfortunately, were damaged by being stuck together in a pile for years. By the time the ship returned to take part in the blockade during the Cuban Missile Crisis, I think my dad was back in civilian life.
Every once in a while he will tell stories from his days in the service. The only time he saw the northern lights, for example, was aboard that ship. On a practical level, his Navy service endowed my father with an ability to fall asleep instantly in any position, a skill he retains to this day.
This is my Uncle Bob, who was in the Army during the early 1960s. It was taken in 1963.
I know even less about his service than I do my dad’s and my great-uncle’s. I know he was discharged in 1964. This was before Vietnam was all that much of a deal, so I don’t think he served there. I suppose I will have to ask him about it.
After he was discharged he came back to Philadelphia and took a number of photographs to celebrate his newly “unemployed” status (seriously – that’s what it says on the back of one). This one is with his grandmother, my great-grandmother.
Every Memorial Day we are urged to remember those who served, and this is a good thing. All too often, though, they become a faceless blur. It is always good to remember the people behind it all, in their specific individuality.
Happy Memorial Day.
Off to the Side
I’m up to the mid-1970s in the photo-scanning project now. There are four big plastic bins of photographs, but the first one is the longest – it’s got the albums that my brother put together, while the others have a great many photographs in frames, so in terms of photos per unit volume this box is by far the densest.
I went past my parents’ wedding a while ago, but I’m going back to it here. They were married in May of 1963, forty-nine years ago now, and it was a well-photographed event. Most of them are in color, and quite a few were taken by professionals. This is my favorite of the wedding photos I’ve seen, though.
I don’t know who took this picture. It wasn’t the official photographer – you can see him on the right there, with the bull moose of a camera that was what professionals used in 1963. You can also see his assistant in the mirror, holding an array of lights.
It was taken at my grandparents house on Willows Avenue, probably before the ceremony rather than after, during a moment of quiet between frantic activities. That’s how weddings are, really – run, stop, run, stop, run, stop, run. I remember my own wedding being that way.
Part of why I like this picture is my mother there, in the middle, looking like she’s trying to figure out what comes next, or just glad for the respite in all the commotion.
But mostly, I like this picture because right over her head, reflected in the big mirror, is my grandfather, off to the side of events, looking at his little girl all grown up now. Nobody’s really paying attention to him – he is, appropriately, not the center of attention on this day. But I’m guessing he’s remembering at this moment, thinking back over the years, and wondering what is coming up next.
My own daughters are still young and have years to go before they reach this moment in their lives. But at some point that will be me there, standing off to the side and wondering how it all went by so fast.
I went past my parents’ wedding a while ago, but I’m going back to it here. They were married in May of 1963, forty-nine years ago now, and it was a well-photographed event. Most of them are in color, and quite a few were taken by professionals. This is my favorite of the wedding photos I’ve seen, though.
I don’t know who took this picture. It wasn’t the official photographer – you can see him on the right there, with the bull moose of a camera that was what professionals used in 1963. You can also see his assistant in the mirror, holding an array of lights.
It was taken at my grandparents house on Willows Avenue, probably before the ceremony rather than after, during a moment of quiet between frantic activities. That’s how weddings are, really – run, stop, run, stop, run, stop, run. I remember my own wedding being that way.
Part of why I like this picture is my mother there, in the middle, looking like she’s trying to figure out what comes next, or just glad for the respite in all the commotion.
But mostly, I like this picture because right over her head, reflected in the big mirror, is my grandfather, off to the side of events, looking at his little girl all grown up now. Nobody’s really paying attention to him – he is, appropriately, not the center of attention on this day. But I’m guessing he’s remembering at this moment, thinking back over the years, and wondering what is coming up next.
My own daughters are still young and have years to go before they reach this moment in their lives. But at some point that will be me there, standing off to the side and wondering how it all went by so fast.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
All God's Chillen' Got Shoes
I don’t get shoes.
Okay, I understand the whole concept of “put these things on your feet and you won’t have to hobble about in pain until you develop calluses on your soles like a Teabagger’s heart” – that much is pretty straightforward.
And yes, I understand about trying to look nice and how as a general rule there just aren’t many people you need to see barefooting it around your workplace or restaurant.
But shoes as objects of desire? I don’t get it.
I have exactly four pairs of shoes, all of them black. I have a pair of sneakers that are comfortable and look like dress shoes from a distance. These I wear almost every day. I have a pair of dress shoes for those occasions where the sneakers won’t pass inspection, which happen on average about once every twelve to eighteen months. They are therefore in a “classic” style that I can wear for the rest of my life with only the mildest of reproach from the fashion-conscious. I also have a pair of boots for winters in Wisconsin, boots that I wore for a week this year since that was about how long our winter lasted (good thing global climate change is a myth, because otherwise, you know, I’d be worried…). And I have a pair of sandals that I drag out in the summertime when it gets too hot for sneakers.
When they wear out, I replace them with their nearest equivalent. This is a process that – including checkout – takes about ten minutes once I hit the front door of the store. I know my shoe size, and men’s shoes (like men’s clothing) are far more standardized than women’s. I know exactly what I’m looking for. I find them, try them on, confirm that they are indeed as close as possible to the last pair, settle my debt and leave. Easy. The rest of the day is mine for more important tasks, preferably involving a nearby bookstore.
This attitude comes as a great shock to a lot of people I know who consider shoe shopping a treat. They love shoes in all their many shapes, colors and manifestations. They look forward to shoe shopping as a reward for services performed in other areas of their lives. They enjoy shoes for the very shoe-ness of them. They are almost all women. I don’t get it.
Considering shoes a treat is as mystifying to me as considering vaccinations a treat. They’re just something necessary in civilized society that you do because otherwise you and everyone around you suffers.
Apparently I have passed my attitude along to my eldest child.
We went shoe shopping yesterday, now that Tabitha has outgrown Kim’s shoes and has nothing to wear on her feet except a pair of flip flops and her gym shoes. Tabitha hates shopping in general, which is a position I am rather reluctant to change, now that she is approaching her teenage years. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and even Tabitha recognized that this was the time for some shoes.
So we hiked up to the nearest Giant Shoestore Emporium and set to work.
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick but there are a lot of ridiculous shoes out there. Shoes canted at 45-degree angles or higher. Shoes that you could use as murder weapons. Shoes with chambers built in for each individual toe. Shoes in colors not found in the rainbow. Shoes in colors not found in drug-induced hallucinations. Shoes that appear to be made of compressed air. Shoes made of old tires. Wicker shoes. Shoes with random bumps, flanges and bulges.
GSE has these all and more, in a room about the size and warmth of an aircraft hangar.
We spent an hour or so there, and eventually came away with everything we needed and more. Tabitha got a couple of pairs of shoes that she can wear. I got a pair of black sneakers to replace the ones that are about to fall apart – Lauren found them, as I had gotten overwhelmed and had to go sit down. And Kim got a pair of shoes with toe compartments and unnatural colors. She insists that they are comfortable. For all I know she is right.
Lauren is full up on shoes at the moment, though that didn't stop her from trying on every ridiculous pair she could find. There is nothing quite like a 9-year-old in red stiletto heels to make you question the whole concept of dress shoes.
Afterward, we went to the bookstore.
Okay, I understand the whole concept of “put these things on your feet and you won’t have to hobble about in pain until you develop calluses on your soles like a Teabagger’s heart” – that much is pretty straightforward.
And yes, I understand about trying to look nice and how as a general rule there just aren’t many people you need to see barefooting it around your workplace or restaurant.
But shoes as objects of desire? I don’t get it.
I have exactly four pairs of shoes, all of them black. I have a pair of sneakers that are comfortable and look like dress shoes from a distance. These I wear almost every day. I have a pair of dress shoes for those occasions where the sneakers won’t pass inspection, which happen on average about once every twelve to eighteen months. They are therefore in a “classic” style that I can wear for the rest of my life with only the mildest of reproach from the fashion-conscious. I also have a pair of boots for winters in Wisconsin, boots that I wore for a week this year since that was about how long our winter lasted (good thing global climate change is a myth, because otherwise, you know, I’d be worried…). And I have a pair of sandals that I drag out in the summertime when it gets too hot for sneakers.
When they wear out, I replace them with their nearest equivalent. This is a process that – including checkout – takes about ten minutes once I hit the front door of the store. I know my shoe size, and men’s shoes (like men’s clothing) are far more standardized than women’s. I know exactly what I’m looking for. I find them, try them on, confirm that they are indeed as close as possible to the last pair, settle my debt and leave. Easy. The rest of the day is mine for more important tasks, preferably involving a nearby bookstore.
This attitude comes as a great shock to a lot of people I know who consider shoe shopping a treat. They love shoes in all their many shapes, colors and manifestations. They look forward to shoe shopping as a reward for services performed in other areas of their lives. They enjoy shoes for the very shoe-ness of them. They are almost all women. I don’t get it.
Considering shoes a treat is as mystifying to me as considering vaccinations a treat. They’re just something necessary in civilized society that you do because otherwise you and everyone around you suffers.
Apparently I have passed my attitude along to my eldest child.
We went shoe shopping yesterday, now that Tabitha has outgrown Kim’s shoes and has nothing to wear on her feet except a pair of flip flops and her gym shoes. Tabitha hates shopping in general, which is a position I am rather reluctant to change, now that she is approaching her teenage years. But sometimes you have to do what you have to do, and even Tabitha recognized that this was the time for some shoes.
So we hiked up to the nearest Giant Shoestore Emporium and set to work.
Sweet dancing monkeys on a stick but there are a lot of ridiculous shoes out there. Shoes canted at 45-degree angles or higher. Shoes that you could use as murder weapons. Shoes with chambers built in for each individual toe. Shoes in colors not found in the rainbow. Shoes in colors not found in drug-induced hallucinations. Shoes that appear to be made of compressed air. Shoes made of old tires. Wicker shoes. Shoes with random bumps, flanges and bulges.
GSE has these all and more, in a room about the size and warmth of an aircraft hangar.
We spent an hour or so there, and eventually came away with everything we needed and more. Tabitha got a couple of pairs of shoes that she can wear. I got a pair of black sneakers to replace the ones that are about to fall apart – Lauren found them, as I had gotten overwhelmed and had to go sit down. And Kim got a pair of shoes with toe compartments and unnatural colors. She insists that they are comfortable. For all I know she is right.
Lauren is full up on shoes at the moment, though that didn't stop her from trying on every ridiculous pair she could find. There is nothing quite like a 9-year-old in red stiletto heels to make you question the whole concept of dress shoes.
Afterward, we went to the bookstore.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Sidetracked
And so the photography project keeps chugging along.
Part of the problem, of course, is that I get sidetracked by the pictures themselves, because really what else can you expect? I end up wondering about how things ended up in just that configuration, and what happened right after the photo was taken. I suppose this is one of the dangers of being a historian – you want to know the rest of the story.
Take this picture, for instance:
It’s 1963, in the kitchen of my grandparents’ house on Willows Avenue. It’s a party, because my uncle has just graduated from college. All parties end up in the kitchen eventually. My uncle is off in another room somewhere being sociable, perhaps – he shows up in some of the other photos doing that – or maybe he took this photo himself.
My grandparents are the second and third people from the left. The two on the right are my parents. They’d been married about a month when this was taken. In between is a family friend named Annie, and I don’t know who the person on the far left is. It was a party. People drifted around. There is good food on the table and good company around it, and it looks like everyone is enjoying the moment.
There is a story in this photograph, an evening spent together, an achievement celebrated among family and friends.
How can you not get sidetracked by such things?
Part of the problem, of course, is that I get sidetracked by the pictures themselves, because really what else can you expect? I end up wondering about how things ended up in just that configuration, and what happened right after the photo was taken. I suppose this is one of the dangers of being a historian – you want to know the rest of the story.
Take this picture, for instance:
It’s 1963, in the kitchen of my grandparents’ house on Willows Avenue. It’s a party, because my uncle has just graduated from college. All parties end up in the kitchen eventually. My uncle is off in another room somewhere being sociable, perhaps – he shows up in some of the other photos doing that – or maybe he took this photo himself.
My grandparents are the second and third people from the left. The two on the right are my parents. They’d been married about a month when this was taken. In between is a family friend named Annie, and I don’t know who the person on the far left is. It was a party. People drifted around. There is good food on the table and good company around it, and it looks like everyone is enjoying the moment.
There is a story in this photograph, an evening spent together, an achievement celebrated among family and friends.
How can you not get sidetracked by such things?
Thursday, May 24, 2012
A Night at the Orchestra
Most kids today have never seen The Lone Ranger.
This means that when the 8th-grade orchestra starts playing The William Tell Overture, only the parents think it’s funny. The kids, as the conductor said, just think it sounds like a horse galloping.
And then the parents stop thinking it’s funny and start feeling seriously, seriously old.
Tonight was the Mighty Clever Guy Middle School annual spring orchestra concert, and everyone who was anyone was there. Were you there? So sorry, then. You missed a fun night.
The 6th-graders went first. Tabitha marched onstage with the rest of her companions and after what may or may not have been an introductory speech from their orchestra teacher – a sincere and good-hearted person utterly incapable of any form of meaningful communication, though by all accounts a good teacher in spite of that – they launched into four pieces from around the world.
They did a very nice job, too.
Afterward we sat for the 7th- and 8th-grade portions of the show, because if you’re going to sit in a hot auditorium for a concert you might as well see it all. Besides, they were willing so we should be too.
This is not to say that the trip to the soft ice cream stand afterward was entirely unwelcome, though.
Great musicians deserve ice cream.
Well done, Tabitha.
This means that when the 8th-grade orchestra starts playing The William Tell Overture, only the parents think it’s funny. The kids, as the conductor said, just think it sounds like a horse galloping.
And then the parents stop thinking it’s funny and start feeling seriously, seriously old.
Tonight was the Mighty Clever Guy Middle School annual spring orchestra concert, and everyone who was anyone was there. Were you there? So sorry, then. You missed a fun night.
The 6th-graders went first. Tabitha marched onstage with the rest of her companions and after what may or may not have been an introductory speech from their orchestra teacher – a sincere and good-hearted person utterly incapable of any form of meaningful communication, though by all accounts a good teacher in spite of that – they launched into four pieces from around the world.
They did a very nice job, too.
Afterward we sat for the 7th- and 8th-grade portions of the show, because if you’re going to sit in a hot auditorium for a concert you might as well see it all. Besides, they were willing so we should be too.
This is not to say that the trip to the soft ice cream stand afterward was entirely unwelcome, though.
Great musicians deserve ice cream.
Well done, Tabitha.
Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Bookmarked
I started a new book yesterday.
I do that a lot, actually. It’s one of the things that make my world a pleasant place, so I try to get there as often as possible.
This one was a library sale pick-up. A couple times a year our local public library weeds out its collections with book sales. They don’t go by any particular merit as to what to keep and what to get rid of, as far as I can tell. It’s pure democracy. Anything that doesn’t get checked out after a given period of time goes onto the chopping block.
This tends to work in my favor, I find. The books that get ignored are often the best ones, popularity being a poor predictor of substance or artistic quality. Given that the most popular book section in the library is the Romance section (believe me, I know – I was forced to shelve it for most of the three years I worked there, in part I suspect as a punishment for being the sort of troublemaker who answers questions honestly), this leaves many high quality selections for me come book sale time.
This book in particular is an older China Mieville novel, one that I have meant to read for a while and which, for four bits, was mine in hard cover. If you haven’t read China Mieville, you should. He writes deeply intriguing books that are rewardingly complex. They are not for the lazy, however. Nobody does alien quite like Mieville, either. Most authors have Other characters who are just ordinary people in funny suits, but Mieville’s Others are alien to the point of near incomprehensibility and part of the fun is bending your brain trying to figure them out.
Tucked inside was a bookmark from the last person who checked it out. It was a scrap of paper, a shipping invoice, with the recipient and sender clearly marked.
I don’t know who the recipient is, though I know they live in Our Little Town, not too far from me. There isn’t anything all that far from anything else in this town, really. They buy things from one of the many catalogues that we also get, though I don’t know if we ever have. We get a lot of catalogues, many of them absurd, though this one is on the more normal end of the catalogue spectrum.
Things like this always make me wonder about the name on the paper – what they thought of the book, why they chose it, whether they even finished it. But you can’t really ask them. People get a little weirded out when you track them down like that.
Although sometimes they appreciate it. I once found a thick bunch of legal documents inside a different library book, one that the library still owned and I had just checked out. They had all been prepared by a local law firm, and I dropped them off there one afternoon. They promised to send the documents along, as well as a note to the client to be more careful next time.
I ended up tucking the bookmark back inside the book. I may just leave it there, as a reminder of – what? That other people enjoyed this book before me? I don’t know.
Maybe because it just makes the book that much more interesting.
I do that a lot, actually. It’s one of the things that make my world a pleasant place, so I try to get there as often as possible.
This one was a library sale pick-up. A couple times a year our local public library weeds out its collections with book sales. They don’t go by any particular merit as to what to keep and what to get rid of, as far as I can tell. It’s pure democracy. Anything that doesn’t get checked out after a given period of time goes onto the chopping block.
This tends to work in my favor, I find. The books that get ignored are often the best ones, popularity being a poor predictor of substance or artistic quality. Given that the most popular book section in the library is the Romance section (believe me, I know – I was forced to shelve it for most of the three years I worked there, in part I suspect as a punishment for being the sort of troublemaker who answers questions honestly), this leaves many high quality selections for me come book sale time.
This book in particular is an older China Mieville novel, one that I have meant to read for a while and which, for four bits, was mine in hard cover. If you haven’t read China Mieville, you should. He writes deeply intriguing books that are rewardingly complex. They are not for the lazy, however. Nobody does alien quite like Mieville, either. Most authors have Other characters who are just ordinary people in funny suits, but Mieville’s Others are alien to the point of near incomprehensibility and part of the fun is bending your brain trying to figure them out.
Tucked inside was a bookmark from the last person who checked it out. It was a scrap of paper, a shipping invoice, with the recipient and sender clearly marked.
I don’t know who the recipient is, though I know they live in Our Little Town, not too far from me. There isn’t anything all that far from anything else in this town, really. They buy things from one of the many catalogues that we also get, though I don’t know if we ever have. We get a lot of catalogues, many of them absurd, though this one is on the more normal end of the catalogue spectrum.
Things like this always make me wonder about the name on the paper – what they thought of the book, why they chose it, whether they even finished it. But you can’t really ask them. People get a little weirded out when you track them down like that.
Although sometimes they appreciate it. I once found a thick bunch of legal documents inside a different library book, one that the library still owned and I had just checked out. They had all been prepared by a local law firm, and I dropped them off there one afternoon. They promised to send the documents along, as well as a note to the client to be more careful next time.
I ended up tucking the bookmark back inside the book. I may just leave it there, as a reminder of – what? That other people enjoyed this book before me? I don’t know.
Maybe because it just makes the book that much more interesting.
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