library anomalous when i was a kid in school, especially when i first started school, the school library was an important place for me and that is one of the many many reasons i am not voting for gordon campbell and his gang on the 17th 050512 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Today, replacing my father at the library, has been very dull and quiet - I finished the review I was writing, though, so there's a plus, even if I had to write nonsense (see "argument") to restart some creativity - until a woman came in and started chatting about CERN and dark matter. She had grey hair, nearly down to her waist, and red gloves. At first she was looking among the music CDs. I said there'd be more of those in the music library, but she chose a few from here and I hurried to get the circulation software running (luckily I found the password; I hadn't remembered it before from the last time working here, in e_o_i's_exciting_life). Unfortunately she didn't have the right card for here, just a student card, and I don't know how to add new members. So I reserved the books for tomorrow - put them on the desk with a Post-It attached, very high-tech. Anyway, after she found the CDs she wanted, she sat down on the chair in front of the desk and showed me this year's McGill graduation pamphlet. An honorary doctorate went to an Italian woman heading a team of 3,000 (I think) scientists at CERN trying to detect the Higgs-Boson particle. "I saw her speak," the red-gloved woman said. "And she said she studied at the (music) conservatory in Milan while getting a PhD in particle physics, just like that. She's a chic young lady like you, but even more... sophisticated, if you can believe that." "Yes." I grinned. "I can believe that." Then she talked about dark matter, and how people have found water in dark matter. "But," I said, looking to the side at the white library wall, "water is hydrogen and oxygen together, and how would that fit inside dark matter? Isn't dark matter, like, small?" (I was still thinking of subatomic particles.) She smiled. Turns out she'd also done a PhD in some area of physics when she was younger, and was doing another PhD now. But we both marveled at the CERN person who could be a genius at different things at once. And how people still expect scientific authorities to be men, "like Albert Einstein" she said. And "imagine being in charge of 3,000 people, who all have their egos and opinions, all having gone to the best schools" - and then I felt somewhat relieved not to occupy that space. With great power etc. 140604 ... e_o_i I saw the red-gloved woman at Bloomsday. Also, it turns you can borrow with a student card like at Concordia. I just didn't know that. Since this library sold some old rare books from the vault, there's a bit of money to pay people to categorize new (often old, but new to here) books. So here I am this week and next, at least. Two jobs that equal full time put together, plus I have a bit of time and some impetus to novelize. (Novelizing: there's a funeral for a grandfather whose name's Finnegan, and people are hoping that the Joyce-scholar granddaughter doesn't mention Finnegans Wake. But she's not evil like that. She's evil like: not speaking up when her friend tells her rather transparently about an abusive relationship - that's in the past now, but it will surface and cause problems, because... conflict.) Just wait for the temperature to hit 30, though - I'll be reduced to a dozing blob of laziness. Yes. Like now, even though it's cool out. I really should be working. But what I am doing right now is very very dull: looking up call numbers and copy-pasting them. Mostly it's religion and philosophy. I don't think I've ever seen the name Kierkegaard so many times in one week. The letter part of the catalogue system is fun. Biblical studies is BS - acronyms for atheists! - but things don't always line up with the first letter of what they are in English. P is for language and literature somehow. Q is science. H must be history, perhaps biography - I processed a book on Tommy Douglas, Canada's "father of medicare"; at first I read "father of mediocre" and thought, Even for a politician's bio, that's harsh! 140620 ... e_o_i Muttering things about books, I am. Things that would sound funny to the casual observer: "Jewish-Christian dialogue... is very small." 140620 ... e_o_i To relax from book-labeling work at one library I bike to another, returning a finished book, The_Cry_of_the_Dove, to borrow NoViolet Bulawayo's We Need New Names. The title alone deserves a second look, and I started reading it but didn't finish. 140626 ... e_o_i Overheard_in_conversation, first: I was going into Concordia Library when I heard a young woman say, emphatically, "I hate the library so much." Why? That library, or libraries in general? Granted, non-school libraries have a chiller vibe. But university ones have so many books, which is both a draw and an intimidation - you suspect you'd need dozens of lives to read them all through. I was taking out a book for my brother and I got waylaid by the anthropology section just before the one about fairy and folk tales, so I brought home The Trashing of Margaret Mead. I guess it's not a surprise that neither her nor her critics were 100% right about everything, but I was interested in how the controversy played out...in overhearing the gossip of the past. 250916 ... raze two very different childhood memories are attached to the same public library. there was a chamber orchestra performance. i can't recall the repertoire. the only thing i remember with any clarity at all is the tubist. he looked like a droll cousin to phil collins and told a funny story about the tuba's water key. come to think of it, i might still have the playbill somewhere. then there was the time my grandfather tried to talk me into taking his camera into the library and asking a stranger to snap a picture of me while he waited in the car. as young as i was, that struck me as an excellent way to get abducted. i asked him why he couldn't come in with me and take the picture himself. he didn't explain why that wasn't possible. he just got very angry about my unwillingness to play along. i should have grabbed the camera, pawned it, and used the money to self-publish a book called "things no one in their right mind should ever do or even think of doing". then i could have handed it to him and said, "here. you might find some of this information useful." 250916 what's it to you? who go blather from