Introducing the B blog

I have commandeered an older side project of the clerk manifesto and retrofitted it to be my B blog. I have a kind of standard for my main blog, the clerkmanifesto, and sometimes keep things off of it for a variety of reasons. Here are some:

1. I don't want to offend my audience, and though I consider them enlightened and fully treat them as such, I would rather err on the side of caution.

2. I don't feel like it's the place to ramble on too much about the Barcelona soccer club as I'm pretty sure my thoughts on them are not of interest to most of the people reading.. anything... in the world.

3. I want to keep a reasonably consistent tone and a presentation based, with extremely particular exceptions, on a pure short essay writing format. No pictures. No links. No artless screeds.

4. I'm cautious of experiments, as they tend to blow up and muck up all those beautiful tapestries I have hung up in the luxuriant rooms of clerkmanifesto.


So with all that in mind I decided it would be nice to have a less careful blog, less religiously written, less reliable, and of a lower, more experimental standard. Posted anytime, without ambitions, and prone to fits of activity and long slumbers, think of this as my mad scientist lab in one of the basements below clerkmanifesto. This is where I will do things I might regret. You may get blood on your shirt. You may have to read about soccer or the perfidy of people who don't think like I do. Older, strange clerkmanifesto posts might get reposted here. And you could even wonder if I'm losing my mind. If any of that is appealing to you please sign up to receive this via email, over on the sidebar links.

If it's not interesting to you, I hope you will read clerkmanifesto instead, which is a masterpiece of American letters. This is more like the bonus features. If you like this but don't read clerkmanifesto as well, I'm sure I don't know what to do with you. You poor bastard.




A few side notes: 

A. This is retrofitted over an older side project concerning The Last Harbor Library, a project that was too ambitious for me to maintain. You can see the remnants of it in the older posts here.

B. If I really like something I write here I don't feel any compunction about hoisting it up to clerkmanifesto proper, like a minor league player getting called up to the bigs! Just think how exciting that would be for a B blog blog post! 

C. There are few enough eyes as it is on clerkmanifesto, and there will surely be far fewer here. So it would be extremely nice, if this project is at least provisionally interesting to you,  even if you aren't a commenter normally, if you left a little comment here. You can even just anonymously say "Here". Thanks.


Oh, and welcome to the B blog.






  

Five Questions for Winter

Five Questions for Winter

I received a few sharp words from my co-workers for my recent post in which I not only suggested that no one at my library does any work, but actually demonstrated them in the act of not doing it. These sharp words stirred up several questions in my mind.

1. Why are my co-workers reading this blog when they could be reading any number of books from our thorough collection of Medieval Literature, like The Mabinogion for instance?

2. Do my co-workers not know they're not working? I could demonstrate it for them so they become more familiar with what it looks like. But not now because I am too busy writing the library blog.

3. Would they rather I lie to the public here? Lie! In a library, the repository of human knowledge and truth! I am scandalized at the mere suggestion!

4. Do they think that all this not working is some fault of their own?  There is nothing to do here! Nothing! This is due not to worker laziness. It is due to the fact the only person in all of Last Harbor, Minnesota, who would actually want to read The Mabinogion, which is the sort of thing our collection focuses on, is upstairs, so industriously refining our collection and micromanaging our library that she has time to read neither it nor this blog.

5. Are my co-workers unaware that this time belongs to them, to be enjoyed, because once the summer season arrives again they will all be fantastically overwhelmed? Have they forgotten the throngs of tourists who under no circumstances are interested in one of the greatest buildings in the world, our Frank Lloyd Wright designed masterpiece, when it is minus 20 degrees out, but are fanatically interested in it when it is a steamy, ice cream eating, 60 degrees out at the height of summer? Have they forgotten the endless tours, the convincing of people that even though we own not a single book by James Patterson, they might really like The Mabinogion (they won't), the complicated issuing of library cards to people living across the planet so that they can check out three books one time in order to never read them? Have they forgotten the mad carnival of events, shows, architectural lectures and confused tourists who descend on Last Harbor mistakenly thinking there is something of note to do here besides this library ("No, I'm sorry. I believe you're thinking of Grand Marais. No, moose rarely wander into town.")?

Yes, my co-workers have forgotten. All people who live in an extreme climate share this in common: they are incapable of remembering the other seasons or any other conditions than the current ones. It requires so much effort to contend with these conditions that there is no room for that small bit of imagination that allows one to conceptually travel in time. It is, as I mentioned, minus 20 degrees out right now (I was neither kidding nor exaggerating). For us it is like this always and ever will be. But I have now lived up here for a bit less than three years, and so still retain, barely, a bit of the ability to see in the long view. I know that if you take the average of the whole year it is merely cold here, not insanely freezing, that it is not always dark, but balanced between light and dark pretty evenly, and that though we all have nothing to do now, averaged through one of our summers, we do our share of work. And so I say to anyone contending with a bitter, shut in winter, pick up a copy of The Mabinogion, or tune your internet dial to this blog, and stay calm when the truth is spoken.

Five reasons for our new blog

The imperious leader of our library has instructed me to write an official blog. This is that blog, the blog of The Last Harbor Memorial Library. Our head librarian, benefactor, and local tyrant, Amelia Browning, who issued these instructions, is pictured above. Seized with initiative I have leapt to work on this blog and from this moment on intend to keep you fully informed as to every unimportant thing that happens here at the library. Perhaps you are wondering if I am approaching this blog in the proper spirit, if this is what Ms. Browning had in mind to represent The Last Harbor Memorial Library, the finest library on the viciously cold and nearly abandoned shores of Lake Superior. I don't know, but I will grant you that it would perhaps be fair to present to you the discussion of my instructions so that you can decide for yourself.

"Nathaniel?"

"Yes, Amelia" A frown at my response. Perhaps she would prefer to be called Ms Browning. Perhaps her wrist was bothering her.

"I'd like you to start one of these "blogs", for the library." She said "blogs" like it was a word that did not belong in her mouth.

I regarded her. "Why is the head of one of the most technology averse libraries in the country suggesting I write a blog?"

"I am not technology averse. We have the Internet." She said, waving a disdainful backhand at our barely enough share of computers.

"You loathe them."

"They are useful tools. Nothing more."

"A blog?" I asked.

"We need to communicate better with our next generation." I believe Ms. Browning considers there to be only two generations. I, at 40, belong to the inscrutable, immature one. "Library Journal speaks well of them and I thought you would be suitable for this endeavor."  Aha. Library Journal magazine has a biblical like authority with Ms. Browning. Unless she doesn't agree with what they have to say, in which case whatever article is involved ceases to have ever existed. Why the "Every Library should have a Library Blog" article made it to the biblical side of things is the subject of this initial blog post.

"Okay." I said cheerfully.

 She looked at me with suspicion and headed towards her accustomed information desk to decide whether the latest Booker prize winner was of adequate quality for our library. But before she got very far she stopped, turned, and said "Try to put in a good word for Literature, Nathaniel."

"Will do ma'am." I said, tipping an imaginary hat.

And she was gone, if about 70 feet away can be considered to be gone.

Because our library is privately endowed, overstaffed, and pretty well empty due to Winter and our unpopular commitment to quality in our circulating materials, I have had a great deal of time to consider the mysterious reasons behind this blog request. Fortunately I feel free to give full reign to my imaginations here because Amelia Browning will never, ever actually read this blog. Which, of course, is part of the curiousness of why she would ask one to be written.

I have come up with five reasons.

1. She is ready to make some compromises in the battle for Literature, so long as she needn't dirty her hands.

2. Like one of Bertie Wooster's aunts she feels I need improvement and engagement.

3. She has occasional fits in which she is under the illusion that our library is "With It" because we have the Internet and carry Catcher in the Rye.

4. She thinks that despite the fact that our library, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, is the most famous building of any kind on Minnesota's North Shore, a National Landmark, and virtually the only tourist attraction in our town, people are so immersed in their Internet that they have yet to hear of it.

5. She has not the faintest idea of what a blog is, and has decided to bluff her way through.

Whatever her reasons The Last Harbor Memorial Library now has a blog. You should be able to find it on our website as our website is so threadbare it will be easy to pick out. You can also follow us, by email, if you fill in the box to the right. I must go now as I have a patron to help. No, my mistake. It is just Lawrence, who has confused our Frank Lloyd Wright building with the True Value Hardware store once again. Still, I believe my assistance may be required.

-Nate