Monthly Archives: January 2010

Addiction: Part One Million

Posted on January 28, 2010 | 2 Comments

This week without online distractions at work has reminded me of nothing more than my college work-study job. I worked in Neilson Library’s book repair department ten hours a week, stitching pamphlets, repairing torn pages, tightening hinges, and tipping in addenda. It was a little peaceful break in my studying schedule and the hot house atmosphere of competitive women’s college living. I thought that contrast was the reason I loved the job- but I realize now that was the last good job I had where I wasn’t online ALL DAY LONG.
Let me just check this headline/email/site for one second, and I’ll get right back to you about this thought…
Where was I? Oh yes, it’s generational. But what a pleasant surprise that I can indeed focus on one project at a time and complete them in order. I can walk out of the trap that is multi-tasking.

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Last Guest Post

Posted on January 27, 2010 | Leave a comment

You can read it here. Guest blogging is awesome.

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Breakfast Pizza

Posted on January 26, 2010 | 2 Comments

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Well I guess that answers that question

Posted on January 25, 2010 | Leave a comment

I just had my most calm and productive day of work in I don’t know how long, by simply removing gmail, facebook, and the nytimes from my day.  My name is Emily and I am addicted to the internet.

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Laziness

Posted on January 24, 2010 | 2 Comments

Three weeks into the new year, I’m feeling pretty discouraged about certain recent events: election, Supreme Court decision, natural disasters. But I am holding steady with my resolutions and am feeling so positive about the way things are going family/friendship/writing wise I’m ready to add some more. What makes me miserable at work? The amount of time I spend not working: checking email, the blogs, the Times, the evil f.b.- (constantly monitoring my popularity). So this week’s pledge: only work at work. I shall report back.

Also no gossip.

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Nothing Human is Foreign to Me

Posted on January 21, 2010 | 3 Comments

My advisor in college introduced 19th Century European Thought with a dichotomy- either the idea from ancient Rome that “I am a man, I consider nothing that is human alien to me” or the thinking that became nationalism and fascism and genocide.

An academic librarian trying to make the small talk in a noisy Boston bar joked that we had nothing in common professionally when I said I ran the children’s department at a suburban library. I strongly disagree with this and I hated the impression I got that public service (and the unglamorous public reference service that I provide) is somehow not on the same family tree as other kinds of librarianship. This has been said many times before by women better than me, but how on earth do you expect your (or your neighbors’) children to learn to think for themselves and become compassionate forces for good in the world if you treat the people who teach them like you would a twelve year old babysitter you hired for the night?

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Superheroes’ Union Hall

Posted on January 19, 2010 | Leave a comment

Read my latest Desk Set post here. No kleenex required.

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Bullet Biting

Posted on January 19, 2010 | 2 Comments

The Heath Historical Society had a number of artifacts from our Colonial Fort William Henry Shirley on display in a crowded former school house. I remember a musket ball with teeth marks on it from a soldier chewing it during primitive surgery- but that can’t be true. It seems exactly the sort of story my father would tell me, planting it as truth in my mind, making history vivid and concrete- not just a turn of phrase but an actual object. Was it really there?

I’m trying to get my next guest post together for the Desk Set, but I feel a clammy listlessness come over me each time I sit at the computer. Instead I dreamed all weekend, detailed quasi-practical dreams. Looking at apartment after apartment each flawed in its own special way. Carefully reading a job offer to be a Maritime History Librarian at a small Christian college in Kentucky. Looking at students’ art at a large gallery in Brooklyn full of people who I don’t quite know. Work. Lots of it.

Time for the musket ball.

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Frenemies

Posted on January 15, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’m ashamed

while mothers and fathers

are trapped in fallen buildings

to spend yet another

moment analyzing

who loves more.

Counting the change

in my wallet

while you hang

from a fraying

rope.  This time

I’ll drop everything and

reach out for you.

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MidWinter

Posted on January 13, 2010 | Leave a comment


Boy is it ever. Cold, icy, get in your pajamas at six pm sort of January time of year. Where do the librarians choose (!It’s a choice, ladies!) yes choose to go for their January conference? Boston. The frozen north. Why do they do this? I can only assume it is a martyr complex. Do you think firefighters or policepeople would do this to themselves? No. Only librarians would deliberately send themselves somewhere cripplingly cold and windy at this vulnerable time of year. And they do it all the time. Then New Orleans or Orlando in July. Pathological.

That said, I’m looking forward to seeing some old friends.  Drop a line if you’re coming to town.

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