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At Home in Queens
My favorite things so far are grocery shopping (bitter melon! fresh smoked mozzarella!), a presentation on art classes at the Met for people with dementia and their caregivers, and having a lovely home with my honey. Yes, you can do that all in the same day in NYC. Now time to rest!
Posted in writing
Card Towers
Doing a farewell round of programs- all those fun things I want to try but haven’t gotten around to yet. Some will have to wait for my new digs, but who knows how many libraries still have stockpiles of Date Due Cards? Better enjoy them while I can.
Posted in arts and crafts, libraries, photography
How to appreciate perfume and be confident in your opinion
While Nick and Kelly were with the rest of the world’s hip librarians buying quite a lot of independent comics at Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art Festival I was down on Prince Street with the fashionistas at Trade School, learning about perfume. It was a gorgeous warm sunny flowery April Saturday and I felt so lucky to be in New York and able to full advantage. Cost of the class? One subway ride, and one recipe of pumpkin spice cupcakes with chocolate frosting that I tried to give anonymously to my coworkers last week. The eponymous barter requested was “an act of kindness.” And in return I now appreciate perfume and am far more confident in my opinions. Thank you to volunteer instructors Liz and Anaheed, who shared their 50+ bottles of scents for our experiments- I hope you are working on a book for those not lucky enough to attend.
Important highlights from the class:
- Do not buy any perfume based on how it smells in the bottle, on paper or after the first few minutes on your skin. It really is true that scents interact differently with different body chemistry (we smelled the same scent on different people to test this). Also, it changes over time from the top to the middle to the base note. I was sniffing myself all day.
- Don’t feel pressured by salespeople and don’t listen to their opinions about what might be right for you. Or your ideas about what kind of person you are so the scents you should like. One of the most interesting and compelling perfumes turned out to have a top note of gasoline, so leave those preconceptions at the door and go for what you like based on smelling it.
- Sadly, since this was a blindish smell test, I did not find out until just now that my favorite perfume from the day costs $250. I guess my sister is right and I am like “Sarah Parker from that sex show” after I’m in New York for a few hours.
Blood, Bones, and Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton: Book Review
Hamilton tells her difficult coming of age story without flinching. Her unusual childhood in agrarian New Jersey with an artist father and French ballerina mother was disrupted by divorce as she hit puberty. Walking along the railroad tracks at the age of 13, looking for a job, she goes into the first restaurant she finds- and the die is cast. “Be careful what you get good at, because you will be doing it the rest of your life.” a kitchen coworker warns her.
Hamilton structures her story well, moving forward and backward in time to illuminate the mistakes/choices she made and why she made them. After ten years in catering kitchens in New York, she cannot put to rest the idea that she should be doing something more “worthy” and heads off to Ann Arbor for an MFA in writing. (This is not a memoir that pretends to be written by a non-writer.) The alienating academic language and culture drive her back to the kitchen and a woman she meets working there gives her a first glimpse of the possibilities of her own restaurant. A restaurant that gives patrons a taste of childhood comfort and being cared for by the mother that she has not seen for twenty years. On her return to New York she makes such a restaurant.
As I wrote about on the desk set, my attraction to books and libraries was given to me by my parents, and in many ways at work I try to give that comfort and feeling of being recognized to my young patrons and their parents. I have frequently felt that I should be doing more or other than that. Blood, Bones, and Butter is a rare memoir of vivid convincing detail and compelling story that resonated with my experience of working life.
Prune, Hamilton’s restaurant, is what they call a labor of love which means she works ridiculous hours. By the end of the book she also has two tiny sons to care for as well as an unfathomable husband. She is searching for balance but unwilling to compromise on career or family or writing a beautiful honest book at the same time. For this reader, attempting to balance all these often unspoken and complex internal drives- for family, success, and art- Hamilton’s tale is as bitterly refreshing as a perfect negroni.
Posted in book review, cooking, libraries, writing
Tagged books, family, gabrielle hamilton, nyc, prune restaurant, work/life balance, writing
Trade School NYC
I signed up for a bartered class on understanding perfume and having confidence in your opinions at a temporary classroom space in Manhattan. The group that runs Trade School has been presenting events and classes at a variety of city museums and cultural organizations. Among other things, the group is trying to create “economic practices that reinforce values of mutualism, cooperation, social justice, democracy, and ecological sustainability.” Unlike the library model, (free and open to anyone) participants must bring something to barter in payment for the class, and different things are requested by each instructor. I’ll let you know how it goes.
Posted in found, libraries, museums and art
Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson: Book Review
The lost serendipity of browsing is sometimes bemoaned by book lovers. We are wary of the transition to digital collections and catalogs that leave nothing to chance. Happily, browsing (stumbling?) seems to have neatly followed us into the surprisingly haphazard digital world. I found Kate Atkinson’s first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum through a simple subject heading search (York, England–Fiction) the summer before I went to study at the University of York. Atkinson’s award winning debut was a darkly funny gothic tale set in the medieval city. The deeply dysfunctional family suffering, acting out, and keeping awful secrets through the trying events of the 20th century fit my mood perfectly.
The last four books she’s written are Northern noir: nightmarish tales of children in peril and mysterious strong but flawed women. They are puzzled over by the violent, inept, but morally sound and dogged unaffiliated investigator Jackson Brodie. The latest volume sticks to Leeds and darkest Yorkshire, (where my own gloomy relatives originated) and has the satisfactions of a solid police procedural in a vivid and disturbing setting. And I found it by chance, googling the line from Emily Dickinson that Atkinson took as her title.
Atkinson is speaking tomorrow night at Porter Square Books in Cambridge
Lizard Music by Daniel Pinkwater: Book Review
Daniel Pinkwater in his own words “has written hundreds of books, many of them good.” Lizard Music is his first and it is wonderful. Accidentally left to his own devices while his parents are on vacation, Victor starts to see his neighborhood and the observable in an entirely new and unconventional way. He takes the bus to the big city, talks to strangers and stays up late enough to see what is after the late late movie- rock and roll playing lizards who are trying to rescue the world. That his visions may have been inspired by the glue from his model airplane kit is something only a square adult would quibble about. His pragmatic observations are a comic foil to the absurd narrative. This book from the nineteen seventies might remind adults of Donald Barthelme’s postmodern novels. Kids will appreciate the voice, humor, and adventure, although they might need to ask their grandparents to explain Walter Cronkite.
I regularly post children’s book reviews on my library’s website. Since I review books I personally love- it occurs to me you might love them too. I’m going to do some crossposting here, expanding a bit on the adult appeal.
