A new year; as good a time as any

My plan for the new year to improve Mind, Body, and Soul.

1) To sharpen the mind: read_____________. And write_______________.

2) To strengthen the body: a regular walk with Duke. Care for Buddy’s feet and ride him more. Also Utah.

3) To aid the serenity of my soul: clean & organize my house and workshop and barn. And get out a blank sheet of paper and draw.

Trials & tribulations of the reader

I was supposed to do jury duty today on the grand jury, so last night I spent some time picking out a good book to take with me (I’ve always heard you should take something to read.)

I discovered it was hard to pick a good book! I didn’t want to read trash (no Danielle Steel), but I didn’t want to look like a complete weirdo (no Boccaccio’s Decameron, and yes, I looked at it!) I wanted something that looked intelligent and truth-seeking. I liked the idea of Telling the Truth About History, but I didn’t want to read it! I also wanted something that would be light enough to be readable in less than ideal reading conditions. I wasn’t sure about Documents of American Indian Policy or Andrew Jackson vs. Henry Clay. How about Lies My Teacher Told Me? Something anti-establishment would go over really well, right?

On the other side of the bookshelf, I didn’t want anything too hippie. I want to read How to Survive Without a Salary but I’m not sure how the average legal sort would take that. I almost chose Gene Logsdon’s Homesteading. But another criteria was that if it somehow accidentally got lost in the courthouse, I wouldn’t cry too much over it, and I really don’t want to lose that book!

I very nearly chose Mark Twain’s Life on the Mississippi, but I finally decided on the book about Man o’ War that I got for Christmas a year or two ago. I think it was a very neutral, smart but not in a weirdo way, interesting choice. And I do want to read it. I started last night, and so far it’s pretty interesting.

Oh, and I arrived at the courthouse, sat for 20 minutes and read a few pages, got sworn in and then told to go home. Thank you very much.

So now I have to go to work. What a drag!

The big things and the little

Do mind-changing books actually change your mind?

The librarian listserv is doing “mind-changing books” right now. Since I’m not technically subscribed to it, so can’t add my thoughts there, I thought I’d muse a little bit on it here.

First of all, doesn’t a mind changing book have to actually change your mind? In other words, if you already agreed with the book’s premise before you read it, is it still mind-changing?

I have to say, the book that had the greatest impact on my thinking was probably The Contrary Farmer by Gene Logsdon. I’ve always been a country girl, and I’ve always been contrary too. But reading that book was like a nearsighted person finally getting a pair of glasses. It was that book that got me thinking about homesteading and farming and gardening in the first place–and this was before we got our land.

So obviously, yes, it changed my mind. Not in the sense of doing a 180 in my thinking. But it was like flipping a switch in an unused room and suddenly there’s light there.

The law of the phone.

Here’s the way the phone works at my library:

A) If you are at the desk alone and no one has had a question all day, as soon as someone steps up to the desk with a question, the phone will ring.

B) If the phone hasn’t rung in hours, as soon as you walk to the other side of the library, it will ring.

C) If you are away from the desk and hear a phone ring that you think might be your phone and you run across the library to answer it, it will not be your phone after all.

D) If you are on one line, the circulation staff will repeatedly transfer calls to you.

Procrastination

A month ago, when I was deciding what to enter in this year’s fair, I impulsively entered a quilt that was not even started. It wasn’t even a glimmer in my mind’s eye. I just thought “gee, I think I can whip together a wallhanging by fair time.” Two weeks ago I started cutting it out, and last night I finished the binding a little after 9:00 p.m. 

That was cutting it a little close, since today is the deadline. Honestly, I can’t believe I made it. I’m thrilled that I did, and I am very pleased with how it turned out. We were joking that I was “The Iron Quilter” (like TV’s “Iron Chef.”) It looks like she’s cutting out a red triangle and sewing it into that orange quilt; I wonder what kind of quilting pattern will go with that?

I’m normally not a procrastinator, honest! (Except for building fences.) I dislike last-minute stress and prefer to get unpleasant tasks out of the way, so in school I was pretty good at getting papers written and homework done in plenty of time. If there is something that I know I have to do, I see no reason to put it off. It feels so much better to get something done, especially if I’m not looking forward to it. The husband is completely different–he fiddles around all day until he finally has to go to the office at 2 in the morning to finish up something that is due at 8 a.m. the next day.

Who needs a gym membership?

Remember that hay I said I got on Friday? Well, it was raining that day and some of the hay got wet. (How hard would it be to throw a tarp over the load when you take it to the hay auction, huh?)

Anyhow, I had to stack all this hay on the ground floor because the old man couldn’t throw it into the loft. I can’t complain too much, because I couldn’t either, but it sure is easier to throw straight from the truck into the loft instead of having to throw it all the way up from the floor. But oh well.

So I stacked a ton and a half of hay on the floor, trying to keep all the wet ones together so I could identify them later. The other day I unstacked that section and laid all the damp bales out so they could dry (I hope.) Then I stacked up bales in a stair-steps fashion and crawled into the loft. From there, I winched the topmost bale off my pile into the loft. Climb back down, carry another bale up the the top of the “stairs,” climb back up to the loft, repeat. So far I’ve gotten 12 bales into the loft.

I have to laugh at myself, stacking & unstacking this ton of hay. Sort of like WPA hole-digging work.

Posted

I’m so excited…my new fence is actually going up! Dad came out and we worked on it Saturday and Sunday. The discouraging part is that with all the work we did, we only set the corner posts and the gate. Only one post is completely braced. And the ground is hard as a rock! The auger on the tractor just sat there, spinning and spinning and going nowhere. There’s a lot of sandstone down there, and sandy soil, and not much topsoil. No wonder my pasture is nothin’ but weeds.

I got a load of hay on Friday and stacked it in the barn. A ton and a half. Then I worked on the fence all weekend. My muscles are SORE.

My plan to take over the world (or just the library.)

I get lots of time to ponder things while I’m pitching horse manure, and one of the things I think about is the future.

I got to thinking that the most interesting questions we get at the reference desk, since the Internet took over most of our job, are about genealogy and/or local history. Hmm, that’s sort of my favorite type of research.

I could go to library school and get the degree and then, one day, perhaps the library will decide to make the genealogy/local history department a separate unit within the library. They might especially move to this setup if they have a candidate handy who has the degree and the special skills. That could be me.

The others can cover all the other questions we get. Maybe they will change the title from “reference librarian” to “entertainment specialist” to more accurately reflect the job.