Macavity

"Stand back! Let me handle this." He moved forward assertively.

"No!" I cried. "You don't know about these things. You'll get hurt!"

"Don't be scared," he said. "I'll have this taken care of in no time. Look, it's just a flitty little thing. Lots of fun to play with." He jumped up and batted at it. It buzzed at the screen and swooped down at my hero, who promptly scampered behind the couch.

"It's a hornet, you see, Macavity. They sting."

His head popped out from the corner of the couch. "You won't let him get me, will you?"

This is what I love about Macavity. He's a take-charge kind of cat, but he's not afraid to show his vulnerabilities. And he doesn't see or acknowledge any contradictions in his reactions to changing circumstances.

What am I doing with a cat? I'm not, or so I once thought, a cat person. A little over ten years ago, I happened to be walking through the library when I overheard Paulette say to Cyndi, "And if we can't find anyone to take him, we'll have to take him to the pound." I could have just shrugged and moved on. Why didn't I? Too late to ponder "what might have been" now.

I stopped and asked. Paulette explained that her husband had discovered a mother with her litter living in the wood pile in their backyard. They had been bringing plates of food out, but a few days later the family had disappeared--except for one little ginger and white head poking out from the wood pile. Paulette's cat had feline AIDS, so they couldn't bring the kitten inside. They kept feeding it in the backyard, but the weather was turning colder, so they knew they had to find a home for him or take him to the pound.

The impulse erupted--I have no rational explanation. Bring him in, I said, and introduce us, and I'll take him home and try to live with him. I spent the next few days scurrying around buying litter and kitten food, and Paulette said she'd lend me her carrier until I got one.

Not at all sure this would work, I told Paulette if it didn't work out I'd find him a home--my step-daughter runs her own personal rescue league and will take all strays. She married a man of similar sensibilties, and now they and my two grandchildren have a dog, three or four cats, a gecko, and some other amphibian thingy.

The morning Paulette brought the kitten into the library I was quite nervous--animals pick up on all sorts of feelings, I'd heard, and he would sniff out my reluctance and uncertainty. Not to worry! He had the situation well in hand. He greeted me with a purr that sounded like an over-flying jet, sniffed and batted at my hand, and gave me that wide-eyed, I'm-so-frightened-won't-you-help-me kitten look.

Thus conquered, I took him home, where he easily established himself as Lord of All He Surveyed. He loves to supervise my work, especially the changing of the sheets, which ripple invitingly when they're shaken out.

His behavior is quite admirable: He's prudently wary, approaching anything unfamiliar with caution. He won't be coaxed into doing something he doesn't want to do, and guilt is a foreign concept to him. He expresses his needs openly and without manipulation, making it plain that he wants to cuddle, be petted, or play.

I often wonder what happened to the rest of that litter. The mother abandoned him, the vet told me, because she judged that he was least likely to survive. Ten years and going strong. The twist of fate that brought him into my life was not a cruel one--it saved him, and gave me an endlessly entertaining companion.

Having read this (he really is precocious), he tells me to write not "companion," but "friend." Then he commands me to get away from that computer and take up my book, so he can settle comfortably in my lap.

Be right there, Macavity my friend.

Change You Can Count On

My first job (not counting my disastrous stint as a 15-year-old mother's helper) was at Rocky Point Amusement Park. There I sold tickets--ten cents each, eleven for a dollar--in the Upper Booth, right in front of the Wildcat. I learned to make change by counting up to the amount the customer had handed me. For example, if the total was $15.50, and the customer handed you a $20, you were supposed to make change by counting out loud, handing them $.50 and four ones, saying, "Fifteen fifty. That's sixteen (the $.50), seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty." It was important to make change correctly, because you started with a $20 cash drawer, and had to "prove the drawer" (balance it) at the end of your shift. Or you heard about it from John Ferla, park manager.

I needed to do it that way--counting up--because arithmetic was not my strong suit, and still isn't. Some people can do arithmetical calisthenics in their heads, subtracting or multiplying effortlessly. Not me. I need pencil and paper, or a nice simple method like counting up.

I wish people today would make change that way, but not for the reason you may think. This is not a complaint about how kids today can't make change. It's too bad that they can't, but since the cash register does the arithmetic for them, you can't blame them, really. But they give it back exactly the way it's displayed for them--dollars first, and then coins. Using the example I gave above, the display says $4.50, so they hand you four dollars and fifty cents all together, with the coins balanced precariously on top of the dollars.

As a customer, I like getting my coin change first, before my dollars, because I find it less awkward. They do it the other way, coins atop the dollars, and I'm constantly dropping my coin change on the ground at the Dunkin Donuts drive thru. Well, I was. Now I tell them how I want the change handed to me. They roll their eyes ("Another quirky customer--what we have to put up with!"), but I don't care. I've got my change without having to undo the seat belt, open the car door, grab what I can off the ground, and bang my head on the way up.

And that's change I can count on.

Sister Mary Grammaticus Explains the Apostrophe

OK, class, settle down and come to order. Today we will deal with the apostrophe.

What is this fascination people have with the apostrophe?

They slap it on, throw a dash of it in, sprinkle it on top, and drizzle it over the whole concoction as if it's a seasoning they think will bring out the flavor of what they've written.

As with any seasoning, its overuse merely confuses the palate and ruins the taste.

There are two common uses of the apostrophe: to connote possession and to indicate contraction. It is also used, but only occasionally, to signify a plural.

Here are examples:

Possession: Your brother's hat is on the table. The Democratic Party's candidate was successful in his campaign.
Exceptions: We don't use an apostrophe with yours, ours, theirs, or its. That hat is yours. These hats are ours. Those hats are theirs. This hat has lost its feather.
Common mistakes: Writing a plural as if it's a possessive. These hats' are ours. Our special today is hot dog's. If you write these or anything similar, you're confusing your reader. Are you telling us you have hot dogs, or are you telling us your hot dogs have something, but you've forgotten to say exactly what they have?

Contraction: You're. When you write this, you're shortening the phrase, "you are." They've. When you write this, you're shortening the phrase, "they have." It's. This is a shortening of "it is." Could've. This is a shortening of the phrase, "could have," as in the sentence: "I could've been a contender."
Common mistakes: Writing "your" when one means "you're." People will write, "Your driving me crazy." No, YOU'RE not. "Could of." Since "could've" is a contraction of "could have," what exactly is conveyed by "could of?" Nobody knows, as could, should, and would, followed by "of," means absolutely nothing in the English language.

If you are hopelessly confused by the rules governing the use of the apostrophe, please follow this general rule: when in doubt, don't use it. Please.

Class dismissed...for now.

The Arc of History Bends Toward Justice

My sister has quoted these words of Martin Luther King, Jr. to me a couple of times in the past few weeks. She said it again tonight as we talked long distance to wish each other a happy election day.

I was so intrigued by this unbelievably powerful statement that I looked up the source--well, after all, I am a librarian.

MLK spoke these words in a sermon delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. on March 31, 1968, less than a month before he was assassinated. The exact quote:

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

In the same sermon, countering the argument that African Americans should be patient and let things happen, let justice unfold in time, he says:

"Somewhere we must come to see that human progress never rolls in on the wheels of inevitability. It comes through the tireless efforts and the persistent work of dedicated individuals who are willing to be co-workers with God. And without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the primitive forces of social stagnation. So we must help time and realize that the time is always ripe to do right."

I cannot help but think of MLK tonight, this historic night that he foresaw and foretold in one of his last speeches, a twentieth century Moses crying out, "And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

Getting to the White House is not necessarily getting to the promised land. The promised land is equality and justice throughout the fabric of the land, in the interstices, the detailed handiwork of everyday life in America. But it certainly is a giant step.

When I think of the enormity of the stains on the soul of humankind: countless massacres, institutionalized slavery, the subjugation of the Irish and the Armenians, pogroms and the sickening horror of the Holocaust, death squads in El Salvador: these words, uttered by a prophet in the land of his oppression, fill me with hope tonight:

The arc of history bends toward justice.

The Library Irregulars

When I worked at a large urban library in the 70's and 80's, we had quite a few street people. That was the time of the sociological theory that people should be let out of the institutions if they were not dangerous to themselves or others, and allowed to find a place for themselves in the world. The place they found was the public library.

Some of them were too smelly, too hostile and violent, and too psychotic to be anywhere but in a padded cell. But they were regulars--and by that I mean that they came into the library every morning at 9 and left every evening at 9--the library was their home, the place where they felt most comfortable.

One day Richard came in, cigarette in hand, and asked, as usual, for the City Directory. I handed it to him and and told him smoking was not allowed in the library, so he ground his cigarette out in the desk calendar. Another time, a patron in the Reference room asked a regular to stop humming. The response? "I'll go and get my AK 47 and we'll see if I can hum or not." Since most library users weren't aware of the crazy element unless they were regulars themselves, the first patron didn't know enough to laugh it off. So a fist fight broke out, broken up by my cohort Peter, librarian and peace officer. AK 47 strode out yelling that he'd be back with his rifle. I informed Peter that I'd be hiding under the desk until further notice.

I have to admit, though, that for the most part we all had great affection for our regulars. They made us laugh, and that was welcome when one had spent two hours poring through the CFR (Code of Federal Regulations, for the uninitiated).

There was Head Transplant Man, who informed Anne that he desperately needed one, and wanted to know where he could get the procedure done. Although Mary and I begged her to usher him into our "clinic" in the back stacks, Anne simply humored him, and settled him down with some government documents, his favorites. There was the little guy who looked like Squiggy, who always asked for "the book with the plutonium cover" (The Congressional Directory). And one of our favorites, Jane, who drew a mountain range near the North Pole in the National Geographic Atlas. When we got a new edition, we kept the old one just for her, so she could continue to draw the world the way she saw it.

When I left that library for a smaller one, I discovered that it wasn't just urban libraries that drew the, shall we say, odd. Imagine my surprise when I walked through Information Services one day and found my old friend, Toenail Clipping Man...yes...clipping his toenails. Shoes and socks off, leg extended over the top of the library table, clipper making that loud, unmistakable clicking sound. I told him to stop that immediately and he, of course, accused me of following him from library to library to interfere with his grooming routine.

The library I work for now is smaller still--it fits the category of medium sized--but it's in a mixed suburban/urban community and, as Sue, Mistress of the Macabre and my Administrative Assistant, likes to say, "It's on the bus line." Though we have fewer of them, the eccentric and perverse and odiferous are well represented at our library.

Public libraries excel at providing a non-threatening atmosphere and, public servant and bleeding heart that I am, I'm rather pleased that the most alienated and lost among us find refuge there.

Emily Latella Explains Wealth Redistribution

As Emily Latella might say, "What's all this I hear about health redistribution?"

"Uh, excuse me. Emily?"

"Why should those of us who are in good health give some of our health away to people who don't have much? What if we get sick? Then what?"

"Miss Latella, that's...uh..."

"Sounds like a Communist plot to me! And another thing..."

"Emily, that's wealth-"

"What's that? Speak up!"

"That's WEALTH redistribution. Wealth. Redistribution."

"Oh. That's very different." Sweet little smile. "Never mind."

People seem to be that confused about what it was Obama actually said. He didn't say wealth redistribution. That was just something the Republican desperados seized upon when they heard him say, "Spread the wealth around."

I'm not surprised that they would try this tactic. What surprises me--and I suppose it shouldn't, given that the majority of voters reelected Bush in 2004, knowing what they knew--is the number of people who accept this interpretation, seeming to need him to have meant that he will take their hard-earned money and give it to the great unwashed.

Let's review, shall we? Wealth distribution, or redistribution, has been around since the dawn of time, to coin a phrase; monarchs used it liberally to keep their royal coffers filled for their wars and other adventures in power-gathering. Serfs and peasants were taxed, as were the aristocracy, though paying them off with part of the proceeds was part of the game, to keep them loyal. Henry VIII plundered church property and redistributed it to his loyalists, thus helping to keep the Tudors on the throne.

Robin Hood, whether real or mythic, was a creative reaction on the part of the powerless to this injustice--why shouldn't some outlaw redistribute the wealth of the rich to the most needy?

But redistribution of wealth has, since the late nineteenth century, been associated almost exclusively with socialism and communism. It's really just another riff on the old monarchical theme, in that the state seizes all production and goods--and the wealth thus obtained--pays the workers, and keeps the rest for the "common good." Its opposite is capitalism, wherein people are allowed to keep the profits from their labor, at whatever the market is willing to pay for it.

Taxes come into play in both systems. Taxes are the "wealth" everybody's so concerned about, although one can't help thinking that some people believe that Obama has a plan to plunder their personal savings. The whole point of taxes is to pay for the nation's foreign and domestic programs. There are two real questions: what is a fair method of taxation, and how should the taxes collected be spent? Should those who make (earn/inherit/invest) more, pay more? Or should we assume that if they get to keep more of their money, they will reinvest it in businesses and enterprises that create jobs and keep those in the middle- and lower-income brackets also earning? Or should there be a flat rate for everybody, regardless of income?

I have my opinions about all of these possibilities, which I'll go into at another time. When Obama threw off his line about "spreading the wealth" during his conversation with Joe the Plumber, he was castigating the Bush policy of giving tax breaks to the very rich--who, as a group, did not live up to their end of the bargain--and touting his own plans to give tax breaks to the middle class.

If people would apply their critical thinking skills in analyzing recent events, they would realize that the bailout of the banks and other financial institutions is really a buyout. Admittedly, it seems to have been the only way to avoid a complete meltdown, but what is more communistic than a state takeover of any industry? And this was perpetrated by the Republican Party, that bastion of defense against communism, necessitated by their eight-year strategy: lower taxes for those who would ordinarily pay the most, and spending taxes collected from the rest of us on the war and all its accoutrements, like lucrative government contracts for private companies with ties to administration insiders.

I'd rather my taxes not go there; I'd rather my "wealth" be redistributed to the returned veterans, and children at risk, and libraries, and a sane health insurance policy.

Wait a minute, maybe Emily Latella got it at least half right after all: not health redistribution, but health care redistribution...

Never mind.

Enough

I plan to vote for Obama in November. It comes as a surprise to me that I will do so almost reluctantly, rather than whole-heartedly and with deep political conviction. I have been a Democrat all my life, and yes, a protester and picketer for social justice causes, and would ordinarily be thrilled to cast my vote for the first African American with a legitimate chance to win.

McCain has never been an option for me--not ever, but especially not now, when his desperation has caused him to throw over his "maverick" status except in name only, and has brought about his craven selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. I mean, I honestly believe that I could do a better job than she could, and believe me, I'm not qualified.

Nothing Obama has said or done in the campaign has helped to ameliorate my strong doubts about his readiness--he is untried and untested on this large a stage, and there is much to be done--and undone--to restore some semblance of the country we once revered. I still believe that Hillary was the best choice among all those who ran. If you care to see my reasons why, see my post "Why I am for Hillary" on the blog, "The Macavity Dialogues." (http://macavity dialogues.blogspot.com)

But my vote for Obama is my way of saying "Enough!" to Bush, Cheney, and the neo-cons who have spent the past eight years hacking away at the social compact comprised of all those programs that come under the umbrella of the New Deal. My vote will say "Enough!" to those who dismantled the Justice Department and turned it into a political patronage palace; "Enough!" to those who selfishly and stupidly prosecuted the first full-scale pre-emptive war in our nation's history and sent thousands to their needless deaths in a false cause; and "Enough!" to the religious bigots who have somehow convinced themselves that God is as small-minded and bitter as they are.

My vote for Obama will be one of hope--that he will demonstrate the extraordinary judgment that will be needed, and make sound choices in his appointments, and will use the office to unite rather than to divide. It's clear his election would be welcome around the world and would restore some hope that America can reclaim its status as a symbol of equality and opportunity.

I hope Obama will win, and I hope he will astonish me.

Coincidence or Divinely Inspired Theme?

Some days four or five of us show up at the library wearing the same color. As we remark about this to each other, someone else will arrive, off-color so to speak, and we all round on her demanding, "Didn't you get the memo?"

The movie "Terms of Endearment" came out within a year after my sister died of breast cancer. The situations were eerily similar: young mother with three children and a clueless husband. My sister did not have a whacky, righteously angry mother who drove across the beach with an ex-astronaut, but that's why movies are never exactly like real life. My other sister, a cousin who was like a sister to us, and I all saw the movie on the same weekend, but not with each other. After I recovered from copious weeping at the end of the film, I could not wait to get home and call them to say, "Don't see this movie! It's too devastating; you shouldn't see it yet." What happened was that we all called each other to give the same warning.

A couple of years ago I re-read Josephine Tey's marvelous book, "The Daughter of Time," in which she makes the case that Richard the Third got a bad rap. She blames the general historical assumption about his bad character and physical deformity on Shakespeare, pointing out that it was, after all, in his best interest to set the Tudors in a good light and more or less cover up their own suspicious activities in the matter. So I went and re-read his "Richard the Third," wanting to examine it again with Tey's perspective fresh on my mind. I found I couldn't; his luscious language and keen dramatic instincts obliterated my intention, and he basically swept me away. Not a month later, I caught Al Pacino's documentary about preparing for the role, "Looking for Richard." And then a few weeks later I saw the movie starring Ian McKellen. Set in the 1930's, it is rife with fascist overtones. But my point is that I didn't seek these movies out--they were offered serendipitously as part of some weird literary theme just for me.

As Jerry Seinfeld might say, "What's THAT all about?"

Now my favorite blogger PJ (http://wordinthewoods.blogspot.com. Check it out.) has just posted about a family dinner conversation about T.S. Eliot. This morning I opened the next book I'm going to read, Val McDermid's "The Torment of Others," and found this quotation from "The Four Quartets" as the introduction:

"But the torment of others remains an experience
Unqualified, unworn by subsequent attrition.
People change, and smile: but the agony abides."

Is another literary theme about to thread its way around me? I don't know, but I'm feeling an overwhelming urge to stop everything and pick "The Complete Works of T.S. Eliot" from my bookshelf and let this take me where it leads.

Sail Away Again (With Apologies to Milan Kundera)

This is another story about taking a ferry. I will get on any boat I can at any time I can. And until I come into my rightful millions and get my yacht, The Pirate Librarian, ferries will have to do. I suppose it's good practice for my final journey across the Styx, a crossing I hope is many years in the future, as I have many ferry rides yet to take.

My sister is visiting from Buffalo, and last week we took the ferry to Block Island. When we were kids, the whole family went every year. In those days (writing that phrase makes me fell like such an old codger!) the ferry left from Providence. It would meander down Narragansett Bay, put in at Newport to take on supplies and passengers, then cross the Sound to Block Island. I've written elsewhere (an essay in the book that resulted from the NEH project "What a Difference a Bay Makes") about the mystical, musical, magical experience of sailing back to Providence in the dark and watching the lights that flickered along either side of the Bay. For many years now, the only ferries to Block Island from the RI mainland (there's one from Connecticut) have departed from Galilee. I'd much prefer the longer sail from Providence, but I'll take what I can get.

Anyway, there we were on the top deck in rough and rocky seas, getting completely soaked from wind-whipped spray and loving it. Most of the passengers were on the lower, enclosed deck, but Margaret and I were perfectly content in the open air, though we had to shout to hear each other.

On the Island, we each had a Bloody Mary (having had the best one of our lives two years ago on BI and hoping to repeat the experience)and a leisurely lunch, and then poked about in the shops. We were nostalgic, invoking well-loved family memories; we were somber, sharing our current personal woes and views on politics and world events; we were silly, catching each other's looks and breaking into laughter: We were sisters.

This is probably the source of my abiding love for sailing anywhere, but especially to Block Island. I've made this trip with my parents and sisters, with my friends, with my late husband and later with my in-laws. Even when I've gone alone, I've carried them all with me. They are not a burden; instead of weighing me down, the memories fill me with a bearable lightness of being.

Adventures in Grammar

When I taught sophomore English many years ago, we had a vocabulary component. They had to learn 15 to 20 new words a week, and every Thursday I would give them a quiz on ten of these words. They had to define the word, then use it in a sentence to demonstrate they understood it in context. "Ebb," one girl wrote. "To fall off, or recede slowly." So far so good. Then she wrote this sentence: "The book ebbed off the table." A few minutes after I read this, I picked myself off the floor, having ebbed off my chair.

Thus began my long dark journey into the terrifying world of fractured syntax, words and phrases used out of context, punctuation free-for-all, disagreement between subject and verb and subject and modifier, and the ever-popular split infinitive.

I have received cover letters with resumes assuring me the writers have "alot" of experience working with the public. I have read menus offering "potatoes' au gratin" and wondered how potatoes can have au gratin and if it is a condition we should look for in potatoes. People have told me that someone gave the books to "she and I." OW. It hurts even to write that.

Most of the people who commit these grammatical faux pas (pas's?) are educated; some to Master's degree level. I'm convinced the difference between those who can write a simple English sentence and those who wander around in verbal airspace, never actually coming in for a landing, is the habit of reading regularly. Reading lifts the imagination and provokes critical thinking. But its by-products are equally important: one learns without necessarily meaning to--perhaps by osmosis--how to spell, how to punctuate, how to express oneself clearly and concisely in speech and writing.

I intend to write here occasionally about some of the common mistakes that drive me crazy and to share some simple ways to correct them. How, for example, to know whether to use "less" or "few." Oh, all right, I'll do that one now: "Less" refers to volume or general quantity; "few" to specific numbers of items. There is less water in the pitcher, so we'll be able to fill fewer glasses. People know not to say "fewer water in the pitcher," but they have no problem with "less glasses." Sports reporters are constantly reporting about "less" people in the stadium for tonight's game. Stop that! It's hurting my ears!

There is more, so much more, but I must stop now as I'm falling off, receding slowing....I'm ebbing.

Questions I Wish They'd Ask the Candidates

Many citizens believe that in the past eight years government departments and policy decisions have been sullied by political interference, and hope that the next Administration will attempt to undo some of this.

Do you believe political considerations should enter into appointments to the Justice Department or any department, and if so, to what extent?

Do you believe scientists and scholars should have the freedom to explore and experiment, and to publish their studies and conclusions without reference to a political or religious agenda? If not, why not?

Do you believe that issues of security trump civil liberties? Where would you draw the line in balancing this? Are there any parts of the Patriot Act you would rescind, or do you wholeheartedly support it?

What is your definition of political leadership, and can you give an example from your own experience? What is your definition of political courage, and can you give an example from your own experience? Which of our presidents do you admire for their political leadership and their political courage?

Our war in Iraq is a reality, and most of us know that the question before us is how best to proceed from this point--whether to end it and how, or whether to define an acceptable outcome and to work to achieve it, regardless of how long it takes. Nevertheless, this question is worth asking our next leaders: What is your view on pre-emptive attacks on other countries?

What books have you read in the last year? If any, which would you recommend and why?



These are just a few of the questions I'd like to pose. And if I could moderate just one debate, I wouldn't let them get away with mindless repetitions of bromides like "reform," "change," "hope for the future."

Come on, people! This may be the most important election of our lifetime! Let's put at least a little thought into this.

A Sports Fan Thanks Her Dad Part Three The End

Only a few years later a date took me to my first game at Fenway. Dad had been right, I was in awe. The lush greenness of it; the perfect diamond. It was a closed universe, a paradisiacal light-year away from the crowded city beyond the green wall. When the teams took the field and began to play, I instinctively looked not at the pitcher and batter, but at the outfield. No one had ever described for me that moment when the pitcher goes into his windup and the whole team behind him comes to high alert. "It's beautiful," I cried to my date, and thought of my Dad and got a lump in my throat. I still think that's one of the most beautiful moments in all of sports--whatever else they may have been doing, however nonchalant they had seemed, when the pitcher goes into his windup all of them, infield and outfield, lean forward in a state of deep concentration and readiness. The moment is full of high drama and caught breath. Wonderful.

So now the Patriots have won the Superbowl three times and my Dad would be ecstatic. I just know that throughout the New England region there were fans like me who thought of their dads and had a bittersweet moment of feeling an aching loss along with the jubilation.

And the Red Sox...In New England, we often got into discussions about what we'd do, how we'd feel if they ever won the World Series. Would we be able to live with it? Would it somehow lessen our obsessive love for the team? What, a group of us asked each other a few years ago, would be the first thing you'd do if the Red Sox won it all?

I didn't even have to think about my answer. And when the Red Sox won the World Series in 2004, I held true to it. I took a Red Sox t-shirt, hat, and large banner to St. Anne's cemetery in Cranston, RI. I put the shirt over the gravestone marking Joseph Francis F......(it's an Irish name), perched the hat on top, and wrapped the banner over the whole thing. The banner said, "They did it, Dad! Rest in peace."

Sports have been, at various times in my life, distraction, obsession, amusement. Sports have taught me about the human reaction to victory and defeat, made me think about ethical dilemmas; helped me recognize, in other areas of my life, the apparent conflicts between striving for a personal best and sacrificing personal glory for the sake of a group goal. Some people think following sports is a trivial pastime, nothing to do with real life. True sports fans--like the ones who lean out of the way to give a fielder the opportunity to catch the ball and make a play--even if he's on the opposing team--know that sports encompass all the drama and comedy, all the lessons about fair play and living with a bad call, that real life dishes up every day. I'm proud to say I'm a sports fan.

Thanks, Dad.

A Sports Fan Thanks Her Dad part two

Although this sounded extremely boring to me (wasn't getting the ball and scoring the whoe point of the game? and therefore wasn't it crucial to follow the ball?) I did what he suggested for the next few minutes. And of course it turned me into a sports fan for life. Because I saw how all the action on the field was designed to further each team's goal: score or prevent the score. No matter how remote from what I had thought of as the center of the action, each man was performing a specific task that enabled (or didn't, if he didn't do his task well) the entire team to succeed.

"Hey," I said in wonder to my father. "I see what you mean!"

He beamed at me. "But what's the 'down' business all about?" I asked. "I mean, I know as long as they keep making ten yards they get to keep the ball, but what's a down?"

"A down is, is--OK, a down is a try," he said. "The team that has the ball has four downs, or 'tries,' to make ten yards. If they make four yards in their first try, then they have a second try to make the remaining six, and so on."

Oh. So simple. I even figured out the fourth down punt on my own. I was actually beginning to enjoy this. Football was strategy and logic as well as huge behemoths pounding into each other.

Warming to this new-found appreciation I was exhibiting for one of his passions, he gave me the key to all team sports.

"Don't watch just football this way," he said. "Basketball is a great game to watch when you occasionally take your eyes off the ball and see what the defenders are doing, and what the rest of the offense is doing to set up the next basket. You can tell how good a player is by watching what he's doing away from the ball."

The Red Sox were my father's favorite team. He lived and died with them each season. Watching them on TV was OK, but you couldn't really see the whole field, he told me. The beauty and symmetry of it. He couldn't take me, because a few years earlier he'd lost a leg to arteriosclerosis, and while the prosthesis was fine for getting to work and church, it really was an ungainly thing which he found difficult to maneuver in crowded situations. Someday you'll go, he told me, and you'll see what I mean.

The Red Sox game was always on the radio, the background to whatever else was going on. If he was working in the garage or mowing the lawn, the game was blasting from a transistor radio on the back steps. Driving the car: there was the game. Frequently, on hot summer nights he'd turn off the TV and he and my mother would retreat to the small sun porch with a beer and the radio. Their conversations about life, work, kids, etc., would punctuate the night air, accompanied by the whispery crowd, the announcers' murmuring, the cracking noise of a bat making contact. My Dad died very suddenly, having just gone to bed, on just such a night. He would have said it was a perfect way to go--Mom by his side, the two of them turning in after an evening of contented conversation and listening to the summer night sounds of crickets and the Red Sox game.

(To Be Continued. I will wrap this up in the next post, I promise!)

A Sports Fan Thanks Her Dad part one

On a Sunday afternoon sometime in the mid-60's my father spoke the words that turned me into a sports fan. He had three daughters; I was the one in the middle. We were all sports fans in that we rooted for specific teams, even if we didn't "get" all the nuances of the games. The teams we cheered for were his teams, of course, and since we lived in Rhode Island our hearts belonged to the Providence College Friars, the Boston Celtics, the Boston Bruins.
The Patriots were our team, too, but they were part of the fledgling league and their games weren't carried on television. Some network executive somewhere decided that since New England didn't have its own NFL team, we would root for the closest alternative--the New York Giants. Consequently, every Sunday throughout the Fall New England fans who wanted to see football on TV had to watch the Giants. Many New Englanders fell for this ploy, and some even today are fanatical Giants fans. My father, though he thought New York was a wonderful city, hated all New York teams on principle. But he loved football, so each Sunday he would settle down to watch the game and root for whichever team the Giants were playing against that week.
Throughout the afternoon one or all of us would join him for at least a few minutes--boys weren't the only ones who bonded with their dads through sports. We would make comments, ask questions, or just enjoy sitting with him and thrill at the level of enthusiasm he could muster for every play.
On this particular day I was alone with him--he in his chair and me across the room on the couch. I was still in the pre-teen stage and he was still the Ultimate Source of knowledge for me, the Final Word on all subjects. I had fallen madly in love with him sometime in infancy and as far as I was concerned he was the smartest and best man in the world. There was a time in my teens when that changed--it suddenly became clear to me that everything he did or said, even his mere existence, was calculated to embarrass and mortify me and that, in fact, he knew absolutely nothing about what really mattered in life. Fortunately, I snapped out of that a few years later.
That day I complained to him that I couldn't see what was so great about football. "Everybody just plows into everybody else, which takes two seconds, and then they take five minutes to get back in line and plow into each other again. And besides," I added, "I can't follow the ball--whoever has it is in the bottom of the pile."
And then he spoke the magic words. "Don't always follow the ball," he said. "You'll never understand the game if you're just watching the ball or the action around the ball. If you really want to understand what the game is about, pick out a man, any man on either side, and watch what he does for three or four plays. Then pick out a man on the other side and watch him for three or four plays."

(To be continued. This is going to be longer than I'd thought!)

sail away

Today my friend Kathy and I escaped from our normal routines and took the ferry tour of Rhode Island's lighthouses. It was so much fun to put my face in the wind and watch the light sparkle on the water. The tour was wonderful, and once again brought that frequent thought that we don't often enough take advantage of the natural beauty in our own backyard. Perhaps we should think like tourists even in familiar climes; fresh perspective can be found just in looking in a new way.
But the best part of the day was careering from deep conversation to unfettered hilarity with Kathy. Although we try to get together often, it somehow works out to be only a couple of times a year. But we make the most of it when we finally pull it off.
How grateful I am for the ocean and for friendship.

These past few months have been tough for me at the library. We had a substantial reduction in our town appropriation for the first time in years, going from $814,000 in FY 2008 to $732,000 in FY 2009. We do have other sources of funding, but the town money is what keeps our doors open.

I spent much of the summer preparing various budget drafts that would reflect our new financial reality, and finally concluded that we'd have to do what I'd so wanted to avoid: letting go of staff. So over the last week I've met with people and told them the sad, sorry news.

I have fired people before--for incompetence and a number of other serious infractions. It's not easy to do, but when people's lack of performance drags down the quality of service, and the rest of the staff suffers in countless ways trying to make up for it, you do it for the sake of the library. But this is different--this is letting go of people who have performed well, given good service, and in no way deserve to lose their jobs.

People who don't use libraries have this strange stereotype in their heads about small children going to storytime and little old ladies checking out fiction. They have no idea, because they never come through the doors, what a lively hotbed of activity the library is. People of all ages come in for such a variety of information needs; our literacy program is thriving, filled with eager students hungry to learn to speak and write English so they can get ahead; we have quite a number of shut-ins from the six elderly housings in town who look forward to their visits from the library; and the computer classes are always popular.

I hear or read comments about there being no need for libraries anymore because we have the Internet. Please. There is a large portion of our population who don't own a computer and whose only access is what we provide at the library. Yes, lots of kids have computers at home to do their homework and print out amazing research projects, but our computers are in use every night by kids who, if they didn't have access to them, would be at a serious disadvantage.

So now we will reduce staff and hours and make the library less accessible for the people who need it most.

It really makes me sick at heart.

blog name: inspired by Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson has inspired this blog name. He wrote one of my favorite poems, "Ulysses." I won't quote the whole poem, but here are the relevant lines:

...
"The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks;
The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the
deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyong the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down;
It may be that we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we
are,-
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield."

Oh, how I love the stubborn insistence that we can and will go on, we will continue to strive no matter our infirmities, until the last breath. Not because we must, or because we have no choice, but because life has been such a precious gift, and the only way to honor it is to live it fully even to its wondrous end.

This is true even for those of us who have suffered unbearable losses--we seek life, and joy, and love, knowing the terrible sorrow that awaits us when it ends, but knowing, too, that the amazing happiness and contentment is worth the risk. "'Tho much is taken, much abides..."

And, of course, the sentiment I heartily embrace: There is always a cause, there is always something else to be achieved, there is always a way, if there is a will, to make things better. Readers of this blog, I exhort you:

"Come, my friends, 'tis not too late to seek a newer world."


Fran