Nantucket.

I’m not sure what it is about Nantucket that I love so much. I just identify myself with it. I identify my past with it. I associate fond memories with the island, with the landscape, the look and feel of the island, and with the history. I associate the good parts of my childhood with Nantucket. But in truth, very little of my childhood was actually spent there, and my identity as one who vacationed there as a child is really based more on my sister’s memories, and my mother’s memories, than of my own.

My sister and mother talk often of Nantucket and of their memories there. They stayed at 2 Ash Street, and they would go back with my uncle Barry on extended visits during my sister’s youth. I myself recall being there only two or three times as a young person, meaning pre-college, and I have been back only three times post-college. While that may seem like quite a few times to go to the same vacation spot, it’s not, really, not if you compare it to how many times I have been to Crystal Lake in New Hampshire, or how many times I have been to Cape Cod. Yet somehow I feel like Nantucket is a piece of me, or that I am a piece of it, and I hold my own vague and foggy memories of the island, along with the stories that my sister and mother tell, close to me. Doug asked me what my family does when we are on Nantucket, as he wanted to relive the family experience, and I answered him with things that my family has done, but not necessarily things that I have done, and so these things are not necessarily my traditions. It’s my sister who raves about the cheese soup and curly fries at the Brotherhood, yet we went here in search of those foods (only the fries are still on the menu) in order to recreate this supposed family tradition. It’s my mother who talks of the house at 2 Ash Street, and of the memories there; I never was inside, was not even born when there was any tangible connection to the house. Yet I stood outside it this weekend and Doug took my photo, capturing for us this family tradition, this link to the family past, that I was never a part of.

I was eager to take Doug out to ‘Sconset, to roam that more remote part of the island, but I have no real memories of being there, not until that one early January day in 1998 when my mother, brother, uncle, and I flew to Nantucket, just for the day, and stood on the windy ‘Sconset beach, staring out at the winter ocean. I think we stayed out near ‘Sconset once when I was young, in a house rented by my uncle, the whole brood of us, cousins and all. All that I remember of that trip was someone wearing a jersey nightgown with blue piping around the hems, blue whales on a white background blowing red waterspouts. And of eating popcorn before dinner, my first real introduction to appetizers. And of there being a pond near the rented house, and of there being a path we would walk down, lined with prickly sea grass and beach roses, to get to the ocean, which was bitterly, bitterly cold. Of course, I could be confusing this path with the path that we would walk to get to the beach at my aunt’s Connecticut cottage on the Long Island Sound; there were roses along that path, too. But these memories I associate with Nantucket, so to me they are the Island. And now, I have to somehow fit Doug into these memories.

This time on Nantucket Doug and I saw the Sankaty lighthouse, which was never part of the Nantucket of my memory. We rode Vinos along Milestone Drive and Polpis Road, two roads that meant nothing to me before this trip. Two mornings I woke up early and jogged out to Brant Point and walked along the small beach there, watching the fog veil the harbor; jogging and Brant Point were never parts of my Nantucket history. Neither was staying at the Sherburne Inn. Neither was dining at American Seasons. Not renting scooters, the Old Mill, the Quaker Burial Ground, or going to Easter service at the Congregational Church, either. These were new experiences, adult experiences, that now I have to somehow mix with the picture of Nantucket that I have had in my mind, that of my youth, my family’s past, my life without Doug. What does Nantucket mean now? How do I now relate to this place? I’m still not sure what to think, or, more importantly, what to feel. But at least these memories are all mine now. Whatever experiences I have now I share with Doug, and I won't be able to confuse them with stories from my mother or stories from my sister. They are our experiences and our memories, and Nantucket can be our place now, too.

Pale Avacado.

Dear Blog,

It's not you, it's me. I've strayed from you for the violin. What free time I had before to take photos and write insipid posts I now spend screeching away at the violin. But I have only three more lessons left, and once I am only practicing for myself and not for the show of my teacher I will neglect this new interest and will come back to you again. This phase will pass, but with time.

In the meantime, let me catch you up on some of the things going on around here. Like our newly stained window. And our newly painted kitchen. And our newly painted hallway.

Because we had to stain the new window in the kitchen, I thought this might be a good opportunity to trade in the strawberry-pink walls for something a little more vegetable. Less sugar, more fat. So goodbye pink kitchen, hello green kicthen (and hello stained window).

Before (or during):


After:


Note the window in those two photos. Let me tell you how dangerous stain is. It gets everywhere. And it stains stuff. It's a horrid product to use - effective, but effective in the way that petroleum is effective to power our cars or heat our houses. My poor mother had window-staining duty, and she was like Flipper flipping about in the water, splashing everything with brown fingerprints. It was not her fault; I did it, too, when I arrogantly thought that I could be neater. Stain is just not your friend, even if the end result looks pretty darn good.

And then there was the hallway. My mother cannot tell the difference in the colors, the before and after, but I can. It's a subtle difference, very subtle, but such an important difference.

Look closely at the before photo. If you focus around the light switch, you may be able to better see the shading on the wall. The brighter color is the before. The calmer color is the after.



When done, the walls looked so creamy. The new look inspired me to switch up our art, so now the harbor scene from my uncle Peter is in the hall, the ocean scene from my parents (by way of Uncle Barry) is in the guest room, and the Guinness girl, who was once in the hall, is sitting on the floor in the guest room (sorry, no photo!). We haven't dealt with her yet. Give us time. We'll figure out a good home for her. I'm thinking the basement. Beer and girls and basements go together somehow.

But, lest you think that the only thing that my industrious family and I did that weekend was prime and paint the kitchen and vestibule, paint the hallway, and stain the kitchen window, let me set you straight. My brother, Brother Bunyan, did me and Doug an enormous favor by cutting down the shrubs that were growing along the side of the house along the driveway. Goodbye shrubs. Hello fresh start and painted house. Soon. We still have to figure out what we are going to plant in place of those shrubs (and the shrubs that we took down last summer in the front of the house), and we also have to still come up with a color to paint the house (or maybe just keep it the same?), but we'll get there. Soon. Things just take time around here. We're like the giant tortoise exhibit at the zoo. We get to where we want to go eventually, but it sure does take us a while.

Until next time, my neglected friend.

Sincerely,
Roadielocks

More to Philly than cheesesteak.

I went to Philadephia last week to attend the ACRL 2011 conference. I have been to library conferences before, but never to this one. Never to one that catered specifically to academic libraries. It was different, but it was also the same. Most of the same vendors were there in the exhibit hall (thankfully Euromonitor was there, which means that I got a replacement for my favorite pen that I picked up at the SLA conference last year) and many of the topics were the same - What does it mean to be a next generation librarian? How can you integrate social media best into your library? What kind of mobile site are you developing? How are you showing your institution and community at large that you are valuable? You know, the same-old same-old. I'm telling you, what librarians need is someone to come to these conferences and present a talk on how not to be collegial and easy-going, on how not to spend your days gathering data to show your community that you provide value. Show me a librarian who is persistent, aggressive, direct, and who runs a lean, mean organization that gets consistently high funding and that's the person I want to learn from. This person would be truly revolutionary and I might even pay my own money to attend the conference at which she speaks, because the rest of us are too interested in group-think, in trying to convince people that we are worthwhile, that we provide services that are needed to the community, that we should have meeting after meeting to make sure that people like what they do, aren't too overworked, and that we gather every last person's opinion and feedback before we write a first draft of a procedure (only to go back at least two more times to the group for every last opinion before presenting a final draft to the group that will get shot down at the last minute for violating some kind of ancient policy that should have been changed a long time ago), to say much of anything that hasn't been heard before.

But, cynicism aside, I actually learned stuff at ACRL. I learned that there are so many librarians out there today who are passionate about what they do, and who are implementing some pretty innovative ideas at their libraries. I learned that there are thousands of colleges and universities out there in every little town imaginable, and it's from some of these smaller, more nimble kinds of institutions that I'm seeing some of the most creative solutions to problems. I learned that Access Services is like the Cinderalla of the academic library community, in that it's the dept that does the vast majority of the labor and reaps hardly any of the rewards. (My manager's manager, with whom I was traveling, kept likening Access Services to a logistics operation, and I was somewhat offended by that, since I don't see myself as working for UPS (not that there's anything wrong with UPS, of course). I learned that given a bit of an energy and confidence boost, and a lack of desire to spend my outside-of-work time devoted to non-work-related activities, I might actually try to do some in-depth reading on topics that are unknown to me and to get more involved in the organization. At one point I was thinking about starting a professional blog about the days in the life of a new Access Services librarian, and had visions of people following my content, retweeting my tweets, and of me becoming a Library Journal Mover & Shaker.

I'm home from the conference now, though, and the real world has sunk back in, so that desire to become involved has faded (somewhat). But, at least ACRL gave me the chance to see a bit of Philadelphia, like City Hall and the National Constitution Center. What I may remember most about my trip to Philly, though, is the ACRL Closing Keynote speaker. Recognize him? That's Clinton Kelly, looking as snappy as ever and doling out his fashion advice to all of us eager and needy librarian-types. Yes, he told us to be ourselves, to love ourselves for who we are, to have confidence in ourselves, but he also told us that the shoe makes the outfit, so whatever you do, always wear great shoes. Those are words I can live by.

BioWillie?

I could write about my trip to Philadephia and my ACRL 2011 experience, but instead I'm going to write about other things. I've been thinking a lot about work lately (in fact, I have been waking up each morning thinking of work, either of how to deal with the people with whom I work or thinking about all the things that I want to get done that day... it's like Bain Capital all over again, though slightly less stressful) and tonight I'm tired of thinking about work and about libraries. I'm going to think about something else. Something like...

BioWillie. Do you know that Willie Nelson had his own branded biodiesel? The company tanked when the industry stopped promoting the use of biodiesel (which was claimed to be worse for the environment as a whole than petroleum-based fuels), but still. If my Mini had a diesel engine, if BioWillie were still being sold, and if any of the gas stations around here had a biodiesel pump, I'd buy it.

Cadbury Mini-Eggs. I love these little sweet things with the crisp candy shell. Really, they are my favorite holiday candy, hands down. What I don't love is the feeling I get after I eat, oh, I don't know - thirty? Forty little eggs? Who knows. I just eat and eat and eat them, even though I know that I am simply giving in to my body's reward system in a way that a drug-addict gives in, and that I don't need them or even really want them. It's shameful, it makes me literally sick to my stomach, but that's the way it is. Thank the lord that these candies are not around all year long. I wouldn't be able to stand it.

Banana bread. Tonight I baked a loaf of banana bread instead of practicing my violin. I had two nearly rotten bananas that I didn't have the heart to throw out, so I decided to make a bread. Which means that after I stop inhaling my Cadbury Mini-Eggs I will go butter up a slice of this bread (I put chocolate chips in it, too). Yeah, I'm really the picture of nutrition these days. I'm also regressing in terms of progress on my violin, but that's a subject for another post.

Jimmy Carter. Was he really all that bad? No president is without his flaws, and while Carter's term is not highly praised, he did push the country ahead in terms of energy consumption. He had solar panels installed on the White House! Any guy that does that cannot be all that bad. I don't see Obama putting solar panels on the White House (though, to be fair, he has made progess in healthcare policy, which Carter did not). Let's give Carter some credit.

Sneakers. I bought a new pair of sneakers this past weekend because my sneakers were no longer giving me the best support at the balls of my feet. I bought running shoes, which is funny, because I'm not a runner. I run less than half the time that I exercise, and I recently heard that to have the best foot health you should use cross-trainers when cross-training (which means what, exactly?) and running shoes only to run. So did I buy the wrong kind of sneakers? Will this motivate me to run more? All that I want is better support at the balls of my feet, not all of this added anxiety.

So, okay. Those are some random thoughts for the night. This is the kind of stuff that I think about when I am not thinking about work. Maybe I should have written that post about my conference after all - might have been more insightful and more interesting to read (and it would have had a picture or two!).