Review: Trouble is a Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromly

I finished my first book of Summer only 3 days into the break.  BAM!

We purchased a copy of Trouble is a Friend of Mine by Stephanie Tromly based upon a favorable School Library Journal review earlier this school year.  My most avid reader reported back that it was both “funny” and “compelling.”  And then he checked it out again a few months later.  That was good enough for me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  Sometimes the characters fell into predictable patterns and sometimes the situations they encountered seemed a little far-fetched.  But, in reality, humans are prone to predictable behavior and how often is it said “you couldn’t make this stuff up” in relation to real-life scenarios?  So, I set aside the critical, nagging gremlin in my head, suspended my disbelief, and barreled in to the story.

Our protagonist is Zoe Webster, a smart, troubled, frustrated child of divorce trying to navigate the incomprehensible social waters of River Heights in upstate New York after moving there from Brooklyn with her mother.  Zoe is not hanging up her hat in River Heights.  She has her sights set on returning to New York City, to a private school, to her father, and eventually on to a conventionally successful life as a Princeton graduate.  So when she gets caught up  Digby’s web of crazy, she is not pleased.

Well, maybe she is.

Just a little bit.

Digby has been dealt a raw deal in life and he has, like a virtuoso, turned his lemons into some seriously epic lemonade.  He reminded me a teenaged cross between Benedict Cumberbatch’s Sherlock Holmes and Hugh Laurie’s Dr. Gregory House with just enough of Anton Yelchin’s Charlie Bartlett to keep things zany.  Digby is more interested in solving local crimes than attending high school, following rules, maintaining a healthy diet, or making friends.  Zoe claims not to like him.  And yet she keeps going along with his antics.  And together with Digby’s once-friend, the handsome high school quarterback, Henry Petropoulos, they set out to solve a kidnapping, expose an unethical gynecologist, and take down a cult.

Supporting roles populated with a Vegan cop and his canny, long-suffering partner, a bullied, grade-skipping genius, a threatening Miss Hannigan-like neighbor and her brood of apparently hyper-religious orphans, a truancy officer bent on taking down Digby (his very own Ferris Bueller), and a counselor whose desperation is as permeating as the aroma of the cookies he warms up to offer wayward students complete the cast of characters neatly.  Ultimately, this book is a love letter to one remarkable and entertaining character–Digby.  His idiosyncrasies (he’s constantly eating, he wears a suit and tie, he’s kind of a stalker) make him fun.  His powerful intelligence makes him interesting.  And his all-too-human vulnerabilities make him relate-able.  He’s not just an ill-mannered, socially-maladjusted teenager. He has goals and his actions, while seemingly bizarre in the moment, all serve his greater purpose.

I would recommend this book to anyone aged 14 and older as there are some mature themes that might put off younger readers.  Trouble is a Friend of Mine will find a home among the growing population of insightful, amusing, YA noir.  And its dashes of social commentary keep it from getting bogged down in the potential mire of those more mature themes.

Take it out for a spin and enjoy!

Book Review: Tunnel Vision by Aric Davis

Last night, I recovered my Librarian superpowers and actually stayed up far too late to finish a book.  I was that engrossed in Tunnel Vision by Aric Davis.  This is hardly surprising given that Tunnel Vision  is the sequel to Davis’s fantastic 2011 book Nickel Plated.  When I read that, I was well and truly blown away by something delightfully new and different.  Davis has a talent for combining relate-able, heroic teenage characters with harrowing situations, humor and intelligence.

In 2011, Davis introduced us to Nickel, a tough, smart, survivor of the system who manages to fly under the radar, privately investigate scumbags, and–just to make ends meet–sell some of the sweetest pot Grand Rapids, Michigan has ever smoked.  He has set up a life for himself that insulates him while simultaneously bringing him into dangerous proximity with the very criminals who would victimize him and he’s done it all by the ripe age of 12.  At times, Nickel Plated reads like a how-to manual for avoiding oversight and adult interference.  Davis has clearly given great thought to weaving Nickel’s world so that even this wholly unbelievable premise seems possible.  As a high school teacher-librarian, I can see how a kid could slip through the cracks as Nickel has.  In his first book, our hero successfully rescued a little girl from her kidnappers and lived to fight another day.

In Tunnel Vision, Nickel hits the ground running…and bleeding.  He has escaped after perpetrating a frightening level of Old Testament justice upon the horrific juvenile delinquent camp he’d been sent to after his best dealer turned on him.  Nickel is four years older and more battle-hardened than ever.  He is also more wounded and vulnerable than we’ve ever seen him and immediately Davis ropes us in to his story again.  Tunnel Vision is actually three stories woven into one very compelling knot.  First, we have Nickel who is faced with a dilemma: survive and compromise his ethics or maintain his code of morality and potentially come to even greater harm than ever before.  Second, we have Mandy’s story, told through her diary entries.  Mandy died 15 years ago, strung out on heroin, beaten beyond recognition, and stabbed, presumably by her junkie boyfriend, Duke.  Finally, we have Betty and June’s story.  They discover that Mandy was June’s aunt and they decide to investigate her murder.  Naturally, their paths cross with Nickel’s.

Tunnel Vision is gritty.  It literally pulls no punches.  Davis doesn’t flinch away from extreme situations, language, or characters.  There is murder, prostitution, drugs, violence, identity fraud, and child abuse.  The beauty of Nickel’s world is that the horrible people get their comeuppance.  Oh, man, do they get their comeuppance!  This is a world full of consequences, both good and bad.  In one scene in this book, Nickel defends Betty against her boyfriend who has attacked her and, because he has trained under a particularly brutal streetfighter named Rhino, Nickel wins the fight with extreme prejudice.  The description of Nickel felling a hearty 16 year-old with a full-force kick to the crotch and then finishing him off with a wind-up kick to the face almost turned my stomach even as I punched the air in my empty apartment to cheer him on.  And perhaps this is why Nickel is such a compelling character.  He is socially maladjusted as a result of the abuse he has suffered in his short life but he has a code and he sticks to it.  He can return violence for violence but he does so judiciously.  After making a drug deal with a particularly unsavory asshole, Nickel pedals his bike over to the dealer’s last crash pad and rescues a neglected child he had spotted on his last visit to the house.  His courage and humanity keep him from becoming the very people he fights.  And, yes, the drug dealer gets his just desserts in the end too.  Davis looks out for his reader in this and doesn’t leave aggravating loose ends that scream “SEQUEL!”  Even though we may yearn to read more Nickel stories.

In fact, Davis avoids virtually all of the conceits so common to both procedural crime dramas and YA lit today.  His characters are smart and well-rounded and diverse without being overbearingly and annoyingly “original.”  They seem real and they think through their own situations.  There aren’t obvious red herrings and while, yes, there exists a thread of romance between Nickel and Betty, it is appropriately awkward and beautiful and realistically messy.  And neither character is there solely to prop the other one up.  In fact, each of the main characters in Tunnel Vision could sustain his or her own story and this literary autonomy only strengthens their combined story.  When Nickel, Betty, and June finally team up and start working on Mandy’s murder as a group, it feels as though three master instrumentalists have finally resolved their disparate themes into one rousing movement that is accelerating toward a truly thrilling conclusion.

As a result of this realism, my only gripe about this story is that even so insightful a writer as Davis has lacunae where some of his characters are concerned.  Specifically, and unsurprisingly, I take issue with his high school librarian character.  Betty and June wind up in their school’s library often throughout the course of their research into Mandy’s murder and, inexplicably, the librarian is a cardboard shusher of a character who takes issue with their enthusiastic volume not once, not twice, but three times!  As a librarian, I have never shushed a student.  I have been shushed by a student on more than one occasion.  The potent disdain Davis directs toward the librarian on multiple occasions is most keenly felt in the following passage: “…that remark sent both of them into librarian shush-worthy titters, an affliction they managed to rein in before any actual punishment could be levied on them for daring to be amused in the temple of stacked books” (p.128).  It’s an insultingly inaccurate portrayal of a modern librarian or library and, I hope, it is simply a holdover from an unfortunate stereotype Davis himself ran into as a teenager.  Frankly, though, I almost stopped reading right there out of disgust.  Librarians are not all the same, just as teenagers are not all the same.  Davis does a splendid job of recognizing the latter in his books while completely disregarding the former.  Fortunately, I was able to curb my frustration long enough to get to the very next page where I was once again fully committed to the story.

Ultimately, this book is not for everyone, but it will appeal to far more people than one might suspect, given its content.  Nickel’s world appeals to many reluctant readers, true, but it also appeals to teachers and parents.  I passed along a copy of Nickel Plated to my own parents who firmly abhor violence and crudity and they both devoured it.  There is something special here.  It’s a little rough, a little unpolished, and little off-balance at times.  But the end result, as is so often the case with true new art, is beautiful to behold and deeply satisfying to absorb.  I highly recommend Tunnel Vision.  Just make sure you read Nickel Plated first.  And plan on NOT sleeping until you hit the final page!

Sunday at the newly-minted BPL

I am sitting in the beautiful, expansive, brand-spanking-new Billings Public Library as I write this.  What an exhilarating dream come true—and a long overdue dream come true!  Billings has never before built a library.  It has HAD a public library for over a century but it has never set out to construct a facility specifically to house a public library.  Finally, finally, the city has done so, and it is a sight to behold.

An imposing, confident, two-story edifice of glass, steel, and concrete rises above the January slush and scurf and the bare clacking trees of downtown.  The newly renamed Billings Public Library announces itself plainly and triumphantly, “I am HERE!”  All around outside, families and individuals scurry to and from the main entrance, even as the chilly northern plains wind tugs them in all directions.  This is a special outing for most of them in this the library’s first full week in the new building.  The first floor is teeming with patrons and tourists and the line to the Circulation Desk stretches out into the foyer as people sign up for library cards, many for the first time.  The lines to the multiple self-checkout stations are even longer and denser.  And today is quiet compared to how it’s been all week!  While some of these Sunday library-goers are obviously on a mission to find a specific item, a great many of them are simply wandering around, taking in the new facility.

It’s a novelty for Billings residents, you see.  The old library building, which stands less than 20 feet to the south of the new building, awaiting demolition, was often referred to as the Warehouse.  Arguably the only structural asset in the Warehouse was the oversize, circular stair which patrons could use to access the second floor.  And most did because the tired, cramped, old elevators crept up and down their shafts at a terrifyingly slow pace.

Happily, that circular pattern has been echoed in the new library, which was designed by Will Bruder + Partners.  Above the circular first floor Circulation Desk, a huge circular space cuts up through the middle of the second floor and finishes in an enormous dappled skylight.  To cover such a huge open space in the roof, the builders had to order the skylight from Europe.  It is the same material used to cover the grandiose Beijing National Aquatics Center:

And while you can’t ascend to the second floor here (the stairs are over by the elevators now) you CAN walk the perimeter of the oval and take in the wonderful quotes and BPL sponsors that have been etched into the bright yellow, glasslike sheets that define the space and serve as a balcony at the second floor level.

Everything in this new library is about showing the inner workings of the facility.  A perforated metal grate encases but does not hide the elevator mechanisms.  That same metal grating clads portions of the floor-to-ceiling glazing on the second story which provides some shelter against the often-harsh Montana weather and provides a sense of security for patrons within.  It does not, however, obscure the incredible sweeping views of the city of the Rims.  It merely screens it subtly.  The conveyer belt that carries library materials to the back room to be sorted and processed runs behind a translucent red vinyl curtain.  In the fabulous Story Cone in the hugely-expanded Children’s section, unfurnished pressed wood covers the two-story height of the space.  The curving wall that partially shields the Children’s section from the general public is finished with raw boards salvaged from snow fences in Wyoming.  The new building itself echoes the spacious steel hay barns that are so ubiquitous in Montana.

It is a design that has proven quite controversial in this conservative burg.  Many detractors have called it overwhelming and ugly.  And, truthfully, it does stand out.  But it does so only because it is the first new building downtown that was designed to reflect both its era and its function instead of merely trying to emulate the ephemeral, quasi-“traditional,” hodge-podge architectural legacy of this comparatively young city.

Personally, I applaud the architects, builders, and Library Foundation for this wonderful new facility.  I had the privilege of touring it while it was still under construction and I know that what the public sees is not even half of the intelligence, wonder, and thoughtful construction that went into it.  It is a game-changer.  Perhaps now, the tourists who are projected to visit Billings for the gaudy, monstrous behemoth that is the new Scheels sports store on the far, developing West End will feel compelled to venture farther into town to experience the more authentic Billings community and its beautiful new library.

There is a Woody Allen quote on the yellow glass balcony here that says, “Reading isn’t fun; it’s indispensable.”  This library wasn’t built on a whim to cater to the passing interests of an unfocused few.  It was built to provide the indispensable function of making information and resources available to the larger Billings community.  Luckily for us, we get to revel in this glorious new environment while we do so now.

Long live the library!

 

More photographs:

Review: Worldshaker by Richard Harland

Review of Worldshaker by Richard Harland

In a YA fantasy literature market saturated with vampires, demon-slayers, mind-readers, and soul-crushing, totalitarian dystopias, Worldshaker stands out as a solid steel relief.  This steampunk novel maintains all the comfortable absurdities of the Victorian era while also laying bare the hellish, inhumane injustices and greed of Imperialism and class-driven societal structures.

The novel centers around Col (Colbert Porpentine, if we’re being perfectly accurate).  He’s an intelligent, if impossibly sheltered, favored son of the British juggernaut (which is also all that apparently remains of the British nation), Worldshaker.  He has been raised to believe in a morality that allows Upper Decks aristocrats, like his family, to maintain lavish, useless lifestyles while brain-drained Menials serve them contentedly and subhuman Filthies who live Below keep Worldshaker moving while multiplying shockingly and exponentially.  Col looks forward to a dazzlingly bright future as the named successor to his grandfather, the juggernaut’s Supreme Commander.  That is, he does until Riff (just plain Riff), a Filthy who escapes the lobotomizing process that turns Filthies into Menials, crashes headlong into his life.  She forces Col to acknowledge his own lacunae about his world.  Col’s natural curiosity then leads him to discover gut-wrenching truths about the apparently placid existence he has occupied in his 16 short years of life.  Throughout this journey, Col forges an unconventional but powerful relationship with Riff that will alter their lives, and the destiny of Worldshaker, forever.

Like so many other YA novels I have read in recent years, Worldshaker trades complexity for action.  Harland has obviously created a fully-imagined alternate reality in which ships the size of cities roam the Earth (yes, there is more than one juggernaut), chewing up everything and everyone in their path.  The literal and figurative stratification of Worldshaker’s society serves as an intriguing metaphor for our own culture, both historically and today–as does the callous, dehumanizing treatment of the lowest members of that society by the upper 1 percent.  Personally, I would have liked to read more about how that fully-imagined society functions.  Harland whets the reader’s appetite with brief passages about Graveyard Rooms (where would you put your corpses if you never stopped moving and maintained stringent religious and moral guidelines about the sanctity and superiority of your existence?), great protruding scoops and cranes that denude the landscape of produce and resources as Worldshaker tears past, and the ephemeral presence of other such metal behemoths roaming the planet with apparent impunity.  Unfortunately, the reader’s discovery is limited to Col’s discoveries.  His journey is ours.  And while we can clearly see where his revelations are headed even before he gets there (subhuman, animal-like creatures living without resentment or pain in the treacherous bowels of the ship because they lack the capacity for such sophisticated thoughts and emotions?  Come on!  We know immediately this is incorrect!), we also only learn as much as he does.

Perhaps this is what Harland intended.  It does, after all, mirror the inevitable journey toward societal and self-awareness many young adults take.  From that perspective, it makes sense that the author would not prose on inexorably about the intricacies of this world he has created.  I think both arguments are ultimately valid.

Despite this minor objection, I really quite enjoyed Worldshaker.  It afforded me a welcome relief from the Twilight and Hunger Games knock-offs flooding the shelves right now.  It is not obscenely violent, nauseatingly self-involved, uncomfortably sexual, or ploddingly maudlin.  I can readily and eagerly recommend it to both boys and girls.  Anyone from age 12 and up might enjoy it.  Harland sets out to tell a compelling story and, refreshingly, does not see fit to resort to shock and awe tactics of literary titillation in order to do so.  He succeeds in delivering a strong story with likeable characters and, for me, it came at just the right time.

Review: Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging by Louise Rennison

Georgia Nicolson has a rough life, mate.  She’s put upon by her self-absorbed friends, the thoughtless lads trying to get a piece of her, her dictatorial teachers, her insufferably awkward father, her busy, madcap mother (who may be having an affair with the decorator, Jem), her as-yet-not-housebroken little sister Libby, her half-wild, massive cat Angus, her expanding nose, Mr. and Mrs. Next Door who despise both her and Angus, and her karma, which seems determined to keep her from landing the local “sex god” Robbie as her boyfriend.  Her diary entries lend the reader insight into all the tragedies and triumphs that make up Georgia’s life, never mind that sometimes she write her entries in, apparently, a split second between action-filled scenes.  The inconsistency between actual diary entries and Rennison’s fictional account of the life of one 14-year-old English girl may drive some readers slightly mad, but they are otherwise an often amusing snapshot into the struggle that is adolescence.

Most teenage readers (yes, mostly girls) will appreciate Georgia’s bravery and enthusiasm for delving into the world of dating.  Some may even enjoy her irreverent sense of humor and her wonky priorities (no doubt an intentional move by Rennison to hold a mirror up to the absurdities often espoused by younger generations).  However, some readers may be put off by Georgia’s dramatic homophobia toward lesbians (gay men are not mentioned in this episode), her callous treatment of her family members, her sometimes willful dishonesty, her disrespectful actions toward her teachers, and her single-minded drive to pair-bond with a boy, no matter what the consequences may be.  Her “stalking” of a fellow classmate is also an unpleasant chapter in the book and brings to mind the dire situations that have evolved over the years as a result of such profiling and bullying by teenagers.  At times, I found myself laughing at Georgia’s escapades and turns of phrase (multi-lingual swearing is one of her favorite writing techniques in her diary, it seems).  Mostly, though, I tired swiftly of her self-absorption and shallowness.  She proves herself to be a better person than her id would wish her to be but I am disinclined to continue with the series unless she grows up considerably over the next nine books and develops some depth of character.

Back in the High Plains

Well, I’m back in Montana.  San Francisco was a very unique experience, both professionally and personally.  I learned a great deal about living at a Zen Center and a little about archiving practices.  Mostly, I learned some very practical tips for conducting oneself in a more deliberate way.  Namely:

1. Use both hands!  I cannot stress how vitally important this is in archiving and, I’m increasingly convinced, life in general.  When you start getting stressed and flustered, stop and tell yourself, out loud if necessary, “Use both hands.”  By reminding yourself to handle each situation as it comes, to hold and attend to one thing at a time, you not only calm yourself but you also risk less damage to the work at hand.  In the world of archives, which is full of delicate, unique, and often irreplaceable artifacts, such an approach is much safer.  There is much to be said for the ability to multitask, but at some point you really have to draw the line and allow yourself to focus on what is precisely in front of you instead of the crazy world roiling about your periphery.

2.  Easily half of active archiving is moving boulders.  Okay, not actual boulders.  Although, depending upon the materials within your collection… (check out this rock library in London!)  Truly, though, many archived documents are kept in file folders in boxes that get very heavy.  You end up moving them a lot.  You need some strength, both of body and of heart, to keep constantly moving these boxes.  We often drew comparisons between our box-moving and the practice of moving boulders or creating sand mandalas only to have move or destroy them upon completion of the project.  It will sometimes seem like unnecessary work.  Get over it.  It usually must be done.  In a perfect world the materials would be house in super cool, Ender’s Game style zero-gravity chambers where we could rearrange and preserve them to our heart’s content.  Until humanity conquers long-term space travel and living, we’re stuck with that heartless bitch, Gravity, and her equally heartless cousin, Limited Space.

3.  A long-term plan with carefully laid-out steps of completion, definitive guidelines of practice, and clearly-defined roles for the various participants will go a long way toward mitigating your inevitable frustration at the constant boulder-moving.  We started out somewhat aimlessly in the Zen Center archives, we had 4 different people working on the project, we were hampered by little or no Internet accessibility, and we had no designated space in which to work.  We made it work…it would have worked much more efficiently if we had had all the points I suggest above covered from the beginning.  Be on the same page with your fellow archivists as often as is humanly possible.  A shared real-time spreadsheet (such as a Google doc) can really help with this.  Near the end of our inventory, we spent an inordinate amount of time combining and reformatting our individual inventories.

4.  Don’t librarian the project up.  Yes, I just used my profession as a verb.  We are, by and large, an unquestionably awesome bunch and our zeal to provide access to information is totally laudable and worthy.  If we do our librarian thing in the archives, we will completely disrupt the context of the materials and render more than a few of them meaningless.  Let the context be!  Accept the fact that you cannot control how someone decided to organize this material in the past and simply focus on carefully documenting that organization scheme.  It may not be how YOU would organize the material.  It may not be the best organization scheme for a potential researcher.  You need to let it go!  And, if it really bothers you that much, apply your frustration to your own personal documents and files.  Reorganize your film collection.  Relabel your computer files.  Rearrange your albums on Facebook to make more sense to you.  Paws off the archives!

5.  Don’t lose your sense of wonder.  It’s easy to tire of year after year of line-item budgets.  But the moment you happen upon something that truly captures your interest, you feel like IndianafreakingJones discovering the Lost Ark.  You’ve hacked history!  Primary documents are like a drug that calls you back to the files, the carbon paper, the unreadable, obsolete tech-storage time and time again.  Remind yourself of that when you feel your motivation flagging, when you’re covered in book rot, when you’re caught in a sneezing fit brought on by dust and God only knows what else.

Now that I’m working in the Montana Historical Society Archives, I can confirm that these 5 tips can be applied in more than just the San Francisco Zen Center.  The parallels are very satisfying, to say the least.

Archiving Power!

Zen Center: HOWL if you love City Lights

On Saturday three of us went to City Lights Bookstore.  For those who don’t know, City Lights started off as a publisher and was the original printer of, among other groundbreaking literary wonders, “HOWL” by Allen Ginsburg.  As it happens, the very next day, City Lights celebrated its 60^th birthday.  We decided it would be less stressful if we chose to forego the celebration and just go on Saturday instead.  However, the bookstore was still quite busy.  It is tiny.  By comparison to other bookstores in this world, City Lights is a blip on the radar.  By comparison to the impact on literary and social history of other bookstores in this world, City Lights is a freaking giant!  What a wonderful establishment!  Behind it runs Jack Kerouac Alley with great embossed metal paving stones set in the cobbles with quotes on them by Kerouac, Maya Angelou, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and more.  Across the street from the alley is a huge mural depicting jazz and Beat cultures and the street lights that illuminate that particular intersection are formed into the shape of flying books.

So cool.

I know that the Beat poets were often dismissed and vilified by mainstream culture at the time of their greatest activity and I know that “HOWL” at least was instantly banned for its subversion upon its publication.  The obscenity trial that followed could have shut down free speech in the United States and changed the course of librarianship, among other professions, forever.  I am so thankful, so fervently grateful, every day that I am not charged with enforcing morality but with protecting the right to read anything and everything that exists.  It breaks my heart when book challenges are brought to libraries and school districts.  I understand and fully support the right of any reader to opt not to read anything he or she does not wish to read.  However, denying somebody else the right to read something infringes upon their rights as citizens of this beautiful, if often flawed, nation.

Bearing all these implications in mind, I made a few purchases at City Lights on Saturday: a copy of “HOWL,” a postcard of cadets at the Virginia Military Institute reading “HOWL,” and a bumpersticker that reads “HOWL if you love City Lights.”  I consider that a good day’s work for a free-speech-loving librarian.

Happy Birthday, City Lights!  Thanks for 60 years of awesome!

Zen Center: Intentions

“The best laid schemes of mice and men go often awry”

I wonder if Robert Burns had any notion when he wrote that how very often he would be quoted.  I wonder if he wrote “To a Mouse” with the intention that it would filter into every nook and cranny of the English-speaking world.  I doubt it.  If he did, he had some serious ego issues.

Nevertheless, intention is exactly the subject of this post.  You see, I fully intended to write a post every day I am at Zen Center.  That’s already gone awry.  On Wednesday of the first week, my laptop cord frayed out.  Literally.  I had taken my laptop back to my cubicle/sleeping space and plugged the cord into my power strip.  As I was sitting down on my bed to begin my daily post, I heard this little fzzzzzt.  I thought maybe one of my transfer tickets for the MUNI had fallen out of a pocket and ended up in the rat’s nest of cords underneath my nightstand and the movement of the cords was just causing it to skitter across the floor and make the noise.  Then, as I shifted my laptop from the bed to my lap, I heard it again.  Fzzzzzt!  This time, out of the corner of my eye, there was this tiny flash of white light.  I zeroed in on where the laptop cord meets the adaptor and knew, immediately, that I needed to keep my laptop as still as possible for the short length of time it would take for me to hop on Amazon and order a new cord.  I was about as far as putting in my search term and my computer screen went blank.  I have no battery, you see.  Or rather, I have a battery; it just needs to be replaced.  It holds no charge.

So, my laptop was down for the count for a few days.  Fortunately, I brought my school-issued iPad along this summer and I was able to snag an Internet connection there and order my new cord.  However, I draw the line at typing out whole blog posts (or even emails) on my iPad screen.  I have not developed the knack of doing so with minimal frustration as yet and I had plenty to keep me busy during the interim.

Hence the virtual silence on my part.

My new cord arrived on Friday and I’m back in business!

Intention figures prominently into life at Zen Center.  The Ino, Valerie, told us that if she had to explain Zen Buddhism in a single sentence it would be, “Life is full of suffering and through intentional living we can help to mitigate some portion of that suffering.”  This concept transcends Zen Buddhism, certainly.  I was raised in a staunchly Judeo-Christian tradition and there was the very explicit understanding that you do your utmost not to add to the suffering of the world if at all possible.  However, in my own experience, that was really never explored in greater depth.  At Zen Center, the intention with which we live our lives is broken down into its finest detail.  Some examples of its realization are the entirely vegetarian menu, the effort to use food grown at Zen Center’s sister location Green Gulch Farm, the prevalence of tri-partitioned trash cans everywhere (sections for recycling, compost, and garbage), the outreach programs to feed the ranks of homeless people in the Tenderloin District, and the frequent observation of silence or quiet so as not to disturb others.  Frankly, I’ve found it pretty refreshing.  I like getting to learn a little sign language at every morning work meeting from the Center’s one deaf resident.  I like not having to explain my dietary choices to the ranks of indignant carnivores who assume, erroneously, that my refusal to eat meat is an inherent judgment on their own dietary choices.  I have even grown to like bowing at every turn by way of a greeting or an acknowledgement of gratitude.  It is a simple, and yet immeasurably humble, way of expressing a range of complex emotions.  I thought, before traveling to San Francisco and staying at Zen Center, that I lived a pretty well-intentioned life.  I thought my own self-examination was fairly laudable and I felt no desire to change the way in which I interacted with the world around me.

I have changed my mind.

If you truly look at how you walk upon this Earth, you can find a hundred million ways in which you can live life with intention.  You can choose to look beyond your own prejudices and make a greater effort to accept people for who they are, regardless of how they affect you.  You can decide to treat every object with care, regardless of the value you personally assign to it.  You can commit to trying to relieve some small portion of the suffering in this world simply in how you live your own life.

I knew, prior to even applying for this program, that one of the concepts practiced by Joe Tennis and his UW archiving groups at Zen Center was the idea of “using both hands.”  In applying all our focus to the task in front of us, by focusing our intention on the here and now instead of what has happened or what will happen, we can treat our current work with the intention and care it deserves, and thus more fully fulfill our charge as nascent archivists to maintain the integrity of the materials in our care.  It was one of the aspects of this program that drew me to it, in fact.  What I’m starting to realize is that this concept of using both hands extends far beyond just the physical handling of the materials.  If we’d had our druthers, we, the unknowing students, would have immediately attacked the Zen Center archives and reorganized the materials and then begun a full inventory of everything.  However, we’ve had to stop and consider the damage we could incur on the context of the materials in proceeding so rashly and thus acted with more studied intention.  We have had to trace and retrace our steps in an effort to maintain the integrity of the materials.  Instead of just diving in and making a big metaphorical splash all over everything, we’ve had to tiptoe into the water and try not to make too many ripples in the process and then retreat to the shore again and again and start our entry all over again.  It’s been both frustrating and enlightening.  Certainly it helps me better appreciate and respect the very unique work of archivists, and the incredible importance of what they do.   Additionally, it has encouraged me to approach my work as a librarian with greater intention.  I just have to keep remembering that the world won’t come crashing down if I take a moment to stop and consider my actions and how they will add to or help relieve the suffering around me.  By proceeding in this way, I hope I will be able to improve my professional practice and my personal behavior and how much I improve or damage the world around me.  I believe I will start today by applying sunscreen to myself before we go visit the Asian Art Museum.  You see, I had great intention of applying it yesterday before we went on our Saturday San Francisco Adventure but I carelessly did not take the time to follow through on that intention.  As a result, I added more suffering to the world by burning badly and incurring pain and discomfort upon myself.  Today, I will take the time to realize my intention.

And with that, I leave you with this.  Here is the final stanza of the “After Lecture” chant that we recite at Zen Center.  May you have ease.

Beings are numberless; I vow to save them.

Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.

Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them.

Buddha’s way is unsurpassable; I vow to become it.

Zen Center Day 2: Down and Dirty with Archiving

I have arrived at the San Francisco Zen Center!  Actually, I arrived at about this time yesterday.  I know I promised to try and blog every day, but by the time I had the wi-fi password last night, I was tired, sweaty, and more than just a little bit overwrought with the upheaval of the day.  Also my Internet connection is extremely spotty and temperamental here.  Thus, no blog for Day 1.  Commencing blog post for Day 2!

We are in interim right now at Zen Center, which means no early morning zazen meditation just yet.  We’ll start back up again on Thursday.  Until then, though, we get to sleep in a little.  Breakfast is at 7:15.  As a sidenote, I really have to say that being in an entirely vegetarian establishment is a remarkable relief.  I had no idea how much of a relief it would be but it is very comforting to know that I can eat anything in the kitchen without worrying about jeopardizing my dietary morality.

Moving on!

Without zazen, the main focus today has been on the archives.  Namely, we rolled up our sleeves (metaphorically-speaking—it’s surprisingly chilly in San Fran) and dug into the cloak room which is currently serving as the storage space for the archives.  My understanding is that, ideally, Zen Center wants to return the cloak room to a more general storage facility.  On Thursday of this week, the Bancroft Library at UC-Berkeley is coming to start a discussion with Zen Center (and us) so that we can look into donating a large portion of the materials to their archives.  That will free up a considerable amount of space.  The cloak room is very cramped and dark and there are a lot of boxes of materials!  So, after digging out the boxes this morning, we had an Archives 101 session with our professor, Joe Tennis, this afternoon.  I’m going to reprise what he taught us for two reasons: 1. It’s incredibly engrossing material for anyone who’s interested in archiving and preservation and 2. I need to revisit it myself to help me ingest it all.

The first thing to note is that librarians are NOT archivists.  We like to think that we are.  We very understandably believe that we can do anything we set our minds to.  While this is not inaccurate, librarians are a remarkably capable bunch of folks, we do not necessarily know how to properly go about archiving a set of materials.  In other countries, like Canada, archivists study the procedures, theories, and practices of archiving for fully two years without ever taking a class that remotely deals with what we would recognize as “librarianship.”  Also, in the United States and most other Western countries (and increasingly globally), librarians are focused on access.  We want to provide our patrons, our users with access to information so we are very preoccupied with how we can best provide that access.  Archivists are concerned with authenticity and preservation, not necessarily access.  Essentially, archivists want to preserve the identity and integrity of records.  Librarians are NOT archivists.  We must be aware of the limitations of our own training and we must respect those limitations.  For further reading on archiving, check out the works of Luciana Durante and Geoffrey Yao.

Now that we have that out of the way, let’s delve into archiving in a little more detail.

Archivists deal with records (as opposed to publications, which librarians deal with).  Records are evidence of an act or a fact.  They are not necessarily intentionally published documents.  For example, the personal correspondence of an abbot at Zen Center, while not something that has ever been published, would be considered a record.  Moreover, you do not have to write a record to create a record.  A letter from an abbot is not in and of itself considered a record.  As soon as an organization (like Zen Center or the Bancroft Library) decides to set that letter aside and create an archival description for it, it becomes a record.

Identity, which so concerns archivists, deals with the name of every person who has ever been involved in a record.  This can be anyone who has written the record, the receiver of the record, a person being discussed in the record, the person or people who are writing the record on behalf of someone else, etc.  Identity also concerns the action or matter or the record and the handling responsibilities or offices related to the record.

The second aim of archivists is to preserve the integrity of materials.  This means recording the provenance of a record from creation to archiving.  For example, a letter from an abbot might have originated with that abbot, then been moved from his files to the cloak room storage at City Center, then moved to the Bancroft Library.  Both identity and integrity are of vital importance in archiving because, remember, archiving deals with evidence of an act or a fact.  It is crucial that this evidence be authentic to provide as accurate a picture as possible.  It is the role of the archivist or preserver to authenticate records.  Sometimes, quite often in fact, this involves deciding what is worth archiving and what is not.  However, the archivist’s discretion is not at all cut and dried.  Sometimes, records only derive their meaning from their context and simply plucking those records out of that context can render a record meaningless.  Great care must be taken to maintain original context inasmuch as is possible.

This concept is known as fonds d’archives.  It originated in France in 1841 as a way of organizing archival records contextually instead of by subject, as many libraries and bookstores are organized.  This practice really emphasizes respect for the creator of works.

As a shorthand, fonds d’archives is known as simply fonds.  It refers to the overarching, most general, contextual level of archival materials.  Below that is the sub-fonds level.  Then come, in descending order, the series, folder, and item levels of archival description.  It is rather rare to reach the item level for most records.  However, Joe has told us that we may indeed do so should the Bancroft Library decide to acquire some of the original art contained in the Zen Center archives.

Archival description commences once a record has crossed the threshold of identification for preservation.  In essence, it begins as soon as someone decides to create a record.  This description is the same concept as a bibliographic description for a library record, however it looks very different.   A library record for a published work usually includes title, author, physical description, subject terms, and publishing information.  An archival description provides a creator (who created the record, not who originated the work), an administrative history (what was the hierarchy of the organization at the time of origination), the extent of the records (usually given in cubic feet), and, rarely, a title.

I am trying to train myself out of the practice of referring to archives as “collections.”  A more preferred term is “materials.”  “Collection” carries the implication of scope and curation.  My high school library has a collection.  It has a defined scope and we weed it every year to further focus that scope and to maintain its relevance to our patrons.  Archives are not curated!  They are an organic accretion of material over the course of time.  While the archivist does make initial decisions about what gets saved and what doesn’t, usually once the materials have been archived they are not further weeded unless there are space crises or other extenuating circumstances.

That initial determination by an archivist or preserver usually results in an archival appraisal report.  We’ll get to create one of these for the Bancroft Library!  This report indicates what should be saved and what should be discarded and when.  Many parties, and varied parties, go into making these decisions.  For example, Zen Center’s maintenance of financial records will be determined as much by Zen Center’s administration and its archiving team as by California state guidelines for nonprofit organizations.  For the personal materials of a specific individual, one practice is to wait until 7 years after that individual’s death before releasing those records to an archive.  It varies greatly.

The last thing I want to mention (I know, it’s been a very long post, but I learned a lot today!) is the practice known as “total archives.”  Total archives advocates for the maintenance of absolutely ALL materials from an individual or organization.  One way this has played out is in the modern practice of capturing art studios photographically for archives of artists’ works.  By generating the context of art in photographs, we are able to lend even further meaning to the original intention and efforts behind those works.  Based upon my considerable time spent as an undergraduate studying for my art history minor, I can certainly appreciate the value of this practice.  Seeing Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning at work in their studios allowed for a deeper understanding of their work and process.  It added greatly to my appreciation of their work and its importance in art history.  So while I don’t know that I’m a die-hard supporter of total archives, I can definitely see their benefits!

 

More tomorrow!

Summer Daze

So, this morning I had an interview at 8 a.m. for a full-time position at one of my high schools.  One of our full-time librarians retired this spring and I was encouraged to apply for the job.  I walked away from the interview feeling like I had given it my best effort and I was secure in the knowledge that even if I didn’t get offered the full-time position, I would still have a truly wonderful job going between the two high schools full-time.

At about 1 p.m. this afternoon I got a job offer and I took it.

This phone call came just as I was arriving to have cupcakes with a fellow-librarian and grad school classmate and just after I had left my mother’s office where she was helping me sort out the equivalencies between my grad school quarter credits from the University of Washington and the semester credit requirements attached to the University of Montana-Western Library K-12 Minor program, from whom I am taking a few classes and garnering institutional sponsorship for my OPI Library Endorsement while I finish the endorsement.  Yeeeesh!

This means that my own work situation will be radically altered when school starts up again in the fall but so too will be the position I am vacating.  Add to this the fact that the library is undergoing major renovations this summer (all the floor-to-ceiling windows that run the length of the library are being replaced–it’s not a small job) and we will have to put everything back together in the fall as swiftly as we can in order to start delivering Freshman orientations and we have ourselves quite a busy road ahead.  Frankly, I feel like I’m caught in a whirlwind!

I’m more than a little nervous about this change in position and all that it entails, especially since, starting on Monday, I won’t be back in town until 2 days before I have to report for the start of the school year.  I wouldn’t be able to get in the building until then anyway, so I’m not so bent out of shape about that aspect of the situation.  More to the point, I plan on needing and utilizing the kind support offered by my fellow librarians in the district and in my library to cope with this change and I won’t be able to interface with them in person until then, at which point we’ll all be crazy busy getting ready for the start of the year!  I plan to try and Skype with them a few times at least this summer while I’m off in Internship Land, and thank heaven for cell phones and email, but still!

I’m honored to be selected for this position.  Please don’t mistake my bewilderment and dismayed ramblings for anything other than the natural anxiety of a perfectionist being faced with an unforeseen series of challenges.  Still, I have to wonder, does anyone remember when summers used to be about relaxation and, dare I say it, even boredom?