I Get So Disappointed...Totally Work Related Blahg

Life in the public sector has it's rewards, don't get me wrong. There are things about working with the public that I absolutely LOVE. For instance, in my job, you never know what will happen next. I happen to think that this is pretty cool. As in, okay: what have you got for me? Granted, some of the time, I'm sitting on my butt reading a book, or reviews, or I'm organizing a book collection so that someone can actually find something, but then there are the occasions when someone will come in looking for something like different - say, books on pre-Socratic philosophers for children. And I have to stop and think: Philosophers before Socrates??? For kids? Hmmm... and then - wham! I get it!, Aliki wrote a book on Diogenes, would that qualify? Who are some others? And I'm off on this random tangent that keeps me busy for another 10-15 minutes. In this way, my job is pretty cool. I mean, I wonder about the teacher, what their expectations were of the material and of the kids; I wonder if the kids will get it and if they'll care - will it resonate? Or is their teacher whack? I figure that the library's raison d'etre is to put the books out there. Hope someone wants them and knows how to purpose them, but - hey - philosophy for 7-8 year olds is tricky.

Turns out, so is managing a box of crayons. My library has been undergoing a MAJOR, multi million dollar renovation. This process took YEARS of planning and, once the money was (apparently) in place, costs had risen so much that they had to scale back the original plans and downsize. I have no idea what the original concept would have looked like, but what we've gotten is pretty nice: totally new layout with expanded and upgraded spaces, new everything: carpet, bookstacks, computer monitors and study carols to provide privacy and the furniture!! Oh, we have microfiber couches for the families to sit on and read together and they are the most gorgeous colors! But not pretty enough for everyone, apparently, because when I was picking up the books that had been abandoned on the floor and left on tables, I discovered that someone-or several someones- had decided to color our brand new furniture with crayons!
Huh.
Now, the library was quite busy tonight - every time I looked around the seating and play area was fairly well occupied by children and parents alike. Not every seat was taken, but it was indeed quite crowded. My question is: how did this happen? In a crowded room filled with adults and children, how did so much furniture get defaced? And not for anything, but NOBODY MENTIONED IT TO THE LIBRARIAN ON DUTY - that would have been me. Even if they hadn't seen it happen, if they had come afterwards, but seen the damage, you think that SOMEONE would have at least mentioned it?! I mean, there is CRAYON ALL OVER THE FLIPPING SOFA!!! AND CHAIR! THEY ARE UPHOLSTERED! What is wrong with people? Do they let their kids destroy everything in their homes? or is it just destroying other people's stuff they have no issue with? I have a news flash for them: This is THEIR library. This renovation was a long time coming and they probably wont see anything new for another 30 years. I've never seen this level of disregard before. It's sad, really.

This is the Part Where They Dress You Up and Put You on a Horse....

Although my sojourn to the W. Bank was last week, the experience lingers in my mind and I just feel the need to get it down on paper - er... blog space. I don't have much of a sense about how much people travel - I've travelled internationally a bit, but not nearly as much as many people I know, like say, for example, my spouse. This isn't my first time visiting Jordan, and so I was pretty much ready for the experience of not understanding most of what's going on. For those of you who haven't had this experience, it's interesting. Imagine sitting in a room full of people, ALL of whom speak another language, and only one of whom can understand you.15 minutes of conversation will go by and when I inquire about what they're saying, my husband says," Oh, they just said they missed me". Imagine all of them talking to each other.On and on, blah, blah, blah, for days. And you have no real idea of what's going on, what they're talking about, yelling about, laughing about. Now, see, for me, this creates a bit of an issue because I like to talk. A LOT. But here I listen. A LOT. But I don't understand the words that are coming out of their mouths. Let me tell you, the mind begins to wander. So anyway, the people are really nice and my spouse has not been back to the W. Bank since he was, like, 15 years old, and he moved to the states when he was 17, so in my mind, he's like, totally Americanized. Let me just say it doesn't take long for the conversion to take place. As soon as we arrived, we began the marathon of visiting 5 (count 'em, 5) relatives homes - these are people my husband hasn't seen in 33 years, and many of whome he's never met. This doesn't matter in the slightest. He's the prodigal son, so to speak, and in keeping with the local custom, each visit lasts about 30-45 minutes and each of them offers you tea, arabic coffee, juice and a cookie or date, or something sweet. Five homes. FIVE cups of tea, five arabic coffee's, five cookies or some such thing. It's a lovely, if just a tad over-invigorating, experience. Not much has changed in this part of the world, though, especially not the hospitality, and when we return back to the Uncle's house after the visits, dinner is waiting.

It's 10:30 at night, so that means it's time for fried chicken, falafel, hummus, pitas, chopped salads, pickled peppers, (Peter didn't pick em, it was Nejla) spicy pickles, eggplant, olives, tomatoes, cucumbers and Fanta Orange soda. (???) They send us off to bed with a entire box of (and I'm not kidding here) moonpies. Just in case we needed a snack.

The next morning we awake to bright, sunny skies and a day chock full of visiting more family members, all of whom have lined up to prepare lunch (which is the big meal of the day) or perhaps dinner. We had only planned on staying for three days, but had to extend it due to scheduling problems. Actual fights broke out over who got lunch and who had to settle for having us over for dinner. The pecking order was firmly adhered to. Some people were not happy, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Before any of this, at breakfast on the very first morning, my husband's family proposed an idea: How would we like to dress up and sit on a horse? Dress up like what?, you may well ask. And you'd be right to. Dress up like a villager, is the answer. "A villager?", I say after I had the preceding conversation with my husband. "Yeah, they've got the clothes. My grandfather's and my Aunt's, I think" he said. Well, with an invitation like that, how could I refuse?? My husband was all,"Well, I'm not sure... um, can't we just go drink coffee and tea?", and I was all,"NO! We have to DRESS UP LIKE VILLAGERS and get on a HORSE!!" So they brought the clothes and the horse and you can see for yourself how well it worked out. The umbrella was a frilly, shiny, bedazzled bonus.

Thing One and Thing Two....

What fun and yippee! I must say that I really, really enjoyed this whole experience. I know that I will absolutely use many of the things I discovered in these exersizes, most notably many of the Google applications (I LOVE my gmail account and all of the bells and whistles that go with it.I am sure that if I hadn't signed up for a bloglines account I never would have gotten another email address) I have used del.icio.us a few times and hope that when push comes to shove, I'll remember to use it with patrons as I move forward. I haven't gone back to Second Lie, largely because I see it as a great time suck - a lot of fun, no doubt, but I don't have time to play with my Wii, heck, I hardly have time to play with my DOG, so that'll have to wait for a long convalescence or unemployment. YouTube consistently gets used, and I ended up setting up accounts and saving videos for my husbands nieces and nephews in Jordan. Some things require no translation.
I suppose that part of the point of this whole exersize was not just in exposing us to all of the new(er) options in information gathering, but to help us become more familiar/comfortable with the entire 2.0 mentality, and to that end, and for me, these 23 things were invaluable. Would I do it again with 23 different "Things" ? Absolutely. Wind me up and watch me go. I'm thankful to have the opportunity to stay in the loop as it were...
It's funny, I was at several holiday parties before leaving on vacation, and whenever the topic of discussion moved to libraries people remarked how much the face of libraries has changed to incorporate the new technologies. It's nice to know that people notice things like downloadable audiobooks and playaways, and are interested in using them.
I'd like to thank Maura and Rebecca for their help and encouragement, and the administration and the Friends for their support.

It's not 5th Avenue, but it'll do...

Everybody knows that the post holiday sales are mayhem, but if you like a bargain, and don't mind the door buster, 5 am opening crowds, there may be no better time to buy. Here in the middle east, however, this concept has not quite taken hold. No matter, I shopped anyway, and of course, here, bartering is de rigeur. My husband has a great time doing this, and since the language barrier causes a bit of an issue for me, he plays this game alone. Usually, it goes something like this: I spy something I'm interested in, but since nothing here is marked with a price, an inquiry must be made. I can either gesture with my eyes, elbow or with a quick raise of the chin, then wander away. My better half then takes over in due time with his best approximation of the local accent as not to be ripped off completely due to our Americki status. It's better still when one of my sisters-in-law come with us, as they know the price of everything - right down to q-tips. Did you know that gold hit a twenty year high yesterday?? I did. It's small, and, it's an investment, really. It's currency that you wear. So much shinier than stocks. And socks.

Silent Night....

It's been quite a week and for those of you who have missed me, rest assurred that all is well. I've just come back from a week away. It's funny to say that, sounds like I've gone and taken a vacation from my vacation. I've just returned from almost a week in the Holy Land. I'd heard that getting there was half the fun. First,you need to take a cab from Jordan to the border. Once there, you have to purchase a bus ticket to take you across the border.(This is a 6 minute ride that you wait an hour for.) Once across the border, you have to get through Israeli security.(This can be the tricky part, and requires patience. Like watching grass grow, answering rounds of seemingly pointless questions about your personal life, then returning to watching the grass? This is for you.) Then, you take a cab to your destination. Ours was Jerusalem. From our crossing point, the drive was a little over an hour, but it was Christmas Eve and Jerusalem was in high spirits. We had booked a hotel not far from the Old City and we hit the souks right away. Later that evening, I heard that the crowds in Bethlehem were soaring towards 70,000. That just wasn't my idea of Silent Night, Holy Night, so, after dinner, we headed back to the Old City to see if there was anything going on. The only church open was the Lutheran church, holding service in German for, appropriately enough, hundreds of German pilgrims. This church is, we discovered, just down the alley from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Finding this site at night, when the city was deserted, was really really helpful, because although it was closed, we knew we'd be returning the next day, and during the day, the passageways of the souk are difficult to maneuver, especially if you're not sure where you're going.

At any rate, Old Jerusalem is indeed a city of contrasts, with it's crazy busy markets selling everything from cell phones to spices, and while you're shopping you're heart out, wham! there's another holy site, for one of the worlds' monotheistic religions. It's been this way for 1300 years, so if it ain't broke...

Getting a Second Life In the Third World

It's not really the third world, not even close. But it's a little odd booting up the computer to access a virtual world from a house that doesn't have central heat. And the water gets delivered to your tank once a week. If you run out - well, the water guys will be back on Tuesday.
So I logged on, created a not so creative name for myself and materialized, fully clothed, thank God for small mercies, at the welcome center. Where I promtly rushed ahead to see everything I could and then tried to fly off the island. Five minutes later, I flew back, having skipped over the important stuff. First things first : I found the LIBRARY FIRST! cha ching for me! ( Oh, on a related side bar, I went to the souk yesterday and found about 23 childrens books for our children's foreign language (ARABIC) collection. AND they are published by none other than Scholastic, go figure. So close, yet so far to come. I considered writing the ISBNs down and simply ordering them from B&T when I got back, but when we inquired about the price, they quoted a little over a dinar for each. That's about a buck and a half, people. Huh. I wondered, if briefly, exactly what truck they fell off of.
Back to Second Life: I've gone through the tutorials, and may, in fact play more and more with this thing when I'm no longer on vacation, but I can definately see the allure.When I was downloading the shareware/software, one of the banners on the site mentioned that more than 1.25 million US dollars had been spent in the previous 24 hrs. That's commerce. Turns out, one of my sisters' -in-law (the very one whose computer now hold my Second Life) has passed her exam for her Doctorate in Economics, and she's looking for a topic for her paper. I threw Second Life out as a possibility. Given the opportunities virtually, and the opportunities here (really) it might not make for a bad study. In the frist 30 minutes of my virtual resurrection I've made one friend. I've changed my hair. I've got the figure of my dreams. All things considered, there are times when I might actually prefer my Second Life. Less mess, and no one has my phone number. However, I've only just scraped the surface, so....we'll see. So for me, for the meantime.... it's back to my vacation. I'm off to bask in the glow of my husband's family's love and cheer, and to warm myself by the propane heater. Cheers!

Putting the Face on Facebook

I know that teens are and have been obsessed with myspace for years, and I think that part of (the roots of) the allure can be found in our country's overwhelming obsession with image and appearance, combined with camera's in cell phones. This is the first generatiion that has been able to take a photo and upload it almost instantly to their myspace page, and so, as soon as school is out, they flock to their computers to see the latest in their ongoing life as photojournalist/subject of photojournalism. They are all media starlets in their own way. I started a myspace page a few years ago, but it has remained largely inactive. I have been slightly more succesful with keeping upwith facebook. I started a page a few months ago, and it's harder to keep up with that I thought it would be...I just don't have the time. But I do it. I checked in today, from my remote location in the Middle East,but had a hard time opening my page. That's okay. That didn't disturb me as much as the angst that went along with choosing my photo. Which face to put on my facebook page? Difficult indeed, for I am usually the one behind the camera, not in front. AND I'mnot really from the generation that is comfortable with the outstretched arm, self portrait style of photography that is so popular. Well...things change. So, after two or three months with a page, I got myself a photo. It's not sexy, or provocative in a cutting edge, artsy sort of way. More of a mugshot, really. Which is closer to what my original "facebook" picture was twenty years ago when Iwent off to school in PA.

For those of you keeping tabs on this... it's cold here. I can see my breath. Inside. But the family is wonderful, gracious and loving, and we are both having a wonderful time. The food just keeps coming, and there are two more children than when I was here last. I still don't understand anything (with the exception of good morning, good night, how are you and may God bless you. ) I smile a lot. And nod. The crisis of the bumped flight got interesting at the airport when we were checking in. Though we were officially bumped, the guy that checked us in put us on that evenings' flight -which was leaving at 9pm. Though they had originally told us 11pm. The time at check in was 8:20. Still had security to get through. My poor husband was as nervous as a kitten. All I could do was make sure that the bags got on the plane. That way, they couldn't leave without us without removing our bags. Long story short, we made it and we're here. Guess what - I've gotta go - it's time to eat. Again. I wish you all a wonderful holiday weekend. May you all enjoy your family's and holiday as much as I'm enjoying mine. Cheers!