Electronic Death ...

Playing computer games makes me happy that electronic death is reversible, going back to where one saved it, or just starting over since the pattern wouldn't change with a new character. Building Civilizations and throwing Nukes would never bother a real gamer - there weren't any real people in those cities. Kind of like watching an actor in "High Noon" get killed, he would come back to die again in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" and many times between the two. Yeah, electronic death is so unreal there isn't a tear shed for the departed Master Elfen Ranger/Monk/Thief from some fairy forest- fifteen games later you don't even remember his name.

I mentioned several blogs back about the death of honey bees, and that my unscientific mind linked their going with the arrival of cell phones and GPS satellites. I now add the HDTV signals that will consume the band lengths with even better deluxe time wasters. I really think the pounding of the digital signals wasn't as harmonious as the analog radio waves were, kind of like listening to the BASS on the little lowered Honda Civic beside you at the stop light - if it never changes someone is going to die from road rage. I am probably wrong but want to blame something I recognize for the disorientation of the honey bees.

I recognize the disorientation because I want to accomplish certain things every day, and instead my good intentions suffer an electronic death. I turn on the computer, turn on the television and get lost in blogs, emails, infomercials or breaking news, weather and traffic reports. I guess I am fortunate that I don't like telephone conversations and refuse to live linked to a cell phone. When I jog I think, I don't drown my mind and body out while listening to music - maybe language instruction and drills would be worthy, but I jog with my thoughts of long legged red heads or some adventure never lived, aliens never met and millions never needed. But really, the computer and television when turned on suck all my discipline away like alcohol does to that first layer of the brain - control. I can listen to music and function, but for some reason I cannot watch without giving myself up to interacting with the medium presented. Time slides right along and I have lost a little bit more of my life.

Nice thing about the blogs and emails, they will be waiting when I have the right time and I have accomplished my goals for the day. So allow me to apologize, sign off this blog and now, and go get my motorcycle ride in for all the best reasons. To live one must disconnect from the electronic digital noise turning my brain and life into mush. Outside, there is weather to experience, people to meet and greet, go ye forth!

Stepping into the Time Machine...

Closed the library on Friday, packed one suitcase for two and departed the Great Northwest. Left the suitcase in Chicago when we changed planes and our best laid plans. The library will be opened one day while I am gone - which means I am not important, or the library isn't or that four days of closure are just more punishment for the guilty. Could be that it has no meaning and no one will notice my shift into the future.

We are visiting my mother for her birthday, she was eighty on the 12th of February, born in a hospital in Uruguay in 1928 and living now in an upscale retirement home in almost Dixie. We find ourselves moving slower, speaking clearer and completely or else repeating ourselves to be understood. My slight limp from the motorcycle mishap has nothing on the number of Scooters, wheel chairs and fourteen types of walkers and canes. I find myself greeting everyone, saying hello with a smile and looking into everyone's eyes. I notice those that are doing things for other people seem the healthiest, happiest and most mobile, a secrect of success?

My sister shows up and hugs my wife and greets me and I immediately tell her to slow down, there isn't anything here to hurry over - she has just stepped out of her hamster wheel in her cage - she needs to adjust (slowly) to our future. We get her coffee and help her wrap a gift and talk (still too fast but we can keep up)about family elsewhere and what is going on and what is important. We don't mention politics nor celebrities.

A former sister-in-law joins us and we attack the set up of the area for the party/reception (elders have a very different party idea - no beer keg in sight). I do the thug work, five women and I just take orders and lift and tote. For fun I get to blow up the baloons, red and pink. Nice set up, nice cake and and most of the local world came to say hello, I get told I look like my father by all that knew him from his time in their world. My mother is having a wonderful time saying thankyous and explaining the pictures from the albums and years ago and far away. I have noted many pictures that I had never seen - some with a much younger fellow I could have been, except never that cute.

Party over, mother sleeping in her throne, we clean up and check the weather, sister decides she can safely return to the hamster wheel in her cage. Wish her well and a safe voyage - back to the place they depend on her for W-2s and payroll, and heartfelt hugs and good advice about home and life. She is speeding up as she turns to go... no time for my hug, but she and I aren't ever that far apart; we both wear LL Bean slip ons, and laugh immediately at the same funny, my sister.

I have a couple of more days for scouting the territory of the ancient, aged, aging, and just older than dirt. We met a ninety-nine year old at the party - she was a wonder. But knowing math the way I do, the women out numbered the men six or seven to one in that age group, I might not make that twenty year trip; I do ride a motorcycle and love to look leeringly at lovely looking ladies (not really, I just wanted to play with L's). I will continue to tell my wife she will miss me when I am gone, and I will continue to jog gently (85% of MHR) when I get back to "my" normal life pace and the walking race into the Prison from the ferry. Work harder work faster... but that is the subject of another post on another day.

Time is moving, and I am dragged along...

I don't want to wake up, waking up I don't want to get out of bed but the alarm calls my attention. It is gray, wet and windy outside and darkness hasn't been broken for days, Hibernation calls, go back to bed, except I can't, my wife's alarm goes off and she is up, I really don't want to go to work. But I have to, I am the Library Keeper, the man with the keys to open up a world beyond the prison, I will go. The inmates bet on really bad weather days about who will show up, I have been there -- always, for snow doesn't phase me, 6.7 earthquakes only make me laugh (although, they turned me around at the gate), anyway, the inmates believe I will be there until I win the Lotto (and they know those odds, too.) At work all the busy stuff and I continue to weed the collection, did you know my Spanish readers check out their Mathematics books more than anything else except business books? Surprised me, but I have been working on increasing the Spanish collection's circulation - I am not buying more American novels intranslation, they don't circulate. I want more paperback books, cheaper to purchase and don't take up as much space on the shelves, but the publishers like hardcovers first and paperback the following year. I find some information and email the other lonely outposts of information and sanity in the other institutions (corrections and mental health) we are all busy closing up the last year in reports and statistics and starting the new one right... or close to that. Back home I find it tax time and download forms and find statements and empty spots to fill in, I could be that slug and go off and sleep, but the day wears on and Responsibility is dragging me, onward ever onward. Should I do something special this year (YES!) when (NOW!) and then I get dragged by Responsibility away from that fine foolishness... the little world of McNeil Island Library and its patrons has my attention, demands better and is never ending in its grip on my reality. How does one get out of this place, I do want a day off.

Work Alone in a Prison? What kind of fool am I?

I mentioned wanting to look into other employment since I feel alone at work, but then I am a loner so what am I looking for? I did take a test for a job in one Public Library and was called to schedule an interview session with another Public Library System, so I am working at seeing what is out there, but my wife reminded me of what my problem was with the Public Library before, aside from the part-time positions I was working (evenings and weekends, of course). Seems that I had forgotten how bored I was there - you know the times that there isn't a patron in sight, all the work seems done but you dasn't get caught doing nothing by the management - ah, the times when you can only think and check books for status, or start shelf reading. Boring, after all - the excitement is inside the books, on the tapes and cassettes and as staff on tax payer money I only get to use the materials on my time at home. So I went for the full time employment in a prison library and boring it never has been.

http://wastatelib.wordpress.com/ That link is the Washington State Library blog, directly from the State Library building in Tumwater, Washington, and it is boring. I actually worked there in Collections and Media sharing (ILL) once and nice enough people but in the end it was boring, too much time to do so little. When the chance came to return to a prison library I jumped on it and have been very well employed ever since. http://www.secstate.wa.gov/office/employment.aspx is the WSL employment link and you could paste it and visit and look at the offerings, they just don't describe the eight hour days and the mad rush of impatient patrons, all certain the universe revolves around them and only them first... and always. That might scare most gentle library types away...

I expect that if you haven't worked inside a prison that you think there are too many terrible people around and it is dangerous, and that might be almost true. But I have about seven years in prison libraries and only one half-hearted fight the entire time I have been working, the real fights are held elsewhere so they can't be interrupted by staff and the Emergency Response Team (Goon squad to the inmates). The more dangerous problem is staff being influenced to break the rules for an inmate - name the rule and they will try to get a staff member to break it, there are almost as many illegal activities inside a prison as outside. When they put tobacco off limits inside the facility the inmates say it just changed the price of the tobacco - since a heavy smoker still smells like stale smoke, I would have to agree that someone is still smoking.


Still like the world outside the fence, most prisoners (inmates, felons and violators) inside the fence are going about behaving well and getting along. They do demand that staff obey the rules and regulations (although they are sure they are okay to break the ones they need to) and there is a long list of customs and polite manners that other inmates know and dare not break without paying the penalty for crossing the line. Everyone makes choices and stands on what they have chosen to do. I watch, work and talk about this and other things with the questioning patrons and penalized, every work day. One never needs count the minutes and the hours for the days fly full.