You didn't make my day, did you???

Gosh, don't mess with the grumpy old guy in the corner.

Well, I should look like this, went to work and found no supervisor, no computer internet access, no outgoing telephone service - so I was back in the days of card catalog, typewriter and stubby pencils. Amazing how bound to technology I am, sigh, all because (RUMOR ALERT!) because an inmate hacker got on a computer that his supervisor wasn't watching closely enough. He is now in the Hole and if I knew his name he would never get anymore library support, but I won't ask his name - just send him all the oldest programming books I can find.... not really, his being a dangerous fool is too close to my own affliction - we could be cousins, but I don't play with computers.

My personal problems are growing but my praying is getting louder and more often so I think it will work.

Honey do, and of course I will... to the best of my...

One of my workers asked if I had a honey-do list waiting for me this weekend, and I never do - I build my own procrastination pile and play around it avoiding my duties - or so I will say so. Today was different, there is the installation of the bright beautiful vertical blinds. The crew will call around eight am and tell us what time they should arrive. Yes, I am old and hired experts to install the blinds, and we were told that for eighty dollars they would take down the old sets and take them away. I even went to the ATM to get a hundred to cover it and then looked at the job.

First I have to move the furniture from around the windows in six rooms - I can do that, and did. Then I looked at taking down the curtains where they were hung, and did that and put them into the laundry basket for washing. All that is left is taking down the old horizontal blinds and I start doing that. Now, there is likely an easy disconnect system that has been holding the blinds up for the last thirteen years, but I am better at destroying things than creating them - I am excellent at killing people in bunches and breaking stuff - they paid me well for that for years. Anyway, short story I have all the blinds down and before the last one dropped to the floor overcome by my efforts and gravity I think I figured out the quick disconnect. But I don't have anymore to practice on to prove it.

My mother called and gave me a welcome break, she wanted to talk about some man that yelled at her and made her feel terrible. I asked if she wanted me to beat him up or take him out - but she is much too good a Christian Lady for her to think that was a good idea. My theory about men that abuse women is that they are cowards, that is why they bully and beat on women - because they know they are afraid and want to be strong and tough - they do need to get a new point of view - as they eat dirt after a real man tries to whip them into shape (jellyfish-like works for me). I don't think my beating them up will change them, just confirm in their mind they need to hide their abuse better or they will get beaten again. Anyway after we discussed all the better stuff about her life and mine and caught up on everyone around us and whatzup (no, we didn't talk politics - we have real lives) I promised pictures of the new improved home in the mail - I have the before pictures already, love digital cameras with lots of memory. Gave her my love and took hers for me and my wife, who is out doing church stuff - where is she going to find community service time? Some days I hardly see her.

Once, long ago and far away in Oklahoma, my commander asked how my wife was, and I had to tell him I didn't know. There is a lump in the bed when I wake up to get to work, and when I come home at night there is a meal waiting for me and the clothes have been washed, but I don't dare waste any sleep time checking to see what is under that lump in my bed, but the next time I get a day off from being a Drill Sergeant I will check and find out if she is still speaking to me.

I did love being in the Army and Airborne and importantly useful in trying situations, but I love my wife and my ability to slowly work through the short remainder of my existence on Earth much more. Smooth Jazz is playing loudly and it is time for lunch and to check my mail.

It seems to be Summer...

Blue sky with puffy white clouds ringing Mount Rainier, the work week is over and I ride my Triumph over the bridge crossing I-5 and look at the slowly moving herd moving back to the barn or the Summer pastures. Too many, too crowded, too slow and for them, too bad. I twist my throttle and lift the front forks and smile. I am going home and feel fine, instant response from my bike and power enough to feel young in heart, again... or always.

As I come up the street to the house I see my departing wife, who rolls down her window and tells me she is leaving for Home (someone else's) Bible Study and I will have to make my own supper, I tell her she doesn't love me anymore (singing it and embarrassing her in front of the other women) I will pay for that later, and I laugh and tell her to have a good time. I microwave food, change boots and drop the tie and the keys and stuff from work. I am going to ride off into the sunset, well, as close as a non-cowboy is going to get on his trusty Triumph.

I know I am going to ride the backroads, between forty to fifty miles per hour - the roads are all thirty-five but that must be for someone that can't lean as deep as I can (foolish thought, and lean deeper and roll on that throttle!). If I need more I can go deeper, but I won't. I think about how tentative I was last year on these same roads on the same corners, when I was finding my level of comfort, I haven't dropped the motorcycle much since, but that first year was full of Gravity. Now I believe I should have spent more time with gyroscopic toys longer. The ride always brings a smile to my lips. I do spend a lot of time looking at blonds driving Vets with the tops down, saw five in two hours, it is the last of Summer. Everyone wants to come out to play, Friday evening and the weekend is for partying (or so I have been told).

I can see the new riders, or the ones that think they must be careful because the machines can cost a lot of money and look at the shine on that chrome, listen to the rumble of the pipes. My motorcycle doesn't rumble, it purrs and stirs and I fly by... There are some one per centers, loud bikes, loud pipes and bad attitude - but they do lean deep as they roar ripping by you like you are sitting with your mouth hanging open - or so they think, but they are wrong. They have to prove themselves every day, and fight to be taken seriously; real riders just ride with little to prove, just more miles done safely with a touch of insanity, a little risk anyone? Want to race? how long does it take to get to Yellowstone? If you spend some time in the hospital or with a broken bike waiting parts, you could be the slowest racer out there...

But look at the water gleaming, and the full green of the grass and the trees swaying with the breeze. Lean away from the Sun blinding as you ride into it's glare, do you see the road? No, and nothing that is on it will be seen until you get into shadow, slow down and look at the road... where are those sunglasses when you need them, you remember where you left them. In a car you pack all the extras, on the bike you ride with the minimum, lighter and faster. Why do you weigh yourself down with extras for what-if? Because you are old and wise, or afraid of failure and alone? I make the the turn around noticing the strange car and open door - it isn't for me so I don't stop, I am planning a different return route to race at highway speeds.

On to the access ramp to I-5, and the dribbles of commuters coming late from Seattle, I find only one small Japanese car doing sixty, everyone else can't read the signs and are moving at seventy or a little better. I merge and lean and merge and lean and am in the outside lanes and climbing the hill into the Sun again- the road disappears and so do those cars going seventy - oops, they are only going sixty now - red brake lights ahead. How fast can I down shift, brake, release and roll back on the throttle? I make it neatly, but spooked and glad the turn is ahead and away from the Sun, passed by some young fools on crotch rockets - lovely fearless fools, go get them young hormones on track and at speed... but remember Darwin's Rules - only survivors reproduce and that is most of the point of life... just saying.

Nothing like being alive, on a fine motorcycle and enjoying the end of Summer. Not too many riders flashing the secret V sign, too many other bikes and they don't seem to want to bother... but I like to think I am grinning like a fool when I flash the sign - that grin they can't see behind my face shield and in my head and warming my heart.

What do they read? isn't the important question...

When I give briefings to visitors to the library I am often asked 'what do they read?' and the cheap throw away answer is 'True Crime, of course'. The truth is that 'they' (the inmates) read everything that you do, except they can't go online and the Department of Corrections has a list of books and types of information that would be bad to have them read while in prison, mostly about security issues. I think the more important question is 'what do they steal from the library?'.

I mostly think that only stupid people steal from a free library inside a prison fence where they can never get it outside. But then the intelligence of some patrons is questioned in every library I have ever worked at, in response to their questioning mine or my co-workers', certainly. But back to what they steal, they start with stealing the sports section of the newspapers, for betting on fantasy football or other real events. They steal the colored pictures of beautiful models digitally enhanced, if not also under a plastic surgeon's care. Those things are easy to hide and pull out when one has forgotten what their sexual desires are focused on, needing refeshed. Some of the fancies are a bit stranger but I have purposely missed mentioning those.

The theft that is costly is of books, 'the self-weeding collection' as we in the prison libraries understand it, and the most popular ones are the ones that give them POWER. Robert Greene puts together a book, titled "The 48 Laws of Power" and it is immediately stolen. Yes, we do have a 3M security system and all the books are sensitized and how long do you think it takes them to figure it out? However it happens, the book is now gone, and we buy a replacement. Robert Greene comes out with another title "The Art of Seduction", and it is immediately stolen and I buy a replacement. Do you see the pattern here? He has a third book "33 Stategies of War" and we haven't seen it since the second circulation. I am buying all three in paperback and will read them and then donate them to the library, for they do have some excellent information that I have gleaned from a life time of reading, and Robert Greene found the same and put it together nicely. I expect they will also be stolen, for the inmates that steal from our libraries inside of prison have lost everything, feel no control of their lives and are afraid of most people and things around them. So they steal what they hope will make them stonger, and then don't read it, just hide it and hug it for warmth and feel it makes them a player again.

Kind of like those self improvement books, how to build one's abs - you can buy five or six of them - but until you start curling your body and flexing the core and working tirelessly in motion the abs don't change - not from hugging those books or putting them on the shelves, they must be read, practiced and re-read and understood. But then I did mention what kind of an inmate steals books, didn't I? Luckily most inmates just check the books out and return them very late, overdues abound, for inmates have a personal time that doesn't match the date due stamp - not very fair, most books come in on time or are re-newed, circulation is about seven thousand items per month, and I only have to replace the stuff that wears out or is lost. I only have about twenty books 'missing' in action a month. Write another one, Robert Greene.