Daily Thoughts 4/30/2009

Elisabeth Maria Anna Jerichau-Baumann, 1855 (right: Jacob Grimm; left: Wilhelm Grimm)

Daily Thoughts 4/30/2009

Today was another intensely busy day. The new slat walls were put up yesterday. We shifted over most of the new books to the new display area. It looks a lot better than the old place where we kept the new books.

I also worked on a few other minor projects; putting together a list of graphic novels for a bookmark, filing some looseleafs, arranging for a program, and attending a meeting. I had a chance to read the latest Publishers Weekly, but not much else.

I read some more of Good to Great on the train. The message is fairly clear; choose great people before you plan anything, be humble, face your problems, and focus on discipline.

City, Pond, Water

Cities are imagined

like pools of water

around a quiet spring

They grow rapidly

along the river edge

spreading like new grass

Skyscrapers are weeds

blotting the horizon

rising in the sun

Houses are mushrooms

clumped close together

around paved street roots.

Cities grow organically

to fill empty spaces

consuming the wild world

Thoughts For Today, Ancestral Dreams

A Photograph of H.G. Wells, it makes me want to grow a handlebar mustache.

Thoughts For Today

I went back through my telephone list of contacts for the disadvantaged. I went to each website and looked for a summary paragraph of what each agency did. I added this to the contact list. Then I added a few more contacts which I found on their websites which I had missed. One of my colleagues is writing a telephone script for contacting the agencies, something flexible enough that it won't sound rote. This is more about getting across the same message than selling something.

There has been a follow up to the New York Times article on street lit or urban fiction in libraries on library journal. This article from Library Journal recommends a few urban fiction books.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6602977.html?nid=4683&rid=#reg_visitor_id_2&source=link

I spent some more time ordering books on construction this morning; carpentry, masonry, energy efficiency, roofing, carpentry, and similar materials. I am getting a bit tired of ordering right now. The new Nolo Law catalog came in with some recently published titles.

I have been feeling a bit disjointed today. Not at the top of my form. I am not fond of working on weekends. But, then life is like this sometimes.

On another thought, I have been finding the blog of Blogging Poet quite entertaining. He seems to resonate well with my view of the world. I really can't quite explain it. I like to pretend that I have limited poetic insight. I find it odd that someone would make the avowed claim of being a poet. More than anything, I find his writing to be quite funny at times.
http://bloggingpoet.squarespace.com/bloggingpoetcom/

I tried to read Hot, Flat, and Crowded Why We Need A Green Revolution And How It Can Renew America by Thomas L. Friedman. I simply could not read it. The book is written in a conversational style much like Jim Lehrer's news hour or Charlie Rose. It turns my stomach. The style feels like I am watching PBS and being fed ideas by television. The author constantly quotes authorities usually governmental or scientific that are the most dry and unquestionably authoritative to prove his points. It feels like I am being fed propaganda.

I may agree with the authors points, but his style is almost Orwellian. The authority speaks and you should believe citizens. Some people like to have their opinions confirmed this way, I don't. I can understand why it is number one on the New York Times bestseller list, but I don't like it. For me, this is not a book which I can read.

I ran into another disappointment with Robert Zubrin Energy Victory. A major premise of this book is that wahabism or the form of Islam practiced by the Saudi family is the major cause of the United States oil and terrorist problems. Because of Wahabism we should switch to flexible fuel vehicles. There is plenty of vitriol against the Wahabis as well as some wild claims made about ethanol and methanol being the fuels of choice for our future.

Supposedly there should be a law that mandates all cars be made flexible fuel vehicles from now on. This is not likely to happen for various reasons which I don't want to go into. It is an interesting premise from an impractical book. If you have something against the Saudi Arabians you might really like this book.

Ancestral Dreams

I dreamed I was at Agincourt
I rode a horse and carried a black shield
The sky rained steel tipped arrows
I fell from my horse seeing red and died

I dreamed I was at the Coliseum
I held a begging bowl at the open gate
Too few coins fell for me to eat
I held my belly starving on the stones

I dreamed I was in a village
I chopped at the earth with a hoe
The earth was broken, barren
The lords tax took all I had

I was no prince, no king, no noble
But common with the worlds pain
The generations go with sorrow
Each one following into the next

Monster Poem, Daily Ruminations

Deluxe Monopoly Pieces

Monster Poem

There is a monster under my bed

It helps me sleep through the night

It feeds on dreams taking my nightmares

I knowingly let it take my bad dreams

The price is contentment lack of a future

The monster smiles it lives on ordinariness

I live in the peace of the contented dead

Daily Ruminations

I have been reading more of The Long Tail on the train. It has made me think about how my library is organized. We probably need to merchandise the collection more. This will be a slow process of negotiation. I don't think it will happen immediately.

I have finished part of my order for the business books, $2000. I still have about $1000 more dollars to spend. I found enough review material and sites to order a considerable amount of newer material. I ordered The Long Tail for our collection.

Now, I am going to go back through the collection and order basic materials. I have a book in front of me called, The Basic Business Library Core Resources, 4th Edition, Edited by Rashelle S. Karp. It is an older book, but it will allow me to look for and fill gaps in our collection.

The Basic Business Library Core Resources, 4th Edition, identified another resource for me to look at. The March 15 yearly issue of Library Journal lists the best business books.

I have sorted through the last six years of the magazine to add more to my growing list of business books. It seems I will have enough room to start on a much larger order, social science books. I will be glad when the initial order of business management books is done. It takes a decent amount of time and effort.

I have been thinking a lot lately. I am working on a short essay on the concept of how a build on demand manufacturing system could be integrated with a cradle to cradle remanufacturing system. It is just an idea. I think it is possible to combine fabbing with inbuilt remanufacturing capabilities. Imagine a future with highly interchangeable reusable parts. You read these books like The Long Tail, then somehow, it mixes with the book, Cradle to Cradle, and then it mixes with Bruce Sterling's essay, Shaping Things and you get something entirely weird. It is a ghostly thought waiting to be released. This is of course all wildly speculative silliness.

Morning Poem, Thoughts for the Day

Sky, Sand, Sea

Can you count the number of stars in the sky?

Can you count the number of sand grains on the beach?

Can you count the drops of water in the sea?

You are on the shore,

Standing next to infinity.

Good morning, I had a moment where a little poem came to me on the train. Sometimes this happens. Here it is.

My book came in today, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss. It will be the next thing I read after Clear Blogging.

I noticed a new book which was out in the United Kingdom, Reaper's Gale: Tales of the Malazan Book 7 by Steven Erickson. It was released in the United Kingdom in May of 2007, now in March 2008 it should be here in the United States soon. There is usually a lag of six months to a year between books getting published between the United States and the United Kingdom. I am hoping this will change. I think it might be a little shorter between the United States and Canada. I am not sure about how long it takes for Australian titles to switch between the United States and Australia.

It has been a quiet day so far which is nice. I went around and took note of the various problems with the reference computers which need to be fixed. Mostly it is minor things like sticky keyboards, loose mouse chords, and little programming bugs.