New Year, new me?

So, my resolution this year is to use less plastic.  It may sound silly at first until you start thinking about how much plastic is in the world.   Almost everything is shrink-wrapped.    Fruit comes in plastic bags/boxes, even the meat from the Farmer's market comes in plastic bags.    Cheese comes in plastic.  So do sweets.   Gluten-free breads and some flours.  Mixes.   Salad greens.   Cereals, crackers, nuts.

Home stuff too, plastic paint trays, dropcloths.   Painters tape.   Zip ties are plastic.  

Plastic pens. Folders.

Clothes.  Even those little plastic threads that attach tags.   And "vegan" clothing often has plastic.  

Drinking straws, coffee lids...

Just so much plastic.   Ugh.

So much that just goes straight to the landfill.

And I feel like it is one or the other, if its organic, its in plastic, if its not, its doused in chemicals.

DVDs are plastic, Christmas ornaments....

I need to stop and take stock.  

And cut down more.   Even if its just in half, that will make a difference in my health and in the health of the planet, if EVERYONE just cut their plastic consumption in half.

My other resolutions?  The usual, exercise more, eat healthier, start dating, get some house projects DONE.

A very solitary Christmas. Which is fine.

I was alone for Christmas.

I built a fire.

I read a book.

I took a nap.

I was going to roast a duck, but its still frozen.

I had pickles and cheese for lunch.  :)

And I had one present.

And you know, with all that, it was still a good Christmas.

I do wish I'd bought a tree...it would have been nice to have the Christmas lights tonight.

But I did not miss the sugar, the hyper, the trying-not-to-be-poisoned by gluten...

Sometimes living alone is nice.  You can wear your jammies all day.   You can slip a little schnapps into your morning coffee.  You can do a crossword and listen to Christmas carols by the fireplace...

I had myself a Merry Little Christmas, and my heart is light.

I hope, if you are reading this, that the rest of your Christmas is merry.

The Christmas That Wasn't.

Sometimes, being single is actually ok for the holidays.   This year, I don't really have any Christmas "goodies".  I don't have a tree.  I've got my creche set up, a bit of Christmas Greenery out, but that's really it.

I don't have any treats.  I toyed with making a gluten-free gingerbread house, but decided it wasn't worth it.

I don't get gifts, which is ok, truly.   All I really want is the big stuff which I end up buying myself, eventually, because my parents dont want to "get me the wrong thing"...  

I'm just enjoying the time off, reading, relaxing...

I will be roasting a duck tomorrow...   so that will be nice.  

Of course there is a part of me that wishes I could share the season with imaginary, sorry, hypothetical, children.

If I had kids, of course we'd have traditions.  

One of those would be making a fruitcake Thanksgiving weekend.

Another would be a live tree, in a pot, which we would plant...

And another would be reading The Father Christmas Letters, by Tolkien.  

As well, of course, as some of my childhood traditions.   Gingerbread men.

Eggnog, family carols, and a fire on Christmas eve.

But this year, its still just me.  And that's ok.

On the tragedy in Newtown

Guns.  We have a society which virtually worships them.   Violent video games, violent, sorry, "action-packed", movies.   Defend ourselves at all costs....

A troubled, by some accounts, developmentally disabled, young man was able to get guns, assault weapons, and kill, not only his mother, but a number of small children.   How have we gone wrong?

Responsible gun owners are not the problem,   I grew up with a grandfather who hunted, and know people who hunt, who respect guns, who respect nature.   The problem is twofold.

We have the NRA which is, unfortunately, not advocating for responsible gun ownership, but is advocating for the gun manufacturers.  MORE GUNS.   MORE PROFIT.  

How a developmentally disabled young man got a gun?  We need tighter laws.   Stronger controls.   They will not stop responsible gun owners, but will prevent needless tragedy.    It could have prevented Columbine, possibly.   If, say, an application for a permit required a psychological examination, and a letter, maybe even references from responsible gun owners.

People will say, "Well the crazy will make fertilizer bombs, or use a knife"...   People have a chance against a knife...  guns kill from a distance.  And after certain events involving fertilizer controls were placed to monitor the sale of large amounts of fertilizer...  why can't we do the same with guns?

We also have no place for the developmentally disabled/troubled folks.   I'm not advocating that they should be all locked away...   but there are many developmentally disabled people who are being cared for by family, parents, siblings, with no chance for an independent life.  The following is just theory, but for all we know the young man in question was angry at his mother, saw the class as rivals, who knows?  

It is heartbreaking, but I am tired of shootings.  I am tired of the glorification of guns.   Lets start cleaning up the gun culture.   Identify all movies/tv shows/etc with guns as R.  Stop giving toy guns that look like guns to children.   You can protect your home without a gun.   Get a dog.   Or two.    Keep a baseball bat on hand.  

Other countries do it.   Why can't we?

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/johncassidy/2012/12/after-the-newtown-shooting-americas-gun-shame.html

The oddities of Facebook.

So, I started on Facebook many moons ago, when the world was new.   And Facebook actually had functional privacy settings, and all that jazz.   But when you are on it, now, you realize what a small place the world actually is.  Because you are occasionally told when people who are friends of your friends, but have another mutual friend in common, comment on your friends statuses.

Yes, I know that sounds convoluted.  But its funny, because I've realised that I have friends who have friends who link back to a part of my past I'd rather forget... the main players of whom I've blocked...

But then comes interacting/unfriending people on Facebook....  I've been in the middle of a messy situation with someone who called himself a friend, but apparently saw me as a patsy....   He's unfriended me, thank God.    But what do I do with some of our mutual friends?  At the moment, I've restricted most of them, but I don't know...I know the ticker can sometimes show activity even on "restriction".     I know some of them are genuine people who are just nice...

I also have a whole bunch of people I became friends with through games, some of whom I've kept, because they are cool and funny...  people like the guy from Mauritius, whose brother apparently worked for Gerald Durrell... (that is so cool).  Now, yes, he could be making it up, but I think its highly unlikely, just because of how the whole thing came out...

But yes, it can be an issue.  I have "work friends" on there, who I know have seem things they are not supposed to see.. (they are supposed to be "custom")...  so the whole thing is basically not private...

I just find the links of who knows whom very funny sometimes...and sometimes it does give me a heads-up....

Good morning!

Ok, so reading back over some of the old posts, I've been a little depressed/overwhelmed.    But I want to put the word out that I am actually a happy camper.   I'm usually pretty upbeat, and get my sunshine back pretty quickly.

So it is a beautiful day, and I'm heading out to the Library for a book sale (yay!) and then the CSA to do my pickup....

And tomorrow...anything goes!

On creating Library Displays...

One of the fun things about my job is creating library displays.   During the summer, it was weekly, but during the rest of the year, it is every three weeks...   it includes both children's and adult displays...  and they are up for a week.

What do displays do?  They actively boost circulation.   They bring books out from the stacks that people don't know we have...   (it also, to me, highlights gaps in the collection...what do you mean we don't have Rapunzel?  Or we only have ONE book on this? ARGH!)

But it also makes you have to be creative.   You don't just take the easy path, sometimes....

You have to think, ok, what are people taking out? What are people asking for?

For instance: people were taking out the 50 Shades of Grey trilogy.  It was flying, FLYING off the shelves.

Now, if I'd been over at the Main Library, I would have pulled some sci-fi/fantasy S&M books, well-written, good things.  J. Carey, or S.M. Stirling (yes, that is his name)..   but I was still able to pull a display out, since we had "The sexual adventures of Catherine M" (kind of a modern "story of O"), a book of racy/funny ads, a book about an affair, etc.

What I'll also do is pull out Chase, which is a book that details every single holiday that goes on for each day, if its a big one, such as "Patriots Day", or a small one...  but that often, particularly with adults, gives me an idea....

For instance this week, in adults, I did:

Agatha Christie's birthday
Tolkien Week (which we can supplement with Tolkien-inspired stuff)
Help with Homework--we have some calculus, English, French, etc books on the shelf in non-fic, its a good way to showcase them.    And easy to refill too.
Fast Meals--a parent asked, a couple weeks ago, about recipe books with quick meals...

There was one more, but I'm blanking....

And here is a picture:

Citizenship Day!  Hah!  Right on top.

For Children, I started with Talk Like a Pirate Day, which is coming up this week...
Then went to Princesses, Policemen, and Pies.    And I had Princesses and Pirates for older kids as well...

Some of the more interesting displays I've done are :Hitler and Friends (for adults), since we had a number of interesting biographies and fiction books on Winifred Wagner, Eva Braun, etc...

Timing is important too...about mid-August I did a display on potty training in kids, including a couple of cute tushie books we have...

There are displays I would love to do, but doubt I'd be able to:

A really political display.   This one is because we don't have the balance in our collection.  And I really don't want to keep Ann Coulter's books or Rush Limbaugh's books around.  Ugh. (Sorry Dan)    And our displays, if they are at all political, need to be balanced.

A children's display, for older kids, on growing up and maturing...maybe we could do this in the teen section?   The problem is that a parent would probably complain if it was in the regular section, and we don't get so much of the teen traffic in the fall...  we get our teens in the summer.

I wish I could do a better sci-fi display.  I wish I could showcase some of my favorite fantasy authors...

There are some fallbacks, for doing a display, if you really can't think of anything else:

Color: books of all one color--green for spring or st patrick's day.

Cookbooks: bread and soup for fall/winter

Gardening.  If you do gardening in winter, people go "oooh" because they want color and light and pretty...  you don't put out gardening books in summer, so much...

Actually, I have a picture of the "Shades of Grey" display I did, which was one of the first official ones I did as an "Associate".  My boss did a blog post on it:

http://farmingtonlibctbarney.blogspot.com/2012/06/check-it-out.html

It was "shades of grey", featured author (Elizabeth Berg), kitchen/garden tour, journalists, and DaVinci Code readalikes.