Month: July 2021

Book Thieves

Posted on by M.K. Waller in libraries, Uncategorized

Somebody stole The Catholic Study Bible.

They left the mylar-covered dust jacket standing upright between its neighbors. When I reached up to pull the book from the shelf, I came away with mostly air.

I was righteously indignant. I’d worked hard to develop the 200 Religion and Mythology section. I’d put money into it. I’d spent time and thought balancing the collection to reflect many religious traditions.

The Catholic Study Bible was a big book. A hardback. It had cost a lot. I was proud of it.

Indignation lasted about five minutes. Then I started laughing.

There is a certain irony about someone stealing a Bible.

I’m still laughing.

Other books went missing over the years, too, not surprising in a small library without a security system.

Our copy of Boys and Sex escaped from 300 Social Science on a regular basis, but it stayed in the library. We found it reshelved: in 400 Language, 600 Technology, 700 Arts and Recreation, Fiction, Biography.

I suspected middle school boys. We often found them giggling over it and similar titles in the far corner of the reading room, the blind spot we couldn’t see from the circulation desk.

Girls and Sex, however, disappeared completely, as did other books about sex written for teenaged girls. Books about child abuse disappeared as well. I believed girls took them. And I assumed they took them because they needed them. There was nothing funny about that.

I skipped indignation and replaced them.

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There is an error in grammar/mechanics in the post above. Doing it right seemed just too too, but doing it wrong leaves me open to criticism from people as compulsively nitpicking as I am. It was a difficult decision. Anyway, if you notice it, please be advised I did it by choice, not by ignorance. Just sayin’.

 

 

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Image of bookshelves by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay

Image of apostrophe by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

Banner image by mohamed Hassan from Pixabay

Letter Home from College

Posted on by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

December 6 of my freshman year, possibly to announce I would fail all my final exams and all my courses. I thought it best that the parents be prepared.

By the end of the second semester, my mother had stopped believing me.

Mass communication is easy when your uncle is the postmaster. See upper left corner.

Later, maybe when Uncle Joe bought new mailboxes, our box number changed from 46 to 44. At some point, our phone number changed from 2622 to 2384.

I can’t remember my current cell phone number, but I do remember how to call home in 1970. I remember some of the answers on that biology final, too.

We’re moving again, so I’m finding stuff I ought to throw away but can’t.

“I Hear America Singing”

Posted on by M.K. Waller in Uncategorized

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear;
Those of mechanics—each one singing his, as it should be, blithe and strong;
The carpenter singing his, as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his, as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work;
The boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat—the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck;
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench—the hatter singing as he stands;
The wood-cutter’s song—the ploughboy’s, on his way in the morning, or at the noon intermission, or at sundown;
The delicious singing of the mother—or of the young wife at work—or of the girl sewing or washing—
Each singing what belongs to her, and to none else;
The day what belongs to the day—
At night, the party of young fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing, with open mouths, their strong melodious songs.

Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

“I Hear America Singing”

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Image of Walt Whitman (1819-1892), age 35, frontispiece to Leaves of Grass, Fulton St., Brooklyn, N.Y., 1855, steel engraving by Samuel Hollyer from a lost daguerreotype by Gabriel Harrison. Via Wikipedia.