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Triumph

Sometimes it’s the little victories that bring us the most joy. For me, one of the biggest such triumphs is knocking out a title from my “to-read” list. I’ve finally gotten it under control recently, though one of my coworkers at the library has described making progress on a reading list as a feat akin to slaying a hydra…

No, not the kind from “Captain America”

In my line of work, I’m generally adding a new book to my to-read list every other day. After a staff meeting a few weeks ago where one of my coworkers introduced us to the concept of the reading map via this example she created, I knew that I had to add yet another. You see, this reading map introduced me to Erin Morgenstern and her debut novel, The Night Circus. I was absolutely blown away by the book, which is a strange and fantastic combination of the magic competition presented in The Prestige and the environment presented in Something Wicked This Way Comes. Morgenstern weaves a tale of intrigue and romance as two young illusionists compete in a game with a mysterious circus serving as the venue. Celia and Marco are bound to the game by their masters, neither of them fully aware of the rules, including the fact that only one of them can survive. The Night Circus is a series of complex rings, much like the black and white striped tents that make up the titular location. I couldn’t put it down. Finishing it is one of those little victories. I can’t recommend it enough.

Next up on the reading list is another debut novel, A Once Crowded Sky. See you soon.

An Apology

Dear Blog,

I’m sorry that I haven’t been around much lately. I know that we’ve been together for the last year and a half, but over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been neglecting you. I hope that you can forgive me. I’m not going to be making any excuses, because it’s really not worth wasting your time with things that may or may not be true. Instead, I’m going to be providing you with some funny and/or cool things that I’ve happened across in the last few weeks. Hopefully this will tide you over while I work on finishing up my newest piece of microfiction for you.

Sincerely,

Philip

1.) Collective nouns for the supernatural:

"A Wall of Text"

2.) The Guide

Hmmmm…

3.) A coworker creates incredible art from discarded books.

See more here: http://ppld.org/whats-new/library-employee-gives-new-life-library-discards

4.) We mock James Patterson some more.

From Booklist:  http://www.booklistonline.com/ProductInfo.aspx?pid=5532399&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

“An author who writes books faster than readers can read them–it must be fiction, right?”

 

Happy Colorado Day!

In honor of my state’s birthday, I am going to share with you a few facts about Colorado. (Please note: these facts come from an article by Jerry Kopel, a journalist with the Colorado Statesman and a former state legislator who passed away in January of this year.)

Which state is bigger, Colorado or Wyoming?
If you said Wyoming, you were wrong. Colorado is 6,034 square miles larger than Wyoming. Incidentally, Colorado and Wyoming are the only states having unbroken and almost straight-line boundaries on all sides.
Why does it feel so good to be in Denver (or in the Colorado mountains)?
Normal atmospheric pressure at sea level is 14.7 pounds to the square inch. That is the pressure exerted against the body by the weight, or density, of the atmosphere. The greater the altitude above sea level, the lighter the pressure.
In Denver, the atmospheric pressure is 12.2 pounds to the square inch. Having less pressure against your body is like having a load lifted off your back, which is actually what takes place.
What famous memorial and cemetery back east were built with Colorado Yule Marble?
The Lincoln Memorial in Washington and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington Cemetery in Virginia. In Denver, the Federal Reserve Bank Building is a good example of Colorado Yule Marble.
This marble, mined on the Yule Creek near the town of Marble in Gunnison County, is white, medium grained, generally banded with pale-brownish streaks and contains angular fragments of chert.
The Colorado state capitol building in Denver was completed one hundred years ago in 1896. What was placed in its cornerstone?
The cornerstone was laid on July 4, 1890 by the Masonic Lodge and contained a bible, American flag, Colorado and U.S. constitutions, a copy of the Declaration of Independence, census reports, speeches by government officials, newspapers of July 4th, 1890, and gold and silver coins of all denominations. Denver became the permanent capital of Colorado by territorial legislative law Dec.9, 1867.
How many people lived here around the time Colorado became a state?
In 1870, Colorado had 39,864 residents. By 1890, the population jumped to 194,327. In 1870, the U.S. population was over 38 million, which meant Colorado then held one-tenth of one percent of the nation’s population. Today, Colorado has 3.8 million people.
What is the penalty for picking the state flower, the white and lavender columbine (Columbine Aquilegia, Caerulea) off of public land?
You have committed a MISDEMEANOR, and while you will not go to jail, if convicted, you will pay a fine of not less than $5 nor more than $50.
The columbine became the state flower in 1899 in a statute passed by the 12th General Assembly and signed into law by Gov. Charles Thomas on April 4, 1899. From 1899 until 1925, it was okay to pick the flower, but in 1925, the Colorado legislature passed the following:
“It is unlawful for any person to tear the state flower up by the roots when grown or growing upon any state, school, or other public lands or in any public highway or other public place or to pick or gather upon any such public lands or in any such public highway or place more than twenty-five stems, buds, or blossoms of such flower in any one day, and it is also unlawful for any person to pick or gather such flower upon private lands without the consent of the owner thereof first had or obtained.”
The penalty hasn’t been changed in 71 years. Five bucks was a lot of money in 1925. In some hotels today, it will buy you a cup of coffee and a roll.
What well-known Colorado author wrote about the “trickle-down” economic theory forty years before it became famous during the Reagan presidency?
Barron B. Beshoar, Colorado native and author of Out of the Depths, the history of the Ludlow massacre and the insurrection by Colorado miners. In his forward to this 1942 book, Beshoar writes:
“On the one hand, firmly entrenched and in full power and strength, were those who held to the theory that all benefits properly trickle down from above, and on the other were those who devotedly maintained the democratic proposition that men and women who toil with their backs and hands are entitled to share in the fruits of their productive labor.”
When was the first time Colorado participated as a state in a presidential election and whom did we vote for?
It was 1880, and Colorado voted Republican 27,450 to 24,647 for James A. Garfield. President Garfield died in office at age 49, having served from March 4 to Sept. 19, 1881. He was succeeded by Chester A. Arthur.
What party dominated the first statewide elections and who got the nod?
The Republicans in 1876. All of the following were Republicans: John L. Routt, first state governor; James B. Belford, first congressman; Henry M. Teller and Jerome B. Chaffee, first U.S. senators; William M. Clark, first secretary of state; George C. Corning, first state treasurer; David C. Crawford, first state auditor; and A.J.Sampson, first attorney general.
Who was Lafayette Head?
A Republican, Lafayette Head was the first lieutenant governor of the state of Colorado. Since 1876, no other state official ever elected in Colorado has had the first name, Lafayette.
There’s your Colorado history lesson for the day. Happy birthday, Colorado!

Point of Reference

In my new position at the public library, I’ve been learning my way around the print reference collection. Let me say this. If a library is a magical place, the reference collection is the source of the power. In my ignorance, I had never ventured behind the reference desk during my initial year at my branch. After spending a mere half hour wandering through the shelves, I realized the error of my ways.

I have been spending my initial training days studying the print reference collection because it is an integral part of our library. Even if most of the searching and problem solving that reference librarians and information services specialists do now is done online, knowing our way around the physical reference section is critical.

Even if it’s only a matter of being able to search for information in the event that the power goes out or the internet is down, I know where I can go to find necessary info for my patrons or for myself. There’s something incredibly satisfying about being able to go to a shelf, pull a book, and open it to the page you need for the data you are trying to find.

A part of me really misses the old card catalogs of my youth. That’s right, folks, I grew up learning the Dewey Decimal system so that I could find a 3×5 card with a book’s call number on it, match the number on the card to a book on the shelf, and take that book to the librarian to check out. Now I understand and fully accept that technological advancements have made it so that a card catalog is now found in a museum rather than a library, but I am still proud that I know how to use it. (I file that accomplishment along with my knowledge of 8-track tapes, rotary phones, and manual transmissions.)

I’ve found all manner of wonderful tools to put to use, both for myself and for others. Here’s a few of them.

 

I am very pleased to have found copies of books like these on the shelves. I foresee a great deal of free time being spent browsing through the reference collection now, and I am happy to say that research for future projects is going to be a lot more fun than I ever would have guessed.

The Dark Knight Rises: A Review

The Dark Knight Rises premiered at midnight on Friday, after four years of waiting since the release of it’s predecessor. Batman Begins showed us that Batman films could be done well, and pseudo-realistically. Its sequel, The Dark Knight, was an epic film, clouded by the untimely loss of Heath Ledger, but nevertheless a critical and commercial success. Now we have part three to director Christopher Nolan’s grand work.

The Dark Knight Rises is set eight years after the events of the first film, and Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) has been living in the shadows, though this time without his cape and cowl. Batman is retired, and has been for most of the eight year timeskip. He’s become a recluse, choosing to hide away as criminals are put into Blackgate Prison by the Gotham City Police Department. The public remains convinced that former Gotham City DA Harvey Dent was killed by Batman during the events of The Dark Knight, and so Dent is a celebrated martyr in the war against organized crime and the truth remains hidden by both Bruce Wayne and his chief ally, Commissioner Jim Gordon (Gary Oldman).

Bruce is under pressure from the Wayne Industry board of directors. A planned clean energy project had been funded and then canceled, costing Wayne nearly half of his fortune and prompting his board to ask for him for his resignation. Luckily for Bruce, new love interest Miranda Tate (Marion Cotillard) arrives to provide financial backing and take over operation of the company. Meanwhile, Batman is forced back into action by the combined efforts of cat burglar Selina Kyle (Anne Hathaway) and genius bruiser Bane (Tom Hardy).

Bane quickly establishes himself as a major threat to Batman, both physically and intellectually, finally being portrayed in accordance with his comic book origin. Tom Hardy is nowhere as difficult to understand as many critics feared, and his mask only serves to enhance to sense of terror and unknown that his victims must feel when he arrives. His face is as inscrutable as his motives, as he appears to be a fierce mercenary with a hidden agenda for Gotham City. As Batman’s most deadly foe to date, Bane will leave you wondering if Batman can ever survive their final confrontation. In Gotham, after all, nothing is what it seems.

Nolan’s final foray into the world of Batman does not disappoint. Everything about this movie felt right, from the phenomenal cast to Hans Zimmer’s elegant score. The plot is complex, but not overly so. The cinematography and effects are everything that we love about Christopher Nolan’s filmmaking techniques. I’ve never seen a conclusion to a trilogy leave me feeling so satisfied and still so hungry for more. Thank you, Christopher Nolan, and all of the cast and crew, for giving us three unbelievable Batman films over the last seven years. I could not ask for more than what you gave us with The Dark Knight Rises.

P.S.

This guy was at my theatre in Colorado Springs. Epic Bane costume. He was generous/friendly enough to let me take a photo of him before the movie started.

image

New Toys

A few weeks ago, I got my first smart phone. This week is proving to be great fun as I adapt to the new piece of technology in my hand.

I have sought out some of the most useful applications for my phone, one of the foremost among them for me being a WordPress app. I’m using it right now, actually. That’s right. I can blog right from my phone.

I have already been working on several more stories for sending out to various publications, and now I can manage that on the go as well, thanks to dropbox. Any stories I have in progress can now be modified on the go, via cloud storage.

I have downloaded a pair of mobile reading apps, one from Kobo, since I started an account through them back when I worked at Borders, and the other from my current employer, PPLD. Now I have mobile electronic reading, so I don’t have to bother with the old eReader debate. I will still focus my reading on paper books, as I have already said time and time again. In my new position with PPLD, though, it’s going to be very much to my benefit to have a more thorough understanding of the services we have available.

The final critical app I have found (all free, by the way) is a QR code reader. This lets me scan and create quick read bar codes from my phone, letting me quickly jump directly from my scanner to a url wherever I am. It’s fun and convenient.

Anyway, I know that I still have a lot of reading and writing to do, and I hear thunder in the distance too. I should wrap it up for the night.

Zombie Apocalypse (aka Bandwagon Day)

I woke up a few days ago and I found this in my twitter feed. Now I like good zombie fiction as much as anybody else (and probably a hell of a lot more than some of you), but the topic is one that I’d tried to avoid mainly due to the over-saturation of modern popular culture. Well, that and I’ve worked in retail over Christmas, so I’m pretty certain I’ve already had some first-hand experience with fending off zombies. NO! BACK! YOU CAN’T HAVE MY BRAIN! HAVE THIS DELICIOUS HOMELESS MAN WHO HAS BEEN CAMPED IN FRONT OF THE STORE ALL WINTER INSTEAD!

The zombie craze has been going strong for several years now, and I am pleased to say that I think the vampire sex fantasies are dying off slowly, as exposure to light generally shows how stupid that concept is. (Disclaimer: I have read the Twilight books, and once I was done, I found myself wondering if I hadn’t briefly been turned into a zombie… I got better once someone handed me a copy of A Game of Thrones, and I am fully convinced that this is a legitimate cure. If nothing else, you can use the hardcover editions for bludgeoning weapons and a layer of the paperbacks as a sort of lightweight but still nearly bulletproof armor. Thank you for saving me, George.) Not that vampire stuff can’t be done well. Bram Stoker’s Dracula give me chills, three readings later, and Anne Rice had a great thing going with her earlier work. Or there’s always the Sookie Stackhouse books. You might know them as those stories that Stephanie Meyer completely ripped off when she wrote Twilight, or like A Game of Thrones, you might know of the story from the sexy HBO adaptation (I’m still waiting for the HBO version of my own life to kick in).

This isn’t to say that the zombie fiction isn’t just as ridiculous as the vampire fiction. Far from it. However, it is technically a little more plausible, especially given recent events. People are even catering to the zombie apocalypse with “anti-zombie” ammunition, bladed and blunt weapons, and fortresses. Zombies are in our video games, our movies, our books, and even our news articles. Combine pop culture’s love of this kind of shit with the fact that some people are legitimately convinced that the world’s going to end because a calendar carved in stone around 2600 years ago is running out of room (oh, hey, look, my calendar printed on paper is going to end this year too, I wonder if that means that the world really WILL end…) and people start to get a little twitchy. I must admit, though, that I am curious as to how a civilization that has supposedly predicted the end of the world couldn’t have foretold their inevitable downfall… I mean, it’s not like anyone who’s ever predicted the end of the world has ever been wrong. Wait, what? You mean they’ve ALL been wrong? Oh man, I need to rethink my strategy… But I digress. In all seriousness, the zombie apocalypse could be a lot of fun. There are some great depictions of it. I just can’t help thinking that any disease or thing like that might likely just kill everyone rather than creating living dead. You can blame my recent reading of Margaret Atwood for this.

Anyway, I should get some sleep. Zombies are making me sleepy. What’s that sitting beside me, you ask? Nothing, nothing, just a little shotgun in the event that you start moaning and craving brains in the near future. Can’t be too careful.

The Door

The door was locked. It had been for as long as I could remember, and it would probably remain so until the day that I died. Maybe even longer than that. It wasn’t that I couldn’t unlock the door to find out what she had hidden away so carefully. It was that I made a promise.

The door stood at the far end of the hallway from the room where I slept. I didn’t sleep in my bedroom anymore at that point. It seemed futile to try to fall asleep in that bed after she was gone. No, the room where I now slept, where I had been sleeping for nearly ten years now, was my study. The overstuffed recliner next to the fireplace served as a better bed for me, and I had lost count of how many times I had nodded off while a fire roared to counter the howling wind and snow outside of my windows.

The door led to a room that had been intended as a nursery, but the children had never come. One day she had gone into the room, and stayed there for several hours. When she came out, her face was pale, but filled with grim accomplishment. She locked the door then, and made me swear to never open it again. She threw the key into the fire that night, and we sat together in the recliner and watched as it melted away.

For a time, we were happy again, and we ignored the door at the far end of the hallway next to the bedroom, when the bed was still shared and we didn’t need the fire to stay warm. The door stayed locked, and I never asked her the reason. We trusted each other with every secret but this one, and it eventually drove us apart.

I don’t remember exactly what happened on the day (or night, I can’t seem to recall the hour) when she left. I don’t know where she went, but I know why. The locked door seemed to torment her more than me, a reminder of the life that she couldn’t carry. I want to say that I plead with her that night, got down on my knees and begged her to tell me what was eating away at her, what this secret was, but I don’t know. I may have, instead, filled my heart with courage from an increasingly empty bottle and told her that if she couldn’t live with herself then she couldn’t live with me, and that she needed to get out.

I don’t remember when it was that I took every one of my books and my lamps and my blankets and my pillows from the room that had been ours and left every one of hers behind. I haven’t been back in that bedroom for years, but I’ve left it unlocked. I can’t risk doing what she did. I can’t leave the house, either. That’s not to say that I can’t go out my door to buy groceries or to find a new book, but I can’t move. I can’t pack up and find somewhere new to live. I’m held here by my promise to her. If someone else were to buy the house, they might open the locked door, and I cannot bear the thought of some stranger learning the secret that tore her away from me.

The door sits at the end of the hallway, on the second floor of my home. My kitchen is directly beneath the room, and some days I find myself staring at the ceiling in wonder. What-if’s fill my head, and I find that I lose my appetite until the next day, when another empty bottle of whiskey or rum or vodka has turned up next to my recliner and I have no memory of coming back upstairs. One morning, I woke up on the floor of the hallway next to the locked door, a screwdriver and a hammer beside me. I must have decided that I had to open the door, but I had passed out before I could put my plan into action.

It’s better that way, really. I don’t want to know what’s behind that door, or at least that’s what I tell myself. Instead I sit next to the fire, or at my desk, and I read, or I write, or I try to do one or the other and fail miserably at both because I remember how much she used to inspire me and remember that she’s gone and she’s not coming back. Occasionally a magazine calls and asks me if I can finish another story for them this month, and I tell them yes, because I still need to eat.

Once in a while, I thought about having a new key made, or having a locksmith come in and open the door, but I realized that would still be breaking my promise, and even now I am still a man of my word. I know what I’m going to do now, though. I’m not going to break my promise to her. I’m not going to unlock the door. I’m going to stoke the fire high tonight, and I’m going to leave my chair closer to it than usual. I’m going to have a drink, and I’m going to fall asleep, surrounded by my books and covered in an afghan that she made for me the winter after I proposed, one of the blankets that I took from our old bedroom after she left. I’m not going to leave a note. It wouldn’t survive anyway. I suppose that the fire will start slowly, kissing the pages of the books, blackening them and turning them to ash. It will start in the study, and make its way down the hall.

It will consume everything in its path. It’s fire, after all, and it will devour the house that was once ours and is now mine and mine alone. The hallway will offer little resistance. Likewise the bedroom we once shared and I now shun. It will burn, and the smoke alarms will attempt to wake me to save me from myself, but it will be in vain. The locked door will stand at the end of the hall, but it too will burn, and her secret will die with me.

Waldo Canyon Fire Donations

We all appreciate everyone coming together to help the evacuees from the Waldo Canyon Fire here in Colorado Springs. What’s really needed right now is more help for the remaining recovery. What can you do to help, you ask? Donate to the American Red Cross. Thank you.

Waldo Canyon Fire

My city is burning. I cannot sleep.

This is the sentiment shared by many of my fellow Colorado Springs residents. I’ll be completely honest, dear readers. I’m scared. I’ve looked disasters square in the face in the past. I used to stand at the front door of my parents house as tornadoes came dangerously close to the little town where I grew up. That never seemed to be as much of a threat as the Waldo Canyon Fire has become. 

Today at work, my coworkers and I gazed out at the mountains west of the city as the flames crested the ridge and came into view. This photo from the Colorado Springs Gazette shows an example of what we’re dealing with. 

"Firestorm of Epic Proportions" from the Colorado Springs Gazette, 6/26/12

Image source: http://www.gazette.com/articles/proportions-140896-waldo-canyon.html

 

Ash is falling. There’s an eerie orange glow on the west side of town, and it’s not a sunset. It’s 2 AM, but we have no reported injuries or fatalities as of this writing. Let’s hope that luck holds. Property can be replaced, folks, but everyone out there fighting this fire has friends and family. This is impacting all of us. If you can, see what you can do to help. Volunteer, donate, anything. Please.