Misadventures of the Monster Librarian

Holy cats! 2009 is the year for anniversaries and 40 is the number : Sesame Street Monty Python the Internet Abbey Road, The Beatles Woodstock Walking on the Moon -Apollo 11 on the Moon This year is also the 40th Anniversary of when the Norman Rockwell Museum opened, and that is a good segue into where I found myself yesterday; hanging out with TSO's family. TSO's Mom, Dad and two sisters A & A were here for the weekend, staying with us at the Farm. Thanks to the Museum pass program-- library shout out !--TSO's family of 5 and I were able to get into the Norman Rockwell Museum for free. I was ambiguous as to whether or not I wanted to go the museum, as I have been many times, but wound up going because TSO forgot the free tickets on the coffee table. As always, I was pleased with the quiet solitude I can find for myself in a museum, and also found the new exhibit to be of some interest ("Behind the Camera," an exhibit documenting Rockwell's use of pho

RugbyGirl, TSO and I got up at 4am this morning to see this . I only saw 5 shooting stars, but there is something so cool and surreal about getting up that early, crawling back into a still warm bed, sleeping for another hour and then going to work. Well, surreal and exhausting. I love looking at the sky. I also love this Starry Night .

Our beloved R passed away this morning, just 4 mos. shy of her 100th birthday. I heard the news from my roomie Rugby Girl and have felt so melancholy since. I am not sad for R. I am glad that she is finally going to be able to rest. I feel a loss for our Community, since she has been part of it for over 80 years, but really my sadness is selfish. It is funny how the death of someone can take us back into the pain and sadness of the death of another. I am always surprised at how my Dad's death (just over 2 year ago) can still evoke such anguish for me. I lay here in front of our fireplace missing my Dad, and thinking about all the things we miss out on without him being here. And I think too of our feisty R and what Community will look like without her. Death is a funny thing. I turn again to this, a favorite poem, I've used on my blog before. It really speas to something so sincere in my mind. Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone Stop all the clocks, cut off th

This morning, spilling into the afternoon, was like a Simon and Garfunkel song; I sat on a train, on this rainy day, and watched as New York City slid away from me. I reentered the outlying cities, looking out over sleepy little cities and towns, traveling over waterways on little bridges made to rock our train back and forth, lulling me to sleep. Everything about leaving the City was unlike how I’d entered it. This morning we woke up early so we could go have a breakfast in the West Village (Manhattan) where my cousin works. It was one of those wonderful successes; trying out a restaurant that my cousin passes every day en route to work, one which she had often wondered about. The restaurant is Grey Dog and a better breakfast place in town I can’t imagine I’d find. Everything about the restaurant was great, from the décor (random pictures and signs, snowboards—many things featuring dogs); to the tables themselves, which had hand painted maps of various areas around the U.S. on them

It is possible to go to New York multiple times and never retrace your steps. I am sure yesterday was that kind of day. I saw only things that I had never looked on before. We began the day at the Morgan Library where we had planned to see the exhibit on Jane Austen, and upon showing up I was pleasantly surprised to see that the Library also had an exhibit on William Blake’s illustrations from a variety of projects--as an English major I was most familiar with his illustrations for the Book of Urizen, Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience. Jessi and I wandered through the galleries, looking at (among many things) some of Jane Austen’s letters to her beloved sister Cassandra. It was quite wonderful to see writing in Austen’s own hand, to see the handwritten letters which referenced some of my most beloved stories; letters which talked about the possibilities that lie open for Austen’s antagonists and heroines. Magical. The exhibit on Blake was nice, less interesting to me, since he

I am sitting in my cousin's apartment in Bushwick, Brooklyn, NYC. Yesterday after work I got in the car and drove over an hour to catch a Metro North train into NYC. From Wassaic, NY I took a train in, transfering once, to Grand Central Station. As I was pushed forward with the swelling crowds--trying to act like I knew where I was going to catch my next train--I marveled at the beautiful architechture of the builiding and the famous image of the building came into my head; the image of the interior of the building with the light streaming in through the ceiling windows. The trip into the city isn't complete without seeing Grand Central; all its people rushing through going to jobs, homes, lovers; such a gathering up of people only to push them out again into the cool November streets. Two hours and three trains later (after getting seriously confused) my cousin Jessi and I found each other at the West 4th Street stop, and another couple of trains and we were walking down the

I SAW IN LOUISIANA A LIVE-OAK GROWING SAW in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it, and the moss hung down from the branches; Without any companion it grew there, uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself; But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves, standing alone there, without its friend, its lover near--for I knew I could not; And broke off a twig with a certain number of leaves upon it, and twined around it a little moss, And brought it away--and I have placed it in sight in my room; It is not needed to remind me as of my own dear friends, (For I believe lately I think of little else than them:) Yet it remains to me a curious token--it makes me think of manly love; For all that, and though the live-oak glistens there in Louisiana, solitary, in a wide flat space, Uttering joyous leaves all its life, without a friend, a lover, near, I know very well I could not. ~ Walt Whitman

"Vermont, Early November" It was in between seasons, after the thin twitter of late autumn but before the icy authority of winter, and I took in the scene from a porch, a tableau of silo and weathervane and a crowd of ferns on the edge of the woods-- nothing worth writing about really, but it is too late to stop now that the ferns and silo have been mentioned. I drank my warm coffee and took note of the disused tractor and the lopsided sign to the cheese factory. Not one of those mornings that makes you want to seize the day, not even enough glory to make you want to grasp every other day yet after staring for a while at the plowed-under fields and the sky, I turned back to the order of the kitchen determined to seize firmly the second Wednesday of every month that lay ahead. ~ Billy Collins And so we begin another fall month and watch as the leaves on our beloved New England trees move to the next stage of their journey. The first leaves fell gracefully and now wh