clearing out the cobwebs

As library cycles go, the Circ department is in its slow phase - not the crazy beginning when professors want everything right away (or better yet yesterday), not the anxiety-ridden final two weeks, when students want everything right away (and realize they should have wanted it yesterday), but the strung-out middle, so I am taking the opportunity to clean out old files, messages, and so forth. One file I stumbled upon was "blog ideas" - promising starts that never got any more attention and inspiring quotes. Here they are, my orphaned children:




“Middle” America
What images does this phrase conjure in your mind? Amber waves of grain. 4th of July parades, a la Norman Rockwell. Red states. Factory workers. TV guide. Soccer moms. Top 40. Or…….Americans who all have quite distinct middles, as in overweight. That’s what the phrase always makes me think of. Sorry to be such a wet blanket, but I’ve lived in places and times where America was a dream, an aspiration. And we are letting everyone down in so many ways. Greed and gluttony seem to be at the bottom of it. I am considering a kitchen remodel. Only one person of all those I have told about it thought it unnecessary. I respect his opinion, but he lives in Argentina and works with needy families. So I put him out of my mind as I look over the set of drawings the architect has given me....
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“El éxito no se lo deseo a nadie. Le sucede a uno lo que a los alpinistas, que se matan por llegar a la cumbre y cuando llegan, ¿que hace? Bajar, o tratar de bajar discretamente, con la mayor dignidad posible.” - Gabriel García Márquez, on literary fame in El olor de la guayaba
PQ8180.17.A73 Z47 1982

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(this one was half-formed around the end of the library 2.0 summer series)

What does it all mean, Mister Wizard?
I used to think I had too many passwords to remember. Now I KNOW it. And I intend to remedy that right away, by jettisoning accounts I will never use. For many people, the time invested in exploring new sites and tools has paid dividends because they can incorporate those items into their daily work routine. I didn’t spend nearly enough time checking out most of the toy/tools because I didn’t see how they would apply to my job and I spend too much time on the computer already to want to seek out ways to increase that exposure. That means they probably won’t be much help now, but… I know they exist and how to find them, if needed. I alluded to this in an earlier post.
Social networking is not one of my favorite ideas. It is supplanting face to face relationships. I have this over-riding sense that people are moving father and farther apart due largely to the ever-expanding possibilities of electronic communication. Instead of writing a letter, which would be treasured by descendents, most people today grab the phone to dial or text message, or e-mail, IM, or blog – anything but put pen to paper. In the resulting badly written posts, poor grammar is forgiven supposedly because the content is so important. These people go on to produce appalling resumes. But I digress.
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“Dios está en el centro. Ahí donde no hay forma alguna, ni sonido, ni movimiento. Cuando te encuentres mareada, siéntate, deja de moverte, quédate en silencio y encontrarás al señor nuestro ahí, en tu centro invisible, el que te une a él. Somos como las cuentas del collar de la creación y estamos unidos unos con otros, cada uno ocupando el lugar y el espacio que le corresponde. Cuando alguno jala más de la cuenta para un lado, altera todo el orden de los cielos y el cielo se abre, la tierra se abre. Cuando una se separa ya no irá a caer donde debería caer, ya no caminará donde debería caminar, ya no irá a morir a donde debía morir porque su lazo se rompió, porque todo forma parte del todo y todo repercute en el todo. Y por eso dios se entristece cuando no lo vemos, cuando no lo conocemos, cuando pasamos la vida de espaldas a él.” from Malinche, by Laura Esquivel
PQ7298.15.S638 M35 2006

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Comments on any of the above are hoped for (preposition not withstanding).