AmeriCorps Week

AmeriCorps

I don’t talk about my time in AmeriCorps a lot, at least explicitly related to AmeriCorps. I served at the Annie Halenbake Ross Library – a mere five blocks away from where I was going to college. So in that regard, it always felt more like a part-time job than a service contract. Friends who joined AC later went off to California and Colorado with AC Vista…the furthest I ever traveled with AC was to Williamsport.

For that year, I ran back and forth between campus and the library. One of my friends awed at the way I was able to run out of the library and catch the campus trolley as it was rounding the corner. It was until I left Lock Haven and central Pennsylvania did I regard my time in AC differently. While I wasn’t digging wells or de-worming orphans, it was still good service that is best embodied in the Digital Divide.

It’s Friday

I made my first music purchase suggestion at work (River City Extension) and the Reference Head was told by a patron that I was “very helpful”. We finally removed the circle of comfy chairs at the library that was in the blindspot of the desk.

This is mordidly fascinating, and my co-worker has a bag of Oren’s coffee on his desk. Thus I thought of Casey, but also my great-grandfather (whose name was Orin). My mind is still whirring with everything LC and I learned about our Dad’s family last month. It’s not bad stuff; it’s just strange to go from knowing absolutely nothing to knowing everything. Information Overload.

A week from tomorrow, I am going to San Francisco for a few days. I am worried and excited – The Final Spring Break. (Suggestions are welcome) There’s 9 more weeks in the semester; I am taking a grant writing course over the summer though.

Kanawha school board no longer forced to help fund library

http://dailymail.com/News/Kanawha/201302220097

“It’s about time that the library is no longer going to have a parasitic relationship with the Board of Education,” said school board President Pete Thaw. “It’s always been grossly unfair that we had to give money out of the classroom to support the library.”

That money saved better going to building up the school media resource center, otherwise good luck and good job for thinking of what’s in the best interest of your community and its future, Mr. Thaw.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Until recently, I loathed American Literature. We read so much of it through middle school and high school, and it was always presented in a boring and dry manner. Vividly I recall my sophomore American Lit. class being forced to read The Crucible aloud over the the course of weeks. I preferred British and World Literature classes. Unknown and Unseen Places. Let me get lost in iambic pentameter and Austen’s countryside. I could not care less about who Tom Sawyer convinced to whitewash the fence.

This week I started literacy tutoring again. (sorry for the PTSD flashbacks, Amanda) I signed on before my semester got insane with midterm work (midterms already?!) and considered being put in-limbo status for a while. Then I got the call — one month, GED student, needs help analyzing poetry, fiction, non-fiction, and drama. I did what any sane person would do. Any sane, literature-obsessed person anyway.

We had our first session this past Thursday. We dove right into Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken

“Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.”

Dr. G was my enthusiastic Shakespeare/British Literature professor in college. She expressed to my Shakespeare class once how she can still read Shakespeare after years of studying the Bard’s work and still find new ideas and things she hadn’t noted before. Teaching helped her with that, since every semester brought new minds to the table. While I am no Frostian, I had a moment like that while reading this poem with my student. We picked at and prodded words and phrases. We considered our own roads and discussed Big Ideas. (The theme of Choice resonates with me more now, having had to make choices.) Incredible what can change in readings. My preference remains in British/World Literature, but I welcome any opportunity to read in a new light. 

Prodigal Daughter’s Return

On my (beautiful) drive into work this morning, I wondered what summer will be like in New Jersey.
I haven’t spent a summer in New Jersey since 2010. Back then, I was working at my old library and I just purchased my car. Ally was around. I wasn’t weighed down by the responsibilites of work and school. The following summer, I worked at a library in Pennsylvania. In retrospect, I loved it.

Friday shifts were my favorite. The library was partially-staffed on then since the other half would work that Saturday. There was quiet and calm. We would close at 5 or 6pm — Whenever the last patron found their way out. When the clock struck close, none of us were in a mad-dash to get to our cars and get home though. We would mill around in the staff lot, laughing, talking, and basking in the sunlight that stuck around for a few hours longer than in the winter. I lived a block away from the library.

I walked the same way that Chris rode his bike home. I would watch him pump uphill into the distance. Rarely did I have any plans for the weekend. (Why didn’t I?) That was the glorious summer that I had the West Church apartment to myself. Rachael would come and go though the summer. I made a few trips to Jersey Shore and Williamsport. On Friday night, I would be on our back porch and listen to our neighbors fight. Eventually I would walk to Avenue, but it wasn’t there was anyone there. The same case can be made for my job now. My prodigal return has been interesting.

The summer stock theatre I worked at this past summer emailed me this morning, covertly asking if I would return. I haven’t replied yet, more in avoiding confrontation than actual consideration. (3 weeks of children’s camp? Get real.) Still, there is some lingering appeal in returning to Pennsylvania for another summer of flash thunderstorms, green hills, cheap movie tickets, live theatre, and coffee ice cream from Avenue 209.

I look forward to driving with my windows down though, wherever I am, and the summer reading program, forever and always.

Creative non-fiction interlude

Image

Image Source: Author Sarah Dessen

One of my exes’ mothers had statues like these in her living room. Every room in her home was meticulously well-decorated, from the chair rails to the baseboards. The furniture was rotated in and out with the seasons (or when she got bored of the pieces), and colors were coordinated. One day there were green drinking glasses, when the night before there were blue ones.

Heavy China cabinets laden with old family silver from Italy, and thick floral rugs.

The carpet matched the drapes…and the couch…and the cushions …and the table clothes…

I had never seen such elaborate and ornamental decor before. I was from a world of picture frames and flower vases — things holding or containing other things. Everything had a purpose or sentimental attachment in my house. Nothing existed just because it “pulled the room together.” I don’t like things that don’t have a purpose. I don’t like having things, in general. I think though, as I decorate my own home someday, I’ll look for a pair of statuettes like these though. They recall fond memories.