Cycho Librarian

Ten years ago we all received an unimaginable shock. Everyone responded to this differently, but for me there have always been two main outlets when I'm dealing with something that extreme: music and writing. After September 11, 2001 I tried to put what I was thinking and feeling into words, really just for myself. I've carried the result around in a portfolio ever since, and it seems fitting to share on the tenth anniversary. New Phoenix I saw them once before— Atlasian pillars thrusting up against the dome In the futility of concrete, Pretending that the day begins And ends because we said so. So this is what we’ve wrought, O Beautiful for Pilgrim’s Dreams— The roar of our invention still echoes down the canyons. Thine Alabaster Cities Gleam a little less Now stained by human tears. Who were we to tempt the sin of Babel? The peoples of a thousand tongues Thrown all together in one place As though the color green were Word enough To reunite the sons of Abr...

A combination of my entry from yesterday, a most excellent commentary by Daniel Schorr last night, the holiday today, a drive to Cincinnati, and a piece on NPR in the car about The Great Gatsby made me realize an important truth about America. No matter how messed up we seem, no matter how insane Wall Street, corporations, major Industry, and all the rest seem to have gotten, what makes us who we are and what makes us strong is the vast majority of the population known as middle America. Where Gatsby comes into this is in the undercurrent behind the New York glitterati in the novel. What I realized in the car on hearing an extended passage is that the crux of the novel isn't Gatsby's death. Nick's final meeting with his father demonstrates that Gatsby is just a casualty of bigger problem. The crux of the novel comes with Nick's recollection of heading west from the east coast for the holidays. As he gradually recedes from the insanity that is New York into the sma...

One of the perks of working in a library is that you get to see all the oddball crap that somehow manages to get through agents, editors, and publishers and still wind up on paper. This can range from the fairly mundane Ann Coulteresque baseless rants (like the gem I saw on the shelves the other day for the first time: "Women who make the world worse : and how their radical feminist assault is ruining our families, military, schools and sports." Now there's a page-turner), to the outright freaky ("Children of the matrix : how an interdimensional race has controlled the world for thousands of years-- and still does." I'm not making this up. ISBN 9780953881017). The fact that this stuff gets published means there must be some sort of market for it, and the fact that the library owns it means either that people requested the title be added or one of our sele...