Women's Work

Taking care of ...my summer reading list

Recently I was told by a physician that I need to find new ways to relieve stress.  He is one of those doctors that has no idea how intimidating his office really is - people come in and he tells them whether or not their brains are functioning properly. So needless to say, when I went in there I was absolutely terrified.  Most of my answers were half answers, or barely that.  I generally couldn't bring myself to speak, so much so that the second time I forced my fiance to come with me, and wrote a list of all the things I meant to say the first time - but still didn't make it through. 

My brain is fine, but this is one of many doctors visits I've been on recently where doctors tell me while I've always thought that I deal well with stress, in actuality my body absorbs it and recently it has reached its max.  So in multiple ways my body is telling me that I need to shape up, deal with my ever increasing stress levels in better ways or else.  Or else what, I ask...but I don't really want to know the answer. 

When the doctor asked me what I do to handle stress on that nervous and intimidating first visit I told him I read, when in fact I read, do crafts (particularly knitting - but I am starting to enjoy scrap booking and paper work a lot too), go for walks, watch movies, cook and bake.  I enjoy many activities is my point - so what type of stress relieving activity is he referring to?  Do I need an aggressive, sporty activity? Because I don't really like sporty activities, I'm a lady of leisure.

It's been a while since I posted, but I find it very therapeutic.  Perhaps I will add this to the list that I have created to prove to my doctor that I am not some laze-about person, and I that I in fact have hobbies that calm my nerves from time to time.  Some times they excite them a little (my hobbies I mean), and perhaps cause more stress, but I think in a good way. 

The books that I have been reading can certainly be called summer reading, and I also am concerned that maybe they don't lend to 'stress relief'.  But I have found a new friend in crime fiction, particularly detective crime fiction.  I'm new at it - so I've started very high brow and I intend to work my way down.  I've always been a fan of crime drama on television, and in the movies.  Film noir is one of my very favorite genres.  I recall Encyclopedia Brown being the first book that I found enjoyment in while reading, well you know - with more words than pictures that is.  I am currently finishing up Paul Auster's New York Trilogy and I'm loving every moment of it.  It is very solitary and provoking. I find myself yelling at the 'detective' in my head as I read.  Is it relieving my stress or creating more?  I'm not sure, but I pity the man that tries to take away my detective books, because at least I've found a place that I can escape to - including from that wretched doctor's office.

Love & Beef and everything in between

So I may have been a little lazy in the last couple months and let my involvement in this blog slide, so in my own translation of this months topic I am going to integrate some of the aspects I was hoping to write about for last month into this months topic...beefs.  I was anticipating a discussion about love and I am going to do that as well, and in doing so I'm going to make a shout out that I'm sure many on this blog can appreciate.  I know I'm engaged and "love is in the air," but I'm tired of talking about that.

I wear two rings pretty regularly, and generally I wear jewelry but it kind of has to mean something.  I don't just wear jewelry if you know what I mean.  Anyhow, I wear two rings.  One is my engagement ring, soon to be joined by my wedding ring - that meaning is clear.  The second is a ring I acquired from the New York Public Library while I was interning there.  It says 'From my Soul' in Cyrillic - or 'Ot Du-shy' for the Russo-phile. That is really the best way to describe my passion for librarianship.  It is from my soul and it is what I have to give.  I know my brand of librarianship is very techie and everything else, but being apart of the larger picture is very important to me. I love feeling like I am apart of what a library does, and that in my mind is also pretty meaty, beefy, or whatever.

I love being a librarian.  There are a lot of annoying aspects of librarianship - but overall, it was probably one of the best decisions I ever made.  Also, its beefy - and in beefs I'm discussing meat - or meaty things and that is librarianship to me. I could also discuss beef, particularly the delicious tacos I made last night for dinner, but a whole blog entry that does not make.

My boss and I regularly discuss our 'meaty' projects that range the spectrum of librarianship.  Archival projects, digitization of rare materials (no pun intended, or was it?), retrospective cataloging, bringing better service to our patrons, statistical analysis of our collections...the list goes on and on.  The forest and the trees, its all here.  Very meaty, or beefy or whatever you want to call it.

You can also suspect that there are plenty of beefs as well.  Librarians can be so feisty!  I went to a library systems conference last week and someone used a quote that I thought was pretty funny - he said 'In education, we usually make the biggest deal about what matters least.' And oh boy did he get that right.  Does it really matter if the imprint and publisher field of a bibliographic record display differently if one of the indicators is different? Really?  Because I'm pretty sure no one else is paying attention except us - and note even most of us at that.  No one cares! Get over it! Maybe you should spend your time better if you got more done instead of paying attention to all the minute details that no one else pays attention to! Yeah, stupid, pointless beefs, that I care so little about and yet still manage to get fired up about those stupid details I hate (but secretly love) so much.

Librarianship has recently (in the last century) been a decidedly woman's profession, but I find that not only is that not true, historically or otherwise, but that if that is what people want to think, let them.  In libraries I have encountered some of the more ingenious, inquisitive, and outstanding minds.  Wit, humor, passion for learning, discussion, hearty debates - they all take place here and mostly without speaking (or are we speaking - haha you will never know!).

Ok, so maybe I do have one major beef.  It's an ageist kind of thing, and many people in my profession have written about creating partnerships between experienced librarians and newbies (like me).  They make the optimist forecasts that we can each learn something from the other and that we shouldn't let stereotypes and prejudices get in the way of working relationships.  Yes, true, however I think the presumptions fall more on the experienced librarians and how they treat people my age - but this isn't something specific to librarianship.  I know I'm a new librarian and I don't need to be reminded that I  could probably learn a thing or two about other people's experiences - professionally or otherwise.  I think everyone can learn from others, not just us youngsters.  I can't tell you how many people have told me how pleasantly surprised they were that I know how to handle myself professionally and personally.  It's a little disheartening and offensive to me because that shows that they doubted my ability to act rationally and responsibly. And someone that isn't really 'with-it'...does that change with age? Often times in professional discussions people will pass over me, assuming that I don't have anything to add or that what I might add isn't of interest to them or the group.  Maybe its true, maybe I am a little naive about things, particularly bureaucracy - but that naivete only induces more outward thinking.  I haven't been constrained by years and years of living within the same box, and in general I find myself to be a pretty creative problem-solver.  So get over it Baby-Boomers - Millennials are coming and we aren't going anywhere, so prepare to share your workspace, figuratively and physically.

Last month Judith Krug passed away, and that was very sad for me professionally.  Talk about beefs, meat, and all the rest!  Fighting for First Amendment Rights is no joke!  Some think that it can be compromised depending on your beliefs, but even if a book is offensive to you doesn't mean that another person shouldn't be aloud to read it - or more importantly shouldn't be given the choice.  She was uncompromising on the subject, and who can blame her - in terms of rights, if you give an inch you can pretty much just throw the whole Bill of Rights out the window.  And many of my friends think I'm over dramatic on the subject, but I remember the Patriot Act and I'm not forgetting the black list or any of the other ridiculous ways that people have wormed around the system to take away the rights of people, citizens or not.

Knowledge is power, so lets get more powerful, and start some more beefs.  I'm never so en-passioned as I am when I get started talking about the different aspects of my profession, the keepers of knowledge, the possessors of all the worlds most precious.  Museum, library, school, university...this is where I want to be, discussing, arguing, and fighting for what I believe - people's rights to educate themselves however they see fit, and preferably in a library. 

Behind door number three: robots.

Learning

Hmm, learning.  I've been having a hard time coming up with something to write about learning.  Do I concentrate on learning something about a close friend, that maybe leaves a sour taste in your mouth.  How all the educators I know don't actually like to do homework.  Or learning that my future husband is really into planning weddings apparently (I think that took even him by surprise).  

So, I'm going with option number three.  

My fiance made special note on the day he asked me to marry him that it was now my turn to labor over this thing (aka our wedding).  When he said that I  figured it was going to be the usual.  I've watched many friends get married over the last couple years and it was always their wedding, not their husbands.  I also think its very much assumed that the lady knows what she wants and the groom should stay out of the way.  But anyhow, how romantic...let me help you put this giant weight on your shoulders.

I was never really that interested in weddings.  They're fun to go to.  I wasn't that girl that had fantasies about your dream wedding.  So when all the bridal magazines told me to close my eyes and imagine...nothing, I got  nothing.  I've learned a lot about myself, my mother, and my guy during all of this.  

Things that I've learned:

I am not a decision maker.  I'm good at finding three really good options, but not choosing between them.  For instance, I bought the wedding dress that I really love, but part of me still wonders, did I make the right choice.

My fiance is really good at making decisions.  I give him three options that I'm ok with and he picks the one that we'll go with.  This has been really handy.

My mother really wants the whole thing, even if she has to pay it off for years to come.  This has been the one time in my life that she hasn't been able to hold back.  We actually got into an argument at a paper store because I didn't want to decide on a color scheme because that feels really feels rigid to me.  Argument, yes, about paper and colors. And she couldn't let got of it, which is unlike her.  At this moment, and during that visit, I learned how lucky I was that my mother never put any of her 'stuff' on me as a child.  She had never even mentioned to me growing up how much she wanted me to get married and how much she wanted to be apart of it. She's lucky my fiance is so excited about planning our wedding, because otherwise I would've taken him to City Hall and been done with it already. And I never would've known how much she wanted this.

I've also learned that everything in my childhood had a larger purpose for her.  We used to rotate weekend between the grandparents.  One weekend with my dad's side and the next at Yaya's (that's Greek for grandmother, but she was my great and not Greek).  I always thought it was because she needed time to herself, but now that I think about it I think she missed having that time when she was a kid and she knew how important it was to them to have us around.  But now I know that's how it has to be for my kids, whenever that happens.  It was some of the fondest times of my childhood, because, well, you get away with everything at Grandma's and I got to eat cookies every night before bed.  And most of all, I want her to have that too.  

I've also learned that my fiance, soon to be husband, future father of my children, is kind of crazy into weddings.  He likes to give me a lot of the credit, but really, he's been there through every decision besides my dress. He's been my sounding board, and I his. We've decided to put a lot of ourselves into this wedding, mostly because we've been to generic ones and they were aw-ful. He picked out the paper...yes, he picked out the paper.  I took him to the store that Emily introduced to me, where my mother and I got into the colors argument and he stepped up to the plate and picked the paper and colors.  He's really excited about making the invitations [he's having a comic book artist friend help us out, and yes there will be robots, many robots], buying a new suit, cake and food tastings, and hanging out with the guys in our families to get ready.  He also wants us to write our own vows.  I sh*t you not.  One night he looked at me and he said, 'I want us to write our own vows, because I really want to look you in the eye and tell you how I feel about you in front of everyone close to us.'  Seriously, he said that, and all I could think was 'he's crazy!'...overall I've learned that he's more like a woman and one of us needs to be in all this.  I'm going to let him have it, because otherwise my mom's dreams aren't going to come true, and well he's really excited.  It's adorable.  And truth be told, if it means that I get him for the rest of my life, then it's worth it.

I approach this as a list of tasks that need to get done in a timely fashion, mostly so when people pick my brain about what's happening I'll have answers for them.  I'm a librarian, it's in my nature to want to answer people's questions.  But he has a hard time following things through to the end, so I handle that and the organization.  But I've also learned that I'm not that patient, so all of it needs to be done now.  So you could say I've learned my place in this...I'm the middleman between my future husband, my mother, and making their dream wedding a reality, robots, favors, color schemes, and all.

And God said, let us repopulate the earth

Family...does anyone else struggle with family as much as I do? This Thanksgiving I'm going to Kansas City. My mother is throwing my fiance and me an engagement party. I find it somewhat ironic that we're having the engagement party in Kansas City, because neither me or my mother lives in Kansas City, and in general we both have a lot of contempt for it, and, yes, mostly due to family, my father's side mostly. I haven't been to KC in over two years, and I haven't seen my dad's side of the family in about four.

Kansas City is a pretty interesting place, now that I'm able to step back and try to enjoy it without all the adolescent rage. Surprisingly Kansas (a state that I hate with more passion than most things) was actually founded on some of the most liberal principles conceived of at that time. No slaves, no talk about enslaving, and any run-away was welcome. Things have changed. I say this because I think my disdain for my family and Kansas City are held in the same location of my heart. Although, as I get older I think this is changing.

My paternal side, for lack of a better phrase, are Italian rednecks. Most of the men in my family live in Kansas, own big trucks, go hunting, have big noses and jet black hair, had their first (and sometimes second) child out of wedlock, and married a woman with big and/or crunchy hair. My brother was the first man on the paternal side to go to college. However, the ambition of the women on my dad's side knows no bounds by comparison. But of course we are told to know our place. Not being considerate to our priorities at home would bring dishonor to our family (and I say this with more cynicism than can be held by these parenthesis). Strangely, it makes the thirst for success and accomplishment greater. I never understood how a matriarch could have that much hypocritical power, but my grandmother does and she embraces it.

With the election looming, I think about them a lot. I think of what their perceptions of me must be, and of my perceptions of them. My grandmother liked her boys to date either nice Italian girls or blondes. To this day I have harsh feelings toward the very blonde. My mother is Greek, so you can imagine how well that went over. Going a shade darker was not what my grandmother had in mind for her youngest. She had a pretty little blonde girl from Shawnee on ice, but he wasn't biting.

Ever since I was old enough to know that I could leave Kansas City, I knew I was leaving. The thought of being trapped inside the Palmisano cage terrified me. But they all love it, everything 'stays in the family'. My mother didn't want to invite kids to the engagement party, but my grandmother insisted that no one would come, because baby-sitting 'stays in the family'. I used to resent them, mostly because of their blatant racism, constant judgment, and lack of ambition. But by the time I moved to New York I started to understand them more. They were scared, and probably have been ever since my great-grandfather sailed to New Orleans from Sicily, and even before that. But it always 'stays in the family,' so no matter what they'll never be alone. And if dooms day ever occurs they can repopulate the earth at no additional charge.

'You don't have to have a penis to be a genius.'

That was a phrase used during a 1985 MoMA re-opening protest for not representing enough female artists (only 16 out of 130+ artists). I went to a talk today by a feminist artist, and this is one of the many things she shared with us while she was reading out of her new memoir. The artist was Sabra Moore. She does mostly sewn work, because she finds the act of joining materials to be the most important. She also grew up in a family of quilters in western Texas. She lived in New York for a long time (during feminist art movement) and recently moved to New Mexico. I thought this was a pretty great phrase, so why not share it with a group of lady bloggers, I thought it would be appreciated here, if no where else.

So I guess I'm doing this now. I just wanted to save this and come back to it later, but it posted it, so here we go.

Introducing Jennifer.

Hello, my name is Jennifer and I'm a librarian. Most of the time when I say that out loud I feel like I'm at an AA meeting, or maybe an alcoholic admitting to a new friend that I'm an alcoholic. Then you gauge the reaction. Many people get really turned off at the idea and others have the opposite reaction. Then said person usually asks what's that like, to be a librarian. The conversation can go two ways, either they're uncomfortable and assume I have a really high nerd level (which I do) and they ask what about my favorite book (Brothers Karamazov or 100 years of Solitude), or they ask what exactly a librarian does. Almost instantaneously as I begin explaining what I do, they look like their heads are going to explode.

I'm in my mid-twenties and I've moved around a lot. I was born in then West Germany. Moved to Kentucky, and then Kansas City, Missouri. Between kindergarten and senior year of high school we moved 9 times. Needless to say, I was always the new girl at school. Then I hit the ground running. As early as I was able to understand that I could leave Kansas City that's all I wanted to do. So I moved to Washington State for college (discovered a hatred for hippies), traveled in Russia for a little while (drank way too much), and then New York for my masters. But don't be confused, I'm not German, I'm Greek and Sicilian. To say the least, a family event is never lacking in energy, but I do think that first one almost made my future husband's head explode. Which brings me to the next topic...

I'm engaged and planning a wedding. I met Brian in college, and we've been dating about seven years. We've been engaged for about five months and we're getting married in a year, and I have most of the wedding planned. I think it freaks some people out how organized I've been about the whole thing, but really what it comes to is something very key to my personality. I don't like to be hassled. The second we got engaged every close member of our family wanted to know about where we were getting married, have you set a date, have you bought your dress, have you picked out colors, and the list goes on...We had only been engaged for a matter of days and I was expected to have bought a dress? Seriously?! So I took the nagging as my green light, and I've planned most of the wedding at this point. Take that grandma.

I'm a knitter. I'm sure your librarian stereotypes are running wild. My great loves in life are my boys (Captain Ahab and Ivan the Terrible, yes they're cats, and my future husband), my mom, and reading. My body has recently been rejecting lactose and I personally take offense. To add insult to injury, I also LOVE to bake. There's something about vegan baking that just seems wrong, but if I must. I also have a fondness for Russian history (hence Ivan the Terrible) and music. I like looking at art but not talking about it, which might seem weird considering the opening of this post. I fly through art museums at an alarming rate. What can I say, I know what I like. I'm also an amateur political analyst, but I try to be polite. If there's one thing my mother taught me (which is a understatement since my mother is a teacher) it's you never talk about religion or politics in polite conversation. I'll wait until we get to at least second base for that, even though some assumptions could be made about where my sympathies lie.