The One Where I Avoid Discussing Libraries

Oh, I know I’ve been inexcusably absent. Life has been crazy, of course, but I’ve also been feeling sort of…meh. You know? Particularly about librarianship, lately. Between Annoyed Librarian here and here, The Monkey Speaks here, and my own feelings about the Marathon County issue, I’m just feeling sort of desperate and sad about being a librarian. Never fear, this is just a temporary funk. I’ll be back to my cheery self soon. Since I’m dealing, I won’t be talking about libraries today.

So what does one do when feeling icky and down? Eat! Of course! And read about eating! Well, at least that’s what I do and, if you don’t, then you should start. Few things can bring you greater pleasure than eating, truly.

As I mentioned, I’ve been eating (and drinking) a lot at The Ginger Man. Read my review.

I had a fascinating conversation (to me, anyway) with a friend of mine over wine, salad, and chili at Tavern on Jane last weekend (because Corner Bistro still remains elusive). I’ll call this friend L—. L— and I share a mutual loathing of sleeping; we consider it a waste of our time and wish we could put those 8 hours a day to better use. So imagine my surprise when L— tells me that she feels the same way about food. Say what?!?! How could anyone feel that about food?! Even when I was 20 pounds heavier and 10 years younger, I still derived enormous pleasure from movie popcorn, Velveeta, and eating an entire baguette in one sitting. Good food, good times. But how can anyone just…not care?! How can anyone say that they’d be perfectly happy if they never needed to eat?! After some probing we ended up talking about her very Puritanical upbringing, where one was not supposed to get pleasure from one’s body, one’s sexuality, or one’s food. Pleasure, in general, was frowned upon and denied oneself. Once L—explained it that way, it made sense because many of us struggle with these issues, with America’s Puritanical history. Not to mention, we – generally speaking – have this weird idea about punishing ourselves when we feel pleasure, or in anticipation of feeling pleasure. How else can you explain our weird gym obsession? “Oh god, I had two pieces of pizza last night!” Hop on a treadmill and punish yourself until you’ve burned off all those calories, thus negating your sin. Or “I’m going to have a big dinner tonight – I better pay for it now” and hop on that Stairmaster to punish yourself beforehand. Now, don’t get me wrong: I do believe there are people who get pleasure from the gym and its culture. But I don’t think that’s the norm. Nevertheless, there really needs to be a stop to this mentality of pleasure deprivation and self-punishment. Life awaits.

I gushed about Lucy’s Kitchen Notebook earlier and her tour of Lyon’s farmers’ markets. She has another market profile up: Marché Guichard. Read it and weep at the gorgeousness.

Anyone have any cookbook recommendations? I believe I mentioned before that I was getting a little burned out on Food Network cookbooks, and that’s how I discovered The French Market by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde. But now I’ve realized I’m bored with French and Italian cuisine. Seriously, that’s all I ever do. I need to branch out! I love Latino food, at least the milder versions. I’ll make that the focus of my next cookbook purchase, and feel free to make any suggestions.

I just finished reading From Here, You Can’t See Paris: seasons a French village and its restaurant by Michael S. Sanders. I’ll have a proper review up soon but, if you’re looking for a quiet, lovely, cozy read about French village life – its beauty, its complications, its simplicity, its trappings – then you’ll thoroughly enjoy this.

Is anyone else sick of root vegetables? Yeah, me too.

I have no clue what I’m making for dinner tonight. Sometimes I think about how much easier life would be if I were sans the husband and kiddo, and here’s why: I have a gorgeous, glistening ball of mozzarella di bufala in my fridge right now. If it were just me tonight, I would slice it up, sprinkle it with salt and pepper, drizzle my fresh new green olive oil on it, and finish it by sprinkling my sweet, syrupy balsamic vinegar on it. And that would be my dinner, with a glass of wine. Alas, I have to come up with something, you know, real for dinner. My grumbling aside, I prefer my life as it is. I’ll get so much more joy and pleasure using my creativity tonight and dining with my two favorite people on earth.

Bon appétit!

I earned my MLS and all they gave me was this stinkin' shirt

Walter Minkel, over at The Monkey Speaks, has an alarming post up right now. Wausau, WI has demoted all of its librarians (all of the Librarian I positions, anyway). Instead of Librarian I, they will now be “customer service librarians,” which also comes with – BAM! – a $10k annual pay cut.

This, of course, is part of a reorganization to save the flailing budget of the city. The library director, Phyllis Christenson is quoted in the Wausau Daily Herald as saying, “I would rather keep people on staff at a lower pay than fire somebody.” Well, dur! Once again, this is an example of library upper management coming to a half-assed decision because they’re afraid to make the difficult choice and have the difficult conversation. Never mind that you’ll have people on your staff who are undervalued and demoted so you have to guess that the morale at the Marathon County Library System is swell, right? Right? Sheesh. Not to mention that Christenson also states this reason for the reorg: “Librarians today do less complex work, she said -- calling for pay adjustments and more technological assistance.” Whoa. That smells like a cop-out to me. A big, ol’ stinky one. I have seen nothing but evidence to the contrary in my own day-to-day job. Nevertheless, library science/information science programs nationwide should pay attention – if library directors are seeing our work as relevant, then Master’s programs will need to double-time to make sure that they’re producing librarians well-versed in all things relevant to libraries today…like how to be a manager or a director.

I can only hope that this is not going to be a trend elsewhere in the country. I can only hope that this is just the misguided attempts of some Midwest councilpeople and library directors to save their own jobs. Otherwise, that Master’s degree in Food Studies at NYU is starting to look more and more promising…

For an alternate perspective, check out the Annoyed Librarian's post about this.