Free Range Librarian

(An essay about household moves. It helps to know that at this point in the move I have lost my right slipper.)
Sandy sobbed when she gave away her cross-country skis a couple of weeks ago. “It’s the end of that part of my life,” she said. A neighbor we called in for a second opinion [...]

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(An essay about women, guns, and desire. I hasten to add, if you’re reading these in order, I am not a gun nut, not that it would be so awful if I were; the gun-related excerpts from my essays just make for attention-getting call-outs.)
On the weapons range I lay prone, my gun ready. I silently [...]

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We decided to beat Ernesto to the punch, wherever he was going, and pushed to get to Tallahassee a day and a half ahead of schedule. It’s been a good trip (and I’m not done–I soon return to California, wrap things up, then fly back). I’m going to put up my feet and read a [...]

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(An essay about transitioning to civilian life, framed around a cross-country trip.)
In his hands, big as briskets, the box of bullets was plain as plain could get, a small tan cardboard box with numbers on the side. But the gun was flat-out sexy: a classic six-chamber Colt .38 with a 4” barrel, perfectly tooled, [...]

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(Two captains, a dying dog, military red tape, and a stolen truck, all set in Korea.)
Three months into my tour, I meet Pat in the laundry room of our barracks one evening, a few days after she arrives at Suwon. A pilot had alerted me that a new lady captain was on base. Out of [...]

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(”Chow” is an essay about food and military life.)
When I got away from Hahn [Airbase], it was as far as I could get, not so much in miles from base as in distance from the endless war training machine, in search of beer and skittles, hungry for another adventure.
I didn’t have to go far. [...]

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(An essay about the life’s ceremonies, planned and accidental.)
As a low-ranking airman, [during exercises] I was usually placed on night-time bomb build-up detail, assembling the practice bombs similar to the bombs that in real war we would hang off our fighters and drop on the Enemy. I liked war games, and I adored bomb build-up. [...]

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(An essay about learning military lingo.)
“You don’t wanna be an airman no more, get yerselves promoted to SERGEANT!” shouted Sergeant Strale. On reflection, this was practical, even empowering advice. Only in the last ten years had the armed forces lifted the ceiling on women in the military (formerly limited to two percent of the corps), [...]

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(An essay about joining the military, and moving on in life.)
In 1983, New York City had one of those eye-blink springs where one day you are holding earmuffs against your frozen skull, teeth chattering as you pray for the M101 bus to arrive, and the next you are digging musty sundresses out of the back [...]

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Want to juice up your library’s services? Try this five-week course to be offered next spring by a great team of librarians. Or perhaps you have someone on your staff who would like to present or otherwise help make this event happen. A few hours of their time would be a good contribution to the [...]

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