Last Tuesday, January 6, as I walked out of the hospital in New Mexico where my mother is staying due to a series of medical events — a planned hip replacement, followed by an unplanned stroke and then a very unplanned leg fracture — I saw two huge Christmas trees in the hospital lobby — […]
So, about my writing. I mean my literary-essay writing, not blog posts or journo-style magazine writing or academic writing. I’ve spent the past year: Moping over the breakup of my writing group, Pursuing several professional goals that required intense study of un-fun stuff but were also convenient excuses for not writing, and Feeling sorry for […]
In a week I turn 55. Turning 30 was delightful; stationed in Germany, I took myself on a tour of the Benelux, and on the Big Day, wandered enchanted through the Kroller-Muller museum. I was thrilled to leave the twenties behind. Turning 40 was sweet; we were in New Jersey, Sandy threw a party, and […]
A friend of ours, Rachel Dowell, died last weekend after a long and dignified battle with cancer. Rachel was able to hold on long enough to witness an important life event, and then Cancer won out. Friends, relatives, even pets who depart leave not only ghostly trails of their presence in our lives, faint footprints […]
That’s what I’m doing right now, ensconced in my window seat in coach on my flight home, playing Aretha Franklin’s “Young, Gifted, and Black” tuned up loud enough to drown out the food-smackers behind me while I tidy up trip reports and budget forecasts and put the buff on a small preservation planning grant. But […]
Last weekend on Twitter I saw a post: “Tell me your favorite books on failing and failure, especially as it relates to innovation and leadership.” I responded with this comment: “another blog post I don’t have time 2 write: how failure is overrated, & often confused w iterative design.” I got up a little earlier […]
People have been asking me about my arrival and my route. I am driving to Oakland by way of Des Moines (Sandy to me: “Stop saying “Dez Moinz!”), due to a longstanding agreement to do a general session and a breakout session on October 23 at the Iowa Library Association conference. Not exactly the direct […]
We’re headed back to California! I have a job as library director at Holy Names University in Oakland, starting October 30. Ok, to put this news in context… A few months back Sandy and I had a series of family discussions, and we realized that we were in agreement on a change of strategy to […]
I have all these grand thoughts I want to blog about, but I’m either bogged down in micro/maco work stuff or I’m doing personal writing of the long, non-bloggy type, or I am reading. Once in a while I do something beer-related, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Under duress, I clean and garden. Maybe it’s […]
I got asked at Midwinter what I thought about the decision to move Librarians’ Internet Index to Drexel, from a project run by paid contractors to a student-run project. The person who asked me sounded as if there were concerns I might be annoyed or upset. I gave the questioner one-third of my full response. […]