Friday Night Burns

A Red, Red Rose

[Hear Red, Red Rose]
1794

O my Luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June: O my Luve's like the melodie, That's sweetly play'd in tune. As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I; And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry. Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun; And I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run. And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve! And fare-thee-weel, a while! And I will come again, my Luve, Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

Thursday Night Whitman

Calamus  [In Paths Untrodden] by Walt Whitman
In paths untrodden, In the growth by margins of pond-waters, Escaped from the life that exhibits itself, From all the standards hitherto publish'd, from the    pleasures, profits, conformities, Which too long I was offering to feed my soul, Clear to me now standards not yet publish'd, clear to me    that my soul, That the soul of the man I speak for rejoices in comrades, Here by myself away from the clank of the world, Tallying and talk'd to here by tongues aromatic, No longer abash'd, (for in this secluded spot I can respond    as I would not dare elsewhere,) Strong upon me the life that does not exhibit itself, yet    contains all the rest, Resolv'd to sing no songs to-day but those of manly    attachment, Projecting them along that substantial life, Bequeathing hence types of athletic love, Afternoon this delicious Ninth-month in my forty-first    year, I proceed for all who are or have been young men, To tell the secret of my nights and days, To celebrate the need of comrades.

More lives here.

In Praise of TSCPL

It occurs to us that we are sometimes too harsh on the Masters of Library Science and our town's public library.  We don't get out much these days, especially to public libraries in other parts of the world, so we miss a lot of the administrative drama that goes on between beleaguered library boards and outraged parents over things like access to pornography on the library's computers.

That said, we're just glad that we don't live in someplace like Orland Park, Illinois, where the Masters of Library science think they have to post notices like this on their web site:

The warning begins,

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it often empowers irresponsible people to make claims and accusations that have very little to do with the truth. So for all our patrons, and residents of Orland Park, here are the FACTS.

About six weeks ago, two non-residents made false and very unfair characterizations about the library and its employees. One of them allegedly saw a patron viewing offensive material on a computer in the adult section and subsequently made public accusations that the library was an unsafe place for children or anyone to visit. Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

The whole thing lives at the other end of the link.
Of course, not everyone agrees.  Blogress Linda has this to say:

Porn at the Orland Park Public Library and of COURSE they attack the messengers

They uploaded a WARNING.  A WARNING!  OMG!  They are actually warning people about the two people that brought the porn to light.  Here is the gig.  They need a PR Crisis intervention.  They are handling this so wrong, that other past employees that I know are thinking about coming out and talking, too. 

OPPL- STOP!  You are mudslinging and setting the next stage for a full-blown SNL skit.  It was bad enough SNL poked fun at you on the big Lady Gaga hosting night.  I had not watched SNL in months but did not want to miss the Lady Gaga episode.  Proved to be better than I thought when Seth Myers suddenly starts talking about the Chicago Library with the porn problems.

The whole thing lives here.
From this distance, it looks like both sides have a point.  But the relative merits of each side are obscured by the bunker mentality adopted by a best and brightest head librarian, an out of touch and complacent library board determined to maintain their ancient privilege under attack by the hoi polloi, both of them seeking to use the full repressive machinery of the State in their defense of intellectual freedom and an increasing number of outraged mothers of small children using the as-yet-unregulated freedom of speech accorded by the internet to keep certain library materials away from certain library patrons.
Irony abounds, as it often does.  What we're happy about is that we don't have to try to use a library that has descended into the kind of toxic dysfunction and acrimony that seems to prevail in Orland Park.

Nixon

While browsing in the public library I came across several fascinating books. Only a historian or a fellow bibliophile would find them interesting. Cities of the World: A Compilation of Current Information on Cultural, Geographical, and Political Conditions in the Countries and Cities of Six Continents  (4 vol) and Rivers of the World: A Social, Geographical, and Environmental Sourcebook. I learned a bunch of things about cities and rivers. I'm sure they (the books)cost as much as a grand piano and are just about as heavy so I personally would not buy one. However, UNCLE PAVIAN and I take some time to browse when we go to the library and we pick up a ton of information that occasionally comes in handy,particularly Uncle Pavian who never forgets anything he reads and never (well almost never) remembers ANYBODY he sees. Some memory he has! A woman where I worked told me about a little white kitten that was the"cutest" she had ever seen and it was at the pound. So I told Uncle Pavian about it and he being a concerned and dutiful husband forthwith went to the pound to get the kitten. When he returned to get me from work the back seat contained a rather large red dog. Before I got in the car I saw a long red tail and commented to Uncle Pavian that this was the strangest looking white cat I had ever seen. Uncle Pavian said simply, "His name is Nixon".
 He grew until he was a pretty big dog. He was gentle and sweet and smarter than most people I know. He had pretty much solved the door knob problem. Then there were the rats. We had a real rat problem,but Nixon solved it. He would pounce on one, bite once,drop it and check to see if it was dead. Then he would walk away. And he did the same thing to a possum who had come into the house. About 4 in the morning we were suddenly awakened by lots of barking from the other dogs and a hissing sound. Uncle Pavian jumped out of bed and ran into the hall.
 A large raccoon had come in through the cat door and Nixon met him. He was slamming the raccoon against the door. Needless to say he was quite dead. It frightened me because I had heard a big raccoon could tear up almost any dog. Nixon had one tiny little scratch under one eye. And the raccoon did not even break the skin. Nixon died a few years ago and we still miss him and talk about him. He certainly was the greatest dog ever.
 This is sort of a tribute to a great dog and

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