ARCS: New Batch!

Tags

advance reader copies, fantasy, goodreads, historical fiction, history, novels, reading, reading for fun, science fiction

• Words Without Music, by Philip Glass (left over from previous haul, released April 2015) I remember enjoying the Fresh Air interview with Philip Glass about this book, but I just couldn’t get into the book itself.
  
• The Tiger in the House, by Jacqueline Sheehan (Released March 2017) Took a turn at the end that I wasn’t expecting – threads came together nicely.
  
• A Crown of Wishes, by Roshani Chokshi (released March 28, 2017) I am so in love with this series I can’t even begin to tell you. IT IS AWESOME EVERYONE SHOULD READ IT THAT IS ALL.
  
• Sins of Empire, by Brian McClellan (released March 7, 2017)
• The Arrangement, by Sarah Dunn (released March 21, 2017) A married couple with a possibly spectrum-y kid decides to try an open marriage for six months, and unsurprisingly, Stuff happens.
• The Girl With the Make-Believe Husband, by Julia Quinn (Undated)
• Dark Saturday, by Nicci French (Undated)
• I Need a Lifeguard Everywhere But the Pool, by Lisa Scottoline and Francesca Serritella (Undated). 303 pages of generic tripe. Nothing to see here, folks. Move along. 
• The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness, by Paula Poundstone (May 2017) Definitely brought me some happiness.
• News of the World, by Paulette Jiles (Undated) Read in entirety during my flight back from the conference. A Western that is both simple and complex simultaneously. Made me well up at the end.
• Ascension of Larks, by Rachel Linden (June 20, 2017)
  
• Unraveling (Unblemished, Book 2), by Sara Ella (July 11, 2017) First one was okay, second one is pretty clunky.
  
• The Writing Desk, by Rachel Hauck (July 11, 2017) Kind of heavy-handed with the Christian elements of the story, but a good story nonetheless.
  
• Sons and Soldiers: The Untold Story of the Jews Who Escaped the Nazis and Returned with the U.S. Army to Fight Hitler, by Bruce Henderson (July 2017) Completely fascinating story of specially-trained multilingual interrogators in WWII. A local author, too!
  
• The Lost Ones, by Sheena Kamal (July 2017) Darker than I usually like, but featuring a compelling main character. Well done.
  
• Séance Infernale, by Jonathan Skariton (August 2017)
• Hate to Want You, by Alisha Rai (August 2017)
• Are You Sleeping, by Kathleen Barber (August 1, 2017)
• The Heart’s Invisible Furies, by John Boyne (August 2017)
• My Absolute Darling, by Gabriel Tallent (August 29, 2017)
• Any Dream Will Do, by Debbie Macomber (August 8, 2017)
• The Cottingley Secret, by Hazel Gaynor (August 2017)
• The Arsonist, by Stephanie Oakes (August 2017)
• The Half-Drowned King, by Linnea Hartsuyker (August 2017)
• The People at Number 9, by Felicity Everett (August 8, 2017) Life is too short to read books that don’t engage you.
  
• The Girl with Kaleidoscope Eyes, by David Handler (August 2017)
• Pieces of Happiness, by Anne Ostby (August 2017)
• The Quiet Child, by John Burley (August 2017) Dark. Plays on the paranoia that can develop from the human brain’s tendency to find patterns. 
• Unraveling Oliver, by Liz Nugent (August 22, 2017)
• Sip, by Brian Allen Carr (August 2017)
• Rebellion, by Molly Patterson (August 2017)
• A Stranger in the House, by Shari Lapena (August 15, 2017)
• The Blinds, by Adam Sternbergh (August 2017)
• The Daughters of Ireland, by Santa Montefiore (August 2017)
• Dinner at the Center of the Earth, by Nathan Englander (September 2017)
• Right Where You Left Me, by Calla Devlin (September 2017)
• Solar Bones, by Mike McCormack (September 2017)
• The Blind, by A.F. Brady (September 26, 2017)
• The Space Between Words, by Michèle Phoenix (September 5, 2017)
• Keep Her Safe, by Sophie Hannah (September 2017)
• The Child Finder, by Rene Denfeld (September 2017)
• The Thing With Feathers, by McCall Hoyle (releases Sept. 5, 2017)
• The Way to London, by Alix Rickloff (September 2017)
• Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years, by David Litt (September 2017)
• Something Like Happy, by Eva Woods (September 5, 2017)
• The Golden House, by Salman Rushdie (September 5, 2017)
• A Casualty of War (Bess Crawford Mystery #9), by Charles Todd (September 2017)
• Fever, by Deon Meyer (September 2017)
• The It Girls, by Karen Harper (October 2017)
• House of Shadows, by Nicola Cornick (October 17, 2017)
• The Rift Frequency (Rift Uprising Trilogy #2), by Amy S. Foster (October 2017)
• The Last Mrs. Parrish, by Liv Constantine (October 2017)
• Bonfire, by Krysten Ritter (November 2017)
• The Gift, by Shelley Shepard Gray (November 2017)
• The Library at the Edge of the World, by Felicity Hayes-McCoy (November 2017)
• The City of Brass, by S. A. Chakraborty (November 2017)
• The Black Painting, by Neil Olson (January 9, 2018)
• Everything Here is Beautiful, by Mira T. Lee (January  16, 2018)
• The Last Suppers, by Mandy Mikulencak (January 2018)
• All Things Bright and Strange, by James Markert (January 30, 2018)
• Tarnished City (Dark Gifts Trilogy #2), by Vic James (February 6, 2018)
• Rosie Colored Glasses, by Brianna Wolfson (February 20, 2018)
• The House of Impossible Beauties, by Joseph Cassara (February 2018)
• Tangerine, by Christine Mangan (March 2018)

DAYS UNTIL I PICK UP THE NEXT BATCH OF ARCS: 226 (ALA Midwinter 2018, Feb. 9-13)

Five Years On

Tags

Affordable Care Act, exercise, fibroids, health, mental-health, personal, women's health

POSSIBLY TMI ALERT, but I want to say it.

On Sunday I took a nearly four-mile hike by myself – it was a lovely, responsibility-free day, after a lot of rainy, busy weekends, and I suddenly found myself thinking of the Dish Trail in the foothills by Stanford University. It’s got some steep ups and downs, enough to get the breath panting and the sweat flowing, but not enough to be utterly miserable. Normally I kind of hate hiking, so I really can’t say why this suddenly jumped into my head as a good idea.

But I did it. I took my ipod and had my phone and my car keys in my pocket, and set my own pace. I rested when I wanted to and didn’t care how often other people passed me. It took me an hour and a half, and on some of those final downhill stretches, I felt the shakiness that comes from tired legs on steep downhills. My step count for the day was over 13,000.

Today I did half an hour of biking AND walked nearly 11,000 steps. I’m still sore and stiff from Sunday’s hike, and I know I’ll be stiff and sore tomorrow with today’s exertion on top of it. My normal daily step count these days tends to fall between 6 and 7 thousand, so these two days have been unusual for me.

You might be wondering why I’m bothering to post about this. One of my coworkers asked why I was still marveling over being sore today when the hike was two days ago.

I’ve been thinking about that. And you see, it’s because at some level I’m astonished that I’m able to do this.

Almost exactly five years ago, the pain and blood loss resulting from uterine fibroids smacked into me like a ton of bricks. I’d stuck to a diet for a month at that point. I’d lost twelve pounds. And suddenly even standing long enough to cook a simple meal started the bleeding and the pain again. Forget exercise. I was afraid to move.

Pain led to fear. Fear led to avoidance. Avoidance became habit. It’s been five years, and I’ve had two surgeries to remove fibroids in that time. I don’t think I ever believed that I wouldn’t get past them, but when I was in the middle of it, it was so hard to see when it would end. I got caught up in the final months of the pre-ACA health care system, when even having had a fibroid removed within the past year was grounds for automatic rejection when applying for coverage. I couldn’t figure out how to get the surgery I needed without going several thousands of dollars in debt. I stopped dancing. I started avoiding social events because I was embarrassed about my frequent need for the bathroom and the fact that I had to carry several pads with me whenever I left the house even for a couple hours. I grew lonelier and sank further into depression because of pain, fear, and isolation.

And now here I am. Heavier than I was before this started, yes. As out of shape as I was before, and possibly more so. Still trying to reconstruct a social life. But I’m employed. I’m deeply worried about the ACA, but for now I have health insurance. I’m in therapy and on an antidepressant. Hormonal birth control and regular checkups have stabilized things. I have faith it will never again get as bad as it was in 2012 and 2013.

And this week, on each of two of the heaviest days of this month’s period, I walked over 10,000 steps.

I talk about it because I’m grateful, and because it’s a fact in which I can finally see how far I’ve come.

Meditation

Tags

anxiety, breathing, meditation, prayer, religion, spirituality, stress management, Thoughts, yom kippur

Slow me down, Adonai.

Ease the pounding of my heart

By the quieting of my mind.

Steady my hurried pace

With a vision of the eternal reach of time.

Give me, amidst the confusion of my day,

The calmness of the everlasting hills.

Break the tension of my nerves

With the soothing music of the singing streams

That live in my memory.

Help me to know

The magical restoring power of sleep.

Teach me the art

Of taking minute vacations of slowing down

to look at a flower;

to chat with an old friend or make a new one;

to pat a stray dog;

to watch a spider build a web;

to smile at a child;

or to read a few lines from a good book.

Remind me each day

That the race is not always to the swift;

That there is more to life than increasing its speed.

Let me look upward

Into the branches of the towering oak

And know that it grew great and strong

Because it grew slowly and well.

Slow me down, Adonai;

And inspire me to send my roots deep

Into the soil of life’s enduring values

That I may grow toward the stars

Of my greater destiny.

 

— Machzor Mateh Naftali

Rosh Hashanah

Tags

high holy days, personal, reflection, religion, rosh hashanah, t'shuvah, Unetaneh Tokef

Let us ask ourselves hard questions
For this is the time for truth.

How much time did we waste
In the year that is now gone?

Did we fill our days with life
Or were they dull and empty?

Was there love inside our home
Or was the affectionate word left unsaid?

Was there a real companionship with our children
Or was there a living together and a growing apart?

Were we a help to our mates
Or did we take them for granted?

How was it with our friends:
Were we there when they needed us or not?

The kind deed: did we perform it or postpone it?
The unnecessary gibe: did we say it or hold it back?

Did we live by false values?
Did we deceive others?
Did we deceive ourselves?

Were we sensitive to the rights and feelings
Of those who worked for us?

Did we acquire only possessions
Or did we acquire new insights as well?

Did we fear what the crowd would say
And keep quiet when we should have spoken out?

Did we mind only our own business
Or did we feel the heartbreak of others?

Did we live right,
And if not,
Then have we learned, and will we change?

— An interpretation of Unetaneh Tokef by Jack Riemer

Birthday

Tags

birthday, poem, thirty, tuesday's child

Monday’s child is fair of face,

Tuesday’s child is full of grace,

Wednesday’s child is full of woe,

Thursday’s child has far to go,

Friday’s child is loving and giving,

Saturday’s child works hard for a living,

But the child who is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonnie and blithe and good and gay.

Thirty years ago, September 16 was a Tuesday. I really must try to trip over air less frequently. 

See How the Fates Their Gifts Allot

Tags

community, entertainment, Gilbert and Sullivan, Lamplighters, memory, mikado, nostalgia, Stanford Savoyards, stanford university, thinking

There is something thrilling about the sound of an orchestra tuning. It’s a sound that announces the beginning of something magical. It draws me in, somehow simultaneously settling my mind and making my heart race.

I have yet to find anyone who agrees with me on this, but I stand by it. The ritual of dimmed lights, applause for the conductor, and then the sound of first the strings finding their A, then the other instruments joining in – it’s beautiful and intoxicating.

On Saturday, I went to the Lamplighters Musical Theatre’s performance of their reworked “Mikado,” titled “The NEW Mikado,” at the Mountain View Center for the Performing Arts. This production makes a valiant and largely successful attempt at retaining the musical and narrative structure of the original operetta while addressing the racial and ethnic aspects of the original that are uncomfortable and distasteful to a modern audience. Their solution? Remove the entire story from the setting of the fictional and highly stylized setting of the Japanese town of Titipu, and place it instead in a fictional and highly stylized town called Tirmisu in the fifteenth-century duchy of Milan.

And you know what? It works. It really, really works. I loved it.

But as I sat in the darkened theater, listening to the orchestra tune and then play the familiar melodies of the late Victorian operetta, my mind couldn’t stop wandering to my own past.

“The Mikado” is incredibly important to me. Every time I have seen it or been involved with a production of it in any way, it leaves ripples of impact in my life.

In 1997 or 1998, my mother took me to see a production of “The Mikado” put on at Stanford University by their Gilbert and Sullivan Society, The Stanford Savoyards. I remember sitting enthralled through it, and still have snapshot memories of the two act finales. After that, we went to several of the Savoyards’ productions until in early 2002, I decided to audition to join the chorus myself. I was fifteen at the time, and the production staff made it clear that I was an exception to their usual rules about the age of participants. But that audition, and then being in the production, introduced me to a new part of myself. It was the most daring thing I had ever done, I felt, and took me to a world of magic and camaraderie that opened my eyes.

I won’t deny that I enjoyed being the petted youngest member of the company. It’s always nice to feel special. But more than that, I was treated as an equal member of the effort to bring the show to the stage. And really, I was only two or three years younger than some of the others, who were freshmen at Stanford.

It’s hard for me to explain the impact of those few months of rehearsal and performance. Desperate for approval and encouragement in my singing attempts, longing to feel like a valued member of a community engaged in a shared endeavor, I really think that joining the Savoyards in 2002 was a pivotal moment for me. The weeks I spent in rehearsal, performance, and social interaction with the Stanford students in the company proved to me that even without a 4.0 GPA, I could keep up with these students I viewed with some awe.

Being in “Mikado” in 2002 (and “The Sorcerer” that fall, and “The Gondoliers” in the spring of 2003) gave me the courage to apply to Stanford.

As I listened to the familiar music on Saturday, my mind kept going back to May of 2002, as I’d wait backstage for the entrance of the women’s chorus. We’d all bustle about, putting finishing touches to wigs, makeup, and costumes, and occasionally pausing to listen intently to the faint strains of music and dialogue coming through the backstage PA system, praying that the tenor and the trumpet were both having good nights as they approached the high notes.

I remember the movements backstage as a sort of dance, as we knew exactly when to step aside for Ed’s manic sprint offstage at one side and re-entrance on the other side for the next verse, or to make our way to the exact spots for our entrance. At times I remember some people quietly dancing in the wings, compelled to move by music and adrenaline.

In 1997, “Mikado” planted a spark of interest in trying the stage for myself. In 2002, it showed me that I could, in fact, belong at Stanford and find a community there. In 2005, it woke me up to the fact that I was no longer enjoying the theater experience.

And now, in 2016? I have only rarely gone near Gilbert & Sullivan in the past eleven years. The memory of the overwhelming and frightening rage and loss I felt as I saw my time with the Savoyards ending has to some extent tainted the memories of the magic and passionate love I had for the experience. I’ve even flinched away from the music itself.

Perhaps it’s been long enough now that I can start reclaiming that music. I feel no desire to get back onstage, and the only thing I regret about my decision to leave the Savoyards is how long it took me to accept the end of the era for me. It was a life lesson in “leave before you hate it.”

Except for those moments when I hear an orchestra tune. During those moments, as the lights dim and the familiar combination of instruments all seek harmony on their A, I find myself briefly in the velvet darkness of the wings, or the yellow light of the cramped, crowded dressing rooms in Dinkelspiel Auditorium. And for a moment, I miss it. But just for a moment. Then I let myself float away into the magic of theater.

Some Miscellany

Tags

dickens fair, hometown, miscellaneous, photos, stanford, tradition

It’s been over a month since my last post. Normally I’d prefer to post weekly, but I don’t much like posting for the sake of posting. Anyway, here are some photos from the past month.  

  Minion-o-lantern!
  
    
A little downtown fall color. I love the way the pistachio trees change. 

 
Thanksgiving whimsy. 

   
Waiting for the lessons and carols service at MemChu to begin. 
  
Dickens Fair hair! That’s today. 

So yeah. It’s been quite a month, mostly full of stuff I prefer to keep off-blog, at least for now. Looks like 2015 will end better than it started. 

 

Bloggy Book Club: Sister Queens, Part 2

Tags

anne boleyn, books, context, England, game of thrones, henry viii, history, katherine of aragon, nerds, thinking, Wars of the Roses

Having seen Elizabeth Blount and her own sister discarded once the king’s interest faded, Anne wanted more. She wanted to become Henry’s wife and queen, not his mistress. Unfortunately, Katherine was in her way.

But this is where fortune’s wheel favored Anne, not the queen. For Henry now had scruples about the legality of his marriage, and it is far more likely that these scruples developed before he was bewitched by Anne than afterward. She merely crystallized them, focused them, and gave him an additional reason to exploit them.

A few years ago, while pursuing my MA in history, I had a professor who remarked that nearly every historical thesis can be boiled down to the same basic point: The situations under discussion were far more complicated than we previously thought.

Think about your own recent history. If you really consider each major occurrence or decision, how many of them can be explained easily and directed back to one single cause?

England’s split from papal jurisdiction in the early 16th century is undeniably inextricably linked to Henry’s doubts about the legality of his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, but it is a vast understatement to say that it is all because of his lust for Anne Boleyn. To assert this is the only cause is to do a colossal disservice to all those involved, 500 years ago. So here are some of the other points that I think are important to consider. They are by no means all of the causes and influences, and I am of course giving very brief explanations, but hopefully it’ll get some of you thinking.

First, as Julia Fox points out in the passage quoted above, Henry’s doubts about his marriage begin before Anne Boleyn starts showing up in the court records in any significant way, if at all.

It is common practice but in my opinion unfair to dismiss Henry as a lazy, selfish hedonist who took credit for others’ writings and efforts. While certainly true to some extent – he was selfish, he hated the physical effort of writing himself, and he loved banquets and tournaments and pageants – consider today’s politicians. How many of them write their own speeches without any help from professional speechwriters? As far as I know, there’s not much evidence to say that Henry had no hand at all in documents like the pamphlet Defence of the Seven Sacraments, which won him the title of “Defender of the Faith” from a grateful pope.

David Starkey’s book about Henry before he came to the throne is an interesting read. The child exuded charisma from every pore, and he was apparently the epitome of the ideal Renaissance prince. He was well-educated, very intelligent, interested in matters of philosophy, theology, music, art, literature, history, and war. Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, who was the king’s right-hand man for years, is reported to have warned other counselors to be careful “what matter ye put into his head, for ye shall never put it out again.”

He was genuinely interested in matters of theology. This really can’t be stressed enough. His scruples about his marriage to his brother’s widow are legitimate. Biblical verses give conflicting instructions on the question of marrying a deceased brother’s wife. Other royal marriages involving similar relationship networks bore children – why didn’t his? If the pope’s dispensation was issued in error, if the pope had no right to issue such a dispensation to evade canon law, then that gets into frightening questions of papal authority and infallibility.

It is easy to view Henry through the lens of 500 years of 20/20 hindsight. We know he married six women, two of whom died at his command. But when he was struggling with the Katherine question, nobody had any way of seeing the bloodbath and upheaval that was to come. We are too prone to seeing him as the bloated, violent, vindictive monster he became.

The second point I think it important to discuss further is some of the reasoning for Henry’s obsession with getting an undeniably legitimate male heir.

Henry VIII came to the throne in 1509, 24 years after his father defeated the last Plantagenet king, Richard III, in battle at Bosworth Field. 1485 is given as the official end to the decades-long Wars of the Roses, the conflict between opposing royal claims from the houses of York and Lancaster (yes, the loose basis for Stark and Lannister in Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin didn’t exactly break a sweat on that one). It’s basically nearly a century of civil war, royal restorations/usurpations (depending on who you asked), fear, and turmoil. The reign of Henry VII, troubled though it was by the occasional pretender to the throne claiming to be one of the lost “Princes in the Tower,” was one of the longest periods of relative stability in generations.

Henry VIII was terrified of leaving his country without a solid, uncontestable heir to the Tudor dynasty because to do so would be to throw the country back into the Wars of the Roses.

To his mind, a solid, uncontestable heir meant a male heir, and this is an issue that also takes a little thought on our part. We know, because we know how the last 500 years went, that three of England’s longest-reigning, most-solidly-on-their-thrones monarchs were women. Elizabeth I reigned for 45 years. Victoria reigned for 64 years. Elizabeth II took the throne in 1952 and is still going. And yes, the monarchy today is a far cry from what it was in the 16th century, but still. We know a woman can inherit the crown and rule without letting the country dissolve into civil war.

Henry VIII didn’t. The last (and only) time that England had the prospect of a queen regnant was Matilda, in the middle of the 12th century. Her attempt to succeed her father, Henry I, resulted in some twenty years of civil war as her forces clashed with those of her cousin Stephen, who was crowned upon Henry’s death in 1135. In the sixteenth century, England believed that a woman inheriting the crown was equivalent to civil war.

And thus the quest for a legitimate male heir whose right to succeed could not possibly be challenged.

Next Up: The Story of Land and Sea: A Novel, by Katy Simpson Smith

Bloggy Book Club: Sister Queens, Part 1

Tags

Al Gore, books, England, English history, entertainment, henry viii, history, in the news, Julia Fox, katherine of aragon, Sarah Vowell, thinking

In a clause of the treaty which mentions the dispensation of the Pope, it is stated that the princess Katherine consummated her marriage with Prince Arthur. The fact, however, is, that although they were wedded, Prince Arthur and Princess Katherine never consummated the marriage. It is well known in England that the Princess is still a virgin. But as the English are much disposed to cavil, it has seemed to be more prudent to provide for the case as though the marriage had been consummated…

What an impact a single word can make.

Thanks to the popular fictional representations of Tudor history presented by the Showtime series The Tudors and Philippa Gregory’s The Other Boleyn Girl, many people have at least a vague idea of the story of Henry VIII’s divorce from Katherine of Aragon and subsequent marriage to his longtime love Anne Boleyn. There are many ways in which the situation has been oversimplified and exaggerated in popular imagination – rumors of Henry having syphilis, cynical assumptions that his split from the church of Rome was simply for sexual gratification, that Katherine was a dour old religious fanatic – I could write extensive arguments on each of these subjects.

I am quite pleased, though not surprised, that Julia Fox looks in detail at the wording of the Papal dispensation allowing the widowed Katherine to marry her brother-in-law Henry.  Her previous work examining the marriage contract of Jane Parker to George Boleyn showed her skill in dissecting the details and ramifications of sixteenth-century legal documents. In spite of what critics may think of the work as a whole – Fox’s style tends towards excessive speculation about motives and emotions that cannot be proven at this distance of time – the examination of documents is impressive.

In a nutshell, the situation of Katherine of Aragon, a widow at sixteen: The youngest child of the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile, Katherine was brought up to consider herself destined to be Queen of England. She was betrothed to Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII of England and his wife, Elizabeth of York, when both were still toddlers. At fifteen, they married and went to Arthur’s princely seat at Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches. After five months, Arthur became ill and died. When it became clear that Katherine would not give birth to a posthumous child, her parents and her parents-in-law set about arguing over her person and her dowry – the Spanish monarchs wanted Katherine to marry Arthur’s younger brother Henry. The English monarchs thought that they could perhaps do better, especially once Katherine’s formidable mother Isabella died and the unification of Aragon and Castile fell apart. However, Katherine and Henry were betrothed with the blessing of a Papal dispensation allowing for siblings-in-law to wed.

The issue that plagued Katherine again when the matter of the legality of her marriage to Henry came up in the 1520s, when Henry’s distress over not having a male heir led him to doubt his marriage and wish to form a new alliance with the woman who was seemingly the love of his life, was the question of whether her brief marriage to Arthur had ever been consummated. If it had, as Henry argued, their subsequent marriage was not legal. Katherine held to the line that though she and Arthur had on several occasions slept in the same bed, she came to Henry a virgin.  This was the argument when the dispensation was originally sought, too.

Ferdinand, a notoriously wily political operator, was willing to shrug his shoulders and allow a dispensation that assumed consummation had taken place, in spite of Katherine’s (and some of her most trusted household staff’s) vigorous assertions that it had not. Eventually the document included the word “forsitan” – perhaps. The marriage had perhaps been consummated. The passage I quoted at the start of this post is Ferdinand’s own words on the subject, in a message to his ambassador in Rome.

We still don’t know. The only people who knew were Arthur and Katherine – Katherine always asserted it had not been consummated, and Arthur’s teenage boastings about being “this night in the midst of Spain” may simply be the result of a teenage boy’s pride. Or perhaps Katherine was her parents’ daughter, wise to the ways of politics and determined to fulfill the role God called her to – Queen of England, wife to the King of England, no matter what dissembling was required of her in order to achieve her destiny.

Many point to the many historical instances when a single vote has determined the course of events. Less attention is given to the impact of a single word inserted into a document or mis-heard.

In Sarah Vowell’s essay collection The Partly Cloudy Patriot, she writes about a visit then-Presidential-Candidate Al Gore made to a middle school. A student got up and asked how citizens of their age could get more involved, and he told a story about a girl who wrote a letter from western Tennessee about how the water tasted funny and people were getting sick at an alarming rate. He said investigations found the water was contaminated, and that they then remembered similar occurrences in a place called Love Canal. But the letter from the girl, he said – that was the one that started it all.

Reporters present at the event misquoted Vice President Gore by one word. Soon the story went viral, showing Gore’s habit of taking far too much credit had struck once again. “I was the one that started it all,” the reporters quoted him as saying.

Vowell argues that reporters and citizens alike are too prone to projecting the character and story we expect from each given candidate onto them, at the expense of paying properly close attention. Gore had a habit of taking credit for things – he said he invented the Internet, that he was the inspiration for the movie Love Story – so the exhausted reporters following the candidate on his campaign trail automatically assumed he was once again taking credit, this time for exposing the environmental contamination at Love Canal, New York and Toone, Tennessee.

One word.

Just one word misquoted in a story that is actually inspirational – a candidate spoke to an audience, answered a good question with a relevant anecdote, and the audience really listened. The misquotation turned it into a joke.

One word was inserted into the dispensation allowing Katherine and Henry to marry. Five hundred years later and we’re still debating what that “perhaps” means.

To Be a Colleague

Tags

ALA, ALA annual 2014, American Library Association Annual Conference, colleagues, encouragement, friends, libraries, professional, reflection, support, thinking

On Monday night, after the raucous fun of the Library Games at the American Library Association Annual Conference, I went up to my hotel room at the Las Vegas Hotel and Casino.  I sat down on the bed, took off my shoes, and then found myself careening rapidly towards tears.

Some of it I can chalk up to the sheer physical and mental exhaustion that comes from the conference experience, and the unrelenting heat of Las Vegas in summer didn’t help.  Some of it I can chalk up to the inevitable emotional letdown that comes from being an introvert who’s psyched herself up for five days of being “on.”

There’s another element that I hadn’t considered ahead of time, though.  I graduated from library school over a year ago.  In that time, I’ve had a couple part-time and short-term jobs, and I’ve come very close to that elusive first real professional position twice.  Once I got close enough to get rejected by phone instead of by a form email, and the other time the rug was yanked out from under me literally hours before the paperwork hiring me was to be filed.

I have reached triple digits in the number of applications I have submitted over the past year.  I knew it would be hard, and I personally know many others who are in similar situations in their job search.

Intellectually, I know this is not abnormal.  Intellectually, I know I’m not the only one.

Emotionally and professionally, I feel isolated and I frequently feel like a failure.

I know I’m pursuing the right line of work for me.  Surrounded by all those thousands of other librarians, archivists, and information professionals, I knew I had found my tribe.

But yet, after some sixteen months of searching and trying and battering myself against the hurdles placed between me and the professional world to which I aspire, in the wee hours of the night, I can’t help but wonder if I’m fooling myself. Maybe I ought to give up.

I wanted to cry on Monday night because for five days I got to feel like a colleague. Yes, I’m looking for work.  Yes, I’m one of those over-educated twenty-somethings who’s barely treading water in the sea of adulthood. But the people around me, those more established in the profession and more confident in their roles, treated me as a colleague. They listened to me, and took what I said seriously.

I find I cling fiercely to these people and experiences, in spite of distance and personal expense, because they help me remember why I keep fighting for this path. I imagine that at some point they were in a position like mine, and those ahead of them reached out a hand and treated them like colleagues. I hope that someday I will be able to pay it forward in my turn.

I am so grateful to the people, the friends, the colleagues I met at ALA.  For a few days they helped me set aside the psychological burden of my current position.

I hope the memory of their encouragement will last me until the next conference in January.