she*had*a*thirst*for*knowledge

My sister took this video when we were driving to our cousin’s wedding in Missouri last March. I love how Matilda at the very end says “stop!”

I went to New York City last weekend, and Roman took pictures.

(picture from a set on Flickr someone else took…so pretty)

I saw Camera Obscura play a show here in town last Tuesday. I was all concert-reviewed out so didn’t write anything about it. It was lovely, as I expected it would be. There’s a reason they are one of my favorite bands. And OH! I have such a girl-crush on that Traceyanne Campbell.

An…interesting…weekend. Not quite the best, but certainly not the worst. I had a major decision to think about, just when I was getting to a point where I wasn’t having to think too hard about underlying issues, and that’s got me back into thinking too hard about said issues. But I read a lot (completed Coupland’s latest novel in one evening, started three other books), dorked out about music with Sean, and spent time with my children. They are getting pretty heavily into their fantasyland now - it’s very awesome to watch. They play together with their dolls, for hours on end, taking breaks to come back to the real world and eat dinner and interact with their parents. They have the cutest little mannerisms right now, it’s quite fascinating. On Sunday, Sean needed to take some practice GRE tests, so I took the girls out on a long Sunday drive to Roxboro. We drove up 86, stopped in Hillsborough for lunch, and then continued onward to Roxboro. I had no purpose in going there, I just wanted to see what was there. It’s the county seat of Person County (North Carolina has exactly 100 counties, so there are many county seats within a short drive of Carrboro). There is a court house surrounded by an exquisite early-mid 20th century downtown, a couple blocks’ worth in either direction, that was completely EMPTY. I don’t know if it’s just because it was Sunday or what, no it couldn’t be, because most of the store fronts were empty as well. It was really sad, yet beautiful (I got really excited driving into it - Oh My GOD, this is exactly what I was hoping to see!!!), especially considering that this beautiful old downtown was surrounded by suburban hell (parking lots, multi-lane roads, chain restaurants, Wal-Mart, etc.) and people obviously have money in Roxboro (i.e. it’s not just an empty, dead town). It’s the same old story. This country is dotted with failing downtown cores, and littered with too many big box stores. That is what Smalltown America has become. Roxboro is about an hour drive from Carrboro, quite an enjoyable drive. Along the way I saw a million tiny churches (predominantly Baptist), tobacco fields, farmhouses of both the 19th century Piedmont vernacular variety (kinda like this or this) and the 1920s bungalow variety, tobacco sheds, falling down, grey-weathered barns, corn fields, farm animals (the kids loved the farm animals), modern mini-mansions plopped down incongruously among bare fields, woods, old boarded-up general stores and gas stations, and the red, red earth that still fascinates me. (Dirt’s brown where I come from.) It was fantastic. It would have been perfect if I could have found a farm stand selling blueberries or a barbecue joint or something, but there were none to be found.

Too bad gasoline is so expensive these days. I’d love to be able to explore more like that, take long Sunday drives in the country.

(in which I use the word “lovely” more than enough times)

There are a few things in my life about which I am obsessive. It is probably pretty obvious to even the casual observer that music is one of those things - indeed this latest iteration of my blog seems to have become All Music All the Time (won’t always be that way, I promise, it’s just been a heady week of music around these parts). And there are a few bands about which I hold a particular obsession, Belle and Sebastian being a prime example. I read with great interest a couple of months ago that they were playing a show sort of nearby, with Broken Social Scene (!) and Ted Leo as openers. Thankfully, the children are older now and small roadtrips away from them are possible, I have a little bit of extra money around, but most important I also have a friend crazy enough to drive across multiple states with me to see one of our favorite bands.

So Jason and I drove up to Maryland to the Merriweather Post Pavilion outside of Baltimore this past weekend. We got a slight reprieve from the punishing summer heat, which was unexpected and delightful. The weather was perfect for an outdoor show - temperature in the low 80s, barely humid, sunny skies. The crowd was a great mix of ages, many people younger than me of course, but I also saw a not-too-small amount of people older than me. It’s one of the nice things about Belle and Sebastian, the large age range of their fans. The venue has apparently been around for a number of decades, and has played host to the usual bands, festivals, etc. It was nicely non-corporate, compared to the other outdoor venues I’ve attended shows at (ahem, Shoreline Ampitheatre comes to mind). It was downright homey, actually. The pavilion was a swooping roof of sorts that covered a small standing-only general admission area right in front plus a large-ish section of seating. Beyond that, up at the top of the hill, was an uncovered grassy area with more general seating. A typical set-up for this type of venue. Beer was plentiful (and expensive) and I had a pulled pork sandwich for dinner (not even remotely close in quality to my beloved North Carolina pork, of course). We had general admission tickets to the floor in front, and we got cool bright pink wristbands to wear that let us saunter past the people checking tickets like the rock stars we are (ha ha).

Ted Leo went on first, and it was fun, although I am only familiar with a few of his songs and am not a big fan by any means. It was a short set, only 1/2 an hour.

Very quickly thereafter (surprisingly quickly in fact, thinking about the amount of people in the band and how many instruments they had to set up) Broken Social Scene came on and played a really enjoyable selection of songs. They had five guitarists, two drummers, a violinist (I think), a female vocalist (Amy Millan of the band Stars at this show), and other random people popping in and out. They played some great songs with skill and exuberance, but I was pretty disappointed with the way they played “Superconnected.” That song is an incredible, fuzzy, rapid, frantic, yelping sort of song on the album, and I adore it, but the version they played onstage was quiet, slow and kept building up to nothing. At the time I thought it was like being in love with someone all night and going home without kissing them. Frustrating, you know? I took a bathroom break during one song and saw Sarah Martin walk by and then Chris Geddes leaning up against a railing watching the show, the latter who I couldn’t resist telling how much I was looking forward to the show - he got flustered and said something along the lines of, “Oh, gah, gee, well, thanks.” But he’s got a lovely smile.

And then Belle and Sebastian came onstage. Apparently Stuart didn’t enjoy the show very much, but from where I was it was impossible to tell. It’s so hard to believe that this band that is clearly comfortable on stage and pleased with performing used to play such notoriously bad shows in the early days. Everyone was just spot on. Their shows are so enjoyable. This was the third time I’d seen them, and they played a remarkable number of songs that I hadn’t seen them play before. They didn’t play some of the songs that make me go weak in the knees (”Slow Graffiti” for example) but that’s alright, I’d already seen them play those songs before and been blown away by them, I don’t need to keep repeating the experience. There was lively stage banter, a young couple was brought onstage to dance to one of the songs, Stevie was wearing the requisite suit, the crowd was appreciative and happy, and it was just a lovely, lovely time. They ended with a brilliant two-song encore, first “Judy and the Dream Of Horses” and then a hand-clapping “The Boy With the Arab Strap.” I could barely have asked for a better selection for the encore.

And then the crowd slowly shuffled out (ugh, I hate crowds when we are forced through bottlenecks), and Jason and I wandered around the parking lot in the dark, clear night, trying to find my car (which is why one should remember to check the location before leaving the car in the first place.) It didn’t matter anyway, it took forever for all the cars to get out of the lot anyway, and it was a very pretty night, and I was still high from such a lovely show.

But really, maybe next time they come around to tour the States, Belle and Sebastian could consider playing in Durham again? That was an expensive - though supremely delightful - adventure.

I think the things I had to say about my recent trip to New Orleans that were NOT about socializing have flown out of my head. But I’ll see what I can put together.

The purpose of going to New Orleans, of course, was to attend the annual American Libraries Association conference. And I did attend it, although I spent the majority of the time walking around trying to figure out what the point of it all was. It was my first conference - such a reaction should not be surprising.

I spent the first day attending sessions about job searching. I wish I hadn’t. After hearing various people talk about strategies, all of which conflicted with each other, I came away with disgruntlement in my belly. It appears that things are as I thought they were - some employers want certain things from job seekers, some employers want completely different things. There is very little way to determine exactly which employer wants what, so it is best to just go about being who I am and hope that I find the right people/the right people find me. It doesn’t seem like a good idea to waste so much effort engaging in handwringing about the metasearch. I should just continue to honestly and professionally present myself and hope that works out eventually. I’m not very good at playing games anyway.

The second day I attended sessions about cataloging. I wish I would have attended similar sessions on the first day as well. One of the sessions I attended made everything worthwhile. It was Catalog Transformed: From Traditional to Emerging Models of Use. Andrew Pace and Cindy Levine demonstrated NCSU’s fancy new catalog, which I’d already heard about and used before, but I hadn’t seen the dog and pony show yet (and it was entertaining). Jina Wakimoto from Boulder and John Blyberg from Ann Arbor District Library also had some very compelling, frankly exciting things to say about the catalog. They said things that I’ve been thinking about, things that I gave a presentation about last year, things that excite me about cataloging. I came out of it exhilarated, and, well, just really glad to be a cataloger, with such interesting things on the horizon.

Another thing - the convention center in New Orleans is huge. It seriously takes like half an hour to walk the whole length of it. I spent some time walking around the exhibit hall, but didn’t find too much to keep my interest. I am not responsible for dealing with vendors at my library, so it wasn’t really important for me to engage with book publishers, shelving manufacturers, etc. (not yet, anyway), and I’m not very excited by collecting free crap. (I’ve got enough crap in my house as it is.) Although I did get a little bit of free stuff - some of the book publishers had stacks of uncorrected proofs of upcoming books to take, plus I got a funny little business card holder made out of the materials used to make archival boxes, and a water bottle from Microsoft (which was very useful, I might add). And things for the girls - free magazines from the Cricket empire, notepads, Mardi Gras beads. Walking through the exhibits is very, very tiring. It is huge. In the future I will likely have more of a reason to check out the exhibits, but for this year, it was just a little bit disappointing.

I wish I’d brought my laptop with me - it would have been nice to be able to check my e-mail and such with the free wireless in the convention center. But, oh yeah, my laptop was stolen last spring.

I spent 5 days in New Orleans recently.

First, the social aspects:

– Friday night I met up with Niamh and Allison at Pat O’Brien’s in the midst of two librarian socials. We saw other people we knew, but then headed off to a well-needed dinner at Angeli’s, on Decatur St. We had a delightful pizza and salad. Then we went to a bar called dba in the Faubourg Marigny. The Marigny is my new favorite part of New Orleans. This bar dba had an incredible selection of liquors and beers, at great prices, yet the bar was slick and homey at the same time. If only we had a bar like that in town. Suitably liquored up, we braced ourselves for a walk down Bourbon Street, which is an experience I would find horrifying while completely sober, but after a few drinks I just managed to gaze quizzically at it and chuckle a bit to myself. Here’s a less-than-flattering picture of me with the always photogenic Niamh, taken by Allison, in which it is obvious that someone has already started drinking on an empty stomach. And it was really hot too.

– Saturday night I met up with a long-time Internet acquaintance, K. who I’d never met in real life before, and her friend Sophie at the Carousel (I think it was called?), a bar in the Hotel Monteleone that spins around very slowly. We sat at the bar and it creeped around 5 times or so, after which Sophie went to a meeting, and K. and I went to….MOD DANCE PARTY!!!! at the Circle Bar, which is a funny little bar in a funny little lopsided house, totally out of place, on Lee Circle. I’d seen it before many a time, going by on the St. Charles Streetcar, and wondered about it. It was quite possibly the best dance party EVER. We arrived around 10:30, and sat at the bar and chatted for a while before people started filtering in. We met one of the DJs and his librarian wife. We danced in the steamy heat of too many bodies in a not-cooled enough room, sweat sliding down my legs, to the awesome sounds of non-stop 60s rock music. We met two other librarians. We danced some more. And danced and danced. And kept on dancing. A few people asked us, “Are you…librarians?” Ha ha. Because apparently it’s obvious. I heard that the party went on until 5 in the morning, but we left shortly after two. My bag was soaked with beer. That’ll teach me to leave things on the floor. Everyone there was so friendly and welcoming. I frequently used to feel quite nervous meeting people I’ve never met before, but now it’s so easy, and everyone is awesome and so much fun. Apparently someone else who knows someone who I know (I think???) was also there. I wish I’d met them too. Meeting people is easy.

– Sunday night I stopped in for appetizers at a library school alumni reception which was sort of dull. I did not win any raffle prizes, but chatted with a few people I hadn’t seen in a while. Then Niamh, Todd, Jessica Z., and I went out for dinner. Along the way we stopped at a street corner to watch a lively, not at all cheesy band play stomping jazz, of the sort that I actually like. Loud, exuberant, lots of horns, people dancing in the street. We ate in the Marigny. We ran into the DJ from the night before on the street corner and chatted. He showed me even more unflattering photos of myself dancing, on his digital camera. (I should not let anyone come near me with a digital camera in such ungodly hot climates.) We said goodbye and got dinner at Adolfo’s, a fantastic Italian place above a bar. We shared two bottles of excellent Chianti, lovely conversation, and I had a steak. The heat got even hotter and we walked to Cafe du Monde and got beignets and coffee. I will never get used to sweat dripping down my body like that. The beignets were fantastic. I saw a gigantic cockroach, flying. *shudder*

– No social life Monday night. Ate dinner, packed, flipped between a show about house hunting on HGTV (?) and rap/hip-hop videos on MTV2 for a while, went to sleep.