enfinblue's Bluey (credit to Fifi for the nickname!) Diaryland Diary

"I am seeking, I am striving, I am in it with all my heart." -Vinc3nt V@n Gogh

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Librarians hold the key.

So...if you haven't read my last half dozen or so entries...or more...you are not allowed to read.

I was just saying to someone that I think my life and my feelings are like a bad soap opera - you can pretty easily figure out that someone thinks that they have married their thought-to-be-dead brother or something, but that nothing much else (other than a few boob jobs, perhaps) has recently happened. You can start out watching again by tuning into fresh episodes.

So I had a rather lovely day. I still feel as though I was poisoned last night by whatever went into that wine. (Come to think of it, I'm wondering if the problem is instead that bars wash their glasses in weird cleaning fluid. I always seem to have hangovers after I drink something at a bar. Something to ponder...That said, I might go out for a Guinness tonight. :))

C. called and I accompanied him out to the newspaper store. He bought a Die Zeit. I bought a Times Literary Supplement. It had my name on it: a travel article on the ex-pat British and German communities in Florence at the turn of the twentieth century. There's a new book about the period out...Whilst C. had his hair cut I sat on a coffee shop patio and read my delicious paper. Rivalries at Oxford in poetry! Literary catfights!

C. and I then walked in the sun to the bookstore. They didn't have ANY OF the books that I wanted (Mary McCarthy's Stones of Florence, any books about Italy by Vernon Lee (aka Violet Paget), anything by HV Morton, yadda yadda). So I bought a copy of "Where Angels Fear to Tread," because I don't seem to have one anywhere. I got into an interesting conversation with the cashier girl, because she asked me for a donation for public school libraries.

I mean, how completely fucked a country do I live in in which customers are paying to have a bookstore chain match donations to put libraries back into public schools?

There ARE still libraries in public schools in some provinces, but not in Ontario. Now this bookstore chain has opportunities for teachers to apply for grants to refurbish school library collections. (The fact that they no longer hire librarians but instead have teacher librarians fill in is another travesty.)

When I was a kid, and I joke not, my FAVOURITE place in the school was the library. We often would have to go there to do research for projects. We would also be taken there because for our writing and reading projects we were expected to SELECT classic BOOKS from the library to read and study.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine that they might expect children to read books today, rather than cut and paste text from wikipedia???

Oh the heresy.

Anyhow. I am down on the system. Can you tell?

When I was in school there was always a properly trained, career librarian. He or she knew the collection and could make recommendations. I used to always leave the school AND the public libraries with about eight or so books. Often the librarian would know my taste and would recommend the next books for me to read. They guided my child's passion to know and to experience the world. The library was a gift. And yes, you could still read books like Huck Finn. No ridiculous censorship. Children were expected to have brains, learn to think for themselves, and learn and appreciate that times and social norms...change.

And now, as a customer in a bookstore, I am paying so that kids in public schools for which I already pay a shitload of taxes (excuse the language) can have cobbled-together libraries.

Totally horrible.

So anyhow...after the rant...

The girl at the cash said something interesting. She said that she went to school at one point in Yellowknife (which is in the far north of Canada), and in her school all of the classrooms were built AROUND the library. Can you imagine???? She said that the library was big enough that they could have all-school events in the library. What a dream!!

So...

After the bookstore outrage, I took my book and my bags to the market. C. and I went to the Italian bottega and bought olive oil, good parmesan, pecorino, and fabulous baguettes. Oh and fresh basil and rosemary plants. We came back here and I picked C. some lily-of-the-valley from the front garden and we sat and snacked and planned the revisions in decor to our apartments.

That's all. Very pleased. I'm going to read and maybe then rent a movie tonight. I did stuff today. That's a first step to getting things going.

Now if I could just have sex again in this lifetime...You know, come to think of it, I can't think of anything more pleasing than the idea of books, sex and baguettes. In any order! I wouldn't want for more.

5:03 p.m. - 2009-06-06

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stepfordtart
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awittykitty
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fifidellabon
hungryghost
hissandtell