Chad Comello

Tag: libraries

  • How I Got to Now: A Librarian Year

    This week I celebrated my one-year anniversary of librarianship. In my application essay for library school I wrote that I’d been a frequent library user for most of my life, yet had never considered working in one until recent epiphanies changed my outlook. Perhaps I thought of it like working at a movie theater—another regular haunt of mine—in that the prospect of seeing movies for free belied the much less glamorous reality of terrible hours, meager pay, and lots of cleaning. I simply never imagined myself on the other side of the reference desk or at the helm of a book cart. I didn’t lack imagination; I merely had, as Steven Johnson put it in How We Got to Now, a “slow hunch” that gestated for years and then illuminated only once the conditions were ripe.

    My “plan” entering college was to become a high-school history teacher. I loved history and thought I might be a good teacher, so abracadabra: that’s what I’d do. History major, education minor, future set. But that first fall semester I took a writing class and wrote a few pieces for the school newspaper. That I could write about music, film, and essentially anything else I could conjure and get it printed in ink with my name attached to it for campus-wide distribution was a stunning revelation, and a disruptive one. This new storyline challenged the vocational narrative I’d slapped together to have something to tell people who asked at my high-school graduation party what I’d do with my life. But before winter break I’d changed majors to English (with an emphasis in journalism) and bumped history down to a minor (because you can’t have just one economically unviable field on your diploma). I never regretted the decision, nor did I forget the privilege of being able to make it at all thanks to scholarships and financial aid.

    And yet, four years later, clad in a black gown I’d never wear again, holding a diploma I think I maybe know the current whereabouts of, I wondered what was next. As a newly christened liberal arts degree-holding humanities major—Oh great, another one—my skills and knowledge base were just unspecific enough to ensure that my first few jobs would have little to do with what I learned in college. But long-term planning has never been my thing. I have no idea what I’m having for lunch today, let alone where I’d like to be in five years. My strategy has been akin to what Anne Lamott describes in Traveling Mercies, how when her pastor prays for direction, “one spot of illumination always appears just beyond her feet, a circle of light into which she can step.” Life has felt more like that to me than following a line or climbing a ladder: hopping from one bright spot to the next and hoping for illumination. Hop, then hope, ad infinitum.

    My post-graduation bright spot appeared after I’d spent a few months abroad and came home broke. One rent check away from having literally zero dollars, I worked as a cashier for a few months, which gave me much-needed income for the price of my soul, and then started part-time at Barnes & Noble as a bookseller. (That remains an all-time favorite job.) I would’ve stayed at Barnes & Noble indefinitely had another bright spot not appeared. A college friend of mine who’d taken a job at a university had entered its library and information science program and was telling me over and over how much I’d like it, that I should look into it. Who works in a library? I thought. But I looked into the program and realized, Oh, I would work in a library. Classes in archives (where my interests strongly laid at the time) coupled with a field that emphasized organization, books, cultural fluency, and intellectual freedom? Are you kidding me? That “circle of light” was blinding, so I leapt into it with a smile.

    Confirmation came quickly. Library school, in my experience at least, was where being a nerd was nearly a prerequisite, introverts were abundant, and the male-to-female ratio was very much in my favor. (Exhibit A: Meeting my future wife in my first class.) But I was starting from 000. I’m pretty sure I was the only one in class who had never worked in a library. Lucky for me this was a built-in expectation: Because there is no bachelor’s degree in library science, everyone in some sense was starting from scratch. The learning curve was steeper for me, but that made things more fun. I wasn’t that long-time library worker grudgingly returning to school to sit through classes I could teach myself to get that expensive piece of paper that shattered the glass ceiling of professional certification and magically allowed me to earn more money; I was a guy who accidentally made a great candidate for librarianship and happened to like it too. Because I loved history most of my 36 credit hours trended toward archival work, but I also enjoyed classes on storytelling, metadata, bookbinding, and digital libraries. In this new world everything I looked at was a delicious possibility. I felt like a kid with a golden ticket bouncing around Willy Wonka’s sugary wonderland, except the edible mushrooms were finding aids and the chocolate river was the archives/cultural heritage track of my MLIS.

    The river brought me past a few archival internships and volunteer gigs during school, which I parlayed into a (paid!) summer internship at a large corporate archives. But after such a wonderful opportunity, and the apex of my library school adventure, in the fall of 2013 I was back in the dark. The doldrums of unemployment followed, which I dotted with odd jobs, some freelance archiving, and intermittent despair, until I got a kinda-sorta-library-related warehouse job I was, two months later, summarily laid off from.

    Things were dim. But then, another circle of light: an interview, then a second, and then a job offer. Time to hop again. I was a librarian. (Part-time, anyway. Though now I’ve started another part-time librarian position so I figure that equals one full-time job, minus health care.) Yet even after I said yes, I felt ill-equipped. I’d taken the wrong classes and banked the wrong type of internships to feel fully qualified for the position. But I’d learned a valuable lesson about hiring in my previous lives as an RA and housing coordinator: credentials do not (necessarily) a qualified candidate make. The letters after your name can get you a meeting, but they aren’t magic. You gotta hope the people in charge can work a crystal ball, and can see a résumé as a blueprint to build from and not a final product. I hopped, then I hoped.

    My idea of the perfect job is a role that hits the sweet spot in the middle of the Venn diagram of one’s skills, interests, and passions. Being a librarian does that for me. I’m a reader and culture omnivore; I’m good at making complicated things understandable and enjoy seeing people succeed; and I ardently believe—personally and professionally—in what libraries do. I’m also only a year into this thing. The tectonic plates beneath the crust of the library world are grinding and shifting, and I don’t know what the occupational earthquakes will do to it. But I’ll be along for the ride, probably off in the 900s looking for my next presidential biography. Jean Edward Smith’s Grant has been whispering sweet nothings to me…

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  • DDC 440-449: Foux Du Fa French

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 440 Romance languages; French
    • 441 French writing system & phonology
    • 442 French etymology
    • 443 French dictionaries
    • 444 Not assigned or no longer used
    • 445 French grammar
    • 446 Not assigned or no longer used
    • 447 French language variations
    • 448 Standard French usage
    • 449 Provençal & Catalan

    You thinking what I’m thinking? I hope so. Like it or not that’s what I think of when trying to speak fake French. That guttural huh huh huh is probably what the French hate the most about the French stereotype, though I don’t know any French people so I’m just gonna assume that’s true without confirming like a good cultured-enough American. #patriotism

    I kid. I’d love to visit France one day, and if I do get that chance I’d likely bone up on the language beforehand using these books:

    The Dew3:

    Les Bons Mots: How to Amaze “tout Le Monde” With Everyday French
    By Eugene Ehrlich
    Dewey: 443.21
    Random Sentence: “Ferme ta gueule! (shut your trap!)”

    Say Chic: A Collection of French Words We Can’t Live Without
    By Françoise Blanchard
    Dewey: 448.2421
    Random Sentence: “One suspects that the valiant Crusaders would not have been pleased.”

    The Story of French
    By Jean-Benoit Nadeau
    Dewey: 440.9
    Random Sentence: “Merchants in Sudbury still hesitate to put simple signs saying Bonjour on their doors.”

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  • The Simba Life, Thrice

    The third issue of my culture magazine The Simba Life is now live. Check out the full PDF, or peruse individual articles. There’s a listacular retrospective, an artistic rediscovery, a debate over which Relient K album is best, a coming-out story you probably have never heard before, and more.

    Below is the briefing I wrote to set the stage for the issue’s theme, which was “what I learned this year.”

    This year, I learned at least three things.

    I learned (1) to be less skeptical of poetry, that sometimes writing a poem is the best and only way to embody a feeling, thought, or moment. I learned (2) that I love the little things at the library as much as the big ones: sharpening dull pencils at the desk; discovering stray receipts from 2012 in shelved books; picking up scraps with call numbers on them and wondering which book they led the patrons to; and returning abandoned books to the snug vacancy on the shelf they call home.

    And I learned (3) that I could have died in fifth grade. I stood in my friend’s front yard in a sleepy suburb playing nonchalantly with a BB rifle as a police car pulled into the driveway, and the officer could have jumped out of his car and shot me dead because he felt threatened by the gun I had, however non-lethal it turned out to be. But I didn’t die. I received a stern warning, and I went home and cried about it when my mom got a call from my friend’s mom explaining what had happened. And then I forgot about it, until my sister reminded me of that incident after Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy playing with an airsoft gun in a Cleveland park, was gunned down on November 22 by an unqualified policeman responding to a call about someone pretending to shoot people driving by.

    Did Tamir die because he was black? Because of the aptitude of the officer he encountered? Because the airsoft gun he wielded (stunningly similar to one I owned at that age) that a friend had just given him had its orange tip removed? All I know is Tamir is dead and I am not. The why is too sad to confront and too pressing to ignore.

    There’s a fourth thing I learned this year, but it’s really the only thing: I know that I don’t know anything. What better time, then, here at the End of All Things 2014, to wrestle with the Simba Life creed—Run from it or learn from it—in the third issue of the Simba Life magazine, along with this issue’s contributors. What did we learn this year? Put on a pot of coffee and let’s find out together.

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  • The Glass Cage

    To never confront the possibility of getting lost is to live in a state of perpetual dislocation. If you never have to worry about not knowing where you are, then you never have to know where you are. —Nicholas Carr, The Glass Cage

    One time the internet went down at the library and it was like the Apocalypse. Patrons at the public computers and on their laptops saw their pages not loading and came to the desk to ask what was wrong. We told them the internet’s down, it’ll have to be restarted and it’ll be up again in a few minutes. Most were satisfied by this, if a bit peeved, but waited for order to be restored. But it was a serious outage and the wait was much longer than usual, so people at the computers just left. The lab, usually almost or completely full, was a ghost town.

    Just as I was thinking (a bit judgmentally) how odd it was that people who temporarily didn’t have internet would just leave instead of using other parts of the library (like, you know, books ‘n’ stuff), I realized that the library catalog was down too. Without this mechanism that we use to search for items and get their call number for retrieval, I was librarianing in the dark. If someone came to the desk looking for a specific book, I had no way of (a) knowing if we had it and it was on the shelf, or (b) where it was among the thousands of books neatly lining the stacks before me. I knew generally where books on certain topics were—sports in the 790s, the 200s had religion, and so on—but without a specific call number I’d have to navigate the sea of spines book by book until by providence or luck I found the item within a reasonable amount of time.

    The internet was restored, the computer lab filled again, and the catalog came back to life. No crises came to pass during this internet-less interlude, but I did wonder if I knew as much as I thought I did. Did I as a librarian rely too heavily on access to the online catalog to do my job? Without internet connectivity or hard-copy reference material, would we still be able to provide the information people ask for every day? Even looking up a phone number is much more easily done on Google than through a paper trail.

    The times we’re not connected to the internet somehow are becoming less and less frequent, so existential crises like mine don’t have to last long. But the questions lingered as I read Nicholas Carr‘s new book, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us. It asks questions that apply not only to libraries but every facet of our lives: do humans rely too heavily on technology? And if so, what is that reliance doing to us? Well-versed in the effects of technology on human behavior, Carr, author of The Shallows and The Big Switch, posits that automated technology, though responsible for many improvements in industry, health care, transportation, and many other areas, can also degrade our natural skill-learning abilities and generate a false sense of security in technology that aims (yet often fails) to be perfect in an imperfect world.

    Carr points to two phenomena that, taken separately or together, exacerbate our worst human tendencies and stunt the mental and physiological growth required for mastering complex tasks. Automation complacency, writes Carr, “takes hold when a computer lulls us into a false sense of security. We become so confident that the machine will work flawlessly, handling any challenge that may arise, that we allow our attention to drift.” Exhibit A: my opening library anecdote. Knowing that the online catalog will reliably provide the information I need when I ask for it, I’m much more liable not to retain useful knowledge despite the usefulness of retaining it and the pleasure I get from learning it.

    The second phenomena is automation bias, which occurs “when people give undue weight to the information coming through their monitors. Even when the information is wrong or misleading, they believe it. Their trust in the software becomes so strong that they ignore or discount other sources of information, including their own senses.” I’ve experienced this too. One time a patron asked for the phone number of a business; because I was dealing with multiple things at once, I provided the first number that came up on Google without confirming its validity through another source, like the business’s website or the Yellow Pages. Turns out that number was outdated and the search engine hadn’t indexed the new one yet. But because I’d done that before with numbers that were accurate, to be expedient I trusted Google in that moment when I should have been more discerning.

    Whichever technological tools Carr cites—airplane autopilot, assembly-line manufacturing, GPS—the theme that emerges is that after a certain point, the more automated technology takes away from humans the more we lose. This runs counter to the utopian belief that the iPhones and Google Glasses and self-driving cars of the world make our lives better by making them easier, that by ceding difficult tasks to machines we will be able to focus on more important things or use that extra time for leisure.

    To some extent that is true, but there’s also a dark side to this bargain. By abdicating power over how we interact with the world, we stop being doers with agency over our skills and trades and become monitors of computer screens—supervisors of fast, mysterious, and smart machines that almost always seem to know more than us. This dynamic puts us at cross-purposes with the tools that should be working with us and for us, not in our stead. Humans’ greatest ability, writes Carr, is not to cull large amounts of data and make sense of complex patterns: “It’s our ability to make sense of things, to weave the knowledge we draw from observation and experience, from living, into a rich and fluid understanding of the world that we can then apply to any task or challenge.”

    Automated tools like GPS, which we rely upon and follow without much question, take away that innate ability of sense-making and even dampen our desire to make our own observations based on first-hand experience. I should replace “we” with “I” here, because I struggle greatly with navigation and love being able to know where I am and get to where I’m going. But navigation is more than following the blue line directly from point A to point B as if A and B are the only data points that matter. The point of navigation is the map itself, the ability to make assessments based on acquired knowledge and turn that knowledge into informed action. When a computer does all that for us in a microsecond, then what’s the point of knowing anything?

    Ominous implications like this are the star of The Glass Cage, which casts a discerning eye on the assumptions, implicit and explicit, that govern our relationship with technology. It’s a relationship that can be fruitful and healthy for everyone involved, but it also needs some work. Thankfully, Nicholas Carr has done the work for us in The Glass Cage. All we have to do is sit back and receive this knowledge.

    Wait…

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  • The Holy Sanctuary of Public Libraries

    As a reference librarian at a suburban public library, I sit at the information desk, waiting to answer patrons’ many different questions. On Friday evenings, the foot traffic slows and a soothing silence descends on my area. Save the soft clattering of the keyboards in the computer lab, it is mercifully quiet. It’s in these moments I realize: I’m in a holy place.

    As civil institutions funded mostly by taxes from the people they serve, public libraries are strictly secular. Patrons can use their space and resources for whatever cause, without regard for politics, religion, race or any other category. But, as we know, there’s no such thing as secular. Writing for Think Christian last year, Caryn Rivadeneira made a similar point about the beauty of art museums:

    Perhaps it had something to do with the grandeur of the space. Certainly it had something to do with being surrounded by centuries’ worth of wondrous examples of image-bearing creativity. Definitively it had to do with being drawn into works that speak a mystical language, that communicate through brush-strokes or film or clay and yet speak from the artist’s heart to the viewer’s.

    When I look around the library on quiet Friday nights, I see the place itself as holy. I see a cathedral of books, each one comprising a distinct identity and yet functioning as one small part of the larger body. I became much more aware of the library as a place after reading Robert Dawson’s The Public Library: An American Commons, a photographic essay documenting public library buildings all over America. The libraries in Dawson’s photographs range from a one-room wooden structure built by former slaves in California to the imposing, Romanesque Revival-style Carnegie Library in Pennsylvania to the sleek, futuristic Central Library in Seattle. Whether old or new, deserted or bustling, each of these buildings, like the books they contain, tells a unique story.

    Considering the uncertain state of public libraries today, I can’t help but see their challenges running parallel with those of the American church. Both institutions, rooted in history but now confronted with modernity, are struggling to navigate the tenuous space between orthodoxy and innovation. They hear the same critical buzzwords thrown at them: outdated, unnecessary, old-fashioned, dull. They are debating internally how to attract young people and the unconverted, how to revitalize their diminishing influence amidst cultural and digital revolutions and how to make their missions feel essential in a world abounding with choices.

    But above all, I see them both as sanctuaries—havens for world-weary patrons and all their baggage. I’m sure a pastor could sympathize with the variety of interpersonal issues public librarians navigate gracefully every day. I’ve had people approach me looking for books about divorce, STDs, Alcoholics Anonymous, and for ways to track down someone who wronged them. But I’ve also retrieved books on weddings, suggested new reads to eager patrons and even helped a woman find an image of, in her words, a “whimsical walrus.” Many people, some with mental disabilities, simply want to talk. This often requires an abundance of patience; when there are a dozen other things you could be doing, choosing to serve a patron in need suddenly becomes the most challenging one. But extending grace on the frontlines of humanity, whether in the pews or in the stacks, is a challenge worth taking.

    As a librarian and a believer, I see the struggles of libraries and churches up close. I also see their beauty—as institutions attempting to serve the greater good; as places of study, searching and refuge; and as living archives of our shared cultural experiences. These places can transform us if we let them. All we have to do is walk through their doors and take a look around.

    Originally posted at Think Christian.

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  • DDC 430-439: Polyglöts Ünite

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 430 Germanic languages; German
    • 431 German writing system & phonology
    • 432 German etymology
    • 433 German dictionaries
    • 434 Not assigned or no longer used
    • 435 German grammar
    • 436 Not assigned or no longer used
    • 437 German language variations
    • 438 Standard German usage
    • 439 Other Germanic languages

    Based on the material available in this section, I’d venture to say that while Germanic languages aren’t the prettiest ones out there, they are often the most interesting. There’s the umlaut-loving Swedish, the melting-pot Afrikaans, the Tolkien-like Icelandic… I’ll never have enough time to learn them all, but were I to undergo a superhero origin story, I hope my heroic alter ego would be a polyglot.

    The Dew3:

    Born to Kvetch: Yiddish Language and Culture in All Its Moods
    By Michael Wex
    Dewey: 439.1
    Random Sentence: “Men, women, and children: they drink, they fight, and they screw.”

    Swedish: A Complete Course for Beginners
    By Vera Croghan
    Dewey: 439.782421
    Random Sentence: “Vad kostar tomaterna?”

    Colloquial Afrikaans: The Complete Course for Beginners
    By B.C. Donaldson
    Dewey: 439.3682421
    Random Sentence: “Ek het vanoggend brood gekoop.”

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  • DDC 420-429: Nouns and Pronounce

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 420 English & Old English
    • 421 English writing system & phonology
    • 422 English etymology
    • 423 English dictionaries
    • 424 No longer used—formerly English thesauruses
    • 425 English grammar
    • 426 No longer used—formerly English prosodies
    • 427 English language variations
    • 428 Standard English usage
    • 429 Old English (Anglo-Saxon)

    While I know a little Spanish, English is (obvs) my primary language. And what a weird language it is. I’m so glad I didn’t have to learn it later in life, because in some ways it makes no sense. Especially pronunciation: this well-known poem illustrates that well. But because it’s second nature to me, it’s hard to tell how English stacks up against other languages vis a vis difficulty in grammar and pronunciation, logical spelling, and poetic beauty. I certainly enjoy writing in English, though I often wish all those silent letters—like in its buddy French—could die. Isn’t tho much better, prettier, and more sensical than though? That superfluous ugh is just… Ugh….

    The Dew3:

    I Love It When You Talk Retro: Hoochie Coochie, Double Whammy, Drop A Dime, and the Forgotten Origins of American Speech
    By Ralph Keyes
    Dewey: 422
    Random Sentence: “Rutabaga is funny. Potatoes aren’t.”

    Death Sentences: How Clichés, Weasel Words, and Management-speak Are Strangling Public Language
    By Don Watson
    Dewey: 428
    Random Sentence: “You are trapped in the language like a parrot in a cage.”

    An Exaltation of Larks: The Ultimate Edition
    By James Lipton
    Dewey: 428.1
    Random Sentence: “So, Mr. Safire, how about a phumpher of schwas?”

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  • DDC 410-419: Linguistics alfredo

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 410 Linguistics
    • 411 Writing systems
    • 412 Etymology
    • 413 Dictionaries
    • 414 Phonology
    • 415 Structural systems (Grammar)
    • 416 No longer used—formerly Prosody (linguistics)
    • 417 Dialectology & historical linguistics
    • 418 Standard usage; Applied linguistics
    • 419 Verbal language not spoken or written

    Regarding the post title: what did you expect? This is a section all about words! (Plus I love pasta.) But just look at this beautiful list of literary terms. I’ve heard of probably 10% of them, but I wish to know them all, to hug them tenderly and use them liberally in my own writing and speech. Any other word nerds out there? My logophilia is partly inherited (my late grandfather loved crosswords and learning languages throughout his life), but it’s also a learned love, facilitated by reading more and more things in increasingly diverse genres and forms.

    I want to give a special shout-out to the first of the Dew3 picks: it’s pure punctuation porn for weirdos like me who could admire various punctuation marks all day. In fact, I now have plans for the weekend…

    The Dew3:

    Shady Characters: The Secret Life of Punctuation, Symbols & Other Typographical Marks
    By Keith Houston
    Dewey: 411
    Random Sentence: “Case closed ;)”

    Is That A Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything
    By David Bellos
    Dewey: 418.02
    Random Sentence: “For your aches / Carat cakes / Are the cure.”

    Bastard Tongues: A Trailblazing Linguist Finds Clues to Our Common Humanity in the World’s Lowliest Languages
    By Derek Bickerton
    Dewey: 417.2
    Random Sentence: “Wolf has taken daddy, gone, and eaten him.”

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  • DDC 400-409: Learn ALL THE WORDS

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 400 Language
    • 401 Philosophy & theory
    • 402 Miscellany
    • 403 Dictionaries & encyclopedias
    • 404 Special topics
    • 405 Serial publications
    • 406 Organizations & management
    • 407 Education, research, related topics
    • 408 With respect to kinds of persons
    • 409 Geographical & persons treatment

    Gotta admit this up front: I friggin’ love words. As an English major, a writer, a reader—pick the reason. I love them so much that I keep a list of cool words I’ve encountered that I want to remember. (*pushes up glasses*) So I’m embarking on the 400s with great vim and ebullience. Though, curiously, I’ve thus far restrained myself from owning a physical dictionary, mostly because I can’t decide which version I should have. Plus, with the OED and Merriam-Webster adding new words every year, it would soon be out of date. And I gotta have ALL THE WORDS if I have a book of them. (Erin McKean’s TEDTalk on this topic is a great one if you’re interested. And who wouldn’t be?!)

    Regardless, I’m pumped—nay, aflutter—to go through this section and see all the lexical gold we will find. Shall we?

    The Dew3:

    A Little Book of Language
    By David Crystal
    Dewey: 400
    Random Sentence: “The Smiths will be in their clarence.”

    The Way We Talk Now: Commentaries on Language and Culture From NPR’s “Fresh Air”
    By Geoffrey Nunberg
    Dewey: 400
    Random Sentence: “They don’t hear a lot of resemblances to Angelina Jolie, either.”

    The Infinite Gift: How Children Learn and Unlearn the Languages of the World
    By Charles Yang
    Dewey: 401.93
    Random Sentence: “It would have been fun to know what Adam and Eve said to each other in Africa.”

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  • DDC 390-399: Emily Post-Its

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 390 Customs, etiquette, folklore
    • 391 Costume & personal appearance
    • 392 Customs of life cycle & domestic life
    • 393 Death customs
    • 394 General customs
    • 395 Etiquette (Manners)
    • 396 No longer used—formerly Women’s position and treatment
    • 397 No longer used—formerly outcast studies
    • 398 Folklore
    • 399 Customs of war & diplomacy

    This section is a bit of a grab-bag. I suppose customs, etiquette, and folklore fit together under the broad category of culture, but on the shelves this looks like that one drawer in the kitchen where you throw all that miscellaneous crap that doesn’t have a standard space, like rubber bands and capless pens and scrap paper. Not at all discounting the value of these topics—because how could we live without Emily Post telling us how to behave?!—but clearly some sections are better synthesized and meant to be than others. But that’s why we love Dewey, right? There’s a reason for everything (theoretically… we hope…) so we best try to understand why.

    Or these books just needed to be somewhere.

    The Dew3:

    Breakfast: A History
    By Heather Arndt
    Dewey: 394.1252
    Random Sentence: “For those wanting even less human contact for their meal, there were the automats.”

    Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That?: A Modern Guide to Manners
    By Henry Alford
    Dewey: 395
    Random Sentence: “I have benign hand tumors, so don’t worry.”

    Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folktales From the Gulf States
    By Zora Neale Hurston
    Dewey: 398.208996073
    Random Sentence: “Tom told his wife, ‘Tell God I’m not here.’”

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  • DDC 380-389: We built this city on rock and roads

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 380 Commerce, communications, transport
    • 381 Internal commerce (Domestic trade)
    • 382 International commerce (Foreign trade)
    • 383 Postal communication
    • 384 Communications; Telecommunication
    • 385 Railroad transportation
    • 386 Inland waterway & ferry transportation
    • 387 Water, air, space transportation
    • 388 Transportation; Ground transportation
    • 389 Metrology & standardization

    Honestly, I was surprised by how intrigued I was by this section. Typically I’m not one to fall for anything relating to commerce, but I’m officially coming back to this section to find stuff for my to-read shelf. As represented by the Dew3 picks below, I’m often fascinated by how systems, especially concrete and/or historical, come into being. So while I wouldn’t care much for systems of thought or abstract things, I’m all over the Transcontinental Railroad and space transportation, despite my highly limited knowledge of engineering. Or perhaps it’s because of that lack of knowledge that I’m interested. Knowledge rocks! As do trains!

    The Dew3:

    The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires
    By Tim Wu
    Dewey: 384
    Random Sentence: “Is Google destined to arrive at its Napoleonic moment?”

    Nothing Like It in the World: The Men Who Built the Transcontinental Railroad, 1863-1869
    By Stephen Ambrose
    Dewey: 385.0973
    Random Sentence: “This was hard work, dangerous and claustrophobic.”

    The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways
    By Earl Swift
    Dewey: 388.122
    Random Sentence: “Even by his standards, he was stinking rich.”

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  • DDC 370-379: Trigger warning – School

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 370 Education
    • 371 School management; special education; alternative education
    • 372 Elementary education
    • 373 Secondary education
    • 374 Adult education
    • 375 Curriculums
    • 376 No longer used—formerly Education of women
    • 377 No longer used—formerly Ethical education
    • 378 Higher education
    • 379 Government regulation, control, support

    A fitting section to happen upon as we approach back-to-school season. It’s a time of year that is bittersweet for me: while I do miss the camaraderie and intellectual rigor of being in school, I don’t miss BSing papers, having to take math, and the peaks and valleys of semester after semester of different work. But every trip to Target these days brings all this back, especially seeing all those school supplies that would be on the list every year but that I would never use. I mean, who uses hole-punch reinforcement stickers?

    Anyway, this section goes out to all those teachers returning from the sunny beach and getting back into the classroom to prepare for another year. I had a handful of terrible teachers in my day, but also some great ones. Here’s hoping for your kids’ sake that you’re the latter.

    The Dew3:

    How Lincoln Learned to Read: Twelve Great Americans and the Educations That Made Them
    By Daniel Wolff
    Dewey: 370.973
    Random Sentence: “He’d sworn off that, but there was this: this hunt for ideas.”

    True Notebooks: A Writer’s Year at Juvenile Hall
    By Mark Salzman
    Dewey: 373.11
    Random Sentence: “You stealin’ my chips?”

    Be Honest: And Other Advice from Students Across the Country
    Edited by Ninive Calegari
    Dewey: 371.8
    Random Sentence: “You are not our last salvation.”

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  • DDC 360-369: A curious case of massive understatement

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 360 Social services; association
    • 361 General social problems
    • 362 Social welfare problems & services
    • 363 Other social problems & services
    • 364 Criminology
    • 365 Penal & related institutions
    • 366 Association
    • 367 General clubs
    • 368 Insurance
    • 369 Miscellaneous kinds of associations

    361 “General social problems”? Really, Dewey? There could (and probably should) be an entire library filled with books in that subclass. But as has been the case with the previous 300s sections, this one gets FascinationPoints™ for dealing with people themselves: the good, the bad, the insane, the pathological, the criminal… We contain multitudes, we humans and our psyches, and it’s all pretty well represented here. So dive in, if you dare, to the Human Experience. Hope you brought a swimming suit because you’re about to get drenched by humanity.

    The Dew3:

    Devil in the Details: Scenes From An Obsessive Girlhood
    By Jennifer Traig
    Dewey: 362.196852
    Random Sentence: “Instead of tights, I had Torah.”

    The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Go Get Pregnant: An Adoption Story
    By Dan Savage
    Dewey: 362.73408664
    Random Sentence: “I took some more codeine.”

    Catch Me If You Can
    By Frank Abagnale
    Dewey: 364.163
    Random Sentence: “After that I was flying kites.”

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  • DDC 350-359: Battle Cry of Deweydom

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 350 Public administration
    • 351 Of central governments
    • 352 Of local governments
    • 353 Of U.S. federal & state governments
    • 354 Of specific central governments
    • 355 Military science
    • 356 Foot forces & warfare
    • 357 Mounted forces & warfare
    • 358 Other specialized forces & services
    • 359 Sea (Naval) forces & warfare

    Time to rally ‘round the flag, sound the horns, and charge into the stacks to do battle with the many books in the 350s. As a Yankee-bred Union man, I’m partial to “The Battle Cry of Freedom” but realize my counterparts below the Mason-Dixon line might prefer the equally catchy but mightily more incendiary “Dixie.” (Whichever one you pick, rest assured that people will judge you for it.)

    While the Civil War is the prototypical American military story, you’ll have to head to the 900s to get history on that: this section tackles the armed forces themselves in all their diversity (as well as “public administration,” whatever that means). I’m not much of a military buff. I’m probably most familiar with World War II, whether because my familial connection to it through my grandpa or the plethora of popular and academic readings and pop-culture renderings of it. While I can’t say I’m glad that there’s a lot of interest in the armed forces, it’s certainly a huge part of American culture, and human nature for that matter.

    The Dew3:

    Badass Ultimate Deathmatch: Skull-crushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time
    By Ben Thompson
    Dewey: 355.0092
    Random Sentence: “I think we can all see that this is pretty messed up.”

    The Troopers: An Informal History of the Plains Cavalry, 1865-1890
    By S.E. Whitman
    Dewey: 357.10973
    Random Sentence: “Nor could the Republicans duck.”

    The Heart and the Fist: The Education of A Humanitarian, the Making of A Navy SEAL
    By Eric Greitens
    Dewey: 359.984
    Random Sentence: “It’s death. There is no prize for 2nd place.”

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  • This Is Martin Bonner

    this

    I’ve seen a face I won’t soon forget. It’s the face of an unsure redemption, of grace on the upswing. Of counting tenuous steps as tiny miracles. This face is a freshly washed used car whose surface is clean again, but whose frame within still carries the weather and rust. It’s a face leading a journey from point A to point B, its body taking those tenuous steps perhaps not for the first time, but nevertheless in abject terror. It’s a good thing this face is flexible, for its pieces can come together to form a portrait that is more pleasing and assured than the muddled innards it covers. A stoic smile, forward gaze, hopeful laughter—all evidence that the gears are turning still, that the car may be well used and probably unsellable but it is still a car on the move.

    The face, you can see, is a powerful thing. I saw this power in the library the other day, on the train two years ago, and in the movie This Is Martin Bonner.

    The man in the library came to the desk, to-go coffee cup in hand, with a question. “Where are your books about Alcoholics Anonymous?” I checked the catalog to see what we had in the stacks and we walked to 362, Social Welfare Problems & Services. “I have a meeting in an hour nearby and I just wanted something to read until then,” he said as I scanned the spines for what he wanted. A meeting? Oh. A meeting. He was unashamed to show that he meant AA, that these books weren’t for “a friend” or his mother. He was drinking coffee, going to the library, and then going to a meeting, all to make himself better. And he had that face in front of it all: sober in every way, clear-eyed, pragmatically hopeful, still emerging from the darkness but happy to do so.

    I saw the same face on another man, but without the pat assurances of redemption. On a late train home I saw him sitting alone, he and I the only remaining riders in the barreling train car. His workman’s books, rugged jeans, and thick jacket told of hardy work and long days. His near-bald head was greyed along the sides, and his face—the face—was wrinkled by age and strain. But his eyes (isn’t it always the eyes?) told the rest of the story. They saw far beyond the train car he was riding with me through the darkness. They projected a hopeful vision of the near future, when he would leave the train and take a bus (or walk, or drive) to his final destination, a place that seemed especially trepidatious tonight. Whom was he going to see, and why? An estranged daughter he had wounded in too many ways? An ex-wife he wanted to win back? Whoever it was, they had his full attention. He clutched spiral notebooks, unfolding them now and again to sneak a peek, then closing them and trying to send his attention elsewhere. It was as if he had written carefully chosen remarks in those notebooks, a long-time-coming speech that would need to rectify whatever he was carrying that night from his past toward his approaching future. If his face indicated anything, it was his doubt of success. His fidgety hands preempted any attempt his face made to tell anything but the truth. And the truth was, as I saw it, he was terrified.

    I saw the face, too, in Chad Hartigan’s This Is Martin Bonner (2013), a serene and sure film about two men with a faith problem. Martin, a recently bankrupt former church business manager, is a volunteer coordinator for a religious non-profit that prepares inmates for life on the outside through a strenuous work program. The film opens with Martin pitching an inmate on joining the program, which emphasizes rebuilding the prisoners’ “commitment to community.” The inmate balks at this prospect: “What’s in it for me?” he asks with an edge.

    Martin, it seems, could ask the same thing. Divorced, separated from his adult children, working for an organization whose faith he no longer holds, he gets through each lonely day with the face we have all worn at some point—the one that says I don’t know, but I’m trying. He buys art at auction and on eBay to decorate his barren abode. He attends (at his daughter’s behest) a speed-dating event despite strong reluctance and low expectations. He sits through a promotional video filled with earnest testimonials extolling the virtues of the inmate rehabilitation program, his stoic face belying his spiritual ennui.

    Yet through all of this he becomes an unlikely refuge for Travis, a freshly paroled convict whom Martin picks up from prison. They go to a cafe and Travis tastes good coffee for the first time in years. It’s here we see in Travis’ face the dim light of renewal starting to emerge, the kindling dawn that trails a long, dark night. His face, cautious and humble, tells tales learned the hard way and behind bars as only small graces like good coffee can trigger. His past self—convicted of vehicular manslaughter twelve years ago—is gone. He has a new self now, but for what?

    Travis dines with his assigned mentor, who in Travis’s words is “very Christian,” well-meaning and friendly but uncomfortably certain of his role as God’s disciple. When Martin and Travis meet again, Travis shares this with Martin and asks him, only half-jokingly, if he’s “very Christian” too.

    “I’ve got a degree in theology and worked for the church for many years,” Martin deadpans.

    “I should have known,” says Travis, resigned to more proselytizing.

    “But that shouldn’t mean anything,” Martin replies. “I had what you call a ‘crisis of faith’ a few years ago. I woke up one Sunday morning and I didn’t want to go to church anymore. I felt I’d sacrificed enough of my life to God, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. So I woke up selfish and it hasn’t gone away.”

    “So you quit the church?”

    “No. I got fired for getting divorced.”

    “And you still wanted to work for a Christian organization?”

    “Frankly, Travis, they were the only people who would hire me. I applied for a manager’s position at Starbucks and couldn’t get an interview.”

    I don’t know, but I’m trying.

    Every day provides new opportunities for these men to struggle for tiny victories, for just a flicker of light to illuminate their darkened paths. Martin struggles to connect (quite literally) with his adult son, who for some reason won’t return Martin’s many calls. Finally, Martin receives a gift in the mail: a painting from his son, which might as well have been an olive branch. Similarly, Travis strives toward redemption in a meeting with his estranged daughter, who in his decade-long absence has grown into a young woman who doesn’t know her father. The conversation is awkward, stilted, each fumbling to connect with someone they know ought to love but can’t, at least not right now. Travis, desperate for his new life to begin, wants to make up for lost time, but his daughter, though willing to have a relationship, still wants to take it slow.

    I don’t know, but I’m trying.

    I could be wrong about these men and their faces. I don’t know their lives truly. Perhaps I saw what I wanted to see, and projected onto their faces stories I wanted to believe but didn’t know for sure were true. I was happy for the man killing time in the library before another chair circle, another Serenity Prayer, and another day in the struggle, but I could be wrong about him. I was hopeful for the man on the train whose destination I did not know but whose sincerity in getting there was evident, but I could be wrong about him too. And I was glad to see the two men in This Is Martin Bonner find each other as they traversed with fear and trembling the tightrope between faith and doubt, but perhaps another viewer would see in them something entirely different.

    I don’t know, but I’m trying.

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  • DDC 340-349: Law and Boredom

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 340 Law
    • 341 International law
    • 342 Constitutional & administrative law
    • 343 Military, tax, trade, industrial law
    • 344 Social, labor, welfare, & related law
    • 345 Criminal law
    • 346 Private law
    • 347 Civil procedure & courts
    • 348 Law (Statutes), regulations, cases
    • 349 Law of specific jurisdictions & areas

    Favorite courtroom drama? 12 Angry Men, hands down. I’m also a sucker for Aaron Sorkin’s smooth, laser-fast writing in A Few Good Men and the politically hokey yet dramatic flair of Runaway Jury. But we’re talking about real law, aren’t we. In that case, I suppose it’s time for a serious, substantive discussion about 347 Civil Procedure & Courts or 349 Law of Specific Jurisdictions & Areas. Anyone? Bueller? That’s what I thought.

    Law (and I’m sure most lawyers would agree, though don’t litigate me on this because I have zero evidence to back it up) is way more boring in real life than in the movies. And what isn’t? I’m much rather watch Tom Cruise cruise his way through witty monologues than listen to civil attorneys drone on about procedure and precedent in cases from before the Civil War. Am I being unfair? Sue me.

    (Please don’t sue me.)

    The Dew3:

    Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution
    By Richard Beeman
    Dewey: 342.7302
    Random Sentence: “Without naming it, Wilson was calling for the creation of an electoral college.”

    Don’t Pee on My Leg and Tell Me It’s Raining: America’s Toughest Family Court Judge Speaks Out
    By Judy Scheindlin
    Dewey: 346.7470150269
    Random Sentence: “This is not Let’s Make A Deal, and I’m not Marty Hall!”

    The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
    By Jeffrey Toobin
    Dewey: 347.7326
    Random Sentence: “He dominated the arguments to an almost embarrassing degree.”

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  • DDC 330-339: Economics? Interesting? WTF

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 330 Economics
    • 331 Labor economics
    • 332 Financial economics
    • 333 Land economics
    • 334 Cooperatives
    • 335 Socialism & related systems
    • 336 Public finance
    • 337 International economics
    • 338 Production
    • 339 Macroeconomics & related topics

    Gotta be honest: I was not expecting to find as many interesting books in this section as I did. Like another theoretical principle involving numbers, economics scares me. (I do take great pleasure in the good work of the people at Planet Money, whose mission is to speak plainly about the economy so number-dumb English majors like me can understand what’s going on in the world.) But when I saw what “land economics” meant book-wise (essentially, how to take care of nature) and that “public finance” isn’t quite as mind-numbing as it sounds (yet I’ll still leave it to the financiers—try not to crash the world economy again!), I felt encouraged. There’s plenty to be bored by here, as with most sections, but also more than meets the perusing eye.

    The Dew3:

    John Muir and the Ice That Started A Fire: How A Visionary and the Glaciers of Alaska Changed America
    By Kim Heacox
    Dewey: 333.72
    Random Sentence: “His stout muffled body seemed all one skipping muscle.”

    A Sand County Almanac: With Other Essays on Conservation From Round River
    By Aldo Leopold
    Dewey: 333.72
    Random Sentence: “There is a peculiar virtue in the music of elusive birds.”

    Belching Out the Devil: Global Adventures With Coca-Cola
    By Mark Thomas
    Dewey: 338.766362
    Random Sentence: “Are you a porn star?”

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  • DDC 320-329: Beware the festering swamp

    A Teach Me How To Dewey production

    This Is How We Dewey:

    • 320 Political science
    • 321 Systems of governments & states
    • 322 Relation of state to organized groups
    • 323 Civil & political rights
    • 324 The political process
    • 325 International migration & colonization
    • 326 Slavery & emancipation
    • 327 International relations
    • 328 The legislative process
    • 329 Not assigned or no longer used

    Ah yes, politics: the second of the Banned At Thanksgiving Dinner topics is finally at hand. Personally, I’m fascinated by politics (American specifically). Notice I didn’t say I love them: as a history nut I enjoy viewing current events in historical context, and also enjoy dissecting the various political narratives that come out of them, but horse-race politics disgust me. I’m a moderate through and through, leaning left on some issues and right on others, but I’m a radical in my view that cable news is generally a vapid abomination of journalism and that politics in the U.S. is a festering swamp of ego and soul-crushing skullduggery.

    All that to say that I took extra care in this section to avoid those shoddy polemics by pundits, hucksters, and otherwise annoying public figures who for some cosmically sad reason make a lot of money saying stupid and/or wrong things on TV. There are so many of those books! But there are just as many interesting, well-written ones about a variety of political issues that you ought to check out.

    The Dew3:

    The Black Panthers Speak
    Dewey: 322.42
    Random Sentence: “Whose benefit are they concerned with, Huey P. Newton’s or black lawyers?”

    Freedom Summer: The Savage Season That Made Mississippi Burn and Made America A Democracy
    By Bruce Watson
    Dewey: 323.1196
    Random Sentence: “Beer cans flew, and a SNCC car’s tires were slashed.”

    Will the Gentleman Yield: The Congressional Record Humor Book
    Dewey: 328.7300207
    Random Sentence: “I await with eager anticipation my trophy.”

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