This coffee tastes like prison

On a power walk from my apartment to the Bull Run Library I spotted a sign for

"Spanish for Fun! Join the Spanish Conversation Club! Bring your lunch and chat with new friends in Spanish over coffee and dessert. A fluent Spanish-speaker is available to help with conversation"

The time when I arrived at the library was 11:30 precisely. I spent the next half hour debating with myself over whether I should go. Lately I've become less inclined to take risks and put myself out there. I don't know if it's because of lack of confidence or lack of luck with the job search but normally it doesn't take me half an hour to convince myself to do something. At 12:01 pm I arrived back at the library having run home to throw a lunch together. I ran into the conclusion of the English conversation club and then awaited for the arrival of the Spanish Conversation club.

Overall I want to chalk this up as a mediocre experience. I had no expectations when I got there but I did not expect the unstructured style of the two hour conversations between groups of people. The tables were too close together and it was difficult to hear one another shout in Spanish across the room. No one introduced themselves to me at first nor asked where I was from or how I had come to learn Spanish. I was literally a fly on the wall. I was sitting between an elderly man who was answering a volunteer's questions about grammar with another elderly man who kept looking over and smiling at me. To my right was a Chinese woman whose voice was so clipped it was hard to hear what she was saying. Imagine when you're crying so hard you can't speak except in gasps. That was how this woman spoke except without the sobbing. To her right was a man who didn't know a lick of Spanish at all, and next to him two elderly women who volunteered for the library (the know it alls). One woman's name was Judith and I don't recall the other woman's name. To their right and directly across from me were two woman, a blonde and a brunette. The brunette was very friendly and had an easy going personality. From speaking with her and correcting her grammar and pronunciations I learned that she teaches an ESL class for first graders at a local elementary school. The blonde woman had four children and I'm not sure what she did for a living.

Throughout the two hours of conversation I felt more and more isolated. I listened to the conversations going on around me and after about 45 minutes Judith introduced herself to me (one of the elderly ladies on the side table). To pass the time I got riled up about a project I wanted to with Lydia for an open mic night. Translate Nine Inch Nails' song "Hurt" and sing it with her accompanying on guitar. I asked a few questions to Judith pertaining to the lyrics and the conversation stalled from there. The only conversation I got was from the Chinese woman who couldn't speak very well. We talked about how hot it was in Texas and how much we both hated Indian food. It's not that I didn't have a good time interacting with people but I suppose I'm more used to structured conversations like I would get in high school or college. Step one: study this lesson, Step two: break up into groups and complete this activity. It looked like that was how the English Conversation Club was ran now that I think about it. I know I should have been more interactive with everyone. There were people in the room I didn't speak to the entire time. However it was my first time and despite popular belief I am an incredibly shy person. I immediately jumped up when Judith moved to the other side of the room and took her place between the two young women. Here was where the most conversation was happening. Here was where I spent the best part of my afternoon. Unfortunately the other woman who sat next to Judith was less than friendly. I know most elders are set in their ways but I detected a hint of condescension from this woman. I felt very ignorant sitting next to her and even I had had seven years of experience speaking Spanish. However, she and Judith had been talking about the rules for adding accents to words ending with vowels and even they admitted that they could be wrong.

The worst part for me was when everyone was leaving and the elderly woman turned to "the man who knew no Spanish" and asked him if he knew anything about the Chinese woman. He said he didn't but only that she'd been coming for a few weeks. I stayed in to listen and the woman said, "I don't know if it's just me, but her accent is so hard to understand. I can't hear anything she says. And I don't know if this makes me a bad person but I was actively ignoring her the entire time." I left fuming. If this was to be my example of how librarians (supposed library volunteers) viewed patrons I wanted no part of the group.

Overall Verdict: 2.5 out of 5 - I should probably go back because I need the practice for Spanish, but I think I'll check out what's available at other branches too.

Life on the Ref Desk

I was on The Desk the other day, which is to say it's the Reference Desk, the Desk where people ding hello or wait for you to stand around and notice them, or the Desk where people give their two cents. The strangest comment I heard came from a little boy who walked by me muttering, "There's a baby crawling around the library." I left the desk to investigate and did indeed find an infant crawling between fiction and young adult. Her mother was staring transfixed at some fiction titles. I went back to the desk thinking I'd never seen a baby crawl that fast.

While I'm on the desk, mothers and babysitters alike descend upon the library in one massive convergence to sign their children up for summer reading or apply for library cards. Now and again we'll get a very opinionated patron who wants to give her two cents on the .25 fine to reserve a book that's being instituted in September. I think one of the staff members told her, "Well, the library lost 1.5 million dollars in the budget last quarter so we had to come up with a unique way to charge patrons money that would make sense." I had a discussion about charging for holds with a librarian in DC during an informational interview. I told him I didn't think it was fair but he reminded me of the cost to transport holds from library to library and half of the time the patrons don't even pick them up. At least if they start charging, perhaps patrons will be more selective about which titles they choose.

Between shelving, pushing tiny carts around narrow shelves, and working the cash register I am having way too much fun at this volunteership. The ladies who work there have dubbed me "the Barefoot Librarian." Every week I stay a little longer past my 3 hour volunteer time slot to make sure I'm not leaving them with too much work. I love finding books in the free bin, leaving books in the free bin and seeing them disappear during my shift, checking out books to myself as patrons hand them in (yay Stephen King), and drinking coffee. I am so lucky to be able to work here, even if it's volunteering.

ALA Day #2 & #3

This day was spent with less volunteering and more attending events. I overshot my commute by an hour so I ended up re-organizing my backpack and writing poetry before my first event.

My first event was a Q&A session with Dennis Lehane, author of Gone Baby, Gone, Mystic River, and Shutter Island. I actually haven't read any of his books but I've seen several movie adaptations. Since it was fairly early in the morning and I hadn't had any coffee yet I was hoping that he'd be funny. The woman sitting next to me assured me that he wasn't. But lo and behold, he opens his lecture with a blond joke. Dennis Lehane looks like a combination of Simon Pegg and the principal from Buffy the Vampire Slayer with a Bostonian accent and a very dry sense of humor. He read us a few chapters from his new book, Moonlight Mile, the sequel to Gone Baby, Gone. Afterward he took some audience questions.

Some interesting quotes about his writing style and where he gets his inspiration:
"I tend not to be a very judgmental human being and this attracts a lot of psychos to you because  I sit and listen to them. And they have the best stories"

"I'm a writer because of libraries." Dennis came from a working class family with no disposable income. They could not afford books so he got a library card for free and began to read books this way.

"I can't read books that don't have a love for the English language."

My second event was a Q&A session with young adult author, Ellen Hopkins. She authors books containing free verse and concrete poems centering around her real life daughter's addiction to meth. She writes other books on differing subjects, prostitution, abuse, but the format is still the same. She read from her newest book, Fallout, which chronicles the aftermath of the lives of Christina Snow's children and the affects her addiction has had on them. Her real life son is only 13 but Hopkins portrayed him to be 17. The other children in the novel are based on qualities from Snow's other five children, specifically the babies that were exposed to meth in utero: OCD, panic attacks. Her advice was to go back to your art, art heals. Discussing the books seemed a very painful ordeal for Hopkins, as she stumbled on her words a lot. I waited in line to get her autograph since they were giving away advanced reader copies of Fallout.

After the reading I had lunch with Danielle and her friend Rebecca where we discussed library shop and looking for jobs.

The rest of my day was spent sitting in on a meeting of the Best Fiction for Young Adults committee. I didn't get there in time to discuss the works I had read but did provide input on a few books. The committee was meeting early the next day to go over the last bit of the list of books and make their decision on what should make the list. There was one lone man on the committee and it was fascinating hearing them debate the merits of young adult literature. Another wonderful aspect of the committee was how they interpreted input from the teen committee who had reviewed the same books into their own critique. Even if no one on the committee liked the book in question, they agreed to push it through because the teens made it seem like the book mattered to them. The particular book in question that none of the adults seemed to like or felt was too graphic but the teens particularly enjoyed was By the time you read this I'll be dead, which discusses suicide and bullying.

I concluded the night by attending the Michael Printz Award Ceremony and Reception where I heard Libba Bray give the most fantastic acceptance speech as she received the Printz Award for her book, Going Bovine, something I recommend everyone pick up. Not all of the speakers were great, some were funny, some were loud, very loud, and some were less than personable. But they'd written something that impacted the Printz committee enough to want to nominate them, so they have important things to say.

Day 3 was uneventful. I was so exhausted from the events of Day 1 and 2 that I did not choose to go to the Library Advocacy Day Rally. I ended up watching a video of the events later on, but at that point I was so exhausted I could not imagine dealing with the sweltering heat and large crowds.

All in all I'd say it was a good Con. I want to go to the PLA conference in Philadelphia in 2011 now so I'd better start saving.