We're an ADA/EOE compliant library with 5.2 FTE

A great mystery has been solved! Ok, so perhaps it wasn't such a "great mystery" as a personal enigma and it wasn't really solved: more like I stumbled across the answer. Still, "a great mystery has been solved" sounds much better than "I stumbled across the answer to a personal enigma," so we'll leave it at the first statement. Perhaps you are wondering just what this great mystery could possibly be. Do not worry; I'm about to tell you. I promise.

I've spent much time lately in reading job postings, and I keep coming across variations of a phrase that puzzled me greatly. This would be something like "supervises 5.2 FTE." Now, I interpreted FTE to mean "full time employees," yet I could not figure out just how one could have two tenths of a full-time employee. I can rationalize away the average American family's 2.5 children easily enough, but there is little I can make of two tenths of an employee. But today, yes just minutes ago even, I ran across a written out version of FTE to discover that FTE=full time equivalent. Aha! Now we are getting somewhere. Just where, I do not know, but I strongly suspect I'd prefer to supervise 5.2 full time employees than the 10-12 part time employees that FTE potentially indicates.

Fragility of water

Small dark clouds hang over the city against a rust-tinged evening sky. Their lack of willingness to move gives one the impression that they are parachuters suspended forever in mid-fall, patiently watching the streaming flow of headlights far below. Frozen in time and doomed forever to perch on air, does time appear to stop for them as well? Do things proceed as usual for these flying men, or does everything move at great speed beneath them? They have transformed themselves into mere silhouettes, dancing motionlessly in the sunset. How long will they stay and dance on air for me? Ah, a gentle breeze comes and they dissipate before my eyes.

Just a quickie!

The clouds stood like mountains on the horizon,
obstinate in their purity against the liquid blue sky.

Jobs and such

The semester has begun with a flurry of activity. My classes have started off running so that even though it is only the first week, I'm already realizing how quickly it will all be over. No dallying around this semester! I only have five weeks left before I have to turn in two final projects for one course.

Amidst all this, I also have to try to find a job. Hmmm. Where to look? Well, I've applied to three thus far: one in New York, one in Kentucky, and one in Texas. Monday I heard from Cornell University that they had over 225 applicants for the position and that they would not be pursuing my candidacy at this time. Tonight I'll apply for a job at the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston. That one is a Preservation Librarian position, and I really think I would enjoy it, though it will carry much responsibility. After that, I think there are two in Ohio I need to look at and one in Montana, if it is still open.

What irks me about these job postings is the tag line at the end: "Women and under-represented minorities are encouraged to apply." Well, yes. Of course we are! Why shouldn't we be encouraged to apply? I've even seen job postings that will hint that women, minorities, and Vietnam-era Veterans should apply. What does this mean for a young, caucasian male's chances for employment? I don't want to be handed a job that someone else is more qualified for just because I'm a woman. I want to be hired on my own merit, not merely because I happen to have a double X. Is that really too much to ask?

The wisdom of ages

Having just come from the university book store, I plopped my bags down on a park bench to wait for my bus to come along. I wasn't there long before a little old man, who was surely no younger than seventy and could easily have been eighty, came along with several bags and sat down next to me. I'm not in the habit of speaking to strange people at bus stops, but he struck up a conversation right away. He first asked what bus I was waiting for and responded with a slow, 67F, which was good, because by the time it came by he was so engrossed in a story that he would have missed it had I not pointed it out to him.

Seeing my bags from the bookstore with University of Pittsburgh emblazoned across them as well as my college ID hanging from my neck, he rightly assumed that I was a student and asked what what I was studying. When I answered "library science" he became even more interested in talking and turned to face me, saying, "tell me, before you started classes here, what was your opinion of the future of libraries." We breifly discussed the impact of technology on the future of the book and the way in which people have been predicting the death of the book for centuries, for it seems that any time there is a new development that could possibly impact information retrieval people expect books to just fall to the wayside. Clearly this has yet to happen. Who wants to read a novel on a computer? Cuddling up next to a roaring fireplace with a mug of hot chocolate, a heavy blanket, and a laptop just doesn't quite cut it somehow.

Anyway, it turns out this elderly gentleman is, or was, an aero-space engineer and has taught computer literacy programs at the downtown branch of the Carnegie public library for over thirty years. He shared several stories with me, mostly relating to changes in technology and advances in information retrieval, each time starting out with the charming clause, "in my lifetime I have seen." I could have listened to his stories all day, but his bus came in the midst of his recounting the history of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and his development of the theory of nooshpere in 1918, which, in a sense, predicted the development of the internet by the end of the century. Such a sweet, intelligent little old man, and I never even caught his name.

Her Daddy's Coat

As I walked home this afternoon, I followed briefly behind a mother and daughter. The little girl, probably only five or six years old, trailed behind her mother at times, skipping through puddles and seeming to thoroughly enjoy the light rain. From time to time she would catch her mother's hand and walk under the umbrella, but she made a charming image on her own, this child, splashing about in a drab brown dress, little white tights, shoes that were easily a size too large for her, and what must have been her daddy's coat, dark leather with sleeves that reached to her knees and flopped loosely as she went along her merry way. The girl would stretch out her arms for balance, sleeves dangling inches past her fingertips, when hopping over, around, and through the pooling water, and I eventually lost sight of the pair when they disappeared into a small grocery. The child was dripping but happy, because for a moment there, she became a bird, soaring over puddles in her daddy's coat.

A wonderful deception

Now I've done something that will shock everyone; I've bought a book. At first glance it would appear to be nothing especially wonderful, aside from the fact that it's fairly old -- circa 1869 -- and covered in a much rubbed paper over rounded boards. The cover of the book claims that this is a copy of Brooks Primary Arithmetic: The Normal Primary. This isn't what the book contains at all, though. Someone has made this into something of a book of useful knowledge, ripping out all of the original pages and sewing in their own. The new book is made up of only two signatures. The first is either one signature from a larger book or an entire book without its title covers and title page. Regardless, it contains recipes for cookies, main courses, and medicines, along with testimonials and advertisements such as the following:

"Mothers. Mothers. Mothers. Don't fail to procure MRS. WINSLOW'S SOOTHING SYRUP for all diseases incident to the period of teething in children. It relieves the child from pain, cures wind colic, regulates the bowels, and by giving relief and health to the child, gives rest to the mother."

The second signature contains clippings from newspapers and books that have recipes or medical advice. These have been pasted onto lined paper that had been used for lessons of some sort and which were cut down to fit this book. Each paper has a line of text written across the top, and this text, often scripture, had been copied out over and over on the pages. Written upside down in this section is a record of marriages, deaths, and addresses. Such a wonderful find! I think I'll take it to work this week and see if my boss will let me make a phase box for this charming bit of history.

Taylor in Wonderland

"Look Taylor! Do you see that rabbit up there? It's right there, in the garden."

"Oh, ok. See the bunny. I see him jump."

"But do you see it?" she asks, noting that he's not looking in the right direction.

"Umm . . . no." Jessica sets the three year old down at the crest of the hill and points to the rabbit. "Oh," the child exclaims, "I found him."

"Go get him!"

Once free of his aunt, the red-haired ragamuffin hurries over a mostly barren, uneven ground dotted with patches of tall, hardy weeds. The rabbit easily eludes him, hopping away and through a hole in the fence before the child takes a dozen steps. Looking up at his aunt with big eyes and raising his arms to be carried again, he pleads, "Jessica, I want to see another bunny!"

Swinging Taylor easily up onto her hip, Jessica suggests that they go to the end of the small field to check behind grandpa's special tree. Why it is special she no longer remembers, and her grandfather cannot remind her, but there was surely something wonderful about that tree. At any rate, there were no rabbits to be found. Instead, they found something equally exciting to a little boy.

"Jessica, look! It's a calpillar!"

"Would you like me to put you down so you can see it better?"

"Yes!" Squatting above the insect and leaning forward with his hands clasped behind his back, Taylor asks in all seriousness, "Where are you going cowpillar?"

Curious to see how the boy will react, his aunt answers from behind him in falsetto, "I'm going to watch the big trucks on the highway!"

"Oh," he responds, "I like trucks." Taylor watches the caterpillar for a few minutes longer before again asking, "Where are you going calpillar?"

"I'm going to watch the big trucks on the highway!"

"Nooo," he says with mild disbelief. "Where are you going cowpillar?"

"Well I'm really hungry, so I'm looking for some good leaves to eat. Then I'm going to go build a cocoon and go to sleep for a few weeks." Switching to her natural voice, Jessica feigns excitement, "Wow Taylor! Did you hear that? He's going to go build a cocoon! A cocoon is like a little house where the caterpillar will sleep for a few weeks. Then he'll come out as a beautiful butterfly."

"Him's building a cocoon house?"

"Yes, he's building a cocoon!"

"Wow. I want to see another bunny." She lifts the small boy and carries him back over the uneven terrain to his great-grandmother's somewhat ramshackle house.

"I don't see any more rabbits, Taylor, but I think it's time to go home now."

"Ok. Take a calpillar home?"

"Hmmm. I don't think your mommy would like that very much," she says with a smile.

Stooping down to the bottom of the fence where another caterpillar busies himself, Taylor lets out a small sigh and looks sadly at his new friend. "Goodbye, cowpillar."

Relaxation . . . I could get used to this!

Ah, what a wonderful weekend. I worked all day on Friday in the Preservation Lab and then spent the evening with people from archives and preservation at Dave and Buster's for an end of the semester "bash." My parents made it in late that night and we headed off to the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium early Saturday morning. The afternoon was spent wandering around downtown and through Point State Park, and we went to a Pirates game in the evening. We won. :)

Today I slept in and then spent most of the day alone. I wanted to try my hand at my violin again, but all of the strings were terribly loose. I tried to tighten the G, even though I have nothing to test it against to know when it's in tune, but the string snapped. So much for that idea! Perhaps I can take my violin somewhere to have it restrung and tuned. I spent the rest of the afternoon in knitting and card-making and watching bad television. This was until my mother came home with my three-year old nephew.

As soon as Taylor saw me, he said "there's aunt Jessica. I found her!" He's so cute. I don't believe he was here for more than a few hours, but in that time we played hide and seek, did a rhinoceros puzzle, sat on a teeter-totter, slid down a slide small enough for me to easily step over, and ate German Cheese (known to all but Taylor as American Cheese). I absolutely love this kid. He and I (and his mother and baby brother) will go for a walk through a park near the river tomorrow. I can't wait to hear what precious and adorable things will fall from his mouth.

Now I had intended for this blog to be more creative in nature, and I realize that this is more journalistic, so I promise my next one will be more creative in nature.