Seattle Public Library System shut down for a week

Seattle libraries are closed Monday and won't reopen until Sept. 8. Locking the doors and sending the librarians home for eight days will save more than $650,000.

Meanwhile, the city of Seattle expects to save up to $20 million next year by having most city workers take off 10 unpaid furlough days.

A coalition of 14 city employee unions approved the plan last week that covers nearly 6,400 workers. Uniformed police and firefighters are not part of the furlough plan.

http://www.seattlepi.com/local/6420ap_wa_seattle_cuts.html?source=mypi

For some reason I thought I'd get one extra week of reading. No.
I do treasure the fact that our family makes library time a regular part of our schedule. Jazz/funk/ambient/chill CDs, Pokemon/Electric Company DVDs, books on geography, and my 'whichever way the wind blows' tastes, which right now are on exercise and spirituality.

So I have one week with the boy with no library time. I wish he'd chosen some meatier chapter books, but apparently the best way to encourage boys to read is to let them pick out what they want. My kid reads beyond his grade, but he likes Garfield comics. So he takes out Garfield comics. He also likes poetry. Guess we'll clean up the garage. After I finish my novel.

I need a new decision-making matrix

To do:
1. Return books/CDs to Library
2. Get maybe new books while Library is shut down for a week
3. Go to gym or do yoga here
4. Plan meals
5. Clean rooms
6. Initiate project plans for furniture, office, personal space
7. Initiate novena
8. Return chess book

I see where Utah has the right idea of sending texting drivers to prison for fifteen years when they cause fatalities. I wish my state were as strict. Texting drivers scare me.

weird msg from Google: Your Google Account recovery code is: #######. If you did not request this code you can safely ignore this message. Yay. Time to check what Phone # I gave Google. I don't need a recovery code.

Update: apparently someone with an e-mail address very similar to mine lost her password. Somehow Google thought it was mine. No, Google didn't send me her password. That would have been bad.

another book list: recommendation list

1. Care of the Soul : A Guide for Cultivating Depth and Sacredness in Everyday Life by Thomas Moore
2. The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life by Thomas Moore
3. Soul Mates by Thomas Moore
4. The Soul of Sex: Cultivating Life as an Act of Love by Thomas Moore
5. Coming to Our Senses: Healing Ourselves and the World Through Mindfulness by Jon Kabat-Zinn

6. Shelter for the Spirit: Create Your Own Haven in a Hectic World by Victoria Moran
7. Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life by Frederic Brussat
8. A Blue Fire by James Hillman
9. The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the Poet Within by Stephen Fry
10. The Invitation by Oriah

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some Facebook drama happening behind the scenes.
Boy just told me I looked like Sarah Palin.
The tragedy of attempted reconnection/reconcilation: rejection

1920s and 1930s music: where to listen online

Community Radio isn't supporting my fringe listening interests.

KSER's "Let the Twenties Roar" left the air in April.
KBCS is canning "Vintage Jazz" and "Jazz of the 20th Century"

What's left: The Art of Jazz on KPLU and The Swing Years and Beyond on KUOW.

What's on the Web:
WWOZ - commercial free Cajun, blues and jazz
Radio Dismuke
Radiola
Jazz 24
Evolution of Jazz

Radio Paradise

http://ask.metafilter.com/128087/Vintage-jazz-radio-streamspodcasts
WAMU Saturday Night Jazz
KJAZ
Jazz After Hours

coz, if you're out there, I've missed reading you. Drop me an update line, please?

My son is learning chess

This suits me fine. It's an intellectually demanding game, but genteel, but best of all it is NOT TRADEMARKED. What this means: game rules don't change, pieces don't adapt or evolve. You can buy a board and a working clock and study positions. I was disillusioned with SCRABBLE® because:

* rules of tournament play changed;
* club and tournament lexicon was restricted for televised play;
* Canadian spellings not altogether permitted in North American play

Chess is simpler that way. I mailed my son's registration for U.S. Chess Federation membership. He attends chess camp and a local man I know, whom I learned yesterday was state champion twice, has lent Chess Life magazines and his first chess book to my seven-year-old sun.

Mental To-Read Dump

I have many messes right now. My external life mirrors my internal and vice versa. Write it down, get it done, set it free.

Don De Lillo - White Noise, Underworld
Carson McCullers - Ballad of the Sad Cafe
Jeffrey Eugenides
Rohinton Mistry - A Fine Balance
Doris Lessing - The Golden Notebook
Philip Roth - The Plot Against America
Christopher Isherwood - The Berlin Stories
Lewis Nordan - Welcome to the Arrow-Catcher Fair
Elinor Lipman - The Way Men Act
Carol Shields - The Republic of Love
Elizabeth Hay - Late Nights on Air
Sara Jeanette Duncan
James Morris
Paul Scott
Iris Murdoch - A Severed Head, An Unofficial Rose
Jonathan Lethem - Amnesia Moon
Titles: An Unexpected Light, Travels in Afghanistan
David Goodis
Cornel Woolrich
Terence Blacker - Kill Your Darlings
Haim Ginott - Between Parent and Child
Howard Zinn
Marc Reising - Cadillac Desert

Why should I read poetry?

Yes, yes I took a minor in English, but had to be spoonfed meaning and interpretation in most poems surveyed in the curriculum, except for those lamenting the war dead or imagistically representing a brave, chaotic new world post-armistice.

It may be that my mind is not ruminative or patient enough to peel layers of meaning and intent in poems. Some poems are simple; others are difficult. My mind runs at a great pace, not necessarily in one direction at a time, so when I stop for a poetry break I'm not "ooh, I would like something difficult please." I'm wanting a playful diversion.

I either like how the words smash against each other by sound, or I like a vivid single image. My son's teacher shamelessly professes her love of poetry and loves to share that passion. Me, I read either Dorothy Parker's "Frustration" or Hart Crane's "Chaplinesque".

What brought this on? 8.3% of the US populace has read a poem in the last twelve months. If we agree that "Frustration" or "Chaplinesque" are poems (the latter most certainly qualifies), or include Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" then I'm one of the 8.3%. But seventeen years ago more like 17% of the populace read poems. Whose poems were being read? Whose poems do you read?

When I was reading poetry, back in my twenties, I read:
Edna St. Vincent Millay
Dorothy Parker
Charles Baudelaire
Gerard Manley Hopkins
Anne Sexton
Sylvia Plath
William Butler Yeats
William Carlos Williams

I even wrote poetry. No, I will not share. I have too much respect for my audience. But in this bleak and gloomy period, the only poems I've read are Wislawa Szymborska's and Homer's epic poem "The Iliad." Whom should I read? Is there a place for poetry nowadays among those out of school?