Comic Memoir a Five-Star Read

Don Borchert’s FREE FOR ALL: Oddballs, Geeks, and Gangstas in the Public Library is a hoot. It’s a memoir, focusing on his years working as a librarian in Lomita, California. In an excerpt from one of my favorite scenes, Don describes the reluctance on the part of librarians to call the police when bad things happen, thinking if they do, administration will view it as an admission can’t handle their jobs.

During Don’s first year, he sees a kid get hit by a car, yet when he tries to make a call to the cops, the librarian at the reference desk puts the kibosh on it. Hilarity ensues:

Peg Peters, the almost retired, dour, and imperious children’s librarian at the time, was at the reference desk. She was just getting off the phone and I told her that there had been an accident. I reached for the phone and she put out a cautionary hand to block me.

Had I seen this “accident”?

Yes.

Hmm. Where?

Out the window, on the corner by the traffic light.

Hmm. Do you know if anyone’s hurt?

Probably the kid who flew through the air.

She gave me a pinched, biting-into-a-lemon face to let me know she acknowledged the dark humor but didn’t approve.

But you don’t know, she said.

And I looked at her like, What the f**k?

She cocked her head as if she felt vaguely sorry for me for not understanding the ways of the world – especially the library – and said: You should talk to Juanita before you do anything. If anyone calls the police, it should be the senior librarian. Then she smiled her sad, bemused smile that she saved for retarded people who are struggling to appear normal.

So I picked up the phone and dialed 911.

Peg Peters’ smile shattered into a million sharp pieces and her head snapped back, indicating betrayal and disgust. I had violated the time-honored chain-of-command thing, called the police, and disobeyed a supervisor. Quite the trifecta for a recent hire.

Five stars, even with the handful of typos.

Out and About

The American River, Saturday, February 9, late afternoon. Steve’s on his bike, pedaling along, stopping every so often to photograph a phoebe or a nuthatch, mergansers running atop the water. I’m walking alongside. We stop and sit on a bank, watch a pair of mallards preening. Close our eyes. Inhale the scent of damp earth, warmed by winter sun. Sit until the shade hits, spills across the landscape. Head for home and a fresh-crab dinner, a bite of crusty bread. It is heaven.

Great Backyard Bird Count Just Two Weeks Away

The annual Great Backyard Bird Count (GBBC), sponsored by the National Audubon Society and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, will be held February 15-18, just two weeks away. During the event, bird watchers of all ages and expertise count birds for four days to help scientists determine the distribution and abundance of birds throughout the U.S. and Canada. Prior to the count, bird watchers can print a checklist for the birds in their area from www.birdcount.org. We’re asked to count birds in our backyards, or at local parks, ponds, marshes, or wildlife refuges, keeping a separate list of counts for each day, and then entering the results via a link on the website.

Last year, birders submitted 81,003 checklists tallying 11,082,387 birds and 613 species.

The 10 most commonly reported species were:

1 – Northern Cardinal

2 – Dark-eyed Junco

3 – Mourning Dove

4 – Blue Jay

5 – Downy Woodpecker

6 – American Goldfinch

7 – House Finch

8 – Tufted Titmouse

9 – American Crow

10 – House Sparrow

I’ve downloaded my checklist, and though I can’t wait to get started, I promise to hold off until February 15!

World Wetlands Day – A Good Day for Muskrats, Beavers, and Birds

Tomorrow, February 2, is World Wetlands Day, and as I walk the trails in the middle of the suburbs in Folsom, California, I am reminded of the importance of ponds and marshes to our local wildlife. A muskrat is a frequent visitor to a pond adjacent to the footbridge I cross every day, and a pair of beavers occupies another pond near a suite of offices with a man-made waterfall.

I’m curious about beavers, and thanks to an IMAX documentary, I’ve learned a few things about them. Here is a sampling:

They are 3-4 feet long and weigh 40-60 pounds.

They eat the bark and leaves of trees such as cottonwoods, oaks, willows, aspens and alders.

They can remain under water for up to fifteen minutes.

They’re nocturnal.

Bears, coyotes and bobcats prey on them.

They do a fair amount of wrestling – a sort of rigorous face-to-face embrace – and they talk to one another, making amusing little noises similar to baby grunts.

Two beavers can topple over 400 aspens in one year’s time, which makes me worry for them, here in the suburbs. All the more reason to protect our environment from overzealous development, and to financially support our state and national parks.

Litcomm -- A New Genre?

I was reading The Sacramento Bee recently, which featured a piece on Roger McGuinn, the founding member of the folk-rock band The Byrds. I was interested in the story because McGuinn commented that the folk-music establishment in the '60s viewed the Byrds as little more than “barbarians at the gate” because they weren’t purists. McGuinn attributed the folk establishment's attitude to a “kind of snobbishness.” Which got me thinking that this is sometimes how writers of literary fiction view writers of commercial fiction. Which got me thinking about those of us who fall between those categories; who write commercial fiction with literary qualities. Which got me thinking we need a new category for this genre, and that we ought to call it Litcomm.

I Googled “litcomm” to see what was out there, and it appears the term is most often used as an abbreviation for “literary comments” or “liturgy committee” or “liturgical commission.” A search for “genre litcomm” brought up no hits (none!) while “genre litcom” brought up “literary community” and not much more. There was nothing anywhere about a market inhabited by the likes of Larry McMurtry, Pete Fromm, Ron Carlson, Dennis Lehane, and, well, me. (Why should boys have all the fun?)

And get this. Type in www.litcom.com and you’ll find that the domain name is parked, but available for $4,350. (Why stop there? Why not shoot for $5,000?) Oddly, www.litcomm.com has been purchased by a guy in Wappingers Falls, NY, though this name too is parked. Why? Is he a writer? And if not, what’s he’s going to do with it? Type in www.litcom.net however and you’ll see that it is a parking space reserved (gereserveered) for (voor) a Scandinavian company providing “services.” And then there’s www.litcom.org -- which is ahem, best left alone.

I’m curious about other writers’ feelings on this. Is anyone willing to share? Are you a litcomm writer, and if so, should we band together and form a group and maybe march on Washington? Or at the very least, New York City? Let publishers know we’ve got a voice and wish to be heard and that dammit our numbers are huge? Or are there only five of us, one of us unpublished? In the words of Scout Finch, “Shoot me a beet, Pete,” and let’s see where we go.

ReGeneration at Sundance

According to Wikipedia, the “ReGeneration” refers to people of all ages who share a common interest in renewable resources, recycling and other means of sustaining Earth’s natural environment. The prefix ‘Re’ in “Regeneration,” they say, could be interpreted to include environmental practices such as Re-using, Re-cycling, and Re-storing.

Jena Thompson, director of The Conservation Fund’s Go Zero climate initiative (and our first-born sweet pea), wrote from Sundance last weekend that the ReGeneration is “flexing its muscle” at the film festival this year, and that a “more integrated, more sustainable Sundance is emerging.” Here’s a quote from her blog:

“Green is growing – and so is giving back. Festival-goers can join film critics over a martini made with 360 Vodka, the ‘official spirit’ of the Sundance Film festival. The McCormick Distilling Company product is made from locally grown grain, packaged in 85 percent recycled glass with 100 percent recycled labels, and touts a reusable bottle cap that you can ship back for free to the manufacturers so it can be recycled.”

The Conservation Fund was helping festival visitors calculate their carbon footprints and restore native forests via a mobile Go Zero Carbon Kiosk.

Photo: Jena Thompson and Jeremy Meredith, Park City, Utah