Whew!
Back at home, back at work, hopefully pretty much back to normal. A few summer people still here but the crowd will thin by next week. Two dinner invitations on my answering machine when I got home last night.


I've just returned from Utica (central NY), from a conference of public library systems in NY. There are 22 of us systems and there were 115 people at the conference--director from each of the systems, for the first time in many, many years. Usually only about half or 2/3 of them show up so this was pretty cool. The rest of the attendees were consultants, people like me who do various things within the systems. I saw people I haven't seen in a long time and met some new people. Lots of the directors are people I've known for 20 or so years, who used to be Assistant Directors or consultants. Some of the directors are getting ready to retire. Most of the consultants are people I don't know. We had 2 really productive meetings of the Reference Consultants, lasting all morning on Monday. We had 4 excellent speakers who got me all fired up and have left me with a big wad of work to try to do for our little system in our little rural setting with our tiny little population. Marketing, communication, letting the patron's guide us so we'll be serving their needs. Blogs, better websites, letting member libraries and patrons evaluate databases, Facebook and this really cool online course that the IT person from Charlotte & Mecklenberg (NC) has put together. And a great formula to determine how much money's worth of service libraries provide in their communities. Like, in Suffolk County (Long Island) for each $1 spent on libraries there's a $4 return on the investment in terms of jobs created by construction of new buildings and additions, savings in use of free internet connections, free use of materials, etc. Of course, they paid $20,000 to a consultant for the full version--the formulas and abbreviated versions are available free online.


Then there was the tour of the brewery where Saranac beer is brewed. The tour was great, except it was after the brewery was closed so we didn't get to see the bottling part in action. Anyway, they gave us as much beer as we could drink while we had our social hour and waited for the other half of our group to tour (group too big to tour at once), then we each got a free 6-pack of beer or ginger beer or root beer to take home. Pretty cool, huh. I took Pomegranate Wheat, which was really good.

Julie and I roomed together, as we always do. Lots of conversation and laughing. The director told me I would have to drop her off at the airport, where her husband would drop off their car when he flew back to Alaska on Mond. morning. I assumed she meant Burlington, adding 2 hours to my trip home, after the 4 hour drive back to Plattsburgh, making it too late for me to pick up the dogs at the kennel. Half way back to Plattsburgh (during one of the 4 stops we had to make because the staff car kept overheating) I found out it was the Plattsburgh airport, which is on my way home. HOW EMBARRASSING! She couldn't believe I would ever think she would ask me to take her to Burlington. Well, woman, I'm used to a director who orders me around like a Philipino gardener, and if I don't do what she says the Board hears about it. So we laughed a lot about it, but I could tell it upset her that I would think that of her.

Anyway, I was late getting to the kennel as it was, 8:30, which is the latest Joan ever likes to have me pick them up. The dogs were great--when I dropped them off they pulled on their leashes, dragging Joan to the kennel building. Even though it cost $80, I didn't have to worry about whether they were suffering while being boarded--she has 3 fenced in acres and lets them run around with other dogs. Only my yellow Lab Emma (the grumpy one) burrowed under the fence. These girls are perfectly happy to be there.


Everyone's been busy writing about things like dreaming of Henry, which I often do. When I dream about him he's always fine and there's not that feeling that "you're not supposed to be here, you're dead." Molly once told me about a friend who had a dead mother and dreamed he got a phone call from her. He said "I can't talk to you, you're dead," and hung up the phone. Maybe that's a saner approach to dead people, I don't know. I have happy dreams about Henry, which I find comforting and sort of cheering.

Molly writes of memories--we spend a lot of time on reviewing our memories when we're together. My mother often used to say to me "It's too bad you only remember the bad things about your childhood." I guess I did say a lot of negative things, and now I have more pleasant memories I can report. There are plenty of unpleasant things to remember but plenty of good ones too. I remember ballet lessons with my sister when we were very young and how exciting that was, and I remember the horseback riding ranch we went to for a week, where we got to ride every single day and were responsible for saddling & bridling our horses. We reviewed the places we lived when we were all together, and that was a nice exercise. I remember the hours my sister and I spent running around on our stick horses in the parking lot of the funeral home we lived next door to in Urbana, Ill. Gee, I feel as if I should send this to my mother to show her that I know GOOD things happened to me.

I remember a lot of bad things about my marriage (which I WON'T recount here, you can all relax) and seem to have trouble pulling up the good things. Maybe that's a defensive device, who knows. I try not to obsess about it but I still fuss in my mind sometimes. That was a dozen years ago, but it lasted for 10 important years.

I read Dooce's blog about going back to L.A. and her feelings about the city. I have some of the same feelings about Rhode Island: it's where I grew up. I lived with a man for 4 years (and boy did I ever learn stuff from that relationship!). I earned my masters degree in a field I'd never really heard of, and got my first job in that field, discovering a whole world of wonderful work.
I started to define the sort of adult I would be. I watched my father die and mourned his death, dealing pretty unsuccessfully with my mother during that. I have many regrets about the way I handled that. I made some wonderful friends (only 2 of whom I keep in touch with, 20 years later). I got to work in the 2nd largest public library in New England, with 600,000 volumes and used to be an amazing place. I got to spend lots of time in Providence, a really cool city. I got to spend so much time at the ocean that I got sort of sick of it. I got to buy a lobster for $3 and have it for dinner when I was a poor graduate student. I discovered that I can live alone and enjoy it.

And now look where I am! I get to live in an even more wonderful place, I have really wonderful, lifelong friends, I have Ken's guidance and friendship, I have Fred to entertain me, I have this set of dogs for now and I know that when a dog dies you can replace it and survive the loss. I also know that the way I live my life is not dramatic or a big deal, it's just my life. We all life in places that present challenges. Right now my sister is facing a challenge that would be incredibly difficult for me to bear: 100-degree heat. I don't know what I would do in heat like that that lasted so long. I know I'd be cross and miserable. I suppose that's what people think about my -20 degree days, but I sort of enjoy them. They're beautiful and offer a lot to appreciate. Lucky thing we're all different. And have different memories, as hard as that can be.