Filed under: Book, China, Culture Clash, Industrial Design, Law school, Library, New College, Wonder
My walk this evening landed me in the main library. Understand, I’ve only spent time an appreciable amount of time in four college libraries: The New College Library, a two story behemoth sports a whopping 267,000 volumes; the music library at the University of Florida, where I spent a couple of days reading and photocopying Scarlatti scores; Zhejiang Normal University library, which was an incredible building that opened while was teaching in China and featured mostly books in Chinese and about 40 copies of MacBeth and Jurassic Park (somehow I don’t believe the homepage when it says they have 226,890,000 books); and most recently the Emory Law School library, which has the best natural light in town, but is mostly useless for browsing (those ALRs and regional reporters just don’t do it for me). That’s it. So imagine my surprise when I ended up in the stacks at the Robert W. Woodruff library (there wasn’t any difference between The Stacks and the rest of the library at new college). Ten stories of wall to wall books. They have so many books the shelves are on tracks so they can move together and fit more shelves in each room. These tracks work with the push of a button, which freaked me out when I pushed on for fun and then realized that I hadn’t checked to make sure no one would be crushed to death (the law library has movable shelves, but ours are manual, with big wheels a the ends each shelving system). There are over 3,000,000 books in the library. And that’s not including the eight other libraries on campus.
The part of the library where people hang out and do work (the computers have giant 20-some-odd inch screens!) is an amazing marble building. Students are everywhere studying late into the night (open 24 hours!) and goofing around. It reminded me of an episode in the first season of Felicity where they’re staying up late studying for finals in the library and everyone keeps shushing them (which my friend does at the law library when people are being loud; it’s awesome). There’s a wonderful reading room with big leather chairs and dark oak desks. But the stacks are in a monstrous building from what I guess is the ’70s. The ceilings are low and the light isn’t good. It’s incredibly claustrophobic, but that’s OK because it’s miles of books. More books that you knew existed. I originally wanted to look at some Peanuts comics, but found myself quickly lost and roaming from Virgil to Erasmus to books in German and French and Sanskrit (he says as though he’d know what Sanskrit looks like). I even got suck on an elevator trying to get up to the ninth floor to find some books on the philosophy of art (I eventually made it and got two for winter break). It was quite an adventure. This library is so high tech I was able to do a self-checkout for my books. It was like shopping at Smith’s again (I’ve been missing New Mexico lately, but more on that some other time).
To complete my suspiciously authentic university experience I went to one of the dining halls (yup, they have more than one, including a cafe in the library that’s open 24 hours) to get french fries at 10:30 at night. When I was an undergrad, if you wanted to eat after 9:00 (when the C-Store closed) you had to get in a car and drive to Perkins (oh, Perkins who I miss you and your pot roast at 2:00 AM on a Tuesday). Then I walked around the quad and breathed in the night air.
I’m sick. My company doesn’t offer sick days until you’ve been there 90 days, so every time the clock ticks I lose money. This is an issue that I surely will bring up with my bosses. But being sick did give me the oppotunity to sleep in and watch The Colbert Report.
Three cheers for Georgia for offering Bible classes in the public schools. So long as these classes are taught as academic classes, not Bible study, I’m all for it. My mother is always complaining about how little her students know about Biblical mythology. She has a difficult time teaching literature when her kids don’t understand half the text due to their ignorance. Parents and groups concerned with the separation between church and state ought to be vigilant, but I think it’s a good step toward putting the Bible into a historical and social context while expanding the cultural education of secondary school students.
Sorry for the lapse in posts. I really have no excuse.
I started my job last week and only have one thing to say, “Yesss, I have an office.”
OK, I have more to say than that. I won't make it a habit to blog about my job, but I will give you low down on what I do. I am the Executive Administrative Assistant to the CFO of Los Alamos National Bank. The bank is actually quite impressive. It only has a few branches, but it's incredibly successful. It makes a point of not having fees, instead making all its money from loans and various investments. It's the winner of the Baldrige Award and does it's best to make the employees happy (free massage and memberships to a bunch of gyms). It's my job to work with the folks who do that investing. I manage securities and help make sure everything goes smoothly for the CFO and Chief Cashier. I also serve as the backup for everyone in the accounting office. So far I've learned how to wire money around the world and pay the company's bills.
The nine to five also puts me back on a regular schedule. I'm back on a good workout routine and once my gym memberships start on Thursday, I'll be back in the pool.
I've also finally started Godel, Esher, Bach. I've been meaning to read this book for years and it's time to stop postponing.
I promise to get back to writing more and more of substance.
