At the Baddeck Library - where I will soon be working! Hurray! More about that to come - the front hallway is painted bright colors, and boasts a chalkboard and a magnetic poetry wall. The chalkboard is periodically wiped clean, and then Kate, the head Library Assistant, will write a question for kids to answer. (Adults answer it too, but the target audience is children.) I love how sometimes you get answers, and sometimes you just get people writing their name. It seems we humans like to mark things with our own names, showing "We were here."
The other day, as you can see from the above picture, the question was, "What are you looking forward to this school year?"
I swear, despite my previously-declared love for images of women typing on laptops, that I did not draw this! I asked Kate if she had, but she didn't know who had done it. So there is a mystery artist going around town making my dreams come true.
About the library job: I was hired as a part-time Library Clerk for the Baddeck Public Library. I start in a week or so, training at a larger library in the regional system, and then I move to Baddeck. I'm really, really excited about this. Ever since I was a little girl, I have adored libraries. The scene in Beauty and the Beast where Belle walks into the massive, many-stories-high library, with the fireplace, and the walkways and ladders and high windows? Man, as a little girl watching that in the theater, I nearly lost my mind. Could such a library exist? If it did, could I ever get to see it?
Around the same time, I was being schooled in a small Waldorf school with 8 or so other kids. We had a few well-stocked bookshelves and somehow or other we decided to make it into our own library. I got a notebook and wrote people's names down, and which books they had borrowed. Some kids play store, others play doctor, and I played library.
Last year I started working with VCCAPS, a local non-profit umbrella organization that distributes umbrellas to those in need. Oh wait - that' s not it. VCCAPS runs CAP Sites, and CAP stands for Community Access Program. It's all about computers and technology, and community. So I was organizing and teaching courses to seniors, getting them familiar with computers, and I was doing so "in partnership with" the Baddeck Library, which just means I was doing it there in the library.
Well, I loved it. The building has been a regular haunt of mine since I was little, but I'd never actually worked there, and I loved being around the books all day long. I also loved being around the people, and promoting the library services, of which there are many. And so when the position came up for Library Clerk, I got my application in, got an interview, and eventually got the job. It hasn't really sunk in yet that I will be the person behind the desk, actually checking books out, actually putting the books back on the shelves, actually answering reference questions. Me! Little old me! I'm kind of in heaven.
I wonder if they'll let me go out on the bookmobile? I guess that's what "upwardly mobile" means in this career.
In other news: well, it wouldn't be a post if it didn't include food in some way, would it? Above: a dead-simple, thrown together supper. What, you say? This looks more like an appetizer? Well, I don't really think that way. If I was having people over, maybe. But when I'm home from work and tired out and don't want to cook a darn thing, then this IS supper. Corn chips, with three separate dips. (At least I put them into separate bowls. I'm willing to expend SOME energy.) Yogurt - hummous (home-made) - and salsa.The best part: eaten outside on the deck, in the last few days of summer.
So: what are YOU looking forward to in this school year? Or, if you're not in school, what are you looking forward to this fall?
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