Friday was nice, and we were friends.

Friday is becoming my day to clean, recharge, catch up. (Also known as laundry day.) It's also the day I usually check my Free Will horoscope, which is at the bottom of this post. Lately, I've been getting these startling messages about love and opportunity and unexpectedness, at least from that corner of the universe.

I will say this. I have a feeling of possibility to a degree I haven't in a long time. I can see myself living in any number of places, falling in love with anyone, really. As soon as my focus narrows in one area of my life (library school), it explodes elsewhere.




Free Will Astrology. (Aries)
Love isn't as simple as you wish it would be. On the other hand, it's nowhere near as complicated as you fear it is. My advice to you is to extinguish any itch you might have to compel love to serve any agenda at whatsoever. Instead, bow down before it with all the innocence you can muster, and declare yourself ready to be its humble student and servant. Celebrate through surrender.

Sky of arrivals

There's always the sky; let it hear what you are saying
And let it take you apart, to the elements of praying
Till we are only playing to the firmament
-Dar Williams

Maybe I didn't look at the sky enough in Chicago, but I have this feeling that it was not as interesting as the sky here. I rarely see it monochromatic; there's always some complex cloud cover. Is this delusional?

All of a sudden, I tumbled into these packed weeks of class, work, and seeing people. I processed stacks of materials about past and present injustices. I understand what Linux is; I can make a webpage. I met the librarians behind Radical Reference. I've had JP Licks ice cream three times in two weeks. I've discussed my romantic dysfunction more than I care to remember. Speaking of which.

This week, I'm in love with:
Eileen Ivers ( from the Boston Folk Festival today, which had a blue-and-white sky full of arriving airplanes)
Carbon Leaf (Thank you Jacob and Eliot)

The first of many library-themed links, I'm sure

I saw this and had to post it. I don't really have anything else to say.

Dewey Decimal System Helpless To Categorize New Jim Belushi Book

DUBLIN, OH-Members of the OCLC Online Computer Library Center's Editorial Policy Committee, which oversees the Dewey Decimal System library...

People with three names

I have now been in Boston for a week, and library school for two days. So far, both have been illuminating and enjoyable.

One of the classes I've been to is what I've been referring to as my technology requirement, which I thought would be more "how to use this program," which to an extent it will be, but will also be "how the Internet works" and the digital divide, and the future of resources (i.e., the printed book). All very interesting (to me, anyway). In the timeline of technological developments was the second mention I'd heard in 24 hours of Alexander Graham Bell...just the night before, Jon Stewart posited (in a conversation on decency) that after Bell said "Watson, come here," he followed it with "What are you wearing?"

Speaking of timelines, I came across this one today by Ben Schott, of Schott's Miscellany. I find especially fascinating the top Google searches for the year 2005: XBox 360, Iran, and Jessica Simpson.

In one more dispatch, I spent the afternoon at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. I'm afraid you'll be hearing a lot about this place, because I'm utterly in love with it. It's laid out just as ISG wanted it, not by artist or period, but in a way she intended to impart inspiration. This sounds really presumptuous, but I think we have similar tastes in art. Beauty ranks high in her aesthetic sensibility. The painting is of her, by John Singer Sargent (from wikipedia.org). She either had a good tongue-in-cheek sense of humor, or was on the arrogant side -- this painting is in the Gothic room with portraits of the Virgin Mary and female saints.