Escape from Camp 14

I wrote about this briefly earlier, and now I finally read Escape from Camp 14. It's a short book, and one I almost couldn't put down. You can read the synopsis and reviews on Amazon. Next on my list is Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea. I don't have the book yet, and can't find it to borrow anywhere, so it might be awhile until I get to read it.

So many things are memorable about Escape from Camp 14, so here are just two: At one point a reference is made to Hitler's concentration camps, with the question, Why didn't we just bomb the trains? (In other words, Why didn't we take away his means of getting people there?) The North Korean camps have been going on for fifty years. The question still stands ...

A small but very sad and telling episode in the book: When the protagonist is in China, he goes to Korean pastors of churches for help. They will give him money, but not shelter or a job. They, too, fear the authorities. The cycle of fear continues.

Down to Busyness

I've updated my reading list over on the right sidebar, and already I've read about twice as much in the first three months of 2013 than I did in all of 2012. The list is somewhat misleading, though: two are audio books, and The Pale King took me a long time to read. I began it in the fall of 2011, and stopped and started many times, finally finishing off the last few pages last week. I really liked it, but its nature as a posthumous work made it very uneven. The best way I could describe it? It's to the IRS what Moby Dick is to whaling. Read it yourself and see.

(As an aside, regarding reading lists, I don't like the changes LinkedIn has made. The site no longer supports the Amazon Reading List app, or links to Blogger or LibraryThing. So while I still use the site, and find it a very helpful way to store and post my resume, I can't find a way to link to my work here. Disappointing, and I hope they change it.)

In other news, life just gets busier and busier, as we here in NW PA wait for the great thaw and a real spring, despite what the calendar says. Our school has added a new program and new sessions, which mean additional textbook ordering and putting together more library resources. I love the challenge of hunting down materials and take a certain small pride in knowing that, although our library is not large, I probably deal with more diverse subjects than librarians in much bigger libraries.

The past month was also one of many changes. The pastor at the church where I work retired, our Catholic church pastor's term was up here and was reassigned, the pope resigned (that's still weird to type) and a new one was elected, and even the local band director is moving on. It seems as if everyone is doing something new, and the lingering winter seems to be dragging on, keeping me stuck here with it.

But the sun is shining today, and Holy Week is almost upon us. This week is one of the busiest I have all year, and it doesn't help that it's entwined with tax and financial aid season. So if you don't find me at the organ or piano keyboard, I'll be at the computer, either at home or at the library, working on figures or books, and dreaming just a little of some bike rides in the warmer weather that's sure to come.

Reading

I've been stepping up my reading so far in 2013. Partly because I wanted to -- I didn't finish about half of the books I started in 2012 -- and partly because I've been slogging through a bog of inertia. I began the year with a bout of the flu which caused me to miss two days of work (something that's extremely rare for me), and I feel as if I haven't quite recovered since. The cold and dreary weather is certainly playing a part. Whatever the reason, I've been tired and cranky and it's all I can do to get to work and do what needs to be done. In the meantime, I've used "I have to read: I'm a librarian!" as my excuse to have more down time than usual. So I've actually spent large chunks of time reading, instead of trying to fit it in during the five minutes before I drift off to sleep. I also have decided to "count" audio books as books "read"; after all, I listened to them, and I certainly couldn't read them while driving. I saw another librarian do this on her year-end reading list, which allayed my cheating fears. So far I've read --

Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis, by Lisa Sanders, the medical consultant for the television show House. I've decided that medical mysteries are now my favorite genre. I got this book from our campus library (kind of nice to buy the book for the library and then check it out to read), and we have a couple more of the same type that I'm looking forward to reading.

Teacher Man: A Memoir, by Frank McCourt, the author of Angela's Ashes. This was an audio book, read by the author. The book was enjoyable, but a bit tedious at times, as the author does a lot of complaining about the trials of being a teacher. Obviously the listener has to do some reading-between-the-lines, since the author is a Pulitzer-prize-winning writer and award-winning teacher.

Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy, by Frances Mayes. I picked this up at a book sale sometime last year, and I've always wanted to read it. I haven't finished it yet, but I am enjoying it. I especially like that she mentions Elizabeth David's Italian Food, one of my favorite cookbooks that I've had for many years.

I'm almost finished with Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson, another audio book. I skimmed Isaacson's biography of Steve Jobs, and wasn't that impressed, but the Einstein biography has had just the opposite effect. (Read the New York Times review, which expresses my feelings better than I could.) Our public library has the Steve Jobs biography on CD, and Isaacson's Benjamin Franklin as well, so I think I'll be spending the next many miles with those.

First Impressions

As a child, I had many older cousins. Many of them were teenage boys, prone to rowdiness, and from whom I learned to keep new toys safely hidden away. (Of course, they've now outgrown all that.) One of them received a Polaroid camera from our aunt, and loved taking pictures. He once held the camera up to his face and took a picture of himself. For years after, the family would remark on that, as we went through old photographs, because it was so unusual: "Look, Jerry took a picture of himself!" and people would even "explain" how he did it.

Of course, taking a picture of yourself now is nothing unusual at all. As the mother of two teenage girls in the Internet age, I can safely say that they've taken more pictures of themselves than their dad and I took of them as children, or probably more than we took of them and their brothers combined. Their photos are then posted to Facebook, so that friends can "like" them. I can't say that I'm grateful for my own teenage years, but I certainly am thankful that Facebook wasn't around then. I don't know that I could have handled the pressure. As someone with decidedly less-than-perfect looks (and getting more that way all the time), finding a halfway-decent photo to go with my online persona is my new 21st century challenge. I was even asked by a "friend" to change my Facebook photo to something more attractive.

All of this focus on outer beauty made this article on CNN.com about photographer Brian Steel's project "Impaired Perceptions" very welcome. Steel, who himself has a rare condition that causes muscle weakness and difficulty breathing, has taken photographs of people with disabilities and told their stories:

"We filter everything that we see through the lens of our perceptions, so it is not until we are able to step outside of our perceptions that we are able to determine what is real and what is not," the 33-year-old wrote. "The portraits are traditional, empowering and show each person's humanity."


"The overall message is that you cannot tell what a person is capable of or what their life is like simply by looking at them. That is true regardless of ability, race, religion or orientation."

This is true also of those who have no apparent physical disabilities. A friend of mine is very attractive and talented, and kind and cheerful as well. To the outside world, she appears to have no problems or difficulties, and some people might be jealous of her gifts. Yet those who know her know that she's faced some incredible struggles,all with grace and dignity. The moral is that, whether "disabled" or "gifted", the true person shouldn't be obscured by our perceptions and first impressions.

2012 Wrap-Up and Predictions for 2013

As I near the half-century mark, I'll say that 2012 has to go down as one of the weirdest years in my life, or more accurately, the culmination of a bunch of weirdness. I'm not going to go into details on exactly why it was weird, but let's just say that if you were charting my life on a graph, there would be the usual bumps, some small ups and lots of downs, and then a place where the line would just shoot out to the side and off the page altogether. That was 2012. But somehow I lived through it and here I am, facing another January 1.

I'd like to provide a list of "highlights" from the past year, but one of the effects of stress, I've read, is memory loss, and my usual absentmindedness has taken a turn for the worse this year. I tend to be very responsible as far as work and family obligations, but if you ask me if I mailed the electric bill or what I wore yesterday, I'd probably give you a blank stare. (But of course I mailed it and also wore matching socks.) So not much comes back to me from 2012; it was mostly a blur of run-here-do-this-hurriedly-practice-that-accompaniment-where-is-my-scarf-mom-i-need-$5-don't-forget-there's-practice-after-school-look-someone-is-following-me-on-Twitter. A few things do stand out:

> I temporarily took over handbell-directing duties at church in the late spring and then, after having a talented young college student as interim director for the summer, I officially became director of the group this fall. It's not a huge obligation, but I was surprised by two things: I enjoy directing more than I thought I would, but I also really miss playing with the group (and miss our former director, too).
> I left my secretarial duties mid-year in order to take on more library responsibilities. I now travel to another campus one day a week. So while I am closer to full-time (but still not quite), my itinerant ways make me feel a little more like the "freelance" person I despaired I would be when I started this blog. I can't say I enjoy the long trip (my very old car guarantees that I maintain an active prayer life at least one day a week), but I have enjoyed listening to some great books on CD. I love building up the library. And I've met a whole new group of teachers and students. Of course I barely remember which names go with which faces from week to week.
> I had some surgery in the middle of the summer from which I've fully recovered, but which means you'll always see me wearing a scarf or, in temperatures under 70 degrees, a turtleneck.
> I actually learned (or relearned? there's that memory issue) two Bach preludes (WTC II). Alas, no fugues. Yes, that's incredibly puny for a whole year. But it's a 200% increase from 2011.
> I got a really nice compliment from a student and another one from a fellow librarian. I don't think either one knows how much their kind words meant to me. To be honest, these moments were probably the highlight of my year, and I count them among just a few such times in my entire life.
> I won an employee-recognition award last month for my work in the libraries. I felt very honored and  grateful, but I guess I'm more grateful for getting to do what I do every day. Really.

Predictions or hopes for 2013?

> As my eyesight worsens, I predict that I will become one of those librarians with glasses on a chain. (I was doing the bun thing back in 1986, so I've paid my dues on that one.)
> I hope to get a new(er) car. Or petition the state for a trans-city bus system.
> I hope to finish some of the books I never finished in 2012, finally making it to the end of The Pale King. I might even dump some books that never paid off. (I'm looking at you, One Hundred Years of Solitude.)
> I must, somehow, maintain a better practice schedule. I don't have much hope of being at the organ more frequently in really cold weather, but I want to finish all the music I started learning this year and feel more confident overall in whatever I play. It's so hard to find time to learn music other than what I need for my job, but time at the keyboard is never wasted.
> I have a lot of projects I want to take on for my professional development as a librarian -- learning more about Dewey number building, doing some screen casts for instruction, continuing to update the catalog, and learning RDA -- and I hope to write about them here.

Wishing everyone all the best in this New Year!

Escape from Camp 14

I first heard about this book on NPR, and really wanted to read it (but haven't had time yet), and now Heather King has mentioned it on her blog, as she's just read it:

Here's a book for you: Blaine Harden's Escape from Camp 14:One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. The subject is Shin Dong-hyuk (b. 1982), the only known person to have been born in a North Korean death camp and escaped.

I probably love concentration camp stories as much as the average tween loves Twilight, so I think it's only been my extreme busyness lately that's prevented me from tracking this down. After reading more about the book, though, I'm a little wary -- the brutality described means I might not make it through. We'll see; it's definitely on my "to read" list for 2013.

Nate Silver, Tina Fey, and the Art of Preparation

Thanks to my hour-long commute, I've started listening to lots of audio books. My latest is Tina Fey's Bossypants, which I'm really enjoying -- to my surprise. When it first came out, I was excited to read it, but then heard some negative reviews, and figured I'd just skip it. Instead, it's funny, and also has little nuggets of truth, especially for people involved in performing. The latest one is her quote from Lorne Michaels: "The show [meaning Saturday Night Live] doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's 11:30." That really resonated with me, because there are many Sundays I feel less-than-prepared, but come 8:30 (actually 8:25), it's time to start, whether I'm ready or not. Knowing that Sunday is coming every week without fail is an incentive to practice, but when Sunday does come, there's a part of you that has to let go of your fears and just play. Easier said than done. If you're going to be a perfectionist, you probably shouldn't consider a career as a church musician.

Of course, you do need to practice, and that's where Nate Silver comes into this. Despite his amazingly accurate predictions, his overall prediction of President Obama winning reelection handily wasn't something I found surprising. Mitt Romney never had all the polls showing him ahead of the President at any point in the weeks before the election, and the day before the election he wasn't even tied in all the battleground states. It doesn't take a genius statistician to see that a Romney win would have been very difficult. Conservatives kept saying, "Romney's ahead by 27 points among independent Swedish-speaking women", while ignoring the fact that he was 4 points behind among everyone else. True, he could have won the election, but he would have had to have won in all the places where he had been behind all along. Possible, but not very probable (and even more improbable when factoring in the electoral college system). There were very few realists among the Republicans.

The same thing is true of practicing. How you play in the practice room is how you will perform. If you play something wrong nine times in practice, but get it right once, the odds are very good that your performance will be wrong. My students could never seem to understand this. They would play something wrong over and over again, finally get it right, and think they had "fixed it". Instead they had learned it incorrectly more times than they had correctly. True, it might be possible to play it correctly in performance with that kind of practice, but it wouldn't be very probable. To perform well, you need to be a realist in the practice room: practicing correctly, working on problem spots more than the rest of the piece, and not counting on improbabilities to get you through. And then forgetting about your worries when 11:30 comes.

More Book Sales

Regular readers of this blog (all three of you) know that I love used book sales, the kind put on by many public libraries. I probably would be going to these sales every so often even if I weren't a librarian, because books and bargains are two of my very favorite things. But now the sales are a big part of building up the collections at the two small libraries where I work. I can't claim this as being my original idea of acquisitions on the cheap. When I was teaching at a small private school, the librarian there built much of the library through used book sales. So I had a good role model in thriftiness.

I went to two book sales recently, and only bypassed a third because my budget is almost spent. The first sale was a new one for me, at a library about a half-hour away, but somewhat on the way to our other campus. So I was able to stop there on my way to work. It turned out to be a great sale, although a tad more expensive than the one here in town. Still, it's one I plan to return to. The library itself was easy to find, and the parking was close and convenient, a plus when you're lugging bags of books. The sale itself wasn't very large, but there were many children's books, and while many were definitely "used", others were in like-new condition. So I grabbed many for our education program. I also wanted to get second copies of books we have at one campus to have at the other, books like Stephen Covey's The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I also found The Audacity of Hope (which I bought for both libraries) and Dreams from My Father. I'd wanted these for the library for a long time, but only found them used now. No matter what the results of the election, I thought, books by a recent president will always be something we have room for. I also found some books on beauty and manners and autism and Alzheimer's, all fairly new editions and in good shape. A few gems: Economic Facts and Fallacies by Thomas Sowell, Stop Walking on Eggshells, On Writing Well by William Zinsser, and An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks.

The sale here in town never disappoints. True, I've gleaned many of the best items from it, but there are always new books that people discard. I got Kevin Aucoin's Face Forward and Making Faces, which are old, of course, but he was so important in the world of makeup that I thought they would be great for our cosmetology collection. (Plus he's a Louisiana native.) Both books looked slightly dirty, but I thought they were fixable. When I got them back to the library, though, I saw that one had a few pages that were water-damaged. That's a deal-breaker for me, so out it went. I almost always absorb these losses myself. The downside to these sales, especially the one in town, is that they're crowded and the lighting is bad. It's not always easy to see the titles, let alone the true condition of the books. That's the chance you take.

I did something this year that I normally don't do: I went back to our local sale for the last day. I had hoped that it was "dollar-a-bag" day so that I could get some paperback fiction very cheap for the library, but it wasn't. Instead, I got almost a dozen books for myself -- on exercise, gardening, housekeeping, and decorating. All things I love but don't have the money to buy full price. I was pleasantly surprised to find so many good books at the very end of the sale. All in all, a success on all fronts.

Gulag Catalog

OK, that title is a joke, just a phrase for the sake of rhyming, but it had some truth to it today. I had some textbooks to catalog that our IT instructor thought would be good to have in the library. We're trying to provide opportunities for students to learn about different versions of operating systems and software, including older versions, so that they're prepared for whatever opportunities might come their way. That's a good idea, of course, and we have had students come in sometimes looking for materials to meet just that purpose. But IT books, especially those for certification tests, tend to have many iterations. There's the textbook, the lab manual, the CD-ROMs, and then various exam numbers for each. I had three books, all of which had a differently-worded title on the cover than on the title page. I found records for two of them, but even though the ISBNs matched, one of the authors did not. There were two main authors, and then a long list of authors listed as a "team" on the cover. The catalog records were both strange, with the first author listed in the 100 field, and the 2nd author and a 3rd wrong author as added entries. But the description gave only the first author and et al. So I made a weird compromise and listed the 1st author, the 2nd, and the "team" in the description.

Two of the books had almost identical titles (and authors, publisher, and copyright date), yet the content wasn't the same. Of course the ISBNs were different, and I knew they were different books, but I spent the longest time staring at them, trying to figure out why they weren't the same, and where the differences were. I wanted to have the same subject headings (where applicable) on all three, and have the series listed, and put the cover title in the 246 field. Eventually I had to print out all three records that I had done, line them up, and make sure that I had been consistent in them. I have to say that I learned a lot in the cataloging I did, and also that I'm proud of how hard I worked to be sure they're correct. But much of the time, I was wondering -- Will anyone even read these books? The analogy of moving rocks from one pile to another in the gulag flitted through my mind more than once. I think most of that was my tiredness. Overall, I enjoyed the challenge.

Happiness vs. Joy

The Happiness Project is one of my favorite books. I read it a while ago, and I've since bought copies for our libraries (one copy just this week, but that's another blog post). I really like the practical tips that author Gretchen Rubin gives for improving your life. I read her blog sporadically, and have now added it, rightfully, on my favorites list here. She has a new book out, Happier at Home, which I have on my "To Read" list. All that said, I've always been slightly bothered by the quest for happiness that lies behind her writing. As Christians, our own happiness isn't (or shouldn't be) our goal. So I was delighted when I was checking her blog today and found that she had a "Happiness Interview" with another one of my favorite authors, Heather King. (Their connection is that both are fans of St. Therese of Lisieux.) Heather beautifully lays out the case for what true happiness is for the Christian, and how that contrasts with happiness as an end in itself. The short interview is a penetrating look at Christian joy. At the same time, so much of what is in The Happiness Project (both the book and the blog) is simply commonsense (but rarely heard) advice on how to live better. Very little of it claims a specific spiritual outlook, and the tips given could be applied to almost anyone, in any station of life. There's a great deal to be said for practical advice on daily living, and rather than turning my focus inward ("What makes me happy?"), I've found that the suggestions she gives allow me to better manage my work and home life, making everyone around me a little happier in the long run. And I hope that's a small part of the service that's at the heart of the Christian life.