The logistics of it all

So I've fallen down a Logistics rabbit hole.

It all started when I was looking at the jobs available at the Antarctic Program, who don't need librarians (certainly not in Antarctica), so I started thinking laterally. And then I started looking at what jobs the ADF had available (they also don't need librarians - or so they think) as they would give me training and experience. It turns out the ADF also don't "need" people with IBS (regardless of what job they're doing and whether IBS would affect their ability to do that job) so that option's off the table.

But, between the two of them, I've caught the logistics bug. I started looking into what was involved in logistics and supply roles, and by gum the field of Logistics tickles my fancy. It turns out I didn't know a thing about what was involved and, now that I do, I want to learn more.

When I thought the ADF was still on the cards, I was going to see if I could start in a warehouse and supply role to get some skills, licences and experience, and then maybe move on to higher level logistics stuff. Now the ADF is out of the picture, so I have to figure out how to do it myself, dangit.*

Which is a bit trickier than I thought because my research** has revealed there's a weird training-experience-employment vortex thing happening where it's easier to get a job if you have training and experience, and it's also easier to get training and experience if you have a job...

And I've been thinking about maybe doing a degree or a diploma, but all of the programmes that look particularly interesting are in places that are both "not where I am" and also "not where I'm going" and are only on campus. So I have to decide if I'm interested enough in this new (to me) and exciting field to actually commit to moving somewhere specifically to get into logistics, and do the whole "be a real student" thing again, and find a way to support myself in uni student mode when I'm used to having a real job...

Anyway, I'm getting a forklift licence. Maybe.

Photo by Kseniia Ilinykh on Unsplash

*I also have to figure out how to make the positive impacts on my health and lifestyle that the ADF would have given me, myself, which is quite annoying.
**I'm a librarian, of course I'm researching the dickens out of something as simple as "maybe I could get a job in a warehouse"?

Brontë Sisters: Three, Two, One

I'm finally deleting a blog that I was briefly experimenting with for work in 2011, but there was one good post on it that I actually liked, so I'm transferring it here for posterity (well, as much posterity as one can expect from a Blogger blog):

Three Books By Charlotte Brontë

While other works by Charlotte Brontë have been published since her death, Charlotte saw three novels published during her life-time, which were written under the pseudonym "Currer Bell":

Jane Eyre: An Autobiography

Well, obviously Jane Eyre wasn't Charlotte's autobiography, that was just a common way to indicate the book was written in first person and told a character's life-story. However, some aspects of Jane Eyre were autobiographical - Charlotte based some of the characters and settings in the first volume on her own childhood.

Jane Eyre is the most famous of Charlotte's novels, and the first she successfully published. It's one of the classic gothic novels of the early 19th Century. In the first volume we get to read all about Jane's miserable childhood. She's an orphan, left to the care of her aunt. The trouble is her aunt hates her and her cousins are all evil. They send her to Lowood - which has to be one of the worst schools ever encountered outside of a Dickens novel. She manages to avoid starving to death, freezing to death and dying of typhus fever. She even manages to avoid punching the school director, Mr Brocklehurst, in the face - something readers may be sorely tempted to do.

The second volume is the part that gets the most screen time in the many, many adaptions. Jane, now 18 years old, gets a job as a tutor for a young French girl living in an old house in the middle of nowhere. The girl's "guardian" (who may or may not be her father) is a thirty-something English man by the name of Rochester. He usually spends very little time at the family home, but after Jane moves in he sticks around for a bit. He is mysterious and brooding. The house contains a secret locked away in the attic. Things go bump in the night. She falls for him, but believes he is going to marry the rich, beautiful girl who keeps coming to his parties. And just what is in the attic, anyway? Or, rather, who*? There's a declaration of love, a promise of happiness and a wedding gone horribly, horribly wrong.

The third volume is a tale of lost families, secret identities and the mysterious, all conquering power of love. There's a fire, some disfigurement and mysterious psychic link that may or may not be based on the power of the moon. Or, it could just be Thursday Next** trying to save the day. Either way, it's a corker of a story and one that has been adapted into no less than twenty movies or television series – with more on the way.

Shirley: A Tale

Shirley is the second of Charlotte's novels to be published. While Jane Eyre was written as part of a writing circle with her sisters, Shirley was written after both Emily and Anne had died and is something of a tribute to them. It's remarkably different from Jane Eyre, and seems to have more in common with the works of Elizabeth Gaskell*** than any of the other novels written by the Brontë sisters. It’s the story of a love quadrangle: Caroline, who is poor, is in love with her (wealthier) cousin Robert, who is wooing Caroline’s (rich) new best friend, Shirley, who quite fancies Robert’s (poor) brother Louis. Robert and Shirley don’t really fancy each other that much, but Robert could do with the money and Shirley’s family don’t approve of Louis, so…

But it’s a social and historical novel, as much as a love story. It’s set during the height of the Luddite movement, and Robert finds his textile mill is under threat when he buys some of those new-fangled, labour “saving” frames that will put many of his employees out of work. Caroline and Shirley are trying to find their place in a world where the role of women is changing, and the future holds unknown opportunities. Apparently denied the man she loves, Caroline feels destined to become an Old Maid, but chafes at the lack of useful activities allowed to unmarried women. Shirley, a young woman with a man’s name, who has inherited a man’s property, finds expectations increasingly hard to juggle.

And it’s also a family story. The character of Caroline is a lot like Anne Brontë, and Shirley bares some striking similarities to Emily. The affection Charlotte has for these two characters shows – in spite of the fact that the book was written “in character” by “Currer Bell” and is dripping with irony. In the end, the characters are looking forward to the kind of bright future Emily and Anne would never see.

Villette

Villete was the last book published during Charlotte’s lifetime, and it’s something of a return to many of the themes that made Jane Eyre so popular. There’s a girl’s school, something mysterious happening in an attic and a dark, brooding man. Once again we are treated to the first-person narration of a vulnerable-yet-spunky young woman, and once again there is a family secret getting in the way of true happiness.

Lucy Snowe takes up employment at a girls’ school in a small French town called Villette. Amongst her struggles to “make it” as a teacher in a community that considers her an outsider, she also has to deal with her feelings for the gorgeous Dr John – something that is complicated by the fact that Dr John is quite taken with the equally gorgeous Polly.

Oh, and then there’s that French professor who is so rude and frustrating. He really is quite an annoying man. And why does he insist on spending so much time with her if he clearly doesn’t like her? And why does she let him get to her when she should just ignore him? And why is his cousin trying so hard to stop him from talking to her? And why does she feel so peculiar at the thought of talking to him…?

And what is in the attic anyway? The ghost of a dead nun? Surely you can’t be serious?

Be warned: the ending will make you want to slap someone. Probably Charlotte.

Two Books by Anne Brontë

Anne, who wrote under the pseudonym “Acton Bell”, was the youngest of the Brontë sisters, and hasn’t enjoyed the same enduring success as Charlotte and Emily. This is possibly because she had a strange tendency to think her romantic leads should be nice guys, rather than brooding jerks.

Agnes Grey

Agnes Grey and Wuthering Heights were published at the same time – both before Jane Eyre was on the scene. Keen observers might note that Jane Eyre definitely “follows” the other books – it combines the gothic tones of Wuthering Heights with the “helpless governess in love” central character from Agnes Grey

Agnes, a poor young woman of some intelligence, is in dire need of a job. As an unmarried, educated woman of the lower middle-classes, the only job she’s really allowed to have is that of a governess. Unfortunately, most governesses are treated rather poorly. She goes to work for a family of rich obnoxious people. They are horrid, their children are horrid – heck, the whole town is horrid. She gives up that job and goes home.

She still needs the work, and she still has no other option but to work as a governess, so she takes up another position with another horrid family. These children (one of which is a teenage girl on the cusp of being considered a “woman”) are less likely to torture birds to death, but more likely to ruin your life for their own personal amusement. The teenage girl, Rosalie, is particularly brutal. Once she notices Agnes has taken a shine to the new curate, she goes out of her way to flirt with the poor man specifically to practise being a coquettish heartbreaker.

There’s much angst as Agnes watches a man she “truly admires” become the sport of someone she can’t stand but can’t stop. After her father’s death, she returns home to start a school with her mother and assumes she’ll never see her dear Mr Weston again…

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

This is Anne’s most famous book, and the one that comes closest to matching the style of her sister’s novels. There is a dark, brooding man in this one, but he sure as heck isn’t the romantic lead. Anne seems to be of the opinion that self-obsessed alcoholics aren’t really nice people and you probably shouldn’t marry them.

The lead character, Helen, flees from the self-obsessed alcoholic in question before he can be too bad an influence on their son. Oh, and also because he’s an abusive jerk who treats her badly. She takes up residence in the run-down Wildfell Hall using a fake name (secret identities) and tries to work to earn a living, using one of the only means available to her. No, this time it’s not as a governess, but rather as an artist. Both poorly paying jobs with little respect.

The townsfolk are suspicious, that Gilbert fellow living next door is quite nice (the story is largely narrated by him as a really long letter to a friend), and there is a secret waiting to catch up with them all…

One Book By Emily Brontë

Emily (Ellis Bell), the second youngest of the Brontë girls, only wrote one novel in her lifetime. This one novel, however, is insanely popular and has eclipsed everything written by her sisters with the exception of Jane Eyre. Beyond that, she is known for some poetry****

Wuthering Heights

This is the only book by the Brontë sisters to be adapted as a hit song. However, Jane Eyre has more film adaptions - Wuthering Heights has only been adapted into fifteen film versions (so far). Just to put things in perspective, they’ve only made nine adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (so far [in 2011]).

Wuthering Heights is the classic gothic novel of the early 19th Century. It’s famously dark and wretched, and many readers have difficulty finishing the novel. There are dark, mysterious houses in the moors, acts of cruelty passed down the generations, forced marriages and a touch of madness. All this, and a dark, brooding man. There may even be ghosts.

The book basically involves a lot of people making each other miserable. The characters seem to take turns at this task: Hindley makes Heathcliff miserable because he feels like it, Catherine Senior makes Heathcliff miserable because she’s selfish, Heathcliff makes as many people as possible miserable for revenge…

Most of the characters die a miserable death, but the kids are all right. After making each other miserable for a time, Catherine Junior and Hareton (Hindley’s son) end up potentially living happily ever after.



* [The Libary has] a copy of Wide Sargasso Sea
** [The Libary has] a copy of The Eyre Affair
*** [The Libary has] copies of most of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels, as well as her biography of Charlotte Brontë
**** [The Libary has] copies of most of the Brontë sisters’ poetry – as well as books based on their early writings as children.

***** All images are taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/

Observe and Interact

For the past few years I've been mildly obsessed with the Permaculture Design Principles and their potential application to everything, but particularly my work in an academic library.

There are essentially two sets of Permaculture Design Principles. The most famous is the set of 12 by Davild Holmgren. Well, 12 design principles and three overarching general ethics:

Big Picture Stuff:

• Earth Care (take care of the planet and the natural resources)
• People Care (take care of each other)
• Fair Share (don't take more than you need, and give back where and when you can).

The 12 Holmgren Design Principles:

1. Observe and Interact
2. Catch and Store Energy
3. Obtain a Yield
4. Apply Self-Regulation and Accept Feedback
5. Use and Value Renewable Resources and Services
6. Produce No Waste
7. Design from Patterns to Details
8. Integrate Rather Than Segregate
9. Use Small and Slow Solutions
10. Use and Value Diversity
11. Use Edges and Value the Marginal
12. Creatively Use and Respond to Change

Then there's also the set developed by Bill Mollison, which has a lot of conceptual cross-over with Holmgren's set, but are much more practical focused and less broad-principle-y. I'll no doubt rabbit on more about his principles later. Just between you and me, one of these days I'm going to write a dang book about applying permaculture principles to the office, libraries and education.

And I'll no doubt rabbit on about Holmgren's set in more detail at some point as well, but right now I want to look at that first one:

Observe and Interact.

There's a reason why it's the first principle, and I really would like to see it catch on in the wider world as The First Principle.

The First Principle – the thing you do before you do anything – is remember to Observe and Interact.

Come in to any given situation with a spirit of curious and open observation. Look at what the situation actually is and give yourself time to really think about it, then interact intentionally with the things you have observed.

Look at the patterns, the flows, the way things interact with each other and depend upon or act against each other. Know what it is that you are sticking your nose into.

It's the essence of Evidence Based Practice, but it's less intimidating, I think. EBP carries with it a concept of surveys and measures (which all have their place), but Observe and Interact seems much more immediate and down-to-earth.

And then, when you are interacting with the situation that you have observed, continue to observe and interact!

It's like the Noble Eightfold Path – you shouldn't mistake any of the principles as a "one and done" step that you then move away from, but regard all of the principles (as all aspects of the Path) as something you keep doing simultaneously as you travel along.

You should constantly be Observing and Interacting. Constantly noticing how the patterns, flows and dynamics set and change, and what effect your interactions are having on the situation.

This is so very important to get out of the ridiculous mindset that once you've chosen a course of action you have to stick with it until it magically starts working. No. You keep observing, and you keep interacting. And this may mean you change from your original plan to something else – and that's fine.

In the comparison with the Noble Eightfold Path, Observe and Interact is essentially the equivalent of Right View* – you have to see things clearly in order to follow any of the other principles effectively. In fact, if you Observe and Interact, many of the other principles will come naturally (just like if you have Right Views, the other practices will come along naturally).

Without that clear view of what's happening and why, you're just stumbling around hoping for the best.

I find myself, these days, regularly railing against people making sweeping decisions without first observing and interacting. 

If you do nothing else – if you remember nothing else – try to remember The First Principle: Observe and Interact. It can only make things better.

*Just a flashback to Zen Master Raven by Robert Aitken:

Owl said, “What are Right Views?”

Brown Bear said, “We’re in it together, and we don’t have much time.”

Change One – Or, When a Publisher Developed a Diet, and it Didn't Completely Suck

Do you remember the Change One diet and fitness plan?

I expect you probably don't, it was a brief flash-in-the-pan thing that didn't take off the way the diet's creators were hoping it would. And those creators were... The Reader's Digest.

Literally, it was the Readers Digest – the magazine. Staff writers and editors. They created a diet and fitness plan for a book they were trying to sell.

I first encountered the Change One plan back in the early 2000s when the Reader's Digest magazine ran a few articles promoting the diet and the book they had published about it. They were probably hoping it would pick up the kind of traction the CSIRO's Total Wellbeing Diet had (and still has), but it didn't. They did reissue it in 2014, but the Readers Digest don't even mention it any more.

And yet, it was actually a really good idea. I didn't manage to read the book until a couple of years ago when I found it in a library, and the book itself was... well, it's what you might expect from a diet book written by the dietitians employed by the Reader's Digest. Which is to say: largely indistinguishable from any other cookbook based on a diet, and filled with recipes and "meal plans" that no one has time for.

I don't know why dietitians who write books with meal plans forget that most of us work full time and have no energy to cook, but they do. They seem to assume we've all got buckets of time to spend on food preparation and we're all really engaged in making "proper" meals in the kitchen. We are not. Those of us who aren't super food conscious are just looking for something we can throw together after work without a lot of planning, preparation or forethought. And, I think I'm not alone in saying this, we don't really want a meal plan that involves thinking of 21 different meals for the week. Eating the same thing for several lunches is okay. It really is.

But I digress.

Apart from the fact that the Change One meal plan had the same problems as pretty much every meal plan book I've ever seen, it was kind of sensible. Remarkably so.

In fact, I would go so far as to say the Change One programme (or, at least, the basic concepts behind it) was one of the best I've ever seen. Even better – dare I say it – than the CSIRO programmes. I think, if you put the CSIRO programme and the Change One programme into a blender, you might end up with one of the best things ever produced in this genre.

The basic idea behind the Change One programme was that you focus on changing one thing at a time. Instead of overhauling your entire diet, you overhaul breakfast. Spend a couple of weeks getting some new breakfast habits bedded down. Then change one aspect of your exercise habits, like making a point to go for a walk at the same time every afternoon.

After a few weeks of eating your overhauled breakfast and going for a walk every afternoon – so that it becomes a pattern you can just maintain, rather than something you consciously have to work on – change what you do for lunch, and build some healthier habits around that. And so forth and so on; just keep changing one part of your life at a time, give yourself a few weeks to absorb the new habits, and then stack another habit change on top of that.

A heck of a lot of the book was just the “sensible” advice you would get from your average middle-aged GP, who has seen the fads but isn't invested in them. Sure, the composition of the food they recommended was based on the preference for “low fat” food that existed at the time, but the idea behind the programme – that you overhaul your life one change at a time, and keep everything you do at a level you can maintain long term – is a good one.

I have a habit of reading self-help books for fun. They normally are a bit like reading a science fiction novel, or a holiday romance or cosy crime: something comfortingly familiar, but you aren't going to suddenly go out and fly a space ship, fall in love with a billionaire or solve a murder. I'm also not going to suddenly get my act together because I read a book that recommended I eat X number of calories in a day. I'm not going to count calories; I don't mix maths and food.

But, what I will do is potentially listen to a little bit of sensible advice that can work with my stupid executive dysfunction.

I may not do it immediately, but eventually something might stick. I can't remember the details of the diet, now that it's been a few years since I read it, but the idea of gradual, stacked improvements has been floating around in the soup that is my brain for some time now, and might eventually do me some good. Who knows?

The Master and the Student.

 

Image generated using DALL-E 3
via Bing Image Creator

I've been involved with (or I've been sitting in on) a lot of meetings at the moment about the future of assessment in a post AI world.

How can you ensure the students are actually learning when they can use AI to complete any part of any assessment for which they have advanced warning? If your goal is to test their own, actual knowledge, the options available are limited. They grow even more limited if you don't want every assessment item to be some kind of invigilated exam.

So what can we do to make sure the graduates of our universities actually meet the graduate attributes? In a world where it's almost impossible to survive without hustling, how can we ensure the student who has graduated from your university actually learned anything, apart from how to hustle their degree?

To be honest, I'm not sure you can. The more I hear and read about this conundrum, the more I think about the implications of this Brave New World in which we find ourselves, the more I think our current education system can't continue to work like this.

What's the solution? 

Well, some clever bunny somewhere is going to come up with a better option for assessing large numbers of students with small numbers of teachers and markers, but I think the only "true" solution that will let us ensure the graduates actually know their stuff is to go back to the old "Masters' Apprentices" way of doing things. Small numbers of students attached to teacher who is able to regularly talk to them and watch them work, and glean from those conversations and observations if they know what they are doing.

This is going to fly in the face of budget conscious higher education institutions who want to have hundreds of "bums on seats" while only having scant handfuls of academic faculty members on the payroll.

But I honestly think this is the way we need to go to ensure we aren't completely deskilling ourselves and undermining our future. The Capitalist way of delivering education has just "Capitalist-ed" itself into a corner, and it was barely fit for purpose before it became possible to outsource your every thought and sentence to a machine.

How can you ensure your students actually know their stuff before they go out into the real world? By talking to them. Really, deeply, meaningfully talking to them. Have a real conversation with them about what they know and how they would apply that knowledge. Give them puzzles to solve and be with them, as they solve them – watching how they go about it, asking them about their processes.

This is, I feel, the best way to know if you are happy to release that student out in the world to be a professional in your field.

Tough and Competent, or: Ad Astra per Aspera

For some time, I had a badly drawn image of the Apollo 1 Command Module on my desk. I recently replaced it when I needed a badge design to upskill myself with the library's badge maker. Instead of a poorly drawn image, I now have a home-made badge using the official mission insignia.

I've been slightly obsessed with the Apollo 1 mission ever since I first read about it. You may be more familiar with Apollo 11 (landed on the moon) and Apollo 13 (had a movie with Tom Hanks), and maybe Apollo 17 (last manned mission to the moon), but Apollo 1 was the first manned Apollo mission. Then they had a bunch of unmanned missions and tests before having the second manned mission with Apollo 7.

Why such a long gap between manned missions? Because Apollo 1 was a death trap. All three astronauts were killed in a systems test before they even got close to launch.

The Command Module of Apollo 1 (which I had badly sketched to keep on my desk) was riddled with problems. It had faulty wiring, flammable materials and a badly designed hatch that couldn't be easily opened from the inside if it was under pressure. As it turns out, the hatch couldn't be easily opened from the outside either, if the inside was on fire. 

They pumped the thing with oxygen for the "plugs-out" test, then an exposed bit of wire overheated and the interior of the module went up in flames. Then, thanks to the poor hatch design, they couldn't get out of the module to escape the fire.

They also couldn't call for help, because the comms system was faulty and kept cutting out. The patchy recording of the crew's last words included the phrase "How are we going to get to the Moon if we can't talk between two or three buildings?"

Why did I keep a drawing of this death trap on my desk? Why do I now have the mission patch as a badge?

Because every single one of the faults that lead to the deaths of Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger B. Chaffee were noticed before the test. They knew each and every one of these problems (and many more besides) existed, individually, prior to trapping these three men in a tiny fire bomb.

No one took the time to fix them, because there were budgets and deadlines to meet. And no one made sure you could get out of the module if something went wrong, because everyone just assumed nothing would go wrong.

This disaster, and the knowledge that it was entirely preventable if people just took the time to fix the little isolated problems when they noticed them, lead to Gene Kranz, the Chief Flight Director of Mission Control, making the following speech:

“Space flight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity and neglect. Somewhere, somehow we screwed up. It could have been a design in build or in test, but whatever it was, we should have caught it. We were too gung-ho about the schedule, and we locked out all of the problems we saw each day in our work.

“Every element of the program was in trouble and so were we. The simulators were not working, Mission Control was behind in virtually every area, and the flight and test procedures changed daily. Nothing we did had any shelf life. Not one of us stood up and said, 'Damnit. Stop.'

“I don’t know what the Thompson Committee will find as the cause, but I know what I find. We are the cause. We were not ready. We did not do our job. We were rolling the dice, hoping that things would come together by launch day when, in our hearts, we knew it would take a miracle. We were pushing the schedule and betting that the Cape would slip before we did.

“From this day forward, Flight Control will be known by two words, 'tough’ and 'competent.' 

"Tough means we will forever be accountable for what we do or what we fail to do. We will never again compromise our responsibilities. Every time we walk into Mission Control, we will know what we stand for.

“Competent means we will never take anything for granted. We will never be found short in our knowledge and in our skills. Mission Control will be perfect."

 "Tough and Competent."

Tough means we will not compromise when it comes to our responsibilities, competent means we will not fall short in our knowledge and skills.

I have this reminder of Apollo 1 floating around to remind me that I should try to take care of a problem when I see it. I should make sure that, when I do a job, I should make a point of doing a good job. 

I know nothing I do will ever be perfect. I know I'm not capable of doing perfect work – and I'm especially not capable of single handedly changing an organisational culture that is far from "tough and competent"... But...

But insofar as it's within my ability to do so, I should strive to be tough and competent. Insofar as it's in my ability to do so, I should encourage the people I work with and work for to be tough and competent.

It's easy to forget this when you have deadlines and budgets to meet, and when some of the problems you notice aren't yours to fix, and some of the jobs you have to do are outside of your current abilities.

Sure, no one is going to die in a fireball if I let something slide, but I expect whoever didn't get around to checking they'd removed the nylon from inside the Command Module before the plugs-out test didn't expect a tragic outcome either.

No harm comes from doing a good job.

Yes! And...

It took me a ridiculously long time to understand the point of "Yes, And..."

I didn't get it at all when I was in school and my drama teacher was trying to get us to learn improv skills.

I didn't really get it at university, where I was studying to be a drama teacher (gods save us).

I barely got it when I was a drama teacher, and certainly didn't understand it well enough to teach it to my students (one of many reasons why I'm not a drama teacher today).

It wasn't until after I became a librarian and found a book on Improv Skills in the library I was working in that it all clicked into place. And, like many things that should be self evident, it was both a life-changing revelation and an embarrassing "well, duh!" moment.

"Yes, And...", for those of you who haven't been introduced to the joys of Improv, is an improvisational technique, but also the name of a Theatre Sports "game" that is designed to teach that technique. 

In this game, whenever anyone says anything, the other person is supposed to reply with "Yes, and..." and then say something that builds on what the other person said:

"Isn't it a lovely day today?"
"Yes, and the whether forecast is looking very promising for the weekend."
"Yes, and I'm really looking forward to seeing the football match."

"That person just shot a gorilla!"
"Yes, and not before time – that escaped gorilla was about to climb the Empire State building."
"Yes, and it would be dreadful to have to get the biplanes in."

"I really wish I hadn't watched that horror film straight after eating all that weird street food."
"Yes, and I really wish I wasn't sitting next to you at the time."

That's the game. In Improve, the principle of  "Yes, And..." is essentially the same, but you don't actually have to say the words "Yes, and..." You just have to keep going in the spirit of what has gone before:

"My goodness, Jack, you look like you've been dragged backwards through a hedge!"
"I was! A Hawthorn! By a Sasquatch!"
"Oh, no, don't tell me Benny's back in town?"

The fundamental idea of "Yes, And..." is that you just accept whatever reality has been offered to you and riff on it without hesitation – and offer the other players in the improv something to build on and riff with in return. It requires a complete lack of defensiveness and an open-handed generosity, with the understanding that your pride isn't at all important, but the flow of the story is.

Whatever the other person says to you, you're all in. Whatever character is suggested to you, that's who you are – no questions asked. Whatever offer is made, you accept whole-heartedly, without any ego.

Which is, of course, why high school students struggle with it so much. All teenagers instinctively feel very embarrassed at all times, and they want to try to protect themselves from anything that might threaten the appearance they want to present to the world. Teenagers and youths instinctively want to control the narrative, so they can control how people see them. 

In addition to this, conversations amongst teens and youths have a tendency to become combative. In a good Improv, the conversation is a volley and the aim is to keep it going for as long as possible while making it interesting for the audience. But most kids can't engage in a conversation as a game without trying to "win" by scoring points off your "opponents".

A good improve is supportive. You carry the rest of your team through it because you want everyone to be able to shine. Sometimes, for the sake of an amusing performance, this involves making at least one person an unfortunate clown. But this should never be done out of malice – only for the sake of the story. If everyone knows that they are safe, then they can play the clown happily without feeling like they are being attacked.

Because that's the point of "Yes, And...": to know that you are all part of the same team, and whatever ball you throw, you are throwing to a member of your team, and whatever ball is thrown in your direction is something you should catch and play, for the good of the team. And because we all have each other's back, we know to throw the balls in good faith, and to catch them with good grace.

Which is one of many reasons why I'm ashamed that it took me so long to understand the point of "Yes, And..." It's a principle I try to live by, these days – to varying degrees of success, it must be said, but I'm working on it.

Permitted and admitted

 With the rise of casual use of Generative AI software over the past year and a bit (has it really only been that long?), we've also seen a lovely little moral panic sweeping the nation(s).

Should we be using AI? Is it cheating? Is it being lazy? Is it ripping off millions of authors who actually had to work on something? Will it spawn a group of people who can't string a sentence together to save themselves?

The answer to every single one of those questions is "Yes... and no." 

Ever since the Industrial Revolution (which was, as far as I'm concerned, a Bad Idea) we have been devising ways to get a machine to do the bulk of our work for us. 

We replaced ourselves in the field with tractors (and then we replaced ourselves in the tractors with remote control and robots).

We replaced ourselves in the factories with rigs and jigs (and then with robots).

We replaced ourselves in the copyroom with printing presses, and then we replaced ourselves in the typing pool with computers... it was really only a matter of time before we replaced ourselves at the computers with robots.

Replacing ourselves with robots is just something we do. As our main industries moved from field to factory to office, where and how we replace ourselves moved with us.

Should we do it? Heck, we should probably still be tilling a field somewhere with a couple of oxen. Or at least making a cabinet out of actual wood with honest-to-god hand tools. And then we should be writing a letter with pen and paper to send to our friend who lives a 6 day journey from here. 

We're not going to do that, though. We're going to use whatever tools are available to us. It behooves us to learn to use them well so we can make a quality product.

Every time we invent a new tool to do the "heavy lifting" for us, we deskill ourselves in the old ways. We could keep whining about that, or we could just accept that this is what we do, and make a point of learning to use the new tools in a way that keeps us actively engaged in the quality control of the process.

Oh, and have a secret enclave of people who can still write actual sentences with their own brains and hands, for when the solar flare (or the cyber-terrorist EMP) wipes out technology and we need to rebuilt society after the resulting apocalypse. Basically, writing is going to become like knitting and woodwork - a quaint little hobby that will eventually save the human race.

Not that we're worth saving.

The important thing with using a tool that replaces us intellectually is that everyone is on the same page with this – we need to ensure no one reads something written by a machine and assumes a human wrote that.

Eventually, it will be assumed that all copy was written by a machine unless otherwise noted (just like we assume everything we use was made by a machine, even though the vast majority of the things we touch in our lives are still "handmade" by actual people in factories. Very, very poorly paid people in very, very unsafe factories...), but at this point in our evolution it's still the other way around.

So, for now, we still need to insist that any use of Generated AI is "permitted and admitted" – you don't use it when you were told not to, and whenever you do use it, you outline/admit to what you used it for.

My Job Still Doesn't Exist

 I was cleaning up some comments on this blog when one of them lead me to an old post from 2009:

My Job Doesn't Exist

In this post, I talked about how my job is almost entirely made up: I teach people to use things that they only need to use because I told them these things exist and they should use them. In the post I mentioned several tools that no longer exist - I'd completely forgotten they existed, to be honest, and we don't miss them. I wonder how many of the tools I teach people to use today will be forgotten relics of a brief period of time in the near future?

Almost 15 years later, I'm still teaching people to use tools they only need because we tell them they exist, but with slight variations. Instead of "training a unicorn to fly a spaceship", I'm now teaching people what they should now about flying spaceships with unicorns, so they understand the principles and can better adapt to the new spaceships they may encounter in the future and the legendary creatures that might be flying them.

But... 

Teaching transferable skills is all well and good, but - as I have bemoaned many a time - if these skills aren't transferable to a post-apocalyptic wasteland, then what's the good of them?

After the "something that happened", will we need to know how to use a database that uses boolean operators? I doubt it. Will we need a plumber? Yes.

If I run away from this job and move to a quaint sea-side town with a population of 20 farmers, 10 fisher folk and a vet, will these people need me to teach them how to use EndNote? Probably not. Could they do with someone who can make cupcakes and coffee? That's more likely.

What I do isn't real. I don't make anything real.

I need to learn how to bake bread. Bread is real. People will always need bread.

Photo by Mae Mu on Unsplash

I Think it’s Only Fair to Warn You…

 A few years ago I bought a T-Shirt that had the quote “I think it’s only fair to warn you that I am, in fact, a librarian” (from the movie The Librarian) on the front of it.

Unfortunately, I bought a long-sleeved women’s shirt from an American store – completely forgetting that American women aren’t allowed to have arms. Or, if they do have arms, they aren’t allowed to wear clothes. As a result, whenever I put the shirt on, I have difficulty bending my arms and spend most of my time with them hanging limply by my side, like that character from Sesame Street who lost his elbow. Needless to say, I almost never wear it.

This is a shame, because I think I should probably go about my business wearing a suitable warning about my librarianship. I think people need to be warned that I have probably done some research prior to coming here tonight, and therefore have unexpected amounts of information about this topic that I ostensibly have no business knowing.

Take the other night, for example. I was at a Foundations course at my local bouldering club. We went around the table introducing ourselves and saying how much climbing we have done. Most people (except for someone who had been roped into trying it for the first time tonight) had at least six months experience; I’d just finished my two-week trial.

At some point one of the other participants asked a question, and I instinctively answered it. I was closest to her when she asked and the course instructor hadn’t heard her, so I just told her the answer. I watched her face move from “oh, okay…” to “…but wait, why would she know?” and I realised I hadn’t mentioned that I’d been reading up on bouldering in the past month or so and watching YouTube videos about it on and off since the last Olympics. I’m a librarian – if I’m interested in something, I look stuff up.

If I can do one thing to make my life worthwhile, it will be to introduce a second librarian stereotype into the mix. I know we’ll never be able to shift the idea of the crusty, old, cardigan-wearing lady in a dusty old building telling people to “shush”, but in library circles we have a completely different stereotype that I think the media would have fun with if they adopted it: The thirty-something person with green hair and tattoos who has always done pre-reading on every topic and will answer questions you didn’t even ask… even if you didn’t want them to.

Granted, I didn’t get tattoos until my 40s and when I coloured my hair I went purple. I’m also nowhere near hipster enough to truly match the stereotype we have within our circles (maybe I should start wearing a vest?), so I’m not personally going to be the biggest flagship for this stereotype. But that’s neither here nor there.

However, the “cardigan-wearing” thing is a keeper. We really do all have one close at hand.

Shepherd’s Race

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Have you ever had a mistaken meaning for a word or term become something deeply entrenched in your mind, so much that it still means something to you even after you learned you were mistaken?

I’m not talking about clinging to something even though it’s wrong, but rather that your “wrong” idea about what that term meant is something that you still think about, and you still need a word for it, so, for you, that’s what it’s called.

A couple of decades ago I became slightly obsessed with mazes and labyrinths (try to act a little bit surprised – I know this is totally in character for me, but I like to pretend I have hidden depths).

It began with a deep fondness for mazes that I developed while living in Tasmania – home to several maze complexes within a few hours’ drive from my house – and grew into a profound appreciation for labyrinths as both a design concept and a meditation tool over the years.

At one point in my life I dreamed of opening my own maze complex for tourists in Estonia – a land that has surprisingly few tourist mazes, given how whimsical it is. It was going to be glorious: a big maze, a couple of smaller “knots”, a turf maze and at least one proper labyrinth – all surrounded by gardens with “rooms” and statuary everywhere. It would be a game (literally, with a spotter’s card and everything) to see if you could find all of the statues in the complex.

I haven’t entirely given up on that dream…

Early in my exploration of the world of mazes and labyrinths, I came across the term “Shepherd’s Race”, which I thought was the name of a type of maze which served a particular purpose: to allow shepherds to stretch their legs while not going too far from the flock.

It’s actually a name given to a particular turf maze near Nottingham, and a couple of other mazes had very similar names. Shepherds apparently did carve turf mazes, and they no doubt used them to keep mentally and physically active while sitting around watching a bunch of sheep do sheep things in a paddock, but it’s not the name of a type of maze or a type of activity involving mazes, which is what I had erroneously thought.

However, the idea of a “shepherd’s race” being a long exercise track tucked into a small area really captured my imagination when I first “discovered” it, and it has stuck with me ever since. I loved the idea of a labyrinth being an historical treadmill.

If you’re not familiar with the design of labyrinths, they are most often a single track or path that loops around within itself to create a pattern. If it’s a labyrinth, it’s most likely going to be unicursal; you don’t have islands or dead ends, like you do in a maze. Once you enter the path, the only place you are going to go is to the centre. Then, depending on the design, you may have to turn around and go back the way you came to get out again.

Labyrinths are also often just a pattern on the ground. They frequently don’t have high raised walls like a maze, which means you can always see the pattern of the path you are walking on.

This is why they were often used for walking meditation, and you’ll find them in churches and temples. Within a short space, you can walk a “long” distance. Imagine walking a one-kilometre track but staying within a space of a hundred or so metres – and during that whole time you don’t come across any surprises; you know exactly where you’re going, and you can spend the whole time focusing on your cadence and your breath.

Walking a labyrinth as a meditation is a wonderful thing and I recommend you try it if you get the chance.

But back to “shepherd’s race”.

I use this term (or “shepherd’s run”) all the time (mostly in my head) to refer to getting exercise by walking or running a circuitous path that stays within a small area. I’ll sometimes decide I need to go for a walk, but the whether is inclement, so I’ll go to a large store and use the aisles of the shop “as a shepherd’s race”. (So far no one in Bunnings has asked me why I’m walking up every single aisle of the shop at a brisk pace and then turning around and doing it again in the opposite direction. They’ve probably seen much, much weirder things.)

Or I’ll decide to “go for a shepherd’s run” and try to map out a way I can hit as many streets as possible in a single neighbourhood to run several kilometres without going more than a kilometre or so from my starting point.

Even though I know “shepherd’s race” or “shepherd’s run” isn’t actually the term for covering a lot of ground within a short distance by taking a circuitous route, it’s my term for it. I don’t know of another.

I know you can cover a lot of ground in an even shorter physical space by hitting a treadmill in a gym, but this way I actually get to see some change to the scenery. I find a “shepherd’s run” in a “shepherd’s race” is way more interesting than hitting a treadmill any day of the week.

Do me a favour and start using these terms for the same thing I’m using them for. I think the terms (and the concepts) deserve to take off.

P.S. My love of labyrinths has nothing to do with the Labyrinth movie starring David Bowie (which I loved to pieces), as that movie had very little to do with labyrinths, surprisingly. Name one thing you know about labyrinth design as a result of watching Labyrinth. You probably said “something about an oubliette,” but oubliettes are dungeons that can only be accessed through the ceiling. Nothing to do with labyrinths.

One thing you possibly did learn about labyrinth design from Labyrinth, without necessarily noticing, is that some (but not all) labyrinths have a path out from the centre that runs parallel with the start of the path into the labyrinth. ("If she'd 'ave kept on goin' down that way she'd 'ave gone straight to that castle.")

Scrabble as a Cooperative Puzzle

 For as long as I can remember, my mother and I have played card games and board games together, and we've always done it wrong.

Q. What happens when you get two highly non-competitive people to play games together?

A. Everybody wins.

Well, actually nobody wins, but we're okay with that.

Take Scrabble, for example. I understand that you are supposed to pay attention to the numbers on the tiles and the scores written in the squares on the board?

Yeah, we don't do that. We just try to get every letter on the board in the most interesting words we can think of. If that means occasionally using a foreign word, onomatopoeia or initialism, so be it. It's not so much a "game" with a "winner" as a cooperative puzzle. Often, by the end of the game, we'll even turn around the last few tiles so we can all see them and work together to finish the board.

For games where the "winner" is the first person to do something ("you've played out all the cards in your hand! You win!") we'll often just pick up another hand of cards or tiles and keep going. There are still pieces left to play - why would you stop just because someone theoretically "won"?

Our least favourite games are the ones where you basically have to stop when someone wins. So boring.

I don't know if we started doing this because my mother wanted to teach me that winning isn't a big deal (and thus I shouldn't be a sore loser), or if it's actually my fault that we do this because I just wanted to keep playing until we ran out of pieces.

Either way, it's a habit we fell into many, many years ago, and it's my preferred way to play games. This makes it very difficult to play with other people. They care about winning and all that crap, which is incredibly dull. I care about whether I can sneakily get three different spellings of a homophone onto the board.

If you've never played Scrabble as a cooperative puzzle, you really should give it ago. When it's a team sport and everyone is on the same team, it really does change the dynamics of the game completely - for the better I think.

But if you're a competitive person, you probably shouldn't try playing a game with me. I'll lose just for fun, which tends to really annoy people who are genuinely trying to win.

I'm just calling Luxembourg "Idris" from now on

I've started reading City of Bones, and I'm not sure I can cope with the level of stupidity shown by the characters... and maybe the author.

Let's ignore, for a moment, the "plot that is furthered by people doing stupid things" and look, instead, at geography.

According to an early conversation "Idris" is a country that is between Germany and France that "Mundanes" don't know exists. And "There isn't a country between Germany and France, except for Switzerland"...

So "Idris" is Luxembourg? And "Mundane" is just something rude we use to refer to people who lack a basic knowledge of geography?

The argument can be made that a particular character has a terrible grasp of geography – especially if it's the American character. Everyone in the world is happy to accept that an American character would struggle to remember European countries exist. Most of us are pretty sure Americans can only name three European countries at any given time – and sometimes one of those is Genovia.

But when the other character in the conversation supposedly comes from that part of Europe, you'd expect them to say "well, actually, there are a few countries between France and Germany. There's Belgium, Luxembourg, Idris, Switzerland and then Genovia. Perhaps you might wish to purchase an atlas?"

The fact that the guy from Luxembourg... sorry, Idris, said "oh yes, you're right about there being nothing there – but my magical country is the exception!" just makes be think it's the author who might require an atlas.

This is after the "plot furthered by stupidity" thing already made me want to slap people. Look, I don't care how old you are, teenaged people – if you walk into a room that has clearly been freshly ransacked, you should have enough nous to think "I wonder if the bad guys are still here?" and shut up. Just shut up and stop drawing attention to yourself.

I'm only five chapters in. I asked a friend at work today if it gets better, and she said "nope – but the grasp of geography improves slightly". I don't know if continuing with this book will make me more accepting of the stupidity and I'll be able to suspend disbelief, or if I'll just end up flinging the book across the room (which would be awkward, because I'm listening to an audiobook on my phone, and both my phone and my headphones are too expensive to fling).

(And, yes, I know: Genovia is between France and Italy, not France and Germany. I was taking liberties for comedic effect.)

The Creativity of Weeding

Photo by Kasturi Roy
on Unsplash

When I was studying to become a librarian, I had a part time job as a signwriter’s assistant. A big part of my job – actually, I would say it was one of the biggest parts of my job, was a task called “weeding”.

Weeding involved getting rid of any material that wasn’t part of the sign. I’d carefully strip away the excess vinyl that wasn’t part of the design, so that only the actual design and words were left. Everything else was extraneous. Unnecessary. In fact, if we didn’t get rid of the material we weeded, it would render the sign useless. You wouldn’t be able to see the design or properly read the words.

When I became a librarian, I soon learned that a task called “weeding” was a part of that job, too. Items that were too old, were in poor condition or hadn’t been used enough were earmarked for removal from the collection to free room for new items – or to create spaces for our patrons to use for various purposes (sometimes, in a library, empty space is more useful and more valued than books).

As a liaison librarian in a university, I was only tangentially involved in the weeding process. The resources team had a series of criteria for works that would turn up on the regular weeding spreadsheets. My role involved checking items that had been marked for weeding to see if they needed to be kept or replaced and occasionally scanning through the collection to find superseded editions that were too old to keep, even though they were too well used to turn up on the lists.

While weeding was less central to my role than it had been when I was a signwriter’s assistant, it was still central to the ecosystem of the library. As a team, weeding was a big part of what we did – and an important one. In order to keep the collection healthy, vibrant and relevant to our patrons, we had to have a “healthy” weeding programme.

As much as people freak out at the idea of a library getting rid of books, it’s the same principle as weeding in the signwriter’s workshop – or even weeding in a garden: you have to take out what shouldn’t be there so that it doesn’t detract from or obscure what should be there.

A good library isn’t full of books no one is using. There are some libraries that keep works for historical reasons, and we all work together to make sure we don’t throw out the last copy of something – but we don’t need to keep a book that no one wants to read. And we shouldn’t keep a book that no one wants to read, because a) it will make it harder to find a book you *do* want to read, and b) it means we won’t have space for the new books you might want to read.

But this post isn’t actually about weeding in libraries, it’s about weeding in general.

I briefly mentioned gardening a moment ago. Over the past few years I’ve been getting more interested in gardening, but I don’t come from a gardening background and (between work and family commitments) I keep stupid hours, so I don’t really have the time or know-how to get as into gardening as I want to. Most of the time I’m lucky if I can find the time to weed.

This has been a source of great frustration to me, because I’ve never really seen weeding as gardening. Weeding is a chore – a task. Gardening is a creative process. Weeding is taking plants away, while gardening is about adding plants and growing them… isn’t it?

A few weeks ago I looked at my overgrown and shaggy garden and realised that gardening is a lot like sculpture – the carving-figures-out-of-marble kind of sculpture. To butcher an old adage: you carve a sculpture of a lion by taking away all of the marble that isn’t a lion.

I suddenly realised that a large part of good gardening is weeding (and pruning – which is a kind of weeding, if you think about it). Yes, by all means gardening involves planting and designing, but to a large extent it involves carving away anything that isn’t the garden. Weeding isn’t just a chore that we do because we don’t like weeds. Weeding is something we do to make our gardens “intentional” spaces. We take out what isn’t part of the garden, so that the garden can be revealed.

Not too long ago I read a book written by a Zen garden designer. Now, when I say “not too long ago”, I mean “long enough ago that I’ve forgotten what that book was and who wrote it.” However, I do remember that it was written by someone who designed gardens for Zen Buddhist temples, and I remember that one of the pieces of advice that he gave was to go into the garden and think vary carefully about what needed to be removed. Do you need to sweep the paths? Do you need to prune this particular branch of that particular tree? Do you need to cut the grass over there?

There *is* a kind of creativity in weeding.

When you walk into a space and think of it as a sculpture, you ask yourself, “what needs to be removed so that what remains is improved?” This is absolutely a creative process, and one that can be done with only a few minutes to spare here and there.

It’s also a process that can be applied to so many aspects of our homes, workplaces, jobs and activities. In every domain of our lives, we could benefit from a bit of careful weeding. What is getting in the way of this space being better? Can you see the intentional design, or is too much of what is unintentional getting in the way? Can you strip away something extraneous and unnecessary to improve what remains?

On Essays, Features and Columns

I'm currently reading a book that is touted as a "collection of essays". 

It's a book I had to put down and come back to, because I bought it thinking it was one kind of book, but it turned out to be a different kind of book, and I had to wait until I was ready for it. You have to be in the right headspace for books, or they just don't work at all.

When I bought the book I was working off a brief description and the title, brief author bio and the description of the contents as "essays" made me think it was going to be the kind of non-fiction book where you learn information about a topic. Perhaps one of those books university lecturers put out that are assigned to students in courses to make sure someone buys them, although they're really just a researcher's love letter to their field of research.

Once the book was in my hands, though, I realised the real clue to its nature was in some of the blurbs on the back cover that didn't make it to the website I found it on, and the description of the genre above the barcode: Creative non-fiction, which tends to get appended to the more autobiographical side of non-fiction.

The book (Onigamiising: Seasons of an Ojibwe Year, by Linda LeGarde Grover) is a collection of memoirs that touch on wider (but very personal) themes. It reads like a collection of "slice-of-life" columns from a "smart" magazine or "literate" newspaper – you know the kind, the ones that are written for people who might also read the New Yorker or the London Review of Books. I noticed one of the "essays" actually referred to itself as "this column", and I've since learned she does write columns for the Duluth News Tribune, so perhaps quite a few of them started their lives as "columns".

I'm not complaining – I love columns. They're usually my favourite part of a magazine or newspaper. Heck, sometimes they're the main reason I buy that magazine. And the "creative non-fiction" books I most enjoy reading are the ones where most of the chapters started their lives as columns. This book was accidentally right up my alley (I'm also really enjoying it) – it just wasn't what I was expecting when I bought it, so I had to wait until I was in the mood for the book it actually was.

But it has me thinking about the way we use the word "essays". 

As an academic librarian who teaches into workshops on how to write essays for university, my first thought when it comes to "essays" certainly isn't magazine columns. Nor is it short stories (that happen to be non-fiction), or feature articles, or memoirs – but all of these things are described as "essays" once they get into a book that's for sale to the general public.

The word "essay" contains multitudes (as you can see if you look it up in Wikipedia), and I know that both Stephen Jay Gould and David Sedaris have their works classified as "essays", even though they are very different genres... except that they aren't. Both Gould and Sedaris were columnists, and many of their collections started out as columns (Gould in Natural History magazine, Sedaris in The New Yorker).

The genre I teach people to write is an "essay" – but it has absolutely no resemblance to the genre I read when I pick up a book of "essays". The latter is mostly things I would think of as feature articles and columns.

But while I would have been a little closer to the mark in my assumptions about Grover's book if it had been described as a collection of "columns", the words "feature article" and "column" contain multitudes as well. They can be wildly and widely different from each other.

All of which makes it hard to see the word "essay" or "column" and know what you're going to get.

I feel like we need better words to describe non-fiction of this kind. More subgenre terminology out in the world. I used "slice-of-life" above, but that's just my personal way of describing a piece in which the columnist tells me about their own lives.

You know the publishers of magazines and newspapers must have terminology for this, as it's their bread and butter (and when you go looking specifically for "types of columns", there are plenty of options). They'd know exactly what the tone and genre and audience is for X as opposed to Y. But when those articles find their way into a collected book, what does the book-buying public get to see? "Essays".

What is the point of an abridged book?

I was looking for advice on how to do a decent abridgement of a book, and I came across a blog post in which the author (A.S. Thornton) was asking why abridged books even exist. She felt reading abridged books was a bit of a cheat, and wanted to know what others thought. I tried to leave a comment on her blog, but Wordpress was uncooperative, so here are my two cents:

I used to be all "abridged books are for literary wimps and losers!", but I also used to think the same thing about audiobooks. I'm now an avid audiobook listener, and I'll sometimes read an abridged book if it's available. One reason is that I'm a fan of short fiction, but hardly anyone writes novellas for a popular audience (this is picking up a bit more with self publishing on Amazon and their "quick reads"). And, let's face it, a lot of books would make very strong novellas, but make pretty flabby novels. This is especially true for a lot of classics that were originally written as serials back in the day – the authors were trying to make the 19th Century version a TV series, and there's a lot of filler. The story really does benefit from having a few subplots or rambling descriptions of moorlands removed.

Another reason is that my attention span is garbage these days. I want to know the story, but I know I won't even start the book if I have to try to get through the whole thing. I work in a "word-heavy" job, and sometimes by the time I get to read for pleasure, I'm at a point where books pitched at second language learners are closer to what my brain can deal with. Which brings me to another plus point about abridgements: they're often easier to read for people who have English as a Second Language or trouble reading for some other reason, so it makes the story (and "reading" in general) more accessible.

But I think the main reason abridged novels exist is because the 20th Century was pumping these suckers out for a mass market. Remember, the average reading level of the general population is around 8th Grade, and people are looking for a quick read while they're taking the train to work or sneaking in a few pages between putting the kids to bed and going to bed themselves. They want to know the story of Robinson Crusoe, and they *want* to read... but ain't nobody got time to read the actual novel. The first few chapters of the unabridged version are an absolute slog, and it's easy to get moored. So time poor, book hungry would-be readers will gladly read the shorter version, and the publishers will gladly make it available for them.

Speaking of moorlands, I have never been able to get past the first couple of chapters of "Wuthering Heights". I once borrowed the abridged audiobook version of it to see if that helped, and it didn't. I still couldn't get past the first few chapters. Which just goes to show that a book can be abridged and still keep it's "natural charm".

The freedom of limitations

 

Photo by Gaelle Marcel
on Unsplash

When I was a child my mother and I made regular trips to the local library to change our books.

At that time the library had a number of limits placed on borrowing: you could only borrow ten items at a time, and you could only borrow them for two weeks. You could, of course, renew the items you hadn't finished with (provided no one had placed them on hold), but there were limits to the amount of times you could do that, too. If I recall correctly, you could only renew something twice before you had to bring it back in.

So we had a regular day when we would go through the library and pick the 10 things we wanted the most. If there was anything we hadn't finished before we went back to the library for our next visit, we had to think carefully about whether we wanted to keep it for longer (and thus have even fewer new books to choose) or call time on it and look for a better book.

When most of the books I borrowed were picture books, I'd chew through those quite quickly. As I progressed to longer books, it started to become more of a challenge to finish the books I borrowed before the next library trip - but the limit of 10 books always meant there was a fighting chance I would be finished with everything I actually cared about before our next visit.

Then the borrowing allowance increased, and so did the borrowing time. At the same time fines were removed, so there was less incentive to actually pay attention to due dates.

Like most voracious library users, I saw this as a good thing, but I realise now that the old restrictions gave me something that the "new" freedoms took away: focus.

To be honest, the old restrictions weren't a burden. They didn't restrict the number of books you could read or finish. Just the number you could have on your "To Be Read" pile at any given time. At any time, if you wanted more books, you could get them. You just had to bring back the ones you were done with first. The whole library was still your playground. Just with more structure.

When you can only have 10 items at any given time, you think about what you actually expect to read this time. You think about what is most appealing to you. You think about what you're going to read next.

Now the current limits in the public library are 25 items for 1 month, which doesn't seem like a lot extra, but it oddly is. It's more than enough rope to lose track of what you have and how long you've had it - and more than enough to encourage me to borrow a book in case I get around to reading it (which I might not). And since they don't have any real consequences for ignoring the due date, I'm less likely to notice when it's due (yes, I'm the kind of person who needs incentives to make my brain pay attention to things). 

The library I work in (which is a different library) is worse. Staff and students can borrow unlimited books which automatically renew an unlimited number of times (as long as no one requests them). I realised, at one point, that I had almost two shelves worth of books that I had checked out to read "at some point", which I had barely looked at for months - some I'd had for years. When I looked at my account recently, I noticed that I had checked out a book in 2019 that I still haven't finished. It's just sitting in my house, waiting for me to get around to it.

When the sky is the limit, what's to keep you from floating away?

As I have been going through my house trying to wrangle it into some kind of order, I noticed a large part of the "clutter" that was weighing on me was the number of books that didn't belong to me that I had to get around to reading so I could return them.

So I've recently started to impose my own 1980s borrowing limits. I'm a little over (I currently have 11 books from each library), but my goal is to only ever have 10 items on loan from any given library, and to return them by the due date without renewing them (it's going to be tricky with the autorenewals, but we all need goals).

To help me focus on only what I actually think I have time to read, to give myself the incentive to borrow only what I most want to read "next", and to stop filling my house with books that don't belong to me, I'm going to take away the "freedom" that my libraries have given me and go back to the limitations they so kindly removed years ago.

Perhaps the limitations will set me free...

All That Can Be Contained: A Book Reflection

Photo by Jake Nebov
on Unsplash

(This is Part 3 of a group of book reflections about the same book. Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.)

As you may recall from the previous posts in this series, I've recently listened to the audiobook version of Decluttering at the Speed of Life, by Dana K. White (read by the author).

One of the central tenants of White’s book is something she calls the Container Principle.

The Container Principle is both incredibly simple and obvious, and deeply profound. I suppose most fundamental principles are, whether they were discovered by a monk in a remote mountain cave or a mother of three with a clutter problem.

The Container Principle states that any given container (be it a drawer, a cupboard or your whole house) has two fundamental aspects – two things that make it a “container”. The first is, obviously, that it holds things. The second is that it limits what can be held. It contains, in multiple senses of the word.

We have a tendency to forget about that second aspect. We keep trying to put more into our containers than they can hold, but you can’t really do that. If you try to put more into a container than it will hold, you will put the container and everything in it under stress, which could lead to damage. Or it will overflow, and everything will spill out, and then gets out of control.

White’s definition of clutter (and I am very much paraphrasing at this point, as it has been several weeks since I listened to her book and I can’t remember the exact way she phrased it) is something that is out of place, out of control and causing stress. If it has a place to be, but it’s not in that place, then it is clutter in this place where it isn’t meant to be. If there isn’t a place for it to be, then it’s just clutter.

If it doesn’t belong, it’s clutter. I’ll come back to this in a moment.

Things that are spilling over the confines of their container are, in a very real sense, out of place and out of control. When your threshold for this kind of clutter maxes out, you find yourself under stress. It’s very likely that the “things” that the container is supposed to hold are also under stress (you can’t squish too much into a given space before something gets squished), and the container might very well be under stress as well.

When the stuff you're trying to fit in the container gets beyond what the container can hold, then the best and most sensible thing you can do to make sure things are properly cared for and don’t get damaged is to scale back so that you only have what will fit in the container.

Take it all out and evaluate it – as a whole, and in relation to everything else you wanted to put in that container. Don’t just look at each thing on its own and say “I want this”, look at each thing in relation to all the other things and say “I want this more than that”. Prioritise the most important, the best, your favourites – these go into the container first.

When the container is full, everything else that isn’t already in the container doesn’t fit. It wasn’t a priority, or it would already be in the container, and therefore it doesn’t have a place. It doesn’t belong in the container. So, if it doesn’t belong, it’s clutter.

If you want to avoid putting the system under stress, you have to be able to accept that you can’t keep everything all the time. If this thing that doesn’t fit isn’t more important, more loved or more useful than the things that are already in the container, then it has to go. And quickly – don’t leave it to become a burden.

Whenever you think of adding anything new to that container, you have to consider it on a “one-in-one-out” basis. Is it more important, useful or loved than something that is already in the container? If not, don’t bring it into your life. If it is, then the less important/loved/useful thing has to go.

You might think the obvious solution is to get a bigger container, but space isn’t infinite. A bigger container for this means there’s less space for something else. If you dedicate a second drawer to hold what doesn’t fit into one drawer, then you have less drawer space for what would otherwise have gone in the second drawer – you’ve moved the problem, you haven’t solved it.

White was talking about drawers and cupboards, but many things in our lives are containers.

Time is a container. Your mental or physical capacity is a container.

Any given container can only hold so much. You can only do so much in a day. You can only make so many decisions. You can only keep on top of so many tasks.

It’s harder to see these containers and their capacity (and certainly a lot harder for other people to see them and respect their limitations), but it’s actually quite easy to tell when they’ve been overstuffed and can’t hold what you are trying to contain: they are under stress, over flowing and getting out of control.

If you get to the end of your work day and you feel you have to stay back and keep working because you could not do everything you “had” to do today, then there is too much in your work day. It spills over and puts the system under stress. There are only so many hours in the day, so if you spend more time at work, there’s less time to spend doing all the things you “have” to do at home. You have a smaller container to try to fit your domestic tasks into. And so that spills over and takes time away from unwinding so you can get some rest…

So of course you feel like your days are overflowing and you have so many things you couldn’t get done today. You’re trying to fit too much into your day, and there are limits to what your container can hold.

If you find you are doing this every day, then there’s a bigger container issue at play. You’re trying to fit too much into something else. Perhaps your job has too many tasks to complete? If it’s more than you can do in the time you have available, then it’s too much work to fit into your job. If the “job” is supposed to fit all of this work into it, but it doesn’t, then perhaps that job doesn’t fit into your capacity – it doesn’t fit into your life.

We don’t like to think about this – we don’t like to admit it. We think we should be able to fit these things in, so we refuse to accept we can’t. We think we need to keep cramming stuff into the container until the container finally grows enough to accommodate all of it.

But that’s not how containers work. There are limits to what they can hold. If you keep pushing them beyond their limits, something is getting damaged, even if nothing obviously breaks.

So we need to look at everything we’re trying to fit into that container. We need to see everything in terms of whether it is more deserving of a place in that container than something else. We have to prioritise what is most important, most useful, most loved. And when the container is full, we have to be willing to say “there is no place for this – it wasn’t a priority and it doesn’t fit.”

And then we have to find a solution to that which doesn’t involve us continually trying to cram it in. Something that leaves us with enough space in our lives that we can actually enjoy what we have, rather than stressing about what is overflowing.

We also have to look at every new thing in relation to what is already in the container, and be honest about whether it’s more valuable to us than something that is already in there. Then we have to let something else go.

And that’s the hardest thing, I think. We’re so used to pretending we can do it all; we struggle with admitting we can’t and telling people that this is beyond what we can do. Also, we know everyone is in the same boat – everyone is stressed out trying to fit it all in and do all of the things. For some unfathomable reason we see that as a reason for why we should keep struggling, instead of realising we’re all making a mistake.

What if…

What if we gave each other permission to only do what we can – to stop trying to cram in more than our containers can hold? What if we gave ourselves permission to do this, and extended this kindness to everyone around us?