Via wood s lot comes a little humor for your Wednesday afternoon:
The Tao te Ching is an ancient book of wisdom, the well spring of a great religion, Taoism. It has been translated many times, by such literary luminaries as Ursula K. LeGuin, Stephen Mitchell and Alan Watts. I do no possess even a modicum of their literary talent, poetic ability or knowledge of Eastern religions. I do have one advantage that they do not. Lao Tzu, the reputed author of the work, was a librarian. This is the first attempt by a fellow librarian to translate the Tao te Ching.
An excerpt:
The highest good is like water / Water gives life to all things and does not strive /
It flows in places that men reject and so is like the Library /
In constructing, be close to the land /
In developing a collection, go deep in the heart /
In dealing with patrons, be gentle and kind /
In speech, be true /
In making rules, be just /
In budgeting, be competent /
In action, take care to be timely /
No fight: No blame.
More at Librarian\’s Lao Tzu: The Book of the Library and Its Ways.
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