Michael

Tonight I managed to wrangle a ticket to the PEN USA Annual Literary Awards here in Los Angeles. Though I am a writer I don’t generally attend such events but the roster of honorees persuaded me to go.

PEN is of course is the laudable organization which defends the rights of writers and readers the world over. This event was its thirteenth annual awards ceremony and the best part of the evening was devoted to honoring librarians and their work.

Tonight I managed to wrangle a ticket to the PEN USA Annual Literary Awards here in Los Angeles. Though I am a writer I don’t generally attend such events but the roster of honorees persuaded me to go.

PEN is of course is the laudable organization which defends the rights of writers and readers the world over. This event was its thirteenth annual awards ceremony and the best part of the evening was devoted to honoring librarians and their work.The prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to California State Librarian Kevin Starr. In accepting the award Starr gave a brief and typically humorous speech (during which he managed to touch upon the California budget crisis and declared an official diminution of all outstanding library fines) but reserved the main part of his speech to comment on the meaning of writing and reading in a modern civilization. Starr suggested that “We do not so much use the language as the language uses us,� and that literature is possessed of a transcending grandeur which acts to raise us from the ordinary plane of existence. After these remarks he departed the stage, though we would have preferred him to continue through dessert.

Following Starr’s award and remarks, Steve Wasserman, Book Editor of the Los Angeles Times, presented the Loreen Arbus Special First Amendment Award to the American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom. Accepting the award for the ALA was OIF Director and founder Judith Krug.

Krug gave a marvelous, spirited speech which began with a vigorous attack upon Attorney General John Ashcroft and the USA Patriot Act. Krug described the Act’s extension of new and unprecedented powers to federal authorities, comparing its provisions to those of previous federal law. Krug claimed “The Patriot Act does not represent new law but prior proposals—an old wish list from the FBI and other agencies, become real in the post 9-11 era.�

Krug stated the position of the ALA in a single sentence that was met with cheering from the audience: “It’s nobody’s business what you read in the library but yours.� She concluded by saying “We will continue to fight for the freedoms and liberties guaranteed in the Constitution of the United States.�

I cannot tell you how special it felt to be in that room; to hear the applause and feel the warm support for these two librarians, for the idea and the reality of the library their careers represent. For a few moments the cares and crises of the work fell away and it seemed as though the world did understand, did care and could recognize this quiet diligent child of its liberties. I wish all of you could have been there with me, and perhaps you were in spirit.

My congratulations to Kevin Starr and Judith Krug, pioneers and champions of the library; many thanks and much gratitude to PEN USA for the laurels bestowed upon our heroes.

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I am indebted to Roy Stone and the Librarian’s Guild of the Los Angeles Public Library for inviting me to this event.

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Whether they are aware or not, librarians have just experienced a significant moment in their own history and in the history of the country. Over the past few months, opposition among the profession to the provisions of the Patriot Act reached the point where librarians, individually and collectively, did a thing they are not ordinarily known for: they made noise.

The reason for this racket was because the administration somehow managed to do the one thing that would make librarians howl: they came between patrons and the right to read. Librarians do not ask for much; library pay is nothing to write home about, and the work requires a spirit of devotion as much as anything else. A library career offers the opportunity to serve, generally in anonymity, a public which rarely if ever recognizes the contributor except as a quaint, if generally positive stereotype.

Whether they are aware or not, librarians have just experienced a significant moment in their own history and in the history of the country. Over the past few months, opposition among the profession to the provisions of the Patriot Act reached the point where librarians, individually and collectively, did a thing they are not ordinarily known for: they made noise.

The reason for this racket was because the administration somehow managed to do the one thing that would make librarians howl: they came between patrons and the right to read. Librarians do not ask for much; library pay is nothing to write home about, and the work requires a spirit of devotion as much as anything else. A library career offers the opportunity to serve, generally in anonymity, a public which rarely if ever recognizes the contributor except as a quaint, if generally positive stereotype.The recent frantic tap-dancing by Attorney General John Ashcroft reflects the fact that the librarians’ message has hit home in a big way, registering with the public in a manner which does nothing for the image of a president who has sought to ride the wave of public support in the wake of 9-11.

I would venture to say that no previous Attorney General has made a whistle-stop tour of the nation to defuse the protests of mere librarians, but these are not mere librarians: they are librarians alienated, offended, even enraged. More than anything, they are librarians united. Ashcroft has become to the library what Reagan’s James Watt was to the environmental community, and not so much for the deed as for the defense, the denial, the attacks upon the offended parties. All of this has had a galvanic effect upon the librarians, making them come together as nothing, not even terrible budget cutbacks, could do.

We ought to give thanks for such officials as John Ashcroft. Without him, the Patriot Act would have no personal face, no identity except on paper. Given the work he has done for the profession, he is certainly a candidate for any library association’s Person of the Year.

One of the best things about living where I do is the close proximity of some pretty good libraries. One of my favorites is an old girl who waits for me down the hill a ways, close enough that my motorcycle hardly gets warm before I’m steering into the parking lot.

Pasadena’s Central Library was laid down at the peak of the Jazz Era, when the town had settled into its role as an affluent resting place for the wealthy of Los Angeles and anybody else with money who didn’t want to winter in the snow. They didn’t scrimp on the place, and it shows to this day.

One of the best things about living where I do is the close proximity of some pretty good libraries. One of my favorites is an old girl who waits for me down the hill a ways, close enough that my motorcycle hardly gets warm before I’m steering into the parking lot.

Pasadena’s Central Library was laid down at the peak of the Jazz Era, when the town had settled into its role as an affluent resting place for the wealthy of Los Angeles and anybody else with money who didn’t want to winter in the snow. They didn’t scrimp on the place, and it shows to this day.Entered from the south side, the library gives a visitor the immediate impression of having entered a richly paneled cathedral; fill a good-sized church with reading tables, replace the altar with a reference desk and you get the idea of the room. The librarian on duty presides over an expanse of polished walnut and cork flooring that seems to go on forever.

To the left and right of the reference desk are the chapels of this cathedral, each of which constitutes a separate journey into reference materials and another look into the architectural mind of the period, a time of grand and even magnificent public spaces whose function was as much as anything to embody a particular spirit. You can see what they thought of themselves when this place was built, and what they thought a library ought to represent. The carpeted rooms sound a deep note of dignity and certainly of purpose; this is not merely a storehouse of books but the home of Literature, of Knowledge, the accumulation of the ages. Libraries used to think of themselves that way, and this one certainly looks the part.

Notwithstanding all that, the place has a great warmth that calls the visitor back again and again. I spent nearly a decade working in a glass-walled garret a block from here, and often came to services at this church of the written word on days when the atmosphere of business got too thick for comfort.

On a summer afternoon the best place to read is in the shade of the little plaza near the coffee kiosk at the south side; in winter take your novel or magazine to the History Room, find a place near a window and let the time melt away. I recommend you sit at the ancient oaken roll top desk; pull open its drawers and wonder, as I have, what some librarian might have stored in them. The room smells of reading, the lamps glow pleasantly and the hours pass in their own good time.

A little ways off, at the chancel of this cathedral, the librarian sits at her desk in the glow of a very un-medieval computer screen. When I first came here the desk had only a blotter and a pad of paper and whatever the librarian brought to it in her mind. How different now– I don’t think they could have comprehended it, the builders of this place. Still, the computer casts its magic glow as the walls take it all in, as they have for three quarters of a century.

These days I find myself coming through the doors not fleeing work but seeking it; they’ve made me an intern here, a novitiate in a cathedral where I’ve worshipped many years. If the librarians here recognize me or recall my odd questions from the past, they don’t let on. I am not so much concerned with doing a good job for myself as for the sake of these old walls; I still think of the library in the old-fashioned sense and want very much to live up to that standard. I don’t know if it will be the same, coming here when my term of work is over; I hope I don’t lose this place as I have known it.

California has quite a few interesting libraries, mainly because they tend to reflect the communities they serve. Nowhere is this more true than in the state’s prison libraries. This week I found myself visiting one of them down south in Chino. If the name doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t feel dumb; most people in southern California can’t find Chino on a map, much less the two prisons located there.

The California Institution for Women sits in the middle of the last dairy reserve in that part of the world. On any day you realize that a mile from the parking lot; on a hot August afternoon you know it before you get off the freeway. Prisons are never put where the rich folk live, unless you happen to have a condo overlooking San Quentin. If you can see the women’s prison at Chino you are either a cow or a horsefly, both of which are in abundance just beyond the wire fence surrounding the facility.

California has quite a few interesting libraries, mainly because they tend to reflect the communities they serve. Nowhere is this more true than in the state’s prison libraries. This week I found myself visiting one of them down south in Chino. If the name doesn’t mean anything to you, don’t feel dumb; most people in southern California can’t find Chino on a map, much less the two prisons located there.

The California Institution for Women sits in the middle of the last dairy reserve in that part of the world. On any day you realize that a mile from the parking lot; on a hot August afternoon you know it before you get off the freeway. Prisons are never put where the rich folk live, unless you happen to have a condo overlooking San Quentin. If you can see the women’s prison at Chino you are either a cow or a horsefly, both of which are in abundance just beyond the wire fence surrounding the facility.The grounds of this institution resemble nothing so much as a high school campus wrapped in razor wire. These discordant elements represent the historical shift of correctional philosophy from reclamation to retribution. As built this place was intended as a sort of correctional training campus, but that was then. Now is all about Three Strikes and throwing away the key. An auto trip up Highway 5 is a tour of state prisons, strung out like the Missions along El Camino Real, beacons of our current faith and desire.

At fifty, CIW is an old facility, creaky and inefficient, but it still bears a certain charm for the visitor. Women’s prisons are different in the same ways that women are different from men. The women seem to have more freedom of movement; the air seems less tense. Not to say that this is any paradise: far from it.

It is a commonplace saying in corrections that people are sent to prison as punishment, not to be punished. That statement dies in the throat here, and nowhere so quickly as in the prison library. Prison libraries have their origin in the old-fashioned concept of redemption through positive influence. In this state and most others they owe their survival to the fact that the courts require that prisoners have access to legal books and materials. I wonder how anybody working on an appeal could concentrate on his case in a room filled with the odor of cow urine, simmering in temperatures that are certainly above ninety on this hot August afternoon. Without air conditioning, the air here is closer and warmer than any other library I have visited outside Manila. Nevertheless the work gets done; the librarian here is as conscientious as any on the planet, insistent on service and order, even in this Sahara-by-the-feedlots.

Juming Tong Davis came here after a stint in an Ohio prison library. When she talks about this library, her face takes on the glow of evangelism. Juming works in a prison because she has a very deep commitment to the inmates-to the sort of library and service they should have, and which she thinks they deserve. This is probably true of most prison librarians. Like any other phase of the business, you don’t go into this end of the work unless you are prepared to deal with the worst the patrons can offer. Here, the customers are doing time for things you don’t want to know about: still, and despite what you might think, they are human beings with ordinary desires. Quite a lot of them like books. Books are good for passing time, and they have a lot of time to pass here.

Today Juming looks a bit wilted, but offers a glass of water and a pleasant smile to this visitor. She remembers me from last time; we have a brief chat and then I take a tour. This library is about the size of the one in my junior high school, but excepting the law collection, not quite as good. You will not be surprised to find that this is because there isn’t a lot of money for such things– that and there isn’t space for expansion. There is only Juming, her inmate clerks and whatever she can put together in the way of shoestring programs for her patrons. This is rather painfully reminiscent of your average public library.

It isn’t easy getting people to work in prison libraries. Prison is after all prison, and the library plays a subordinate role to security and whatever conception of role the warden and the state have of what the place should be about. It is not just a public library for a confined population, but for a separate world whose denizens waken every morning in the aftermath of a nightmare. It is a place of lost hope, but with many of the same possibilities as any other library, and similar challenges, even if the odds are longer. It takes a special person to run a prison library, and the libraries either get them or the jobs stay unfilled, as many are now across the state and were even before the budget noose got tightened.

I would not mind working at CIW, and I am sure others might feel the same. What makes me hesitate to apply is not the stifling air of the place or the ancient facilities, but the sense that things will not get better any time soon; the real stink in the air comes not from the dairy cattle but from the rot of neglect and disdain for the human beings here, staff and inmate alike. The state (by which I mean all of us) simply doesn’t care; caring was yesterday, redemption long ago. Today we enforce misery. Against this philosophy stand a few people like Juming, she of the indomitable will and heart. Perhaps I will be that good a librarian someday.

NEW YORK (Aug. 14) – A huge power blackout hit U.S. cities spreading from New York to Cleveland and Detroit and north into Canada Thursday afternoon.

In New York City, the blackout had a significant effect on the public library.

None of the Internet terminals or other computers in the New York Library system were functioning, but the novels and non-fiction books somehow remained operational, according to patrons on the scene. Older reference librarians were able to switch to print sources in order to maintain services, preventing any disruption. Seekers of pornography crowded the reference desks asking for help and were referred to a list of bawdy novels and assorted men’s magazines.

It is noon of a summer Sunday and I have gone to San Jose to visit the future at its source. At the corner of two main streets the state university and the town have undertaken an experiment: they have mated two animals to create a third. The making of hybrids is always a gamble, as any rose fancier knows; quite a few are beautiful, others simply useless, but risk has never stopped the breeders, and we have gardens of beauty to thank for their efforts.

The town and the state college now have the same library. This is a new idea, and certainly a novel one upon which to expend considerable millions of dollars. The Martin Luther King library will function as the main library for San Jose State University and for the City of San Jose, opening very soon to these mixed constituencies.

It is noon of a summer Sunday and I have gone to San Jose to visit the future at its source. At the corner of two main streets the state university and the town have undertaken an experiment: they have mated two animals to create a third. The making of hybrids is always a gamble, as any rose fancier knows; quite a few are beautiful, others simply useless, but risk has never stopped the breeders, and we have gardens of beauty to thank for their efforts.

The town and the state college now have the same library. This is a new idea, and certainly a novel one upon which to expend considerable millions of dollars. The Martin Luther King library will function as the main library for San Jose State University and for the City of San Jose, opening very soon to these mixed constituencies.A reconnaissance of the place reveals that the critics were correct in their praise of the building, which is spacious, airy, well appointed and very handsome, after the fashion of modern spaces now, most of which seem attempts to bring warmth to ultra-modern décor; if I had to make a phrase I’d call the design Star Trek meets Borders Books.

The public have been allowed in to peer at the interior, which must seem very inconvenient for the staff who are yet assembling the place for its work. This is no time for criticism of operations or collection or anything else; give that a year and some fiddling. Libraries are like most other engines: they have to break themselves in gradually.

This one will get only a few runs around the block before the critics lick their pencils and begin to write the place up or off. The fate of this library and similar endeavors will depend largely upon the resolution of certain conflicts; all the talk thus far has been about blending and harmony, but all that is just noise to cover the bang that will come from the collision of these two worlds.

Nobody really knows what will happen. This new library is portrayed as an experiment in physics, but success will depend more on the elements of chemistry. Nobody has poured a public and a college library into a beaker before to see what would happen.

I do not think that the public sector will suffer much from the addition of the college library staff, collections or philosophy. I am wondering how well the college side will fare now that an urban public library has been dumped into their laps. I wonder what they will do for or about the homeless woman I found in the little café downstairs, mumbling her problems to the world, filthy, certainly no scholar; what of the man I found upstairs in the journals, amusing himself by flashing pornographic cartoon images on his computer screen for the world to see; these are commonplace everyday public library patrons in the big city. I asked one of the university librarians what he thought, and he told me, “I’m getting a lot of questions about what a novel is, that sort of thing. I don’t plan to spend a lot of time on that, and if it comes down to a time conflict between the students and the public side, I know which one hired me and pays me, and it isn’t the public library.”

The frankness of that comment surprised me, but I wasn’t shocked to find that a person who went into one sort of library wouldn’t necessarily be happy to find himself and his career wedged into another type altogether. Me, I’m a public library man. I like the edgy ambience of the urban setting, and its denizens don’t bother me a whit. I suspect that feeling may not be universal; the effect of that upon the operations of the new King facility will not be inconsiderable, though the shakeout may be, like most other things librarians do, a silent operation.

If I had to make a prediction I’d say that the future looks a lot more like King library than otherwise. Our friends the taxpayers require a lot of convincing to open their wallets, even for things like libraries, which in California used to be considered ordinary expenses of a civilized society. Future library projects, particularly large ones, are likely to be designed and promoted as benefiting multiple constituencies-a grim if realistic nod to our segmented society.

I would be willing to bet that the thing works itself out in the end; librarians are flexible creatures (say what they will under their breath), and in the end it will be their work that makes the place run well, as it very likely will.

Now, if only they would shift the library school to the new library and hold classes there-now that would be a revolution.

From Needlecraft Magazine, August 1934:

A Unique Lending Library

Last month, in the City of New York, an enterprise was started which will be watched with great interest by everyone who has at heart the well-being of our little men and women – the future citizens of America. Educators and social workers have long had in mind the benefit to result from adding to the home environment of certain of our little ones, who through no fault of their own are less fortunately situated than some of their comrades on life’s journey, the opportunities for recreation and study which will eventually help us to attain to that sterling principle of our Constitution which maintains that “All men are born free and equal.” Back of the Hecksher Foundation Toy-Lending Library is this thought in embodiment, based on the model of the public library, but with playthings instead of books to read, thus promoting normal amusement and recreation.

From Needlecraft Magazine, August 1934:

A Unique Lending Library

Last month, in the City of New York, an enterprise was started which will be watched with great interest by everyone who has at heart the well-being of our little men and women – the future citizens of America. Educators and social workers have long had in mind the benefit to result from adding to the home environment of certain of our little ones, who through no fault of their own are less fortunately situated than some of their comrades on life’s journey, the opportunities for recreation and study which will eventually help us to attain to that sterling principle of our Constitution which maintains that “All men are born free and equal.” Back of the Hecksher Foundation Toy-Lending Library is this thought in embodiment, based on the model of the public library, but with playthings instead of books to read, thus promoting normal amusement and recreation.

Deep in the heart of every child is the desire to play. It is fundamental and normal, and quite as important to the spiritual welfare of every little one as is the food for his body. The life of a child who is denied or deprived of the proper facilities for play is to that extent stunted; but supply him with the sort of toys which will develop and expand his consciousness and you have not only aided in truly educating him, but you have provided an incentive to keep him off the street, and away from the temptation to join the little “gangs” which have been so often pictured as the origin of juvenile delinquency – that menace to the youth of the nation which has for some years caused such wide-spread concern among thinking men and women.

Playgrounds for children living in closely populated districts have come to be an established institution in every large city, and these have done an immense amount of good. It was not so easy, however, to reach the home life and it was found practically impossible to supply enough toys to distribute “for keeps” as the boys term it; so the lending-library idea naturally came to suggest itself, and the “toyery” came into being with its slogan, “An educational toy for every child every day.” And “educational” in this particular is not so formidable as might at first appear when one consults the “library catalog.” There are construction sets, blackboards, sewing materials, dolls, trains, carpentry sets, toys that reproduce industrial and housekeeping tasks, picture books, hand-craft sets and building blocks. For outdoor play there are also roller skates, scooters, sidewalk bicycles, express wagons, doll carriages, velocipedes, kiddie cars, balls, baseball bats, rubber horseshoes and all sorts of games. Each item certainly spells a lot of fun for some wee lad or lassie, and the educational aspect is not so emphasized as to detract too much from the idea of play which is justly uppermost in the plan.

Naturally a great deal of breakage is expected, so a force of several men has been engaged to repair such toys as come back considerably worse for wear. Also a sterilizing machine has been provided through which all toys, large or small, are run as returned before they are again permitted to go into circulation among the next group of youngsters. This is something rather new as related to playthings, but its need is very manifest when one stops to think of the possibility of spreading children’s diseases. A single toy is the limit for each little applicant and he is not allowed another until he brings back the first. The venture certainly deserves all the success which interested co-operation can bring to it, and it is hoped that the toy-lending library will become as universal as the playground in the very near future.

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Note: The Hecksher Foundation noted in this article is actually spelled ‘Heckscher.’

Michael McGrorty

I have come across an interesting book about the connections between the feminist movement of the twentieth century and improvements in the teaching profession, and consequently, in the lives of millions of women who have and who will teach school in this country.

I have come across an interesting book about the connections between the feminist movement of the twentieth century and improvements in the teaching profession, and consequently, in the lives of millions of women who have and who will teach school in this country.Patricia Carter’s ‘Everybody’s Paid But the Teacher’ examines the complex connections between the women’s movement in all its varying aspects and the female-dominated job of teaching the country’s children. Briefly put, Carter shows that feminist action created a strong foundation and impetus for improving the material existence of those who stand before blackboards for their living.

Carter reveals the significance of the feminist link: “By the time women won the right to vote in 1920, nearly 5 million participated in some sort of women’s organization. Over 50% of urban women teachers or former teachers claimed membership in a club aligned with some aspect of the women’s movement.” She demonstrates that the suffrage and post-suffrage movements acted as boosters to the profession’s goals for its members and were indispensable as organizing factors and examples of positive change that could be achieved.

Perhaps the best way to view this book is as a loose blueprint for action within the library community—another female-dominated profession with old burdens to shake off. The problems of insufficient pay and control over the workplace are practically identical to those of teachers before the attainment of consciousness and coordinated striving. What we lack is the connection to an ideal larger than the work at hand or the interests of the moment. Our grandmothers understood their struggle as a debt owed to daughters yet unborn; toward what greater goal do we strive?

“Everybody’s Paid But the Teacher”: The Teaching Profession and the Women’s Movement, By Patricia Carter, ISBN: 0807742066

http://store.tcpress.com/0807742066.shtml

Michael McGrorty

Today’s New York Times carries a piece whose opening paragraph will suffice as a summary of the article:

“WASHINGTON, July 20 — A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.”

Today’s New York Times carries a piece whose opening paragraph will suffice as a summary of the article:

“WASHINGTON, July 20 — A report by internal investigators at the Justice Department has identified dozens of recent cases in which department employees have been accused of serious civil rights and civil liberties violations involving enforcement of the sweeping federal antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act.”

It appears that our fears about this law and its administration were realized almost immediately after its passage. Officials of our government have been quick to claim that there have been no significant violations of individual or group rights; perhaps they will dismiss this latest information as well, or claim that, since the violations were caught by the agency itself, that the situation is well in hand.

It is too late to put the cork back in this particular bottle; what remains is an accounting of damage done and a rescinding of the harsher elements of this onerous law, which gives undue license for government abuse and intrusions which are irremediable in their aftermath.

The true victim here is the trust of the people and their faith that fair laws can be enacted and enforced fairly. Especially in terms of the library, the Patriot Act is a standard which abandons fairness and the tradition of our laws from the start. In enacting this measure our government has ignored the most fundamental of our rights: to be left alone.

Michael McGrorty

The July 17 edition of the Los Angeles Times bears an article about the abundance of used bookstores in this area of the country. I read the article with pleasure not unmingled with shame, owing to the fact I somehow managed to miss some of the stores named despite all my book-loving years of residence here.

The July 17 edition of the Los Angeles Times bears an article about the abundance of used bookstores in this area of the country. I read the article with pleasure not unmingled with shame, owing to the fact I somehow managed to miss some of the stores named despite all my book-loving years of residence here.One of the very first things I did with my very first paycheck from Uncle Sam’s Navy was to begin making purchases in the used bookstores of southern California. A couple of cross-country moves proved to me the futility of attempting to retain the entirety of my collection, but I possessed a fair accumulation at various points in time.

The story makes mention of the justly famous Acres of Books in Long Beach. A literal catacombs of books, the place is what Stephen King would create if they asked him to do a makeover of a Barnes and Noble. You could die there in those dusty stacks and nobody would ever find your bones. I used to go there a lot, but can’t anymore because my throat can’t take the dust—the fine, greasy residue of a million dead novels, atlases and other printed matter, gone to air and come to rest upon everything at that address. They keep boxes of tissues handy so patrons can keep from looking like chimney sweeps when they exit the place for the Blue Line trains.

My absolute favorite book venue was the now-defunct Papa Bach’s in the west side of L.A., to whose fascinating shelves I would repair while friends were pretending to enjoy some Bergman film at the theater across the street. When I was single and lonely (once a common combination) I’d toss down a few stiff drinks and spend the evening there selecting Penguin Classics; I rationed myself to three at a time, though it was sometimes interesting to discover what I’d bought by the more sober light of rosy-fingered dawn. What made that store so special? A few things: I discovered Evelyn Waugh there, great medicine for a cynical young man without a steady date– besides that, they took my check at Papa Bach’s without asking for identification. Try that at Borders next time you’re there.

So, those of you force to pass your lives in less-literary places (which I know better than to name) can come stay in my spare bed when the wife is away on business and absorb some second-hand Los Angeles culture. Don’t worry about your luggage; the post office still has a Book Rate, and it’s still cheaper than First Class.

http://www.calendarlive.com/books/cl-wk-cover17jul17.story

Michael ‘How did I end up with three copies of the Aeneid’ McGrorty