Counterpunch has a column by Linda Ueki Absher, ‘the lipstick librarian’. Here’s a portion:
It’s finally happened: everyone wants to be me.
Well, they don’t want to be me, me. After all, who wants student loans, an undervalued house and a sweater that looks like I’ve just mugged a red heffalump? But everyone under thirty with skinny black jeans and artistic facial hair, or Bettie Page bangs and winsome skirts with felted bird appliqués (with an influential minority wearing all of the above) want to be what I am: a librarian. This is a surprise, to put it mildly.
A surprise because when I announced to friends and loved ones that I wanted to become a librarian, reaction was less than enthusiastic, running somewhere along the lines of what I would expect if I’d just announced I was really Joan of Arc but with less restrictive clothing and a high tolerance to heat: pity, bewilderment and resignation. It was as if I declared my intent of becoming a secular nun. I went to library school–a graduate program, no less, learned unspeakable things (“a festschrift is WHAT?”) and graduated two years later. I was a librarian, with all its perks (steady income and access to books) and downsides (embarrassingly low steady income and non-existent social life)
But since library school, something odd happened: librarians became hip.
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