Saving any library is

important. It is very important. It may also be hard work.
There are lots of tiny specialist libraries that most people remain quite unaware of unless they happen to have a special interest in the subject matter. I once applied for a position as a librarian at a mining company. It was only a small library. The position was very much part time but the library was important to those people who worked there. Now they probably have all the information on line.
Universities tend to have specialist libraries. The Australian National University has a number of libraries. I frequented some and not others. I always sat in the same seat in the Law School library. This was by request of both staff and students. They wanted to know where to find me. I was the student who sorted out linguistic problems. I knew about the mysteries of the "bell curve" and other oddities. I had discovered the inner workings of the library before the first class in "Legal Writing and Research" and I was perhaps the only student in my year who realised that LW&R was actually the most important subject we did and not, as most students seemed to think, a waste of time. It was the subject that taught students how to use the library. If you could do that then you could find any information you needed to find. Now of course most of the material is "on-line". It was going "on-line" when I left. My youngest nephew has most of his legal materials "on-line".
I look after a small and highly specialised library as well. It is the library of our Handknitters' Guild. When I took it over it was a collection of secondhand books that had been donated. Occasionally the committee would agree to actually buy a book. People would borrow the new books. The rest were left to gather dust. Nobody seemed to be too sure what was there. There was no catalogue. A little - well a lot - of work has remedied that. I argued for money, supported by some of the younger and newer members. Now there is a regular sum set aside for the purchase of books and I choose what we need in consultation with the members who, like me, read the reviews. The library is now used. It is very well used. Instead of talk of closing it altogether there is talk of how we can rearrange the two steel cupboards to make more room for books. People have joined the group simply in order to have access to the library.
I think this all says a great deal about all libraries. Libraries need new materials the way humans need oxygen and plants need water.
Tiny specialist libraries like ours, like the one belonging to the Embroiderers' Guild, the one belonging to the Handspinners and Weavers', a music society, a gardening club, an engineering society and a genealogy society, all need to preserve some old materials and to gather new materials. It costs time and it costs money but what these libraries are saving is information. The received information of the members is important but, in an increasingly busy and time poor society, information also needs to be located where it can be accessed by as many people as possible.
If we start to lose libraries then we will lose information. It is not, as it once would have been, going to be passed on by word of mouth. By no means all the information needed is available on the internet.
We may not even know we need the information until we read it in a book. We need to save libraries to save ourselves.

It is "Save Our Libraries" Day

in the United Kingdom.
Now, to me, this is a no brainer. Why would you even need a "Save Our Libraries" Day? Surely any modern democratic society is aware of the value of libraries?
I recently had cause to read the Annual Report of our local council and, in particular, the section which dealt with the library. Our local library service (two libraries, a mobile and a home-delivery service to the elderly) dealt with ninety-six people on average ever opening hour. That did not include the school groups that came in or the people who just wandered in and out again. These were people borrowing books, using the computer terminals, making inquiries etc. Books, magazines, CDs, DVDs, audio-books etc went out in their hundreds of thousands.
All this happened despite less money being spent on the library. The staff are less knowledgeable than they once were. They tend to be casuals who can issue books and find the basics but more complex inquiries have to be referred - or they hope that someone like me will perhaps be around to help. I try not to mind too much because I think it is more important for a library user to have a positive experience.
Our "new books" shelf often looks pretty sparse too. At one time we knew that the beginning of the month would see a row of new fiction, a row of non-fiction and a row of children's material. The new fiction would include at least some of the books reviewed in the press, some crime and a variety of other titles designed to suit an equal variety of readers. The non-fiction would reflect the interests of the local community. The children's books would include any award winners but would also include local authors and a healthy variety of other writing.
Now it is very different. Central buying has gone from bad to worse. The aim appears to be to try and fill the shelves with quantity not quality. We will still get the Booker Prize winner on the shelf but, next to it, there will be pulp fiction which has been bought at remainder prices. The non-fiction is clearly remainder. Some of it may be lovely but it does not represent the the interests of library readers.
Children's selections suffer most of all. They are almost entirely paperback. There is some local content but much of it is cheap and second-rate.
Those responsible for central buying know they can get away with all this. Why?Because people want to read.
We are suffering from cut backs that are being disguised. Our libraries do need to be saved just as British libraries need to be saved. There libraries are under threat of closure. No library should ever face closure. Libraries should only suffer from lack of space, a need to expand, and more books on the shelves. Publishers should only suffer from excess profits due to the volume of sales.
Cutting back on libraries or even just library services is about the most foolish move any government can make. It is the child who reads a book that fires his or her imagination who is going to produce the next life-saving drug or build a more efficient power system, not the child who can play a computer game or who has been trained to kick a soccer ball to within an inch of his or her life. Oh yes, the last two things have their place but, in the overall scheme of things, they are less important than the power of imagination.
Just imagine a world without libraries. I think I might just head off and help save mine by using it.

It took me a long term to learn

I had friends. Does that sound strange?
Do most people just assume that people they know and like are friends? I have never assumed any such thing. Why should I?
As a small child I had very little opportunity to mix with other children. Certainly I never remember playing with anyone other than a child over the back fence - and that was only on the occasions my mother was childminding. I never went to play there.
My brother and I played in our backyard or rode our tricycles up and down the lane at the side. There were some huge concrete pipes there for a long time. We could stand upright in them and rode up and down them listening to the echoes bounce off the sides. The echoes were our companions.
When we moved and I started school I was definitely the odd one out. I read a lot. The other children could not yet read. I found friends in books. We kept on moving. I kept on reading. My mother did not allow us to invite children home to play or us to go to their homes (because that would mean inviting them back).
I never felt comfortable in anyone else's house. I was much too self conscious. I still feel that way. Perhaps you need to grow up going in and out of other houses to learn to feel comfortable about visiting other people. Does it help you grow less self conscious as well?
Even when I left school I did not believe I had friends. Circumstances were such that I did not have an opportunity to mix with my fellow teacher training students on a social basis.
I do not drive. I have never owned a car. That also limits social life style. You do not "hop in the car" and head off to socialise.
So friendships came slowly to me and they are still slightly awkward affairs. I envy those people who feel they can just 'phone someone and suggest they meet for coffee, go out to a film, drop in for a cup of tea etc. On the other hand when someone 'phoned and asked if I would like a ride to somewhere we both needed to be on a very hot Saturday afternoon I was perhaps unduly pleased. It was unexpected. I was pleased that someone should actually bother to think about me. I made very sure I said thankyou too. Yes, she has to be a friend. That is the sort of thing friends do - or I think it is.
I think it might be why I have not actively gone seeking "friends" and "followers" on the internet. I would rather people found me and thought "might be interesting". I follow others I think "might be interesting" - and most of them are very interesting. I think I might like them if I met them.
What I want to know though is when does liking someone you meet become friendship? When do they remain acquaintances? How in the heck do I know if I am welcome? There are no answers to any of that but I also wonder if other people feel the same way.
What I do know is that everyone needs a social support network.

Cyclone Yasi hit the Queensland coast

last night but the full extent of the damage will not be known for days.
I woke before dawn so I could watch the sky grow from dark to grey and then grey-pink as the sun rose. Then there were pale pink wisps of cloud fading into paler grey. Now the sky has tbe palest of pale pink feathery clouds and faint grey cotton wool clouds and even fainter patches of blue behind them. It is going to be hot and uncomfortably humid.
We are thousands of kilometres from the eye of the cyclone but these clouds are, unbelievably, the outermost reaches of it. It is difficult to conceive the size of it.
Last night our international news service tried to explain by super-imposing the weather pictures over a map. The map was not, as one might expect, of Australia but of the United States. The cyclone was so wide that it covered almost the entire area of the United States. They then showed the area of Australia which was likely to be affected. It was a vast area.
Cyclones bring rain. Some of that rain will have fallen on areas that are already so waterlogged there is nowhere for it to go. There will be more flooding. More homes will have been destroyed. Roofing has been ripped away. Trees and power lines have fallen. Banana crops and other crops have been lost - and not just for this year.
Down here we have power. Up there the power of the cyclone was enough to provide the entire planet with power for a year but they have no power.
I do not believe that these events are due to man made "global warming". This is nature. It is even within expected statistical variation. That does not make it good. It is a disaster of terrifying proportions for those living through it. It is a disaster for the national economy and it will be made even worse if the Prime Minister and her Cabinet continue to refuse to listen to the advice they are being given.
But I wonder if good could come of it. Is there an architect or engineer out there who might come up with an affordable means of constructing cyclone proof, flood proof housing? That alone might turn this tragedy into a positive.

There is the small matter of keys

or more than one key. No, I have not lost my keys. I know I might. It is always possible.
I keep my keys on a lanyard around my neck when I am out and about in a general way. The lanyard was given to me by the Whirlwind. It is black and decorated with yellow smiley faces. I rather like it. Other people like it as well.
I keep my tricycle lock key, my house key and several other keys that I am likely to use on that lanyard. One of them is a key to my sister's house. It is there for a very good reason. There is another key to her house in the key collection at our place. There is a very good reason for that as well.
My sister is inclined to lose things like that. It is often a temporary loss. She forgets where she has put the keys.
Yesterday she drove her husband into work. He normally rides a bicycle but 42'C is a little too warm for that sort of exercise, especially if you need to arrive looking fit to attend a meeting and not as if you have just come from a work out at a gym.
My sister's household is one of those with more than one car. On her return to their house my sister realises that she has the "wrong" keys because she has driven the "wrong" car. In other words this set of car keys does not have a house key. She has effectively locked herself out.
That means first a short trip to our house. There is nobody home but she can let herself in here because we have a key stored outside - and not, I hasten to add, under a flowerpot. She cannot find the key here. I suspect that by then she was impatient and irritated and did not look as carefully as she should have.
That meant a trip back into the city to get a key from her husband at work. By then irritation was really showing.
We then had a telephone call, "Where was the key?" My father says that one is on my lanyard.
It should not, she tells us, be there. It should be in the cupboard where she can find it. I am certain there is another one. I have since found it. In the meantime I endure a dressing down because the key is on my lanyard. It is, apparently, extremely thoughtless of me. Perhaps it is. Apparently all I need to do if I need to get into her house when she is out is to 'phone her on her mobile and she will come home. We will ignore the occasion she landed in hospital and needed me to get in urgently.
However it would make more sense to have a house key on both sets of car keys would it not?

Aros stone thirty-one

Is there an end to everything?
Does a beginning mean an end?
What of the project abandoned incomplete?

Fifty-two percent of parents do not read

a bedtime story to their children - or so the little paragraph in the paper this morning informed me. I will ignore the "statistics". I do not know enough about the way in which the research was conducted to have any idea whether the statistics quoted are accurate. It does not matter. What does matter is that there are children who do not get a bedtime story.
Bedtime stories were a ritual in our house. It was my father who told them, not my mother. My mother was an infants' teacher but bedtime stories were not part of her repertoire. She probably believed they were important but she always claimed not to have time even before she went back teaching the year I turned ten.
I was expected to read my own bedtime stories from the time I started school. This coincided with the time my father returned part-time to university to resume his own studies. As I was a thoroughly independent reader by then I am sure that my parents thought it did not matter - as long as I was reading.
It did matter of course. I missed out on the interaction between parent and child. It is not just hearing the bedtime story that matters. What also matters is the time spent together, the time to discuss the story and the words used. Even parents who believe they are "just reading a story" can do this without realising it.
I could ask what a word was of course. The answer to that was often "work it yourself" with, perhaps, a brief clue thrown at me. I could ask what a word meant. A dictionary would be put in front of me, first a picture dictionary, then a child's dictionary and then the Shorter Oxford. I was using the Shorter Oxford at the age of eight. My father had two copies. He had bought one when he began his degree and was then given another one that was almost falling to pieces. I used the latter one.
The message I got was "do it yourself". (In later years my mother criticised me for being "too independent".) All the same I was reading and that is important. I did have the utter joy of the bedtime story until I began school. There were evenings on which it did not occur but they were rare. My father and I shared many books, some of them were probably rather above my head although I do remember being read the full version of Alice, Tom and the Water Babies and Gulliver's Travels. It may be that my father needed to read (or re-read) these things. It did not matter. I was getting my bedtime story.
My father and I can still talk books. His light reading is currently Ian Rankin, his heavy reading a book about cult psychology. He is also reading a book on water-wise gardening. He will not read any of them to me but we can share the ideas in them because he read to me as a child.
I feel for the children whose parents do not read to them on a regular basis. Having my own computer and my own flat-screen television, my i-pad and all the other electronic toys would not make up for having a bedtime story.