Emily was deeply impressed by the showing of at least a hundred people who attended a Library Trustees meeting at the Jones Library to support the ESL program. Ok, sure. We’ve all got our little preconceived notions about who librarians are and what they do. Many people think of librarians as diminutive civil servants, scuttling about "Sssh-ing" people and stamping things. Well, think again buster.
Librarians have degrees. They go to graduate school for Information Science and become masters of data systems and human/computer interaction. Librarians can catalog anything from an onion to a dog’s ear. They could catalog you.
Librarians wield unfathomable power. With a flip of the wrist they can hide your dissertation behind piles of old Field and Stream magazines. They can find data for your term paper that you never knew existed. They may even point you toward new and appropriate subject headings.
People become librarians because they know too much. Their knowledge extends beyond mere categories. They cannot be confined to disciplines. Librarians are all-knowing and all-seeing. They bring order to chaos. They bring wisdom and culture to the masses. They preserve every aspect of human knowledge. Librarians rule.... -- "
Now, the issue of where the Jones Library budget cuts should come from has had two answers: the librarian department head proposal which preserves the ESL program, and the trustee proposal that eliminates the ESL program.
I want the burden of cuts to fall on my own library-loving shoulders rather than on the shoulders of new immigrants. I will wait longer for books. I will forgo the latest and greatest so that ESL is preserved. The rationale of "serving too few people" is specious at best.
I will be attending a public meeting on Tuesday, March 12 at 7PM to ask that the trustees trust the librarians and preserve the ESL program at the Jones Library. Please look at the proposals, and come to the meeting. It should be lively!!!
Embryo J. Regicide sends me junk mail. He wants to sell me something, but he never will. Its not that I am offended -- no no no. Its that I am so utterly fascinated by his name that I never read down to his blush-inducing junk mail proposition. His name is so jarring that I am consumed with laughter! I close my eyes, I fall back in my chair, I laugh out loud, and my imagination soars.
Thanks for the new STOP sign, Amherst sign guardians, but I have to confess I really liked the old one.
Birds to the feeder, seeking their fill,
By far, the best snippet of the past month:A woman missing from her Amherst home since Feb. 22 has been located in San Diego, Calif. and appears to have gone there on her own.Kaitlyn Ierardi, 19, who is confined to a nonmotorized wheelchair, apparently traveled cross country by bus and was located in San Diego Monday.
Police were initially contacted by her concerned family Feb. 23 and released her photo and information to the media seeking information about Ierardi's whereabouts This led to several tips from area residents that helped track Ierardi's movements.
Police will work with San Diego police to ensure that Ierardi remains safe.
Is this heartwarming-determination or hell-girl on wheels? Imagine if this young lady had had a motorized wheel chair???? Well, with sympathy for the anxious friends and family, I say:
Kaitlyn, congratulations, its still cold here!
They are not mere fishermen but giant squid catchers, not mere judicial reformers but petticoated cross-dressing 68 year old lawyers, not mere ivory tappers but piano-playing, pathos-plying leg pullers. 
