Retrospective

Charlie Rose's hour is a retrospective devoted to the late John Updike. (The second link brings up a menu of past interview clips.) The whole discussion is how multifaceted and prolific Updike's output truly was. A novel a year, plus essays, poetry, short stories, and over 800 pieces in the New Yorker during his 50-year career. His last pieces, yet to be published, reflect on his impending death.

Many who produce things over a span of time, or experience things over a span of time, have the opportunity to look back and examine the past.

As noted in the top banner for this blog, posts are subject to revision. Earlier this evening, I went back through the past three and a half months' posts, and made some subtle emendations. Most of them were revising the .html behind the images in the early posts, and inserting additional links in the text. Nothing substantive.

I am mildly bemused that the most often viewed image of the over 800 posted on FLICKR is one showing the south side of 6th Street, taken from the roof of the City Auditorium on the day the buildings that formerly occupied the Kilgore Memorial Library site were scheduled for demolition. A quarter century has passed since that chilly morning.

Lineup

The group photo taken at Kilgore Memorial Library's dedication on September 14, 1986 elicits different responses depending on the viewer. Those who were present that day may try to find themselves in the group.

The day's dignitaries and others in the front rows are shown clearly. Those further back in the group, or who were standing in the shade on the south side of the library, are not so easy to distinguish. Twenty-two years and four months have passed since the photo was made. Some of these people have died. Some of the children are now parents with children of their own. It is doubtful that anyone remembers what the various speakers said that day. The library building and its ongoing services are probably the most enduring "thing" from this event.

Busy Place

People will sometimes comment "why all the cars" when the "reading room" library is relatively quiet but the meeting room is in use. Library regulars eventually get used to the parking lot full of public safety vehicles during a R.A.P. meeting, or the lineup of small town utility vehicles when the water system operators meet for training sessions.

Elected officials use the space to meet with constituents; all sorts of groups with regular membership or Board meetings get a slot in the meeting room schedule. "In house" uses include story times, Board meetings, etc.

Impromptu uses including spreading out and basting together the layers of an applique quilt, or sorting through boxes of family photographs to decide which ones will go into a scrapbook.

Yesterday, five groups kept both rooms busy from early morning to closing time. A construction company's employee safety training sessions, Girl Scouts, Foster & Adoptive Parents, Corps of Engineers field staff, Writer's Guild. Each of the groups reported how the space met their needs. When you consider all these uses, a larger image of the library as a hub of community activity starts to emerge.

Architecture and Aerodynamics

Years ago there was a comic feature titled "There Oughta Be A Law."


Dennis Michalski clearing snow Dec. 19, 2008

In our windy climate, wind tunnel studies of proposed buildings should be part of the design process.
The Kilgore Memorial Library building has an aerodynamic quirk. Any snow event with accompanying wind, or followed by wind, has an inevitable result.
Wind sifts the snow off the library's flat roof, and dumps it along the south front of the building in a roughly bell-curved deposit with the greatest depth in front of the entrance doors, and tapering off toward both ends.

9:20 am., Saturday Dec. 20, 2008
The key element is wind speed; the drifting may take place hours or days after the snow fall depending when the wind finally blows.

9:30 am., Saturday Dec. 20, 2008 - path cleared to book drop
It is a frustration to the library staff and library users.

9:45 am., Saturday Dec. 20, 2008 - "cleared path" already covered
The drifting can go on for an entire day or more depending on how much snow is laying on the roof, and the wind speed.

11:00 am. Saturday Dec. 20, 2008 -- drifting snow in the sunshine;
if not kept cleared it will turn to slush in the afternoon and freeze overnight
An aerodynamic study of a scale model of the building and its surroundings might have alerted designers to this phenomenon and suggested an alternate building layout to avoid it.

Acronyms and Initialisms

The following four sentences use asterisks in pre-html format+.

The C.A.S.T.L.* group and S.E.L.S.** Board met in the K.M.L.** meeting room yesterday.

C.A.S.T.L.'s "round robin" discussion allows each institution to describe current concerns and get insights from other members of the group.

The S.E.L.S. Board welcomed a new member, and went on to review activities and formally approve an annual plan document.


As "host agent," the K.M.L. Library Director sat in on the day's meetings and chimed in as appropriate. Only a few of the library representatives in C.A.S.T.L. have time or inclination to try L2NE.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

+Nineteenth Century & early 20th Century footnotes sometimes used asterisks or other typographic characters as reference marks --


*Conversations Among Small-Town Librarians

**Southeast Library System

***Kilgore Memorial Library

Now HTML serves as an alternative to foot notes; but only if the referenced item appears elsewhere on the internet. C.A.S.T.L. is described in a paragraph about half-way through the narrative of S.E.L.S. Services., and at present cannot be directly reached by an html link.