Gentrification

I don't know how many of you deal with gentrification from day to day. My guess would be that it's not something Jeremy and Kelly have to think about too much (I could be wrong), but for those of us in more urban areas it's often a reality of life. So enjoy this little article.

Harding Graduation (5/9)

Will any of you attend?

AT

So, we've been on the trail. Good trip, overall, I think, on the grounds that every day spent hiking is a good day. It was 23 degrees with horizontal snow when we got out of the car, and our friend had a little trouble making the miles. Once we decided that we weren't going to get it all done, the trip got better. The first night we camped in a little gap, behind some evergreens, which blocked most of the wind for us. We awoke to the sounds of something running around our tent. Turned out to be a couple of Rottweilers pulling our food bag down and eating most of the contents. They looked like this:


The beasts consumed: 2 pounds beef jerky, 1 pound summer sausage, 1 pound cheddar cheese, 1 plastic wrapper that had been on last night's sausage, 1/2 gallon bag of trail mix, several packets of oatmeal, and 7-8 foil-wrapped granola bars,* including the foil. They turned their noses up at pepper jack cheese, and this freaky jerky that Kelly likes. I sang the final verse of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War" at them, as they retreated.

As always, we met a lot of good people on the trail, and, as occurs somewhat more infrequently, we met a girl who snored so loudly I feared that the entire mountain would give way. We shared a shelter with her, not knowing this to be true. We got off the trail a little bit early, in part because the bulk of our food had succumbed to the beasts, and in part because the miles just weren't going to get done. I'll post some more photos here in a bit.

*I made these bars in an attempt to not need to make coffee while hiking. They contained: oats, honey, chocolate, and lots of coffee beans. Enough, at least, to set me up for a whole day.

LibraryThing

Aside from certain exceptions, most of us have a lot of books. And most of us organize them. When I helped Taylor move some things into the dorm at the College last summer, I noticed that he tended keep his series paperbacks arranged by publisher: Oxford's World Classics, Penguin Classics, etc. More recently they have been contently intermingled with the considerable collection of Mrs. Lydia Carr, but now strictly by alphabetical order. I must admit, I tend to agree. Though a certain visual appeal may be lost in having tall, handsome hardbacks next to tattered, thin paperbacks, I much prefer a book I own to have a place.* However, in contrast to Lydia, I like lots of subsections. With poetry, fiction, and drama, my books are arranged by nationality starting with the Greeks. Then I proceed alphabetically by author, except with British Isles authors, which are arranged chronologically, a habit I picked up from Anne Fadiman.

Online, it is quite different. Since September of last year, I have been cataloging my books with LibraryThing. Initially, I was interested in the site merely as a more bibliographically accurate and less commercial alternative to Amazon. As I spent more time with the site, I fell into tagging my books, and I have come to be quite impressed at how LibraryThing lets you see your books in a new light. Tag your books however you wish, and the resulting tagcloud immediately reveals quite a bit about your library. I knew, for instance, I favored the 20th century, but I didn't consciously realize how extensively. Nor did I realize just how many translations I had. But this is all old hat. The real reason I felt the need to share is because of the new feature, LibraryThing Local. As you can see in the previous link, old Arkansas is a little bare. But try Chicago or New York, and it's a different story. I think trips into the city just got a little more bookish.

*Footnote: [Strangely, this tendency hardly holds for books I borrow. As I have mentioned elsewhere, I have stacks of library books throughout the house. But even books from friends migrate from the couch to the armchair and back. Also, having a static place tends to be less true as the particular book departs from literature. My philosophy, theology, and reference books have a particular shelf but less consistent order. History books are often tucked away in the same leftover corners. Sorry, Kelly.]

UPDATE: 5pm March 15
LibraryThing Local exceeds 20, ooo venues. 6812 bookstores. 12721 libraries.

I love Hippies!

Aren't hippies great? They want to save the earth so badly that they even put marijuana out for the recycling. In the comments leave your best guess at the conversation that led to putting pot on the curb.