I made this presentation on Tuesday, but still haven’t put the stuff for it away.
When I came to The Dungeon this morning, mug of coffee in one hand and laptop computer in the other, I was greeted by a mess. Lots of writing related stuff strewn on my near worktable. A few stray income tax forms on the printer table (making me wonder if I forgot to put one in the packet I mailed to the IRS).
And also on my worktable, some things about letters. Three are notebooks that contain just a few letters, the ones I’ve been digitizing then discarding the originals. I need to consolidate them into one notebook and complete the process. Three notebooks to go to a thrift store, a little more free shelf space.
Somewhere, either on the worktable or possibly upstairs still, are the things needed for the presentation I did on Tuesday to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society. The topic was “Letter Collections: A Window on History in the Making”. The presentation went well, and we had a good number of people there. Now I need to get a number of books back on shelves and my notes somehow stored so that I can find them again should I ever need them.
Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on. A few edits to this are possible this month. Hang on, folks. It will soon be done and available.
Then, there was the book Letters Between Friends. I thought I had written about this before, but a look back on my posts indicates I haven’t. I guess that was because I wasn’t quite ready to announce this project to the world. And, actually, I’m still not. I finally have permissions from all copyright holders to publish the book, but I had a few redactions to do then reformat as needed. I also felt I should add an e-book, which takes some more formatting.
But I found my copy of it, before redactions, on my worktable. I need to find two hours of time for completing this project, then let people know it’s available. It will be of interest only to family members and classmates of the people involved. Perhaps 20 copies will be sold. I would consider that a success.
But when will I get to it? The two Bible studies I’m working on have consumed all my available writing time. And they will do so today. Somehow I have to carve out those two hours to complete that project.
And another two hours to complete what’s needed to get rid of those three notebooks. That may not take that much time. I should get to it. Right after supervising two workmen at the house today, one in the morning, one in the afternoon. Right after the weekly grocery run. Right after finishing a letter to my oldest grandson. Right after…
…oh, where is my to-do list?
Oh, yes, I’m still reading that scholarly magazine article about letter collections. I should finish that today and dump the pixels back into the ether.
Here it is, Monday morning, 7:42 a.m. at the new Central Daylight Time, and I’m just getting around to writing my blog post. I didn’t get up until 7:02 a.m. today. I guess I was tired.
I taught adult Sunday school yesterday. That usually takes a lot out of me, both the preparation work and the teaching. I was exhausted as I made my way from the classroom to the sanctuary, and then as I sat through the church service.
When we got home, I ate our Subway lunch then put a roast on for supper. And off to the sunroom I went for my normal reading and nap time. I don’t always nap during these sessions, but I did yesterday. I like to take a walk then, but I was much too tired to do so. I went to my reading chair in the living room, where Lynda had a UFO program on. Just the thing to have in the background when you’re too tired to do much. I decided to forego my afternoon walk.
The next couple of hours are a blur. I caught up on e-mails. At 3:45 p.m. I added the veggies to the roast. I sent an e-mail to our Life Group with the prayer requests from the morning and the scripture we studied. I really can’t remember what else took up those couple of hours. But I did learn that I had left the charging cord to my computer in the Sunday school classroom. Alas, I won’t be going anywhere near the church this week. Well, I have a second cord I keep in The Dungeon, and fetched it. I can carry it up and down the stairs this week.
When the roast was done a little after 6:00 p.m., we ate, putting on a Miss Marple TV show, one of the ones from the 1980s in which Joan Hickson plays Miss Marple. When that was over, I pulled up on my computer the Bible study I’m writing, the one that my co-teacher and I are also teaching. I started writing on that around 8:30 p.m. or so, and when I stopped at 9:50 p.m., I discovered I had added 1,800 words, and was a little ahead of schedule on where I hope to be at that point in the week.
After that writing session was reading, putting pills together for this week, cleaning a bit in the kitchen, and to bed around 11:00 p.m., my usual time. I slept okay. Up several times in the night, but was able to get back to sleep each time. I woke this morning around 6:10 a.m., and rather than get up I decided to stay in bed until my normal 6:30 a.m. rising time. The next thing I knew it was 7:02 a.m. I never sleep that late.
But, of course, we changed this weekend to Daylight Saving Time. I lost an hour of sleep. It’s no wonder I was tired. It’s going to take a couple of days to fully adjust. And Saturday, I spent a fair amount of time pulling together our partnership income tax form. We trade stocks as a partnership, and that tax return is due March 15. That actually came together pretty well. I was able to complete and print the forms on Saturday. Today I will proof them and, assuming they are correct, make my copy and take them to mail today, two days early.
I also did some writing on Saturday, in the evening, on the Bible study as I prepared the lesson for yesterday. In that session I produced around 1,200 words. I think they were good words, but I’ll know more when I re-read them today at the beginning of my writing session.
So maybe I earned that tiredness. My blood sugar readings were good, as were my blood pressure. My weight is up a little as I’ve lost motivation to eat properly. I hope to get that motivation back today.
I think also the weight of everything I have to do this week was pressing on me. Tomorrow I make a presentation to the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society (one of my clubs) on Historical Letter Collections, and I’m not ready yet. With banks failing this weekend, I know stock trading today will be intense. Wednesday are our annual eye exams. Thursday is Scribblers & Scribes writing critique group, and I have to decide what to prepare.
Oh, and this morning, I discovered that I also forgot my wireless mouse at church. It’s very hard to do my stock trading without that, and of course it’s important to overall computer use, so I guess I’ll make the 13 mile drive to church this afternoon and retrieve the forgotten items.
My current main read is Great Voices Of The Reformation, Edited by Harry Emerson Fosdick and published in 1952, I think my copy, bought used some time ago for a long-forgotten price, was from 1954, I think. I bought it as a reference book. However, last November, I pulled it off my research shelf and decided to read it. I’ve been going at it slowly, normally 5 to 10 pages a day, but skipping days where I felt like it and reading fewer pages on days when I didn’t think I was reading for comprehension.
The last couple of days I had progressed to the included writings of Cotton Mather. This 17th Century New England Puritan is a man whose name I have often heard but really knew little about. I’ve learned something of him from the brief bio provided by Fosdick and from the excerpt from Mather’s magnum opus, Magnalia Christi Americana. This was Mather’s defense of the Puritan method of colonization, intending to make Winthrop’s “shining city on a hill” into the reality it never was.
In Tuesday’s reading I came across the word “animadvert”. This is a word I’ve seen somewhat regularly in the old writings and have looked up to know what it was I was reading. Then, in Thursday’s reading it came up again, but in a different form. Here’s the quote:
…diverse persons professing themselves Quakers…arrived at Boston, whose persons were only secured to be sent aaway by the first opportunity, without censure or punishment, although their professed tenets, turbulent and contemptuous behavior to authority, would have justified a severer animadversion—A law was made and published, prohibiting all masters of ships to bring any Quakers into this jurisdiction….
This form of the word, as a noun rather than a verb, if what I see most of the time. Here’s what I learn from the dictionary about them.
Animadvert: verb; 1) to pay attention to; 2) pass criticism or censure on; speak out against.
Animadversion: noun: criticism or censure
This is an old work originally from Latin, adopted into English more or less directly from the Latin. Dictionaries give the etymology. They also show a severe decline in usage from the early 1800s unto our time. Here’s a graph that shows that for animadversion.
Animadversion has obviously fallen out of style.
I’m not surprised that the word has fallen out of use. Animadversion is so much more complicated than criticism or censure. It sounds so strange. I never see myself using it in a sentence, either in speech or in a book, whether or not it’s considered archaic.
What are the nuances of its usage, I wonder? When would it be more correct—if ever—to use than criticize or censure? Would I say, “Trump I criticize, but Biden I animadvert”? That would take a lot of study, consuming time I really don’t have.
This got me to thinking about words and what they mean. I have a tendency, which I think many people have, to use words without really thinking about what they mean. I’m trying to change that. We’ll see how it goes in the future.
Meanwhile, if you don’t like this post, keep your animadversions to yourself!
The sequel is done, and close to publishing ready. Hang in there, folks.
And, for the second month in a row, I forgot all about publishing my progress against my goals as the first post for the month and setting new goals. I should have done that Friday. What was I thinking? Well, a couple of days late, here they are. The progress first.
Blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday. Yes, I did this. I liked the series I thought of, posting library memories.
I won’t be attending writers meetings this month. There was nothing to do about this goal.
Edit and complete A Walk Through Holy Week, Part 6. … Part of this goal is to, at the end of February, have a publication-ready book. I completed this! I was able to knuckle down, finish all chapters and sections, add the Introduction, and declare the book publication ready. I even figured out a cover scheme for the series.
Begin work writing AWTHW Part 7, simultaneously to when I teach it. I have been doing this. Fairly successfully I think. My co-teacher and I have now taught two lessons in the series. Chapter 1 corresponding to Lesson 1 is complete. Chapter 2 corresponding to Lesson 2 is close to complete. Last night, after doing other things and watching some Miss Marple movies, I spent a very productive hour on it. I think I shall be able to finish Ch 2 today, putting me ahead of where I usually am for this simultaneous teaching and writing.
Get TKTTT to beta readers and receive their feedback back. I did this. One of two grandchildren read it and gave me feedback. I also sent it to an elementary school teacher to give to students who will be beta readers. No feedback from them yet, but it will be coming soon.
Work with the cover designer of TKTTT. Yes, I got with the cover designer. I gave her my ideas, and she will work with it. Hopefully she is working on it now.
Gary is gone, but the letters between us live on. A few edits to this are possible this month.
So, here are some goals for March.
As always, blog twice a week, on Monday and Friday.
Attend four writers meetings this month. I already attended the first one, held last Thursday.
Keep up with A Walk Through Holy Week writing simultaneously with teaching. You never know what curve balls life will throw at you, but, based on how this is starting, I think it is doable. By the end of March, I should be through Chapter 5 and have started on Chapter 6.
Finish either Part 4 or Part 5 of AWTHW. I actually worked on this a little last month. Or maybe that was Thursday-Friday, which would be this month. I spent time reading where I was when I pulled of this last year, split and organized files in the new part designations, and put a few words down. Part 5 is farther along than Part 4, but I feel like I want to get Part 4 done first. We’ll see.
Organize some writing ideas files. I began this last Thursday and presented them to the Scribblers & Scribes critique group. They liked one idea a lot, but not the other. A new idea came to me on Saturday and fleshed out a bit with brainstorming yesterday. I plan to document that on Monday—today—the put it out of my head until the time is right.
Get any needed edits done to TKTTT according to feedback from beta readers.
Make a handful of edits to Letters Between Friends, and republish it. This is based on feedback from copyright holders. This is not really urgent, and I may put this off until AWTHW and TKTTT are further down the road.
That’s enough. If I get all that done this will truly have been a productive month. Also, my business partnership taxes are due this month, which will cut into my writing time.
Sorry, all you Thoreau lovers out there. I gave up o this one.
Every now and then you pick up a book, not because you necessarily are interested in it, but because you know others are and therefore you ought to be. That was the case with The Heart of Thoreau’s Journals. I bought it used some years ago and put it on the bookshelves in a guest room. That way someone might see it and say, “Oh, my, he reads Thoreau!”
Except I didn’t read it. It sat on that shelf for close to ten years until, in the spirit of dis-accumulation, I picked it up and decided to read it. Again, I thought others did, why shouldn’t I? I’ve read other journals and liked them.
Alas, this one I didn’t. Emerson described Thoreau as a brilliant, gifted writer. Famous, of course, for his time of isolation on Walden Pond. I found his journal entries to be unintelligible. Oh, they were made in proper English, but what did they say? By reading them, how was I enlightened?
Here’s an example from June 26, 1840, when Thoreau was 22 years old:
Say, Not so, and you will outcircle the philosophers.
And another from around the same time:
My friend will be as much better than myself as my aspiration is above my performance.
Nice sounding prose, and to read such a line in the midst of a narrative about the day will cause the reader to stop and ponder the meaning, thinking surely this is profound and I must think on it until I gain knowledge or enlightenment.
But I couldn’t take it. I read 25 pages of this 219 page book. I usually try to get at least 25% into a book, but I couldn’t this one. Actually, I rarely give up on a book all together, so this speaks of my inability to appreciate the obvious brilliance of the journaler.
I did take a little time to look ahead before I totally gave up. I read some of the entries from 1859, about the slavery debate then raging. I found Thoreau to be lucid and spot-on in his denunciation of slavery and support for the abolitionists. If only the rest of this excerpt from his journals was just as good, I might have finished it. I have a copy of Walden, and hope to read it someday. For now, however, I will give Henry David Thoreau a good long rest.
Two stars only, and I’m not quite sure why it’s not 1-star, except that the literati will think I’m an ignoramus if I rank it that low. Tomorrow it goes on the sale/donation pile. There are plenty of other books on the guest room shelves, and anyone who stays there will find hours of pleasurable reading.
Well, we got back home late Saturday evening from a 2082 mile road trip. Yesterday was mainly a restful day, including church. Monday will be getting back to normal.
We left home midday on Tuesday, Feb 7, driving to the Oklahoma City area. After dropping our recyclables at the great OKC drop-off center, we met up with Lynda’s step-sister and husband who live nearby in Norman. We hadn’t seen them since Sept 2020. The purpose of the visit, besides catching up, was to deliver to them a box of music we found at our house that had belonged to Katie’s mother. It had been left at our house years ago and was overlooked when we were going through Lynda’s mom’s things.
We spent the night nearby, and continued to Big Spring, Texas. The next day, our daughter and son-in-law left for a 10-day mission trip to Thailand. That left us watching the four grandchildren, three cats, and one dog. Oh, yes, and one bearded dragon. For twelve days. Twelve days of taking kids to school, seeing that they took care of their pets, their lunchboxes, and clothes.
A couple of years ago, when the kids came to visit us, I created the rule that they had to read 30 minutes in a book—a print book—before they could get their screen. I didn’t get any pushback from them, and that’s been a rule for a couple of years now. I made that the rule in their house during our surrogate parent gig, but we did it in the afternoon rather than in the short time between rising and leaving for school. They also had to clean litter boxes, feed pets, and do some room straightening up.
Both Lynda and I were able to spend some good time with each child. Lynda did the daily reading with the youngest, both after school and before bed. Then I laid down with him and sang him to sleep. I read the Bible with the second oldest book, took him to boy scouts, and had some good conversations. I took our only granddaughter on an educational walk around the neighborhood. We had a number of conversations, and worked together to clean up a major mess in her room. The oldest boy, a freshman in high school, spent a few nights away at a friend’s house, and had a friend over one night. He and I had one particularly good and important conversation the day after the parents got back. It went well.
The cats were not a lot of work for us, as the kids do most of what’s needed. The dog was another matter. I walked her around noon every day. She’s a big lab mix, 66 pounds of muscle and excitement. The walks were generally a mile to a mile and a half. I came back really tired; she came back barely winded. One day another big dog hopped the fence of its yard and rushed us. I was barely able to control Nuisance (my nickname for her) until a neighbor, who I think was actually the owner of that dog, got it under control.
We were able to keep up okay with laundry, school requirements, church activities. We also got a lot of cleaning done, things the parents can’t really get to with their jobs. At the end of the time, we were quite tired but feeling good about a job well-done.
Two other bits of excitement happened. On the first Monday, I had a crown pop out. Fortunately, I was able to get into a dentist the next day. The crown was still good. The dentist re-cemented it fairly easily. Then, the second Saturday morning, Nuisance ate a box and a half of dark chocolates left out by one of the kids. We had some anxious moments trying to find a vet who could help us on the weekend, but were successful at that. I had to miss some of a church activities. The dog survived and soon thrived again. The grandkids were not disappointed that we missed some of their activity.
On Wednesday, Feb 22, we drove from West Texas to Santa Fe NM to see Lynda’s brother. Intending to drive home on Friday, we extended our stay until Saturday. It was a good visit. I got out of the house a couple of times: once to the library, once to get a Dunkin. Our drive there was an adventure in itself. It was the day of the big windstorm. We drove through Texas and New Mexico in much wind, sometimes having to slow down as if we were in fog. Then, as we got closer to Santa Fe, the winds increased and the snow started, the winds blowing it horizontally. We passed through one snowstorm, had blue sky for a while, then had another, more intense storm. The snow never accumulated on the roads, but was being caught by fences along the right of way.
We spent the drive dodging tumbleweeds as best we could. At Vaughn NM, we got out for a pit stop. The wind was near hurricane force. We made it into the store and back into the car, afraid we would be blown to the ground. After Vaughn, we saw an amazing thing. The wind was so strong that, instead of blowing tumbleweeds across the road, it was tearing the tumbleweeds apart. The smaller pieces—still recognizable as mini-tumbleweeds—no longer in pieces big enough to catch the wind and whiz by, seemed to dance across the highway, bouncing a few feet, then bouncing in place a while before moving before the wind. It was like a dance of a thousand little tumbleweeds in front of us. Quite exciting to behold, had I not been hanging onto the steering wheel for dear life.
Our trip home on Saturday was relatively uneventful and, for me as the driver, relaxing compared to every day of the trip before that. We got in about 10 p.m., having lost close to 1.5 hours of time with stops related to picking up some items that were supposed to be delivered to us at Christmastime.
Would we do it again? You bet we would. For our kids and grandkids we would be temporary caregivers/guardians in a heartbeat. For the pets, well, let me thing about that a little.
This post continues in the series of my memories of times in libraries Earlier posts are: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
After moving to northwest Arkansas, with our children a little older, with a house that had space to accumulate books, with the school libraries apparently adequate, we spent less family time at the Bentonville library. However, from 1991 to 2000, my office in downtown Bentonville was across the street from the Bentonville Public Library. I went there frequently during lunch hours, even sometimes on breaks. Once in a great while, I would go there with some of my company work and find peace and quiet, away from the telephone and people, and get some real work done.
I don’t have memories of particular books or discoveries from this library. One thing I did was look at investment publications, particularly Value Line. You couldn’t check that out, so I would sit and read it over several days. Was it time well spent? I’d like to think so. The things I learned about stocks, for investment and trading, provided a foundation for how I use the stock market now for supplemental income.
The Bentonville Library built a new building at the edges of downtown, and our company moved way away from downtown. I used the Bentonville library less. In the last ten years, it has been more of a meeting place. I used to meet with our pastor there for coffee and conversation. I donated a number of my books to this library for their local authors section.
Nowadays, my library forays are to the Bella Vista Public Library. While I sometimes browse and find a book to check out, it’s more a place for organizations I belong to to hold meetings. My critique group, Scribblers & Scribes, meets there one afternoon a month. Another group, Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society, meets there one afternoon a month. And another writers group, Village Lakes Writers and Poets, does the same. So I’m in this library typically three or four times a month. A recent expansion makes it much more functional.
If it weren’t for the 2000 or so books in our house, which I’m trying to sort through and read those I don’t think I will ever read, or read again, I would get more books from the library. I actually checked one out last week. But that was at the Big Spring, Texas, Public Library. It was a biography of C.S Lewis. I had only a few days to read it, and couldn’t get through all the 300 pages in that time, not with the babysitting and pet sitting duties to read a whole lot. I read a number of sections, determined it’s a book I’d like to read in full, and returned it to the library on the way out of town. I’ll see if they have it in Bella Vista, or if I can get it on interlibrary loan.
This will be the end of this series. I conclude by saying: Long live the public library!
This post continues in the series of my memories of times in libraries Earlier posts are: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.
I learned a lot from reading Congressional Quarterly in the library.
In 1984, after returning to the USA from Saudi Arabia, we settled in Asheboro, North Carolina, instead of Kansas City. Asheboro, the seat of Randolph County and then was a city of less than 30,000 people, stretched out along a highway. In the downtown district was a very nice library.
Our children were 5 and 3 when we moved there, and many times in our four years in Asheboro did we take them to the library. That meant a lot of time spent in the children’s section. I think the number of visits increased as they became young elementary school students.
But it was in the adult section that I made two discoveries in this library. They weren’t, perhaps, quite as mind-opening as the atlas of the universe in Dhahran, but they led to other things.
The first was the magazine Congressional Quarterly. I had never heard of it before. It is (was; the name and format of the magazine may have since been changed) a reporting of Congress’s actions, and other things related to our national government. It may have been a weekly magazine then. For sure it was at least monthly, not quarterly as the name suggests.
While the kids were engrossed in their books, I would sit with CG and read for hours. Well, we didn’t really stay in the library for hours, but I could have. How interesting I found this publication. It seemed to me to be balanced politically, neither pro-Democrat nor pro-Republican. I learned much from its unadorned pages.
Dad at the truck-mounted mobile unit of the “Stars and Stripes”, putting out the Combat Edition in Italy.
The second discovery was a large book—coffee table book size—about the Stars and Stripes military newspapers. Readers of this blog will know that my dad set type for the Stars and Stripesin Europe during World War 2. Yet, we kids didn’t know that in the basement was a steamer trunk full of those S&S, sent home during the war and preserved by my grandparents then passed on to Dad.
So, I found this book of the S&S, which consisted of copies of the newspapers along with narrative about the newspaper. I skimmed it in the library and was fascinated by it. When we were preparing to drive to Rhode Island one year for a holiday, probably Thanksgiving, I checked the book out and brought it with me. Dad looked at it with less interest than I expected. But we had a good conversation about the S&S. Dad was glad that one of his children took more than a passing interest in what had been most of his war service.
That was in 1985 or 86. Fast forward to Fall 1990. Kuwait was now behind us, I was spending a couple of weeks a month in Boston working a temporary job while the family stayed in NC. On weekends, I drove to R.I. to spend time with Dad. Somehow in our conversation the S&S came up. He said, “Come with me. I want to show you something.” He led the way downstairs and showed me the trunk with the newspapers. He said, “When I croak, these are yours.”
Dad died in 1997. Lynda and I drove from Arkansas to Rhode Island for the funeral. One reason for driving instead of flying was to be able to take the S&S back with us.
So, my obtaining the Stars and Stripes from Cranston RI came about probably because of time in a library in Asheboro NC. Like I said, perhaps this isn’t an earth-shattering memory, but it fits with my current theme. Thank God for libraries.
Continuing with my library memories series. This post will likely be shorter than the last two. See them here and here.
This was a good library find, probably in 1976 or 1977.
A long, long time ago, back in the second half of the 1970s decade, I first discovered the joys of library use for other than school stuff. Lynda and I bought a home in Mission, Kansas in 1976. Early in career, early in marriage, there wasn’t much budget yet for buying books. So we found the nearest public library, and checked books out there.
Two particular books that I got at that library stand out in my mind, even after all these years. The first was The Origen by Irving Stone. This is a biographical novel about Charles Darwin. Stone has done many of these, and I’ve since read a couple of others. This was my first introduction to Stone and to the concept of the biographical novel.
I didn’t know a lot about Darwin at that time, either, other than what I learned in science classes, that he had put together the theory of evolution and that he was English. The novel treated Darwin very fairly, I thought. He was a sympathetic character, and I learned much about him from that. I came away with a favorable opinion of him. I’ve since read Origin of Species, and reviewed it on this blog. I’m currently reading the first volume of Darwin’s letters, although I’m still in the lengthy biographical preliminaries. Hopefully I’ll be in the letters themselves in a day or two.
The second book was a genealogy book on Lynda’s family, The Cheney Genealogy. This was published in 1898, and I believe I got it via interlibrary loan rather than it being a book at our local library. At that time, I was having conversations with Lynda’s dad and paternal grandparents about genealogy, and just beginning what would become a serious effort to trace family history.
In that book, I found much information that appeared to be relevant to her family, though with a missing link that prevented me from making a firm connection to the original Cheney ancestor, John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. Years later, in the internet era, I was able to build upon The Cheney Genealogy and make the connection. But it all started with my local library and the book I accessed through it.
23 Feb: Editing to add: One other book I found at that library was Rees Howells: Intercessor. This told the story of Rees Howells, a Welshman who was in the USA at the time of the Welsh revival around 1903. He went home, was converted himself, and began working in Christian ministries, including a Welsh bible college. He became known for his praying. The book tells about times of intense prayer in his personal life, in ministries, and in the life of the British nation during World War 2. The story of Howells has stayed with me, and in later years I picked up a copy of his biography for my personal library. Another good find at the Shawnee Mission Public Library.
Well, these are not profound memories, but they fit in this series, so here they are. Look for more going forward.
These massive structures took computer programs to design optimally. A library helped me do it well.
The first company I worked for had several libraries, one for each of the major divisions. But the main library was in the main building, Building A, on Meadowlake Parkway in Kansas City. I discovered this when I was working in Building N (or was it Q?) in Roeland Park, Kansas.
I had to go the 10 miles to Building A a couple of times a week to deliver a deck of punch cards to the main computer room, where they fed it into a modem to have the program run at McDonald Douglas in St. Louis. Don’t laugh, folks. This was 1975-76. Sometimes I would go, drop the cards off, and get the results the next day in the interoffice mail. Sometimes I was supposed to wait for the results. On those times, with nothing to do, I found the library and browsed in it.
This led to what I call two of my “career moments”, those times when you do something so spectacular that you remember it for the rest of your career and even after. At the time, I was with a group that was doing the structural design of 230 kV lattice steel transmission towers for the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. A few years later, I would be in Saudi and get to see those towers on the ground.
We were designing the towners using what we thought was a very good computer program, and none of us knew a whole lot about it. In the library, I found shelves full of journals of the American Society of Civil Engineers. One of those was the Power journal—many years of it—dealing with all things a civil engineer does for the electrical system. I found several articles about transmission towers. Needless to say, this was interesting reading.
In one issue, I found an article comparing the six or eight major transmission tower design computer programs (the analysis done by an unbiased party). The one we were using, the BPA program, was ranked second. The one that was first was proprietary, available only to the company that created it. My boss was about ready to head to Japan to a meeting about the Eastern Province project. I showed him the issue and article, and he took it with him and read it on the plane. In his meetings, someone criticized our program, saying it was not the best. My boss, fortified by the article and with the issue in hand, said, “Well, the ASCE Journal of Power Engineering says it’s the best program available. Look at this.” He won the argument and I was a hero. Career moment #1.
In another of those issues was an article on the general methodology of structural design of those towers. That led me to check out the manual on the BPA program and I learned it was a whole suite of programs. We were using the Design program, but after that we were supposed to go another step and do a more detailed analysis with the Analysis program. Based on what I learned, we started using it.
I learned this while a full-scale model of one of our towers was being tested in Japan, and we had a man there watching it. We worked late into the night and discovered that tower was 3% overstressed in one structural member. We quickly made a change, reran the analysis program, and had our fix, and waited for our man to make a pre-arranged call (no cell phones back then).
That morning, our man in Japan called and said that the tower being tested had failed at 97% of full load. We gave him the fix and were able waive the re-test, saving thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. Career moment #2 was in the books.
My next corporate library experience: While in Saudi Arabia, I discovered an Aramco library in Dhahran, where I frequently had to go for meetings. Perhaps it was more of a privately run public-type of library, but I’m calling it a corporate library. Whenever I had a half hour to kill between meetings, I would go there and browse. My main find was an atlas of the universe. I don’ remember the exact name. This had more than star charts. It talked about all things stellar and galactic. I learned about stars and galaxies near and far, and clusters of galaxies. I learned what a parsec was and how it was used to measure distances in the galaxies.
This gave me a fascination with space travel. I have several books queued up about that. Not sure when, if ever, I’ll get to write them.
Alas, my last couple of memories about corporate libraries aren’t good. When CEI moved into our new building in 2000, we had a great library. The then-director of training and his assistant did a wonderful job of organizing and labeling everything. And we even had a digital card catalog. This worked great from move-in day to around early 2005. A re-organization caused the library to move to less prominent quarters in our building. Things didn’t get put on the shelf the digital card catalog said they were on. This was not a downsizing but rather a reduction in usefulness at the start of the search engine era.
The downsizing came in 2009. After three or four layoffs, we were giving up our beautiful building and moving into rented offices. The library would move, but would be reduced in size. I was assigned the task of deciding what to keep, what to throw away. First, I had to organize it, which resulted in finding many duplicates of manufacturer’s catalogs and many we didn’t need. Things such as old phone books, old municipal standards, etc. all had to go. It was hard, but I made the cuts, and the truncated library barely fit in its new shelves.
That wasn’t the worst. As the Information Era came on full blast, and as we had a little growth, around 2012 the library lost much of its usefulness. It had to be shrunk even more, to maybe 125 linear feet of shelf space in a conference room. Again I had to make those hard decisions. Then, around 2016 the company decided to get rid of it all together. I took some of it into my office, got other people to take things, and got rid of everything else. Those were hard decisions to make, and hard to see valuable books and references overflowing in our dumpster.
I’ve wondered what my first company did with that library in Building A. The thought of all those journals being discarded isn’t a pleasant one. Maybe they found a way to keep it. I hope so.
