My Fabulous Freshman Year- Find the Prize

As part of the blogging committee, I have been assigned to share my experiences as a freshman at Coe every week.  Today I sat thinking about what I should write about. I mean I could talk about tests, classes or orientation.  There have been so many amazing things that have happened in the month I have been at Coe that the list can go on and on, but I instantly thought of the event that has consumed my life for the past 24 hours, causing me to procrastinate on everything, and basically get nothing accomplished.  So I thought, what better way to make something useful out of all the time spent on this activity than by blogging about it?

For anyone that's on campus at Coe, you have probably heard about the Oohlala app, which basically connects you to everything that is happening on campus.  On Tuesday, a new aspect of the app was released, an event, or game rather, called Find the Prize.  The rules are simple, using your app you search around campus for the "prize",  and you tap a button to take it from another person's smartphone when you are within 100 feet of each other.  You can't leave campus or you drop the prize, and if you are lucky enough to hold it for the longest amount of time over the three-day period or have it on your phone Thursday at 5:00 pm, you win $200.  Not a bad deal for a free smartphone app. 

The problem is the game is addicting.  It's basically electronic capture the flag.  I initially laughed when I saw the poster advertising the game, with students chasing each other across a campus.  I mean why would people be running for some stupid game?  Well, I was one of those people running yesterday as my two writing center teammates and I chased down the prize for over three hours, including a late-night search which ended with us determining our sleep might be worth more than $200. 

We've spent time formulating well thought plans and trying develop the perfect strategy to win the prize money, and in the process have left only a small amount of time to get our homework done. We learned that the fence that goes around the football field is much larger than you might think, and that the Writing Center, although sometimes hidden from the public, is not hidden from people after the beloved prize.  We also learned never to underestimate the lengths people will go to to capture the prize back from you, people are obsessed with this game (us included).

Win or lose tomorrow, I will gladly say that Find the Prize has been one of my favorite campus events so far.  Were it not for my ever-growing mound of homework and my short-lived cell phone battery, my team and I would be out at all hours in search of that coveted prize.  I can't wait to have more fun on campus this year!

- Alexandria, Class of  '18

Homecoming, Friendship, and the Writing Center

Hello, everyone!

The academic year is rolling and the writing center is hopping with beginning-of-the-year conferences (and coffee, of course). Despite the mass amount of homework we all have, we make time for fun... because the WC and fun might actually be synonyms.

We especially made time for fun this weekend, since it was Coe's homecoming.

Homecoming is this fabulous time of the year when Coe students remember how awesome Coe is -- and how awesome it's always been. Lots of alumni come back to watch the famous football game, eat juicy burgers, and visit with old friends. There is also a dance where we all go get our groove on. You can feel the school spirit everywhere, and I for one spent the weekend feeling grateful that I made this college decision.

My college experience (and my homecoming experience) wouldn't be the same without my friends -- and I made my closest friends through the writing center. It's amazing to think back to two years ago (yep, two!) when we all met and practiced conferencing together. We were scared, little first-years, but we supported each other and have grown into thriving students: studying abroad, landing the best internships, and starting the process of writing our honors theses.

The writing center is really what gave my friends and I (all 70-something of us, but a few in particular) the chance to bond and develop these lasting friendships. The first time we really got to know each other was in San Diego at a conference for writing centers across the nation. We learned a lot of very helpful tips for more productive conferences, and we also got to explore San Diego together. As the old adage says, "Those who navigate the San Diego trolly system together become close friends." The WC also puts on plenty of social events for consultants through our special committee, Fun and Games. Last year, we went apple picking at an orchard and watched movies together on Friday nights. I know this year, Fun and Games is carefully planning how they will magically transform acquaintances and co-workers into best friends -- because it somehow happens every year.

A few of our lovely WC consultants getting ready for Homecoming 2014!

  I'm so thankful to have such a great place to work and to develop myself professionally, socially, and personally.

Happy first day of Autumn!

-Angela, class of '16

Ursula Le Guin: Part III

I believe I said that there was a book by Ursula Le Guin I had to find and read at some point. It would appear I was mistaken.

There were two. And one of them finally gave me a name for a collection of Tolkien's literary criticism, which I've found surprisingly hard to find...

From Cheek by Jowl:

-"The mandarins of modernism and some of the pundits of postmodernism were shocked to be told that a fantasy trilogy by a professor of philology is the best-loved English novel of the twentieth century."
-"To throw a book out of serious consideration because it was written for children, or because it is read by children, is in fact a monstrous act of anti-intellectualism. But it happens daily in academia."
-"What fantasy often does that the realistic novel generally cannot do is include the nonhuman as essential."
-"What reality may be, what really happened, we cannot tell; what we can tell is the story, the infinitely flexible, wonderfully rearrangeable, extremely useful story. With it we remake reality."

And from The Language of the Night:

-"I think we have a terrible thing here: a hardworking, upright, responsible citizen, a full-grown, educated person, who is afraid of dragons, and afraid of hobbits, and scared to death of fairies. It's funny, but it's also terrible."
-"Some people can talk on the telephone. They must really believe in the thing. For me the telephone is for making appointments with the doctor with and canceling appointments with the dentist with. It is not a medium of human communication. I can't stand there in the hall with the child and the cat both circling around my legs frisking and purring and demanding cookies and catfood, and explain to a disembodied voice in my ear that the Jungian spectrum of introvert/extrovert can usefully be applied not only to human beings but also to authors. That is, there are some authors who want and need to tell about themselves, you know, like Norman Mailer, and there are others who want and need privacy. Privacy!"
-"The way of art, after all, i neither to cut adrift from the emotions, the senses, the body, etc., and to sail off into the void of pure meaning, nor to blind the mind's eye and wallow in irrational, amoral meaninglessness--but to keep open the tenuous, difficult, essential connections between the two extremes."
-"I invite you to meditate on a pair of sisters. Emily and Charlotte. Their life experience was an isolated vicarage in a small, dreary English village, a couple of bad years at a girls' school, another year or two in Brussels, which is surely the dullest city in all of Europe, and a lot of housework. Out of that seething mass of raw, vital, brutal, gutsy Experience they made two of the greatest novels ever written: Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights."
-"You may have gathered from all this that I am not encouraging people to try to be writers. Well, I can't. You hate to see a nice young person run up to the edge of a cliff and jump off, you know. On the other hand, it is awfully nice to know that some other people are just as nutty and just as determined to jump off the cliff as you are. You just hope they realize what they're in for."

Quotation Time with Ursula Le Guin: Part II

So, in case it's not apparent at this point, I really like Ursula Le Guin. And she's intelligent. And verbose. And a badass.

Also, the library apparently has a copy of another book on writing by her which I have not read so... there may be another set of Ursula Le Guin quotes popping up later. Fair warning.

Anyway, more quotes (again from The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination):

-"Children have a seemingly innate passion for justice; they don't have to be taught it. They have to have it beaten out of them, in fact, to end up as properly prejudiced adults."
-"Women have a particular stake in keeping the oral functions of literature alive, since misogyny wants women to be silent, and misogynist critics and academics do not want to hear the woman's voice in literature, in any sense of the word."
-"It is curious that evidence for what looks like an aesthetic sense--a desire for objects because they are perceived as desirable in themselves, a willingness to expend real energy acquiring something that has no practical end at all--seems to turn up only among us [humans], some lowly little rodents, and some rowdy birds."
-"In America the imagination is generally looked on as something that might be useful when the TV is out of order. Poetry and plays have no relation to practical problems."
-"To me the important thing is not to offer any specific hope of betterment [in stories] but, by offering an imagined but persuasive alternative reality, to dislodge my mind, and so the reader's mind, from the lazy, timorous habit of thinking that the way we live now is the only way people can live."
-"These days, no writer can legitimately claim either ignorance or innocence as a defense of prejudice or bigotry in their writing."
-"A dangerous book will always be in danger from those it threatens with the demand that they question their assumptions. They'd rather hang on to the assumptions and ban the book."
-"All human beings are liars; that is true; you must believe me."

Reflections on the Writings of Academics

Mostly, this has been prompted by the fact that I'm reading a number of philosophers, along with several authors/literary critics. Some, such as Umberto Eco, are both. I thought it would be fun to take some of the academic language and change it into more colloquial phrasing, trying as best I can to preserve nuances. Now, since this has been for research regarding the ethical implications and ethical assessment of art, the variety in subject matters is going to be a little low.
Anyway, without further ado:


Umberto Eco: "many modern theories are unable to recognize that symbols are paradigmatically, that is, textually, open only to the indefinite, but by no means infinite, interpretations allowed by the context."

Translation: "modern theories of literature ignore the fact that, while a given written work can say multiple different things, it can't say anything."




Richard W. Miller: "there is always a possible rational dissenter from our moral judgment who would disagree in response to our evidence, indeed all the evidence that there might be."

Translation: "There will always be someone who can disagree with any moral claim you want to make, and be justified in doing so."




Noel Carroll: "inasmuch as the autonomist argues that art is essentially independent of morality and politics, the autonomist goes on to contend that aesthetic value is independent of the sorts of consequentialist considerations that Plato and his followers raise."

Translation: "in arguing that art exists only for its own sake and isn't tied to morality/politics, people seek to avoid arguments (such as those by Plato) that art which causes dangerous effects should be banned/restricted."




And, my personal favorite in this:

Pierre Bourdieu: "all religious theologies and all political theocracies have taken advantage of the fact that the generative capacities of language can surpass the limits of intuition or empirical verification and produce statements that are formally impeccable but semantically empty."

Translation: "Religious and political organizations like to say things which, while grammatically correct and coherent, mean fuck all."

Patrick

More Quotation Times!!! (Ursula Le Guin Edition)

Now, in quoting Ursula Le Guin (from a variety of essays compiled in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination), I'm running into a problem I didn't have with Margaret Atwood. Namely, that any attempt I make to quote Ursula Le Guin takes her words out of context, and they're inevitably better in context. But, I'm going to do it anyway, because much like a internet picture of the Mona Lisa isn't the Mona Lisa, but is respectable nonetheless, so it is with these quotes. So:

-"Maybe the people who rope themselves together and the huge heavy things resent such adaptable and uncertain footing because it makes them feel insecure. Maybe they fear they might be sucked in and swallowed. But I am not interested in sucking and am not hungry. I am just mud. I yield. I do try to oblige. And so when the people and the huge heavy things walk away they are not changed, except their feet are muddy, but I am changed. I am still here and still mud, but all full of footprints and deep, deep holes and tracks and traces and changes. I have been changed. You change me. Do not take me for granite."

-"I run into the moral problem we storytellers share with you anthropologists: the exploitation of real people. People should not use other people."

-"We [as children] had to be allowed to go into the Adult Side [of the library]. That was hard for the librarians. They felt they were hurling us little kids into a room full of sex, death, and weird grown-ups like Heathcliff and the Joads; and in fact, they were. We were intensely grateful."

-"Coming from another world, they take yours from you, changing it, draining it, shrinking it into a property, a commodity. And as your world is meaningless to them until they change it into theirs, so as you live among them and adopt their meanings, you are in danger of losing your own meaning to yourself."

-"My fantasies explore the use of power as art and its misuse as domination; they play back and forth along the mysterious frontier between what we think is real and what we think is imaginary, exploring the borderlands."

-"Fiction as we currently think of it, the novel and short story as they have existed since the eighteenth century, offers one of the very best means of understanding people different from oneself, short of experience."

Summer Projects Discussed

As part of my assignments this summer, I've been tasked with mashing together video clips of a number of Writing Center consultants saying why they love the writing center. For example, mine can be found below:

In my personal opinion, I sound really weird. And I feel like I have an accent in this video that I'm not sure if I normally have or not...

What I've noticed in compiling these videos is that a vast chunk of us don't say much of anything related to actually conferencing. Generally, we talk about the Writing Center community: as friends, family, or just a good place to be. With some mentions of coffee, which are far more sparse than I thought they'd be.

Sparser. Should probably use correct grammar. Wouldn't want Weird Al to become cross with me.

Garden Update

Hey all,

     Gardens, unlike bloggers, never take breaks from creating new content. Here's a few updates on the garden since Patrick or I last wrote. It's still there even though Dr. Bob officially retired. Dr. Bob, at the moment, is teaching at Coe's Wilderness Field Station.
     Penstemon Husker Red was in bloom in late June. Now, its flowers have turned into attractive, waxy red seed pods.

     Not sure the name of the plant, but it attracted this butterfly who didn't mind a photoshoot.

     This shot is from the bed immediately behind the house. 

     This bed is to your right, as you leave the house. Recently, Dr. Bob endorsed it as "one of the better-looking parts of the garden."

     Felicia and I planted two beds near the back gate. We planted Russian Sage, lilies, bee's balm, bachelor's buttons, balloon plants, and a few other things. This bed and its opposite, at the start of summer, were the most chaotic but now that we've tilled, replanted, and re-mulched parts of them, they look more ordered, for now.

     -Peter

Summer Deep Clean

     On Monday, June 23, the summer WC crew, 5 brave students, gathered to clean our space. We knew not what we would uncover, but uncover we did.
     Here's some of the finds.

We ended up with a lot of things from the cafe. 19 cups (plus a red one from the pub), two mugs, and a few tongs from catering. We took it all back, don't worry.

Another kitchen find: look at all these plates! We have so many plates. This is just one set of plates we have. Patrick and I (Peter) took everything out of the cupboards and cleaned them well.

While Felicia and Nicole were moving furniture and vacuuming the main room. We heard a lot of crunches and tings as the vacuum picked up who knows what.

We have a lot of chairs! Look at them! This isn't even all the chairs we have. One question we had while cleaning: Where did all these chairs come from? Another question: Where do they all go?

One thing is certain: the Writing Center smells cleaner now and looks a lot cleaner. Until next time, 

Peter

Advantages of Summers in Cedar Rapids

Namely, the ability to visit Iowa City once in a while. Well, not so much Iowa City as Prairie Lights and The Haunted Bookshop. Because books.
In particular, I made a point of picking up a copy of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace. I already have a copy, but it's an eBook. I thought I'd save money that way. I had forgotten to factor in the fact that trying to read Infinite Jest on an eBook is a horrible life choice because it's so ridiculously dense. I also happened upon a copy of Doctor Faustus. Which, as I am looking the book up on Goodreads to link, I have now realized was not the book I had wanted to buy. Silly me; I had actually been looking for Doctor Faustus. Can't imagine how I'd ever make that sort of mistake. So, instead of an early-17th century English playwright's rendition of the Faust myth I get a mid-20th century German's rendition of the myth which focuses heavily on contemporary (for when the book was published) German social issues... You know, I actually am kind of happy I made that mistake.
Also, while I'm on the subject of my stumbling in book buying, I managed to finally find a copy of Pscyho. And, while I was browsing the horror section for some comfort-reading material (like you do) I saw a copy of Hannibal. As I was already picking up a classic horror book successfully turned into a movie that's probably better remember, I figured I'd pick up the other one. Only to realize that there's also a book called The Silence of the Lambs which comes before Hannibal in the series. Fortunately, I managed to snag a copy of that as well. I did not, however, realize that those were the third and second books respectively, and the first book (Red Dragon) did not happen to magically appear in my possession before I left the store.
So... Reading. Yeah. Gonna have to do some of that.

-Patrick

Odd Jobs & Good Books

     There is always an element of surprise working in the WC. You never know who will walk in looking for a conference or what subject you might end up talking about. Maybe one of your coworkers makes a batch of flan or mashed potatoes at 10 pm.
     But in the summer, the surprise comes from a different source: Dr. Bob. The other day I helped him move some furniture from campus to home, around his house, into his garden house (a small writing hutch at the end of his property), and a few other things.
     There were a few benefits to me for helping. Dr. Bob gave me a small pot filled with potting soil for an indoor basil plant and a number of books to borrow. Including (but not limited to) Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac, Walden by Thoreau, and The Great American Novel by Philip Roth.
     -Peter

Quotation Time

Today, a few choice quotes from Margaret Atwood, because I can:

From Negotiating With the Dead
-"Normal youths sneered at the artsies, at least at the male ones, and sometimes threw them into snow banks. Girls of an artistic bent were assumed to be more sexually available than the cashmere twin-set ones, but also mouthier, crazier, meaner, and subject to tantrums: getting involved with one was therefore more trouble than the sex might be worth."
-"By two, I mean the person who exists when no writing is going forward--the one who walks the dog, eats bran for regularity, takes the car in to be washed, and so forth--and that other, more shadowy and altogether more equivocal personage who shares the same body, and who, when no one is looking, takes it over and uses it to commit the actual writing."
-"The written word is so much like evidence--like something that can be used against you later."
-"An art of any kind is a discipline; not only a craft--that too--but a discipline in the religious sense, in which the vigil of waiting, the creation of a receptive spiritual emptiness, and the denial of self all play their part."
-"Should the god of the artist be Apollo the Classicist, with his beautiful formality, or Mercury, the mischief-maker, trickster, and thief?"
-"It isn't the writer who decides whether or not his work is relevant."
-"Its [the chapter's] hypothesis is that not just some, but all writing of the narrative kind, and perhaps all writing, is motivated, deep down, by a fear of and a fascination with mortality."
-"I had a boyfriend once who sent me--in a plastic bag, so it wouldn't drip--a real cow's heart with a real arrow stuck through it. As you may divine, he knew I was interested in poetry."
-"A book is another country. You enter it, but then you must leave: like the Underworld, you can't live there."


-Patrick

What up in the WC?

     Just want to give a feel for what the WC is like right now for all of you out of town and missing the space. Sam Orvis and I (Peter Madsen) are at opposite ends to the room, both at computers with our backs to one another. He's studying for the MCAT; I'm working on the summer newsletter.
     Dr. Bob is recently back from his May Term class. They drove all over to watch baseball games. He is packing stuff into boxes, but is not here at the moment. My guess is he's at the Alumni House Garden.
     John, the Gage Union custodian, is waxing the kitchen floor sometime soon, so the table is out of the kitchen, as are all the chairs. But, that didn't stop me from making french toast this morning. A group of tour guides being trained by Ryan Rey walked in and commented on the good smells.
     It's quiet around here, but there is at least one advantage: I get dibs on the space. I'm at my favorite computer (the touch-screen HP by Dr. Bob's office) sitting in my favorite chair (a rolly chair that leans way back) and I am using the white board on wheels to help me organize my thoughts for the newsletter.
     -Peter

Books and Things

So, this weekend I devoted to moving apartments for the duration of the summer, and trying to make sure I unpack as little as possible because I'm going to need to do this again in a few months. But, more importantly, I went book shopping at two different Half Price Books.

I managed to get three books by Margaret Atwood, whose book on writing (Negotiating With the Dead) I'm currently trying to work my way through in spite of my messed up sleep schedule. I also got The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker, who visited Coe this past year and seemed to know what she was doing in writing the book. As well as having a fantastically quotable book, with some of said quotes signed and hung around the Writing Center. Somewhere. There were also books by Umberto Eco (wonderful historical fiction). And a book on writing by Jorge Borges, about whom I know little more than that a large amount of the philosophers in my Contemporary Continental Philosophy course liked quoting him. Which, I suppose, is as good a reason as any to pick up a book.

Most importantly though, I grabbed a copy of Tolkien's translation of Beowulf. Which, for whatever reason, was not published until this May. Though that does go a long way towards explaining why I couldn't find the thing no matter how hard I looked, even though every Medievalist who discussed Tolkien mentioned how wonderful his commentary and interpretation of Beowulf was for the study of fantasy literature.

Perhaps I'll get lucky next time I visit Half Price Books and they'll actually have a copy of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest.


-Patrick

Tutoring

    During the spring semester, the Coe Writing Center and the Catherine McAuley Center began working together. The McAuley Center offers tutoring in English to people new to the US, in addition to other services, including transitional housing for women. The McAuley Center offers one-on-one tutoring to people from all over the world who are in Cedar Rapids and trying to learn English. Coe's Writing Center is full of tutors who speak English.
     I wasn't on campus in the spring to witness or be a part of the tutoring sessions between Coe students and McAuley students, but I am happy to be tutoring one student this summer. Tutoring is the core of the WC job, and I had missed the chance to work one-on-one with someone over a period of time and to observe their skills and strategies change and improve.
     I am working with an adult from the Democratic Republic of Congo who is very eager to learn English. We have fun together and make sure to laugh at ourselves. The other day, I said I was in an argument with someone and he though I said the person was pregnant.
     A few numbers from the Migration Policy Institute before I go: There are 40 million foreign born persons currently living in the US. Of that group, about half are Limited English Proficient, a self-reported status that indicates the person doesn't consider that he or she speaks English "very well."
     -Peter

While On the Topic of Gardens

The rain means no watering can
Earth black and rich as oil
I might send in an envelope
In lieu of a tuition payment

Weeds love the rain
As do tender shoots of plants
Weeds by virtue of location
Feeling guilty every time I hoe down a flower
For seeking sheltering shade of a rose bush
Wondering if I should have used sunscreen

Worried more about the gnats
Feel like I'm breaking out
Into hives of gnat-bites
Or forgetting an encounter
With a garlic-resistant vampire

Munching tortilla sandwich under a tree
Mulch digging into my pants

Alumni House Garden

     As of now, the aspect of my summer job I'm taking most seriously is the Alumni House Garden. It helps that there are so many wonderful things to look at. Here's a sample. I don't have all the names down, so bear with my ignorance, please. 

     The above photos represent some of the first blossoms in the garden; bleeding hearts and peonies among them. They started to appear about two weeks ago. The batch of photos below is from Wednesday, the 28th. The Siberian Irises are in bloom and the peonies have opened up. In addition to white roses, there are a number of pink roses. The purple flowers are a member of the mint family, and I'm not quite sure what the last photo is, but it's easy on the eyes. 

     After pulling thistle from one of the beds, I realized I'd left quite the trail and couldn't pass up the chance to take a photo. A gardener's self portrait, maybe. 

     -Peter

Thursday's Ramblings

I'm still not used to the Writing Center being quiet. Granted, it's summer and there's basically no one here to use it. But I'm accustomed to there always being at least 4 people inside it at any given moment (save those rare occasions where my sleep schedule was messed up and I went into the Writing Center at 6 or so in the morning to roast some coffee since I was awake anyway). Still, gives me an alternative to Hickok for places other than my apartment to sit around reading books (currently working through Perdido Street Station and The Savage Detectives). Eventually I might have to look through the Writing Center's collection of books to see if there's anything in there I feel like reading.

I'd try using it for writing, but I have this horrible habit of not starting to write until 11 or so at night when I really should be going to bed and getting some sleep. It makes it a little hard to do it anywhere other than my apartment, since I could end up falling asleep at any moment. Or feel like I'm going to fall asleep, try to go to bed, realize I'm actually not tired, and go back to writing.

Also, my second batch of banana bread turned out well. Unlike the quality of the picture, I'm afraid.

Like a BLT

The WC is infamous for its large kitchen the creativity of bakers and cooks brought upon by having 3/4 of the ingredients the recipe calls for. Some recipes are ways to use all the ingredients you have in the pantry or fridge.

Sometimes, though, inspiration comes in the last moments of the day, before your eyes close and you tumble off to sleep. My breakfast today fits into the second category. Wouldn't it be great, I thought, nearly asleep, to make a BLT, but instead of bacon, asparagus, and instead of lettuce, kale.

I chopped my asparagus, tossed it in a pan with olive oil, salt and pepper, and a touch of lime juice; cut the kale; toasted bread; fried two eggs because I love fried eggs; cut the tomato into slices; and put it all together. It was great.
-Peter

Greetings, Salutations, and Other Words of Similar Meanings Ad Nauseum

Hello everyone who visits the Writing Center blog! I have no idea who is included in that list and what you're interested in hearing about, so I'm going to feel a little bit like I'm writing to myself. And this might result in a great deal of me rambling on about things. Like I'm doing right now. Should probably stop doing that. Mostly because the banana bread I'm trying to cook is starting to smell oddly and is probably burning as I'm typing this...

I suppose I should begin with an introduction: I'm Patrick. I'm a creative writing and philosophy double major with a potential minor in unemployment. I think professionals call it "freelance writing" and it sounds like it would be fun and conform well to my desire to not get out of bed before noon. It also sounds slightly terrifying with all the college debt I'm lugging around. And the fact I have yet to publish anything outside a single poem in my college literary magazine, the Coe Review. Long-term goal, I guess.

Aside from my writing center and gardening duties, I'm currently gainfully employed at the local Hy-Vee, and am trying to finish a book and do research for a research paper on John Stuart Mill's On Liberty that I shall be writing next semester. And making assorted (potentially vain) attempts to not be a hermit. And, eventually, making expeditions to bookstores because I like books, and libraries because I like books and don't have much in the way of disposable income. More on that if and when those trips happen. Possibly with pictures, if I manage to commandeer a camera.

As for my insights for this piece... well, a glance outside my window tells me it's a beautiful day, I've found a new Ed Sheeran song to listen to, my eyes currently hurt from taking too many notes on a library book I'll need to return soon, and I'll need to get working on my book shortly because I've been lazy about working on it and need to fix that. I have banana bread that I hope is edible cooling on the counter, a chicken in the slow cooker I might have put too much steak sauce on, and a poem I wrote last night that has the potential to not be shit after I rewrite it a few times. Seems like it'll be a good day. And I may need to locate some nonfiction to determine how people write about things in an interesting manner without lying profusely. 

-Patrick