That’s because I am a hybrid driver, which means I am fully preoccupied with my Miles Per Gallon meter.

Some of you have asked, and I’m happy to report that I’m really loving Sparkle, my Honda Civic Hybrid. She’s a comfortable, eye-pleasing, fuel-efficient car I feel very safe in as I drive around Georgia. The Civic Hybrid doesn’t get the stratospherically good mileage that a Prius gets, but it was far less expensive, and doesn’t look as if it has a load in its pants. I’m averaging a good 40 mpg, and Sparkle is a quiet, pleasant drive with a nice road grip.

I didn’t go into this past summer thinking I wanted to buy a car “just yet.” I was hoping to drive my 15-year-old Civic another two years (it’s still doing fine;  Sandy drives it). But when we lost the Corolla in a bad rainstorm and I started shopping, I had to admit that as much time as I spend in a car, having some creature comforts (Cupholders! An MP3 jack! A driver’s seat I can raise to my height!) and some safety features such as side curtain airbags makes me feel prosperous, important, and protected. ( Sparkle’s upholstery is also deliciously cuddly, and it’s a practical dark blue.)

I looked around, but back then, with gas $4 a gallon, dealers were selling the already somewhat spendy Prius $2,000 above MSRP. After test-driving other vehicles, I reverted to type and began looking at new and slightly-used Honda Civics.

Amazingly, I had the chance to buy a very-gently-used, Honda-certified 2008 Civic Hybrid at a good price with a clean Carfax report (it was a leased car owned by a family near Warner Robins; I have a hunch they were military), and it has been True Love ever since.

Sparkle also feels solid and well-made. For you who sew, Hondas to me have the hand-feel of a Pfaff sewing machine: solid, handsome, strong, no gimcracky geegaws, and very quiet.

Part of the fun of driving a hybrid vehicle is that you spend a lot of time gaming your own fuel-efficiency — hypermiling, they call it. Hybrids teach us about fuel-efficient driving. If you’re dedicated, you can find websites about hypermiling and other efficiency techniques. But just by driving with one eye on the MPG gage, even the casual hybrid driver learns a few things we could all heed, whether or not we’re driving a hybrid — and whether or not gas is $4 a gallon.

Drive like a lady. If you want to save fuel, don’t gun your motor, drive aggressively (fast starts and stops, lots of zig-zagging), or try to out-run everyone on the road. I learned this several times in rental Priuses well before I knew I’d be buying a hybrid. If you drive hard enough, you can get bad mileage, even in a Prius. But you can drive assertively, even speedily, and stay efficient — just drive as if you’re gliding on a dance floor in a waltz.

Every American needs a pressure gauge. Barack Obama was derided last spring for his practical observation: tire pressure affects fuel efficiency.

(Irresistible political aside:  just as Obama was derided for his warnings about the economy.)

Cars are largely automated these days, but checking tire pressure only requires a simple $10 tool and two minutes of your time. Plus it gives me the feeling I — who once knew an F111 TF30-P100 engine inside-out — actually know something about that mysterious machine that is my hybrid car.

Use cruise control selectively. I found this advice on a hybrid discussion group and proved it: use cruise control on long straight stretches; don’t use it on hilly terrain. However, I have found that cruise control works well on gently undulating terrain, such as Route 441 in Georgia,, so go figure. Cruise control also helps improve fuel efficiency on gently descending stretches such as Old Bainbridge Road, a gorgeous canopy road north of Tallahassee where I might be tempted to pick up speed.

Sensible driving gets you there pretty quickly. This has been a hard lesson for me, but driving like a maniac doesn’t get me there that much faster, and I get far better mileage (regardless of the vehicle) if I take it easy — plus I don’t have that teeth-gritting stress that comes from weaving in and around “slow” drivers.

That doesn’t mean driving 40 mph in the far-right lane… I keep up with traffic and pass my share of slower cars. But I don’t have to be the fastest car on the road. I’ve driven in a dozen countries, sometimes under very grueling circumstances, and I don’t lose any Estrogen Points if I stay within plus or minus five of the speed limit. The difference controlling speed makes on fuel efficiency is sobering, even in a hybrid. If you believe oil is a scarce supply to use wisely and only as needed, ease up on the gas pedal.

Every car needs a MPG gauge. MPG gauges should be mandatory in vehicles. I think of this as the Frappuchino Effect, from the time my father called me to say he had learned that Frappuchinos had hundreds of calories. My dad has a bad heart, and to keep the load on his body light he’s watched his weight as long as I can remember. What seemed like a simple treat turned radioactive to him (and for that matter, to me). In the same vein, a MPG gauge in every car could get everyone driving smarter.

Every driver needs a GPS. Wannabe macho-types think driving without maps or instructions is for sissies.  Odd, because in the flying world, you get street cred for learning to fly by instrument flight rules (IFR).

I’m a good map-reader, but fumbling with a map  on a dark, rainy road (or even a sunny, dry, heavily-trafficked road) is not my idea of struttin’ my stuff.  Having a GPS on my dash puts key information in line of sight, and though Lady — as I call her — isn’t good at the “big picture” (which is why I still have maps in my map pocket), Lady is very trustworthy on the molecular level. (You do have to be able to trust machines.) I have saved countless time, gas, miles, and frustration by having Lady, in her Liza Minelli lisp (”Eggshit in point two milesh”), safely guide me onto tree-obscured exit ramps, help me quickly find alternate routes when bad traffic approaches, find me the closest gas station or grocery store in a strange town, and teach me where the shortcuts are.  Lady also resigns herself to my alternative routes. “Recalculating,” she mutters in disgust, and lets me apply human knowledge to her map-awareness.

Together, Lady and Sparkle are making me a better driver and a smarter person more engaged with my resource usage. People who drive alternative-fuel vehicles aren’t more greatly evolved than the rest of the human race. But as humans, we not only build tools, we, can — if we’re listening — learn from them, and some lessons are very timely.

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Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks

Several weeks ago Kore Press notified me that they had nominated my essay, “Falling In,” for a Pushcart prize (”Best of the Small Presses”). This essay is in Powder: Writing by Women in the Ranks, which, might I add, is a mighty fine read all around and makes a lovely gift for the soldier or veteran in your life, or anyone else who enjoys a good book.

I got a little weird about this news. Was it o.k. to share it? Brazen? Jinxish?  I finally wrote a writer who I was pretty confident had not been a Pushcart contender this year, who reassured me it was fine to share the news.

So mark 2008 as the year I had an essay published in a “Best of” anthology and had another essay nominated for a Pushcart. I will write this in longhand on an index card and tape it to my monitor, to comfort myself every time I get another rejection (and I need a lot more of those, because if I’m not getting rejections it means I’m not submitting) or when I feel low about my writing.

Leon County, if you’re reading this, I’d be happy to donate a copy of each book if it will go into your collection.  It feels bad to see both of “my” books unavailable for hundreds of miles from where I live (at least according to WorldCat) — 1000 miles, in the case of Powder. Talk about getting a dose of my own medicine!

But while I’m whining… a big warm THANK YOU to every library that added these books to your collections. It feels good to think that I could go into your library and see “my” book on a shelf… or even better, find that it was checked out. (I might just pass out if that happened.)  THANK YOU for adding small-press books in a tough economic year. THANK YOU for buying those books when you could have bought other, more popular titles. THANK YOU for the spine labels, and the bar codes, and the cataloging, and the shelf space. THANK YOU! THANK YOU! YOU ROCK!

For librarians interested in such, I’d be happy to offer my own librarian-writer insights on how to market creative nonfiction to patrons. Leon County is notable for having nearly every “Best American Essay” anthology, back to 1987, if memory serves — these alone make terrific lagniappe-style reading (I made it a goal to read all of them at least once, and succeeded) and would even work for book groups. These books now slumber peacefully in the 800s… each one explosively good reading. As someone said to me yesterday, don’t hide that light under a bushel!

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(Oh, and because two people have asked, Sparkle, my beloved Honda Civic Hybrid, is VERY reliable. The mechanic at the dealership who changed its oil and didn’t correctly tighten the oil pan plug — not so much.)

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In libraries, for instance, I advocated for protecting the book budget but advocated against spending to buy television sit-coms, such as Seinfeld. Also, as a long-term strategy, I advocated for abandoning the Dewey Decimal System (DDS) and advocated for a more user-friendly method such as that used by any national book chain. The harsh reality is libraries are experiencing drastic cuts; the DDS is labor intensive in addition to being user-unfriendly, particularly so for literacy-challenged people. Other libraries across the nation have abandoned the DDS, and we should, too.

It seems to bother you that the Tampa Tribune latched on to your comments about libraries, but that’s because you made it so easy to do so.

First, most of us who actually work in this field refer to it as DDC. So if you want to look like you know what you’re talking about — and not as if you just Googled up an acronym from Wikipedia — don’t use “DDS.”

Second, I agree that for some collections of a certain size, there are other methods of organization that can work. But if there is anything that underscores how little you know about library management, it’s that in the middle of a budget crisis, reclassifying an entire library collection might not be an administrator’s first priority — or anywhere on the list. It’s not like you can flip a switch and relabel those books — not just on their spines but in the catalog as well. It’s a daunting task and it sorta explains why Dewey is ingrained in libraries — because libraries like to give people bang for the buck, and that generally means that reclassifying hundreds of thousands of books is right up there with needlepointing covers for the self-check machines.

Think about what you’re saying. Do you really think that when libraries are experiencing blockbuster usage despite severe budget cuts, when the value of libraries has never been clearer, and when library resources — not just books, but computers and people — are stretched to the absolute limit (and then beyond) as we assist the working poor, the unemployed, jobseekers, and the rest of society, you really think it’s a priority to reorganize books?

Why does that remind me of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic?

You also don’t get that many if not most libraries buy materials shelf-ready — already classified. That means it doesn’t cost any more to use Dewey than it does to use BISAC headings (used in bookstores) or any other classification system.

I only know of one library that is actively and intentionally using BISAC. It’s a success, but they did it with a brand-new opening-day collection for a small library.

As for wading into what libraries purchase, may I suggest — you being in South Florida and all — you not start with a television series featuring obviously Jewish lead characters? Just a hint.  Also, it’s hard to understand what you do think is worthy for libraries to collect. No sit-coms would mean no television classics such as I Love Lucy.

When it comes to selection decisions, overall, I suggest you not go there. You risk looking dumb.

If you want to come up with good ideas for libraries, here’s an idea: talk to the people who work there. We have a lot of good ideas, not all of them consonant with conventional wisdom. But if you’re looking to target wasteful spending, try to find something less ridiculous than how libraries organize books.

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Best Biscuits

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

By design, because we could, we essentially had the same meal twice for Christmas.

In the morning, by popular demand, I served biscuits and sausage gravy. Then for dinner we had oyster pan roast, almost verbatim from the recipe in my Oyster Bar cookbook, except served over split toasted biscuits. (Call it Southern Pan Roast.) Both meals were complete unto themselves and utterly sublime.

I’ve carried this biscuit recipe around with me for over thirty years; it’s written in longhand in a small plaid recipe book that has traveled with me to San Francisco, New York City, England, Germany, Korea, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Florida.

We eat very little refined flour, but Christmas is an exception. I had to force myself to give the remaining biscuits to the birds. These biscuits are worth every rich little bite!

Bon appetit –

Best Biscuits

2 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
2 teaspoons sugar
1/2 cup shortening
2/3 cup milk

Sift the dry ingredients. Cut in the shortening. Stir in the milk all at once. Knead 10-12 strokes. Roll 1/2″ thick. Bake 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees.

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More juicy-juice for you:

Found by way of one of my new Facebook friends, this pro-marriage, anti-hate collection, “Please Don’t Divorce Us.”

We’re contemplating taking vacay for Inauguration Day and hosting a brunch (locals… are you interested?). But if you just want to relive the joy of election day, this collection of front pages by Poynter is pretty darn cool.

A Pew recent poll of (predominantly male) digirati pundits found that “The mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people in the world in 2020.” This is news? Travel anywhere outside the U.S. — in many parts of the world, the cell phone is the de facto connection device.

Due to my travel/conference schedule (coming soon!), I think I’m just going to miss the BooksAlive! 2009 literary festival in Panama City this February, but if you’re around, you don’t have to.

See this great library sculpture at Pima County Public Library.

GalleyCat has produced a fabulous “year in publishing” post series.

Hey you Southern localvore writer types: Michael Pollan will be speaking at the Georgia Organics conference, which is March 20-21.

Here’s a delightful NPR story about how to bake a better cookie. The breathy explanations by the chemist/baker make it all quite worthwhile.

Computers, Freedom, and Privacy is holding its 2009 conference this June in D.C. I was irked with them for years due to their EFF connection (long story, has to do with a library director harassed for planning to implement RFID) but I’m thawing out.

This post on Twitter types isn’t half-bad in terms of explaining who you’ll find.

Unshelved takes on Free Kittens.

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The reading backlog

Originally uploaded by freerangelibrarian

This is the backlog I’ll publicly confess to. I have other books I have quietly placed in the giveaway box, but since some of them are gifts, I’m not showing that picture.

Life is short… I’ll give these titles another try, but if these books are unread a year from now, into the giveaway box they go!

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I don’t want to put too many brackets around 2009. But one year from now, I want to be able to say that…

For my personal writing:

• I found at least three opportunities to market Powder
• I finished revising three essays-in-work and started three more
• I at least muddled through to a first draft of the short story I’m writing (after that, I don’t have to write fiction ever again, if I don’t want to)
• I kept to a schedule of ten hours per week for personal writing, plus 1 hour per week of writing administrivia, such as submissions and related work — at Chez Panera’s, if need be
• I submitted essays to literary journals at least twice a month (the acceptances I leave up to a higher power)
• I took at least one personal writing retreat
• I kept up my lifelong reading habit

For my professional self:

• I contributed 3 entries a month to Current Cites (to be a reviewer is to be a reader!)
• I both mentored and was mentored on significant issues at least twice during the year
• I established and led a profession-wide project (I have one in mind, more later)
• I learned at least one new skill that would be broadly applicable to my career for the next two decades
• I continued to have fun at My Place of Work and to be a good worker

For my physical health:

• I doubled the “run” part of my daily exercise, currently a little over 1 mile running, 1 mile walking (up from 2 miles walking as of 1/1/2008). Hardly an Olympian workout, but it’s still 30 minutes of weight-bearing exercise that keeps the ol’ badonkadonk in tune.

For my spiritual health:

• I found a way to connect with a faith community, even if it didn’t mean “going to church” (for example, I checked out Jacob Needleman’s book, Money and the Meaning of Life, and will try to attend half of the book group sessions on this book to be held at St John’s — I feel obligated to make the attempt, since I am hogging the only copy at the library!)

For my family life:

• I ensured we had “just fun” time out of the house for us every week — a movie, a dinner out, a walk, or something unrelated to errands
• I continued to support Sandy in her search for a new job, and kept us open to many possibilities
• I visited each of my parents at least once, and made my sister laugh a few times
• I connected at least once with every one my “family of choice” friends

For the world at large:

• I carefully monitored my carbon footprint and my family’s carbon footprint, and took steps to reduce them
• I participated in national dialogs about economics, social justice, and the environment
• I reduced our consumption of factory-farmed meat and dairy down to fewer than ten portions per month (also related to the carbon footprint, of course, but also a commitment to humane food production)

For whimsy:

• I experimented with a hobby I hadn’t thought of before
• I learned one long, complicated joke and told it successfully
• I made at least one very complicated dessert I had never attempted
• I sewed us new Halloween costumes

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“I think Ford will fall apart. They have just made too many bets on the wrong things. A bunch of the institutions that we rely on currently will, to some degree, decompose.” — John Elkington of the consulting firm Sustainability,  quoted in “Big Foot,” Michael Specter, The New Yorker, 2/25/2008

This is my short list. I had to work hard not to turn this into a glossary of the downturn (staycation, stagflation, etc.).

I’m fortunate that the worst of these terms are happening around me, not to me, but I did feel very uncomfortable when I stopped by a shed store yesterday and walked through a very nice shed that turned out to be a “repo.” That’s my index of hard times: when we start seeing foreclosures on sheds.

Oh, and for phrases on the way out? I submit “flat-panel TV.” Try buying one that isn’t!

Top Ten Words and Phrases for 2008

Presearch: the informal Google/Wikipedia look-ups students do before digging into better resources  (and yes, they do that! More about that in a future post about Project Information Literacy)

Tweet: A post on the microblogging site, Twitter. (Hardly a new term, but when I saw Twitter on the front page of the New York Times, I knew it deserved a mention.)

Long photo: A very short video, possibly first defined by Flickr, but moving into general usage through the ease and popularity of creating and uploading short video commentary to sites such as YouTube and Amazon.

“Pal around”: to serve on a nonprofit board

Maverick: A Republican out of ideas

Early voting: A way to get your “I Voted” sticker up to two weeks before Election Day

Credit default swaps: The willing suspension of pecuniary disbelief (and part of the disaster of our “postmodern” financial theory, per John Lancaster’s “Melting into Air,” another great New Yorker essay)

Jingle mail: Walking away from a mortgage (the “jingle” comes from mailing the house keys to the lender)

Underwater mortgage: I didn’t even know this phrase until I did some presearch on jingle mail, but once I saw it, I knew what it meant, and that it belonged on the list: a mortgage where the borrower owes more than the house is worth.

Change: What we can finally see happening, just around the corner — if we’re willing to remember that change means none of us stay in place;  that there may be, in fact must be, sacrifices ahead for all of us; that we all have to participate in the process; and that we need to be patient. The accumulated problems of our current economic crisis are like weight gain: you didn’t put it on in a day, and you won’t take it off in a day. Have faith, be part of the solution, and hang in there.

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[Publib] Heartwarming story of the season

John Richmond
Tue Dec 23 11:57:52 EST 2008

Sorry, no Friday humor, but just to make you feel all warm and gooey
inside, here is a true story.  I can't say that the names have been
changed, because I don't even know the name of the patron involved, or
his wife.  If you think this is gooey and warm enough to melt the
hearts of taxpaying citizens whose votes you're trying to get to
finance, say, a referendum, you have permission to claim the story as
your own, and make up any names you want.  No copyrighting,
trademarking, or anything else here.

On Thursday we held our annual staff-board Christmas (yes, we still
use that word here in the Heartland) and longevity awards luncheon.
We close from 11:30am-1:30pm.  Just outside the door to the large
meeting room where we party, a staff member had placed a small table
with a tray of different candies and nuts.  Including gumdrops (or
spicedrops, if you prefer).  Not too long after 1:30, we had
re-opened, but post-luncheon clean-up was still underway.

Two elderly, semi-frail gentlemen on their way out of the library
stopped, looked at the table of stuff that is bad for one's teeth and
waistline, and helped themselves to what, theoretically, was not
theirs, but who cares, it's the *holidays*, etc.  One of the men asked
me if he could have some of the gum/spicedrops to take home to his
wife, as "she just loves those spicedrops."  Not your everyday
question, but someone found a container of some sort and dropped drops
into said container.  I believe that the man borrowed a bit of
chocolate, too, and the two men left.  The man who asked for the
gum/spicedrops did mention that it was hard for his wife to get out
and about.

Yesterday he came back and went to circ to check something out.  He
stood around for awhile, visiting with the circ manager and whoever
else was there, lingering longer than one might ordinarily linger, and
finally--the truth came out.  He wondered if we had any more of those
gum/spice drops, because his wife was so happy to get them.  Circ
manager, thinking quickly--once she knew what was up--said, "Don't
worry.  We will *get* you some more gum drops."  The man left.  Last
night circ mgr bought a bag of gum/spicedrops.  She telephoned the
patron's home this morning, the wife answered, and circ mgr said, "We
have a delivery for you."  The woman sounded amazed and/or confused,
but said fine.

So the circ mgr went with two other staff members and delivered the
bag of gum/spicedrops, sang a Christmas carol, and visited for about
half an hour.  Turns out that the woman is on oxygen 24/7 and is
practically confined to home.  There are three children and their
families, but they're all far away, and the elderly couple is going to
be alone for Christmas.

The funny thing is that, after five-plus years of talking about
delivery to the homebound, we're finally taking steps to work on such
a project...but our first delivery was a bag of candy to an elderly
couple, home alone.

I give staff credit for, as they say in Jargon, Excellent Customer
Service (ECS--wonder why we, who love acronyms and initialisms, don't
speak of ECS...or maybe we do, and I've just been oblivious).

Happy HOLIDAYS,

John Richmond, Director
Alpha Park Public Library District
3527 So. Airport Road
Bartonville, IL 61607

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