Concrete Lunch

My first job as a librarian was at the Johnson Space Center library – the Scientific and Technical Information Center. I was there from 1996 to 1998. It was a great first job. As a young person it made me feel great to be part of something important. I got to work with some incredible people. I was there there morning of the fire on Space Station Mir. When I got to work I was immediately pressed into service, retrieving documents and specifications as engineers worked to keep the astronauts alive. It was a great start to my career.

Watching the Artemis II moon flyby mission today is very moving. Thirty years ago you needed NASA TV on cable to watch this kind of thing. Today you can watch the mission from launch to splashdown on a phone in your pocket.

Remembering these words from Carl Sagan seems appropriate today, as four smart and brave people travel farther from Earth than anyone ever has, to loop around the moon and come home. We can still do great things. BUT we need great people in charge, not the orange scumbag and his circle of religious kooks, bigots, and nincompoops.  We could provide healthcare and education to everyone. We could shelter and feed the world’s hungry. We should do that and more.

I’ve been in my job for 20 years. Before that I had other jobs. I’ve been a librarian for 30 years. In that time electronic tools on the computer have come and gone.

We are always switching to the “next big thing” that will without a doubt make our work easier and “more productive.” They always involve learning a new system, which will be abandoned in a year or two for the new next big thing. It’s all wasteful bullshit. Wasteful of our money and our time and our energy. I have rarely seen it actually save time or money or improve anything. I can’t actually think of a single time.  In almost every case, a simple Word (or a plain text document!) would be better, saved in a logical files structure that no one fucks with.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my job and my profession and my colleagues. We (and probably you, if you work somewhere) are simply caught up in a consumerist cycle of bullshit.

When I retire in 9 months one of my goals is to not pay attention to any ephemeral bullshit again. I’m going to write by hand and on the computer. I’m going to read novels, both science fiction and some classics, that are timeless. I’m going to enjoy the time I have with my wife, which is the  most precious thing I have. I’m going to take naps with our now 16-year old cat. I’m going to play with our sweet little sheltie dog.

I am lucky…

• To have met my wife
• To have had the parents and family I was born with
• To be in a good situation
• That we (my wife and I) are both still alive

These four facts are never lost on me.

I watched the space launch yesterday. It reminded me that we can, as a nation and a people, still do great things. Instead we choose to argue over who gets to be a citizen, can’t agree that everyone can be provided healthcare coverage, and allow a few individual scumbags to hoard the wealth generated by our collective creativity and hard work. Fuck Elon Musk. Fuck anyone who drives a Tesla. Fuck AI. Fuck Trump and Fuck all his supporters.

So, here’s what I’ve been doing this month.

• Playing Traveller
• Reading science fiction
• Playing D&D
• Went to the No Kinds rally in downtown Dallas
• Went on vacation to San Diego and to Catalina Island, where I discovered my fear of heights is worse that it used to be.
• Teaching at aikido

As always I find myself feeling rushed to do everything I want to do. I hate feeling rushed. I am looking forward to the end of the year, retiring (becasuse, again, I am old now), and enjoying a non-rushed lifestyle with my wife.

Getting back to my practice of reading at least 5% of a novel every day has gone pretty well. I have failed a couple of days, but in March I finished 5 books, 4 of which I actually started in March. Short SF novels, but it is a really enjoyable practice. I love it. I don’t really understand people who don’t like to read. I feel like a lot of people have reading beat into them as children and learn not to like it. I also think that the internet and social media have ruined many people’s ability to concentrate for more than 30 seconds or to simply slow down their brains and enjoy what they are doing. I think it’s pretty clear that is the case.

Speaking of reading…I have noticed a trend on various social media/video sites of young people (they are all young to me) talking about…GASP!…reading books! I think this is an entirely positve thing, even if those folks are attention seeking monetizers. I think people reading books is just a good thing, and to some extent I think posting on social media about reading, which is the antithesis of social media, is a wonderfully subversive thing (even if it is unintentionally subversive).

Overall it has been a good month! Heading into April I am already loathing the upcoming Texas summer. It is a bummer. Next year maybe we’ll pack up the cat and the dog and go somewhere nice during the hell-months.