Time

I can’t believe it is after 8pm already! When I sat down to write the posts, it was barely after six pm – where did those two hours go? I wrote my posts and then read other people’s posts…the time flew by!

Police Academy is starting on TV.  I doubt I will watch it because it is pretty damn silly and I’m not really in the mood.  Maybe I’ll start reading now.

I did watch a movie last night called “The Swamp” which wasn’t that bad.  It has to do with a young woman renting out a farmhouse in an effort to escape her hectic life.  The place is quite nice and she seems pretty happy with it even though it edges up to a swamp.

In the basement, she finds a beautiful glass door with a red rose in the middle.  Deciding it was silly to have it in the basement collecting dust, she has a local carpenter install it as the door to her studio.  Once it is up and in place, she starts noticing whispering in the house while she works.  Than, after a bit, she starts seeing dead people - a teenage boy and an 8 year old girl.

Haunted by what happens to the little girl – it shows the teenage boy do something to her on the bed & then holding her lifeless body in his arms – she decides to enlist the aid of a psychic to find out.  Forrest Whitaker plays the psychic – I like him.

Anyhoo, other people in the small town die gruesome deaths once the door is hung.  Whitaker decides that the reason the ghosts are talking to her is because she is connected to them when she was also 8 years old.

As I know no one who will watch this movie, I’m going to give a spoiler so if you are going to watch it, stop reading now.  It comes about that the woman finally does remember that she was with her 8 year old friend playing “Hide and Seek” a night many years before.  She hid in the closet while the friend counted.

Before the friend could finish counting, the drunk teenage boy comes into the room and does what he does to her.  The woman, as a child, sees everything.  When the babysitter and her friends come upstairs to check on the kids, they find the other boy in the room carrying the little girl’s lifeless body.  They all decide they are going to cover it up by dumping the little girl’s body in the swamp and saying she drowned by accident.

Well, the main woman, then a child, takes a gun and shoots the teenage boy in the back – then runs away into the swamp.  The others assume she fell into quicksand and drowned so they don’t search for her.  Instead, they dump both the teenager’s and little girls bodies into quicksand – the story is that they just disappeared.  The other child is found by hunters but is too traumatised to tell anyone what happened.  Later that same year, after her parents are killed in a car accident, she is adopted by a couple in another state – never remembering until she returns to the farmhouse what had transpired there years before.

The door, in case you didn’t guess, was the portal between the ghost world and the real world so by hanging it, she had inadvertently invited the ghosts across the threshold. 

It was an alright movie – startling at times and I did have to turn my head once when one of the teens, now grown, was impaled by some ugly farm equipment.

Brave One

Well, I finally decided to check the damage on my personal library.  I knew most of my books were gone but didn’t want to find out exactly how bad the damage was because I knew it would upset me.

Today, after writing the post on the libraries, I decided I was finally feeling brave enough to take stock of my loss and see where I need to go from here.  Here are the final statistics:

Of the 278 books I’ve read in the past five or so years, I owned 115 when I lived in Florida.  Of the 115 I owned, 22 made it to Iowa – leaving me with a deficit of 93 books.

When I moved from Iowa to Florida, I lost quite a bit more than that because I had the complete set of Dean Koontz, James Patterson and John Saul’s works.  In Florida I had started buying the titles that were my favorites from each author rather then buying each book again. 

I keep a detailed list of all the books I read, alphabetised by author.  I have a box next to the author’s name to check once I own the book.  I also rate the books for my own use later when evaluating an author overall.  It is sad to have so few checks in the “Own” column now.

Often I wish I had kept a list of books I have read since childhood but I didn’t.  I know I read the Trixie Beldon and Nancy Drew series but there were other books in there as well.  My son, since becoming more of an avid reader in the past two years, also keeps a list of all the books he reads.  He doesn’t own any because he doesn’t have enough space to keep them – he uses the library a lot.  I can only imagine how many books would be on my list if I had kept one since childhood.  {sigh}

Libraries

Earlier I went to the Coralville Public Library to pick up a book (“The Keepsake” by Tess Gerritsen) they had reserved for me.  I ended up with a second one that was in the “new release” section – Patricia Cornwell’s “Book of the Dead.”  

I really like Coralville’s library.  I like how it is set up, I like that it has a separate area for loafing around in the front so a person could sit out there and write or whatever.  It also has a few easy chairs – not as many as the Iowa City Public Library of course, but a few.  IC’s library will always be my favorite here in this area.  I must say though that Sarasota had them beat by a long shot.

The Coralville library has a large fountain in the middle of the lobby that extends from the bottom story up to the main one.  I like this fountain though I can’t say why exactly.  It isn’t a fountain that is ornate or anything, maybe I like the clean lines of it or that it extends up like trees so it gives that earthy feeling.  IC should get one or at least a large fish tank or something.

The problem with the IC library is that it is downtown which constitutes fighting for parking or parking in a ramp just to run in to pick up books.  I love libraries and feel that they should be easily accessible to everyone – not just the people walking around downtown.  I heard a lot of grumbles about it as I sat in the shade in front of it one day so I know I’m not alone in this feeling.

On my way back home, I decided it was time to get a library card at the North Liberty library as well.  I strongly feel that anyone living in a town or city should support their library by having a library card and checking out a book a couple times a year.  Some of the funding, at least when I worked at the library it was this way, came from how many people had cards and how many books were checked out.  Libraries are always underfunded yet so very important.  I would never settle in a city that didn’t have or didn’t care to have a good library system – it is too vital to the community.

The North Liberty Library is housed in the Community & Rec Building on Hwy 965.  I practically wept when I went inside – I’ve never, ever, ever been in a library so tiny in my entire life.  Even WL’s library is three times the size of NL’s.  What a sad commentary about the things of importance in this town. 

I got my library card – which they don’t issue cards actually, you are in the computer so they need your last name when you check out.  They take your picture and have that with your record so you don’t have to worry about a card or even bringing in your driver’s license.  Heck, you wouldn’t even need to bring in your purse if you would rather not.  I do like this feature.

They had books on top of the six foot bookcases, that is how cramped they are.  In one of the isles is a little foot stool for climbing on to get up to grab a book.  Now, I’m quite positive this is against OSHA regulations but I would never complain as the library was so pitiful. 

In support of my new library, I checked out three books: “Bone Factory” by Steven Sidor; “Buried At Sea” by Paul Garrison; and “Entombed” by Linda Fairstein.  The last one I might have already read but I can’t remember so grabbed it too.

It’s smallness endeared it to me right away so I spoke to the librarian about what plans were being laid for a new building.  She said they have to come up with a lot of their own money before the City will give them funding to have their own building and expand.  Well, I’m all for a bigger building so left my name with her in case they had any fundraisers I could volunteer at.  I found myself wishing, once again, that I was rich because this is definitely something I would donate a few million into.

Libraries, to me, have always been sacred places.  I can’t explain it.  I have loved libraries since I was a child and Mom would let us go to the storybook reading by Hazel at the IC library.  I worked with Hazel years later - she had the same feeling about libraries as I do.  It is such a magical place brimming with so much knowledge that none of us could ever learn it all in our lifetimes.  I would make a great librarian but the field is practically impossible to get into.

Books have always been an important part of my life.  I love owning my favorite titles and dream about having a home big enough to house my own mini-library.  Of all the things I can picture about my dream house, the library and kitchen are rooms that are always the most vivid. 

I can’t wait until I have enough extra money each month to start building my library again.  The thing that also always excites me about this prospect is buying the used books from the library – thus getting books I love and contributing money to the library at the same time.  It is a win-win situation.

So folks, if you don’t have a library card at your local library, I implore you to go get one.  Check out a book or movie or something a couple times a year; explore the stacks for new authors and new subjects of interest.  Libraries have virtually every topic of study known to man and librarians who can help you find the answers to so many questions.  Check it out!