The Librarian

Yesterday I went to the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin and signed my life away; I officially enrolled as a Masters candidate! It was the next step in a journey that started way back when I was very young, walking to our old "downtown library", holding my dad's hand, and giving Dr. Seuss' Happy Birthday To You and Where the Wild Things Are to the elderly lavender-haired youth services librarian for check out.

It continued through elementary school with Miss McCarthy, the librarian at Randall School, who was really grumpy, but nevertheless allowed multiple serial check-outs of The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, Pippi Longstocking, and Little House in the Big Woods. (Miss McCarthy just didn't like us 6th graders using the 8mm film viewer to watch Walt Disney's The Lemming Migration over and over, forwards and backwards -- but it was so life-affirming to watch the lemmings jump back UP onto the top of the cliff!)

And so on. I've been taking classes for the last 5 years to become a school library media specialist , and last summer decided I would go for the gold ring: the MLS. (angels descend, celestial harps play) But in any good quest, there are adversaries ("Here there be dragons.") My first test yesterday was to get the crabcake secretary to authorize me to register for the seminar I plan to take. She informed me "You have to take these 5 basic courses before I'll authorize you for THIS one!"

But I have a fairy godmother -- an advisor with whom I've been in communication for the last year, who seems to like me because a) I've got lots of teaching experience already, and b) she was my husband's 6th grade English teacher and he was such a good, sweet and creative child. (She said something like that.) So SHE authorized me for the course I want and I'm on my way.

But what all this is leading up to is that I wanted to link to this fantastic essay by Garrison Keillor, which appeared in a lot of papers today. It's a sign that the omnipotent lavender-haired library goddess is smiling on my journey.