[FRIAM] Curmudgeons Unite!

[jon zingale]

Steve,

MAKIF'AT writes:
“Books are catnip – or porn, if you want to be vulgar about it - to me, and
if they’re in plain sight, well, I’m going to be looking at them.  I’m also
gonna hightail it out after the meeting and look up as many of the titles as
I can remember to see if they should go on my wishlist.  I’m a bibliophile,
and that’s what we do.”

I relate deeply. Thank you, Signore Eco. In another life, I would have loved
to be a librarian. When Margaret retired from her position as the SFI head
librarian, I asked her if I could be considered for the post. She reminded
me politely that I don't have a library science degree. The more unfortunate
reason, as far as I am concerned, is that I simply don't have the
temperament for it. I am hot-blooded through and through. A few years ago
the downtown branch of the Santa Fe public library notified me to return a
copy of Richard Hamming's 'Numerical Methods', a really nice hard-cover
Springer copy. I did and then waited for a day to check it back out again,
but alas it was gone, and not just checked out by another patron. The entire
math section disappeared! I went to the desk and asked about the book. The
math section was boxed up and sent to auction. They assured me that they
were to get new books soon. I asked for another copy of the book and they
were sad to inform me that it was too expensive for them to replace. One
month later, I returned to find that the math books had been replaced by
books about mathematicians. Surely they were just ignorant, us wizards read
such esoteric tomes and they cannot be responsible for knowing what it is we
want or need. I walked up to the checkout desk and asked if they were hiring
for a curation position, and they again sadly informed me that they were
not. I haven't returned since. Please, make no mistake, Alexandria is
burning.

As far as Go documentaries are concerned, have you checked out 'The
Surrounding Game'🀀? A co-director of the film, Cole Pruitt, was finishing
up a post-doc at LANL when he and Will completed the film. Cole would join
us for the Saturday Santa Fe go club meetup at St. John's to play and he was
a pleasure to learn from (~3 dan?).

🀀 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surrounding_Game



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