14 May 2020—It had to happen. We “went” to our first online lecture “at” the public library last night. It was a presentation on rabbits and foxes on San Juan Island given by one of the National Park Service staff members. We signed up through Zoom (wish we had stock in that company!) and watched from the convenience of my office. The advantage was that we could mute our audio and video and talk throughout the lecture. The disadvantage was—well, everything, as anyone now participating in such “meetings” can tell you. (Iconic photo of eagle and fox battling over a rabbit, taken by local photographer last year.) (I put “sneer” quotes around the words that anthropologist E. B. Tylor would call “survivals.” These are words that are leftovers from a previous time, like when going meant actually leaving one’s residence, and at meant being in a particular location, and meetings implied getting together. The best examples of survivals I can think of appear on our computers: files, desktop, labels, mailboxes, and so on.)
Nevertheless, the library is still offering programs, like online story hour for kids, book club discussions (Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being—yeah!), nature lectures, like the one Mac and I watched, and more. In fact, I am keeping the interlibrary loan maven, Heidi, quite busy with requests for journal articles. I can’t get any books through ILL right now, but I seem able to get almost any article that’s out there. And fast! The librarians around the country seem eager to do something (anything) so I’m trying to keep Heidi and the others engaged with requests. And knowing that many of us had burned through the bag o’ books we grabbed before the shutdown, the Friends of the Library recently set bins of free books outside the library for people to take. Of course, I’m not sure how many takers of Robert Parker or Nora Roberts there are. The people in line ahead of us grabbed exactly one book: a hardback copy of Uncle Wiggly. After placing bets on whether we would find something (anything), we grabbed two, which was two more than I bet on. Miscellaneous Note: While I have read some non-O authors, I am pursuing my O-algorithm, so have read more Ruth Ozeki, Jenny Offill, Andrew O’Hagen, Michael Ondaajte, Yewande Omotoso, Olaf Olafsson, and Chinelo Okparanta. Comments are closed.
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Author Rebecca Moore is Professor Emerita of Religious Studies at San Diego State University. She is currently Reviews Editor for Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions and Co-Director of The Jonestown Institute. Archives
December 2021
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