Busy Day Imagining the Future

No stories today except what I did. I attended an all day meeting where I was told to imagine the future. What would my library look like in the year 2025. It was interesting. We were also asked to look at other companies as metaphors to figure out how my library meets those same sorts of services, etc. or how it would look if we could. They wanted me to imagine, so you can understand if I'm a little worn out to tell you a story. I did write today, though. I'm just not sharing it as it was a very messy Ten Minute exercise about a woman who sets out to settle a feud by calling up the Seven Devils of her childhood stories and using her own heart as the sacrifice whether the feud is settled successfully or not.

Back to the future library, though. MOOCs are in the news about what a cool idea they are but what really is going to happen to them, with them and so on. I had this idea that in the future, people could earn certificated for attending these free virtual classes and completing all the assignments and that my library was one of the certificate granting institutions and that it offered MOOCs in Groups where people could work together through a class so it wouldn't be such an isolated task and that way people would have something of a support system to help them get through the class beyond somebody answering email. These certificates would help people gain more skills they could put on their resumes that they make at classes we offer in partnership with some sort of staffing agency that also offers, with my library, a cloud based staffing service. We would fund all this through a grant, of course. And then with the other classes we offer in other skills and small business, etc, and through the skills learned in maker spaces, we would help people be able to start their own small businesses at home or part time or whatever. But what does that have to do with books? Libraries are more than books.

I think the group my library assembled to take on the task of helping to imagine the future is a good one. I met many interesting people today. But we were kept so busy I barely got to really chat with any of them. I guess I'll have to wait until next time.

The most interesting person I met today, though, worked for a non-profit homeless agency, and he said they had plans to end homelessness for vets and youth by 2015. That's incredible. I hope it's true. Then, he said, they were going to tackle chronic homelessness. Amazing work people in this city are doing. I can't wait to see how they do it.

NaNoWriMo: Looming Closer

Okay, so after reading several forum discussions, I have decided to write something brand new. The problem is I have nothing brand new to write. I don't want to go through any of my notebooks because I really do want to do something brand new. I need my brain to get in gear and come up with something. Not even my dreams are helping, though. Last night I was dreaming about Copyright for Cultural Institutions. Nothing really creative in that. Trust me.

When I was doing my postbac in creative writing at UH, I had a teacher (it may have been my friend Melanie, who is an amazing poet) assign us a ten minute exercise. Everyday or every other day, we were supposed to sit down at our computers and write for ten minutes straight, no editing or critiquing as you wrote. We were not supposed to fix our mistakes or anything. We were only supposed to type for ten minutes. I really liked them and they were really good to get me writing, so in preparation for NaNoWriMo, since I have no ideas coming, I am going to do this everyday for the next five days. Below is today's.

I am so worried about what to write for NaNoWriMo this year. This is the first time I’m really going to participate. I wanted to write one of the two stories I’ve been thinking about for the past few years, but I think I should do something completely new. Something to write about… Maybe library related about a little girl who gets lost in a library and meets all sorts of characters. Sounds kind of boring. How funny. I’m not supposed to edit this as I go along but I’m critiquing my ideas as I go though. Silly Little Girl lost in a library. What happens to her? She meets a werewolf and a jellyfish. I love jellyfish and there really isn't ever stories about them—at least a nice story. Maybe that should be saved for non-fiction. She just got these really nice shoes that she loves. They’re pink and light up when she runs or jumps but she’s not allowed to run or jump in the house or in the library and it’s too hot to run and jump outside. She is a child of the 21^st century after all. So she does it secretly in the library when she wanders into a closed section by accident. When she sees no one is there she runs and jumps and skips down the aisles, her shoes making little squeaking noises every now and again. Then she stops and she hears a squeak that isn’t coming from her shoes. So she quietly tries to find the squeaking that isn’t her and she finds a little white mouse—make that two. They see her. They run to each other. They look back at her and then turn around and slip into a book—but hey that book is closed. I didn’t know mice could squeeze themselves flat like that. Hm…What is that all about? So she tiptoes over to the shelf, pulls the book and…she finds no mice. No mice whatsoever, but she does see a really old creepy looking castle in the dark with a moon and an owl.

“What would two mice want to do with a creepy old castle like that?” she asks herself. She can’t figure it out, so she flips through the book some more but because the book is so old, the pages start coming out bit by bit in her hand and they start to crumble. “Oh, no!” She drops the book and looks around hoping no one saw her or heard the loud bang. She figures she should pick it back up and just stuff the pages in. When she picks up the book again, she sees the two mice. One is holding the other which looks to be unconscious or dead. “Oh, no! did I do that? Oh, I’m so sorry, poor mousey.”

The other mouse looks up at her with tiny mouse tears in its eyes saying, “why would you do that? Look at the mess you’ve made of our homes.”

“I’m so sorry tiny mouse. I…I don’t know what I should do.”

“Well, maybe you should fix this home of ours. I’m sure we’re not the only ones you’ve disturbed. And at that moment, she feels a sharp pinch on her little finger.

“Ow!” She nearly drops the books again, but holds on very tightly to her chest so that she won’t drop the book again causing further damage. When she looks down at the book, though, there is a little

Time's up.

Hm...maybe I should finish that last thought. I think it was a lizard of some type. A tiny one, of course.