I started reading Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (written with her daughter Camille Kingsolver and her husband Steven Hopp) the very day it was released. Actually, I listened to it on my iPod. Now, some people tell me they don’t like to listen to audiobooks, but I say thank goodness for MP3 players and audible.com.

So I was listening to the book, and at one point she was talking about possibilities. How little it would take to grow, say, tomatoes on the back deck of your apartment -- if you happen to live in an apartment, which I do. If nothing else, you could grow tomatoes. Just grow some tomatoes, would you please?! Save a little fossil fuel. Then I realized how deeply I had been resisting the idea of a garden on our balcony: "What if we had to move at the spur of the moment...for some...reason...?" I argued.

Andrew (my boyfriend) wasn't going for it. "Well, and what about the piano you bought at Piano City last Christmas?" he reminded me. "Pianos don't move themselves."

Especially when they're on the second floor! Very true!

But it took Barbara Kingsolver's Miracle book to make me realize that sometimes growing and maintaining a garden, no matter how small, is nothing less than a political act. Before too long, I found myself making a no excuses declaration at the dinner table: "Of course we can plant tomatoes! Two decent sized planters will work just fine! What if we were to start tomorrow?"

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Fortunately, Andrew has a green thumb. The tomatoes are growing taller and stronger all the time thanks to him, and after having watered them this morning, his shoulders smelled like tomato leaves. I told him so and he grinned and said, "Thank you! I like smelling like a tomato leaf! It's one of my favorite smells."

"Mine too," I told him.



We thought to grow our little kitty his own pot o' leafy grass (no...not that kind of grass!), and he loves to partake of it every morning. It's neat to see how he's incorporated it into his routine. And tomato leaf must be one of his favorite smells, too! After he's had his morning mouthful of grass, he takes some time to sniff the tomato leaves. But when he pads back into the living room and I scoop him up in my arms, I happen to think he smells like a little sunbeam.

Well, once again, that's the power of books for you, which is why I became a librarian in the first place. And if you read Barbara Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, you just might find yourself planting tomatoes some summer evening in your own backyard.

Ruth Ozeki, another novelist I admire, recently wrote a lovely essay about libraries -- especially public libraries (posted May 30). She writes, "We’re really lucky to have libraries, and we should use them all the time..."

I love the quote she slips in at the close of her essay:

Libraries will get you though times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.

- Anne Herbert - Writer, editor of Co-Evolutionary Quarterly

I read all day Sunday! In particular, I've been reading Joyce Carol Oates' The Gravedigger's Daughter, and oh! How I love this book! I couldn't stop reading it. My boyfriend finally said around 1 a.m., "Okay, if I don't turn out the lights now, you'll crank out another 100 pages."

I've read quite a few of Oates' novels and have enjoyed most of them, but some resonate more deeply with me than others. The Falls was one; We Were the Mulvaneys was another; and now The Gravedigger's Daughter is in the world.

I've started going through the list of historic homes to be found in Adobes, Bungalows, and Mansions of Riverside, California Revisited, by Esther Klotz and Joan Hall. I feel it is my responsibility as the new local history librarian to know the who, what, when, and where regarding these historic homes.





I've been driving past many of these houses for years, but I'm truly seeing them for the first time. Pictured here is the Henry A. Westbrook House on 2682 Orange Street. According to Klotz and Hall, the house was built in 1874 (John W. North founded Riverside in 1870). I pulled over to the side of the road and shot this beauty with my digital camera. You can see from the photo (especially if you enlarge it) that the owner has been hard at work restoring the home. Even though I tried not to be too obvious, he nevertheless discovered I was taking pictures of his house, because it seems to me he suddenly materialized next to the white picket fence. (Ooopsies! My apologies, sir!)

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My friend Lisa and I are going to take a drive one of these weekends and go through maybe twenty houses on the list. We thought we'd read the accompanying text aloud while parked in front of the various houses. I wonder how much their owners will appreciate this. We'll do our best to be discreet!

New Library Perfume

While I must admit that many libraries seem to have a "smell" to them, I never would have thought to bottle it up and hawk it on the Internet. But alas, that's what separates Christopher Brosius and myself, for he has done just that. At his personal perfume shop, he sells one fragrance that he calls "In the Library," which Brosius describes as a combination of "Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish." Doesn't sound too bad. As a sales pitch he asks, "Don’t you find there are few things more wonderful than the smell of a much-loved book?"

Now to be honest, I thought people came to the library because of the excellent customer service we provide them as we check out their books and answer their reference questions. Now I find I'm mistaken. They just like the smell of the books. Oh well.

But then it dawned on me: he surely must not think that we librarians are potential customers for his product. I mean, after spending eight hours working in the place, I go home smelling as if I have been "in the library." So I guess I'll save the 55 bucks, and when people ask me what cologne I am wearing, I'll just say, "Oh, it's my designer scent."