Some books are hard to buy for the library because they are new and popular; this 1996 book is hard to buy because everyone on talk shows is quoting it in regard to the Fourteenth Admendment and its prohibition against insurrectionists as candidates for office. The whole Admendment is relevant now because we are in a time that is in many ways like the period after the civil war when the admendment was ratified. The first chapter is "The Perils of Originalism." The print is small on my cheap copy, but the prose is flowing and elegant.

January has been all about learning QuickBooks and getting the library's three years of financial transactions imported into it. I find that we can navigate and learn the software with no problem, but it is the underlying knowledge of bookkeeping that we lack. Accounting has ancient and arcane origins and terms like "account" may not mean what they mean in simple English. For the last two years, QB simply imports data from banks and credit cards and we categorize those transactions; for 2021 we have to enter the data. I want to read this paragraph a year from now and know that we have mastered QB for the library.

-- The plural of anecdote is not data.
-- “god created war so that americans would learn geography” - mark twain
-- “The principles of true art is not to portray, but to evoke.” ~Jerzy Kosinski
-- "The future is already here. It's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson
-- "I am often struck by the dangerous narcissism fostered by spiritual rhetoric that pays so much attention to individual self improvement and so little to the practice of love within the context of community." – bell hooks
--"Inasmuch as the future is always surprising, the past is always changing...To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated." -- J. Carse

markers: swag surfing