I was reminded just now of a quote:
We can't all be heroes. There has to be someone sitting on the curb clapping as we go by!
My hands are getting sore!

A long time ago I stood in a book store, book in hand, waiting to be served whilst four cashiers chatted animatedly about the workshop they had just attended.
The workshop dealt with marketing strategies for small book shops.
I stood there wanting to buy a fifty dollar book whilst they ignored me.
Finally I started to laugh and they looked at me in puzzlement.
I held up the book and said: "I'd like to buy this book, please!"
One of them got the irony and laughed with me.
Yesterday I sat with a group of women none of whom were larger than a size eight and for twenty minutes they discussed dieting and how weight was simple to control.
I have been on every diet imaginable to mankind.
I am very healthy. I am not proud of my weight...but it does not define me. I know for a fact that one of the women in the room is frantically trying to eat...she has difficulties just maintaining her weight since dealing with oral cancer...thanks to an earnest dietitian who said weight was bad, she was 100 pounds before her surgery. I know that another woman has a daughter who fights anorexia. And I know that two other women in the room are wraith-like...
     But what I knew most was that I would have to sit quietly and not say a word. I obviously was not an authority on weight control....
     That having been said, if I had decided to say anything, I would have cautioned all of them that appearance does not define a being...that we all have to work on the inner being...that's what I'm working on! Inner beauty...alas that is in direct conflict with my Irish nature...it is a battle with the yes-but's...
      And of course the great irony is that I have lost close to 20 pounds in this last year and no one notices...but I know...and my doctor knows...and that's what counts...
       I think Chihuly understood inner beauty.

The poppies are out! The poppies are out! For one week they explode then disappear.

So I was part of a James Joyce reading...We rehearsed...and people fluttered...and the signal was given and we began...

And there was silence...the man at the end of the table did not give his line...the whole table looked down in his direction and still he said nothing. He is a very fine actor but I think the fluttering had got to him...I couldn't believe what was happening...Wasn't anyone going to rescue him...and I couldn't bare the silence and the staring. He was a proverbial deer in the headlights. So...I changed voices and read his lines. From then on he was there...
What amused me or puzzled me was I'm not too sure if anyone realized I'd read his lines. There were six other readers. No one looked in my direction...I do not know to this day whether they were approving or censuring! Why did you read his line?
But it took me back to my first day in class at the University of Edinburgh. I arrived late and tucked into the back of the room. The professor asked a question. There was silence...and more silence...as he waited...and finally I could stand it no longer. I gave the three word obvious answer: Man has soul.

All the heads turned and for the first time in my life I understood what it meant to be a foreigner...they were not impressed.

The professor smiled and said: Ah a breath of fresh air from America!

The class sighed.

In Edinburgh such questions are rhetorical.

Three months later one of the students finally spoke to me. What part of the States are you from?
And I laughed and replied: Canada...
I had so many invitations for tea after that....

Went on a guided tour of Giffentown on the only sunny day of the weekend. Found this on the door leading into the now vacated horse stables...the condos are winning out...and was reminded of a book I just bought - Debbie Millman's Look Both Ways - Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design...
I have to go back and be more careful with my picture...the words need to be saved and are easier to save than the horses.
And that reminded me of libraries...I don't use libraries even though there is one two blocks up and I work for the volunteers who make money for said library.
I don't use libraries because fifty years ago at McGill, the librarians made it very clear to me that I was an intruder...I caused their books to be disturbed...
That has stayed with me and now between my Kobo and Amazon, I don't need the library...
However I was in the library the other day thanks to a Bloomsday project. On June 16 for 24 hours the text of Ulysses was read around the world.
I was reading with the Montreal readers and we were practicing...and enjoying ourselves thoroughly. Unfortunately we were enjoying ourselves loudly and we did not realize that the room though over a hundred years old was not sound proof.
A desk clerk fluttered into the room and without hesitation began her speech: Don't you know you are in a library? You can't behave like this in a library. You will have to whisper or I will have you removed.
Our average age was 60 (I'm being gracious.) Four of us were retired teachers. All of us were academics. We were horrified and embarrassed. We had no idea. And we apologized immediately.
The librarian was not satisfied and in fact repeated her speech three times.
I would like to think that she was treating us like school children, but in fact I'm afraid she was treating us like senile seniors who didn't understand where we were.
And that's when I realized that whereas fifty years ago I was afraid of what the librarians would say to me, now I was afraid of what I might say to this young woman who didn't have the sensibility to understand that she had made her point the first time around.
     We left and did not return...until the event...we broadcast from the library to a world wide audience.
      That young woman is probably very proud of her achievement. Little does she know - we upstaged her by fifty years!!
   

Ok...almost enough of pansies!

I lost my breath today...fortunately I didn't lose my cool.
Six of us were working on a reading from Ulysses in the Reading Room of the library...we got carried away with the crowd scene...

A young nondescript librarian came into the room and said: This is a library.If you can't whisper, I will have to have to have you removed...
We immediately apologized and explained that we hadn't realized that the room wasn't sound proof. And she repeated her threat. The room is not sound proof. If you do not whisper, I will have you removed. She was speaking to six retired teachers not one of whom had spoken to their respective students in that way ever. She was half our age.
       And I was transported back fifty years the the librarians at McGill who terrified me.
       The reason I was in that library was that the retired director had wooed me in. It had taken her two years. And that two years was shot in two sentences.
        I will stay out of the library not because I am afraid of the librarian but because I am afraid of what I might say to the librarian.