Overwhelmed.

Pay attention to what you say and do.

Overwhelmed

My boss asked me to come into work today because there was no one in the building from our department. I did it. It is probably a mistake. I'm still a bit under the weather.

Still, I think I am doing alright, not great, but alright. I'm trying to focus on light duties. I filed the monthly report, ordered some annual reports, and read the New York Times Book Review. The New York Times Book Review was advertising a new Neil Gaiman book, The Graveyard Book. It is a novel for middle graders. Most all of his books have been for teenagers and adults, so this is something new.

I also read the New York Times Bestseller list and put Killing Sacred Cows, Overcoming The Financial Myths That Are Destroying Your Prosperity on Hold by Garrett B. Gunderson.

It took me a while to pick out books on the financial crisis for the display stand. There are a huge number of subjects the books can fall under; social security, short selling, mortgages, bad debts, politics, economics, globalization, government corruption, hedge fund trading, banking, predatory lending, financial crisis, and recession are just a few of the subjects.

There are many different books which seem to touch on the financial crisis the United States is in. It seems to reach into many corners of the collection. It is not just one cause, if you start looking for information on the financial crisis, it becomes a tangled web that spreads its fingers into every aspect of finance.

I am not surprised by the failure of the initial bailout. It never addressed the people on main street who are the ones who will hurt most. In the last bailout in the United States, the 1988 Savings and Loan bailout, there was not so much information available to everyone. Now, it is impossible to hide. You get it from the news, from the government, from books, from the internet, and many other places.

People have started checking out items from the book display stand. I think the display will do well.

I filed some more Bender's Forms for the Civil Practice in the law collection. I am almost caught up with my law filing. I like it when most of the looseleafs are done.

Things are a lot more caught up than before. I think I accomplished a lot this month. I think I'm starting to feel a little better.

I like to walk around my sections and check to see if everything is in order. I pick up magazines, books and other things and put them on the sorting carts. I do quick checks to see if books are out of order or lying on top of the shelves. Sometimes, I find soda cans, or candy wrappers lying around. I checked the clipboards of the government jobs to see if they were up to date, cleaned off the old flyers from the job information center bulletin boards, and neatened things up a bit.

I got the top image from this list of resources. I do like it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources

There is a new incarnation for the Society of Midnight Wanderers. It has a nice new interface.

http://mwsociety.wordpress.com/

A Day To Rest

The Sick Doctor (1892) Jehan Georges Vibert.

A Day To Rest

I am sitting here with a strong cold. I have poured various things down my throat, reddish syrupy cold medicine, red zinger tea boiled with chamomile, cranberry juice, and soon, chicken noodle soup. Most of the day has been spent lounging on my couch or flat on my back. I have even chewed a few vitamin tablets.

My head is a little fuzzy, not quite ready for writing. I hate being sick. I violently hate it. Probably more than most people. I also don't like going to doctors. This is a common trait. I probably should be resting right now, but I am not.

Being sick is the same as being in a cage. You can't go anywhere or do anything. Maybe, I just need to rest.

I have a book, Writing Begins with the Breath Embodying Your Authentic Voice by Laraine Herring in front of me. The opening line to chapter 8 is a quote. "Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."-- Thomas Edison. It is so true, but what I need to do is rest not work. Maybe work at resting.

I admit, I did a few rounds to keep my blog going. Everyday, I fuel a group of people at Fuelmyblog, check my Twitter and post a short entry, check blogcatalog for threads to comment in, then I comment on a few blogs in my link exchange, and finally check on any bids on projectwonderful.

Also, each day, I take some time for reading things like libraryjournal.com, Bookselling This Week, Locus Magazine, and maybe look at the Yahoo! News section.

So, I think I will do my daily rounds and avoid doing a review, or some special commentary. It will be too much. There was nothing too exciting today. Just the usual stuff.

Here is a really interesting article on an amazing home library built by a very wealthy internet entrepreneur.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/16-10/ff_walker?currentPage=all

Wordless Books the Original Graphic Novels by David Berona

Wordless Books the Original Graphic Novels by David Berona

This book is a survey of the different wordless books printed between 1918 and 1951. The book gives a short description of an artist then includes several pages from their books. The book is written in chronological order and is very easy to follow. There are a large number of artists in the book. I am going to choose to focus on a few of them.

Woodcut novels are designed to deliver a message without words. The images are for the most part black and white with very heavy lines. The only exception to this are some of Lynd Ward's dream images from the book Wild Pilgrimage (1932) which are an odd orange color. Sequencing is done by moving the characters in the panels to different locations and changing their actions. There is one panel per page. There are occassionally words, but these usually indicate a simple descriptor like gas or marriage certificate.

The books opens with Frans Masereel who is an artist that worked with the International Red Cross and the International Pacifist Movement. There is often a strong political element in many of the artists work in this book. Frans Masereel's drawings are of common scenes. They include depictions of everyday life activities in the raw. In the book, Passionate Journey (1919), we see the protagonist piss on people below him from the top of a skyscraper, fart at some industrialists, dance, and make love. This is a link to the complete set of wordless woodcuts for The City one of his novels. http://www.nebulous-cargo.com/masereel/woodcuts/city1.html

The simplicity and the focus on delivering an artistic medium to the middle class and working class made these books populist in nature. I would call most of the artists in this work to be progressives. Lynd Ward's father, Harry was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union. Lynd Ward was heavily involved in social movements. His art depicts cities as industrial hells, brutal strikes, the harshness of slavery, equates industrialism with spiritual malaise, and suggests a return to pastoralism.

Not all of the books are about a social message. Some are light humor about family, love, and marriage. Milt Gross, a popular cartoonist wrote the wordless book, He Done Her Wrong, a satire about a country bumpkin falling in love with a girl in the city. Fantagraphics reissued this book in 2006.

Not all of the artists work in wood. Otto Nuckel used black and white lead cut prints. This allowed much finer lines to appear in the prints on the page.

Some of the later woodcut novels strike much closer to home. Many of the social issues in the 1930s which were decried have not gone away at all. Southern Cross done in 1951 is about the forced removal of native polynesians so the United States can test and atomic bomb. White Collar (1940) is the story of the downward spiral of a white collar worker. First he loses his home, then he has an unwanted child because he can't afford an abortion, then he loses his job and becomes homeless with his family, finally he turns to labor radicalism as a homeless man. This really hits home on what could happen if the mortgage crisis goes wrong in the United States.

I am not an artist, so I can't tell you too much about the styles of art. I can tell you that there are a variety of different artistic styles being expressed throughout the book. Lynd Ward was supposed to have been influenced by German Expressionism and Art Deco. Myron Waldman's Eve is the work of a cartoonist who drew Popeye, Superman, and Betty Boop. There are quite a few artists I didn't cover. I think they are all interesting.

The book itself is beautifully designed. It is on high bond glossy paper. You can see the stitches in the binding. The cover has very heavy boards. This enhances the artistic images in the book itself. There is an index, pictures of many of the covers of the books, copyright credits, and a bibliography of wordless novels. We have one of the more contemporary novels listed, Flood! A Novel In Pictures by Eric Drooker at our library.

This is a book that I can recommend without hesitation. I really enjoyed reading it. But, it also fit well with my political views. Get it, read it, enjoy it.

Avril Lavigne

Avril Lavigne Whibley (born September 27, 1984), better known by her birth name of Avril Lavigne, is a Canadian Grammy Award-nominated rock singer, songwriter, fashion designer, and actress. In 2006, Canadian Business Magazine ranked her the seventh most powerful Canadian in Hollywood.

Lavigne's debut album, Let Go, was released in 2002. Over 16 million copies were sold worldwide and it was certified six times platinum in the United States. Her second and third albums also sold in huge numbers, Under My Skin (2004) at about 9 million copies and The Best Damn Thing (2007) currently over 5.3 million copies[15]; the latter two reached number one on the U.S. Billboard 200. Lavigne has scored six number one songs worldwide and a total of eleven top ten hits, including "Complicated", "Sk8er Boi", "I'm With You", "My Happy Ending" and "Girlfriend," which became #1 hits in the ARC Top 40. In December 2007, Lavigne was ranked at #7 in the Forbes "Top 20 Earners Under 25", with annual earnings of $12 million. Currently, Avril Lavigne has sold over 30 million albums worldwide.

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Kate Hudson

Kate Garry Hudson (born April 19, 1979) is an American film actress. She came to prominence in 2001 after receiving an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe for her role in the drama Almost Famous, and has since established herself as a Hollywood lead actress, starring in several films, including How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, The Skeleton Key, You, Me and Dupree and Fool's Gold.

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Jesicca Alba

Jessica Marie Alba (born April 28, 1981) is an American television and film actress.
Alba began her television and movie appearances at age 13 in Camp Nowhere and The Secret World of Alex Mack (1994). Alba rose to prominence as the lead actress in the television series Dark Angel (2000–2002), then expanding her résumé to film, predominantly within the confines of action and comedy. Alba later appeared in various films including Honey (2003), Sin City (2005), Fantastic Four (2005), Into the Blue (2005), Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007) and Good Luck Chuck of the same year.

Alba appears frequently on the "Hot 100" section of Maxim and was voted AskMen.com's number one on their list of "99 Most Desirable Women" in 2006, as well as "Sexiest Woman in the World" by FHM in 2007. She also appeared on the cover of Playboy, which was followed by a lawsuit that was later dropped. Alba has won various awards for her acting, including the Choice Actress Teen Choice Award and Saturn Award for Best Actress (TV) for her acting in the series Dark Angel.

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Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay Dee Lohan (born July 2, 1986) is an American actress, model and pop music singer. Lohan started in show business as a child fashion model for magazine advertisement and television commercials. At age 10, she began her acting career in a soap opera; at 11, she made her motion picture debut by playing identical twins in Disney's 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.
Lohan rose to stardom with her leading roles in the films Freaky Friday, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Mean Girls and Herbie: Fully Loaded. Her subsequent roles include appearances in A Prairie Home Companion and Bobby. In 2004, Lohan launched a second career in pop music yielding the albums Speak (2004), A Little More Personal (Raw) (2005) and the forthcoming Spirit in the Dark (2008).
Lohan's personal life has been a frequent subject of celebrity and tabloid journalism.

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