My Lucky Day in Everyday Ramblings

Autumn crocuses are popping up around town. What I like about this particular shot of them is the dirt. There is potential there.

That is what I feel right now about my life, if I can stay healthy and financially independent. I’ve done some blooming, that is for sure, but there is space, and a place for so much more.

We are having a gorgeous, delicious fall into it fall day here. It is sunny and mild and there isn’t too much smoke in the air and just enough wind to keep it that way. I was out for hours running errands and getting from here to there.

I heard an interview a couple of months ago with this famous chef Dan Barber (I’d never heard of him but I don’t follow food blogs or watch cooking shows so that is no surprise) that has a new book out called The Third Plate. It puts forth this concept that there is more than just this idea of farm to table, and starts the conversation about what we are eating at that table and what we are asking our farmers to deliver.

The current state of what we consider healthy and delicious is not sustainable, really truly sustainable. Not if we are trucking in a huge percentage of our honeybees to pollinate blueberries and almonds. (Both of which I eat regularly.)

I am trying hard not to buy books, particularly electronic copies; unless I know I am going to finish them so I put a hold on a copy at the library. I was something like #18 on 6 copies at that point. I kept waiting, trying to strategize trips downtown to our main library in my rather busy schedule and I was frustrated because while I saw they bought more copies and I got to be #6 on 18 copies I still wasn’t getting a notice that a copy was available for pick-up.

So last Saturday I had a poetry book due back and therefore I had to go to our Central Library. I asked the two librarians in the main area near the holds if they could help me understand. They were visibly excited to have an actual book question to answer and be helpful with. They didn’t say this exactly, but they implied it, that getting your hold requests filled was more a question of resource availability what with staffing cuts and…

While the one librarian was implying this the other one took my card and mumbled to herself that she could have sworn she shelved a copy of The Third Plate - Field Notes on the Future of Food earlier in the day. I asked… “So, no offense, but how could you have shelved a copy of a book that now has 65 hold requests on it?”

Ah, she said… It was a “Lucky Day” book.

So apparently what they are doing to bring actual readers, people who want actual books to read, (as opposed to a social service agency that provides air conditioning, bathrooms and Internet services), into the building is they buy an “extra” copy of popular books with lots of holds and shelve them on a first come first serve basis.

She walked me over to the shelf and there plain as day was a brand new copy of the book I wanted to read! It was my Lucky Day.

And now a week later another copy is waiting for me. She said I should keep it in play because that way I get an extra week of check out time.

The book is wonderful and I definitely recommend it even though I am only a few chapters in. It is conversational and well written. Ruth Reichel, (whose books on food and her life, both my sisters and I basically inhaled) says it will change the way the reader eats.

Wow.

I love stuff like this.

Last updated September 14, 2014