Restaurant Review: Brewburger

Last night I took my family to Brewburger for the first time. We go to church right around the corner, so we knew about it, but hadn't been yet. We had a marvelous experience.

The party was my wife and I, our three kids, and my in-laws visiting from out of town. My middle son has celiac disease, so it was important that there be no wheat in his meal. The server was a little harried, as we were part of a dinner rush, but she was friendly and prompt. Our food was served on time. Orders were correct. While fries were cooking for my father-in-law, she brought him some extra sweet potato fries to tide him over. She also brought out an extra basket of fries for the kids to share.

The food itself was excellent. Portions were just right, and the options were diverse without being overwhelming. I had a Brewburger, but my mother-in-law had a fishburger, and I definitely want to come back and give it a try! Sides were great as well.

I want to especially compliment the owners on the atmosphere. It seems that every restaurant now has a TV for every four or five tables. It was refreshing to go out and not have that distraction. Please, don't put any in! I also appreciated the coloring books, cards, and other things available to keep the kids occupied. I loved the art on the walls, particularly Lydia's drawings. She and I seem to have a similar aesthetic. :-)

The only thing that surprised me was that there were no local beers available. I would have liked to have a Choc or a Marshall with my burger. I understand that Oklahoma's ridiculous liquor laws can make this difficult, but if your brand is being one of the "small fries", you should make as much effort to support other local businesses as much as you can.

Interestingly, the Brewburger website lists Choc as one of their draught beers. Wonder why there wasn't any on tap last night?

Musical Musing

I've never been very confident when talking about music. I always seem to be out of step with what everyone else thinks is good, worthwhile, or important. As an example, one of the local radio stations has recently changed to a "Generation X" format, which is all music I heard on the radio in college. A lot of it I love, but I feel like somehow it's not supposed to be "my" music. My music should be the stuff that was popular when I was in high school, the heyday of MTV. But I hated almost everything that was on MTV and contemporary radio at that time. I was listening to Kansas and Bad Company and Pink Floyd for the first time, even though their music was, by then, already "classic rock".

So I tend not to talk about what I like, other than quoting random earworms on Twitter and facebook statuses. Recently, though, I've had some angst-filled moments surrounding music and musicians, and I thought I'd share them.

I'm a huge fan of the Pandora music service. It's a great alternative to trying to load up my BlackBerry (my only MP3 player) with all the things I think I might like, or putting a bunch of CDs in the car. One of the things I decided as I've been exploring new music on Pandora was that I had to figure out why people seem to be so enthralled with The White Stripes.

In a recent documentary film, Jack White shares equal billing with The Edge from U2 and Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin. Obviously, somebody thinks he's important. But everything I've heard from him just felt like noise (I know, stereotypical old guy reaction) or something trying to be interesting and failing. So I plugged in a title that Rolling Stone seemed to think was significant, "Seven Nation Army" as the seed to a new Pandora station. Some of the songs by other artists sounded good to me, but there was only one White song I liked, "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do As You're Told)", and that was really about the lyrics and the sentiment behind them more than the music. If anything, I felt like what I wanted the song to be had to fight its way out from behind his singing and playing.

"So what," right? I don't like The White Stripes. Big deal. But here's the thing. I WANT to like them. I feel like, somehow, I SHOULD like them. And I dislike them, not because they don't play music I like, but because I'm missing something fundamental. I'm not getting it. Not liking The White Stripes isn't a personal choice. It's a failure.

In a similar way, I've been avoiding listening to the music of Amanda Palmer and her duo The Dresden Dolls. For those who haven't heard, Ms. Palmer has been dating the author Neil Gaiman, and they've recently become engaged. I know that Neil and Amanda collaborated on a book based on her solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer, and presumably, he likes her music.

The trouble is, Neil is also close friends with the musician Stephin Merritt, and I feel the same way about his band The Magnetic Fields as I do about The White Stripes. I just don't like their music. I want to, very badly, because it seems like I should. It has many of the same elements that I like in other kinds of music, like They Might Be Giants, but no matter how hard I try, I can't seem to stomach it.

Somehow, all of this gets bundled up together. I like Neil Gaiman's work. In fact, I ADORE it. Sandman, American Gods, Neverwhere, Good Omens, Don't Panic... Everything he's written fits perfectly with my tastes. Because of this, my dislike of The Magnetic Fields feels like a failing or a betrayal. Again, I'm missing something. I'm too stupid or I have no taste or I have some other fundamental flaw that makes me unworthy.

So I didn't want to listen to The Dresden Dolls, because I was afraid it would be The Magnetic Fields all over again. I finally did it, though. I seeded a new Pandora station with the band's name and gave it a shot. So far, I've liked one of Amanda's solo songs, but the station is rapidly steering away from her and the Dolls toward artists I really like. Regina Spektor, in particular, who I would just about follow to the ends of the Earth.

So in the end, I'm not sure how I feel about all this. Intellectually, I know this is ridiculous. Neil doesn't know me. Even if he happens to be steered to this blog entry by Twitter and reads it, I'm sure he would just shrug his shoulders. Different people have different tastes, after all. Nobody is universally adored.

But still, deep down, I feel like I've failed as a person because I didn't click the thumbs up on a single Dresden Dolls song.

Does this kind of thing happen to anybody else?

So I say to myself, how did I get here?

I recently heard of a project called Library Routes that's asking librarians to document how they became librarians: what led them to the profession, what path they've taken, et cetera. I realized that this is a story I haven't shared here, so I thought I'd post it.

The story begins with my library heroes. When I teach the ODL "How to Think Like a Librarian" class, the icebreaker exercise includes this question. I have two. The first is my mom. She was an elementary school librarian for more than 20 years, working in public and private schools, doing storytimes, felt boards, puppet plays, bibliographic instruction... the whole package. My first experiences in libraries were summer days spent helping her. I shelf-read, processed withdrawals, sorted cards (yes, actual cards) and even inventoried A/V equipment. All for the princely sum of a can of Coke with my lunch that day. My mother was dedicated to her student patrons. She would tell me stories about their lives and how it felt to see them light up when she found the book they wanted.

My second library hero was Michael Printz. If you know his name, it's probably because of the ALA award, but I knew Mike personally. He was the librarian at my high school. He was the one who taught all of the freshman English classes how to do basic reference. It was Mike who put the Oxford English Dictionary in my hands for the first time. He was a close friend of the author Gary Paulsen, and he loaned me an ARC of Hatchet so that I could read it before it was published. He was an extraordinary librarian, with great passion and compassion for his students. Later, I learned that his heroism had another level. As an out gay man working in a Kansas high school, he endured criticism and abuse that I can't imagine. But he never let anything distract him from the real goal, connecting young people with great books.

Because of these two, I am that rare librarian who never wanted to be anything else. If you had asked me in second grade what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said without hesitation, "a librarian." At the time, that really meant that I wanted to work at a job where I got to read as much as I wanted. But by the time I encountered Mike, I understood that being a librarian meant helping people, answering questions, and knowing a little bit about a lot of things. These were all things that I wanted very much to do, so my path was set. When I took the ASVAB test, it told me I should be a cartographer or an archivist. Based on that, I arranged for an independent study: a 9-week internship with the head archivist of the Kansas State Historical Society. I saw amazing things in their collection, including ledgers from the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad, private Super 8 film footage spanning decades of life in Lawrence, bound newspaper volumes that predated statehood, and much more. Mike's passion for oral history had led him to put in a video editing lab at the library, so my final project was a video of all the things I'd seen and done there. I still have it in my own archive.

When it came time to choose a college, it seemed logical to me to major in English. I was going to need a Masters to be a librarian, so I should just take the path of least resistance and get a Bachelor's that wouldn't be difficult for me. That led to the big detour in my library route. My advisor suggested that I get a teaching certification so I had "something to fall back on" while I was waiting to go to graduate school. This was not good advice. Believe me when I tell you that the worst possible teacher is the one who doesn't want to be there.

For three years after college, in Tribune, KS and then in Polo, MO, I taught high school and middle school English. By then I'd had more than enough. Looking back, I learned valuable things about myself and about teaching that have served me well, but I still can't help but wonder what might have happened if I'd gone a different direction.

I gained my MLIS at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul, Minnesota. When Kim and I were looking at library schools, we realized that we were newlyweds and we could go anywhere we wanted. Returning to my northern roots (Mom grew up in Fargo, Dad in East Grand Forks, and my grandmother still lived in Chaska) seemed like a great idea to me. Of course, two years in, we had our first child and realized we were ten hours from the nearest grandparent! My library school track led me toward teen services, based on my love of YA lit (Mike again) and my teaching experience. It was then that I discovered something really scary. Most of my classmates were already working in libraries. They were associates, circ clerks and others who already had library jobs. I didn't get my first paycheck from a library until after I graduated. I worked one shift as a sub for reference in the Dakota County Libraries, where my colleagues learned that I'd been working as a secretary for three years. The secretary in the Director's office was going on maternity leave, so I interviewed (on September 11, 2001) and got the job. From there, I began looking for jobs back in Grandparent Territory, and eventually I landed work in Tulsa.

For my first five years with TCCL, I was the Business Reference Librarian at my current location. Not exactly the best fit for someone with all that teen-oriented experience, but I've always prided myself on having knowledge a mile wide and at least an inch or two deep, so it worked out well for me, and eventually I was given responsibility for teen services, and I couldn't be happier.

So, that's my "library route". If you've managed to read this far, I'm glad you're still here. Thanks and happy reading!

Breaking the Cycle

The defining trope of my childhood was that I was the underdog. I was the picked-on, the teased, the friendless, sitting alone on the playground with a book. This shaped my self-image for a long time, and is still something I struggle with today.

From conversations with my father and brother, I know that they had similar experiences, so I have been, consciously or unconsciously, waiting for the same thing to happen with BB.

This morning, he and I had a long talk on the way to school, about friends and teasing and getting along. It seems to be that he's a pretty happy kid. I asked him about a teasing incident he'd mentioned to me fron a couple of weeks ago, and he seemed surprised that I remembered. It hasn't affected his friendship with the boy in question. I asked him if he had a best friend, and he told me it was hard to pick one, and he has at least four candidates. My best friend was always just the one who picked on me least.

I'm beginning to have some hope. Not just that BB himself will escape his school years with self-esteem intact, but that maybe the whole system has gotten better. At the very least, I feel proud of my son, who is growing up to be a good and decent young man who has a hard time even grasping the concept of bullying.

Techno-what? or Where's Karl on Thursdays?

Friends have been asking me what's up with the "Techno-fast" thing I've been doing on Thursdays. Some are even taking great delight in catching me out if they see any online activity from me that day. I'm glad that people are interested, and I thought I'd write it up and give everyone the facts.

The first thing I want to say is that this is my own thing. I do this for myself, and I'm not advocating it for anyone else, nor am I judging or condemning anyone else's actions. It's all about me (isn't everything?) :-)

This all started when I participated in Adbusters' Digital Detox (https://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/digitaldetox) back in April. I became aware of it at a time when I was struggling with the parts that the Internet and technology play in my life. As I told some friends recently, the Internet taught me how to make and keep friends, and many of my most important relationships are with people I know online, but it also came close to losing me a job. I learned a few things about myself during that week, but it was a one-shot deal.

Then, this summer, Kim and I participated in a Bible study called The Hurried Family. The class was great for us, helping us get some perspective on the things that we do and the reasons we do them. The class featured weekly challenges, and one of them was to pick a day and give up something technological. So I chose Thursday, and chose to do a mini-Detox that day. I enjoyed it so much that I'm working to make it a weekly thing.

So, here are some of the questions that arise:

What exactly am I giving up?

At a minimum, I go 24 hours without watching a television or using a computer for personal reasons. Since my job requires me to stay on top of e-mail and to help patrons with online research, I can't really give up computers completely.

In addition, I try to keep from sending text messages. I don't listen to the radio or CDs in the car. As much as possible, I try not to be a consumer of media for that one day a week.

There are a few exceptions. I continue to read, and since I use GoodReads to track my reading, if I finish a book or start a new one, I still record that. That's why you might see something pop up on facebook or Twitter about what I'm reading. Also, in an emergency, all bets are off. I'll use whatever I need.

Why??

At first, the main reason was to challenge myself. Can I do this? Am I an addict, or could I quit if I needed to?

The reasons that I continue to do it are more esoteric. A good friend once told me he envied my ability to be by myself. He was impressed that I didn't have to be around people all the time. In recent years I've become aware that, even when I'm alone, I surround myself with distractions. Often I'm doing multiple things (watching TV, knitting, and checking social networks is pretty common) so that there's never a moment when I'm at rest. This has meant that my ability to be truly alone and introspective has atrophied. Turning off all that stuff and giving myself some silence has been helpful in this way.

There's also an element of mindfulness in all this. More about that next.

Am I adding anything?

Well, I'm continuing to read, knit, and crochet, so I do a bit more of that than I would otherwise.

The other thing is, when I feel the urge to pull out my BlackBerry and update my status, or check Twitter, or do any of the other things I usually do, I stop and think. Why am I doing that? What's motivating me? Am I feeling lonely? Is there something really interesting I want to share? Am I just bored and looking for distraction? Increased self-awareness has become an important part of this experiment.

Something else I've been doing recently is making those times an opportunity for prayer. Did I want to Tweet something cute that one of the kids is doing? Offer up a prayer of thanksgiving. Did I want to post a photo of something cool I saw? Praise God for the wonder of his creation. Am I unhappy? Angry? Lonely? Ask God for help and guidance. This is a significant change for me, as my prayer life is usually confined to specific events.

What am I learning?

I can do this. I can make the commitment, follow through, and stick with it.

I'm not as important as I think I am. The Internet is not going to fall apart if I don't participate in discussions for one day. :-)

When I need something, I'm learning non-technological ways to get it. If I do personal research at the library, I use books. When I have time at home with the kids, the TV has to be off, so we play and read and do other things.

So, that's all very long-winded, and probably boring to some, but I hope it helps the curious to understand what I'm doing and why. Thanks for reading it all!

Fort Cute

The boys built a fort this morning while TS had breakfast. Once she was done she crashed the party, literally. BB rebuilt with an added blanket so it was big enough for all three. They seem to be enjoying themselves.

My First Ponytail

Well, it's not MY first. That would have been sometime in my senior year of high school. This is TS's first, though. Isn't she precious?

Elmo is a Good Listener

LB decided to get out his guitar and try a few licks to show off for the Elmo puppet.