What’s in a Name?

I love living out here in the “boondocks” of Calhan, Colorado. We’ve got pretty much everything one needs within walking distance: grocery, small restaurant, Post Office, Town Hall, hardware store, feed store, butcher’s, elementary & high school, park, walking trail, even an insurance company! (We used to have a bar and a bowling alley, but the smoking ban killed those. That’s another story for another day….) Anyway, here in Calhan, the one thing we don’t have is a library. Fortunately, our wonderful Pikes Peak Library District provides us with Bookmobile services twice a week.

Well, that is, they used to. Very soon, Pikes Peak Library District, in their wonderful wisdom, will no longer drive the Bookmobile out to Calhan anymore: From now on, they will be driving the Mobile Library Services um, vehicle? Van? RV? Truck?

Yup. They’re changing the name. It’s the same old vehicle it’s always been, wonderfully stuffed to the brim with books, DVDs, videos, cds, and the absolutely nicest, friendliest, people you’ve ever met. They will still remember most of our names, even when we forget theirs, they’ll still bring out, special-delivery-like, any books you put on hold through your internet account. They’ll still make spot-on recommendations, and they’ll still take the time to ask how life’s treating you. Just like they always have.

Nothing changes except the name.

Mobile Library Services. Wow… what a mouthful. I wonder how much the consultant who came up with that brilliant idea got paid!

When I first moved to Calhan nearly ten years ago, I was thrilled to learn we had a bookmobile. It brought back a flood of some of my most cherished childhood memories. In the small New Jersey town I grew up in, every Wednesday was bookmobile day. Not only did we get out of the classroom for an hour, not only did we get to go and pick out ANYTHING we wanted, they brought special books they picked out just for us!

My mom adored Wednesdays, because it was the one day of the week she didn’t have to fight me to wake up in time for school. She’d pop her head into my bedroom and quietly say, “Laura, wake up, it’s Bookmobile day!” I’d be out of that bed like a shotgun! Mom never “grounded” me like normal kids… if I got in trouble, she took my library card away. “No bookmobile for you this week, young lady!” It was devastating to me!

For me, seeing the Bookmobile driving down the road was like seeing the ice cream truck. “The Bookmobile is here! The Bookmobile is here!” And I know, first-hand, that many of the young people here in Calhan view the Bookmobile parked in front of our school every Tuesday exactly the same way I did in my youth: as a Special Day, the Bookmobile day.

Bookmobile. What a wonderful word. Regardless if you utilize their services or not, when you hear that word, you have an immediate image in your mind, and maybe even a few warm-and-fuzzy feelings, like I do. Bookmobile. You know exactly what the word means and exactly what it does: It brings books and other library materials to those that need them.

Now, try out the new name in your head: Mobile Library Services um, Mobile. Um, Vehicle. Um, Van… I don’t know about you, but Mobile Library Services simply leaves me hanging. I feel like there is not only a word missing, but a meaning. I can just see the teacher’s having fun with this at the school: “Hey Kids, don’t forget, tomorrow is Mobile Library Services Day!”

Can you imagine the new ice-cream-truck-like mantra? Kids yelling in excitement, “The Mobile Library Services thing is here! The Mobile Library Services thing is here!”

Yeah, right.

I don’t understand why Pikes Peak Library District made this silly decision. In the nearly ten years I’ve been using their services, I’ve never been able to complain about anything. There’s no other public service like it. It’s the one public service NO ONE dreads going to, unlike the Driver’s License or Vehicle Registration offices! For starters, the employees are always HAPPY!

And honestly, I’m not really complaining now about PPLD, I’m simply questioning: Why change a name that has such a long, gloriously wonderfully emotive history as the Bookmobile? It’s the PERFECT name: It’s a vehicle that brings you BOOKS! And more, more, more!

You see, Bookmobile day is an OCCASION, especially for those of us living in small, rural communities that simply do not have the financial resources to support a full-fledged library. Mobile Library Services Day… it just doesn’t have the same feeling.

I cannot understand why this rush to change something that simply didn’t need fixing. PPLD, I beg of you, fire the consultant who convinced you that somehow, for some stupid reason or another, the name Bookmobile was no longer trendy enough. Go back to calling it the Bookmobile.

Or if you really insist on changing a perfectly good name, at least come up with something at a bit more catchy? Oh wait, I forgot… there simply isn’t anything catchier than Bookmobile.

I can’t wait till Saturday. It’s Mobile Library Services Day.

The Cost of Marriage

Very likely later today, the Colorado senate will be voting on a proposal to raise the cost of a marriage license from $10 to $35. According to The Gazette, Sen. Dave Schultheis, R-Colorado Springs, is against the idea, arguing that the State should do “everything it can to promote marriage and should consider adding the fee to the cost of getting a divorce instead.” I say Schultheis is not only wrong, but that the Senate should consider raising the cost of a marriage license higher. Much, much higher.

Colorado, like many states, makes it extremely difficult and expensive to get divorced. Now, I’m not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing, but I do believe the emphasis is in the wrong place. I don’t think divorce needs to be made more difficult. I think we need to make it far more difficult to get married.

Why? Because it’s cheaper - and simpler - to get married than it is to license my dog. Seriously. If I wanted to get married - and I don’t - all I need to do is go pay $10 and sign a short piece of paper. Until not too long ago, you didn’t even need to show an ID.

Stranger In An Ever Stranger Land

The flight is short between two worlds, less than two hours and I’m landing in an odd, strange world. I remain seated as those around me rush to grab their bags full of their ever-important-stuff from the overhead compartments, rushing to leave the plane even though no matter how much they rush, it always takes at least fifteen minutes to debark and at least an hour to get through Customs and Immigration.

Americans. Always in such a rush to get to the next red light.

To Eat or Not to Eat: That is the Question

It’s the time of the year when we spend hours wrestling with crowds in the mall, when finding a parking space within a ten minute walk of the store is the high point of the day, when we send cards to people we didn’t talk to all year, and warm our homes with the smells of baking and cooking. Turkey, ham, potatoes, fruitcake, yams, bread, and of course, holiday cookies: especially chocolate chip cookies. After all, what are the holidays without lots of diet-busting, tooth-decaying cookies to eat? Ahhh… you just have to love chocolate chip cookies… the feel of the dough as you mix it, the eating of a few raw chips before you add them to the mixing bowl, and the heart-warming smell of them baking.

Wandall, or Hopefulness

Wandall, or Hopefulness

Translated from the Yiddish of Toomuch Drincks, a good man

of a good town, with additions found in the stalls of the Tipple Inn’s men’s room.

With apologies to Voltaire.

CHAPTER I

How Wandall Came to the Good Town and met the Mayor and went to Church

There came to the town of Dekadent, in the land of Coolyuras, a world weary wandering woman known as Wandall, who had traveled far and wide in search of a good town filled with good people. Wandall, having heard from far away of this good town, arrived believing her search had ended. A town of golden streets, where good people helped their neighbors and all the high school cheerleaders were blond. A good town, with so little crime it needed but one cop, who worked only part-time.

Just a harmless whistle….

This past Saturday night, a friend ruptured my eardrum.

You see, I went back to college five years ago, and to help support myself, I started a small karaoke business. Most Friday and Saturday nights I’m in one small-town bar or another, aiding and abetting the vandalism of many a great hit song. This past Saturday night, at one of my regular gigs, one of my regular singers decided it was too quiet and let out a shrill, high-pitched, extremely loud, excruciatingly painful whistle. You know the kind, with two fingers in the mouth, intended to be heard across football stadiums over 90,000 screaming fans. That kind of loud.

The first time she let out one of her obnoxious sirens, it literally knocked me breathless. I yelled into the microphone, half-jokingly, to quit it, she was making my ears bleed!

In truth, I discovered just a few short minutes later, she really did make one of my ears bleed. My left ear started to ooze a very small amount of blood, mixed with some sort of clear-ish fluid. Still ringing, and a bit numb, the bleeding and oozing stopped very quickly.

A Knock at the Door

It’s Friday night, and I sit down after my very-off-key Karaoke rendition of “YMCA” at Makenna’s Saloon, one of my small-town’s few places to socialize. I look around at the crowd: all people I know, most drunk or well on the way. Maggie, the bartender, seeing I’m drinking Diet Coke as usual, catches my eye with the dim hope that I will offer to drive someone, anyone, home. But she doesn’t ask, she knows I won’t, and she knows why. She doesn’t blame me: she won’t either.

Questions

“What happened?”

“Kashley, don’t be rude!” her father says, scolding.

“It’s OK, Trey.” I look into her six-year-old eyes, this little blond beauty I have loved for four incredible years. She is not my daughter, but, like her father, she is my closest friend. The friendship between us confuses outsiders, but has a closer-than-family feeling to us.

I realize with surprise that neither she, nor her father, ever asked me about the scars on my face before. But Kashley is six now, with more than the usual amount of curiosity that comes with this age. I should have known that she, like many before her, would eventually ask.

“When I was four years old, I did something very stupid and hurt myself.”

Dead

“You know we shouldn’t be doing this.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet. But, thank you anyway,” she says as they walk past the scrap of faded crime scene tape blowing in the wind.

How ridiculous, she says to herself, I’m thanking him for allowing me to enter my own home! Brushing a few raindrops off her coat, wishing she could remove the wet wig, she instinctively reaches for the light switch then laughs gently as she remembers there is no electricity now.