1800 Miles

More stuff from the past – wish I could remember the paper trick.

This is many moons ago when I worked for the Gates Foundation putting computers in libraries…

1800 Miles, 19 towns and 35 Librarians

Just wanted to take a few minutes of your time to thank you all for all of your kind words, supportive emails and listening ears these past two weeks. Since I only called to fix or report problems I wanted to pass along some of the positive things that happened this go ‘round.

Every library is unique, as is every librarian. While this usually just makes our jobs harder, it also them richer.

Sunday, January 4th, I began the trip by stopping by the natural foods store to by cashew butter, bread, fruit and dehydrated soups, supplies which would surely save me if I was stuck in a Hardee’s only town.

I left Birmingham and drove to Eutaw. I had not been able to get in touch with the librarians in Eutaw, AL, the site of my first class. I figured that I had a better chance of contacting them in the city of Eutaw. I drove into town and around the town past the greyhound station and the county jail and finally to the hospital where I asked for directions to the library. The two men in the waiting room were no help and it probably wasn’t the best idea to ask potentially ill people directions. The Indian doctor looked helpless when I asked him and he ran off to find a nurse. While he was gone a nurse approached me and I asked her.

Upon arrival at the library, I found a sign on the door. The library had been closed for several days due to the new year’s holiday and would reopen the next day at 3:00. I drove to a payphone.

I called the library and left a message that I would need to set up the lab before class and that would require meeting at the library no later than 7:00 am. I left my pager number. Still nervous about not speaking to the librarian, I called everyone with the last name of Livingston in Eutaw; I figured that I might catch her (Ruth Livingston) at home.

Directory Assistance will only give out two names a call so each time I called I not only had to spell the name of the town to the operator (“Eutaw,AL?!!! They would ask, shocked) but I had to explain that I was calling all seven Livingstons in town and where I was on the list.

This rather obsessive tactic was not successful. I drove back to Tuscaloosa.

Upon arrival in my room, I received a page from Ruth Livingston, who had come to the library to get things in order for tomorrow’s class. We planned to meet and from then on things in Eutaw proceeded smoothly. The class was good-humored, chatty and excited to be included in the project. I met the intern Barbara Goss for the first time here. I felt good about the class and felt the librarians learned what I was teaching them.

It was sometime during this first round of classes that the desire to purchase a pogo stick was born. I tried to pick one up in Tuscaloosa but could never find the Toys R Us. (I have since located the store for future reference!) It wouldn’t be until Sunday that the much anticipated purchase was made.

For the record I am not a strong pogo-sticker.

Probably the height of surrealness (is that a word?) occurred in Wetumpka, AL. I arrived mid Wednesday afternoon to set up the lab for the next day’s class. I had been to Wetumpka in the past; my good friend’s aunt lived there and we had spent the night at her house. All I remember is my friend making me watch Dirty Dancing, which crushed the adolescent Smiths-listening non-conformist image of myself.

Shelby Bryson, the library director, showed me to the room where we would hold class. The room turned out to be a city council’s chambers. There were eight cushy high backed blue chairs which stretched the diameter of the room. There were three steps up to the chairs. I was stationed down below as if pleading my case against this or that city initiative. My head was level with the platform the librarians sat behind.

These quarters made me giggle and I don’t think Shelby got the joke. I told her that the room was perfect and that I was going to unload my equipment. It was at this point that she asked if I wanted help. I told her that I could do it myself but if she wanted to help that would be great.

“I think we have some inmates that are around here somewhere,” Shelby offered.

“okay,” Inmates? I was thinking to myself.

Shelby walked away down a corridor of the city hall only to return with two women in their mid-30s clad in white scrubs with the county seal and “Elmore County Jail” emblazoned on their right lapels.

The three of us began to walk to the car.

“Hi, I’m Tiffany,” I offered. “Thanks for your help. It certainly goes faster with three people.”

“I’m Connie,” replied the woman closest to me. The other woman muttered; I could not understand her.

They were a great help and I resisted the urge to ask “whatr yall in for.”

After packing up the lab two days later, I walked up to the library office to say goodbye, was presented with a piece of birthday cake, and bidden a fond farewell from Connie whom I urged to use the computers.

Arriving in Butler, Al on Sunday, January 11, 1998, I met two more librarians, Elizabeth Habib and Claudia Dogget. Claudia’s son Lance, a local “computer guru”, stopped by with his girlfriend and her two-year-old Nick. (Claudia told me later that Lance likes to play the field but she thinks he really likes this woman; she is trying to like the two-year-old, as he may become her grandson.) Lance had a bunch of puffed-up computer questions about the lab, “Are these Toshiba’s?” “No, they’re Gateways.” “But are they Toshiba’s?” “I don’t know, but you are welcome to look at one (read: please stop bothering me).” “What kind of network are you running?” etc. As as I was under a table duct taping cords to the floor.

Claudia and Elizabeth could not wait to get their hands on the computers and to give me a tour of their library which they remodeled and moved all by themselves and with Claudia’s super handy husband. They showed me the children’s computer that they want to build into a cabinet like thing that will be decorated to look like mission control. All of the women who work at the Choctaw County Library were inspired and inspiring.

Because there was no equipment to set up in Choctaw, I spent one afternoon helping their director, Virginia Montgomery, with this really neat web page they have been working on. It is full of links and quite impressive since none of the even know what HTML is.

Apparently they created the entire web page in Word and Word Perfect and solely from observing the physical layout of other pages. They had a Choctaw graphic on every page and a lot of well-organized information. I helped her tweak a few things and showed her how to use the Composer in Netscape. She had expressed dissatisfaction with Word Perfect.

Before class on Tuesday, January 13, 1998, I stopped by the gas station in Butler to buy some water. As I was paying an older gentleman asked me, “what do you sell?”

“Nothing,” I replied.

“I noticed a bunch of boxes in your car.”

“Yea, I am helping out at the library.”

“the where?”

“the public library. I am helping them with some new computers they received.”

“Oh, well I recognized the Jefferson county plates.”

Later that day, Claudia showed me a paper airplane trick about heaven, hell, the devil and a little boy. Ask me and I’ll show it to you.

On Wednesday, January 14, 1998 I returned to Marion to try and get Marion Perry County Library on track. And, while she may talk a lot, Astrid Knudsen is our biggest fan and a gracious woman. (I can’t really complain about talking too much as all of you know and as I can tell as I am on page three!) She bent my ear quite a bit about the E-rate application, which sounds like a nightmare. Several other librarians have been complaining about the absurdity of it. They all thought they reason the application is so complicated was to employ government workers and I tend to agree. While I never saw the application (I was afraid to ask to see it for fear that my help in filling it out would be enlisted), they must ask their current or any potential ISPs to put in a bid. It seems like an extraordinary amount of work. And they have to accomplish this in something like 20 days.

By the time I arrived in Pickens County my patience had, honestly, already flown back to Seattle. I was tired and frustrated. The librarians were quite sophisticated and therefore paid little attention to me in class as they we exploring on their own. Their equipment was all messed up and the first day of class the docking station didn’t realize it had a server plugged into it. Thanks goodness for help desk because at that point with ten librarians staring at me I had no ability to think clearly. The problem was solved and of course had a simple solution which I used to illustrate the number one rule of troubleshooting, make sure everything is properly plugged in! A mouse died that day as well. My spare was being used by Susan Wolfe  (regional support for the Pickens County Library Coop) whose attendance bumped the class up to ten members.

In the afternoon of the Thursday, January 15, 1998, I made a site visit to Gordo. Here Trudie Burkhalter asked me to make her a poster in publisher.

“Trudie’s real artisitc,” offered Susan Wolfe.

I told Trudie that she would have to do it but that I would help her. So Trudie made a poster for an elementary school field trip to the library. We worked on it for a good 30 minutes, adding clip art, resizing images, inserting text, copying text and finally printing it out. Trudie loves Publisher; she can’t wait to use it for her summer reading program.

With that image in my head, I returned to my car and drove back to Tuscaloosa away from Gordo and the smell of the dog food plant that resides directly behind the library.

The second day of class, the Marriott Courtyard (my home away from home, my solid ground, the place where LaDonna recognizes me and wishes me good day and doesn’t judge me when I forget to pay for breakfast, the place with hot water in my room) didn’t give me my wake up call. Normally I set my travel alarm, but I trusted in the Courtyard and it let me down.

I turned over and looked at the clock at 7:27 am Friday.

I showered, packed, checked out and drove to Carrollton in 40 minutes. Next time I am setting 18 alarms.

And then the trip was over. And as I drove east away from Carrollton hell-bent for Birmingham and ultimately Seattle, I felt good about the trip. I regained my perspective and wrote this note to myself as well as you all.

In Birmingham, I arrived at the Embassy Suites and approached the desk. Working there was Christopher, a thin man with glasses who immediately recognized me.

“Oh, you’re the library lady,” he said. “King, non-smoking. Let’s see if we can’t find you a groovy room.”