Ridin' The WALE

I spent last weekend with two of my co-workers at the WALE conference. WALE does not, as you may have thought, refer to the large mammal of the ocean, but rather the Washington Association of Library Employees.

The conference was held in Spokane and was quite beneficial. There was some great food, and we learned a few things too. I actually took quite a few things home from my workshops, which ranged from tackling procrastination to useful web based applications. And I won a MP3 player, as you can see above.

The keynote speaker was pretty great. I actually thought about dining and dashing, but stayed and Jess Walter was very enjoyable. I've never read any of his stuff, but I will now. He had a correspondence with Kurt Vonnegut and showed us a very cool leather bound, autographed copy of Sirens of Titan. I was, no doubt, impressed.

Now its back to the daily grind. In fact, I should get to bed, since I am working tomorrow.

R.I.P. Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Kurt is up in heaven now.

Kurt Vonnegut died on April 11th of complications from a fall he suffered at his home. He was 84.

I've been a fan of Vonnegut since I laid eyes on one of his books. In junior high and high school, my best friend and I would trade his books back and forth like most boys our age were trading pornography. Later we would scour the internet, looking for interviews, biographies, or anything else Vonnegut-related we could find.

Since High School I've never let one of his books slip through my grasp, although my copy of Cat's Cradle is held together only with a hair tie, the result of my foolishly loaning it to a girl I was dating at the time. I own multiple copies of many of his books, and reread them all the time. His books have a great way of cleansing my literary palette between authors. Sometimes I feel like he was with me throughout my entire adolescence.

He seemed to understand the human condition far better than any author I've ever read. And in talking to the rest of the staff here at the library, many of them feel the same. The world has lost a truly fantastic mind.

So it goes.