Mental meanderings...

[Lamplighter]

In a library with extra time, I like to walk down a random stack
and reach for any book without looking at it's title.

Doing this, from one photo-essay book I eventually bought our family's Foldboot kayak,
and from another I learned about right-brain/left-brain from trauma journal.
(I later realized it was the original publication on this topic cited in all later publications.)

Now, it seems the internet, and occasionally The Cellar, serves me a similar purpose.

Yesterday, I was looking in Google Images for an examples of antique printing tables,
and came across a pic of a printing press museum.
Somehow, from there I ended up on a woman's blog that kept me fascinated
just scrolling through her life interests in photography and poetry.

That blog is, itself, a mental meandering because it is not chronological or catalogued, but it is huge and filled with pics.
I recommend it as one person's record of life on the American prairie,
and especially for the non-Yanks who may not have seen much of the true middle-America.

Here is the link to Minnesota Prairie Roots, one of the best blogs I've found.
Writing and photography by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

WRITER AUDREY KLETSCHER HELBLING grew up in a Little House on the Prairie. Really.

Her tiny childhood home outside of Vesta didn’t have a bathroom or, for a long time, a telephone.
On the family’s dairy farm, Audrey walked beans, picked rock, fed calves and cows, and scooped manure.
When she wasn’t in the barn, Audrey played in the grove with her five siblings.
Or she biked across the flat open land of spacious skies and stunning sunsets in southwestern Minnesota.

Her writing career began at the Wabasso High School newspaper, The Rabbit Tracks.
That led her to pursue a mass communications degree and a writing career.
Fresh out of college, Audrey worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer for The Gaylord Hub,
where she was fondly called “the cub from The Hub.”

Eventually, Audrey joined the staffs of other weekly and daily newspapers in Minnesota.
She also established permanent residence in Faribault [MN] with her husband, Randy, where she has lived in the same house since 1984.

I'm sure others have had or found similar mental meaderings, and will share them here.
.

[jimhelm]

dude. That's my Aunt Audrey. wtf?

[infinite monkey]

Are you total cereal?

[jimhelm]

No... I was lying.

•spoken in to my phone

[BigV]

I wonder if Lamplighter would be lost to us forever if he knew about stumbleupon.

[Lamplighter]

For me, the joy is the coming upon the unexpected, based on
an unplanned path from one thing to the next to the next.
Maybe everyone has taken a vacation and remembers a special thing
that was not even remotely expected in their planned agenda.

Let me give another example...
My family moved into an old house in Buffalo NY, and I set about cleaning the attic.
I found some old posters about the local women's suffrage movement,
and this led me to the Chautauqua movement in western NY.
Later, on a sight-seeing trip near Lake Chautauqua I came across a museum about the chautuaquas.
Inside I learned the building was originally one of the Carnegie Libraries.

There I learned the history and impact the Carnegie Libraries
had and are still having in the US.
And whatever impression you may have of libraries and librarians,
such as open stacks, free lending, etc., it probably comes from Andrew Carnegie.
Who knows... one of the Carnegies may be near you !

[infinite monkey]

It's sad how the joy of wandering through a library and finding treasures is lost. Or researching the town archives and finding the history of an old house where you live, or just admire.

[classicman]

vacation and planned agenda.

Interesting concept...

(makes mental note)

[Griff]

The Carnegie library in Binghamton is the subject of a lot of urban blight talk. It would make a hell of a fencing club.

[BigV]

Seattle has a handful. I've been in three of them. One is in Ballard, my neighborhood. It houses a restaurant and an attorney's office now. Lovely structure.

[Pico and ME]

Thanks for that link Lamp. My hometown's historical society building was a Carnegie library...