After reading the quite entertaining book Devil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood, I have been looking up information on OCD (sometimes linked with anotherr FP interest, hoarding and garbage houses). I stumbled across a fascinating bit of research that suggests a genetic cause of OCD and related disorders! Yes, I sometimes miss the news for months on end, but you’d think I would have heard about this. More on OCD from Medline Plus.

The Frugal Housewife mentions (in 1830) using peach leaves to flavor a pudding– this is certainly the first I have heard of this flavoring. Some half-hearted googling turns up some other mentions, most quite old, of flavoring with peach leaves. It sounds like they may taste of almonds.

A contemporary herbal mentions the leaves as having many positive effects, including “[i]n large quantities, they act mildly upon the bowels, securing mucous discharges without pain; and in this act many times leading to the expulsion of worms in their nests.” Eek!

Bad news: lectured by patron upset about the “gay agenda” the library is pushing (his evidence: Gay Bingo poster in copy room next to many other posters and the fact that we own “books like Daddy’s Roommate“)
Good news: it’s the same guy who did the same lecture at me before, but previously he complained about Seattle Gay News and Daddy’s Roommate, so there’s only the one rabidly anti-gay guy locally
Bad News: he fills out lots of complaint forms
Good News: since he does this over and over, I get to try out different coping strategies each time: this time I showed him a huge number of Christian picture books to show that we are not promoting one view over another. He felt that we were putting out poison and candy. I pointed out that this is why children need to be supervised in the library.
Bad news: He is never ever convinced and had no interest in checking out any of our lovely Biblical picture books
Good news: He rarely updates his rant. He’s still talking about Daddy’s Roommate (1990) instead of King and King and Family (2004).

Mind Hacks– looks like a neat book and is certainly a neat web log. I have been quite interested by the baby mind hacks my pal the new dad has been telling me about.

Yes, a knitted uterus. Teach your youngster how to knit and where her period comes from. Unanswered question: will it help men find their keys?

A topic mentioned briefly in some of my library school classes was the Infoshop- a storefront librarylike affair intended to be grassroots, revolutionary, and aimed at opressed persons. My impression was that they ended up being collections of “underground” magazines and newspapers that the opressed were no more interested in reading that they were before they were stuck in an infoshop. Besides, if you want to be revolutionary, what better way than to get a municipal job you can’t be fired from for anything short of arson (but only if it was arson at work and they could prove it wasn’t due to mental illness) and then answer whatever questions the opressed have the best you can while buying library materials they seem to like (and not just the ones that your smelly friends are publishing out of their commune basement). But an actual grassroots library that could be brought out to preexisting gathering places instead of requiring people to find the building THE MAN has put the information in seems pretty cool. So I was disappointed that the nandeya (why? shop) seems to be more of a streetcorner Infoshop than a performance-art library installation. But maybe it will morph into that. Any librarians interested in making some nandeya-like fun here in the states?

So this guy always wanted to fly carried by helium balloons and did it the smart way- with hot air ballooning training, good safety equipment, flight planning, disaster planning, and permission from the local air traffic controllers. But I would be more interested in using his techniques to try a simulated moonwalk! Boiiiiing!

Honestly, it sounds like something out of Seinfeld, so it’ll get lots of media attention: a fast-food style breakfast cereal bar. Actually, it sounds like a really good theme party, with the necessary addition of cartoons and footie jammies.

Wondering where your favorite life-on-the-edge patron is, since usually he or she is at the library all damn day? Perhaps he or she is in jail. But there’s still no way to see if they’re at Harborview.

Speaking of deadly and mysterious incidents, do you miss the terrible tragedies of Kent, WA? Sure! We all do! Well, catch up on your old hometown’s mayhem.