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7/1/1999 Thursday In Bloom: Queen's Anne lace, cornflowers, and tiger lilies by the roadsides. Reading: Fire in the Valley, the book that was the inspiration for the TNT movie Pirates of Silicon Valley. While I liked the movie, it took a lot of liberties and condensed a fascinating story with many, many players down to a simple rivalry between two people, Jobs and Gates (or Good and Evil, as many anti-Microsoft folks would have it). The real story is more complicated and much more interesting. Watching: The first hour of the Mystery miniseries Touching Evil again. During the twins' nap this afternoon, I decided just to sit on the couch and watch the tape while paying attention to the story and the British accents. I can't remember the last time I watched a TV show while not working on the computer at the same time. Background courtesy of Ace of Space |
In the StacksLast night we arrived in Princeton twenty minutes before Tab would be ready to leave. So I parked the car behind Tab's building and took the boys with me to Firestone Library in search of a couple books. The boys scampered on ahead, laughing and shouting whenever they spotted one of the many squirrels that live on the Princeton University campus. I thought once again, as I have so many times before, that I would love to have my sons' energy. When we arrived at Firestone, I pulled the boys aside before entering. "I want you guys to behave," I told them in my Stern Mom Voice. "No running, no laughing, no talking too loud." "Because people are working," chimed in Daniel. "I will, Mama," said Matthew. "I will be a have." Firestone is the primary university library, although there are more than a dozen satellite libraries in various departments. When it opened in the late 1940s, Firestone Library was one of the first open-stack scholarly libraries in the country. It consists of six floors--three above ground and three below--and houses a number of special collections. Fire in the Valley, one of the books I wanted, was shelved in the stacks on the lowest floor of Firestone. The boys and I rode the elevator down to the C-level, a place I where I spent many years of my life. The documentary editing project for which I used to work until I had the twins is located on the C-level. I haven't been back there for awhile, and I was surprised to see how little things had changed down there. The same sculptures still occupy the open areas; the same paintings are still on the wall, including one abstract work that I always loved for its colors. Being back on that floor brought back a host of memories, many of them not pleasant. Look in the dictionary under "micromanager" and you'll see a picture of my former boss. The stacks in the newer addition to the C-level are movable to conserve space. You turn the handle to a giant wheel on the outside of the shelf, and the shelf moves along a set of tracks until it is right up against the shelf next to it. This can be a real pain when the bookshelf you want is buried in the middle of a set of shelves and you have to move four or five of them to get to it. The boys, of course, were fascinated, having never seen movable shelves. They immediately started trying it out for themselves. Fortunately, I remembered to lock my shelf in the open position before I entered the aisle to find my book, or they might have trapped me in there. The other book I was looking for, Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age, was supposed to be one floor above on the B-level, but I wasn't able to find it on the shelf. So we headed out of the library, stopping at the circulation desk so I could check out Fire in the Valley. As the spouse of a university employee, I have borrowing privileges even though I no longer work there myself. I've told Tab he'd better plan to stay at Princeton. I'd hate to lose the access to Firestone.
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