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Very pretty, drool-inspiring libraries.

Beautiful advice on reading, reproduced verbatim in case aworkinglibrary ever goes defunct:

• Always read with a pen in hand. The pen should be used both to mark the text you want to remember and to write from where the text leaves you. Think of the text as the starting point for your own words.
• Reading and writing are not discrete activities; they occur on a continuum, with reading at one end, writing at the other. The best readers spend their time somewhere in between.
• Reading must occur everyday, but it is not just any daily reading that will do. The day's reading must include at minimum a few lines whose principle intent is to be beautiful--words composed as much for the sake of their composition as for the meaning they convey.
• A good reader reads attentively, not only listening to what the writer says, but also to how she says it. This is how a reader learns to write.
• If a book bores you, or tells you things you already know, or is not beautiful, do not hesitate to discard it. There are better books awaiting you, just around the bend.
• Every book alights a path to other books. Follow these paths as far as you can. This is how you build a library.
• A single book struggles to balance on its spine; it pines for neighbors. Keep as many books as you have room for.
• Read voraciously, many books at a time. Only then will you hear the conversation taking place among them.
• The best library contains both books you have read, and books you have not. The latter should grow in proportion as the library expands. A working library is as much a place for the possible as it is a record of the past.

Remember back in grade school when you covered your text books with paper bags and colored/drew/wrote all over them? This company took that concept and turned out beautiful book jackets to allow you to secretly read your shameful books you wouldn't be caught dead with in public. I might have to get the Whale Whisperer (shown below) to cover my copy of Moby Dick, because I don't want to be pigeonholed as a pseudo-intellectual hipster as I read that on the bus.

Coolness.

I'm not sure how to process this article- is it better for teachers to let kids read whatever they'd like, or should teachers influence learning by enforcing the standard classics? Does creating a lifelong reading habit matter more than instilling a sense of quality?

George W. Bush's assistant education secretary asks what child would voluntarily read Moby Dick... which I agree is beyond the comprehension of the teenage mind. But there are shelves full of wonderful stories that lay the groundwork for a deeper appreciation of language that children should be made aware of. If left simply to pillage their parents' shelves, they might come up empty or with brain rot like James Patterson.

Record hot temperatures followed the nine of us as we biked around San Francisco, listening to Chris Carlsson's well researched tour of the ecological history of the city.

Starting at CounterPULSE (Mission @ 9th), we looped through alleyways and the wrong-way down streets, stopping in front of the community gardens on Howard (I pass these every day on my commute and never noticed them!) to hear about the Food Conspiracies of the 1970s when people began to care about eating natural unprocessed food direct from farmers. Rainbow Grocery is one of the last remaining results of the Food Conspiracies (ironically, Rainbow was hated by the community in the 70s for its focus on capitalism and making a profit, which is what has kept it around through the last 30+ years), where neighbors would get together and bulk purchase produce from farmers in the Central Valley.

Then to Folsom & Main where the sparkly new highrise luxury apartments were build on shipwrecks and toxic sludge from the mines and gold rush dregs. Then to the original shoreline at Battery and Market, where we stopped to discuss the evils of PG&E and the Raker Act.

Deeper in the FiDi, we learned about the walruses on the old Alaska Commercial Company building (California @ Sansome). Heading out towards North Beach, we stood where the freeway used to allow people to zoom straight from Broadway and Sansome onto the Bay Bridge, learning about the freeway revolt and San Francisco's rejection of the Federal Highway Plan which would have dropped highways smack dab on top of the city in the 1950s (Terry Francois was the deciding vote against this).

After cooling off in the shade of Telegraph Hill, we heard about illicit dynamiting of the hill and the transformation of the area by Grace Marchant's garden development. The wild parrots yammered overhead, and then we were off to Pier 39 to ogle the sea lions who co-opted some of the most desired land in the city. Finally, up past Fort Mason then through Chrissy Field to admire the restoration work of the marshes and sand dunes.

Also along for the ride were Eduardo, the Brasilian traveling the world with his bike, and Bryan, editor of SF Streetsblog.

I love Chris's "Serfs Up" hat:

Eduardo had a sweet bicycle evolution tattoo:

Combining two of my favorite things, this library lets you check out bikes for up to six months. Run by volunteers and donated bikes, it's a great way for people to get comfortable with the idea of biking before plunking down a couple of hundred bucks for their own ride. $20 deposit and you're out the door.

Happy Bike to Work Day/Week/Month/Year!

It all started as a idea flippantly fired off in email, half-joking; inspired by the movie Ratatouille, we would wander down Valencia Street, blindfolded and identifying used books by smell.

First up, I closed my eyes and inhaled the aroma of the pages. "Eighteenth century, British." "Are you sure you're not looking?" he asked, showing me The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde.

I held up a vintage children's book to his nose, flipping the pages to maximize the scent. "Pre-1940s. No wait, 1950. American," he guessed. I showed him the book, a maroon hardcover by Hon Geo W Peck called Peck's Bad Boy with the Cowboys, with illustrations like "Pa Kicked the Dog" and "The Chief's Knees Knocked Together".

Next, he wafted the pages of a paperback towards my upturned nose, eyes closed. Breathing in deeply, I guessed, "1960s, On the Road." Close. The Noble Savage, a collection of stories in a set of at least 5 volumes, which was edited by Saul Bellow as a literary magazine in the 1960s. He scoured the shelves and bought volumes 1, 3, and 5.

My turn again. I crinkled the plastic covering on the illustrated hardcover of this book, cracking it open and fluttering through the pages. He inhaled, mulled it over. "1953. Definitely." "Actually, you're not far off, you've transposed the 3 and the 5. 1935," I corrected, showing him the illustrated cover of Fly By Night, a somewhat racy action book with this on the flap:

Brett Dixon was just the kind of chap who would fall in love with the wrong girl. His father knew it. "Have another cocktail," he said. "I'm going to startle you. I'm going to make you a sporting proposition. If you accept it, I will back you to the limit. If you won't I'm through. I mean about money, of course."

Also interesting was the interior of Fly by Night, where a previous owner pleaded, "And please return. I find that though many of my friends are poor mathematicians, they are nearly all good bookkeepers."

A map of Florida smelled nothing like coconuts and suntan oil, more like stuffy overcrowded glove compartment. Another children's book had an interesting title but not much more (A Kitchen is Not a Tree). After ogling the image collage on the walls and poking around the stacks a bit more, we raced off into the night, bicycling madly toward the Makeout Room to wrap up a thoroughly entertaining Wednesday evening.

I consume a lot of information on a daily basis, and rarely does something speak to me as clearly as this section of a blog post on the benefits of frugal living and finding your true path. I find it refreshingly inspiring to read this, and wanted to bookmark it on my own blog for later perusal.

When we were radically simplifying our lives and finances, I don’t know how many mistakes and bad ideas we had. We tried being super frugal and using every tip in the Tightwad Gazette, only to be miserable because most of them didn’t work for us. We tried numerous jobs until we found jobs that allowed us work in a way that meshed with our values and goals. (I thought at one time that I wanted to be a super career girl. What a laugh that turned out to be. Suits, heels, office politics, and corporate culture made me ill. I’m a jeans and outdoors kind of girl who doesn’t believe in office politics. Needless to say, I didn’t fit and I had to try, try again until I found a job that allowed me to be who I am.) We experimented with everything from the food we ate to what we wore and where we lived. We tried so many different ideas and approaches, I think we even confused our families as to who we were and what we were trying to become.

It didn’t all come together for several years. Had we given up (and believe me, it was tempting) we’d still be living hectic, crazy lives working at jobs that left us empty with only reckless spending to make us feel better. Thank heavens we kept at it. Now we are both very happy in our work, we’ve found the perfect approach to frugality for us, and our lives are much simpler and happier. We work and spend in accordance with our values and goals and that has made all the difference.

The great thing about life is that we get almost unlimited do overs. The only time you can’t try something again is when you’re dead. As long as you’re alive, you can reinvent yourself and correct your past mistakes.

If the term "magazine" is a loosely-collected bunch of speakers and images and mp3s and movie clips, then sign me up for a subscription. Wednesday night, one night only, at the Brava Theater, myself and hundreds of other ticketed guests let the magazine unfold on stage in front of us. From Heelys demonstration to clips from Botany of Desire documentary (on tulips, ganja, potatoes and apples), an imagined rap battle between Doom and Lil Wayne to images taken from Louisiana prisons, this live action magazine had it all. This was the brainchild of Evan Ratliff, Doug McGray, Derek Fagerstrom, Lauren Smith, and Maili Holiman.

Highlights for me:
* termite article by Lisa Margonelli-- the queen shoots out eggs at a clip of one every 3 seconds for fifteen years while her young lick her to keep her cool, walling her up in an antechamber and then licking her to death. Also, the mold of the mound somehow controls the bugs.
* Larry Sultan's slideshow of a photo album he found in a flea market. The pictures were a bit odd, the subjects not looking dead on into the camera, and the progression of Christmas tree photos with the brothers and mother, then just the mother, then the photograph of the son placed among pictures of furniture, then the memorial for the son killed in WWII.
* Peggy Orenstein's "Pink" article about the media pushing pink down girls' throats until it's the only color they clamor for.
* Andrew Lam's piece on watching his unemployed Chinese neighbors chow down on good food.
* Todd Hido's slideshow of photos taken a decade ago that showcase homes in foreclosure, empty rooms, clean carpet, light fixtures in place and everything just spic-n-span waiting for new owners to come in.
* Megan Prelinger interview about her library in downtown San Francisco of ~ "40,000 books, periodicals, printed ephemera and government documents"
* the final act-- Devil's Water, a memoir by Glynn Washington about having Michigan farmers come watch his family try to find water for their well.
* the woman who spoke about Fear - downhill skier who watched his friend crash/get medivac'd out/go into coma/ then goes on to nail his own run. She was a bit weird-- we watched the footage of the crash and then she made a sarcastic remark about the twitching body on our screen which fell flat.