A Quandary in Quarantine

Chapter One

The sun was high and bright in the brilliant sapphire blue sky. A few perfectly puffy cotton-ball clouds floated lazily by. Looking up towards the sky out my front window, I could almost believe it was the middle of summer, rather than the beginning of March. But, it was definitely not summer. We were still deep inside a brutal Midwestern winter. The snow had been piled by the plows thigh-deep along the roads and an ever-present layer of ice hung heavily from the branches of the sturdy trees that lined the street.

And, it was cold.

No, not it wasn’t just cold - it was that deep bone-chilling, zap you to your very core kind of cold that Wisconsin does so well. I reminded myself, as I pulled closed the drapes, and reached for my scarf and mittens - the last layers I would add before braving the world, I should not complain too much, I mean - it was already March. We were over the harsh hump of December to February, when the average high temperature had stayed below zero for weeks on end. So, in theory, Elsewhere, Wisconsin had already seen the worst of the winter. There was light at the end of this long tunnel.

Or, so I had been told.

I am not a native Wisconsinite, or a ‘Sconnie,’ as the local college kids liked to call those brave souls who had been in Wisconsin all their lives. I was born and raised in Arizona, actually. Though, as many folks are quick to think upon hearing that detail, I am not a ‘desert rat.’ My wardrobe does not consist solely of tank tops, and shorts - with zero pairs of closed-toed shoes to my name. In fact, I grew up in Prescott (say it with me, ‘Pres-kit,’ like ‘biscuit!’). The ‘high desert’ city where I was born and raised is actually quite sizable, and is located just a few hours north and west of Phoenix in Maricopa County, which is better known as The Valley of the Sun. So, technically, I had seen winter before. I had even seen snow. It was just that the snow I was used to fell lightly, maybe an inch or two in total - and then disappeared quite quickly. None of this snow-that-fell-before-Halloween-that-it-is-still-on-the-ground-in-April stuff they call winter up here in the Midwest. Prescott averaged thirteen inches of snow a year - Elsewhere? Eh, only about five times that amount.

But, all that aside, I am really not complaining about the weather. I did come to this veritable winter wonderland on purpose, after all. I moved to Wisconsin after accepting a position as Assistant Reference Librarian at the Elsewhere Public Library.

A quaint and beautiful community asset, nestled in the tiny town of Elsewhere, located in north central Wisconsin - the Elsewhere Public Library was my perfect next step. I had been stuck in a dead-end paraprofessional Circulation Assistant position back in Prescott, even though I had graduated over ten years ago with my Master’s of Library Science degree from the University of Arizona, which the only library school in the state. Unfortunately, in “Library Land” as librarians affectionately call our field, you can not do anything until you have your Master’s degree - but, once you have it, there is very little separating you from the myriad other fresh-faced, excited, completely able graduates. You just have to pay your dues, and keep your fingers crossed positions open up. And, sometimes those positions are halfway across the country. Oh, well. C’est la vie.

That was why Elsewhere was pretty close to ideal, with a population of just over 2,000 people cementing it firmly in the town rather than village category. Perfectly sized, I knew all my neighbors - and most of them were patrons at the library.

The library itself was quite well appointed for a community our size. The library employed four full-time, Master’s degree-holding librarians who all served under the director, Maggie Gillan. The Elsewhere Public Library also employed a handful of part time employees who primarily worked in the circulation department, and on nights and weekends. There were also some high school student workers who helped us with projects, and with the constant re-shelving of books patrons of the library had returned.

I moved the approximately one-thousand-five-hundred miles from my home in Prescott, Arizona to Elsewhere, Wisconsin at the beginning of last fall. Which, in my opinion, is the best time of year - anywhere!

I will never forget landing at the General Mitchell Airport, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin - the closest major airport to the tiny town of Elsewhere, on that late September day.

The sky had actually been a very similar brilliant blue the day I arrived in Wisconsin. But that day, the air temperature had been well above freezing. It was probably closer to the mid-60’s. The crispness and freshness I smelled upon taking my first steps outside the terminal had sold me - I loved Wisconsin.

I had looked to my right and left, I had seen only red, golden, and green edged with orange. These were the multicolored jewel box leaves that reminded me so much of the high desert back home. I had truly arrived.

Of course, the people queueing up behind me, who were trying to exit the airport and just get on with their days, probably wished I would have come to the realization somewhere other than two feet outside the automatic sliding glass doors that lead from the terminal building to the warren of sidewalks, crosswalks, and escalators that would lead them to the parking garages and their cars, and eventually their well-established comfortable homes… but that was entirely beside the point.

*****

Pulling myself from the memories of my first arrival in Wisconsin, I shook my head of long wavy blond hair, pulled my front door closed behind me, and locked it.

I began the four block journey that separated the small yellow two bedroom craftsman style bungalow I had rented back in September, and the Elsewhere Public Library. As I walked, I took in the beautiful scenery of the town. In the area directly surrounding my house and the library, most houses I passed looked much like the neighbors, but I knew - having gotten to meet a few of the residents as patrons of the library - that each house held stories, and probably more than a few secrets, too.

The house right next to mine belonged to my best friend, and fellow librarian Lucy Carmichael. Luce, as she liked to be called, was the children’s and teen librarian at the Library.

In a town the size of Elsewhere, we were lucky to even have a dedicated children’s and teen librarian position, really - let alone Luce herself. She was a Wisconsin native and she was a dynamo. She was able to connect with children and teens quickly and help them build confidence in their reading skills as well as explore new things.

Many other small community libraries could not afford the luxury we had, four degreed librarian positions, plus our director! Most typically only had one or two librarians total, beside the director - who all shared programming duties across patrons of all ages and needs. Great for a town’s bottom line, but there really was huge value in having librarians who specialized in services to specific demographics.

I paused at the end of the walkway that lead up to her front door, and waved in the direction of the large bay window that overlooked the street, taking a gamble that she could see me and would know I was waiting.

Like my own house, Luce lived in a small craftsman style bungalow, but her house was painted a deep purple with stark white trim. Clearly, a previous owner had not jumped on the everyone-in-Wisconsin-loves-the-Packers bandwagon, and stuck true to their (likely Minnesotan) roots.

Luce cracked the front door, leaned out and shouted, “Libby! Hi! I am so sorry, I know I am late. You start out, I will be right behind you!”

I smiled, shrugged, hoisted my bag higher up on on my shoulder, and turned to continue down the sidewalk. A moment or two later, Luce came huffing up behind me, her own shoulders laden with not one, not two - but three tote bags advertising some various names of publishers of children’s books. Conference SWAG staple, I knew Luce grabbed them each year at the Wisconsin Library Association’s Annual Conference. Last year’s conference had been held at the ever-popular Kalahari Resort in the Wisconsin Dells. But - it had been scheduled for about a week after I started my new position at the library, so I did not get to attend. That was totally understandable of course, but I loved library association conferences and I was sorry to miss my first as a Wisconsin Library Association member.

Fondly, I remember the Arizona Library Association Annual Conferences I had attended each year - without fail - ever since my University of Arizona iSchool days. I had even served a couple years on the Program Committee. Working with another librarian, we had received all of the program proposals and helped create the schedule for the Conference. What an eye-opening experience that had been! One definitely had a different view of events when they worked behind the scenes. I suppose that the same as working in many other industries. Once you look behind the curtain, the magic is bit dulled.

Oh well, of course I still planned to attend the Wisconsin Library Association’s Conference this year, provided I could get approval from our director, Maggie, to go. Travel and professional education grants were sometimes hard to come by. But I really I hoped I could find ways to become involved with the committees, too. I had heard from Luce how much fun she had had serving on the Literary Awards Committee. The members of the committee got to read all the books that had been written by authors with ties to Wisconsin in the previous year, and then - based on defined criteria - they selected notable books in various categories, as well as one overall recommended fiction and non-fiction title that would be made available to library patrons across the state. That Community Read title was a great way to engage patrons in the work the state’s library association did, too.

As Lucy joined me on the side walk, I said, “Hey, Luce - what’s black and white, and red all over?” She and I had started sharing jokes on our walk to work and I thought, this time, I had a pretty good one for her.

“Oh! I know this one - it’s a book, right?”

“Nope - it’s a mime at a crime scene!!”

I made a ‘bah-dum-tsch!’ sound, pretending to hit the high-hat with a flourish, as she groaned.

“Okay, I know - I know, that was bad. I heard it on a mystery author’s Facebook live the other day… sorry, I couldn’t resist.”

She laughed and then groaned again, but this time I didn’t think it was from the bad joke. Chancing a side-long grace in Luce’s direction, I stifled another smile. She was sweating, despite the frigid temperatures. Her brown hair was already escaping from her habitually low ponytail, giving her heart shaped face an even younger appearance. Her bright red-and-white Wisconsin Badger stocking cap, complete with fluffy white yarn pompom bouncing on top of her head, and Buckingham U. Badger (Bucky, for short) himself striding sportily across the front, football in hand - or would that be paw, I wondered, was askew. The hat, though one nearly any Wisconsinite might own, was a memento of her days at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she attended for her undergraduate program (a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature) and Master’s program in the School of Library and Information Studies.

Now, she grabbed the hat with her free hand and pulled it back down over her forehead. She looked over at me. 


“What? Oh, I know, I know - but give me a break. It has already been a day, and it is only 7:45 in the morning. Mom has got so many ideas about more ways the Friend’s can be involved, and even though she is due at the library at 10 o’clock this morning for her volunteer shift, she just HAD to talk about it before I left for work. I swear, that woman will drive me bonkers! I should have pushed her harder to go with her snowbird friends to Florida, and get out of my hair - and my house - this winter!”

I could not keep my laugh contained any longer - I would burst. Luce’s mother was a long-time volunteer at the library, and might actually spend more time there each week than the folks who were there on the clock.

A deep-felt belly laugh erupted from me, and then I said, “Luce! I cannot believe you! You love your mother, and you know it. Besides, she truly is an asset to the library - the headway her Friend’s group has made this year has been invaluable. Even Maggie says it.”

“Ooh, I know - I don’t really mean that bit about sending her away. But, at my age, the last thing I expected to be doing was sharing a house with my mother. You, of all people, have got to understand that!”

And, I did. I had to give Luce that. We may have only known each other for a few months, but Luce had become a fast friend. She knew my life story pretty well, already. My own mother, Rebecca, was happily ensconced in a 55+ luxury apartment complex back in Scottsdale - about 1500 miles away.

That was just far enough away that we now had a great relationship. Only took 35 years. It is true what they say about absence making the heart fonder, but, I did lament the fact that my mother and I did not have the close, nearly sister-like relationship Luce and her mom, Anne-Beatrice Carmichael (affectionately known as ‘Annie Bea’) had. Annie Bea was a force to be reckoned with.

I decided to try to shift Luce’s mind off her troubles with her mom for the time being. There would be plenty more opportunity to commiserate over our mothers later.

“So, what are you carrying in those totes, by the way? You know, you can actually leave books AT the library overnight, right?” I joked.

“Of course I know that, silly!” Luce smiled. My plan must be working. “I was working on story time plans for the next month and I wanted to have some backup book options ready. St. Patrick’s Day is coming up soon, then after that I thought I would dive into a Spring Fling theme and use it to carry us through April. And you know what April is, right?”

She looked at me with an excited smile quirking up the corners of her mouth.

“Um… The second month of the year in the Roman Calendar?” I guessed. Librarians knew a lot of random facts. Which was great if Alex Trebek ever showed up and had a need for backup contestants, but otherwise just a fun parlor trick.

“Well, yes, but also Camp NaNoWriMo! National Novel Writing Month is held in November each year, of course, but in April, I like to encourage the teens especially, but anyone really, to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo. It’s like a baby version of the full blown challenge that happens each November! They can set their own goal, and write anything they want. One year, I had someone do a Found Poetry project using Jurassic Park as their source text. The novel, not the movie - though the movie could work, too,” Luce paused to picture what that project could have looked like, then continued. “Last year, I joined in the fun, too. I wrote and illustrated most of a children’s book that featured a frog who wore shoes. The shoes were really quite cumbersome for him to wear most of the time, and made it really hard to jump, but then one day it rained so hard and all the ground became muddy. Well, you can imagine this was rough for the rest of the frogs - they were all sinking down into the mud and they got their feet all dirty. But Herbert, that was the name of my main character - or would that be main frog? Oh, well, anyway - Herbert had his shoes on, so he was able to keep his feet clean. He eventually opened up a frog-shoe shop, where he created custom made shoes for all the other frogs. It was quite a lucrative business venture in the swamp, you can imagine.”

Luce had kept her eyes forward for the past block, while she focused on recounting these memories. But now she glanced at me again, and a concerned look glazed her eyes.

“Oh, Libby, I meant to ask you - did you get a chance to talk to Maggie last week Friday about getting the Chat Reference service up and running? I know you set that as one of your early goals. How is that going?”

Ah, yes. I knew she would bring up my little pet project. Or was it more of a personal crusade? That did sound a lot more epic, at least.

Elsewhere Public Library only served a population of about 2,000 people between the town itself and the people who lived in the countryside surrounding the town, but I wanted to make sure that we could reach those people where they were. Sometimes, they were not able to come into the library in person to ask for help, or if they could - they might be turned off by the need to approach the imposing looking reference desk and ask their question face-to-face. I noticed that, when I took the job, the head of the Reference Department, Senior Librarian Irene Savela, had not embraced much in the way of current practice when it came to what we offered patrons. She was very much set in her ways. There was no chat reference, there was not even a publicly available email address patrons could use if they did not want to call directly. I brought this up in a one-on-one with our director as soon as I felt it was appropriate. The Elsewhere Public Library director, Maggie, supported my idea to offer at least basic chat reference, and asked me to put together an implementation plan. I had spent the better part of this past snowy weekend ensconced in my spare bedroom, which doubled as an office, working through my thoughts and creating a proposal for her.


“Well, I think I will probably have more definite news after the Library Board meeting this week Wednesday, but Maggie really did take to the idea. I am thinking of calling the platform ‘AskElsewhere.’ What do you think, Luce?”

“I. Love. That.” The pause between each word really added emphasis to her excitement. Luce was nothing if not the quintessentially excitable information professional. I was glad of it - her support of my ideas had been instrumental in my feeling confident early on in my new position. “And I am sure the Library Board will, too!”


“Yes, I think I have got most of them in my corner. But, what about Sally? She has always been a tough nut to crack, right? She and Irene are old friends, too - right? I wonder if she has enough clout to sway any of the other board members. Remember how vocal she was about us “young girls” as she called us - coming in and changing everything about her beloved library? She is defiantly not one to recognize that without change and growth, libraries become stale, and stagnant. And, that’s when they die.”

“Well, I’m not sure Irene and Sally are so friendly anymore. They used to be, I know, but recently something has changed on that front. I have no idea what - but there’s been a shift in the power dynamics on the Library Board in the past few years. They’re not as easy to read anymore."

Luce and I shared a worried look as we approached the side door to the library building. She reached out, and put her hand on my arm.

“Libby, I know your passion for better service for all our patrons will win out. Just keep that goal in mind. You were hired for a reason. Remember that, always - no matter what happens. We are the future!”

I hope Luce was right. This town could use a bit of a shake up. We both heaved a big sigh as we pulled open the door to the library and trekked inside, each to our respective side of the library, to begin another day of public service.