Oddments of High Unimportance

i.e., [Confessions of a Basement Book Cleaner] (https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/27/the-strange-things-ive-found-inside-books/)

by Jane Stern, via The Paris Review

I remember seeing these “Fear of God” cards now and then growing up in a Southern Baptist melieu.

via Alan Jacobs’ Snake & Ladders newsletter

A fun article: We Almost Forgot About the Moon Trees - The Atlantic

via today’s Recomendo newsletter

Some days, my banjo lesson feels like I’m playing music. Other days (like this morning), it feels like I’m doing math and my mind won’t settle down.

From today’s Recomendo newsletter:

Weird Old Book Finder

Clive Thompson created this search tool for weird old books in an attempt to rewild our attention. It only finds books one at a time and in the public domain, which you can download. I found this 1901 copy of Studies of Trees in Winter, which is actually a book I came across in a Berkeley library years ago and have been searching for. I also discovered this — definitely weird — rare manuscript titled The Complex Vision by poet/philosopher John Cowper Powys. I love tools like these that help me break free from the same old internet loop. — Claudia Dawson

The Night Stalker movies and TV series aired during my junior high school years. Not ashamed to say that Darren McGavin made me want to sling a tape recorder over my shoulder, wear a straw hat, and be a hard-bitten reporter.

Lithub’s Crime Reads hub has a wonderful appreciation of the movie that started it all, a movie that remains a tasty Halloween treat.

Today’s Pome was too good not to share:

Pattern

Your dress waving in the wind.
This
is the only flag I love.

Garous Abdolmalekian
trans. Idra Novey and Ahmad Nadalizadeh (2020)

1. Imaginative experiment 1: Think back to when you were 7 or 8 years old. You’re at a dinner surrounded by parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents. Someone asks you, “What will you be when you grow up?” Answer as if you were that 7-year-old. What’s the reaction of your family around the table? Laughter? Teasing? Disbelief? Scoffing? What’s your reaction to what your 7-year-old self said? Whose reaction is most important to you? Source: [The Ultimate Anti-Career Guide] (https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Ultimate-Anti-Career-Guide-Audiobook/B002VA8HD4?qid=1642099378&sr=1-1&ref=a_search_c3_lProduct_1_1&pf_rd_p=83218cca-c308-412f-bfcf-90198b687a2f&pf_rd_r=4NWGK7Y15THH5ZEYCXSH)
2. Imaginative experiment 2: You’re at your retirement party. Your colleagues are celebrating your life and career. What are they celebrating you for? Were you a great manager? A visionary? A great teacher? A skilled navigator of the bureaucracy? What footprint did you leave behind in their lives?
3. Where do you want to work? Use LinkedIn to find contacts there and invite someone out for a coffee meeting. Don’t talk about yourself: ask about their work, what interests them about it, what keeps them there, etc. Make friends, don’t network. Schedule 3 or 4 coffee meetings a month, let people know you’re out there and you’re interested. Source: Ask the Headhunter, and a few other places.
4. In my 20s-40s, I switched jobs every four years, it seemed. By that time, I’d figured out the job, was bored, and wanted to be tested and challenged elsewhere. Think in terms of job adventures. Don’t hone a set of skills so specialized and local that they make you the perfect employee at your current job. When you start a new job, start looking for the next job. Maybe apply for jobs via LinkedIn to see if the marketplace values your current skillset.
5. Don’t worry too much about this mythical thing called “a career.” Look after the little things, like doing work you find valuable and worthwhile. The career will look after itself.