WEEK 5 (WELL, ACTUALLY MORE LIKE, WELL... LET'S NOT GET INTO THAT)

It has taken a long while. I read the material, Spruce Goose and all, and it wasn’t jelling.  I went to the first retreat and it jelled but more like aspic, with little bits in it that no one quite knows what they are and avoids it (Everyone: a rousing chorus of “Lime Jello, Marshmallow, Cottage Cheese Surprise”!)

It was great stuff, I was taking it in, and yet it was like hiking through the Rockies with Vaseline on my lenses.  And through it all, I kept wondering: what’s wrong with me?  I’m not stupid.  I should get this.  Why is this so foreign?

I benefited from some wonderful wisdom, hard to beat Anne Marie and Rebecca as sources on this stuff, met some great folks from across Ontario, some with bad situations, i.e., in similar boats as I, though with less leakage from my point of view.  So why is this so hard?  They seem to be getting it.

Rereading reinforced the fact that I’ve really taken a huge career bite when I accepted to become a library director even if it is a small, more rural than urban library.  It was a joke, a stupid joke that helped crack the wall. And I can’t even remember the context except that it was in a very forgettable movie: “Howard Hughes, isn’t he the one that never got out of his pajamas?” “No, that was Hugh Heffner.”

My tired brain popped: it’s the damn Spruce Goose analogy!  I’ve actually visited the damn thing, around 1990.  Star Trek is made up!  If they need it to fire matzo balls at some alien life force, they just have to write it in and it’s done.  The ships community and the Federation: all chirpier than Disney forest critters being sung to by an abandoned princess.  What community and City administration is ever that Kumbayah for any length of time? Even Bones’ curmodgeony made a tantruming three year old look like Attila the Hun.

And when I read: “..grab your Trekkie shirt [and I’m sure Rebecca and Jim have both received many admonitions about how it’s “Trekker” and never “Trekkie” by now.  I had it only once but, man, what a delivery and a set of lungs!], I saw myself in the red shirt of the original Kirk and Spock version.  And for those of you who don’t appreciate the significance of the colour, don’t Google it.  Watch Galaxy Quest, a brilliant send-up of Star Trek, including its fan base.

I’m actually living the Spruce Goose nightmare!  Hughes was a brilliant engineer.  When the Goose flew, it was a mere trial but the concept was brilliant and totally doable.  It could fly.  It could carry a large payload: the thing is cavernous, great for belting out an aria or two. I know, much to the surprise of some other tourists who had never heard Verdi’s great baritone aria from Ballo in Maschera - they do now!  But Hughes was against a huge force.  And the Spruce Goose analogy rang truer to me than the Trekker dream.

His plane was made of wood, easy to build cheaply and using renewable material.  Major airplane manufacturers and allied supply companies knew the threat to their fat military contracts.  Government and military officials are only human, offer them pots of cash and they can scotch even the greatest idea for a fee.  Anyone drive a Tucker these days?   And look into Dole and its Nicaragua banana plantations in the 50s.  Don’t believe these companies have the power to crush those they wish to oppose?

There’s a lot I could ramble on about but my bottom line is this: I am up against some long standing cultural issues and some deep imbedded “business as usual” practices, none of which are healthy for my Library nor for my community. I appreciate this now. So, time to cook the goose.