“The Mind Stone is the fourth of the Infinity Stones to show up in the last few years. That’s not a coincidence. Someone has been playing an intricate game and has made pawns of us.” – Thor (Avengers: Age of Ultron)
“Endgame” is a term used to label the late stage of a chess game when there’s fewer pieces on the board–and the King becomes a more powerful figure. This is why Strange saved Tony–not only because Tony will be a pivotal figure moving forward, but to lose Tony would be checkmate. (x)
Between 1990 and 2014, visits to public libraries grew by a whopping
181%. For context, the population of the United States increased by 28%
during that period. Why have so many more people been using their
libraries in the last two decades? Here’s what I think…
Librarians Are More Involved in Communities
In the distant past, the library building was the center of a librarian’s professional world. Now, librarians regularly expand the library’s reach by presenting at
community meetings, staffing booths at events, and just generally
applying their skills in creative ways to helping their community.
Responsive, Unique, and High-Quality Program Offerings
Libraries have hosted programs such as book clubs, film screenings, storytimes, and arts & crafts for years. Today’s libraries have raised the bar with their program offerings in the past
few decades to respond to patron needs. Workshops and training on starting a business, basic job skills, and STEM programs for kids, “Community Reads” events and literary festivals are just a few new options available.
Embrace of a User-Centered Approach to Technology
Possibly the biggest reason that library visits have grown so
drastically in the last two decades is that libraries have become the
go-to places for computer classes, help with devices like tablets and
e-readers, and access to free ebooks and audiobooks.
Libraries succeed at technology not by upgrading their computers every
year, but by helping their patrons access the information they need,
whether it is at the library or at home using the skills they learned at
the library.
When I was 7 years old and at the optometrist, I was what’s known as a Little Shit. I didn’t sit still. I didn’t want to read the letters. I didn’t want to do anything except go home. Eventually, my mom bribed me with a kitten. A PERSIAN kitten, freshly purchased from the extremely shady pet shop directly across the street. It worked like a charm, I’m sad to say, because I’m extremely vulnerable to kittens. tbh, considering the way my mom was looking at those kittens, she would have bought one anyway.
My dad says that she always did have a weakness for dumb animals. “It’s why she married me,” he always says. Anyway, this is a story about a Very Dumb Cat, not Heterosexual Hilarity Hour.
This kitten weighed about a pound and I suspect 75% of that was fluff. She was smokey grey, had a perfect little nose (she was what’s called a doll-faced or traditional Persian. No pug faces here!), and had the IQ of a hammer.
I mean this with all the love in my heart, but you could just look into those eyes and absolutely KNOW that there was nothing going on in there. It wasn’t even a case of ‘no lights on upstairs’. There wasn’t even an upstairs. There wasn’t even a ground floor. There was just NOTHING going on in there.
Kiki didn’t understand some simple concepts—-stairs, for example. She never figured them out, even after 7 years of living in a house with stairs. Her preferred method of locomotion was to cry very loudly until someone carried her where she wanted to go. One could argue that this was, in fact, very clever of her.
Please don’t give her the credit. It was pretty clear that she was simply confused about how stairs could go up AND down at the same time.
TBH, she never figured out how to get onto furniture either. She was fully capable of jumping and playing like any other cat, but it seemed as soon as she had to THINK about something, everything else shut down. Like… one day, I was playing with her and a piece of string. She was delighted and jumping and playing. Just normal kitten stuff. Then she decided she wanted to sit in my lap instead. I mean, i SAY “decided”, but it could’ve just been a passing air mote depositing the idea in her head.
The point is, she abruptly forgot how to jump onto furniture. She forgot how to JUMP. She just kinda sat there and stared at me for a few seconds before starting to cry. She was actually pretty distressed by it and didn’t stop until I picked her up for a cuddle. Thankfully, she seemed to forget it pretty quickly. No room for anything besides the moment, I guess.
She also never grew very much. Even as an adult, she barely pushed 3 pounds. She also had a serious dental issue. Her canines stuck straight out horizontally. They weren’t very big so they didn’t push past her lips or anything, but it was the most baffling thing her vet had ever seen.
I loved that dumb animal. She was a very good girl and I miss her.
