Kimberly Hirsh

I was planning on getting to work soon but my office mate had a different idea.

There are few feelings as good as canceling a bunch of library holds because your family already owns all the books. 📚

I’m sleepy and in pain which is a rough combo because it’s hard to actually sleep while in pain.

Midnight says hi. 🐈‍⬛

📚 There are still spots available for online attendance at Public Librarianship in Contentious Times, a conference hosted by the University of Michigan School of Information and the Michigan Library Association. School librarians should find this relevant to their work as well and are welcome.

Finally watched the Amsterdam episode of Ted Lasso and just really missed Amsterdam the whole time. It was a really cool place to be and I’m sorry that between the weather and transit strikes we didn’t get into the city more. Also, gezellig is kind of like Dutch hygge.

🔖🖖🏻 Happy Star Trek Day! I just read Teaching in Trek: A Look at the Education System of the Future by @joepraska@universeodon.com.

I love thinking, reading, & writing about this stuff. This is great timing as I watch Keiko O’Brien start the school on DS9. Thanks for writing this, Joe!

When we stayed in Le Vésinet, a suburb of Paris, there was a boulangerie on our walk home from the train station. Every time we went into the city, we would stop there and grab a baguette (and usually some other things, too) to have back at the house. I recently got homesick for Paris and found Sophie Nadeau’s blog post, Here’s How to Recreate the Paris Experience in Your Home.

This morning, in order to follow her recommendation to eat a typical French breakfast, I went to Guglhupf, which makes excellent baguettes (but is technically a German bakery) and bought 2.

I don’t know if I’ll polish one off today or not.

Pro tip: too tired/anxious to introduce yourself at a social event? Wear a bookish shirt and wait for people to come ask you about what you’re reading.

CW: Pet death

When we brought our kitties home last week, Wednesday had a little nasal discharge. The person at the front desk was all, “Yeah, that’s an upper respiratory infection, they’re super common in shelters, just get her to the vet and they’ll give you some antibiotics.”

I couldn’t get her into the vet until Monday. By Monday, she had lost a third of her bodyweight. She was severely dehydrated. She was constipated. The vets gave me a bunch of (not inexpensive) meds and gave her subcutaneous fluids. Later in the day, I got the discharge notes and they said I should bring her back the next day for more fluids if she didn’t improve in the night.

I took her back, they gave her fluids, and I asked if we could give her fluids at home. They said yes, told me what to do to feed her from a syringe (it’s called trickle feeding), and told me they didn’t know if she was going to make it.

Yesterday, W’s mom came over and we gave her fluids twice. I fed her with a syringe every two or three hours. I gave her all her meds.

This morning, M went in to check on the kittens and when I went in, I saw that she had died in the night.

This is, of course, very sad. But it’s also something I’ve been prepared for for a few days. I know I did everything I could for her. I also know, especially after consulting with the vet when I took her for fluids a couple day ago, that the shelter did wrong by her by not only not treating the respiratory infection but also by going ahead and giving her a bunch of vaccines and spaying her while she was sick.

I know the shelter is struggling, too, so I’m not angry.

But damn. What a set of events to conspire against a little kitten.

I only knew her a little and her personality faded as she got sicker, but she was a fierce, adventurous girl.

On the other hand, her brother Midnight, who also came home with an upper respiratory infection but much less severe, is thriving. We’ll be giving him lots of love and attention.

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about my first writing craft book. In case you didn’t believe that I was excited, I recently found my journal from 7th grade and in it I write about that very book.

📺🖖🏻 Finished my rewatch of Star Trek: The Next Generation today. It felt much less intense watching “All Good Things…” now than when it originally aired, probably because I can visit my Enterprise-D friends whenever I want.

🔖 💻 Read Now is the time for grimoires: It isn’t data that will unlock AI, it is human expertise by Ethan Mollick (One Useful Thing).

This is the most helpful take on generative AI that I’ve seen: create a prompt that is basically a computer program written in prose instead of code.

📚🍳 Started reading the introduction to Jules Sherred’s Crip Up the Kitchen: Tools, Tips and Recipes for the Disabled Cook and I might cry.

“The kitchen is the worst room in the house if you are disabled. I’m about to change that and make life easier for everyone.”

Fan Studies Network North America is October 11 -15 and open for registration! I’ll be facilitating a conversation among FanLIS scholars about fan tagging practices and ways libraries can use their collections to engage fans.

🔖📚 Read Falling in Love With the Avengers, America’s Most Toxic Work Force by Leigh Bardugo (New York Times, gift link)

I love Leigh Bardugo so much.

🔖📚 Read Shadow and Bone author Leigh Bardugo: ‘People sneer at the things women and girls love’ by Sian Cain (The Guardian).

She really is my hero.

Twenty-five years ago tonight, W. and I went on our first date. (Yes, we were young.) We went to see a cross-cast production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Afterward, we went to Ben and Jerry’s.

I was going to catalog a bunch of memories of those early days together here, but I think I want to keep them in my heart. And, of course, as heady as that first rush of falling in love is, it’s the time after it that builds to an anniversary this big.

It feels like and is a long time, 25 years. It’s wild because it doesn’t seem to me that we’ve been together that long because how could I still find someone so incredibly delightful after all that time? How is it that every pun he makes still cracks me up? That the way he moves through the world, like literally physically carries himself, can still bring a flush to my cheeks? What miracle is this, to get to spend this much time with someone so great?

It’s a choice every day to wake up and keep loving each other. To show up, to have patience when we’re not on the same page. To know that even when we’re not on the same page, we’re on the same team. And it’s a blessing, a gift from whomever gives us cosmic gifts, to have the chance to make that daily choice.

We’re celebrating a quarter century by taking M. to the animal shelter to pick out two kittens to add to our family.

Currently reading: Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness by Kelly Baker 📚

Austin Kleon says to climb your creative family tree. Kelly is like an intellectual big sister, so I’m starting with her. (Katie Rose Guest Pryal is another.) 📝

💬📚 “I hunker down with books when I need time to process what’s happening in my own life.
Books give me the space to breathe.”

• Kelly J. Baker, Final Girl: And Other Essays on Grief, Trauma, and Mental Illness

Meet Midnight and Wednesday.

W: I just don’t have a framework for doing this kind of writing…
Me: You need to read a lot of it and then just start writing.
W: holds up invisible mirror

📚💬 “Disaster and hero, monster and martyr, beauty and beast . . . Choose your own dichotomy. Because it doesn’t matter. We were always built to be both.” Lana Harper, For Better or Cursed

Finished reading: From Bad to Cursed by Lana Harper 📚

Loved it even more than Payback’s A Witch. Full review coming later this week.

If generative AI traffic is declining, does that mean AI can just become another tool we use and we can talk about it normally without talking about it exclusively?