Confessions of a Bibliophile

In my youth I bought books, borrowed books, checked books out of the library and haunted bookstores, list in hand. Mostly I bought books, and today those eagerly-made purchases still stand in rigid formation on the crowded shelves, thick and thin, tattered and almost pristine, in colors garish and subdued. I have sticky fingers where books are concerned; best not to loan me a book, it will creep in among the others on the shelves to hide anonymously. On occasion, possessed of a cleaning-out zeal, I trawl the shelves, thinking guiltily that someone else would surely enjoy having some of these nearly forgotten titles. I find the purchases from university bookshops, the volumes that covered the backseat of the car after a stop in Cambridge - back when books were cheap in England - the booty from second-hand sales, birthday presents, paperbacks left by decamping guests. I can't part with any of these volumes. The cleanup zeal passes the bookshelves by.

At some point it became clear that this purchasing mania was going to have to stop. Continuing to bring home all those lovely treasures would soon drive me out of the apartment - there'd be no room for me. Not that that would be a problem actually, for I would be residing in the poorhouse anyway, having spent all my cash on printed matter.

Not buying hasn't mean less reading; joining three libraries has seen to that. There is the friendly, homey library in the next town, which must have a sizable English language readership, for there are continually renewed shelves of the latest paperbacks, convenient for popping into my backpack and transporting on the train. The library of the American Women’s Club of Zurich yields a larger selection and audio books, but it is the Zentralbibliothek, the library of the city of Zurich and its university, that yields up most of my present printed treasure.

The general reading stacks in this library take some getting used to. They are located in the catacombs in the cellar. These underground warrens have no windows. The stacks slide on rollers, the mechanical equivalent of little cat feet, so that many of them can be jammed together, separable by means of hand-turned wheels at the end that set them gliding. One is cautioned to check that no one is searching in one of the open gaps between shelves before moving them to create one's own gap. A friend who hated the whole dungeon-like setup once got caught by someone who didn't "mind the gap". I experienced this once also and was more dizzy than frightened. I felt that I, not the shelf, was moving, a very eerie experience indeed.

That's the hardware of the stacks - now we come to the software, the identifying numbers on the books themselves. Whereas the Dewey decimal system and the alphabet have always been good enough for me, this library does things its own way. The North American Library part of the Zentralbibliothek, housing books by American, Canadian and Mexican authors, simply marks each incoming book by the year and a number corresponding to its arrival from the library's own bindery, which re-covers each book in what amounts to armor plate. One feels that this is a too zealous manifestation of Swiss quality. Browsing is also impossible; one has to look up the identifying number on the computer beforehand.

Wanting to check out several books but not enjoying schlepping home a lot of armor plate, I pull my little 2-wheeled shopping cart behind me, rather like a dog on a leash, up the library steps past the gawking students. I assume they finally realize that I am decades older than they, and they probably feel proudly Herculean toting their weighty tomes home to their desks. I am grateful that my books get to ride and can be rolled onto one of the new railway coaches with floors level with the platform. At home they are stacked in the hall bookcase, and then begins the unequaled pleasure of stretching out on the couch with one of them.

Old fashioned am I, you say, to be so enamored -still- of the printed word in this electronic era? No e-books, no Kindle? Think how much easier, I can hear you say, it would be to stretch out on the couch with the laptop and just download the weightless electronic equivalents of my armor-plated volumes.

Yes, but it is I who am old-fashioned, not only my library-visiting habit. I would miss the search in the stacks and the feeling of being among students once again - I feel I am one of them for a few moments. I would feel bereft to hold a tablet in hand, rather than the weightier, thicker item with pages I can turn. My shopping cart is going to continue to bring home as many books as potatoes.

At some point decrepitude will force the electronic reading world upon me. What is most important will stay the same of course - the reading experience; the soaking in of the mystery, the love story, the fascinating facts. What will be lost is the physical, the tangible, the atmosphere given off by ranks of still-unknown books in quantity, the chunky feeling of the story in my hand. Amusing and ironic is the fact that I will then be back to buying books again - e-books this time.

Crazy Costly Carbon Concepts

 

The people of Engelberg, Switzerland are trying to save their glacier. Losing 1 to 2 meters of ice thickness per year, the tourist-attracting Titlis glacier will be gone within the next century, taking with it a major source of the area’s income. The locals are unwilling to simply accept this fate, and are taking a couple of steps to slow down the melting while considering another measure as well.

Already in place are special reflecting blankets at strategic points on the ice, and another course of action, to start this year, involves cooling the glacier artificially from inside the ice grotto. A half-million francs outlay at the start, plus energy and yearly adjustments. Under consideration is a plan to cover parts of the glacier with artificial snow created from its melt water.

The Engelberger are not alone in considering such expensive technical measures to counteract global warming. Wrapping all of Greenland’s glaciers in blankets has been floated, and this quickly becomes hilarious. White blankets of course; embroidered? with satin binding? Or how about this other Greenland-related idea: shooting mirrors the size of that island into space to block some – about 2% - of the sun’s light? One pictures one such mirror covering 11 times the area of Florida while it awaits its trip into space, powered by let’s see – several hundred? thousand? rockets. Not to mention the vulnerability of such mirrors to space junk collisions and the enormous task of getting them down safely at the end of their useful life. And then there is my favorite of all the - shall we say unusual - ideas: add garlic to cows’ feed to kill the methane-producing bacteria in their stomachs. This would be cheap and no doubt effective, but it would add a new dimension to halitosis.

Such measures seem to me the climate control equivalent of locking the barn door after the horse has run away. The people of Engelberg realize that their glacier meltdown will only be slowed, and presumably have done a cost-effectiveness analysis of the proposed measures vs. lost tourist income if nothing is done. Most of the other ideas, however, would cost a large fortune; money far better spent on such technical solutions as changing over to renewable energy and continuing to increase energy efficiency. They fail disastrously to get down to the foundations of global warming and real measures to reduce it. Gold-plated bandaids over huge gaping wounds come to mind. And speaking of mind, they reinforce a couple of the mind-sets that have gotten us into the present climate crisis. One is the preference for the equally expensive shallow fix over serious action, the other the complete failure to even think about the side effects of our actions. Need we be reminded, yet once again, that the first law of ecology is that everything depends on everything else?

BRRR

 

Here in Zurich we had a terrible spring. When it wasn’t raining it was leaden and gloomy. Venturing outside in winter jackets and scarves, we shivered in the chill wind. One friend fetched her winter boots from the cellar because her feet were freezing, exclaiming, “Winter boots! In May!” I planted nasturtium seeds twice; each time they rotted in the ground. The morning glories’ growth is severely stunted. Snow was predicted in May for altitudes only slightly higher than that of Lake Zurich. One joked about whether we should all die from depression or from vitamin D deficiency instead. Only now that it is finally summery can I wash the heavy fleece jacket in which I cocooned myself every day, needing its coziness.

When we were able to lift our heads from the nest of scarves and blankets, we found that we shared our experiences with virtually the entire northern hemisphere. From the UK to eastern and continental Europe and North America, the headlines all echoed the same theme: record-setting blizzards and snow depth, widest tornado every recorded, coldest month on record, migratory bird return delayed, states of emergency declared, snowfall in May, mass death of sheep and newborn lambs caught in the icy cold, three-week delay in blossoming and ripening, cattle deaths, ships stuck in the ice. No freak spring this, something more serious, what in the world is causing such widespread chill? To be sure, global warming is just that, global, with both extremes of temperature to be expected, but on this massive scale?

The answer is also massive, and chilling – pun intended. Melting artic ice has exposed huge swaths of open sea to sunlight, and this warming has shifted the position of the jet stream. Instead of the usual westerlies as the prevailing winds, massive quantities of cold arctic air were able to push father south, covering the eastern US and Europe with icy inert blankets. This was not a phenomenon limited to this spring; weather scientists are predicting more extreme weather events to come, including the opposite situation, heat waves.

We started considering the small - fleece jackets and struggling morning glories - and then went to the massive, the jet stream and continent-size frigid air masses. I’m wondering if it will be our individual experiences this spring or the sheer mammoth geographical size of the cause that will do more to convince us that climate change is drastic and already upon us?

Who's Priveleged?

For an American living in Switzerland, two differences in living conditions here and back home stand out: few people own their own houses and the public transport system is terrific. Trotting home from the railway station, I mused on the fact that the wealthier one is here, the more one can cut oneself off from contact with the great unwashed majority of us. The better off drive everywhere in their cars, air-conditioned and therefore sealed away from the odors and noises of summer. They have a pool in

the yard, so do not mix with the crowd at the beach. They sail their own boats rather than taking the scheduled ships on the lake, and take exercise at a gym rather than walking home from the grocery store. Watching films on the home cinema, they miss the crunch of popcorn and the sight of necking teenagers at the public movies. They own their own houses, so do not rub elbows with neighbors who live in the same building.

 
This is quite different from isolation, as one can be in close contact with workmates, friends and members of one’s interest groups. What is missing is the casual chat with an acquaintance on the bus, the examination of the young sportsmen transporting their bikes or their snowboards on the train, the experience of sharing an apartment house with people much older or younger, with different lifestyles.

Their contact with nature is also different. It is planned and controlled; their own gardens, the mountain hike, the walk in the woods. They are not knowledgeable about the blackberries growing next to the train tracks, the buttercups in the field on the way home from the station, the sight of American chestnut trees in bloom next to the church; invisible from the road but bordering one’s homeward path. They miss feasting their eyes on the allotments, one of which in my town has the most gorgeous tulips and forget-me-nots in spring and peonies later.

Neither way of life is necessarily superior. It does seem to me that the more integrated lives of those of us not in the privileged classes are more spontaneous. I would love a picking garden full of tulips in the spring and delphiniums later, but it’s more fun to bring home the wild buttercups and red clover. A regular dip in my own pool would be quite heavenly, but I would miss the swim from buoy to buoy out in the lake, glorying in the sight of the Alps and bobbing in the wash from the old paddlewheel ships. An own grill would be delightful, but so is the experience of eating a Bratwurst at the public beach while sitting on the rocks at lakeside, watching the sailboats compete in the weekend regatta. One owns less privately, but the public offerings are staggering. As Mary Oliver says, “The world offers itself to your imagination”. Yes!