Three feet of snow: now what?

Phew.

All this snow. It makes me wonder why I left Rochester at all. Of course, I spent a couple of years in Florida after I graduated from RIT, so that makes sense -- except now, of course, I find myself up here, buried under three feet of snow.

As I'm sure you may have noticed, the recent snowstorms have thrown off the blog schedule a little bit. Add on to that my work with the Academic Bowl, and you've got a strange schedule simmering away. This week gets a Wednesday post, since I'm in Utah starting Thursday, but next week will get a post on Friday.

Since things have gone a little askew, I'm going to put the remainder of the Deaf Research Help series on hold until next week; we're all still playing catch-up after a week off, and it's beyond me to try and focus on such involved stuff at the moment while I've got a few other things going.

Instead, we'll do a quick post, starting with a book review and then an update on the Library in the wake of last week's snowstorms. Sort of a half-post for a half-week.

Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger. I actually checked this book out for a re-read after hearing about Salinger's death a few weeks ago; it's one of my favorite books. It's basically the story of the Glass family, which consists of a pair of parents and a whole passel of overachieving kids who sequentially rose to fame on a radio show by being on a panel of smart-aleck children who answer questions posed to them by callers. Of course, by the time in which the novel is set, the kids have all grown up, complete with a war death (the Second World War) and a suicide; the surviving Glasses are left to cope with the attendant psychological problems that arise when child geniuses grow up.

Specifically, the two youngest Glass kids, now in their twenties, are the main characters in the book. Franny's the baby -- and beauty -- of the family, who's just experienced a nervous breakdown for reasons not fully explained in the novel (although they are very strongly implied), while Zooey is her older brother, a good-looking aspiring actor with a major chip on his shoulder. The majority of the novel concerns a long conversation between the two as Franny convalesces on their mother's couch about the frustration they experience while approaching a world that is often more senseless than they expect it to be. Really, both Franny and Zooey are more thoughtful versions of Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye; they're more likely to attempt to come to terms with the world as it is, rather than hold a grudge against it for its refusal to conform to their standards.

It's a fantastic book and, if I may be so bold, superior to Catcher in the Rye in many ways.

Now: What happened to the Library in the middle of all that snow?

Believe it or not, while Gallaudet as a whole was closed, we stayed open! This is because our student assistants, most of whom live on campus, went way above and beyond; they came in, they opened the building, they checked out books and movies, checked them in, and generally held the fort and offered our most basic services until we librarians could come back to campus. Major kudos to them!

However, for one reason or another, people may have gotten e-mails saying their items were overdue during last week, but were unable to make it onto campus because of unplowed roads, buried cars, or just plain old snow-laden ennui (maybe not that last one). This is kind of annoying, because folks who checked out any movies on the first day of the first storm, Feb. 4, were unable to come in on or before Feb. 7 to return their movies. Then, after a couple days of digging out, the next storm hit!

Don't worry, though: We're waiving any fines for items that you couldn't drop off last week because of the weather! If you've still got any of those, bring them in this week and you'll get off scot-free. This only applies to items that were due on or after Feb. 4 and before Feb. 14.

Aside from that, as I said, we're all playing catch-up, along with the rest of Gallaudet, but we're definitely open for business.

That's all for this week. Next week: Deaf research pathfinders!