(In which we are reminded that All Things Must Pass which, strangely enough, even includes library grant money from the United States government….)

THIRTEEN DAYS AGO, or one day before the grant spending was officially history, I got the OK to spend the remainder of the grant money.  This money represented DVDs & Blu-Ray purchase requests that AEP couldn’t fill by the June 30th deadline.  Having said that: if you don’t currently deal with AEP, you must.  Phenomenal fill rate, people who specialize in government sales, and what they

THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT INEPT.  THEY ARE OUTRAGEOUSLY EPT.

don’t have they drop ship.  Embarrassingly, until this grant experience I never knew what ‘drop ship’ meant.  Someone in our Fiscal office (who’s probably still laughing) schooled me, so now I’m in the know.

Advanced Educational Products – GSA

See this structure?  Isn’t it magnificent?  If only it was ours.  Our location is ugly.  But the people working at our ugly location are personable, competent book-people, and you can’t ask for anything more than that.  Wait–yes you CAN!  Earlier in the

year they also provided lunch on the house, as a thank-you for spending two thousand dollars.  Proving yet again that it’s what inside that counts.  This time, our paltry $281 netted us a paltry 19 titles.  Nineteen.  What is our world coming to?  You kids and your Nooks.

No books on humor-as-therapy were found this time, but among the titles purchased were (3) Bill Watterson Calvin & Hobbes remainders that are probably already stolen as you read these words.  Cartoon collections are hard to keep.  I buy them anyway, in the psychotic belief that soon prison culture will undergo an inexplicable sea-change where inmates who normally steal this stuff begin to return them on or before the stamped due date.  We each of us have our self-delusions.

On Friday, we received the titles (all of them, it should be gratefully noted) from the Property Department.  The cataloger/classifier classified & cataloged them before he left at

DLM, CIRCA 1999. WE’VE USED THIS FOR SO LONG,  IT’S RETRO.

3:30 to begin his weekend.  The circulation clerk created records for them in Circulation Plus.  The bookbinder covered hardcover dust jackets with Mylar.  Then the ILL clerk–who usually launches himself out of the building the moment “Movement!” is called but was still hanging around–took it upon himself to shelve them.

And so, the money’s gone.  This is what we have to show for it:

• Some pedagogic technology
• Humor-as-Therapy media to feed it
• Two program texts (Healing Power of Humor by Allen Klein & HA! The Science of When We Laugh & Why by Scott Weems) @13 copies each
• Laughter Yoga Leader training and certification
• A 111-title comedian biography section
• A 79-title humor-as-therapy section
• 55 new books for the Humor section

And class content for a 12-week course on humorous techniques to apply when you’re feeling stressed out and even when you’re feeling calm.  This Tuesday’s Week Seven topic is ‘Humor, Laughter, and Its Uses in the Correctional Environment.”