It hasn't been a good week for libraries, what with California considering stopping all library funding

and New York possibly doing the same...

And librarians are taking on big publishers who are pulling their e-books from libraries.

If only the publishers willing to pay millions for Amanda Knox's memoir would help the libraries out a little

Especially considering that small publishers are having just as much trouble as libraries

If you want to cheer up a librarian though, how about a severed head to show your loyalty?

Just don't play Adele, as her songs are scientifically proven to make you cry

And you don't want to cause too much trouble, lest you end up with your own police composite sketch.

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“If a same sex marriage bill comes to the desk of Governor Christie, it will be returned to the legislature with a big red veto on it.” New Jersey Governor elect Chris Christie remembering his Hester Prynne in 2009. New Jersey and Washington State legislatures both passed of marriage equality bills on Monday.

“The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.” The court’s opinion inLoving v. Virginia, 1967.

“The gem belongs on the ring, standing proud and broad. The stream belongs among the waves, mingling with the ocean flood...The bear belongs on the heath, old and awesome...The female, the woman, must visit her lover with secret cunning—if she has no wish to prosper among her people so that someone will purchase her with rings.” Anglo Saxon wisdom poem Maxims II. 

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."

Photograph of Mildred and Richard Loving by Grey Villet, via Time Magazine

I’m always a touch skeptical when I read writing tips from famous writers. Scrolling through Open Culture’s recent selection, I wondered whom these authors—from George Orwell to William Safire—saw as their intended audience. Beginners, most likely. Students, dabblers. But what about that vast, silent majority that lies between the beginners and the pros?

“Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes," suggests Margaret Atwood. "Pens leak.” I am immune to the kind of privileged bullying going on here, and I won’t stand for Neil Gaiman’s condescending #2: “Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down.” I know when I’m being teased. Most of these tips read like your mother telling you to put on a sweater.

At the same time, I find them irresistible. And sometimes it’s a comfort just to see famous authors revealing the dull daily tasks that allow their work to proceed. Sometimes I need to be told to put on a sweater.

Here, then, are some suggestions for those of us who have surpassed the intermediate phase and are now approaching the very real, very dark side of the writer's life.

1. Become a better drinker. If you’re unable to write while drunk, get drunk on the nights reserved for not writing. Devise a hangover method that works consistently. Never edit under the influence.

2. Maintain a cordial relationship with your parents, as they provide useful storage for all the books and manuscripts you refuse to relinquish. You will also, at some point, need to live in their basement.

3. Do not get married. Never have kids. If you have to sleep with someone, do it in a public restroom or over at their place so you can leave easily and get back to work. Never have someone sleep over at your apartment unless you have a separate study with a door that locks. Also, your parents can hear you.

4. Survive by routine. Eat and wear the same things every day. You’re not going to look good; you’re not intended to.

5. Embarrass yourself publicly, as often as possible, in order to build up solid reserves of shame and insolence in your heart. And to convince yourself you don’t live a life of monotony and work, which you do.

Image: vulcanicnews.com

“On Saturday, [Erin] Brockovich’s team was turned away by the school while trying to collect soil samples on the property. However, a doctor treating many of the students is confident that they are suffering not from poisoning, but from mass hysteria…[A]s research has shown, it is also the cheerleaders and not the math-club girls who are likely to spread hysteria.” –Ruth Graham in Slate, on the outbreak of Tourette’s-like symptoms in Genesee County, NY.

“You must have heard of Sálmacis’ pool, whose waves emasculate men who have bathed there; the Ethiopian lake, where anyone drinking the water either goes mad or passes out in a stupefied coma…the Scythian witches are also reported to put on feathers by sprinkling themselves with their poisons” –Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. David Raeburn.

“A small boy tried to throttle his mother ... Among the stricken, delirium rose: patients thrashed wildly on their beds, screaming that red flowers were blossoming from their bodies, that their heads had turned to molten lead … Pont-Saint-Esprit speculated that the village idiot had hexed Baker Briand's flour … The disease was called ‘St. Anthony's Fire.’" –September 10, 1951 (yup) Time Magazine article on an outbreak of gangrenousergotism in France. 

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)"

Image: Quentin Blake for Roald Dahl's The Witches

Chekhov was a doctor. What other non-writing day jobs are great for writers?

Could being an infamous Cuban leader be one of them?

But if you happen to live in book-hating Turkey, that above option may not be feasible.

Or you could always go ahead and write that long-awaited sequel to Blade Runner.

Afterall, science fiction and other genre fiction tops many of the literary elite's favorites lists.

Though, you can never go wrong with copious amounts of Tolstoy and Nabokov.

Just take it from Henry Miller and "Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand."

Whatever you do, keep writing. You know how fast time flies.

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Faulkner was a mailman. Charlotte Brontë was a governess. And you? Whether you're fresh out of school or staring down yet another career change, here are five jobs that can give you a steady paycheck and an unfettered mind for your scribblings!

Banking. T. S. Eliot repeatedly turned down editorial opportunities to keep working as a banker and wrote several of his best poems during that time. “I am absorbed during the daytime by the balance sheets of foreign banks. It is a peaceful, but very interesting pursuit,” he declared in a letter. And much of the force of The Waste Land comes from his depictions of the “Unreal City,” filled with equally bland businessmen. Banking just might be the perfect job for writers who think in iambic pentameter.

Actuarial. With clockwork habits and a monotonous wardrobe, Wallace Stevens stayed at the Hartford insurance company all his adult life. He composed his poems on his way to and from work, and pulled out his calculator as soon as he entered the office. Much like banking, the industry is dominated by numbers and statistics. Surprisingly, though, actuaries have a high level of satisfaction with their jobs. It’s not as exciting as test-driving roller coasters, but it’s much more reliable and stress-free. Detail-oriented writers encouraged to apply.

Law. Franz Kafka worked in Legal, and usually finished with his day’s work by about two in the afternoon. Reading and writing legal documents doesn’t allow much daydreaming, but the often juicy subject matter at hand has turned out such writers as John Grisham and Stephen L. Carter. A crime, a detective, a criminal, and a punishment—what setup could be simpler or more alluring? This is the ideal job for a mystery writer: all the facts are there, but the devil’s in the details.

Medicine. It was a trend even before Chekhov declared that “Medicine is my lawful wife and literature is my mistress,” and poets and novelists alike—from John Keats and William Carlos Williams to W. Somerset Maugham and Khaled Hosseini—have followed in that doctor’s footsteps. Maybe it’s the rigor of med school that forces these authors to attend to patients and words with equal discipline. Maybe it’s their immense fascination with the human body. Character-driven novelists should start studying for their MCATs.

Library Science. Okay, so nowadays the job requires a hefty graduate degree, but if the children’s book author Avi and bestselling novelist Jayne Ann Krentz have both spent time behind the checkout desk, so can you. Once you’re in the door, you’re almost working in a bookstore. The biggest advantage? Your coworkers might actually read your novel when it comes out.

Keep in mind that, for the first time in forever, unemployment rates are on the decline. And getting away from your laptop will do your brain good. Your novel will thank you, so make like Bubba and get Back to Work!

Image credit: fotolog.com

"‘This is an historic day,’ Kerr said. ‘For the first time in our nation's history, a federal court heard arguments as to whether living, breathing, feeling beings have rights and can be enslaved simply because they happen to not have been born human.’ …. [Sea World attorney] Shaw warned the ruling would have profound implications … ‘We're talking about hell unleashed,’ he said.” —CBS News, February 7, 2012, reporting on PETA attorney Jeffrey Kerr and his 13th amendment lawsuit on behalf of five killer whales

“Dr. Navarre refers, in his work on excommunication, to a case in which anathemas were fulminated against certain large sea-creatures called terones, which infested the waters of Sorrento and destroyed the nets of the fishermen. He speaks of them as ‘fish or caco-demons’… and maintains that they are subject to anathematization not as fish, but only as devils.” —from E.P. Evans' 1906 study Criminal Prosecution and Capital Punishment of Animals: The Lost History of Europe’s Animal Trials

“…as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in.” —Ishmael, in Moby Dick (1851); part of this passage is cited in D. Graham Burnett’s new book The Sounding of the Whale

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, dinner party fodder, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."

Image: Autocowrecks

Is there a point where the editor edits too much that it ceases to be the work of its author?

The answer to that question may make a good plot for a literary-themed crime novel.

Though crime novels are coming under fire now that crime itself is on its way out in the big bad city.

Good thing you can still turn to the movies to see some good examples of breaking and entering.

But just be careful since you don't want to end up with a lousy obituary.

Maybe you could hire Ben Marcus, whose literary star is on fire right now.

At the very least, you'll never be as ill-remembered as Lana del Ray is right now.

Photo credit: Mask for 'Day of the Dead' (dia de los muertos) in Mexico Photo: Getty images

"[T]hey were on the 7 train…that goes out to Flushing, and a transit officer saw them filming the tracks on the line, and they professed not to be able to speak English and we were able to bring to the scene one of our Farsi-speaking officers, and they were questioned…ultimately, they were ejected from the country…persona non grata.” –NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, “Bonus Footage” The Third Jihad, produced by the Clarion Fund and screened to roughly 1500 members of the NYPD in 2010. 

"'A foreigner, dressed like an Arab, with a great bundle on his head, took two single thirds for Hull by the midnight express' [...] ‘Why were they not detained?’ ‘We had no authority to detain them, nor any reason.’” –from Richard Marsh’s 1897 novel, The Beetle.

"An accumulation of coarse sawdust around the base of infested trees…is also a sign of the presence of the Asian Longhorn Beetle…If you suspect you have an infestation of ALB, please collect an adult beetle in a jar, place the jar in the freezer, and immediately contact the Bureau of Forestry at 717-948-3941." –Lebanon County Preservation District “Tree Vitalize” Program.

Let Me Recite What History Teaches (LMRWHT) is a weekly column that flashes the lavalamp, gaslight, candlelight, campfire, torch, sometimes even the starlight of the past on something that is happening now. The form of the column strives to recover what might be best about the “wide-eyed presentation of mere facts.” Each week you will find here some citational constellation, offered with astonishment and without comment, that can serve as an end in itself, or an occasion for further thought or writing. The title is taken from the last line of Stein’s poem “If I Told Him (A Completed Portrait of Picasso)."