May

For our 25th wedding anniversary, I gave my wife a framed version of a beautiful photograph she took of a pond in Berlin.

She asked what I wanted. I said I wanted to have my DNA tested. After 25 years, I said, you deserve to know who I am.

So she ordered the testing kit from National Geographic's Genographic Project (see www.nationalgeographic.com/genographic), and I dutifully swabbed the inside of my cheeks with the scraper. It will be some four to six weeks before I hear back. It cost about $100.

So those rumors about Indian ancestry -- truth or myth? Are there any other surprises? I chose to follow the paternal line (my paternal grandmother's father was supposed to be full-blooded Cherokee).

National Geographic also sent a quite wonderful DVD about the genetic history of the human race. Dr. Spencer Wells is a most engaging host, who gallivants around the globe exploring and explaining human genetic change.

Here's the broad thesis of modern genetics: we are all Africans.

I want to tell you about a magical book. It's a book that tells several stories at once, filled with tragedy and humor and love. It does this utterly without words.

The book is called The Arrival, by Shaun Tan. It is, technically, a "graphic novel" -- a sort of hardbound comic book.

The cover looks like a worn leather folio, with a drawing of a man encountering some kind of bizarre animal. Just inside the covers is another arresting image: 60 faces, of every ethnicity.

The story begins in what I think of as "the old country." A man is packing up a photograph of his small family. Soon, we see them all walking through the city. Around them there are shadows: the tails of dragons, snaking through the gray streets.

The man boards a train, pulling away from the fingers of his wife and daughter.

Soon he is on a ship, along with many other emigrants. For several pages, we see nothing but clouds. Finally, he arrives to a country that is utterly bewildering. There is a big harbor, with statues in the water. There is an enormous hall.

The numbers tell the story. Some 80 million Baby Boomers were born; 40 million Gen-Xers.

A 2004 report from Colorado's Library Research Service made several predictions:

* More than 20 percent of responding Colorado librarians expect to retire within the next five years. Of all responding school librarians, about half indicate plans to retire within five years; more than three times the proportion for public librarians and almost five times the proportion for academic librarians.

* Many librarians who responded to this survey are not waiting until age 65 to retire. Almost 30 percent of those who expect to retire within the next five years are ages 45 to 54.

* Retiring librarians will take with them substantial administrative skills. Of these prospective retirees, one out of five expects their job to be combined with another or eliminated. Almost one out of five expects to be succeeded by someone with less education.

When I was in sixth grade, my fabulous public school teacher, Mr. Smith, sparked my interest in haiku, the Japanese verse form.

It fascinated me. Forty years later, it still does.

My own son, at about the same age I was when I encountered Japanese poetry, was captivated by another art form: film. In particular, he's absorbed by the tiny incremental repositioning of clay figures that adds up to the illusion of motion. It's called claymation, and Max is very good at it.

I've served on many boards. Most of them have much in common. They adopt policies. They scrutinize the budget. They hire, evaluate, coach, and compensate (or terminate) the executive who reports to them.

But you know what's uncommon? Boards that take a hard look at their OWN performance.

Over 15 years ago, my wife and I wrote an article called "Green Librarianship." It was based on a lot of research, just coming out at that time, about how our buildings were making us sick.

Back then, a few vendors tried to offer alternatives to the toxic glues used to hold down carpets, the formaldehyde-soaked pressboard used for insulation, and hermetically sealed heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. And most of these vendors were seen as kooks.

Well, I did it. I wrote a book, and it got published. I unpacked my six free copies on a Friday night.

By Monday, I'd read it four times.

There's good news and bad news about being a published author. Here's the bad news.

The copyediting process caught several things I'd missed. For instance, I told the same story twice, in two widely seperated sections of the book. The editor asked me which one I wanted to cut, and I picked one.

But in the final review, both of them were still there. So I sent in another correction.

Recently, my wife brought home a fascinating film from the library called "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill."

It told the story of a man, Mark Bittner, who had once tried to start a life as a musician. That hadn't worked out. He wound up in San Francisco, where he spent a lot of time studying various Eastern philosophies, and reading poetry, particularly the works of Gary Snyder.

Some people think the word "literacy" means the attainment of a specific reading level.

They may have heard that literacy is where an elementary student should be at the end of fourth grade. (Fourth grade does indeed appear to be that crucial year when somebody "gets" print, or needs a little extra assistance at just that moment.)

Or they think it means someone can follow newspaper headlines and get the gist of a story. Or maybe they think literacy is what helps someone decipher the instructions on a prescription.