The Last Time I Saw B.

Everyone knew B. He was a celebrity during the time I worked at Harper and Row (now HarperCollins). He was one of the highest grossing sales reps, though he was rather unorthodox and nontraditional as sales reps go.

We began hanging together at one of the national sales meetings and kept in touch via phone and mail. In 1982, I wanted to make a road trip to visit friends who had moved away from Massachusetts. I outlined my route, then contacted B and asked if he wanted to do any part of it with me.

After I spent a couple of days in New Jersey and a couple of days in Indiana, B and I met in Denver. We visited my friend, visited some of his friends, camped out near Aspen, and generally had a great time touring around Colorado. Then I headed for Missouri followed by Buffalo, NY.

A couple of years later, I got tired of being a publisher's sales rep and went back to being a librarian. In 1986, I attended the American Library Association conference in NYC. I had told B when I'd be there and, sure enough, he showed up. We met with some of the H and R editors for drinks, went out to dinner and took in some of the sights.

The following year, the ALA conference was in San Francisco. I stayed on several more days to visit my younger sister, Wendy, who was living in Berkeley. B joined us for a short time and then headed off on other adventures.

The next summer, I was at the ALA conference in New Orleans. I had told B I'd be there. I expected to run into him on Bourbon Street, but I never saw him. For whatever reason, after that we lost touch. Those couple of days in Berkeley was the last time I saw B.

I've been thinking a lot about Wendy and remembering our time together in Berkeley; the only extended time she and I ever spent together as adults. Though it wasn't a long time, I got to know a lot about her. And having someone else there for part of that time, someone from outside the family, gave additional dimensions to my picture of her.

Thinking about Wendy and those days in Berkeley, I can't help but also remember it was the last time I saw B. I wondered what ever happened to him. Lo and behold, he's on Facebook and is now one of my Friends. He remembered Wendy and our time in Berkeley.

Wendy died last week. I'm very sad. Communicating with B, having him remember her, is a link to Wendy that I find comforting.

Life and Light

In my quest for eliminating all duplicate and inadequate records from the MassCat catalog, I am still slogging through the letter L. I just finished viewing possible duplicates of titles beginning with the word Life (and there are a lot of them) and have been working on titles beginning with the word Light (and there are a lot of THEM).

Usually, as I have said before, I do a keyword search on one or two words, sort by title and then begin looking at each record as I scroll down the list, 20 records to a page.

When I was working at the beginning of the list, I found lots of problems: duplicates, misspellings, weird characters that should be accent marks, records too skimpy to identify the specific edition. Now that I'm nearly half way through (L being the 12th letter of 26), most of the pages are error free, though I still find things that have snuck in (or maybe I missed).

And there are records being added constantly to the catalog, sometimes in error (there's already one there) or the record is CIP (Cataloging In Publication) and is missing some details such as page numbers.

As I continue through the alphabetical list of each search, though, the last half of the alphabet is in far worse shape. It's a good reminder how much is still left to do to clean up this catalog.

On a sad note, my youngest sister, Wendy, 55 years old, a life-long smoker and single mother of beautiful 18-year-old twin girls, was diagnosed in November of 2016 with lung cancer. She's been undergoing chemotherapy and radiation and is now in a Hospice facility near her home in New Hampshire. I visited with her on Monday. Two of my other sisters and one brother were there and I got to spend time with them, also.

I barely know Wendy. She was only 3 when I left home to go to college, so we never really lived together. In 1987, she was living in Berkeley, California with her (now) ex-husband. I went to the ALA conference in San Francisco and stayed several extra days so that I could visit with her. It's the only extended time we ever spent together as adults and I very much enjoyed her company.

Life and Light. When Wendy is gone, she will take with her a Life and a Light.