Happy Mother's Day

"Mother" by Pink Floyd
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Mother, do you think they'll drop the bomb?
Mother, do you think they'll like this song?
Mother, do you think they'll try to break my balls?
Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for President?
Mother, should I trust the government?
Mother, will they put me in the firing line?
Is it just a waste of time?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna make all of your nightmares come true
Momma's gonna put all of her fears into you
Momma's gonna keep you right here under her wing
She won't let you fly, but she might let you sing
Momma's will keep Baby cozy and warm
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, of course Momma's gonna help build the wall

Mother, do you think she's good enough
For me?
Mother, do you think she's dangerous
To me?
Mother will she tear your little boy apart?
Mother, will she break my heart?

Hush now baby, baby, don't you cry
Momma's gonna check out all your girlfriends for you
Momma won't let anyone dirty get through
Momma's gonna wait up until you get in
Momma will always find out where you've been
Momma's gonna keep Baby healthy and clean
Oooo Babe
Oooo Babe
Ooo Babe, you'll always be Baby to me

Mother, did it need to be so high?
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I always thought the line was "she won't let you fly, but she might let you sink".
Imperfect rhyme, yes, but semantically more coherent with the overall direction and theme of the song itself, though I suppose that misheard lyric reveals more about myself than anything else.

Song hits closer to home than I'd like it to.

Mom's a retired school librarian, so it took me longer than it probably would have otherwise to come around to Librarianship as a viable career path for myself; and even then, even though getting school library certified on my way to getting the MLS would've been the financially smart and savvy thing to do, it was impossible for me at a psychological level. I've been stubbornly determined to work in either academic libraries or public libraries, PERIOD. No interest neither in school libraries nor corporate/special libraries--unless we're talking Museum Libraries--I still think back to the really good phone interview I had with SCAD, the "Savannah College of Art & Design"; I had them talking face-to-face interview, the whole 9 yards. They really digged me, for some reason. But then just as suddenly, the employment offer vanished, owing, they cited, to budgetary shortfalls. Too bad, really, as I think SCAD would've been a VERY cool place to work for, surrounded by all those artistically talented people.

During my interview at USC, I did comment that the fact that there was NOT a senior cataloger in their Tech Services Department would be a reason for declining their offer IF I had an otherwise identical offer from another institution that DID have one. My therapist correctly diagnosed that it was a sign of wanting/looking for a replacement mother/father authority figure in the workplace; and a bit irrational, because although the 30-something catalogers I would be interacting with had many years job experience over me, many of them moreover having started out in library school at a much earlier stage in their lives than I did--I was still hoping to learn on bended knee from a gray-haired sage of either gender. *sigh*. That's archetype for you, folks.

Anyway, I did not go the school libraries route, and now it would be quite costly to me financially to backtrack and try to get that credential, either here in Texas or in South Carolina, assuming I get an offer of employment out there soon. It would be basically taking out an insurance policy against future joblessness or underemployment, and a fast-track back to the library world, a way of hedging bets. But the truth is, I just plain don't WANT to work in School libraries, not even in a High School setting. Still too traumatized from my 1 year teaching stint while living in Webster, Texas, I guess. Then there's the question of eventual PhDs...a PhD in Library Science would be the easiest route, I feel, but Intellectual History ultimately more gratifying. Rice U's Intellectual History program is still first-rate, even if some of the professors I most admired have moved on and are no longer on the Rice Faculty. But I can't conceive of taking time NOW to go pursue that. Just doesn't make any good financial sense to do so. I don't even aspire to Library administration beyond a department head job someday. And a PhD is not even required for a Library Director (though it is increasingly expected), only for a "Dean of Libraries" in a multi-Library university system. I'm still just trying to get in on the ground floor, so the thought of scaling such dizzying heights in the library world is pretty far removed from my immediate consciousness.

I do hope that USC pans out, I really think it's a job I could sink my teeth into and work my ass off and gain a lot of valuable knowledge, insight, and practical experience in, with good colleagues that I have good rapport with, etc. But if it doesn't, well, just keep plugging away for the faceless corporation I still work for, try to manage the transition to the new DB as best I can, etc. If I do end up in South Carolina, I may ultimately hire a lawyer to help me track down my biological parents, or at least my biological mother; not that I would ever embarrass the poor woman by meeting face to face; I'm more curious from an ethno-biological standpoint and a medical history standpoint. A friend of mine at work brought me a work of fiction wherein the author (or the copy-writer/editor) had included on the jacket blurb that "all children mythologize their birth"; She was skeptical of this and wanted my opinion. I stated "well, I did, because I'm adopted and have no hard evidence about what really happened, so myth is my only alternative". I speculate that one or both of my biological parents were alcoholics, and as such was probably conceived while they were drunk at the time. I was obviously unplanned, and it was probably not a happy time for my biological mother. My arrival obviously made my adoptive parents very happy, and for that I'm grateful. My biological mother had other alternatives, and me-today still supports the full range of choices she could have taken. Once I was in the world, it sounds as if putting me up for adoption was certainly best for me, and likely best for her as well...I'd like to believe it enabled my biological mother to go ahead and go to college and get on with her life in ways that would not have been possible, would have condemned the both of us to lives of dire poverty and desperation had she tried to raise me on her own. I guess I've lived with the mental interpretation of myself as a mistake, as an accident of carelessness, etc, but suppressed those thoughts so deeply...refusing to deal with them directly but nonetheless being deeply impacted by them regardless. It's not easy territory to cover, and I'm grateful to have my current therapist as a guide.

My adoptive family background is of Scottish decent. It's possible my biological roots are Scottish as well, but they're just as likely Anglo-Saxon (English) or some other European ethnicity. I doubt I have any Jewish ethnicity but that would be pretty neat to discover. Irish would be very cool, too. Or Russian or Polish. I think I would like to know, though, rather than just to exclusively celebrate the Scottish heritage alone based on my VERY Scottish name.

It's perhaps mythically significant that when I married CRC, I was married wearing a Kilt, but it was a generic rental, not in my (adoptive) family's Tartan. I would've preferred a Royal Stewart, but owing to availability and short notice and expense, I ended up wearing a Clan Gordon tartan, which is a mostly Green-Black-and-White pattern. Ironically, CRC, who is not adopted, is biologically tied to Clan MacDonnell of Keppoch, which is my (adoptive) family's Clan as well...the folks with my surname, well, we're a "Sept" of that Clan. CRC also had some Irish in her, which I always joked came out in her at times ferocious temper. CRC was brunette, but at times her hair would wax reddish in colour, to almost an auburn hue. She looked really great wearing my Rice U. sweatshirts; she was certainly smart enough to have gone there, but she decided not to. How happier life would've been if she had done so, for the both of us, perhaps.

To speak of mythical significance, etc, is precisely the sort of liberal-artsy talk that I relish but sets off the woo-detectors of fellow freethinkers who are more hard-sciences grounded, and it's what separates them from me on some level. I'm no less a materialist and scientific rationalist than they are, it's just that when you're analyzing human culture, you have to delve into these referents, become acquainted with them, etc. It confuses the hard-science types equally as the religious types. It's harder on the religious, because while I accept myth AS myth, they want (their own) myth to be substantized as hard reality, and this I'm unwilling to concede. They also want THEIR myth to be exalted over all others. Again, I'm unable to give them that either.

Scientific & Technological know-how is at best a tool to augment human virtue and aesthetic longing...but they make for a poor REPLACEMENT of these things. Organized religion hurts more than it helps, by ossifying free flowing patterns and creating hard dogmas. My point is, I find I am in broad agreement with James Howard Kunstler's musings on this stuff in his book Home from Nowhere, which is the follow up book to his groundbreaking Geography of Nowhere.

Anyway, enough Mother's Day Musings for today.
"Maybe you should put some shorts on, or something, if you want to continue fighting evil today."