ESCONDIDO: 2O MINUTES TO EVERYTHING

Recently, I saw an article in Sunset magazine about all these cool towns that were small enough and well built enough so you could get to every place you needed, by bike or on foot, in 20 minutes. The writers seemed to think this was an amazing idea. Well, it is and that's the wonderful thing about Escondido.  If you live downtown,  you can get all the basics, as well as the library, Farmers' Market, exercise/dance classes, sports facilites, great restaurants, theaters, museums, and live performances in 20 minutes, and maybe even leave the bicycle at home.  Now add the bicycle and you can get to Lake Hodges, North County Fair mall, Auto Parkway, Kit Carson Park, even the golf course.  Not that I have the nerve to ride around here on a bicycle, traffic makes me too nervous.  In my ideal world, there would always be a charming little bike path and I would pedal along it gracefully, ringing a little bell when ever I felt like it while my dog sat happily in the basket attached to the handlebars. (Kind of like the lucky woman and dog in the picture from morguefile.com.)  Sigh.  Monday.

YESTERDAY, THE PRODUCE AT THE FARMERS' MARKET WAS GORGEOUS.

With the dry heat and baking temperatures behind us (knock on wood) the produce at the Market is both crisp and luscious.  The greens once chewy and tough are now soft and tender, the arugula looked especially nice and we'll have it for a salad tonight.  My mint was incinerated by the afternoon sun so I bought a new one, and learned it's happiest at a dripping faucet--who knew!?  Beautiful green beans and small zucchini were easy choices, the former in a mustard dressing, the latter fried for a pasta dish.  My favorites though were the fruits long gone in colder climates--heirloom tomatoes and the stone fruits.  We had a tomato salad last night and the flavor was as sweet as a summer evening. But the real winners, I think, will be the stone fruit.  I bought my favorites--peaches and nectarines--and when I opened the bag back home, it smelled like a summer day and a pie shop all at once.  I also had a ripe yellow plum with a tangy sweetness which I ate right away.  The others are lined up waiting for their perfect moment of ripeness.  The tastes of summer in October.  Another reason to Love Escondido. See you tomorrow.  PS My camera now tells me my "memory card is locked."  I didn't do it and neither did my husband.  Once I find the "key" I'll be taking some more of my own photographs...the one above is from photobucket.com

I WISH THE LIBRARY WOULD STAY A LITTLE OLD-FASHIONED. (DON'T FORGET THE FARMERS' MARKET)

I love libraries.  I love books.  I liked looking at the checkout slip in a book and seeing how often it's been read.  Finding an old one with a flurry of dates in the 40s and then nothing until a resurgence in the 90s and then mine in 2009.  That little slip of paper connects me to borrowers in the past.  But that's all gone now.  All those slips were pulled from the books and thrown away in the name of "progress." Now, every time I walk into the Escondido Library I breathe a little sigh of sadness.  Rather than the friendly murmur of conversation between librarians and patrons--"Oh, I loved that book, I think you will too."  "Aren't you a big girl to take out so many books."  "It's so hot outside, you're lucky to be in air conditioning." --we now have the steady drone of a non-human voice saying "Place your item in the tray.  Leave your item in the tray.  You may remove the item from the tray. [Those might not be the exact words but you know what I mean.] And that's repeated again and again.  Librarians have become customer service technicians, standing there as assistant to the technology--teaching, supervising and assisting people they used to talk to.  It is all so sad, especially when you go to other parts of the library and can still hear that non-human voice, overlapping when all the machines are running, permeating the whole space. The Library is becoming Home Depot.  Now I am not opposed to technology at the library. I have come to love the computer-based "card" catalogue and often search for and reserve books from my home computer.  But I don't think this automated system is about improving the library experience, I believe it is about eliminating librarians.  Oh right now they say it's about freeing them up for other work, but it seems they need a lot of people to supervise us patrons when we check out.  Maybe they'll have to replace those expensive librarians with minimum wage folks who are taught how to use the machine and that's it.  In a few years, we can get it down to just a couple of librarians and have everything else automated.  Heck, why not just have people down load books online and never go to the library?  Sorry to get carried away, but where will this lead?  I guess, in this case, time will tell.  See you tomorrow. PS And the fact that you get one stupid slip of paper for all your books, rather than the due date handily stamped within each book, infuriates me.  But of course I did sign up for the Elf service that tells me when books are due, but that's not the same.