It is my dream that once I finish my MLIS degree I can get a job at a rural library. Hopefully it will pay more than minimum wage. Enough to have a little house and a car payment.
Perhaps in Weed, which had its library burn down in wildfires last summer. A bit tragic, but nobody died. They have to rebuild the library building, and then buy new collections to restore the library to its former state. As Weed is ranching country, with a bit of logging and the local lumber mill, the book selection should be appropriate to their interests. Some librarians are very rude to males for their own personal reasons. I could speculate but I will simply say I have lots of time to observe so I can't pretend this is otherwise. I suspect this is common in the industry. It shouldn't be the case, but it is.
However, my goal is to get into rural libraries and gain experience and skills, well beyond the usual book prep or disc polishing or basic shelving, though I find shelving meditative and relaxing. I would enjoy doing library projects in rural branches for a few years, then move to another branch and do a different series of projects. This would let me live in more than just Weed, but also communities like Red Bluff, Susanville, Bishop, Minden/Gardnerville, and if this county ever regains some civility, Truckee. Maybe even Tahoe City, which was a nice little town on the north shore of Lake Tahoe.
I would be happy in a little house with a good heater, and a little car that's acceptable in the snow. They do expect you to come to work whether it is snowing or not. Library patrons read more when the weather is crappy. The coming pineapple express will fill the library by the time I get there Saturday, and there will be TONS to shelve and go right back out again. I do enjoy that this county are educated and voracious readers.
I might even enjoy travelling by RV towing my little car behind, though I will probably just reduce my things down to what fits in my car and a trailer for the bulkier items like my bed and eventually a modular desk which is light enough to pick up myself. When you can personally lift every item you own, and put it all in your car and a teardrop trailer behind it? You have mobility. Having lived in apartments before, I say: never again. Apartments are horrible. I want my own walls. Even the additional cost in heat is worth more than the noise pollution of hateful bastard neighbors. RVs cost more than rent, but an RV might make sense if the work contracts are shorter than a lease. My efficiency with projects at libraries makes the other staff, who spend too much time complaining, consider me a threat to their continued employment. This willingness to do the work rather than complain about it is a huge difference in approach. I see a lot of job protectionism behind this dragging of feet. It bothers me.
A couple years ago there was a job advertised for a part time library position at the branch in Truckee. Truckee is on I-80, just east of Donner Pass on the main interstate, and just north of Lake Tahoe a dozen miles. Its at the western edge of the plain before the mountains get really tall, up 30 miles from Reno through a canyon with a river that originates in Lake Tahoe. Its an important crossroad and major ski resort area. There are several trailer parks, heavily treed and popular in the summers but under feet of snow most winters and empty. There's also the mansions, many of which are second homes owned by millionaires, and the ski chalet homes as well, for when ski season is going strong. If this storm got colder and dropped snow, that might be the case. But overall, the Eastern side of the sierra has big openings between the trees, without poison oak or shrubs. Rather the opposite from the western slope where I live. Around here is heavy brush, poison oak, and wild game. It is completely different. The eastern side of the sierra has a band of rivers full of trout flowing down, and then those rivers head into the desert and die on lakebeds full of salt washed down from the mountains as the minerals decay into ions. They are stunning. And people have to live near the water to survive. Much of the land is unusable. Little of it has wells. Hauling water to a home or ranch is stupidly expensive and never worth doing for long. It makes you poor. Thus most of Nevada's population is clustered near these flowing rivers in Reno, Carson City, Minden, and the better fed springs that managed to catch passing rainstorms often enough to provide water. This is tricky due to rain shadow. Many people who should understand these core limitations to habitat march into a town and tell the locals they should be happy communists. Living is hard. That does not fly. I would never, and this makes me far better for their needs than nearly all California librarians. I get it. I know how to make land better, and I know that doing so isn't free. And I realize that even teaching that may require a delicate hand and reasonable expectations. In northern Nevada, the Humboldt River winds through many communities before hitting the Carson Sink and going to salt. Its a crucial water supply drifting out of mountains near Idaho's border. Can it be used better? Can the water be used to rebuild perched aquifers to yield better hay for the ranchland that follows the river? Its narrow, but the grass is thick.
What I'm finding from YA fiction is that I like nonfiction better. YA needs to exist for the kids, but Nonfiction might solve some important problems for tax paying adults. It would give the rural ranching poor some better answers to problems. Around here we've got poverty being solved with agriculture. True, its mostly pot growing, but its not completely illegal.
We also see solutions to housing through RV renovation or even construction rather than deal with crooked foreclosure scams, with unstated debts you buy worth more than the house. Not okay. While an RV is a house on wheels, it can be wrecked. And moving it around is expensive in gasoline. However, it avoids the expense of a tow vehicle that sits idle most of the time. And avoids the expense of unfair taxes because attempting them makes people drive away. When a community attacks its membership, there are consequences. In my case, its taught me that nice is temporary and it is more valuable to get paid than bother with claims of "someday we'll return the favor" because that never happens.
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