Man & Other Natural Disasters

Travel Guide

Simon works in the basement of the Calgary City Library. He repairs books and this seems like quite an interesting work for if you’re a book lover you will already be grateful that he is doing this worth while job to ensure that books doesn’t get lost for future generations. It’s a tough job  but he gets help from a woman who comes to help work out how to do it but cheaper and more effectively.

Calgary Library

Never before have you heard a library being described thus-

If you looked from the library from the C train stop at Seventh Avenue, you would be foreign for confusing it with an upmarket whorehouse, the way the neon light runs up the grey brick side like a laced hem on a stockinged thigh…

…the entrance is wide-eyed..

…behind the information booths, elevators wave……

The chapters are divided into themes : water, air, earth and fire. Apparently the city got its name from the Indian word for running water. Good to discover where the other elements fit in to the overall puzzle.

There is talk of ISO systems, broken spines and the spinal health of paperbacks which makes you able to smell the books and feel the library in all of its strange glory.

As for the city –

“Calgary’s geometer is impeccable: all streets run north and south, all avenues eat and west. Ask a direction in this city and you will be given a rank and order: “Fifth and Seventh, northeast. Even the streets curling like unruly hairs are branded to identify where they corral so there is Crowsfoot Drive, Crowsfoot Way, Crowsfoot Place  – all fenced within the square pen called Crowfoot (of course)”