{"id":1154,"date":"2011-09-26T09:02:48","date_gmt":"2011-09-26T13:02:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=1154"},"modified":"2011-09-26T09:02:48","modified_gmt":"2011-09-26T13:02:48","slug":"beauty-librarian-contest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/miscellaneous\/beauty-librarian-contest\/","title":{"rendered":"Beauty<\/del> Librarian Contest"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of our big tourist attractions in this neck of the woods is the Mohegan Sun Casino<\/a>, which naturally makes me think of librarians.\u00a0 They all go together: gambling, second-hand smoke, glamour, live bands, and librarians.\u00a0 Small-talking in line for the bar, I discovered I\u2019m not the only one to find this combination delightfully absurd.<\/p>\n

Last Thursday, the CT Authors Trail<\/a> had its culminating event in the casino\u2019s Cabaret Theater, just past the no-smoking slots, and while the highlight of the evening was listening to author Jane Green<\/a> tell us about how she nearly threw up in Harrison Ford<\/a>\u2019s helicopter (\u201cIt wouldn\u2019t be the first time,\u201d he told her), a close runner-up was the moment when a dozen librarians lined up on the stage under the spotlights to pick winners for prize baskets.<\/p>\n

Yes, prize baskets, to add a wholesome thrill.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Librarians, Mohegan Sun Casino Cabaret Theater, September 22, 2011<\/p><\/div>\n

There was something enormously satisfying about seeing librarians highlighted this way, literally.\u00a0 It was like a spoof of a beauty contest, with women picked for their brains, organizational skills, love of books, and gentle manners.\u00a0 One by one, they stepped forward to the mic, introduced themselves and their libraries, drew a ticket out of a bag, read the name aloud (or not if the ticket was blank, in which case, unrattled, they repeated the process), accepted a spatter of applause, and walked down the stage steps to make sure the prize basket made it to the right person.<\/p>\n

Kristi Sadowski, co-director of the Booth & Dimock Library<\/a> in Coventry, CT, had her heart pounding the whole time.\u00a0 I know because she confessed this to me afterward.\u00a0 I don\u2019t blame her; I\u2019d have felt the same way.\u00a0 But she was great.\u00a0 They all were.<\/p>\n

If the point of the casino\u2019s partnership with the librarians was to sponsor a community event and cover the costs of printing the Author Trail brochures in exchange for luring a hundred potential gamblers in on a slow Thursday night, I\u2019d say it succeeded.\u00a0 I didn\u2019t lose a nickel, and I had a rare chance to cheer for librarians.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of our big tourist attractions in this neck of the woods is the Mohegan Sun Casino, which naturally makes me think of librarians.\u00a0 They all go together: gambling, second-hand smoke, glamour, live bands, and librarians.\u00a0 Small-talking in line for the bar, I discovered I\u2019m not the only one to find this combination delightfully absurd. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1154"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1158,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1154\/revisions\/1158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}