I have zombies on the brain. I am not alone.

What got my attention was "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," by Seth Grahame-Smith. (This incorporates the full text of Jane Austen's novel with a whole lot of zombie issues.)

Last week, I wrote about my new hero, Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Fed. A quietly brilliant economics professor, Bernanke's research focused on the history of the Great Depression. Following a crash precipitated by wild speculation, Bernanke came to believe that the business people and government of the time (the 1930s) did almost everything wrong.

Annually, the planning cycle of the Douglas County Libraries used to look like this:

* at a spring manager retreat (this year, that meant a day at Louviers) we brainstorm our best, most exciting ideas for the next year, then whittle them down to the few that matter most.

"It was 20 years ago today
Sergeant Pepper taught the band to play."

I have now held my position as director of Douglas County's libraries for 20 years. It was a different world back then.

The population of Douglas County in 1990 was about 65,000. We checked out 368,492 items a year. Today, we have close to 300,000 people, and check out nearly 8 million items annually.