Open Writing

I enjoy reading a cluster of related books more or less simultaneously, an act a dear friend called “synergistic reading.” He believed more is gleaned from each of the books because of perspectives raised by the others.

That’s why I recently found myself skipping through that best-seller from 1480, “The Little Children’s Little Book.”

It’s a “courtesy book,” a compilation of exhortations mandating the young’s proper behavior. The format was so popular back then it made up most of the era’s children’s literature.

A typical passage, translated into Modern English, is, “See that your hands and nails are clean. Don’t eat til you’re told. Don’t break your bread in two, or put your pieces in your pocket … Don’t pick your ears or nose,” and so on.

I found it online at Harvard’s “Geoffrey Chaucer Page,” for lately I’ve been absorbed in things Chaucerian. It began a year ago when I heard a cast of six actors read Burton Raffel’s new translation of “The Canterbury Tales” on a CD-set I borrowed from our library. Literary classics often are more appealing when I hear them read well, and I really liked Raffel’s take.

However, there’s great controversy regarding the merits of various leading translations of Chaucer’s classic, so I started comparing them. Then I wondered how such merry tales could have been spun in such a dreadful period in history.

This led to re-reading Barbara Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror: the Calamitous 14th Century,” which contradicts the Chaucer biography by novelist John Gardner recommended by my son.

Last month I found a used copy of “Who Murdered Chaucer,” a nonfiction work of scholarship that transcends both Tuchman and Gardner, despite being written by Monty Python alum Terry Jones of all people. I may never finish most of these books, but I’m certainly enjoying the ride.

Working at the library’s reference desk also leads to unexpected, and sometimes daunting, intellectual curiosities. During an interview on KIAK recently, local radio star Pete Van Nort asked what’s the most underappreciated service the library offers, and I responded, “Answering questions.”

People often hesitate to ask reference librarians for knowledge navigation assistance for fear they’re intruding or bothersome. Nothing’s further from the truth. We truly enjoy helping people and pride ourselves on giving our very best attention and effort equally to every request.

A few days ago at the reference desk, a caller asked for books on apitherapy, the use of bee products in treating human health, and the use of stings in particular. We didn’t have books specifically on topic, but we were able to borrow some for the patron from a Lower 48 library.

We also found intriguing articles on the library’s health-related databases that include full-text medical dictionaries and encyclopedias, pamphlets and fact sheets, hundreds of the most prominent medical journals, and even videos.

For example, bee stings are being studied for multiple-sclerosis treatment.

According to a Mult-Sclerosis.org article, a typical apitherapy treatment involves some 20 bees being applied to skin that’s been iced. “Each individual bee is held with a pair of tweezers and put against the skin to deliver the sting. The bee’s stinger is left in the skin for around 20 minutes to extract all the venom.”

The article goes on to warn that “Clinical trials that have studied the use of apitherapy for MS have been largely negative or inconclusive.” But better results were reported by Korean researchers in another article, titled “Effect of Apitherapy in Piglets with Preweaning Diarrhea.”

Not to be outdone in scariness, a Spoonful of Medicine blog article on Nature.com says some Arizona hospital patients received placebos after being stung by scorpions to test an anti-venom medication.

Toad venom’s been a cancer treatment in China for 5,000 years, according to ScienceDaily.com, and NationalGeographic.com tells us an Australian study has found snake venom can inhibit cancer tumors.

Rely on your public library for reliable knowledge navigation and verifiable information, and ignore the dross produced by simple Google searches.

“For their vine,” as the Bible says, “is the vine of Sodom … their grapes are grapes of gall … their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.”