Libraries are so cool. I had a writer's question that I sent to both the two local library systems, LINCC and Multnomah county, which was: Can a homeless kid get a library card? I provided some details like he and his mom live in their van, and they have a PO box. This is because one of the characters of book 7 is a homeless witch named Raven.¹ I was fully expecting the answer to be No or similar, but I was pleasantly surprised by the answer. For the Multnomah county system, which he would be most likely to be using, they've got a student connect thing where if he has a student ID for the area, he can get a library card that way. But they did also say a PO box is enough to get a card.

The librarian for LINCC -- the Clackamas county library system -- said "Yes, we would work with the patron to make sure they could use the library. Typically, we would provide a temporary card if they did not have proof of address and photo ID. So that would allow them to check out 5 books and use the other library services. In most cases, if someone is houseless and is in shelter or has a PO box, we would work with them to give them a full access card which would allow up to 80 checkouts.  We have a lot of options for patrons that are houseless to access services in the library."

I don't know if the numbers are the same in Multnomah county; I asked in a reply and am still awaiting a response. But still... neat.

And like sure, Fae Springs is a school of magic. But it canonically has a website on the mundane Internet AND is on the website for the US Department of Education. Mainly because of mundane parents of magical kids.


1 = His mom is a 'middle spectrum' witch, IE not powerful enough of a witch to be able to use magic for much of anything. Chooli is also in the middle spectrum, but zee can see spirits and talk with ghosts. Raven's mom cannot. Her magic is very weak and she never got much past first or second year level spell-work. Basically she's barely a witch at all, and works two mundane jobs: one at Walmart and another at Safeway.

In the US, since 2008, meat from cloned cows does not have to be disclosed. If you live in the US, you might've eaten meat from a cloned cow and not even known it.

This is not the kind of cloned meat the old scifi novels promised me. I was promised sheets of cloned meat grown in a laboratory like something out of a mad scientist's lair, meat that was real but which did not have a nervous system and therefore could not suffer. This though? This is just "cow with extra steps."