This point was hammered home for me this morning when I turned to my regular reading of the New York Times’ Ethicist column by Randy Cohen, who tackles this exact topic.

And lo and behold!, look who’s asking questions of public library ethics — it’s none other than my good friend Rachel Bucci, Salem, Ore. resident and mom of one.

Here’s her question:

I borrowed “Juliet Naked,” the latest Nick Hornby novel, from my local library a few weeks ago. It is due today. Unfortunately I’m only about halfway through and can’t renew it, because it is on hold for another patron. I’m willing to pay the penalty, 25 cents a day, so I can keep reading. May I do that, or must I return it knowing that someone else is waiting for it? RACHEL BUCCI, SALEM, ORE.

And here is Mr. Cohen’s answer.

The Ethicist generally runs a few months after the issues are resolved, and that happened with Ms. Bucci as well. By the time she got her name in the New York Times — go Rachel! Every writer’s dream! — she had already decided the right thing was to return the book on time and check it out later.

That’s news to me. I still have the library’s copies of Jo Frost’s Confident Baby Care and Harvey Karp’s Happiest Baby on the Block, which were due on Thursday.

Don’t worry, I plan to make good on this library transgression by participating in the library’s FOOD FOR FINES program.

Apparently, when I am good, I am very very good, and when I am bad, I am horrid.

Or at least unethical.

I’ve been talking to some of my young mother friends, and we’ve stumbled upon a tired family truism that, like all parenting discoveries,  may be old news to you but revelatory to the new parent:

A new couch improves your life by 150%.

We finally found said new couch in Salem, but before I get to that, let me tell you about our old couch.

Our old couch came from a second-hand store in Iowa City and, at just two seats wide, was small enough to fit in a tiny student apartment. You might call that a love seat, but when it’s all you’ve got, you, too, might couch your phrasing a little differently. Ours was grey and lovingly cat-proof and it got us through six seasons of LOST. But there wasn’t a whole lotta lovin’ going on there.

Old Grey Couch couldn’t stand up to late nights with the baby, though. After two months of periodically sleeping on the couch with our little lamb, my husband and I started to look a little crumpled, so we went looking for a replacement at our usual stops for consignment furniture, including Encore Consignment in Salem.

Adam fell in love with a couch there. It was purple and plush and probably would have taken up our entire living room. He  named it “Grimace” and was sure we’d catch it when its price dropped to 250 bucks two days later.

On the day we went to pick Grimace up, he was gone — snatched up by a lady who had arrived an hour before the store opened.

For the next few weeks, we made some sad trips to Portland, where we connived with lesser couches and were lured, however fleetingly, but the prospects of a new couch. And Adam continued to talk about the fabled purple Couch That Got Away.

A new couch! We haven’t bought anything but mattresses new… but considering the beating our old grey couch took in the four years that we had her, we began to consider the idea more and more. It would be our first major furniture purchase as a married couple.

Being stingy recyclers, we were feeling kind of torn, so we started to tell ourselves stories about why one might settle for something new.

There was that time when we pulled grey couch out of storage and found a dead mouse under a cushion…

So yes, we found a couch.  We found it on sale 55% off! — at Kuebler’s in downtown Salem. It’s a Broyhill, it’s firm and plush and perfect and supportive.

It’s the midnight parenting  these young parents needed — and it was totally worth it.

****By the way, Adam has the baby on his head because this is a proven position to combat the Dreadful Wails.***

It may be called Edible Portland, but the publication of Ecotrust’s Farm and Food Program is increasingly telling the food stories of the entire Willamette Valley, and sometimes, even of the whole state of Oregon.

I just wrote my first cover story for EP about the exciting work of a group of young people who call themselves the American Center for Sustainability.

It is the story of seeds more traveled. It’s about a man who was looking for a way to support the shift towards a more sustainable food culture and the solution he found — a volunteer project to bring seedlings to community gardens across Oregon. And it’s a road trip story with an old bus and a couple of dogs.

Along with a few volunteers, Ken Burrow delivers seedlings in old Trimet bus he christened Annapurna. The work of his group has allowed countless upstart community gardens across Oregon to make huge leaps in production in their first years. Good people doing good things for a better world.

You can read the current issue here. Photographer Leah Harb took the amazing photographs, including the kickin’ cover image. My story’s on page 18.

When was the last time you strolled the galleries of the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, on the Willamette University campus? Last month? A few years back? Never? Seriously? You’ve never even BEEN there? There’s one major world-class art museum in this town and you haven’t shown your ugly mug there since you’ve been in Salem?

My fugly mug was there last week — and let its toothy smile tell you it’s time to revisit Hallie Ford.

In fact, get thee to Hallie Ford tomorrow night for the opening of the museum’s new rotating permanent collection. If you’ve read my column this month, you know that I think the revamp of the old gallery spaces there is a knockout. But maybe I’m just blowing hot air? (I’m not). Decide for yourself. It’s not often there is not-to-be-missed public opening of a revamped gallery featuring new works by some of Oregon’s most important artists.

For a primer on the new exhibition, called “On the Edge” (insert more specific subtitle here), read Professor Roger Hall’s shakedown on Pacific Northwest Art here.

And to mingle with the hoi-est of polloi, or maybe just some really engaged and interesting Salemites interested in art, you might want to go to the public opening, tomorrow night, 5-8 p.m.

I hope there’s wine and cheese, but if not, I’ll settle for another chance to look at Robert Hess’s “Passage.”

It took a little planning ahead — fast dinner, pumping milk, shoving baby Dash into his Daddy’s arms for the evening — but I made it to the John Irving talk yesterday at Willamette University.

And was I ever glad I made the effort. He was everything you could want in an author appearance: witty, charming, fabulously low-key, often brilliant, sometimes surprising, and always full of insight into his own work and the craft of novel writing.

He began by telling the story of his latest novel, one that he says has been in his mind for at least 20 years, Last Night in Twisted River. It’s his twelfth novel — a fugitive story about a son and his father, and like many of his books, things won’t end pretty here.

Some interesting tidbits from the evening:

• A famed fan of 19th century novelists, Irving detests Ernest Hemingway’s style and wasn’t afraid to say how much he also hates the contemporary writers who try to emulate the pared-down author.
• The inspiration for Irving’s books always begin at the end — with the very last sentence.
• He spends about a year plotting his novels. Then, when he knows the story through and through, he writes like a demon. Then he rewrites.
• Irving has little tolerance for writers who don’t love the re-write.
• Irving writes by hand. He is often shocked at how awful his kids’ handwriting is.
• He often inserts autobiographical elements into his books, but he would never want the past, nor the lives, that his characters have.
• He gives long, beautifully crafted answers to the questions his interviewers pose. because of that, he can probably only answer three questions in an hour. But man, does he pack in the content!

Time to revisit Owen Meany. Thanks, Willamette, for the talented Mr. Irving to town!

Cue the dueling banjos! We’ve got another young columnist in town taking on the well-worn phrase and attitude that Salem, OR is really “So lame.”

It’s the Statesman-Journal’s Kelly Williams Brown — entertainment beat reporter, Ginger for the New Millennium, and all around sugar and spice and everything nice.

Kelly’s first column ran last weekend. She’s calling it “Not So Lame,” and it was all about the awkwardness of Valentine’s Day.

Speaking of… my husband and I spent Valentine’s Day with another man in bed with us, our now 8-week old baby Dash. Can I get an AWKWARD…

But back to Kelly. Can I just say that it is high time that the Statesman countered Salem Monthly’s culture column with one written by their own effervescent young writer-on-the-rise? And they even one-upped us by offering up a little tart who is about ten times as cute and vivacious as yours truly.

Grumble grumble.

Yes, I can’t say I’ve always liked Kelly. She is a reader of this blog and invited me to lunch during my first months in town. When I met her, she reminded me of the sparkly young twenty-something I once was while tromping the streets of our nation’s capital. She was loving life, the world was her oyster, and her joie de vivre was writ large on her unlined face. Also, she has impeccable fashion taste, one of those Somethings Seldom Seen in Salem.

Naturally, I hated her from the start.

Holding an attitude like that would make for an awesome columnist rivalry! Sadly, Kelly is one of the sweetest people in town — my lord, people she does stories on baby llamas! — and I am happy to call her my dear friend.

You could say she’s the special sauce the Statesman has been lacking. I wish her and her column many incarnations.

It’s not often that a local and nationally acclaimed literary writer takes a stage here in town, but that’s exactly what’s happening tonight at the Salem Public Library.

Gina Ochsner, mother of four, Keizer resident, and all-around writer on-the-rise will read there this evening at 7:00 p.m. from her debut novel The Russian Dreambook of Color and Flight.

The book is one of those amazing debuts that suffers from a bit of a tough sell. I dare you to tell your friends about this book by plot alone and watch as their eyes glaze over (I’ve done this myself)). The novel tells the story of a handful of residents of a dilapidated apartment building in post-Communist Russia, some of whom work at a local museum, which houses only replicas of historical artifacts (The Russian Dreambook is big on the absurd).

That’s a pretty pathetic plot compression I’ve just offered, so I implore you to check out this great review of it from The Guardian, which goes into greater details about the book’s gloriously heartbreaking characters, who are really the stars in this dream book.

I’ve read this one and can’t sing its praises enough. It’s gorgeous, haunting, poetic, hilarious. And if I can get my husband to watch my little dude, I’ll be there watching Ochsner tonight.

I’ve often wished that everyone I know in Salem could meet my neighbors, Keith and Sarah Chilcote. They have introduced us to some of the secret sides of the city (he’s my pick-your-own pinot hookup) and have overwhelmed us with their generosity and good natures.

Well, now you can! Salem Monthly just did a little story on them and their business, American Antique Hardware.

Keith is one of the most loquacious people I have ever known. I am consistently amazed that he can manage a dozen properties, run a business and be father to three darling children when he can barely remove himself from a good conversation. Adam and I both have dad crushes on him.

Sarah is a fabulous mom who has found a way to work from home and raise her kids there — a goal I’m striving for myself. All new parents need role models, and we seem to be surrounded by them.

They have built this mini-Eden in the middle of Northeast Salem, a secret city alcove the is all but overflowing with pears and apples and blueberries and plums in the summer.

Oh, and they sell awesome antique hardware at decent prices. Eat it, Hippo Hardware!

By the way, if you are one of the 2.3 people out there who are wondering why there is no Desperately Seeking Salem column in the January issue of Salem Monthly, I’ll enlighten you.

I totally dropped the ball!

Well, kind of. I’m generally gestating these pieces until about the 23rd of the month, when I write them out in a spontaneous burst of literary activity that lasts about an hour. I was working on such a piece when I went into labor.

Thankfully my editor gave me a reprieve for January. Thanks, Eric!

So sorry to my readers: grandma, Jan and my cat De Kooning. I’ll be back in business next month.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks. Now it’s the New Year, with a new family member, new aches and pains, and I’ve got new ideas of what counts as “getting sleep.”

I will spare you all the really gory details of the birth of our first son, a whopping 9 lbs. 3 oz., 21 inches, who arrived December 26 at 5:30 p.m. at Silverton Hospital after I was in labor for three days (I blame that Dungeness crab dish at La Capitale, which I ate over lunch on the 23rd…).

By the way, if it’s not “progressing” apace,  it’s not true labor.

Uh huh. Well, I was sure in crabwalk labor for a long time — it never let up.

So yeah. I’m exhausted.

But let me tell you something. As he was flying in the air from my doctor’s hands to my belly, the only thing in my head was that I could do it again.

And I probably will.

Just not this week. Or this month. Or this year.

Say hi to the world, James Dashiell Diesburg!

Hello. You’ve reached the no-baby hotline. There is no baby here at this number. We take each and every call we receive seriously and look forward to communicating with you soon.  In the meantime, thank you very much for calling. BEEEEEEEEEP!