I will be on the ballot this coming election, November 7, 2023, as a candidate for Trustee for Wells Branch Community Library District.
I’ve served on the Board as a Trustee since November 2021 when I was elected unopposed. I currently serve as the Vice-President of the Board.
Here’s what I stand for:
Free speech and the first amendment. Library employees and trustees are often asked about this issue, but for our library it hasn’t been a major topic because we are truly independent (not a division of city government or a larger library system). The last word sits with the Director of the Library and the Board of Trustees and so far we have agreed and not faced many (if any) real attempts to ban books. But, if this does become a significant issue, you want Trustees who are willing to stand up for their beliefs. In my case that means protecting freedom of speech and not banning books. I support the American Library Association’s statement on the Freedom to Read.
Equitable access – this means that the public library should work to accommodate access to materials for everyone in the District: homeowners, renters, the elderly, the home-bound, people with disabilities, people without a car, children, LGBTQIA people, the unemployed, etc. They all deserve equal access to library materials.
Access to physical media – Our Library does a LOT! We are so lucky to have the wonderful programs and spaces to meet, computers, storytimes, the list goes on. If you have not checked out an ebook or audiobook from Hoopla, you are missing out! But at its core, I still believe that a Library should be full of printed books. Full accessibility includes print and electronic materials, braille, and other accommodations.
About Me
For people who don’t know me, I wanted to share a little bit about myself here. I’ve lived in Texas for the past 18 years and in Wells Branch for 17 years. My wife Jordan and I have two boys, ages 13 and 16. They have attended Round Rock ISD schools all their lives: Wells Branch Elementary, Deerpark Middle School, and McNeil High School.
I currently serve on the Board of the Deerpark MS PTA, the McNeil Wrestling Booster Club, and I’ve served on the Board of the Wells Branch PTA for several years in the past. I work in the marketing department of Charles Schwab and have a degree in English from the University of Denver. I’ve previously worked in educational assessment, textbook publishing, and book publishing in New York. I’m also a writer and podcaster in my spare time (among many hobbies). I’m a member of the Texas Library Association and I serve on the Board of the International David Foster Wallace Society.
What a Trustee Does
Over the past two years I’ve learned that a Trustee’s job is mainly about good governance. In our case, one of the primary roles of the Board of Trustees is to provide oversight for the Director of the Library. We are lucky to have an excellent Director. Our Director has enjoyed the full confidence of the Board for many years. This makes the Trustee’s job much easier. Replacing the Director would cause a lot of disruption and uncertainty in our Library. But if it ever does become an issue, Trustees should have a good working knowledge of how the Library functions in order to find a suitable candidate.
Another part of good governance involves oversight of finances. Again, our Library is lucky to have a financing model that relies on sales tax collected within the District. Sales tax revenues have been high the past few years. This allows us to fund projects such as Library renovations, increased programming, and pay increases for the staff. So, it really is important to shop local and keep your spending close to home when you can. It makes a real difference! You can read more about the Board and see our agendas and minutes on the Library’s website.
If you are interested in learning more about what a Trustee does or doesn’t do, I’d be happy to speak with you! matt@mattbucher.com
Election Day
If you live in the District, I’m asking for your vote. You can select up to 2 candidates for Trustee.
Early voting begins October 23 and election day is November 7.
In 2018, author Mary Karr tweeted about her abusive relationship with David Foster Wallace. This was at the height of #MeToo and cancel culture, where the phrase ‘problematic fave’ was commonplace. Wallace, dead for ten years but still alive in the public imagination, was suddenly brought into the conversation. Wallace’s fans, too, were implicated in his bad behavior, particularly by their reputation for being ‘lit-bros’. At the time, Grace Chipperfield was writing a doctoral thesis on Wallace, which eventually turned into a collection of essays that reckoned with both Wallace’s complicated legacy and her relationship to him as a fan, a scholar, and a woman. The final essay in the collection was a deep dive into Wallace fandom, and to write this Grace corresponded with members of the Wallace community, including one of its most dedicated and active participants: Matt Bucher. Here, then, is a sample of that correspondence. This essay is a series of letters between Grace and Matt throughout which they consider their moral obligations as fans in the age of the problematic fave.
Grace Chipperfield is a Fulbright Scholar and tutor in English and Creative Writing at Flinders University, South Australia. She recently completed her PhD in Creative Writing, a collection of essays on David Foster Wallace and his fans. She is on the board of the International David Foster Wallace Society and an associate editor for The Journal of David Foster Wallace Studies. Email: grace.chipperfield@flinders.edu.au
The Belan Deck isn’t a straightforward guidebook or manifesto or map, but it nevertheless, in its elliptical, poetic approach, offers a winding, thinking, feeling path of opposition to not only the machines themselves, but also the hollow men who would gladly replace artists and creators and thinkers with those machines. It’s also really fun to read. Great stuff.
The book will seduce you to turn pages whether you chase the clues or you don’t. But if you do there is so much more to think about. I’ll close by pointing out that there is now a rabbit hole connecting David Foster Wallace to Matt Bucher via David Markson and there is a rabbit hole connecting David Foster Wallace to David Markson via Matt Bucher. This is pretty cool.
I was also fortunate to get this blurb from acclaimed Gaddis scholar and literary critic Steven Moore: “Very smart, witty, insightful, very literary, and a lovely homage to Markson.“—Steven Moore, author of The Novel: An Alternative History
I have a little book coming out soon. It is called The Belan Deck. It’s set mostly during a layover at SFO and it centers around a person who maybe doesn’t really fit in at their AI tech job but still needs to produce one final PowerPoint deck.
I am standing at the corner of Folsom and Embarcadero waiting for an Uber.
I can see the cars on the Bay Bridge frozen, stationary.
No MUNI trains are barreling down the Embarcadero at this time of day.
Beyond a few palm trees outlined in the aquamarine sky, just below the descending clouds, I can see the top of the arrow of Claes Oldenburg’s Cupid’s Span.
There is the breeze and the smell that seemingly never leaves San Francisco.
Fifty eight degrees.
I have the Uber app open, SFO as destination but have not yet hit Confirm.
I glance at the Teslas and SUVs in the intersection, glance back at my phone again.
There are several cars stopped on the Embarcadero, almost all Uber and Lyft drivers I’m certain.
Once I tap Confirm I know my ride will be accepted in seconds and I will get into one of these cars.
Just then I had an incoming call: Jimmy Chen.
I hate incoming calls and the immediate panic they induce.
Breathe in. Accept.
Hey Jimmy, I’m on my way to the airport right now. Gotta get back to Austin tonight. Can we talk later?
No, no, it’s fine. Totally understand. Just thought I’d give you a heads up that the meeting I mentioned, the one with the Board, that’s actually happening on Monday now and I just wanted, I mean, wanted to call you.
I can barely focus on what he’s saying. The traffic is muffling all other sounds and I need to get into this Uber right now.
I squint at a black sedan. The driver saw me looking at my phone.
Jimmy, is this regarding the issue of my ongoing employment?
That’s on the agenda. I mean, yeah, but I mean, I just wanted to give you a heads up. So I’ll need that deck on Sunday. The one for Belan.
A tech bro wearing a hoodie and a gray backpack shoots past me on a skateboard. A mother with a stroller maneuvers around me.
Can we talk about this later, please? I’m obstructing pedestrians and I’m on my way to the airport.
Yeah, yeah of course. Just wanted to give you a heads up. But I need that deck sooner rather than later, OK? Sunday morning if you don’t mind.
Got it.
End.
Tap Uber. Confirm.
Your driver is now arriving. Black Mercedes S580. License plate PEV4391.
The Embarcadero morphs into the 101 and soon we are stuck in the usual parking lot traffic. I don’t mind. I have an hour or three to spare.
I like to get to the airport early.
I don’t like to entertain the idea of being late.
Maybe that’s an understatement.
And, despite some awful experiences in the past, I don’t mind SFO.
It feels familiar. An old friend.
And I don’t think of myself as a typical business traveler. Whatever that means.
Weathered men, pale in drab suits, or, more likely now, in Salesforce-logoed Patagonia vests and quarter-zips, always on their laptops, racking up millions of miles, discussing sports or crypto.
That ain’t me.
Most of the time, at the airport, I can’t bring myself to do that sort of work anyway.
Physically, mentally, I don’t find the space conducive to office work.
I am a traveler. Even while commuting.
My preference is for a paper book, a pencil or pen, a paper notebook to write in, a restaurant or bar where I can watch the never-ending flow of humanity, then to go browse the shops, read some more.
Do nothing, in a way. For once.
I always have several paper journals on me at all times, especially when I travel.
Claes Oldenburg died of complications from a fall.
Falls are the leading cause of injury-related death among adults age 65 and older.
Belan is the Chairman and CEO. When I first met him, after I’d been hired and flown to San Francisco, I was shocked when I saw his name.
My great-grandfather had been named Belan when he was born, but had been adopted later at the age of 21 and he changed his name.
We call him Leo Steven. But I never met him.
When I met this Belan, the CEO, this was the first thing I told him.
Belan was a family name. On my dad’s side.
Just as I started to launch into the story, he cut me off: Interesting. Huh. Well, about this strategy deck you’re working on…
I’d never met another person named Belan in my life, and I doubt he had either but that apparently didn’t matter to him at all. He was all business, all the time. I could feel the stress emanating off him like steam.
I made it through the precheck line, no bags to check, and headed toward gate B39.
My phone vibrated. It was Amanda. She wasn’t my assistant, exactly. But she “supported” everyone on the team by doing things like booking travel and ordering office supplies and scheduling meetings.
Flight delayed 2 hours. Go to gate C42.
Thanks, I text back. Then I text my wife: Flight delayed, don’t wait up.
Belan had a few weird rules, like insisting no one use the word “I” in any memos or decks. Meetings must start at 10 minutes past the hour. No ties. Jimmy told me: crack a golf joke to get on his good side, loosen him up. He loves the Kentucky Derby.
Incredibly, SFO has a bargain book store. Or at least I have never seen another airport bookstore with a large bargain section. And one stocked with many small-press books. I headed there before leaving B terminal.
One thing I spent too much time worrying about was the title of the PowerPoint deck.
I’ve decided that my Monthly Audio Newsletter, Mostly About Nothing will, for now, not feature my voice but only feature dead writers. Only dead writers will be featured.
After a brief illness, Bob Giroux (of Farrar, Straus Giroux) passes away at a home in New Jersey on September 5, 2008. Throughout his career, the writers Giroux was closest to–John Berryman, Robert Lowell (who died 9/12/77), Jean Stafford–all broke down.
After losing the second set, Roger Federer defeats Andy Murray to win his fifth consecutive US Open title on September 8.
After weeks of speculation, rumors swirl that the fourth largest investment bank in the US, Lehman Brothers, won’t be able to raise the required capital for a bailout. The Dow Jones Industrial Average drops another 2.5% on September 9 as the financial crisis widens.
“I am not very curious about the lives or personalities of other writers.”–David Foster Wallace to Jacob Didier, 2005.
After the Democratic convention in Denver, David Remnick’s analysis of Obama’s rhetorical powers appears in the Talk of the Town, September 8 issue of The New Yorker. David Foster Wallace had agreed to write an analysis of Obama and rhetoric for GQ magazine but deferred in August, citing a stomach ailment. Joel Lovell at G had offered Wallace a deadline of September 12.
After weeks of border skirmishes, Navy SEALs raid the Pakistani town of Angur Ada. Seven years after 9/11, the trail to find Osama Bin Laden had gone cold. Vice-Admiral William McRaven (who would be installed as Chancellor of the University of Texas system just six years later) wanted to jump start the mission with a ground raid in Pakistan itself.
After a decade of construction and billions of dollars invested, the first beam was circulated through the Large Hadron Collider on the morning of September 10, 2008.
The code among gutter punks is not to inquire about or investigate someone’s past.
After all of Galveston Island is ordered to evacuate, three million Texans lose power on the night of September 12, 2008. Hurricane Ike makes landfall the next morning, causing upwards of $35B in damage and killing at least 50.
“Trying to calculate the odds against two poets as talented as Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton taking part in the same university writing workshop at the same time–and with an instructor of the stature of Robert Lowell.”–David Markson, The Last Novel
After John McCain showcases his running mate Sarah Palin at the Republican National Convention, the duo briefly overtake Obama-Biden in the Quinnipiac polls for the week ending September 12, 2008.
“In the Nazi camps, it was forbidden to rescue a man who wanted to hang himself.”–Evan S. Connell, Points for a Compass Rose
After opening on Friday, September 12, 2008, the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading wins the weekend box office, knocking Heath Ledger’s The Dark Knight down to 9th place.
Federer fathers four children in nine years and is, by all accounts, a devoted and loving father.
After dinner, I am running bath water for my toddler’s nightly routine. Somewhere out in that dark night, Ed Champion’s finger hovers above the tweet button, eager to break the news of an author’s death.
