Carleen and Mike

Yaaaaay!! The small garden bed in front of our sunroom is finally cleared out. I spent most of last week pulling up the last few stubborn pricker bushes. So once I get those taxes paid off, I’ll be able to order all my new plants. Now all i need to do is clear out the big garden bed, and clear out all the ivy vines that have grown back since last year. Also I put a cherry tree I got from Carl in the middle of the back yard, which would like nice exept that I found out today that it’s a dwarf cherry, so I’ll have to replace it with something else.

The average person’s mind is like a garage, a big space that you fill up with all sorts of things, both useful, and junk. Some garages are more clean and organized than others. My mind (and I’m sure several other people too) is like a lunchbox. Only so much can go in at one time and the stuff that goes into it is only there temporarily.

Middle school grade research project. Must find information on unusual jobs in New Mexico.

My blog friend has come up with a brilliant idea. She is wanting to create a history blog geared towards kids age 10 to 15. She is welcoming contributions from anyone with good writing skills and sound knowledge of history. In particular she wants it to be “an aged down version of an adult history blog. People should be able to write about the things they would with adults, but simplify things and add extra explanations.” She’s trying to come up with a catchy name for it. Any suggestions? (Beth, you’re always so good at these

What a day. I just got off the phone with a very cranky man who seems to believe a reference librarian is the same thing as a computer engineer. He was quite upset when I wasn’t able to “system reboot” his computer over the phone for him. I honestly didn’t know how to help him and he kept getting more and more hostile saying that he needed to speak to someone that knew what they were talking about. I tried to explain to him that there wasn’t anybody here to help him and suggested he try calling someplace like Clientale Logic tomorrow but he wouldn’t here of it. He kept repeating all the error messages he was getting on his screen which could have just as easily been written in Aramaic as far as I was concerned. My apologies didn’t seem to satisfy him and he hung up quite miffed. Ahh me (sigh)

Poetry month is coming up and Jenn is doing a column on it in our staff newsletter. She’s asked us to submit our favorite poem. I’ve choosen a poem by my brother of many talents:

An Open-handed Fist
By Konrad Mitchell Lawson

They wisdom’s hardened fist in logic hail,
but in the rhetorician’s face will fail.
And though my friends are virtuous and kind,
with honest tongues true words are left behind.
Athenian men to war by words are led,
and find their truths when left to count the dead.
And when a faith finds home in spoken word,
the wisest see the deafness that they heard.
Those who justice to their cause would seek
must learn to like the cunning serpent speak.
And more to win, must craft their speeches whole,
and from their audience capture heart and soul,
wield with pride a senatorial wit,
as of the victors countless tales are writ.
Some honored more than truth their spoken art,
as aging bach’lors might chide a lovesick heart,
but when returned the vote is ‘yea’ or ‘nay’
the eloquently spoken win the day.
And left are those sagacious sad old men:
The owls who perished in the fox’s den.
How shall we fight our cause when foxes rule,
for surely ours is right and theirs is cruel?
Should we persuade and lift with open hand,
or beat with fist the indecisive band?
The learn’d will always follow reason’s call,
the rest by fabled foolishness will fall,
unless we too should play the serpent’s game,
and in its mastery fight for reason’s name.

I’m really frustrated with our education system in this town right now. I’ve already heard some horror stories from my friend Jenn who teaches night school at the highschool, most of which has already made me think twice about putting our children in private school. I know I’m no teacher but the assignments that these kids come in with just seem a little ludicrous sometimes. I mean, I can understand what it is that they’re trying to teach them but then I don’t really think what they’re teaching them is much use. What use is it for a senior in highschool, in an advance placement class mind you, to have to research a topic that requires her to find a poem about that topic. In this particular example, this girl was writing about country music so she had to find a poem about country music, not lyrics, but a poem about it. This certainly helps them with thier research skills but does it really, as Jenn says so often “make them think”! Today we had a bunch of middle school kids in who had a project to do on Ancient Rome. The first mother and daughter that came in handed us a piece of paper that said something like this, “Make a drawing of Hadrin’s wall”. Does anyone know who or what the hell Hadrin’s wall is? My first instinct (although I was afraid to say it because I was sure a teacher wouldn’t make this kind of mistake) was that she meant to write Hadrian’s Wall but the mother kept saying “well, that’s what she has written here so I’m sure it must be right”. Then another kid came in working on the same topic, slightly different though because he had chosen to build a replica of an Ancient Roman boat. A fine topic, not much out there, but interesting topic. The only problem is that since the entire class is doing research on Ancient Rome right now, all of our good books are already check out. If teachers are going to do projects like this, why don’t they come down here and see what materials we have available so they’re not just sending thier kids here blind and unprepared for the fact that we may not have enough or the right kind of material for them. Beth has tried to get teachers to do this for years but they apparently say they’re too busy to come down to the library. I am very frustrated. Grrrr!

Interesting.

Bruderhof Community

The Houston Public Library have been asked to remove their teen-health website link to Columbian University’s health information site for teens called “Go Ask Alice”. The complaint apparently started with a Girl Scout troop leader who checked out the site before recommending it to her troop members and found “things that I’ve never seen as a 41 year old adult” (I’m not sure what’s more shocking here). It’s a very candid site. Teens have the opportunity to write in and ask questions anonymously about sexuality, drugs, etc. It is very explicit (is there less chance of getting pregnant if the women is on top, is it true that smoking pot while pregnant won’t harm the fetus, etc). Personally, I would hope my teen was comfortable enough asking me these questions but that isn’t always the case so I would be pleased that there was a source like this out there for her.

From American Library Association, Feb. 2004.

“Inspired by the 2003 film Calendar Girls starring Helen Mirren, Senior Librarian Dian Bowman at the West Hampstead branch of the Camden Library in Greater London, England, persuaded nine of her colleagues-all women between the ages of 37 and 60-to doff their duds in the interest of charity. Profits from the sale of “For Reference Only: A Calendar of Camden Librarians, 2004,” are being donated to Mayor Nasim Ali’s charity fund”

The Iraq National Library was badly burned during last Aprils attacks. Remaining books and documents were moved to the Board of Tourism where they’ve been waiting and getting moldy. Efforts by the Library of Congress have tried to find a temporary location for the library while a new building is designed and built. They’ve settled on the Senior Officers Club, which also happens to be occupied by 400 of our U.S. Troops. Full report can be found here.

Mike managed to drag me to the Dawn of the Dead on Saturday. As horror movies go I guess it was pretty decent (I’ll let him give ya’ll the low down) but I was very disturbed when I noticed, while burrying my face in my husbands shoulder during a particularly gruesome scene, a little girl sitting behind me no more than 6 years old. She was hugging her knees to her chest and covering her eyes with her hands. She would peak through her fingers every once in awhile, as if she was trying to decide whether it was ‘all clear’ to look again. It looked like she was there with her whole family, a sister and parents all eating popcorn as if this was some kind of family event. What is wrong with people!

Shifted librarian has a link to a pdf file of the recent Cites & Insights issue which highlights some of the concerns of the Broadcast Flag. To be honest, I’m still a little unclear as to how exactly DRM is going to affect libraries. When I asked my instructor in the last certification class I attended, she replied “we’ll just have to wait and see”.
Here’s a link to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This is also where you can sign a petition if you want to be involved in trying to stop the Broadcast Flag from passing.

I have decided that I am going to participate in a 5k race this summer. I’ve talked my dad into joining me. I’m still not sure if I’m going to run or walk it, or perhaps both, but I am going to train for it as if I were going to run it. It’s just something I’ve always wanted to do.

I am officially broke. I just got my paycheck on Friday, $485. I sent out a check to pay for my taxes, $481, which leaves me with a grand total of 4 bucks in my bank account. I’m doing suprisingly well considering I can’t go off and buy chocolate on a whim for the next two weeks :).

Tomorrow is technically my “spring break” so I’m putting away all the books I’m supposed to read and picking up a book I really want to read. Thank God. That romance is killing me (The Forever Kiss by Thea Devine). Beside her lack of talent for writing, the author has a rather gross obsession with nipples.
So, tonight I’m going to begin The Birth of Venus by Sarah Dunant which is apparently on the Best Sellers list right now. It’s set in Florence during the period of Savonarola and the “bonfire of Vanity”. I just watched a brilliant PBS documentary of the Medici family which touched on this topic and I found it really interesting. I’m looking forward to a night of good reading, sweet cups of tea and lots of dark Dove chocolate :).

I was given a customer service award today during our staff meeting. I got flowers and a certificate and even a coupon for “an hour off” whenever I want. It was very sweet and our director even read an email out loud that she had received from a lady I helped with some research through our online reference chat service. This is a good example of how this kind of technology is affecting libraries and how it helps people who work at libraries provide even better service to their customers. Although she singles me out in the email, what she is unaware of is that the historical documents I photocopied and sent to her were gathered and found by not only me but the always helpful and knowledgeable genealogy librarians who work in our Local and Family History Department. Working at a library is extremely rewarding and is most often more fun than it is work.

“Dear Ms. Singleton,

I’ve made my comments through the online vehicle, but wanted to ensure that I communicated to you personally to let you know how very pleased I am with the service provided by Carleen Huxley to me, a far way Florida resident doing research on Oklahoma’s oil heritage. I have worked with many, many, libraries and sources on a great variety of projects and have not been accustomed to such detailed and responsive service. Absolutely superior in every respect. Clearly the Bartlesville Library makes customer service a top priority. The very comprehensive search and retrieval done on my behalf far exceeded even my most optimistic expectations and provided me the first person, authoritative documentation of new and valuable information as well as excellent corroboration for facts I had gleaned from other sources. Carleen Huxley deserves special praise for her tenacity in gathering these extraordinary documents and the library deserves special praise for having the foresight and commitment to maintaining comprehensive vertical files. With my request on the 17th and the excellent material identified, pulled, organized, labeled and mailed the very next day, nobody could ask for better service. The postal system frustrated us with its snail’s pace transit time from 18 February to 9 March, but this notwithstanding, I would like to thank the Bartlesville Library and especially Carleen Huxley for their excellent service to a distant customer.”

Teaser trailor for the upcoming, soon-to-be-classic, Alien vs. Predator can be found here

Also check out (this one flew totally under my radar) the coming VERY soon Dawn of the Deadremake.

Mike and I went to see Passion last night with dad and our friends, Jennifer and Josh. Besides the general media attention, this movie has been creating quite a stir in our very religious and conservative small town. I can’t say I enjoyed the movie because I don’t really think it is meant to be enjoyed but rather experienced. It was extremely powerful and very well made. I was very impressed with the acting (Jim Caviezel especially) and the use of original languages added to the movies authenticity. Putting aside all the “possible” anti-sematic undertones and the brutal tortures inflicted upon Christ over and over and over again, it is a very worthy film in my opinion.
My first impulse was that the torture scenes went on way to long and were just unneccessary in most instances. But I believe Gibsons objective here was to not only make us feel uncomfortable and squimish, but angry to the point that every human being in that theatre, regardless of religion, felt like standing up with fists clenched, yelling at the top of their lungs “Stop, that’s enough!” He didn’t make this movie violent because he has a fascination with gore, he made it because he wanted to preach something.
The historical inaccuracies are apparently numerous according to some articles I read, but it really didn’t seem to hinder the over all movie in my opinion. Except when the theif crucified next to Christ had is eye poked out by a crow. I’m still trying to figure out where that one is in the Bible. I really liked how a lot of the scenes seemed heavily influenced by Medieval and Renaissance painting, especially the crucifiction scene which brought to mind Carravagio, Van Eyke and yeah, all those other cool art dudes I studied in school and have since forgot I was perplexed when I saw Gibson had choosen to crucify Jesus through the hands, something now known to be physiologically impossible, as opposed to the wrists. But then I wonder whether he did it on purpose, since that is how it was traditionally depicted in art before modern science came along.

Spring is here and it’s time for another session of certification classes. Some ladies from work and I attended our first class last week titled Current Trends and Legislation Affecting Public Libraries. From this class I learned some shocking truths: 1) my co-workers and I and what seemed like everyone else in the class have all broken library law on several different occasions while working at our library 2) our instructor wasn’t all that concerned that we’re breaking the law because 3) there are way too many gray areas in legislation that breaking the law is just too damn easy. For instance, through some class discussion, we became aware that our library is making it very easy to violate copyright law by keeping the bypass key in the History room photocopy machine (something which is done for practicality reasons-makes it easier on the patrons when they don’t have change). By doing this, we are technically “supervising” the copying and thereby making ourselves liable when a patron happens to be photocopying something they shouldn’t or for a purpose they shouldn’t (such as commercial use). Our reference and circulation desk violate the Americans with Disabilities Act since it does not “provide adaptive working conditions” for people who are physically disabled (wheel chair, etc). The desk and chairs are too high and the only possible “adaption” I see is if we were to build a ramp and a platform. It was interesting. We spent the last half of the day discussing CIPA and the Patriot Act. Our instructor was very vocal on her disapproval of both and pointed out that although CIPA requires us to have filters, it says nothing (yet) about having filters that actually work efficiently. As long as we buy them and install them the governments happy and we get our e-rate funding for the year. I dread July 1st. What a mess it will be.

My Aunt Kathy recently had her second child–a girl, Hannah Grace Rossi. I have dubbed her, Hannah Banana. She’s a little doll, I can’t wait to go see her.