The sidewalk ends

Library Thing -

I know I will use this site long after the 23things. What a great place to end up with limitless cracks for all of my favorite books and a place to write about them. I left a review for "Story of a Girl", a powerful YA book that I finished this summer and still think about sometimes. I had thought about buying a copy of this book and leaving it up by the high school or on a park bench, hoping someone would pick it up.

Sound crazy? I have done things like this before and like to imagine that the book ends up with a person who needs just that particular book at exactly this time.

Who knows? Stranger things have happened...

I will miss the 23things and cannot thank Elaine and Nancy enough for all of the hard work they put into this. I have learned a lot and am so proud of myself. I am still on facebook, posting and editing pictures with ease, IM-ing our former page at college, using my multiple google accounts, keeping track of Tim on my RSS feeds, making Snapfish books, waiting for the next AnnK podcast and generally feeling a part of the world.

Namaste!

The google doc is in

I come from a large Italian family.

Most of my older aunts and uncles do not own computers.
If they do, they are most proficient at sending out annoying "forwards": jokes, recipes for sauce, offensive political stuff, or "mistake" email that is suppose to go to someone else who has an email address close to my own.

Most of the nieces and nephews judiciously guard their own email addresses and cell phone numbers from the aunts and uncles. This is for self preservation only and to avoid the dreaded daily "forwards" that appear in our inbox.
Working in the library, close to relatives, I am not always so lucky. I was recently recruited because "hey, you work in a library that's close to the causeway and you know the computer" to write a tribute page for my Uncle's North High Reunion handbook. The "rough copy" was handwritten on legal paper with enough text (and long Italian surnames) to fill a whole book, not just a page. When I tried to explain to my uncle about font size, white space and correct editing, he was unimpressed.

There were also pictures to scan and include, from old yellowed newspaper clippings and clip art of the Marine insignia.
After struggling with these pictures and the text for an entire evening I enlisted the help of my daughter who reasoned, "I can easily reduce and photoshop the clipping as long as you don't give your uncle my email".
My uncle "loved" what we had done with the pictures and the ultimate final product went through numerous edits and "additions" of text. Every time I would show him the "final copy", he would think of another person to add or something else to mention until every inch of the 1/2 sheet was covered.

The neat thing was that my daughter and I were able to use google docs to create the original, edit the text, add more names, correct the spellings (this was tough) and otherwise work together but separately on the same document.

In appreciation for my daughter's hard work I have kept her email address a secret from the relatives and from the Barzini family.

Wikiness

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with wikis. This is me, "Happy Girl" at the Tim McGraw concert last weekend. My daughter was convinced that if she took me to a live Tim concert, paid for the expensive tickets, and bought me a pizze fritte, that I would stop talking about Tim and listening to "Southern Voice".

Unfortunately, that has not happened.

I have enjoyed using wikis for years. My son (who has been surrounded by librarians his whole life - his Mom, 2 neighbors, a former brother in law, and his cousin) is a huge supporter of Wikipedia. If I had a nickel for every time he has said, "Look it up on Wikipedia", I would be buying my own fried dough.

I think that wikis are great tools to be used in a variety of ways. I have used them many times to look up obscure minor league baseball players and trivia facts. This is not the highest level of research but as the Wikipedia people will tell you, "mass collaboration over time will produce high quality material". The links following the Wikipedia articles are also useful for further research as are the external links.

I have spent considerable time this week looking at both Wikipedia and Library Success - a best practices wiki.

Library success is an interesting wiki. The information is a bit scattered but can be quite entertaining if you are a library geek. I will try to add a link for the NYLA November conference at my earliest convenience.

Crack in the parking lot

Whenever I hear the word "pod" used in any of its many derivations, I do not get a warm fuzzy feeling. I remember seeing one of my first Sci-fi movies that included "the pod people". That caused me to have nightmares for a week. I also remember walking into a store in Rochester that was called "Pea in a Pod". I was in there a long time before I noticed that all of the clothes were either very stretchy or very LARGE. After some embarrassment from a sales clerk who asked "when are you due?" (I wasn't!!), I ran out and looked for the nearest "Jenny Craig".

I managed to escape the word "pod" for a long, long time.

And then I was transferred to North Syracuse where the word "POD" would stare out at me from the parking lot every day.

Of course the pod was very useful in housing books for the annual sale but I can't say that I was sorry to see it go.

Podcasts are a different thing altogether and I don't feel threatened by them at all. They are useful and I listened to a few last winter as part of an online class.

Today I listened to AnnK's original podcast and I wanted to tell AnnK that:

#1- I love the easy listening music intro

#2- Don't ya know, you don't sound like you are from Minnesota

#3- I think that the NS non-fiction section contains a Velveeta cheese cookbook from 1964 in case you are interested

#4- I am happy that women have the right to vote and I vote NO on pods in the parking lot!

#5- Your worry segment made me realize that by writing this, I will somehow cancel out my need to worry about pods any longer. So thanks Ann! You have made the 23things fly by.

Permanent Markings

I have been noticing a lot more tattoos lately. Maybe because it is summer and there is just more skin exposure? Maybe because I was transferred to North Syracuse which seems to be the capital of the tattooed world?

Maybe because I am over sixty and feel like my time to be tattooed has passed me by?

On one hand I am fascinated by them - the intricacies of the design, the time (and probably pain) involved, the physical permanency of it.

On the other hand, not so much.

What about when you are 50 with saggy cleavage, out eating a roast beef dinner with the word "vegan" peeking out the top of your shirt?

Will you feel weird, or hypocritical, or just old?

This is one of my favorite "tattoo" pictures.

Tim, of course, with the word "Faith" on his arm. I know this is his wife's name but I like to think it is also a statement of something else - a country boy who grew up without a father, only to find him when he was already a teenager.

I am hoping to get close enough to the stage tomorrow night, seeing Tim in concert, to ask about the tattoo.

Video attached here too - it was fun picking one out and learning to embed it.

Did you think it would be of anyone else??