Still scoring pretty low

You are 27% geek

You are a geek liaison, which means you go both ways. You can hang out with normal people or you can hang out with geeks which means you often have geeks as friends and/or have a job where you have to mediate between geeks and normal people. This is an important role and one of which you should be proud. In fact, you can make a good deal of money as a translator. Normal: Tell our geek we need him to work this weekend. You [to Geek]: We need more than that, Scotty. You'll have to stay until you can squeeze more outta them engines! Geek [to You]: I'm givin' her all she's got, Captain, but we need more dilithium crystals! You [to Normal]: He wants to know if he gets overtime.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com

666 Library Dreaming

Yesterday I attended the Departmental Librarians Christmas luncheon at a local restaurant. I sat next to one of the assistant directors of OSUL who had been my former boss. We spent a lot of time discussing the plans for the renovation of the Main Library.



These plans had begun before I retired in 2000. They will include the relocation of the Education, Psychology, Social Work, and Human Ecology collections to Main from Sullivant Hall which my husband worked on in the 1980s (the space that now houses that library will be remodeled to house Technical Services, the Information Technology Dept., and lots of public PCs with production software in addition to library resources; the Music/Dance Library will stay),



the closing of the Main Library for several years, and the demolition of the 1970s addition to the Thompson Main Library to which I returned professionally in 1978.

It must have weighed heavily on my mind (or it was the onions in the soup), because I dreamed Pat came to my house to ask me to come back to work. Except, it wasn't Pat, it was Barb C. from our Lakeside summer community, whose Christmas card label hasn't been used because she and her husband have moved and we don't have the new address. But I told Pat-morphed-into-Barb, "No," because I was having too much fun being retired.

Then our calico cat decided it was time to be fed. (She has issues from having been homeless.) First she jumped atop the dresser and adjusted the blinds, then she returned to the bed and sat on my chest, with her tail in my face watching the bedroom door. If I move even slightly, she uses my body as a springboard to rush out of the bedroom into the bathroom where she waits to hurry me along in my morning routine.

Consequently, I never found out if Pat, the assistant director, was disappointed or relieved that I turned her down. Or was that Barb? Or Lotza Spotza?

665 A picture is worth a thousand ACLU lawyers

Two large photos in two different newspapers caught my eye today. In the Columbus Dispatch it was a photograph of a fabulous, elaborate, snow-sculptured Santa Claus in northeastern China. Originally the Anti-Christian Lawyers Unrelenting just went after the nativity scenes, now it is red and green, Santas and Christmas trees, all of which are pagan in origin. Anyway, in this regard, the non-Christian Chinese have more freedom of expression than we do.

And in the USAToday there was a photo of another non-Christian nation and peoples celebrating Christmas without the assistance of lawyers and school principals. This one was of blind Palestinian children having a Christmas party at the YMCA (which if it has parties in the USA for American children probably calls them "holiday celebrations"). The party is sponsored primarily by the Mormons, the Jews, and the Presbyterians.

664 Another baby sleep story

A few days ago I gave my advice for getting children to sleep. Here's a great story about what a little one needed and what we need, too.

663 Frivolous vote challenge thrown out in Ohio

Overlawyered has the story about the challenge to the Ohio election results.

"The Ohio Supreme Court's Chief Justice threw out a lawsuit backed by Jesse Jackson and funded by a partisan Massachusetts election monitoring group. The lawsuit claimed that Pres. Bush unfairly won Ohio due to some indescribable fraud by his supporters. . .[w]ithout listing specific evidence, the complaint alleges that 130,656 votes for Kerry and John Edwards in 36 counties were somehow switched to count for the Bush-Cheney ticket."

662 The Perkins Cat

The Ohio State University Libraries used to have a departmental library at the Perkins Observatory in Delaware, OH. For 63 years the University had an arrangement with Ohio Wesleyan to maintain the Observatory and that ended in 1998. I believe HUDL (Heads of Undergraduate and Departmental Libraries) met there shortly before the astronomy collection was disbanded and moved to Ohio State. Perkins had a library cat named CAT. CAT was in charge of rodent control and really didn't care much for visitors, according to this story. There are a number of libraries that have cats, the most famous were Baker and Taylor, two Scottish Folds named for a book distributor. When I was the veterinary librarian, I had their poster on the bulletin board. There was even a documentary made about library cats, called Puss in Books.

660 Letter to Santa

This is the most beautiful letter to Santa you'll ever read.

And here is a heart warming story by a Florida librarian.

My December 21st poem (posted last year on the 21st).

659 Step Grandchildren

At the family Christmas in Indiana I was watching Brandon and Christopher interact. Both beautiful young men in spirit and body, well over 6’ tall, towering over their parents, now both dark haired although both were blond as little boys. It seems like yesterday that I was watching them through the window run around outside when they were about 12, trying out the new helmets and swords and camping gear their grandparents had given them for Christmas. They are first cousins. Sort of. One is my sister-in-law’s biological grandson, and one is her husband’s biological grandson, but in this family they are simply “the grandchildren” and there is absolutely no difference. My sister-in-law has a step-daughter from her first marriage who also has children, and they too are “cousins” and “grandchildren, ” with no distinction, at least not that I can see. Their photos are framed and on the end tables along with the rest of the grandchildren.

Blending a family isn’t always easy at holidays. This family has made it work with love, a sense of humor, prayer and hard work. I liked the advice on this page. They could have written it.

And just because it is Christmas time and I'm thinking about family, here is an excellent letter written by a Professor at George Mason University to his parents about his thoughts on freedom. Don't miss a word--it is outstanding and shows that giving a child material things isn't what teaches the best lessons.

658 Hmmm, smells like apple pie, he said

Maybe it smelled like apple pie, but it looked like sewage from the bottom of a broken garbage disposal. This morning I decided to slice and cook some withered, soft apples. So I put a bit of margarine in the cast iron skillet and sliced the apples into it. But they were dry, so I added a bit if apple cider. Then I got really creative and sprinkled over it some cinnamon and old fashioned oats. It was smelling quite lovely, so I decided to add some walnuts. The whole mess turned charcoal black.

After I threw it out, I decided to turn the kitchen into a chemistry lab. I heated up a bit of apple cider in the cast iron skillet and added walnuts. Turned the liquid black. Then I put some apple cider in a stainless steel saucepan and added walnuts. Turned darker brown, but not black. Then I took that brown mixture and added it to a different, smaller cast iron skillet, one with more baked on black gunk (I like to call it seasoning). No change. Then I moved it to the other cast iron skillet, which probably needs to be reseasoned, and it immediately turned black.

From the kitchen I went to Google, and tried all manner of combinations, finding lots of recipes that use both cider and walnuts, and lots of advice on how to properly season a cast iron skillet (this one is 45 years old). But nothing about turning out a black porridge that looks like I scraped it off the garage floor at the end of winter in Ohio.

So if anyone with more lab experience or more cooking experience knows why an improperly seasoned cast iron skillet turns cider black when walnuts are added, I'd like to know about it. Just don't ever try this unless you've got a lot of extra ingredients so you can start over.

657 Where is Miss Beazley, the latest Barney film

Here is a nice Christmas card from the Bush family, "Where in the White House is Miss Beazley?" featuring their dog Barney, who is looking for Miss Beazley, the new puppy. Lots of fun, including some great shots of the White House decorated for Christmas.



Safe for children and Democrats.

656 New Writer on my List

I've added The Zero Boss to my Writers' Links down at the bottom left. I think he writes mostly about parenting, as well he should--he's 30 years old and has 6 kids! Through him I discovered an e-journal for Ohio State that I'd never heard of--not sure if it has actually had its first issue yet. I found him through Paula, who is a writer discovering other writers (instead of writing), and has just composed a really cute 12 days of Christmas verse about other bloggers.

Update: 3 years later and all three of these links are dead.

655 The Killing of Expectant Mothers

When I heard of another expectant mother being killed and her baby removed from the womb and kidnapped, I immediately thought of the Scott Peterson case. I again wondered why he was the only suspect, since apparently this horribly, brutal type of murder happens more often than we want to remember. Now the Washington Post is running a series:

"Their killings produced only a few headlines, but across the country in the last decade, hundreds of pregnant women and new mothers have been slain. Even as Scott Peterson's trial became a public fascination, little was said about how often is happens, why, and whether it is a fluke or a social syndrome."

"A year-long examination by The Washington Post of death-record data in states across the country documents the killings of 1,367 pregnant women and new mothers since 1990. This is only part of the national toll, because no reliable system is in place to track such cases. . . Homicide accounted for 50 of 247 maternal deaths in Maryland over a six-year period -- more than 20 percent. It had caused more deaths than cardiovascular disorders, embolisms or accidents."

Most of these homicides were committed by boyfriends or husbands unwilling to become fathers or afraid of child support. But not all. When the latest story was reported locally, other killing/kidnapping cases were also reported. Enough for me to question the death penalty for Scott Peterson--again--because the media and police never seemed to look beyond the husband for a suspect.

654 The UCC ad

The other night I saw the UCC ad on a cable station. I think it probably needs to be bumped, or at best, ignored because it depicts other Christians as white, skin-head bouncers. UCC has suffered from declining attendance and membership in recent years, as have most main-line denominations. I don't think it can shore up its sinking ship by throwing water on other Christian groups. Conservative denominations are more integrated and diverse than liberal, not because of lobbying or committees or white papers, but because they preach the Gospel of Salvation through Jesus Christ instead of preaching Good Works gets you to heaven. It always helps if you have a reason for people to darken your doors.

653 Prayer Job Jar December 18

At least now I have an actual jar--my sister gave it to me when I was about 16, and I think it contained bubble-bath. For years, it was a cookie jar, then it just sat around feeling useless for a decade or two. This week's list is a bit full, but that's how prayers are if you actually sit down and note the requests you've heard or received in e-mail or read on a blog. Listing them has the additional benefit of making you feel things are really pretty good at your own address. That could be the primary benefit of intercessory prayer--helps stomp out navel gazing at pity parties.

I'm using up old card stock with our former address, and we include the requests with our table grace. It certainly improves that routine! We'd gotten a bit sluggish with the same words, night after night.

For Chuck, healing; special comfort and peace for his parents and sister whom we've known for so many years.
For Beverly's brother, the same problem, same request.
For Phil, the best possible job for his skills and temperament.
For Keith, a position with tenure.
For Danny, good contracts for his construction firm.
For Robert Jr., a position closer to home so he won't miss the kids.
For Melissa's Dad, wise doctors, skilled testing, and healing.
For new babies of friends and family, God-fearing, loving, mature parents.
For Vicky's family, God's comfort in sorrow.
For our four pastors, a clear, glorious Christmas message.
For Mary, speedy adjustment in her new home.
For Dad (father-in-law) and all in nursing homes, loving caregivers.
For Kate, healing from back surgery.
For Sue and all volunteers in home-bound service, perserverance.
For a mother and daughter, a new way to commumicate.
For Marylyn, skilled doctors and accurate diagnosis, and a quick return home.
For Joe and Julie, blessings on their new house.
For Jean and Bob, safe trip to Florida and lots of company.
For my wonderful husband, his greatest desire.
For all travelers, visitors and guests this season, travel mercies.

652 Faith informed by Reason

Mark Roberts has just finished up an excellent 9 part series answering the Christmas cover stories of Time and Newsweek. Meacham, the writer for Newsweek has no where near the credentials or experience that Roberts has, but the complaint from most believing Christians is that he didn't even attempt to present the other side (often the case with liberals, whether in politics or religion). Roberts takes great care to explain and be fair to the case of the scholars with whom he disagrees. Meacham just pretends that being a liberal Episcopalian makes him some sort of expert on Biblical doctrines and faith. Roberts concludes:

"If I believed as does Marcus Borg and others like him, that vast portions of the gospels, including the Nativity narratives, were made up, I honestly don’t know whether I’d still consider myself a Christian or not. And if I believed that the resurrection was merely a meaningful symbol and not a historical fact, as Borg believes, I expect that my faith would be insipid at best.

On Christmas Eve I will stand up before a packed sanctuary and proclaim the good news of Christmas. And what is this good news? It’s more than the virgin birth. It’s even more than the fact that Jesus is light and Lord. The core truth of Christmas is that God has entered human life in they baby Jesus. By a mysterious process that we won’t ever understand, and that Matthew and Luke don’t even try to explain, God became human in the womb of Mary.

This is the core truth of Christmas. If I didn’t think this really happened, if I thought that the early Christians invented this crazy idea, then I wouldn’t be able to preach the good news on Christmas Eve, or at any other time either. Of course I can’t prove that the Incarnation really happened, but I can show that it’s reasonable to believe it. Ultimately, however, it is a matter of faith, not faith without reason or faith opposed to reason, but faith informed by reason."

651 Tell us how you really feel, Professor

Professor David Mayer of Capital University Law School writes in his blog:

"The so-called “intelligence reform bill” that passed Congress last week is the most ridiculously stupid legislation coming out of Washington, D.C., since the USA PATRIOT Act and the legislation creating the Department of Homeland Security and the Transportation Security Administration. Like those misguided policies hastily enacted in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the bill revamping the United States’ intelligence bureaucracy is a classic example of the great fallacy of the regulatory/welfare state: the assumption that social problems can be solved by creating a government agency to deal with them, as if bureaucrats can just wave their wands and do magic."

650 Sleep consultants for babies' parents

More outsourcing. Now there are social workers, PhDs and counselors who hire out as "sleep consultants" for parents of babies who have erratic sleep patterns (saw the story in the Wall Street Journal). Anything from $100-$300 an hour. Probably a lot has to do with the personality and energy level of the baby, but could any two children be more different in temperment and personality than our two babies were (12 months difference in age)? And they always slept through the night with no problem. One bounded, marched, ran and screamed throughout toddlerhood and the other sat and watched, or browsed books and didn't give up naps until kindergarten.

For this you don't need to pay me. Norma's sleep advice for parents of babies and toddlers.

#1. Keep the activity level very low and quiet after supper. If bath time is a battle, do it earlier. Warn babysitters not to play chasing, hiding games with them (the only time we ever had a problem was with sitters who had learned the "wear them out" method).
#2. Make bedtime routines brief and boring. A back pat or two, a short story and a prayer. No rocking. No back rubs. No explanations of how the world came into being or what is under the bed or in the closet. You're not raising a dummy. The more you succumb to their tricks, the trickier they'll become in ways to keep you in their room.
#3. Don't run in to check at every whimper or snuffle.
#4. Don't sleep with your child--her bed or yours. I know it's done in some cultures, but those mommies probably don't have to do a 45 minute commute.
#5. Early to bed. Sure it's difficult if you are working all day--you want that time with them. Ours didn't know life went on after 7 p.m. until they were about 8 years old. Keeps them away from playing outdoors (stimulating) and watching inappropriate TV.

The tough part is that when they are bathed, smell really good, are wearing those cute jammies gramma sent, and are sweet talking you, it is tempting to sit on or near the bed and chat. Keep your goal in mind. Seven or eight hours of sleep (ours usually slept 10, but mileage will vary).

Here's a parent who read all the experts and incorporated the best of all of the advice into one big sleep package. But keep reading, they do continue to struggle--but by December little Ben seems to be managing to sleep in his own room. Also, the blog owner/writer focuses on interesting technology stuff and tries to make it comprehensible for people like me, so also click to Main page.

649 George Lopez represents all the Hispanics?

We watched "Naughty or Nice," a new Christmas movie the other night with George Lopez. The main characters didn't need to be Hispanic, but the husband, wife and daughter in this movie are. George's character, Henry Ramiro, was a "mean" sports talk show host in Chicago. A young man (not Hispanic) was a fan and called in and asked him to be "nice." The kid was sick (CHF), and died, but Henry, the Shock Jock, didn't know that and strikes up a friendship with him (he's now an angel). Henry ruins his career by being "nice" for this kid. I think I dozed off, because I don't remember how it ended. I did recognize a few Chicago landmarks in the movie.



I read in one of the papers today that according to a recent study Latinos are 13% of the population, and Lopez's Friday night comedy show has 14% of the Latino characters on eight of the 2004 primetime series set in LA. His show corners the market on Latinos. It probably also corners the market on loud-mouth, incompetent, rude fathers, and nasty adult sons (his Friday night ABC character). Is he the only working Latino comic?

648 Ophelia, please darken my door

Ophelia, please darken my door.

Was it somethin' that somebody said?
Mama, you know we broke the rules
Was somebody up against the law?
Honey, you know I'd die for you
They got your number Scared and runnin'
But I'm still waitin' for the second comin'
Of Ophelia
Come back home

Last night we watched The Last Waltz, the final concert of The Band in 1976. The film by Martin Scorsese was released in 1979, and re-released in 2002 on DVD, probably to a whole new audience, like me (the Band is our contemporary, but we weren't paying much attention to popular music in 1970s, or today for that matter). Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed it. Robbie Robertson who says in the filmed interview, "The road--it's an impossible way of life," is still in the business as an arranger and song writer, and at some point the others regrouped and continued to play. Two of the original members have died.

647 Why I became a librarian

A very frustrated librarian is asking his fellow workers at LISNews.com why they became (and remain) librarians. The pay is poor; the institutional budgets are usually strained; and sometimes the people you work with are, well, difficult. There wasn't room to answer him on that discussion board, so I thought I'd post my presentation for "Take a Daughter to Work Day" in 1997. I was extremely surprised when about 25 young people showed up for this discussion--I had no idea young people even picked up on library science as a career choice. When reading this, keep in mind that I'm speaking to elementary and junior high age people.

Take a Daughter to Work Day
Ohio State University Libraries
9:30 Room 122 Main Library, April 24, 1997

Some times choosing a career can be happy thing. In my case, I chose Library Science back in the winter of 1965 because of a terrible tragedy in my life. Everything I thought I was going to do in life had completely changed and I needed a new direction.

I wanted a “real” career to give me a sense of purpose. I already had a teacher’s license, but we lived in a university town overrun with school teachers. What I already had was a degree in Russian, a residence in a city where a very famous library school at a large university was located, a husband who could support me while I attended school, and a history of working in libraries. I was also a reader, which at the time, didn’t seem significant.

Library Science seemed a logical choice for a fresh start. It only took one year and I was sort of impatient. There was a large Slavic department at the university library where I could learn about libraries and foreign languages. I already knew many of the people in that department.

So I had an interview with the Dean, enrolled, took the prerequisites my first semester and then began graduate school and finished in June 1966. The next year we moved to Columbus, Ohio, where I only worked a few months and then stopped for 10 years to raise my children. When I got ready to go back to work, I didn’t remember any Russian, nor was I interested, so I took a temporary job in the agriculture library working with foreign economic material. Then I worked awhile with Spanish language material, and eventually applied for an opening in the veterinary library 9 years after taking that first job in agriculture.

Looking back, everything fits together like a neat puzzle, but it certainly didn’t look that way as it was unfolding. I love the veterinary and agriculture fields. And even though I grew up in a rural area of the United States, when I was your age I certainly had no interest in the insides of animals or their diseases. What I did have, even when I was your age, was a love of reading and a strong curiosity. I was a student who really loved school--I couldn’t wait for September. I also liked art and writing when I was in junior high school. I had lots of pets--even had a horse. I probably also had, without realizing it then, a sense of how things should be ordered. By that I don’t mean I am neat or tidy, but I do see that certain things belong together or have a relationship that other people may not see, or wouldn’t find interesting. I really enjoy finding information for people.

In the 10 years I didn’t work, the library field began to change dramatically. Ohio State became a leader in using the computer for a catalog, so when I returned to work in 1977, everything was different than what I learned in school. And now, also because of the computer, everything is different almost every week, and I am constantly on a very steep learning curve. I use the Internet everyday, but it is not a library. It is a key to someone else’s garage--and much of it is a mess. Librarians are going to help bring some order to that messy storage place.

The other day a veterinarian came to me and told me 350 pigs had died from being exposed to manure gas. She wasn’t able to find any information in print even though she understood how toxic the fumes are from manure pits in large animal holding areas. We sat down together at the computer and I was able to find 4 or 5 really excellent, recent articles for her to look at. While we sat there she told me more about the situation and the seriousness of it--even for people, not just baby pigs.

I love learning, even when it is something as peculiar as this. Everyday in my job there is something new to learn. It is just fun to go to work.

There are some things about my work that I wasn’t told about in school, so I’ll tell you. First of all, some of the extracurricular things you do in school, such as the organizations and clubs, will be as important as your classes. Attending meetings, committees and conferences is part of my job. Being the president or secretary or treasurer of an organization and a willing committee member is important experience, so learn to do that. Frankly, that’s the part that I don’t particularly enjoy, and sometimes I wonder if I’d done more of it in school, would I like it better.

Volunteering in book or library activities can also be useful experience. Perhaps volunteering in your church or school library, or at Friends of the Library Book Sale, or becoming a story teller for children’s groups. Writing book reviews for your school paper would help you learn to be critical of how a book communicates.

I probably don’t have to tell you to learn all you can about computers. If you look around libraries today, you’ll notice them everywhere. You might even create a homepage featuring special book related items.

* * * *
Each participant received: sample journal, 2 library newsletters, library guide, copy of Scientific American article March 1997 “Going Digital.”