1166 Statistics

About once a year for one week we'd have to track all our questions in the library. I'm not sure which black hole these are tossed into, but I think ours were repackaged and sent to ARL or maybe ACRL. They have categories like "ready reference," "directional," "telephone," "e-mail" and so forth. You'd get a huge sheet, one for each day and one for each staff person, and you'd make hash marks in the appropriate column as inquiries were made. Sometimes you'd get a trifecta or even a quadfecta with several questions chained together. "Hi, do you remember me?" (one slash mark). "Have you heard about the science fair my son wants to enter?" (two slash marks), etc. The cartoon "Overdue Media is running a series on reference stats. If you don't think it's funny, then you've probably never worked in a library.

1165 Let's send in Dick Durbin

The Illinois Democrat needs a dose of reality. Looking at the world's developing hot spots, not yet blamed on Bush, let's send him on one of those Congressional fact finding missions to Zimbabwe where the leaders are in the early stages of a Cambodian killing fields. Maybe he can talk it out of existence with exaggeration, crocodile tears and puffery. Get G. Voinovich (R-OH) to help with the tears, just to make it bi-partisan.

"The current attacks on urban centers are part of a corrective strategy to drive perhaps two million people back onto the land. Once there, they will be cut off from the rest of the country and at the mercy of government-controlled food supplies. It is more difficult to starve people in urban areas where the outside world might catch wind of what's going on. As one displaced farmer puts it: "The people don't want to go back to the rural areas because they are afraid and also they know the hardships they will face. In summer, it would be easier for people--even those who have lost the skills--to live off the land from berries and wild mushrooms--but it's the height of winter now and there is nothing."

But controlling this population becomes easier all the time, as millions have fled over the past few years, over 3,000 people die every week of AIDS, and most college graduates, many of whom are activists, leave the country. The result has been an astonishing decline in the population, which is down to around 10 million from over 13 million a few years back. Not that the government minds. In August 2002, Didymus Mutasa, today the head of the secret police, said: "We would be better off with only six million people, with our own people who support the liberation struggle." "
The killing fields of Zimbabwe

1164 Tagged by R Cubed: Books that Matter

R Cubed, who has been blogging since January has tagged me to write about books. I have no idea who she is, but she apparently found my blog and whispered sweet nothings to me so I would write this and tag five others. I think I may have done this exercise, but if so, here it is again, and probably different. What matters on Wednesday isn’t what you cared about on Sunday. It’s a myth that librarians read a lot (and if you see them doing it on the job, that is a job assignment). I don’t read nearly as much as my non-librarian friends.

What is the total number of books you have ever owned?
I have no idea, but several thousand would be a good guess. I pick up a lot of books at sales and give-aways. I’ve also inherited books from my mother, grandmother and great-grandfather. Because all our shelves are full, I try to donate to the Friends sale when I bring a batch in. Right now I have 13 books lying on their sides waiting for me to take some sort of defensive action so they can stand up.

What is the last book you have purchased?
I don’t buy many books except at sales, but I think the last new one was “In but not of” by Hugh Hewitt in May which was on our book club list and not available at any of the libraries I checked. It’s an advice book, really more suitable for new graduates, but interesting. Of course, I did everything wrong, and that’s why I’m not rich and famous or powerful.

What is the last book you have read?
I haven’t finished it yet I’m on p. 167 (I’m a very slow reader), but it is The Devil in the White City (2003, Crown) by Erik Larson. I just blogged about it a day or two ago.

What are 5 books that mean a lot to you?
I have a miserable background in literature, so I can only cite non-fiction. I don’t know when the golden age of American education was, but it certainly wasn’t during my schooling. I never had a high school or college course in American or British literature and I‘m a liberal arts graduate. Not that I couldn’t do this on my own, but life happens--kids, work, church, stuff--and the books don’t get read unless I have to for some project or group. So here’s a list.

1) I’d like to say I’m a Bible scholar, but I’m not, but that seems to be the book I open most often. Right now, the NIV is my favorite translation. I probably have 10 translations.

2) “The Story of English” by Robert McCrum et al (Viking, 1986) really expanded my horizons. It was a tie-in to a PBS show I thought was sort of dull--but I loved the book based on the show.
3) I’m very fond of Frank Luther Mott’s multi-volume work on “History of American Magazines,” and I used it when working on one of my own publications and would read it again just for fun, but of course, that will never happen.

4) How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill made me proud of my Irish roots and it‘s always fun to discover some part of history you knew nothing about.

5) “Seabiscuit; an American legend by Laura Hillenbrand was awesome on many levels--the author’s detailed research, her own illness while writing it, the wonderful story, and reading it on Amtrack while traveling across the country. And I love horses. As a kid, I only read horse and dog stories.

So, I'm tagging Family Man Librarian, Matthew, Tomeboy, Sal, and Jordan.

1163 Site meters can enslave

Some bloggers become slaves to their site meters. Not me. I only check, oh, 4 or 5 times a day. I'm too cheap to pay for one, so I have a freebie with limited features. If I don't check every 100 visits, I'd miss all the fun. I don't get the really wild questions like Vox Lauri or Paula, but I do have some persistent favorites. Three out of every 100 queries are people wanting to know how to fix a broken zipper, something I asked last October, but no one could tell me. Now my own question has corralled others, as though I am the guru or maven of broken zippers (the pants were 20 years old for goodness' sake).

About four out of every 100 are visitors who have found the photo of the kittens belonging to the Agricultural Librarian at Ohio State. I saw the photo in her office and thought they were so adorable I asked if I could scan it, and she gave me one. (I've heard that some photographers use freeze dried animals to get those cutsy poses, but these kittens were alive and well.) And as the weather has warmed, I'm getting about three clicks a day to my own painting of my children sitting in front of the Marblehead Lighthouse.

The other day someone read 45 of my entries spending an hour and a half, and I hope she comes back and helps the stats again. Many readers seem to start at Shush's or Conservator's blogs, can't leave a comment there, so I think they come on over here. The best way to get visitors is to leave comments at someone else's blog, but most of the time I can't think of anything to say. Especially if I think it is really awful.

And I have many ethical people visit here. My stats are highest over the lunch hour, so they aren't reading during work time. Peak days seem to be Wednesday and Thursday. By Friday my readers are in TGIF mode and who wants to read a retired librarian when leaving work early for the bar?

So here's the formula for breaking 90 visits a day: zippers, kittens, lighthouses and comments. I've looked at some of the blogs drawing 1,000 or more visitors a day, and I'd need to be much saucier, sassier and younger than I am. I give up a lot for my craft, but I won't be anyone but me.

1162 Teaching English ain't easy

Nathan Bierma loves the English language, but he has discovered that teaching grammar is different than using it professionally. Here's his English 101 story from the Chicago Trib. I occasionally try reading the blogs of college young people and have definitely experienced his #1, #2, and #4.

1161 What children ask for

Yesterday's question in VBS was something along the lines of "If you could have anything you asked for, what would it be." Apparently, only one little girl (probably watches beauty pageants on TV) thought beyond material needs and did indeed ask for world peace, according to my husband who teaches the class. Most asked for material things, but not a bike or a pony like my generation would have done (we were self-centered too), but a house! One little girl asked for a shopping mall! Now THAT is materialistic. "What do you suppose children in Third World countries ask for," my husband mused.

1160 Give them the gate before 2008

"Opinion polls suggest that John McCain and Rudy Guiliani are the two favorites for the Republican nomination in 2008." WSJ 6-21-05. Why not just hand the presidency to Mrs. Clinton and save all the expense and rancor of an election?

Stories from Lakeside

At the end of the week we’ll be heading for our summer home at Lakeside on Lake Erie, a Chautauqua community. We’ll be reversing the days of summer that we had all those years when we were both employed, which was work four days, take a day of vacation and spend three at the Lake. Now we’ll play three weeks, come home to attend to details for a few days, and go back to more play. It's a tough life being a DINK living in a NORC.

Lakeside Summer 2004

Memorial Day Week-end, 2004
All about Mayflies
Thoughts on July 4
Week-end entertainment
Friends of the Hotel Sale
The week’s entertainment, mid-July
Art Show Opening
Pleasant surprises
First Donut of the season
Complementary colors
Entertainment just steps away
The Last Day of July
Client Appreciation Party
Week Eight at Lakeside, 2004
Colors of SummerCottage Decor
Week Nine at Lakeside, 2004
Packing to go home

And for 2005

Week One, 2005
A Lakeside Wedding
Mind and Memory class
Blueberries are brain food
Perfect Day at Lakeside
Lutheran Chautauqua
The Secret is Out
Another perfect summer day
Lake Erie Cruise
Thirty years ago at Lakeside
First time visitors
Our Town
Apple Pie Sailing Weather
Peace Week
The Big E
Sailing the Front Porch
Resurrection Lilies
Baby in the hotel dining room
Lakeside art class
Kelley's Island
What I haven't seen this summer
Photo Album at the Antique Sale

Summer 2006
Suspenders
Yard Saling
Lighthouse-opoly
Walk along Lake Erie
Remodeling at Lakeside
Our Lakeside cottages over the years
My office nook at Lakeside
Wooden Boat Show
First week's programming
Chinese Acrobats
July 4, 2006 at Lakeside
Lakeside archives
Tram Tour
Kids' Sail
Week 8 at Lakeside
Lakeside dock scenes
Purple Martins at Lakeside
Antique Show, pt. 2

Summer 2007
Tony Campolo preaches at Lakeside
First time visitors
Lakeside is open
Fourth week visitors
Third week programs and activities and
class on geology of the Great Lakes and
art show opening
Flowers of Lakeside

1158 I love my mom, but. . .

My husband is teaching Vacation Bible School this week. This is an enormous undertaking for our church--I think about 3,000 kids are enrolled for one week sessions over a two week period. There is even a special VBS class for developmentally disabled children. Anyway, yesterday at lunch he told me that in his fourth grade class he has 17 children from 15 schools, and one of those schools is about 70 miles away. I think that is amazing. When I went to VBS back in Forreston, IL, we had town kids and country kids--two, possibly three schools and probably 4 or 5 churches.

The theme is something about Africa, and one of the questions was "if you were lost in the jungle on safari, what one person would you want to have with you?" Most of the kids said their dad, a few said their mother, but one little girl said, "Well, I really love my mom, but she's always getting lost, so I'll say my dad."

Of course, I would have asked why we were lost if the dads were so great at asking directions.

1157 Words and phrases for pundits

Words mean something, unless they are overused. Then they become posters, or occasionally poetry. I'm working on a list of the typical words and phrases used by the left or right about the right or left. On this first day of Spring I'm just taking them out of my word safe, holding them up to the light and deciding if they can be strung together as an essay, a poem, a joke or an obituary for discourse. Here are some of my jewels found along the way. Step lightly.

Democrats' favorites include:
outraged
shocked
horrified
politicize
crony
rich buddies
anti-choice
anti-science
hypocrites
idiots
morons
backwater
Haliburton
coalition of the rich and religious
dismantle
high-profile fundraiser
stolen elections
red-meat-but-no-brain
Bush lied
Nazis, Hitler
Gulag, Stalin
polls show
talk-radio
right wing spin
wingnuts
fake but accurate!
Rovian
WTF?

Republicans are currently using these treasures:
MSM
pro-abortion
anti-gun ownership
freaks
baby killers
tired
socialists
communists
disinformation
anti-American
snobs
left-coast
wackos
Deaniacs
kooks
unhinged
Moore lies
snookered
spittle-flecked
high-profile fundraiser
tax and spend
radicals
Clintonesque
SF-180
Bush-wackers
tin-foil headgear
moonbats
fake but accurate?
whiners
wusses
WTF?

1156 Noonan's plan to save PBS

Peggy Noonan has a plan to save PBS that is so sensible and so good, that I just know no one will take her suggestion. Congress seems incapable of coming up with these ideas.

"Why, then, doesn't Congress continue to fund PBS at current levels but tell them they must stick to what they are good at, and stop being the TV funhouse of the Democratic Party? Nobody needs their investigative unit pieces on how Iran-contra was very, very wicked; nobody needs another Bill Moyers show; nobody needs a conservative counter to Bill Moyers's show. Our children are being raised in a culture of argument. They can get left-right-pop-pop-bang anywhere, everywhere.
PBS exists to do what the commercial networks should and won't. And just one of those things is bringing to Americans who have not and probably will not be exposed to it the great treasury of American art, from the work of Eugene O'Neill (again, ABC won't be producing "Long Day's Journey" anytime soon), outward to Western art (Shakespeare) and outward to world art.

And science. And history. But real history, meaning something that happened in the past as opposed to the recent present, with which PBS, alas, cannot be trusted.

Art and science and history. That's where PBS's programming should be. And Americans would not resent funding it."

Complete essay here.

1155 Letters from Gitmo Dick

Iowahawk has uncovered some of Dick Durbin's personal letters (D-IL).

1154 More exceptions for faculty women . . . and a few guys

OnCampus, the Ohio State Newspaper for faculty and staff, had this interesting item about the need for even more exceptions for part time female faculty, who can’t meet the expectations that promotion and tenure might involve 60 hour work weeks.

"In Ohio State’s 2003 faculty work/life survey, one-third of female assistant professors and 20 percent of male assistant professors expressed interest in reducing their work hours to have more time for family and personal needs. While the university has a provision in its faculty rules for part-time tenured and tenure-track appointments, fewer than two dozen of the nearly 3,000 regular, non-clinical faculty currently take advantage of this option and this mismatch between policy and behavior may be hampering not only retention but the recruitment of talented faculty."

"Institutional culture plays a key role in fostering acceptance of those who wish to take advantage of a part-time appointment. The work group found that most chairs, many deans and faculty governance leaders weren’t aware of the provision in Ohio State’s policies. “But the biggest issue is the cultural norm — the expectation that people must work 60-plus hours a week or they don’t get anywhere, and that unit excellence depends on 150 percent effort by each faculty. That is the cultural norm in academia, and that is the norm we have to break if we are going to embrace part-time tenured or tenure-track faculty,” Herbers said." OnCampus June 8, 2005

Call me crazy, but it would seem to me that if you are working part-time AND given more time to complete your research, you have waaaay more time at the library, lab or computer than the woman who shows up at work every day on the usual tenure clock. What am I missing here? Women who work full time and who have teen-agers in the home could teach these new mommies something about time management. I recall interviewing a faculty woman applying for research funds who had eleven children and was home schooling!

One of the ideas is to grant automatic extensions to the tenure clock for each baby (by birth or adoption) instead of making people request it. Come on. These are grown-ups! They need to read the rules and see what applies to their case. The baby rules are nothing compared to facing a panel of peer reviewers to get published. Women already get opportunity to purchase retirement credit for time off work when having or adopting a baby, although my case was a loophole because my tenuring unit (Libraries) changed retirement systems (from PERS to STRS) while I was off work in the 1960s raising my babies, and neither system would let me claim the time their own silly laws said I had coming to me.

Having been there, I have some advice for 18-19 year old women who are thinking of an academic career. Complete your education in a reasonable 6 year time table. Don’t live with your boyfriend before marriage or try to live in Europe or Asia just having fun--it really messes up the time schedule. Marry and have your babies (reversing that REALLY messes it up). Stay home, enjoy them and raise them to school age. Go back to work part-time. Ease into full time. You really do have enough time to do it all as long as you don’t extend your adolescence by 15-20 years with loans from daddy and Uncle Sam, messy relationships and out of wedlock babies. Also, without social security reform, you’ll be working until 75 anyway, so there’s plenty of time.

1153 Durbin needs to talk to this Illinois Chaplain

Kent Svendsen is a military chaplain and a pastor of a United Methodist Church in rural Illinois. This is his bio, and you’ll see he hasn’t come to his faith position lightly. According to a Google search on his name, his church is near Forreston, IL where I used to live.

Here is his advice to anyone investigating (or protesting ) the Gitmo “torture” stories, as a chaplain who has been there.

1152 The Fair that changed America

Columbian Exposition 1893
In 1992 I attended a library conference in Chicago and had the opportunity to visit a display of the photos of the Columbian Exposition held there in 1893. My grandmother was a young teen-ager and attended with her parents, probably getting on the passenger train that passed through their farm near Ashton, IL. Later they would probably follow the trial of the serial murderer who had stalked his innocent victims in the White City. I'm reading a fascinating book about it and mention it at Coffee Spills.

1151 The Dean or the Dick?

Which Democrat will drive more people way from the party? Diarrhea-of-the-mouth Dean or Tokyo-Rose-in-Drag Dick? It's been many a year since I lived in Illinois, but my recollection of those days is that about a third of Chicago was Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Polish, Ukrainian, Belorus, Slovak, Czech, Hungarian or European Jew. About half my classmates at the U. of I. were children of the escapees from Hitler or Stalin. Some had lost their accents, but they never lost their memories of starvation, forced marches, refugee camps, and grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins they'd never see again. And if their memories ever did dim in the usual frivolity of the teen years of dating, music and partying, you can bet your ass mascot their parents would remind them.

Mark Steyn says he doesn't question Durbin's patriotism. Well, why not? He's insulting the children and grandchildren of first generation Illinoians, many of whom are probably in the military being demoralized and humiliated as he spews his ridiculous insults.

"Just for the record, some 15 million to 30 million Soviets died in the gulag; some 6 million Jews died in the Nazi camps; some 2 million Cambodians -- one third of the population -- died in the killing fields. Nobody's died in Gitmo, not even from having Christina Aguilera played to them excessively loudly. The comparison is deranged, and deeply insulting not just to the U.S. military but to the millions of relatives of those dead Russians, Jews and Cambodians, who, unlike Durbin, know what real atrocities are. Had Durbin said, "Why, these atrocities are so terrible you would almost believe it was an account of the activities of my distinguished colleague Robert C. Byrd's fellow Klansmen," that would have been a little closer to the ballpark but still way out." Durbin slanders his own country

The name "Durbin" doesn't have a Slavic or East European ring to it. Sounds sort of Irish. Maybe next time in the voting booth it should be NINA Dick.

1150 A brief history of UnAmerica

Eamonn Fitzgerald tells the story of the short lived nation known as UnAmerica.

"Future historians poring over the records will note that as far as longevity goes, the nation known as unAmerica was remarkably short lived. After all, it lasted a mere two years, which is all the more noteworthy given the popular support it once enjoyed and the resources available to it. But just as the great Aztec and Incan civilizations crumbled in the face of change and left puzzling ruins for coming generations to wonder at, unAmerica fell as dramatically as it had risen."

Essay here.

1149 The Father's Day Card

On May 18, 2002 I was at the Columbus Museum of Art waiting for an exhibit guide, and selected a Father's Day card for my Dad at the gift shop. When I got home that afternoon, I learned he'd died about the time I was selecting it. Here's part of the essay I wrote about that, and the pastor included it in his memorial service.

"Picking out appropriate cards for a no nonsense, tough old bird like my Dad was never easy--he didn't golf, or fish, was never gushy or lovey dovey, didn't do any of the stuff that Hallmark Dads did year after year in muted masculine colors. But this card, without giving credit, superimposed a Bible passage over a newspaper stock report, "spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge." I recognize that this passage refers to the Spirit of the Lord resting on the shoot from the stem of Jesse in Isaiah 11 because it is repeated in baptism in the Lutheran service. Still, it seemed to fit--particularly since I saw him many times pouring over the newspaper business section or working cross word puzzles. The words and art. I thought, I'll take it along to Illinois and slip it into the casket.

Most of us are "adult children" of our parents for many more years than we are "minor children," therefore it is never too late to be a good parent, or a grateful child. As a child I yearned for a dad that would give me a hug or attend my school functions or praise me for good grades (although I don't think I knew any fathers like that). Although I noticed he worked 12 hour days, visited his parents every Sunday, never missed church, and treated my mother with respect and love, it doesn't mean a whole lot when you are a typical, self-centered, moody adolescent. As an adult, it gives you strength and comfort.

It never occurred to me in the 1950s that he probably didn't enjoy driving a car-load of screaming teen-age girls to the White Pines roller rink on his only day off, or that he didn't have to let me pasture a horse in our back yard (which he personally road home from the farm where I purchased him to be sure he was safe). And having my mother be the primary parent means I still remember the occasional ice cream treats he'd bring home, or that he would drive us 40 miles to see a movie in Rockford once in awhile.

But the memory that brings the tears is Dad with my sister Carol: first, carrying her out of our quarantined house to be admitted to the hospital for polio 53 years ago, and then standing beside her hospital bed to support her own children as the life support was removed after a stroke many years later.

No, it is never too late to be a good parent or a grateful child.

1148 Funniest interview of a Christian I've ever read

Tears rolled. I choked on my coffee. Barb Nicolosi is a writer for various organizations and writes the blog, Church of the Masses. She has a paraphrase of an interview she did with a NYT reporter who was trying to sniff out links between the vast right wing conspiracy, the Christians, and Hollywood and wouldn't take "Ain't one" for an answer. It is an absolute hoot--and unfortunately, it really did happen.

Thanks to Fr. Japes.

1147 This is your brain on a political hot button

The May issue of Scientific American has an article on the brain differences between men and women, “His Brain, Her Brain.”

Before getting into differences, the male author makes the obligatory, law-suit protecting statement that . . . “no one has uncovered any evidence that anatomical disparities might render women incapable of achieving academic distinction in math, physics or engineering.” (That’s sort of a straw woman, because I don’t remember Summers saying women were incapable of achieving academic distinction, only that they were different in achievement, and it’s the Summers flap the author probably is referring to.)

Then he goes on to list all the research on brain differences, the hypothalamus, cognition and behavior, including memory, emotion, vision, hearing, the processing of faces and the brain's response to stress hormones, the size of cortex and amygdala, the orbitofrontal-to-amygdala ratio, differences in utero, and differences in behavior in the nursery on day one. And he also provides a lot of animal studies of differences in male and female brains.

I’m a little surprised people are allowed grants to study the differences in men and women’s brains. I hope he hasn’t ruined his career. This puts feminist hard-liners in a tough spot. If they continue to insist there is no difference, they deprive women of important research on how medications affect the brains of men and women differently and thus condemn women to treatments that work for men but not for women and vice versa.