Friday, June 24, 2005
1177 Real Estate Bargains
Yes, there still are a few. I scan the pages for you each week for opportunities. I noticed that home prices in the 19106 zip code (Philadelphia) went up 44% in one year and in 85044 (Phoenix) 30%. So, I'd stay away from those areas!But elsewhere, "close to Lake Superior" (could be 10 miles I suppose) you can buy an adorable 2 room log cabin on 20 acres with a 2 car garage for $125,000. That is a very long way from here, but maybe it is close to you if you are in Minnesota or Wisconsin. If you like hunting, fishing or snow mobiling, it might be just the thing, or you could share the cost with a few other families. Call Apostle Islands Realty, 715-779-5807.
But if you want to be closer to Cleveland or Buffalo (hey, some people do!) "Grandma's House is for sale" near the Allegheny National Forest, just 2 hours from Buffalo. It is being used as a B & B and has 8 bedrooms, four porches and an oil well on the property. Garden and ponds. $284,900. Call 877-723-3910 x23.
Also today in the WSJ I read that the "median price of condominiums and co-ops hit a record in May, rising about 15% to $221,000--$21,000 above the price of a single family home," according to the National Association of Realtors. I think this reflects that DINKS want to live in NORCs and have someone else mow the lawn and trim the trees. Boomers are starting to retire, and they like grass for golf, but not for maintenance.
1176 Reduce, reuse and resell
That seems to be the latest in decorating for rich people according to an article in today's WSJ. "Architectural salvage" is the fancy name of this decorating style. Big deal. I've been doing that all my life. Last night I ironed a white table cloth I got for a wedding present in 1960. It fits the glass top dining room table I bought in 1993 to go with the six chairs I bought at a yard sale. I knew when I opened the gift 45 years ago that it couldn't match the quality of my mother's linen table cloths. Those were government issue and of exceptional quality. When my father's ship was decommissioned after WWII he noticed that things were being dumped. So he brought home a very long linen table cloth--I think if you looked closely at the woven design you could see either a Navy or Marine emblem. Anyway, my mother cut it up and hemmed it into three very nice full size linen table cloths. She also cut up my father's uniforms and made clothes for my little brother. That was in the days of "use it up" values.As I look around the house I don't see much of what the article described, except I'm using a South Hannah Avenue street sign in the guest room as a childhood memento and some children's books from the 1930s as artistic displays. My brother-in-law Bob is a dumpster diver. On trash day he rides around the neighborhood and picks up small appliances, old bicycles, lawn chairs and boom boxes, takes them home and fixes them, and usually just gives them away. I wonder if he's ever thought of selling anything?
1175 A tune up for your memory
Yesterday I watched the Jane Pauly Show. She's that cute, other perky newslady from Indianapolis who now does a talk show. Her guest was Dr. Gary Small who has written ""The Memory Prescription: Dr. Small's 14-Day Plan to Keep Your Brain and Body Young." I'd like to tell you that I remembered his name and book, but I didn't and had to Goggle it. There are just not enough memory cells unused in my brain to take in details like that and remember them for 24 hours.However, it was an interesting interview with video clips of real life situations involving women who were fearful that their memories were deteriorating. He offers a 3 week boot camp with attitude adjustments, memory tricks and menu planning. I was happy to learn that prunes are good--it's their antioxidants, which are about 16 times the amount in apples, bananas and oranges. So if you see old people ordering prunes in a restaurant, don't assume the worst. They may be enhancing their brain cells.
The program was so interesting I forgot it was my day to do the mail run for the church, and left the house 10 minutes late. Not to worry--there was only one piece of mail at each location because VBS is keeping everyone in the classrooms and halls instead of their offices. Then the gasoline light came on. It was $2.25 across the river, so I swung by a BP closer to home where it was $2.10 and bought $5.03, enough to get me to the campus and back to pick up a book I'd ordered. On the way there, I heard a strange noise. I looked in my side mirror and I'd forgotten to screw the cap back on so the flap was open and the cap was dangling by its safety net cord. I don't think I'd ever done that.
So much for memory enhancing programming.
Thursday, June 23, 2005
1173 I'll have what she's having
Over at Rebecca's blog I noticed the AFI's 100 greatest quotes from the movies. I'd been listening to snatches of this list on the radio, and knew that "Frankly, my dear. . ." from Gone with the Wind was number one. So here is the link for your memories and enjoyment. How many of these movies (fewer than 100 since some movies get counted more than once) have you seen? I think I counted 41 or 42.1172 The gap between rich and poor--the series
In yesterday's Wall Street Journal had another in its series about the growing gap between the rich and poor. It really fell flat for me. It is beyond anecdotal, moving quickly to fairy tale. Could the author (whose name I forgot to write down) not find better examples than a 58 year old man who had a GED and a single woman who has three children and had her first baby (unwed) at 18? What really frustrated me is that Ron Larson, 58, the guy with the GED, was making the same as I was in 2000 when I retired, and I had a master's degree, 24 years experience on the job, and had rank of associate professor. The solution, if I caught the drift, is more education. Why?After you read through the meaty paragraphs with filler of concern and pity, you get to the little morsels, particularly mistakes made in youth that come back to bite later--like an arrest that unhinges a security clearance years later; failure to finish high school; and an out of wedlock baby or two. I can think of no government program or change in evil corporations that will turn that around.
The examples of success included a "lucky" 20 year old, son of Puerto Rican immigrants, who really hustled, took extra training in-house and moved from the kitchen to the operating room as a surgery assistant. The other success story was a young man whose parents had worked hard and helped him with good values and financial support for his education. He was having no problem exceeding his parents' standard of living.
Go figure.
1171 Playing the race card in Columbus, Ohio
You know the lawyer's hand is really weak when he pulls out the race card when: Columbus has a black mayor; Columbus has a black female Superintendent of Schools; Columbus has a black female school board President; and Columbus has a black Chief of Police. But when Regina Crenshaw, a black female middle school principal, is fired after a black female disabled student is sexually assaulted on her watch, her lawyer says it is because she is a black female.Regina Crenshaw claims she acted appropriately and had reported problems in the past which the district had not investigated. I can go with that. Why not defend her on that evidence, if it exists? But race and sex? No, not this time, not this case.
Heard on radio 610June 15th - With her attorney, husband, and minister by her side, Regina Crenshaw entered a not guilty plea for failure to report the alleged sexual assault on March 9th. Outside the courtroom, Crenshaw said it's time for closure. The charge against Crenshaw is a misdemeanor and if convicted, she faces 30 days in jail and a $200 fine. Crenshaw also plans to proceed with a public hearing to get her job back. A date for that hearing has not been set.
June 22nd - The attorney representing the former prinicpal of Mifflin High School has filed a motion to dismiss. Toki Clark points to affadavits she says prove other teachers and administrators, faced with potential abuse situations, took the same course of action as her client. Clark says she can only conclude that Regina Crenshaw was prosecuted based on race and gender.
Update, April 28, 2006: "Regina Crenshaw was found not guilty Friday afternoon by a Franklin County Juvenile Court jury. She’d been charged with a criminal misdemeanor for not immediately calling police after the sexual assault of a 16-year-old girl at Mifflin High School, where Crenshaw was principal last year. The Columbus school board fired her because of the incident. But today’s verdict may play a factor in future litigation.
Crenshaw wept when she heard the jury’s verdict. Later she told reporters she felt justice had been served."
1169 Blogging bathrooms
What can you say about bathrooms? They occasionally come up in my stories--like the one I did about cats and the one about books. But photos--that's different--there's more than meets the eye and this photoblogger has done a series of bathroom shots that is just amazing.Wednesday, June 22, 2005
1168 When will politicians learn?
It is NOT an apology when you claim the people who heard what you said were 1) offended without cause by what you said (i.e. blame the victim), 2) misinterpreted your comments. This is what Durbin has done twice. First on Friday, and then on Tuesday.“Let me read to you what I said [on Friday]. ‘I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said causes anybody to misunderstand my true feelings. Our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration and total support.’”
“Mr. President, it is very clear that even though I thought I had said something that clarified the situation, to many people it was still unclear. I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest moral tragedy of our time. Nothing, nothing should ever be said to demean or diminish that moral tragedy.” Durbin's most recent apology
Now ladies, let's assume your husband compared you to a fat cow in front of his friends. In his sincere apology he says, "I sincerely regret if what I said about you being a fat cow causes you or my golf buddies to misunderstand my true feelings. You deserve my respect, admiration and total support."
He wouldn't be sleeping on the couch; he'd get a one way plane ticket home to mama, who'd probably make him sleep in the basement. Come on, Illinois Democrats. Someone teach this guy how to apologize! If he were a Republican, he'd be applying for unemployment, a la Trent Lott.
1167 Perpetual adolescence of the Left
Dr. Sanity does a good job of analyzing the Left, their state of denial, and their adolescent mind set.She started blogging about a year ago with an MSE on the Democratic Party. She found them to be paranoid, with flawed short term memory, with extremely poor judgement focusing on trivialities, with Major Depressive Disorder with psychotic features and Narcissistic Personality Disorder (with paranoid features). Of course, that was during the campaign, but not much seems to have changed.
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.Tuesday, June 21, 2005
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
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