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So much for cover design

Are library staff visually challenged? It was bad enough when they started throwing away the book jackets (which often included information not in the book), but now they are obscuring the cover too!

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This ad has bad karma!

And it should go down in the Annals of Stupid Ads. Have you heard (radio) the ad where the guy and girl are splitting up because he has grown lobster (or crab) claws. He accuses her of discriminating against him because she doesn't like his hands (claws), and she accuses him of being a non-volunteer who isn't contributing to society, so he has grown claws. Stupid, your name is the Ad Council. It gives new meaning to Dumb and Dumber.

A nationwide study among 18-24 year olds conducted by the Ad Council and Lightspeed Research in March 2007 found that 95 percent of 18-24 year olds believe “what goes around comes around” and the vast majority (69 percent) believe in “karma.” Additionally, young adults are more likely to attribute the positive experiences in their lives to their positive behaviors (75 percent) as opposed to having “good luck” (56 percent).

I'm a Christian. We don't believe we are good because of what we do, but we do believe in one who was good on our behalf. Karma is a hindu belief--you get to come back, and come back and come back until you get it right. In that faith, you get what you deserve. In Christianity, you get what you don't deserve--mercy and forgiveness and a new start. With "karma" if you're bad, or don't pay attention, well, you just might end up with claws instead of hands. It's sort of works Christianity without the cross.

God's plan made a hopeful beginning
But man spoiled his chances by sinning
We trust that the story
Will end in God's glory
But at present, the other side's winning-- Oliver Wendell Holmes

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We're losing the tall race

I'm not surprised we're not the tallest country anymore. Holland now has the record. We used to be a predominantly European nation. Have you seen the height of the 12 million illegal aliens? I'm only 5'5" and I'm way taller than most of the guys I see on the construction crews, you know, those jobs Americans don't want?

Are dads less handy these days?

There's an interesting discussion going on over at the Juggle, the Wall St. Journal work blog. Tom Weber admits he has to call in his own father when something around the house needs to be fixed. My husband is pretty handy, but we do call on our son for advice on the cars, and our son-in-law on many tasks, particularly trimming our bushes or moving furniture. I literally don't know which end of the hammer to use. I think I get that from my dad. If he owned a tool, I never saw him pick it up. My mother did everything around the house, including painting, wallpapering, wiring, plumbing and carpentry and the outside stuff too, like gardening, mowing and climbing ladders to hang storm windows and clean gutters. I really hated that, and vowed I'd never do it. That's why I say I got it from Dad.

Remembering Lady Bird

Rick Librarian has some personal memories and book ideas for remembering Lady Bird Johnson, a really classy woman. She will be missed. I heard an interview with Doris Kearns Goodwin on Saturday about Mrs. Johnson and her relationship with LBJ. She lived at the ranch while helping LBJ with his memoir. If all she is remembered for is environmentalism, it will be a pity.

Monday Memories--Visitors from California

This week we'll be hosting my husband's sister Deb and her husband John who live in California. Last summer we traveled there to be with them when they got married. We had a great time doing things together and seeing the sights. This photo is Deb and me together at their home last September.

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Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas

Millions of dollars in damage and thousands of homes and businesses have been destroyed in the recent downpours and flooding. Oil spills are preventing returns for clean-up.

We don't have cable here (Lakeside), so perhaps there's been significant Katrina-type coverage, but I've only seen a few minutes on the regular news and a couple of inches in the paper. I think they can't quite figure out how to blame George Bush or to make it about race and poverty. But stay tuned.

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Crash risk in general aviation

There was a brief article in the metro section of the Plain Dealer yesterday about a pilot killed in an ultra light. Jonathan Gamble, 65, died at the Portage County Airport just after take off. He was a very experienced pilot.

The death rate for general aviation is much higher than for commercial aviation. The April 11, 2007 issue of JAMA examines this and why with improved technology and training, not much has changed in the last 30 years. General aviation flights are 82 times riskier, and account for most of the deaths and injuries caused by flying. JAMA. 2007;297:1596-1598.

In an examination of the crash risk of private flights, researchers found that general aviation flights averaged 1,685 crashes and 583 deaths each year from 2002 to 2005, accounting for 91 percent of all aviation crashes and 94 percent of all aviation deaths. Small aircraft flying at low altitudes make general aviation flights especially vulnerable to adverse weather conditions. For general aviation pilots, flying out of “see and avoid” conditions into conditions that require them to fly using their instruments is the most perilous scenario for pilots who have not obtained an instrument rating. Additional risk factors include pilots flying while intoxicated, sudden incapacitation (heart attack or other health issue), older age, being male, having a nonconformist flying style (e.g. being a daredevil) and having a prior record of an aviation crash or violation. Physician pilots are also found to crash at a higher rate per flight hour than other pilots. From a summary in a press release

Laura Bush

Despite being dissed by some cranky members of the American Library Association who don't know a good opportunity for positive PR when they see one, Laura Bush's numbers remain high. There is a great article about her in the Wall St. Journal week-end edition.

Mrs. Bush nudges the conversation along toward a point she wants to make: Fighting disease in poor countries also pays other tangible benefits, including expanding economic growth and liberating women. Sometimes this happens with the smallest of projects -- like providing clean drinking water to a school:

"Especially the economic part of it, the girls who are kept out of school because they are the ones looking for water, or . . . have to walk however far to the water well and bring it back, and so they aren't in school. And that's one of the reasons the clean water, the PlayPumps [merry-go-round water pumps] that we inaugurated in Zambia are very important -- and they're in a schoolyard -- so that if girls don't have to search for water for their families, they're more likely to be educated."

If reporters pay close attention to what she says and follow up on it, they are likely to find that Mrs. Bush is willing to take controversial stands. On her recent flight to Africa, she told journalists traveling with her that the U.S. needs to be "efficient and effective" with foreign aid money. No one on the plane asked what she meant.

For one thing, she supports using the most effective defense ever developed against malaria -- an insecticide called DDT, which has been vilified by environmentalists even though it was essential to eradicating the disease in the U.S. decades ago."

You go girl! Article here.

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Whose line?

Hoover Auditorium (seats ca. 3,000) in Lakeside was packed last night to experience "Whose line is it anyway" with Colin Mochrie and Brad Sherwood. With help from the audience which supplies ideas, they improvise skits, and even a little opera. I was laughing so hard tears were running down my cheeks. Both performers appear on the TV show by the same title.

Earlier in the evening we met with other donors at the train station for a reception and pep talk from the chairman of the Foundation Board, Dale Knobel, and Kevin Sibbring, the President of Lakeside. We saw lots of friends, ate too many yummies, and heard some great music.

The art show opened Thursday and I think it is one of the best we've had here. My husband has sold two of his paintings, and we bought one by Robert Moyer. I think he will be teaching at the Rhein Center in a week or two. I think he is a terrific artist.

We pick up Deb and John at the airport in Columbus on Tuesday and then will return here on Thursday.

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Upkeep for the Joneses

One of the cottages I passed on my walk yesterday had the name, "Upkeep for the Joneses." Here at Lakeside, many people give their cottage a name, and it sometimes is passed along to the new owner. Ours doesn't have a name, but we tell people we live in the Thompson cottage, the previous owner's name. He died in his 80s and was born on that site in the previous house.

Robert J. Samuelson writes about the happiness scale in the Washington Post, and syndicated elsewhere (I saw it in the Cleveland Plain Dealer). Although much wealthier than they were in 1977, Americans still rate about the same on "happiness." So money doesn't buy happiness.

In 1977, 35.7 percent of Americans rated themselves "very happy," 53.2 percent "pretty happy" and 11 percent "not too happy," reports the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. In 2006, the figures are similar: 32.4 percent "very happy," 55.9 percent "pretty happy" and 11.7 percent "not too happy." Likewise, in most advanced countries, self-reported happiness has been flat for decades.

Go figure. After the basics are satisfied, we can spend a lifetime chasing something we think money will buy. My husband says the happiest people he ever met were the Haitians he got to know last February on a mission trip. By our standards, they had nothing.

One of the happiest people I've talked to recently is suffering (without complaint) from a post polio condition, and is retiring soon with a very limited income. She talks enthusiastically about selling her home and moving into a small apartment on her son's rural property. She has a very full life of service to others, some as a missionary with YWAM and is joyful and excited about life.

No social scientist can explain this. And although she is a committed Christian, even that isn't an explanation, because I know many Christians who aren't happy even if they do serve others and they aren't pleasant to be around. I suspect she was born with some "half full" genes.

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Reminders

My former daughter-in-law is a beautiful woman--but she must have thought she needed a lot of help, because I keep finding her cosmetic bottles at our summer cottage. I've benefited from her hand lotion, moisturizer (hair), nail polish remover, and shampoo. She was (is) also a great cook, and bought a lot of spices I'll probably never use, but I haven't thrown them out. After the break up, we also lost our step-grand daughter (now 16), and today I came across some of those reminders, too. I opened the sewing cabinet and found the little dollies and crayons and coloring books I bought for her when she was around 3 or 4. We'd sit on the deck and have tea parties. They looked up at me with their eyes wide open, waiting.

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I could have taken geology!

This week at Lakeside I attended an interesting series on the Great Lakes. Two were taught by Prof. Charles Herdendorf of OSU, "Geologic History of the Great Lakes," and "Shipwrecks of Lake Erie,"--fascinating stuff, both. A third one was a viewing of a new film by WGTE (Toledo) on the human experience along Lake Erie. I think that one is available from them. But it was the geology lecture that was the most interesting--probably because I never had any in college, so I was starting from zero. I enjoyed it so much, it made me wish I'd taken that instead of chemistry for my science requirement. Funny, too, because I'm a 6 day creationist, but I don't mind a bit learning about all those millions of years of erosion of rocks and seaweed becoming petroleum, or the 4 glaciers that covered Ohio, or the many changes in the size of Lake Erie, or that there used to be many more lakes in the Great Lakes area--a huge one in Canada. One recent event he mentioned did really amaze me. He said the Atlantic Ocean is getting larger and the Pacific smaller. Has nothing to do with melting glaciers, either. It is the shifting plates under the oceans. In just my life time the Atlantic has expanded 6 ft. Don't build near the shorelines, folks.

http://www.epa.gov/glnpo/atlas/images/big02.gif

If you ever have a chance to hear Prof. Herdendorf, grab it.

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Green architecture

Because my husband's newsletters come to my e-mail, and we still get 3 or 4 architecture magazines, I see a lot of articles about green architecture. I read so much green, I'm getting moldy! Now there's a watch list of endangered buildings and cultural sites, and global warming has been added to the list of problems. This year New Orleans made the list because of global warming and Iraq's cultural sites made the list because of political conflicts (nothing political about this list, right?)

New Orleans is a mess because of the political graft and corruption at the parish, local and state level. From the governor to the mayor to the levee boards. It is and was run by Democrats who managed to create a helpless, poverty mired population through a victim creating welfare state. They must like it this way or Ray Nagin wouldn't have been reelected.

The people of Iraq have been liberated from a terrible dictator, whom unfortunately we helped along the way to total power. He's gone now, and let's see what they can do. It won't be our type of democracy, and there are days when I ask who would want what goes on in our halls of Congress?

Which do architects value more? Preserved cultural sites or mass graves of religious and political conflict? Don't answer, I think I know the answer. We got out of Korea with a truce 50+ years ago, and our military are still there and the people of North Korea have been starved because of our "peacemakers." We fled Vietnam in disgrace, and millions died. Now there are Americans who want to continue this inglorious tradition. Baffles me, but I suppose there are Americans who want to be sure that no country ever asks for our help.

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Hands off the sports program, Dr. Gee

Gordon Gee, a former President of Ohio State (1990-1997), will be the new OSU President. At Vanderbilt he shaped up the sports program. I see he's not happy with the graduation rate of the OSU football players. He thinks the system is "broken." If college is supposed to prepare a young person for the real world, and some want to be professional sports players, why do we care if they graduate? Bill Gates didn't graduate, and he's done OK, and he did even play football! If the young, large necked guys don't graduate from OSU, and don't play NFL, but later decide to try a junior college or technical school because they see the light, what's so terrible. Would they have done better if they never had attended the largest university in the country? The OSU football program actually makes money, and it funds the programs like women's basketball and volleyball that run in the red. People don't fill that stadium to see scholars smash mouthing each other.

Graduation rates are way over rated, as are degrees. Librarians have degrees; lots of them. Knowledge is supposed to be power. Ha. We can't even get a librarian appointed as Librarian of Congress.

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Friday morning from the lobby

of the Fountain Inn in beautiful downtown Lakeside, I'm working away at my other, other blog. Yesterday I read an interesting article about weight, hormones, age and activity level in Real Simple, July 2007. My friend Bev had left it at the cottage. So I've written down 20 tips from that article, and invite you over there to read them.

Last night's performance was a fabulous guitar ensemble--a teacher and 3 of his students. Really blew us away. We also had a pot luck dinner with other artists from our Rhein Center which is really booming. We attended the opening of the Lakeside Art show also yesterday afternoon. Really--a knock your socks off show. We bought #307 by Robert Moyer. It's not a happy palette but fabulous composition and watercolor technique. We usually buy art either for my birthday or our anniversary, or both. Also the Amish quilt show is this week--that's always a popular feature.

Time to head for the coffee shop, and then a looooong walk along the lakefront to burn off the effects of all the good food I've been exposed to this week.

Thursday Thirteen from the hotel lobby

1)Yesterday my laptop failed, so I walked to the hotel in the dark where I'm typing at 5:15 a.m. At least no one is around.

2) The time hasn't been set to EST on this machine and it says I'm up even earlier.

3) I spent a lot of time yesterday taking photos for a photo essay, but can't download them.

4) I don't want to reload the software because I'll lose all the great photos I downloaded last summer and this summer.

5) My home computer has stopped reading CDs--it keeps telling me to "insert CD" and doesn't recognize them.

6) Sounds like it is time to call a computer whiz guy to spend some time with both of them.

7) In the meanwhile, I won't be visiting many Thursday Thirteeners today.

8) To my right is the fire extinquisher

9) next to it is the water fountain.

9) Then on my left there is a large chalk board and an artificial plant.

10) The chair is very uncomfortable.

11) The tiny table (seems to be from a kindergarten class 50 years ago) on which the computer is sitting is so low that my knees won't fit under it.

12) So I'm sitting side saddle.

13) I hope you're grateful for this Thursday's Thirteen.

Blogosphere and the Terrorists

Daniel Henninger has an article about how terrorists are using the new media in today's WSJ. Read it here.

There is no more unchallenged verity in our times than that the World Wide Web, the Internet, is a boon to mankind. But as with nuclear or biological warfare, the Web is a dual-use technology. Technically adept Muslims, using out-of-the-box PC software and hardware, are outputting an electronic torrent of slick Web sites, discussion forums, videos, e-magazines and long-form movies, all with one purpose--to incite Muslims to join the jihad against the enemies of Islam in Baghdad, London, Glasgow or New York. Forget those Iraqi attack videos on YouTube; this is a sophisticated, globally distributed propaganda operation.

They need to be careful--once their ladies find out about shopping on the internet, they might have another revolution on their hands! They can't keep them buried in the 7th century forever.

Breakdown!

My laptop has failed, so unless I want to run down to the hotel each time, I won't be blogging much.

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Praised for his bravery

After the Koran toting Muslim men had been led away, the British judge praised the bravery of civilians who were sitting in court, Angus Campbell, 43, and Arthur Burton-Garbett, 72, who tried to stop Razmi Mohammed as he fled the scene of the bomb attacks in London. Campbell is a fireman, and Burton-Garbett a former soldier. Seems the terrorists defense was that a car bomb loaded with nails and metal wasn't intended to maim or kill.Story at BBC News