Somebody doesn't know that once you're a mother, "Normal," is history.
Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct .
Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.
Somebody said being a mother is boring ......
Somebody never rode in a car driven by a teenager with a driver's permit.
Somebody said if you're a "good" mother, your child will "turn out good."
Somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.
Somebody said "good" mother's never raise their voices .....
Somebody never came out the back door just in time to see her child hit a
golf ball through the neighbor's kitchen window.
Somebody said you can't love the fifth child as much as you love the first.
Somebody doesn't have five children.
Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery ...
Somebody never watched her "baby" get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten--or on a plane headed for boot camp.
Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married ...
Somebody doesn't know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to
a Mother's heartstrings.
Somebody said a mother's job is done when her last child leaves home ....
Somebody never had grandchildren.
Somebody said your mother knows you love her, so you don't need to tell her
Somebody isn't a mother.
hattip to Robyn L.
- Text::Science News
We moved my circulation[1] desk station. I now stand at my computer, at right angles to the previous station about four feet away, on the long, L-shaped reference/circulation desk. All day long, adults would come up with books to check out, fines to pay, questions to ask; and just stand at the old location, waiting. Fortunately, librarians, like mothers (I am both) have eyes in the back of their heads, and so I was able to turn 'round and say, "I can help you over here!" At which point half the adults continued to stand dumbly, as I crossed over, picked up their materials, carried them over to my station, checked them out, and returned them: "Would you like a bag with that?"[2]
No child (or teen), however, hesitated for more than a moment before coming over to where I stood.
Children and teenagers are just plain teachable in a way that Grown-UpsTM are not.
Or so it seems to me...
Okay. They're also cuter, funnier, more enthusiastic, and more likely to tell you how AMAZINGLY COOL a given book is (and even hug you for recommending it.) Like I said: Lotta reasons: just because it's a bias, doesn't mean it's completely unreasonable...)
[1] Circulation: (n. Library-speak.) Checking out, as of a book. At the circulation desk, the librarian checks out books to patrons.
[2] "Would you like a bag with that?" (phrase. Library-speak.) Not the equivalent of "would you like fries with that." McDonald's makes money. Librarians ask because plastic bags are expensive and we need to keep costs down. Wouldn't you rather purchase a nice cloth bag from our Friends group? All monies support library programs, usually for children!
- Text::River Current; Valley Record
( The Who-Comments Meme )
Hattip to filkferengi
- Text::Peterson's Field Guide to Western Birds
- Text::Touchstone magazine
Instant Help Online
This Place is Hot - Weigle!
Sweet!
Click on the pictures to visit the University of Pennsylvania's "educational library videos"
hattip to
![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
six_crazy_guys from the amused_library comm.- Text::Ransom by Lois Duncan (re-read)
As a result of my two decades in the library profession, I am more than a little familiar with that outstanding reference work, the Occupational Outlook Handbook, which the U.S. Department of Labor publishes every two years or so to outstanding reviews, except for the deconstructionist critics, who think the work smacks too much of 19th century Russian realism, you know, Tolstoy and all that sort of thing.
...cannot fail to win my heart.
It's quite possible that the bulk of the fellow's writings are equally good value: perhaps, perhaps not.
But this entry in The Passing Parade: Cheap Shots from a Drive By Mind made me smile. You too, perhaps.
Update: Link is fixed.
"Treat Breast Cancer? Not in my backyard"
In November 2007, a Canadian nuclear reactor shut down for maintenance. Unavailable parts shut down the plant for weeks. As a result the treatment of women with breast cancer from Canada throughout the U.S. was jeopardized. I have no quarrel with our neighbors to the North on this: I'm glad they're willing to share their country's resources with the medical institutions--and the women they treat--across North America.
No, it's my idiot[1] fellow-citizens in
Here's a key graph:
Building a reactor in central California has been proposed. Such a facility could generate more than simply energy and jobs; it would provide a solution for doctors and their patients whose care is at the mercy of a single building in Canada. Because existing facilities cannot be retrofitted to allow medical radioisotope production, access to these compounds is dependent on new construction.
Interesting stuff...
Hattip to Victor Davis Hanson
[1] For values of "idiot" = "self-righteous, short-sited, ignorant, neo-Luddites."
- Text::The Lighning Theif (re-read)
"...Mentally, emotionally, and intellectually strong, even if not physically ... Hardworking, honorable, honest, dutiful, protective of family and country. Brave, courageous, rational, reasonable, kindhearted, and respectful. Knowledgeable about how to survive in rough times and how to solve problems. And so on.Okay. I cheated. That's actually a list for Real Men[TM].
But like Rachel Lucas, I wondered why "all of those things were (or should be) exclusive to men. In fact, "All adults should have every one of those personality and character traits as a matter of course."
Read, "We Need a 'REAL WOMAN' Manifesto" and tell me what you think.
I think she's onto something, but... not quite.
Hattip to Doctor Helen
- Text::Touchstone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sApH8Vt
arhyalon advises having kleenex handy. I second the recommendation.Thanks arhyalon!
- Text::Grave Peril by Butcher (yes, I'm playing hooky. Bad librarian. No cookie.)
Hmm....
(*and, I mean that with love)
- Mood:
thoughtful - Text::NRODT
( books as design-elements )
- Text::Max Cleans Up by Rosemary Wells. So appropriate, today...
I'll be in So-Cal for Book Expo with my best friend this year from Thursday evening, May 29th through Sunday afternoon, June 1st.
Thursday evening or Sunday morning are probably the best times to meet up, as I'll be busy with con stuff Friday and Saturday, but if anyone is interested in meeting for coffee, dessert, etc., drop me a line.
- Text::Cooking Light
***Glee*** --and-- I've been cited!
Only in library-geek-land are those two phrases likely to sit side-by-side.
- Text::Fool Moon by Butcher
Jesus loves me this I know,
For the Bible tells me so.
Little ones to Him belong,
We are weak but He is strong.....
Yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me; yes, Jesus loves me:
The Bible tells me so.
A friend of mine sent me a story about this song. A very old pastor, long-retired, told his congregation that, "...there's just one thing that made the most difference
in my life and sustained me through all my trials. The one thing that I could always rely on when tears and heartbreak and pain and fear and sorrow paralyzed me... the only hing that would comfort was this verse
True enough, that. Supposedly another pastor commented that this is the one that the grown-ups always choose for the rug rats to sing, but they end up being the loudest voices, because they're the ones that know it best.
( Below the cut, )
- Text::Cupidity by Caroline Goode (cute)
Admittedly, my interest in these claims-of-utility has been academic: It seems to me that until the ethical question is resolved, questions of the practicalities involved are moot. And yet, all the people writing the articles who argue the position that unpleasant interrogations are necessarily torture, or that torture-like techniques are the moral equivalent of torture, and that (of course) torture is always wrong no matter what the motivation of the torturer always add the argument from non-utility.
And this is a curious thing. Because these are, to a man, the kind of people who would've been bullied in school. Don't they remember? Bullying worked. Well, for values of "worked" which equal "bully got what he wanted." They, and most of their readers, all have a gut-level memory of "how Torture worked for me!"
Again; this is all irrelevant to the morality (or legality) of hostile interrogations, torture-like treatment of unlawful combatants, etc.
It just struck me as odd...
- Text::The Lost Fleet: Courageous by Jack Campbell
In ages past (last year?) e-mail comment notification was simple stuff: I would post a comment in Someone's LJ. Said Someone would reply. I would get an e-mail with a little box at the bottom and a button beneath, labeled: "reply." I fill the box with the silver-tongued glory of my prose, click the clicky-button, the little icon whirred, the box would empty, and Hey! Presto! A reply would appear in the comment thread on Someone's LJ.
Or not, as, at some point (last year? last month?) the clicky-button would click, the icon whirr, the box empty, but lo-and-behold the reply would wing its way out into some aetheric nothingness instead. Maybe I've got a comment-eater.
Anyhoo, my apologies: now that I know what's going on, I can work around it.
- Text::ET Weekly
You might be a librarian if...
- Your spice rack is in alphabetical order--including the "ready reference section;"
- You have nightmares about losing your on-line database access log-in; (True: I woke up in a cold sweat.)
- You snap your fingers and say, "Right, that's what I forgot to check," but the next words out of your mouth are "808 point 8," as you head for a copy of Bartlett' Familiar Quotations;
- You can identify books by, "...and I read it about two years ago, and it had a green cover and was about (holds hands apart) this big;" (Also true: but she was a children's librarian)
- You think the Conan poster would be funnier if he had a giant bar-code scanner strapped to his belt
Do you have any?
- Text::Geary's Guide to the World's Great Aphorisms (skimming)
Well, that and the sensa-wunda up the wazoo, of course.
Hattip to arhyalon
- Text::Miki Falls: Summer (still charming)
Technically, this is a review of Earthblood (& Other Stories) by Keith Laumer, but only the "other stories" are worth much.
The title novel is long: 241 pages long and feels much longer. The setting is a galaxy full of mutated humans, so strongly adapted to their alien worlds that they can no longer interbreed. The Terran Empire, and the alien Niss that crushed it are both long gone: the stuff of legends. Our hero, Roan, is stolen from a mysterious gene bank, raised in alien poverty, kidnapped into a galactic circus, and then into galactic piracy: all of these mediated by his strange identity as one of the last "pure blood" Earthmen. It ought to be good fun, especially for fans of space opera-cum-bildungsroman, of which I am one. Perhaps it's the mysterious human heritage which seems to kick in whenever it's wanted by the plot, (a bit like broken twigs in The Leatherstocking series, albeit in reverse) but not otherwise; the which is never satisfactorily explained. Roan is Just! True! Human! And that makes him a very special snowflake, indeed. Ho-hum.
But if the protagonist is a bit of a cipher, that needn't be a showstopper. The alien settings: slum, circus, pirate ship, et al., ought to be some of the most entertaining parts of the book. Alas, the more intriguing the alien the more likely they are to be shuffled off-stage--and then killed; with the exception of the initial slum, the setting is given short shrift. Again, with the dullsville. Indeed, the only reason I finished re-reading the book, is because I wanted to be able to write this review.
The which review is still going to conclude that the Earthblood, et al. is probably (possibly) worth buying. Happily there are three "Niss" stories, each (as the editor notes) a working-out of a possible Terran-destroying threat, each one, however, unique. They're good solid thwarting-the-alien-invasion stories, and a pleasant way to pass an evening. By themselves, they warrant going on-line and ordering a copy from your local library.
The tome, (and it's a door-stopper) concludes with six Rosel George Brown short stories. One can only infer from the infelicitious combination of their talents in Earthblood, that Laumer and Brown were, as writers, oil and water, because they mixed so poorly. All by herself, Brown is a treat—and I have read elsewhere that these are not even among her best stories. Save Your Confederate Money Boys, features a "snake oil" salesman for the new century (and spray-on corsets); Flower Arrangement, reminded me nothing so much as one of Zenna Henderson's or Connie Willis's charming slice-of-life stories about children and their space-time-continuum-warping games (sometimes it just seems that way to their harried parents); while Fruiting Body, is a wonderfully nasty story about the "perfect murder" gone awry. "Visiting Professor," "Car Pool," and "And a Tooth" all share one or more of these characteristics. They read a bit like what you might get if you crossed Suzette Haden Elgin with Robert Heinlein—and the progeny was viable.
So there you have it: If you can't get the Rosel George Brown Stories anywhere else (Powell's, Amazon, your local used book dealer, etc.) the 75 pages of short stories are well-worth the $14 price tag; and you get three decent Keith Laumer stories as lagniappe!
- Mood:
tired - Text::Earthblood & Other Stories by Laumer & Brown
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