Deep Thinking

After reading Eisha’s post about her recent move, I am even more determined not to move out of this house during my current upheavals. Let me share the story of my nightmare move in 1989.

First, I was still pregnant the week before the move. That isn’t really the beginning of the story, but it makes it more quizzical. I was due July 15th. July 1st they were sure I’d deliver #1 son. Nope. August 1st still no son. So, I finish my comps, I waddle through graduation gaining a pound of water a day and wearing flipflops on my feet on Friday. Wed. we induce because I announce to the doctor I’m moving come hell or high water so they’d better deliver that baby. Friday AUGUST 11th the baby is born. Sat. we leave the hospital. Sunday we go back to the hospital with me reacting to measles vaccine and bloodloss and baby in distress. Monday we leave the hospital. Tuesday we pack the moving truck with friends of ours driving the truck while hubby, baby, dog, and I drive from Iowa City to Chicago. Hubby gets ill on trip so I have to drive (yes, that is a no-no). We get separated from friends when Uhaul truck breaks down. We show up at apartment house to move into ground floor apartment, but there had been an electrical fire so no apt. ready. They decide to give us third floor apt. but that roof had fallen in and they weren’t done repairing it. No friends. No furniture. No funds. Apt. house sends us to a hotel for the night. Next day friends and truck show up, but they can’t help us carry stuff upstairs because they are late so they dump it all on the yard. I sit on mattress and cry because I can’t help carry anything from the severe hemoraging and blood loss I’d undergone. Thursday get into apt. and gradually carry everything upstairs. Friday begin work by going in to first teaching position as a librarian in Chicago. Have to carry ring filled with ice to sit on because not medically cleared for work, but no funds if not working. Hubby stays home and takes care of #1 son for two months.

HOW do we do this stuff? I kept telling myself about those women who delivered babies in the fields/forest/wars and then got up and carried them to safety.

As I look around the house, I cannot bear to move again. I have now spent ten years in one location after moving constantly for first marriage and second marriage to military man. I pity everyone who is moving this summer. I think I’ll just sit here and remember how terrible it can be.

Ignore the doom & gloomers. Reading is alive everywhere. I hope you can tell me where you were at 12:01 July 21st when Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows was released. I wasn’t going to join the hoopla starting at 9 p.m. at my local Books A Million. Honestly, all I wanted was to get the book in my hands and start reading. I didn’t need to dress up and party - I just needed the book. Still when I popped in to get my voucher that day, the sales clerk said to me, “You look just like Lily Potter.” Oops, I was hooked. So I went. Restoring, refreshing, and invigorating. That’s what the experience was to me.

Every aisle was filled with people when I arrived at 11 p.m. As I wandered every child had 2 or 3 other books in their hands and were explaining to their parents why they needed them. Teenagers were chatting about different series and disdaining their parents who weren’t up on the newest titles. Families were grouped on the floors looking at books. Yes, there were lots of people in costume, but there were many quietly determined people like me just dying to get their hands on the book. The intercom announced we could begin lining up at 11:15 and everyone was very good-natured about it. They sorted the youngest crowd of less than 16 year olds to one side of the store and the more mature group to the other. Every aisle became part of the line which then snaked out of the store, through two more parking lots. They announced watch synchronization at 11:30, 11:45, 11:50, 12:00 and then the big ten second countdown.

The screaming and cheering outdid Times Square on New Year’s Eve. These were people screaming with excitement for — a book! The experience of connecting to a character that has become part of our consciousness, our culture, and our creative lives.

I was there to experience the thrill of the release. Will I ever have the opportunity to see so many people from all walks of life (my plumber, my mechanic, teachers, bankers, teens, children, grandparents) excited about reading again? I hope so. In the meantime I will store this experience in my treasure vault of memories as to why I love being a librarian.

Summer time confessions coming. I have not been posting regularly here because I have been reading! Yes, I have finished my Harry Potter and decided to read it again tomorrow. Just to be sure I have sunk every detail into my brain. But I have also been reading tons of other books - advanced reading copies, classics, old favorite series, favorite authors like Donald Harstad, Anne Perry’s WW1 series, Clive Cussler, and Grace Livingston Hill (sh!). I have spent time watching people this summer. Watching at the local bookstores and the chains, watching people reading in airports, watching people reading & working on their computers in coffee shops. And I have not been feeling too guilty.

But I have also been wrapped up in learning how to cope when two sons leave home for army basic training. I’m averaging writing them three letters each a week. I’m happy to receive at least one, usually two back from both of them. One son has been calling every week. The other one laughs in his letters “Phone calls? What’s a phone?” Maybe he’ll get to call Sunday. (Eternal optimist)

DId you know just how “with-it” the army is? They have photographers and chaplains that take photos of our soldiers at basic and post them on their web sites so parents can catch a glimpse of their child. Fort Benning has a forum for parents to post to each other so we can form electronic support groups. When I’m having a bad, sad day and missing the son who clipped the dog’s toenails, I can log on and find someone else who understands what this is like. When I see another parent write about their son’s deployment and their fears, I can empathize and be there for them electronically. When a parent writes and says they suddenly can’t be there for the 36 hour pass midway through the 14 week program, one of us can volunteer to adopt their child with our own. Support. Emotionally. 24/7 That’s what I love about the internet.

Chris Harris posted on SLJ’s Digital Reshift this week a new tool called WeFi - “A new social site is developing with the objective of mapping free wi-fi access points. WeFi uses an overlay on Google Maps to display recorded hot spots.?”

I downloaded the tool and have been trying it out. So far I have contributed more sites than found, but I am confident that others will join with us to unmask the myriad of places where free wi-fi is available in our communities. Today I rode around in a pickup truck with the laptop open just seeing how many hotspots were available in my community. I have already learned which businesses I will frequent because they have free wi-fi available. If you’d really like me to stay awhile, have access so I can work surrounded by people and feel like I am part of society even if I am actually doing some deep thinking on a school topic.

We are in deep mourning. Suddenly the cat threw a blood clot that paralyzed his back legs and put him in terrible pain. The heart damage was too extreme to treat so we had to make the terrible choice to end the suffering for Whisper. #4 son is devastated. This was truly his cat. #3 son is angry at the world. I face having to tell #1 and #2 sons someday. They are still in basic. Would you tell them via letter, when they eventually call, or would you wait until they are finished? It’s not that they can do anything. It’s a question of when do you share the pain and would this simply distract them. We had informed both of them that if anything happened to a human family member of the household while they were in basic, we wanted them to remain there and not come home. We didn’t review the etiquette for informing of the death of a very valued feline member of the family. Grief.

Years ago in elementary school my best friend Kathleen Flewelling and I read avidly and spent recess chatting about books. I was able to go to the Washta Public Library on Wednesdays and Saturdays when it was open from 2-4 p.m. to choose books because my mom became the town librarian for several years in this town of approximately 250 people. Yes, folks, the library was open 4 hours a week. My friend Kat on the other hand lived much closer to the city of Cherokee, Iowa, (population estimated around 5,000) and was able to check out more books and more often. I wish I could go back to those days lying in the grass with both of us discovering new/old authors.

Both of us had mothers and grandmothers who loved to read and we learned early on to devour everything that came our way - including the classics that were handed down to us. Not the grownup classics, but those they considered for children: Heidi, Little Women, Little Men, Jo’s Boys, Freckles, Eight Cousins, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, Anne of Green Gables, Black Beauty, Hans Brinker and the Silver Skates, Alice in Wonderland, The Wizard of Oz, and so many more. Plus don’t forget the series like the Bobbsey Twins, Nancy Drew, the Hardy Boys, Trixie Belden, and my very first series ever - Cowboy Sam. (I’m still waiting for my own horse all these years later and, yes, my mother does have pictures of me in a red cowgirl outfit.)

I’d like to develop a list of children’s classics for a special book club this year. Actually, I’d like to develop four different classics lists - old-fashioned girlie classics, old-fashioned everybody classics, modern classics, and guy classics. Any suggestions for these categories? I won’t be limiting anyone to reading from one list or another and will probably change the names of the lists, but I’m going to experiment with encouraging students to try something older this year so we can write about them and visit some senior citizen centers to survey if any of them have read these titles. You see, I’m worried that we are losing our ability to talk to different generations about books. My parents are not so very interested in Pokemon and graphic novels (although my father does own his own copy of Where’s Waldo and A True Story of the Three Little Pigs).

If you are a guy, I’d especially like to hear your lists. What titles have you forgotten about but that we should bring back? Okay, give me some controversy and share some of the titles that we now deem not-PC. We cannot hide our history including historical prejudices by burying some classics. I believe we should read and confront the attitudes portrayed. Perhaps you disagree with me. If so, comment about it. I’m sure there are some people with distinct hostilities towards the Little House on the Prairie books, but there will probably be a large number thrilled to see the new photographic covers just released.

Come on, talk about it.

Free Range Librarian brought my attention to the blog A Wandering Eyre. Both are discussing ALA with it’s too many meetings and overbooked people double and triple booked to meet. I understand that. I have experienced that, but I disagree with their premise that people are meeting to meet. I agree that much of the content of the meetings they describe could be occurring outside the physical meeting rooms at ALA, but I see the work of the profession getting done every day via email, listserv, wiki, ning, phone calls, and much more. I see people trying out new tools to stay connected. Yes, I have even moderated an ALA Online Communities group - great concept, but I will be diplomatic and state there may be better venues.

Perhaps the difference lies in the divisions we choose. I am in the AASL division. School librarians multi-task, set goals, get things done, and collaborate via electronic tools because we are in our individual locations. The committees I were on did most work virtually and via email. The group I led met for one hour exactly during the 2 hour AASL All-Committee meeting. Perhaps every division should try this one: obtain one large room, many many tables, signs indicating which committee you are part of, and rotate as needed through your committees to get the work done. Most of this is work that needs the cooperation of the other committees in the same room. For example, I was on the legislation committee. I needed to know information from the taskforce on NCLB so sent a member to get it and report back.

The AASL Affiliate Assembly struggles each year to accomplish a great deal of things within a relatively short time to meet. Each region is encouraged to meet between midwinter and annual to develop concerns and commendations. Each year more and more of the work is being down between meetings by the directors-elect and the affiliate representatives so we can spend our meeting time caucusing and finding out what’s happening throughout the country. We value our face-to-face time and our organizations pay to send us there.

Don’t forget the joint meetings across divisions. I attended the joint youth legislative committee meeting so we could coordinate our efforts to benefit all youth. I attended the Legislative Assembly and Committee on Legislation (guest) so I could represent AASL and our needs while fact-finding the needs of all over divisions, roundtables, etc. Much of what we dealt with arose the week of conference and needed our attention, our taking information back to our divisions, and the decisions made during conference brought back to LA and COL.

On to ALA Council. I know that I am newly elected and wasn’t able to attend all the sessions as a visitor before (because of legislative responsibilities), but I was able to see hard working people attempting to get things done. Yes, I did witness some people who feel they must personally address every issue. I believe someone should keep a tally sheet of how many times certain people speak. Some of the comments might not have been necessary if they had all been reading their council emails on the listserv. I’ve been getting something daily even when there isn’t much going on.

ALA’s meetings have become monsters because they limit us as to the locations of conferences. We do have too many meetings. But we are prevented from meeting when divisions hold their national conferences. For example, when AASL meets in Reno this fall, they can have programs, but no meetings of the AASL organization. Why? It’s in the rules. Why is it in the rules? Somebody else should explain that one to me. Was there worry that we would do the work of the entire organization (ALA) at our national conference and feel that we didn’t have to attend ALA? If it weren’t for the meetings to attend, I can bet you that most school librarians wouldn’t be there. The national conferences are focused on education and programming specifically to our needs. The annual and midwinter conferences are focused on running the organization.

When it comes down to it, as much as I love the exhibits, we go to conference to further the profession and that involves some meetings.