Inventory Time

It is summer at the Ed library and we are spending our summer counting, assessing, and exploring every book.  Did you know Old Yeller had a son?!  That snow dinosaurs might eat your dad? Someone annotated the Wizard of Oz. Take that Shakespeare. And, of course Olivia and Stella!

And we are only in the Gs in the Curriculum Collection!  What joys await in Z, what joys in the Indigenous Collection and the Canadian Collection?

Savage Sam/ Fred Gipson

Making Grizzle Grow/ Rachna Gilmore

The Annotated Wizard of OZ/ed. Michael Patrick Hearn

Olivia/Ian Falconer (see Olivia over there? Ian drew that.)

Stella princess of the sky/Marie Louise Gay

Gophers and a Frisbee

It is spring.  Can you doubt it?  We have seen a gopher and the boys are playing Frisbee in the Bowl.  Need there be more?  At +14C  I saw a tree trying to bud out.  "Not yet, not yet."  I warned it.  This is Saskatchewan.

Now we just wait for the babies.  No Frisbees needed for this.

The Little Colourful People

We have them off an on where I work.  Mostly the ones from the daycare in their glorious colours of pink and purple and green and yellow and blue and polka dots.  Today I arrived at work to find them on mass in the Natural Sciences Museum.  The museum is two stories of open spaces which houses a T-Rex and triceratops skeletons, among others. There are small mammals and fish to be seen as well.  And today I came in and above me, noses pressed tot he plexiglas barrier of the second level, a wall of little colourful people as noisy and happy as you please.

I'd present a photo, but one can not photograph children these days without paperwork in triplicate. But this is what they were looking at.  You can see the barrier too.  It was side to side and three deep top to bottom with faces.

Book Knife and Book Repair - the modern world

I am a Jane Austen fan, and a Greer Garson fan.  There is a wonderful scene in the 1940 version of Pride and Prejudice - the one where Elizabeth and Darcy are sparring for the first time in the drawing room at Netherfield - where Garson uses a book knife to open the pages.  It was a common practice.  Book pages are printed on a large sheet, folded and bound into the book.  When a reader sets out to read, they do so with a book knife in hand, to slit the pages.

Today, handed in to me for repair, a book without the pages slit.  The reader, and my coworkers confounded by the pages awaiting a book knife so the information could be opened to the world.  And the book that has confounded them with this small mechanical solution?  Big Data: A Very Short Introduction. (QA76.9.B45H66 2017).

I recommend the Very Short Introduction series.  Even it you need to open the pages with a knife now and then.



           

Today's count.

Mom with twins under 2' in the Bowl.  Twin stroller, and twin with stroller - pink.  Little grey floppy sunhats.  No sun.  Grey shirts, green shorts, blue shorts.  Flowers blooming.  Others on the lawn and walking the circuit fill out the scene.

Oh... there goes the blanket folding.  Lunch break is over.

Inclusivity

I am now responsible, among other things, for making sure the jumbo tron of the modern poster world in our library is up to date with its digital posters.  One of the new ones today caught my attention with its wording.  It reminded me of a newsletter I received when I worked at the campus Women's Centre in the mid ‘90s.  McGill’s Women Centre declared they welcomed ‘women and lesbians’.  This poster declares its event is ‘gender inclusive’ and ‘all are welcome’. 

I was surprised in the ‘90s to discover that lesbians were not women.  I am surprised now to find that all means everyone except those of specific, if unspecified, gender.  

The delicacies of a January Thaw

Admittedly we have not had much winter in recent years.  But this year we have seen the high end of the -30s.  Of course that's cold end of the thermometer, so that's the low 30s?  It confuses the brain at times.  But we all agree it's cold.  But today, it is not cold.  And with little snow to show for our season, now running into its third month, we have earth showing, and bits of grass.  I reached out to touch the delicate yellow green needles of a tamarack and found them as soft now as they are in the spring.  They peeled off into my palm and I raised them to my nose to inhale.  Sweet: earth and spring and warmth and peaceful afternoons.

What's not to love about unions

I am in a union.  I am glad I am.  There is much to be said for banding together to get a fair deal.  But then there is the outer reaches, like arguing over how many angels dance on the head of a pin.  A coffee was spilled in the public area.  Protocol requires me to call the main office - in another building- so someone else can fill out a form and send it to the correct department so they can send a message to the correct clean up person who can then come in and clean up the mess....What's not to love.

Connections

So, last week I read a mystery from one of my favourite authors, Carola Dunn.  I have read almost all of the Daisy Dalrymple series and so I was pleased to read one (or listen as is my wont) to an earlier one that I hadn't read before: The Case of the Murdered Muckraker.  In it I was introduced to a person I had never heard of: Bessie Colman.  And now today Google informs me it is the anniversary of Bessie's birth - not thank goodness her sad if spectacular death. Ever have that happen?  You learn something and up it pops again almost right away?

I wonder what I will see next week about Bass Reeves whom I ran across watching Timeless this week.

Modern Communication

I sit with my iPad open to the FaceTime connection to my brother, a view to his shirtfront as he unpacks his suitcase, holding my cordless, on speaker, in the other hand, while my mother speaks to him about the text messages she sent him about his safe arrival home from Christmas. Her first. I make faces at my small self, presented me by my iPad, upper left.

Digital, all fifteen pounds of it.

Getting a good workout today doing the new books.  The Digital Atlas of Traditional Agricultural Practices and Food Processing - in three weighty volumes has arrived on my desk.  Digital???  Ya, that was what I thought too.  But, as a book binder, I can say it is my kinda digital.  Like when I look out at a blue sky and the weather person announces it is cloudy - my kinda cloudy.  They are beautiful books, pages and pages of photographs on how it's done around the world.  A perfect reference in a digital world in need of manual override.

The Pokapocalypse

It started yesterday.  I biked onto campus as usual, enjoying the spread of trees, the breeze, the swing of the bike in the curves.  Then I spied them.  In small clusters, holding their phones, staring, eerily still.  The Poka-zombies. I am glad that the basement dwellers are coming out.  At least their flesh will get a little sunlight and their muscles some new stretches - walking. But I have never been as creeped out in the real world as I was by their near motionless presence.  There are fewer of them today and an only slightly infected friend has given me the behind the scenes tour of this three dimensional video game of the present.

But just now, a ray of light.  Young, carrying butterfly nets aloft, real children, sans phones or pokadevices,  running about the bowl capturing real insects in the discovery of the real world.  My heart slows down.  I can breath again.  The Infection will not cause permanent damage.

New books

On the Efficient Determination of Most Near Neighbors: Horseshoes, Hand Grenades, Web Search, and Other Situations when Close is Close Enough.  This, believe it or not has reached a second edition.  I would have thought one was enough.  It is by Mark S. Manse and I can say with surety, I don't much care about the horseshoes and the web searches, but I am darn well as close to a hand grenade as I ever hope to be - many many miles.

Today's count

January in the imaginary age of climate change.  Two boys (that's just what they are in their twenties) out in the bowl playing Frisbee- in their shirt sleeves.  Puddles and the wind ruffling them like little lakes. The rising walls of a great white castle.  Bucket after bucket of snow packed around and then the chinks between the smooth forms filled.  It is in my view now, alone after the completion of construction.  A good four feet high.  The last row of bucket shapes showing like crenelation around its top. My ornamental asparagus putting out more shoots, climbing the window under the sun which has finally cleared the tops of the buildings opposite. A sun that goes down, as well roll away from it, almost an hour later than it did a month ago at the solstice.  Winter: more and more light.

A.E. Matheson 2016

Today's count

The scent of wine from fallen leaves.  Rescuing a ladybug off the bus. Warm enough to take off socks. Horse feather clouds across the blue.  A girl with purple hair.  A swarm of graceful green robed people crossing the bowl - most likely the Greystone Singers.  The sound of a child outside the library, clearly setting eyes on the T-Rex for the first time. Wooooohooowwoooo.

Trust them

I know in this current age there are those who would have rushed up the stairs to help, or worse called the cops and social services, but luckily the group I was on tour with yesterday was made mostly of people my age and we just watched with joy and grinned.  I was on a tour, and as the speaker talked (and I listened) about the architecture, two children came down the staircase behind her.  A big brother of about seven and his kid sister of about three. One foot on the step below, one foot on the step she was on, he came down at her pace one stair at a time.  One had behind her, and one hand before.  Patient.  His sister, and he was going to get her down intact.  How will that effect his view of himself as he grows?  No adult even in sight to yell, 'don't do that, you'll fall'.  Because, honey, he wasn't going to fall.  No way.  He had this thanks. And it was so darn cute.

Brute Force Vulnerability Discovery

A bunch of books dropped into the book drop, through the return slot (amazing enough in this age and joyful because my nostalgic Luddite long term environmentally-sound storage loving self likes the clunk the books make as they go in).  As is my wont I check them over to make sure they don't need repair work done (no soddering irons required) and check titles for things of interest.  Fuzzing!?  What **&^ is Fuzzing.  Has it to do with the fuzzy bear on the cover?  Of course it does, because as I have know since I was small Fuzzy wazzy was a bear, and it turns out Fuzzy wazzy is now clogging up computer programs with with his fuzz (much random data - not to be confused the BIG data) to see when they will crash.  It is a brute force test, looking for the vulnerable bits, don't you know.  Though I am quite sure the grizzly on the book cover is really only interesting in catching that salmon jumping toward his open maw - no brute force required, just intelligent placement.

Fuzzing: Brute Force Venerability Discovery.

New Books

Doing the new books again.  Most times I find something that amuses my odd sense of humour. Today I find something that makes me growl.  Masterminding Nature: the breeding of animals, 1750- 2010.  Masterminding nature?  Rather like two squatting toddlers holding up their mud pies claiming to have fed the world all their lives.

Don't go out in Geology Today

PMD@2015

'Cause if you go out in Geology today, you're in for a big surprise.  The dinos have been corralled for their biennial teeth floss and general wash.  This process includes yellow 'do not cross' tape, the removal of a center post between the stainless steel double doors to the out-of-doors to allow for the entry of the cherry picker, and, the cherry picker.  Not to mention two guys in hard hats and Sue - the official dino wrangler.

PMD@2015

Child's play

We had a spring snow dump on Saturday and on Sunday I arose to a foot (30 cm) of wet heavy snow.  Trundling out in my rubber boots, jammies, and my dad's overcoat, I knocked snow off the tree branch bowed under the weight to the sidewalk.  With my granddad's saw I cut up the honeysuckle, planted when the building was built about fifty years ago, that had given up under the weight. The saw handle gave way on the last branch.  Inspecting it closely for the first time in the 30 years I have owned it, I discovered it inscribed with the last name of my granddad's brother in law. Hummmm.  I helped my neighbour from down the hall dig out her car.  We agreed it was perfect snowman snow.  We returned inside to our separate abodes for warmth and rest. In the evening, dressed like a grown up, I ascended to the roof to make sure all was well.  It was. And there I build a snowman.  He was two feet tall when I said good night to him.  I named him Aloysius. Play like a child when life gives you the chance.