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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Spring Count

photo info

A robin taking a bath, dip, flutter, dip flutter.  Then flapping hard the four feet to the fence top to preen and shake his tail feathers until quite dry.  A jack rabbit, half white, pursued by a small ecstatic dog, with this human flapping along behind on a red string.  Finally the scent of rain.  The shadows of leaves on the midnight wall.  Feet up watching the moon disappear into the trees.  Three ticks. Many, many robins.  This morning: five people, twelve poles, a piece of canvas, and in fifteen minutes, a home.  The Convocation Pow Wow is on the 29th of May.

Vote of confidence

I think I have spent too long with the common denominator to think this will work, but I am glad of the vote of confidence and will watch with interest.  The campus has gone the great step of having full stream recycling.  Which means they present us with blue boxes and we huck everything in but the wet garbage and the kitchen sink.  We adore it.  We bring our stuff from home and feel our virtue and our future generations pleasure at our actions. 

Today arrived word of a small addendum to this process.  Each staff member on campus will have their garbage cans taken away and a blue box given to them.  Each blue box will have within it a little black box (sounds ominous and appropriate) for the non recyclables (the garbage formerly known as garbage).  But will we, the common denominator, manage this simple task?  Will we be able to lift up the tiny lid of the little black receptacle and place the gucky stuff inside?  Or will we just chuck everything in the blue bin...which will then be covered in printed signs to remind us which part of the bin to use when.  Large "GARBAGE" signs will appear on the little black box, in red, with arrows.  Or will we demonstrate we are better than ourselves for whom the turning out of a light is an onerous task upon leaving a room, and actually hit the can. 

We aim to recycle. You aim too please.