knitting librarian

The three Hs (hazy, hot and humid) ruled today in central PA. I’m not sure what the high was today but at 5, it was still 92 degrees. Tomorrow it’s supposed to be 95 and feel like 102, Monday 97 and feel like 101. I forgot to mention yesterday that Zoe was playing with AJ’s brush last night and trying to brush her hair. It was pretty cute, so I grabbed the camera and did a little recording. I can’t seem to figure out how to embed Flickr video here, so try this link.

We picked up the kids and went to Reptiland this morning. We watched the education program and the kids both touched the alligator and the boa constrictor. (Zoe had some help but didn’t seem to have any fear, which was nice. I don’t expect that to last much longer!)She was in the BabyBjorn and enjoyed the fan that was moving the air, including signing about the fan and leaning back to look at me. She was adorable! After the program, we went to watch them feed a Rainbow Boa a “rat-sicle” (pre-killed frozen and then defrosted) and also to see Rocky and girlfriend “Adrian” (good job Sandy, send me your address!). The boas are named after Laverne and Shirley characters.

We came home and had lunch. Zoe went down for a nap while AJ got sunscreened up to go out and play in the sprinkler with kids from the neighborhood. I sat out on the porch and read my book while I waited for John to put Zoe down. I broke a fingernail and so I was waiting for him to come out so I could go. He got sucked into playing Rock Band and eventually came down about an hour later.

While I was getting my nails done, they showed a few different clips of Hillary endorsing Barack Obama. One of the other women there was talking about how disappointed she was that Hillary was calling it quits and that she didn’t think Obama will win. She said that she doesn’t think he can be elected, we’re still too racist as a country. I don’t know if she’s right or not, but it makes me sad to think that she might be. She also said that she didn’t “think the world was ready for a woman president.” I said, “There are women leaders and presidents all over the world, if there’s any truth to it, it’s that Americans aren’t ready, not the world.” Later, she wanted to know who else was going to be a candidate. Really? Really! Crazy!

We had dinner and AJ went back out to play for a bit. We put the baby swing up on the hooks on the front porch and put Zoe in it and John, Zoe and I hung out on the front porch.John was itching to get back to Rock Band, he’s got a serious videogame addiction!

A little before 7 we called AJ in out of the heat and he and I started to read Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. He did pretty well at listening. I had him predict what he thought was going to happen next a few times while I was reading and we read the first two chapters. We’ll continue tomorrow night. I’m trying to improve his listening/comprehension skills and to help him with some creativity and picturing what he hears rather than just looking at the pictures. We’ll see how it goes. He did tell me he liked the book so far, so I hope that we’ll continue.

I bought the book Eat, Pray, Love on the recommendation of someone, but I’ll be darned if I can remember who. I bought it before the new year and I hadn’t picked it up yet by April. One of the women at work was reading it with her book club, so I loaned it to her without having read it yet. She told me she couldn’t stand it and was having a tough time getting through it.

I finally picked it up last night and started it. I’m only on the third or fourth “bead” or chapter and she just comes across to me as self-centered and self-indulgent and immature. Yes, I’m older than her, but so far I’m having a really hard time getting into the book and relating to her journey of self-awareness.

If I hadn’t paid for the book, I’d probably put it down and walk away, but I feel $10 worth of obligation to read it now. I guess when I think my time is worth more than the money I’ve put out I’ll give it up, but I suppose at this point I’ll keep trying to slog through!

Teens’ Knowledge of History, Literature Is Very Poor – 3/3/2008 2:05:00 PM - School Library Journal

This posting made me go and download the 24-page report Still at Risk: What Students Don’t Know, Even Now to read.

One of the comments that struck me was “almost 20% of 1200 respondents to a national telephone survey do not know who our enemy was in World War II”—primarily because of a particularly embarassing situation that happened to me when I was a senior in high school. (Humiliation alert!)

We spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day in the Florida Keys. I wanted to work on my tan and stayed at the pool while the rest of my family had a late afternoon nap. I was the only person left poolside. Not long after, a man showed up and was chit-chatting with me. He struck up the conversation by asking if I was on my honeymoon. (I told him no, I was still in high school and implied I was jailbait.)

He went on to complain about our education system—legitimately, as you’ll soon see! He said something along the lines of, “Who won World War II?” and having never taken a history class that went beyond reconstruction but not wanting to look like the cultural illiterate I was, I responded, “Did anyone really win?” (Answer a question with a question, classic avoidance!) Instead of realizing I was a dumb blonde, he jumped all over that, “Exactly!” (I honestly don’t remember much else about that conversation other than thinking he was an easy con.)

The other thing education-related thing I remember from that trip was that I was to memorize Hamlet’s “To be, or not to be” soliloquy for my English class. I’d forgotten my book and needed to go buy one while we were on our vacation. We picked up a copy of Hamlet and a Key Lime pie in the same shopping trip.

When I went to college, as electives I took both a 20th century US and 20th century world history class. At the end of the world history course, I went up to the professor and thanked him and told him that I’d never had a class that went past reconstruction and I appreciated his class. He laughed at me. Even so, those were two of my favorite general education courses and probably influenced my choice to minor in history in college. I had to be sure I wasn’t caught like that again. I also bought E. D. Hirsch’s Dictionary of Cultural Literacy to help ensure that I became a more aware adult than I was teenager.

I hope fewer students graduate from my old high school not knowing the answer to that stranger’s question than did twenty years ago! At the very least, I hope I’ve given them the skills to find the answer if they don’t know it!

My pink and brown swap package arrived yesterday and I managed to get photos taken and posted today. NCBelle_36 did a wonderful job of selecting items that I will use and love! Missing from this photo is a package of Hershey’s Dark Chocolate Sticks so just imagine them in there—I think DH may have commandeered them—this is becoming a bad habit with him and my swap chocolates!

With this cold I’ve developed in the last 48 hours, my lips are desperate for moisture so that lip balm/gloss stuff is going to come in quite handy!

I’m so glad that Heather hostesses (Is that a word? Is that how you spell it?) these swaps. They’re such fun!

Today I added a book list page to the site based on what Nancy does—I am terrible about tracking what I read so hopefully this will make it easier to stay on top of for me. If you’re looking for a list of things to read or not read, this might be the place to look!

I’ll need to dig through the piles on my desk to figure that out! I really hoped I was going to get around to this today but there were too many carts of books to organize and get ready to shelve. They’re an extension of my desk, right? Does that count? I’ll take a before picture soon and then an after picture—when I finally get to it, oh, say about June!

The problem with having such a huge desk that 80-160 of my favorite teens touch every day is that 80-160 kids touch my desk. They move things, they hand me papers, they leave papers un-retrieved in the printer, they mess with my mess!

One of my co-workers went to ALA’s midwinter conference in Philadelphia this past weekend. She kindly entered my name in a drawing and I won a pop-up post-it desk station. She also brought me several ARCs: one by Paul Volponi about a young man in the Superdome in the days following Hurricane Katrina and another by Sarah Dessen. I’d seen a pre-review of the Volponi book a few weeks ago and heard it’s wonderful and awful at the same time. Dessen I always enjoy so I’m looking forward to that as well. I finished Jodi Picoult’s Perfect Match over the weekend and started another of hers Vanishing Acts. Both were generously shared with me by another co-worker. I love co-workers who share book stuff!