Where is home? I've wondered where home is, and I realized, it's not Mars or someplace like that, it's Indianapolis when I was nine years old. I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog, and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts. And there's no way I can get there again.
I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having
succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist,
Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an
A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, “Isaac is up in
Heaven now.” That was the funniest thing I could have said to an
audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several
minutes had to pass before something resemble solemnity could be
restored. So when my own time comes to join the choir invisible or whatever, God
forbid, I hope someone will say, “He's up in Heaven now.” Who really
knows? I could have dreamed all this.
My last words? “Life is no way to treat an animal, not even a mouse.”
Apparently having a full-time job in a city an hour away from where you normally live is not conducive to keeping up with e-mail, Facebook, blog posts, personal diary entries, baby diary entries, regular web surfing activities as well as all those other things that make up this thing we call life. For instance, last night, I went to a boat and trailer show with the in-laws. There were no computers there. Tonight was pre-natal class and again, not a computer to be seen.
So here's some randomness of what's going on in my life and head…
Congrats to Michelle Lake who won the Spirit of Librarianship Award today. I'll update my Spirit of Librarianship page this weekend if I get a chance. I first met Michelle when she was the only person in the whole of FIMS who responded to my invitation to join me at Book Expo 2006. My immediate thought at that time was “wow, this is a person destined to win the Spirit of Librarianship award someday!”
Had some good news of my own today – a paper I submitted to CLA won 2nd place in their national student essay contest! This is probably the best result I could hope for as first place was a trip to the CLA conference in St. John's which is right around the time Shea is due. So if I'd won that prize, the broken legs she would inflict on me would've made the trip quite difficult anyhow. So I'll take the CLA gift certificate, the cash prize and the library directory and run.
(This is a good place to mention that for the purposes of this blog, all papers and presentations I've posted should be considered in “draft” form and not an official publication. This has come up as a concern once or twice with other pieces I've posted here then submitted elsewhere. Someone suggested that calling everything I post here a “draft” even if it was handed in and marked is a good way to get around the concern that any jury or whatever might have. And really, that's the truth – the paper that won (er, placed) was revised at least a little bit from what I originally posted here. My Alberta user fees essay – which I also just heard that the online Partnership journal wants to publish pending some revisions – is the same thing. The one posted here (search the blog for “tits” ) is so vastly different from what it has become so as to be almost a different paper.) Apparently the hockey playoffs started yesterday but I haven't seen a minute of a game yet and barely glanced at the scores for the games so far. But here's my predictions for round one anyhow. Calgary beats Detroit in 7 Anaheim beats Minny in 5 Vancouver beats Dallas in 6 Nashville beats San Jose in 7
Buffalo beats New York Islanders in 4 Tampa Bay beats New Jersey in 6 New York Rangers beat Atlanta in 5 Pittsburgh beats Ottawa in 7
My pick for the Cup? I hate to say it but I think Vancouver could really do some damage this year (meanwhile, my Flames over Detroit pick is the one I'd be least willing to bet money on.) The other finalist? Why not Pittsburgh as a Cinderella story? Man, they're an exciting young team.
Not much else I can think of. If you sent me an e-mail or a Facebook message, I hope I'll get to it this weekend.
Today was my first “hump day” in a long time so I'm really sorry to do this to you but…
Our catalouging prof, the newly minted Dr. E. Davies, demostrated the principles of textual analysis using this song. Meanwhile, a teacher I know wouldn't allow it to be played at a high school dance. Such is the power of the word “humps”.
(via everywhere on the Internet but MetaFilter is the place to check for good discussion as always)
Oh, and Happy Birthday Dad. Kinda embarrassing that I was more out of breath than you climbing up these bales!
I used the
following list when I did up a “mini-yearbook” for our 10 year high
school reunion and came across it recently in a new Facebook group dedicated to the topic. So I thought I'd re-post it here.
You Know You're From A Small Town When…
1. You can name everyone you graduated with.
2. You know what 4-H is.
3. You went to a party that was held about 20 miles down a deserted dirt road.
4. You used to drag “main.”
5. You said the 'F' word and your parents knew within an hour.
6. You schedule parties around the schedule of different police officers since you know which ones would bust you.
7. You ever went or thought about going cow-tipping.
8. School gets canceled for a sports team going to Provincials
9. You could never buy booze cause all the store clerks knew how old you were.
10. When you did
find someone old enough to buy booze for you, you had to drive down
country backroads to drink it then drive home again after since there
were no cabs, buses or contracts with parents to “come get you”.
11. Your stereo was worth more than the car you put it in.
12. You go the local bar every Boxing Day to see who's home.
13. It was cool to date someone from a neighboring town.
14. You had a senior skip day.
15. The whole school went to the same party after graduation.
16. You can't help but date a friend's ex.
17. Your car is always filthy from the dirt backroads.
18. You think that kids who ride skateboards are weird.
19. The town next to you is considered “trashy” or “snotty” even though it is exactly like your town.
20. Getting paid minimum wage is considered a raise.
21. You refer to anyone with a house newer than 1980 as the “rich people.”
22. The people in the big city dress funny and listen to weird music – then you pick up on the cool new trends two years later.
23. You bragged to your friends because you got pipes on your truck for your birthday.
24. On Fridays,
anyone you want to find can be found at Main Street, the gas station
parking lot or eating fries and gravy at the local restaurant.
25. Your biggest excitement in life was a trip to the city.
26. There is a very real possibility that someone drove a grain truck to school.
27. You decide to walk for exercise and 5 people pull over and ask you if you need a ride.
28. Your teachers call you by your older sibling's name.
29. The closest “cool stores” are at least 45 miles away.
30. You laugh your head off reading this because you know it's true!
WebSite Grade For https://headtale.com : 69/100 (overall)
A website grade of 69 for https://headtale.com
means that of the thousands of websites that have previously been
submitted to the tool, our algorithm has calculated that this site
scores higher than 69% of them in terms of its marketing effectiveness.
The algorithm uses a proprietary blend of over a dozen different
variables, including search engine data, website structure, approximate
traffic, site performance, and others.
The software is constantly being upgraded and the algorithm enhanced. The number of potential
recommendations provided by the tool is also increasing frequently. Please check back often.
The site doesn't allow you to link directly to a report so if you want to see the full details about what's good (and not so good) about my blog, go to the site I linked to at the top of this post and enter my blog's URL.
(via Citadel of the Blogs – consistently the best source of interesting links of any blog I read. Check it out!)
A onetime child prodigy, at 39 Joshua Bell has arrived as an
internationally acclaimed virtuoso. Three days before he appeared at
the Metro station, Bell had filled the house at Boston's stately
Symphony Hall, where merely pretty good seats went for $100. Two weeks
later, at the Music Center at Strathmore, in North Bethesda, he would
play to a standing-room-only audience so respectful of his artistry
that they stifled their coughs until the silence between movements. But
on that Friday in January, Joshua Bell was just another mendicant,
competing for the attention of busy people on their way to work.
The Washington Post sets up a unique social experiment – get a famous classical musician to play in a subway station and then see what the reaction is. Includes video clips. (via Reddit)
Despite the lackluster performance nationally, total revenue gains
were strong in the West with British Columbia (+19.9%), Saskatchewan
(+9.1%) and Alberta (+8.7%) outpacing the national average.
In contrast, publishers in the Atlantic provinces lost ground as
revenues declined by 5.2%. Ontario saw a small 2.2% decrease in revenue
from 2004 while Quebec had an increase of 6.8%.
Despite stagnant revenue growth, profits for book publishers were up
in 2005. Total profit for the industry grew from $227 million
to $285 million in 2005. The industry's total profit margin increased
from 10.1% to 11.9%.
Companies in Ontario and Quebec accounted for the majority of the
book publishing industry's profit. They earned $270 million of the
industry's $285 million profit. They also led the industry with profit
margins of 11.0% and 13.1% respectively. British Columbia was next with
a profit margin 7.8%.
Salaries, wages and benefits accounted for 20.9% of total industry expenses, up marginally from the previous year.
The top 10 publishers in the industry earned 52% of the total
revenue and had a profit margin of 15.8%. The comparable figures
for 2004 were 51% of revenues and a profit margin of 14.0%.
I've had this happen a couple times in the past few weeks so thought I'd mention it. If you add someone on Facebook who has the “Auto Reply” function on their e-mail program enabled, the “Jason Hammond has added you” message gets sent back and flows right through Facebook to your e-mail in-box thus revealing the original person's e-mail address.
So now I've been unintentionally sent the home and/or work e-mail of two working librarians I don't know very well but added because I'd met them at a conference or whatever.
The solution? Might be a good idea to use a work e-mail address on Facebook if you use the auto reply function or better yet, maybe set-up a Gmail account specifically for Facebook-related communications (jasonhammondfacebook@gmail.com isn't a real address but that would be the idea. Of course, then you have to remember to check it regularly for Facebook-related messages.)
Hmm, what would happen if you set your Gmail to auto-forward to your POP account? Would the rebound flow through Gmail back to the unintended recipient or would it stall there? Somebody try that and let me know!
Oh, on that note, I mentioned that I would have an article on Facebook in the next issue of Feliciter. I, of course, meant the *next* issue of Feliciter after the one that was wrapped and at the printer and which likely arrived in your mailbox sometime in the last couple days.
This latest issue includes a great article from former Spirit of Librarianship award winner, Sophia Apostol called “Baby Librarians Beware: All-growed-up Grad Speaks Out”. Her anecdote about damaging a company-issued laptop on her first day of work for a vendor will be in the back of my mind as I progress through the early days of my new position. If something goes wrong, “Well, at least I didn't destroy a laptop.” Er, unless something worse happens. Uhm, let's move on…
There's also a good article by Librarians Without Borders founder, Melanie Sellar, about “The Emerging Leadership Landscape” and six new librarians who are leading the way including a couple former classmates who are involved with LWB.
I've addressed this before but my readership has grown quite a bit since the last time I talked about it so I'll give some background on the FFL's again.
My “Friday Fun Links” started as a way to provide regular content when I set up a listserv for the Writers Guild of Alberta. When I left the WGA, they went on hiatus but when I was asked to become a contributor to the LibrarianActivist blog, I saw an opportunity to bring back the FFL's in a slightly modified form (and cross-post to this blog to guarantee I always had a Friday post!)
My initial criteria of “fun, cool or unique” links remained for the most part but with more of a library and activism focus than a writing/publishing focus. Of course, the name “Friday Fun Link” is sometimes a misnomer when the article I'm linking to deals with a serious issue such as today's link about the situation with homeless people in libraries. If time permitted, I should, by rights, probably just post things like this (and last week's story about corporations mistreating their workers and suppliers) as regular stories. But I like to make sure I have a weekly FFL so tend to post these things on Fridays, even when they don't really meet my FFL criteria.
(Man, when did this blog become disclaimer central? First, on the “Twelve Types of Library Students” post then on the one after my first day of work and now this! )
Anyhow, here's today's FFL…an article about the shift in the role of public library from “library” to “homeless shelter”. (via MetaFilter which, as always, has lots of good discussion around all aspects of this issue.)
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