Would you rather...

On Monday I subbed for a fantastic school librarian ( check out her blog here) I was impressed with her low-tech but highly-effective question of the week (you can see a previous question on her blog) - and notice how she connects it with books?

Fascinating.

And if you are wondering, I'd pick being able to fly. How about you?

A Spring Ritual

When I was a teen, my family lived in a little stone house on a hillside in West Virginia. My mother waited impatiently all winter for the first blooms of spring. She inspected the first shoots of the narcissus daily to watch for the buds to form.
When the narcissus finally began to come out she would gather a bunch carefully - taking one here, one there, so that there were still lots of flowers outside.
She would cut a few branches of forsythia just as the buds were ready to burst.
She would put her springtime bouquet in...

this round glass vase.

Now every spring I do the same.

Music in the night

An empty stage... we were early for the final performance of the first Guitar Festival here.
We had plenty of time for members of the guitar ensemble to chat.

With a plucking of strings the notes began.

One musician, one instrument - and the hall was filled with music.

Early Spring at Stillwater

It was a splendidly clear morning. Cold, but clear.

Maples are blooming, giving the gray hills a reddish tint in the sunlight.
It was the first sunny day in a while, so even though it was chilly, Mimi and I went out to see the migrating water fowl at Stillwater Marsh
How I wished that someone with a great camera was along!
I tried...
but the ducks moved right out of the close-ups.

And in the longer views it is hard to identify the different species.

The marsh is wide and walking out on the dikes is restricted during migration so all the photos had to be taken with a zoom.

Still, you can see that there were birds every where we looked.
We saw wigeons, coots, lesser scaup, red headed ducks, wood ducks, rusty teal, canvasback, shoveler, ring necked ducks, pied billed grebe and whole flocks of tree swallows diving and dipping over the water. There were geese and gulls and even a meadow lark.

An adult American bald eagle flew slowly from one horizon to the other, and vees of migrating sandhill cranes made their way to the north.
Mimi and I swung our binoculars back and forth and I paged through the bird book until a gentleman showed up with a real bird scope. He kindly invited me to look through it as he identified each species. His comments implied that he'd been checking on the process of the migration daily ( the golden-eye was late, most of them had flown on last week)
After a while my hands began to hurt with cold and Mimi put on her heavy coat and we decided to drive on.

The narrow gravel road runs right by the flooded woods bordering the marsh. Out of the car window we watched coots and wood ducks swim quickly away.

We drove back through Brown County State Park to admire the views from the hill tops - and Mimi's new boots which she is showing off here.
We had packed a picnic...but did I mention that it was cold?

So we headed to town. Nashville seemed too bright and too crowded after being out in wild areas - but the warm food at the Hobnob was welcome.
Watch for more expeditions as spring comes on!

Sunshine on a cloudy day

Spring blooms...we just can't wait for them.

Especially when it's chilly and drizzly like today. Here is a bunch of bright yellow forsythia already.
Not from outside - outside the buds are just beginning to show a little color.

These early blooms are ones I brought inside and "forced".

Actually I don't think there was much force involved.

I brought them in one day and they burst into bloom the next - they were as ready for Spring as we all are.

Author visit

Yesterday author Will Hobbs came to talk to all the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade students. He peppered his talk with questions and with pauses for kids to fill in the appropriate word - keeping the whole crowd engaged for 45 minutes.
At one point a teacher turned to whisper "He's speaking their language." High praise indeed!

He talked about a slide of two Mexican school girls walking home from school in their uniforms. They were in their last year of school, he said - can you guess what year that is? The kids guessed - but had to keep going lower and lower until they came to 6th grade. (He was getting to the motivation behind his character in Crossing the Wire) When you come to school, he told them, you got to bring it! Because this is your opportunity. All over the room, heads were nodding.
His adventure stories are well-crafted and appealing - but especially to guys.
I have only read a few but after hearing him speak and seeing the slides of the real places in which his stories are set, I'm ready to read more.
The chance to meet and hear a real author talk about his books is so motivational for readers - and who brings the author to school? That would be the soon-to-be defunct school librarian.

Happy Birthday, Eric!

Hello, Eric!You are so much bigger now than you were when you visited us here.

I'll bet that hat would fit you now that you are ONE year old!

We hope you are having a wonderful First Birthday!

This bird has flown

For years now I've bought birdseed from a little specialty store called Wild Birds Unlimited.

Not just feed - I've also carried home bird houses, bird baths, suet feeders, peanut feeders, ground feeders, tube feeders and various miscellaneous bird related stuff. You may have gotten presents I bought there. Even when I only came for a sack of oil sunflower seeds, I always walked around looking at the shiny copper fountains, the cool safari hats, the expensive binoculars and scopes.

When we couldn't identify a hawk, the owner was the knowledgeable and accessible person to ask. He knew which sparrows were migrating and where to hear owls calling. This week I picked up my last two sacks of seed. My voice echoed in the nearly empty space.
The store had been stripped, every thing sold - even the display cases and shelves. Only a few sad looking left-over Christmas ornaments and the coo-coo clock were left. Our little store will close its doors for good at the end of the month.
It was a good place. I'm sorry it's gone.

You'll never work alone...

A job just couldn't get done without supervision... especially on the first day of Spring!

Before and After

Before: the waterfall stepped down from stone to stone.

After:

The water leaps from top to bottom.

Why the change?

There was a leak.

A grievous leak.

A leak that required adding water to the pond every other day,

even in the frozen depths of winter.

So the Mother Nature guys came to sort it out.

They removed the old filters and tore the stones off the top of the waterfall.

The sandstone spillway was transformed into slate. One stone "step" went away.

And when they were through the waterfall was transformed.

As for the leak.... we're watching the water level closely.

A little Irish are we?

Oh it's no secret, says Charles, we're all Irish today.... You just have to wear a little green
drink a Guinness or two

and carry potatoes in your hat.

It's a sure-fire way to celebrate

the fine tradition of Saint Patrick's Day!

The further adventures of the easily amused

This episode is brought to you by IBC Root Beer ( established 1919!) You may ask yourself, "Why is she looking over there that way?"
It is a race.
Our straws are being pushed up out of our glasses by the root beer bubbles.
Mine won.

Goodbye again

The return of the regular librarian - which we are all glad to see - still brings regret to me.
My farewells are more final this time.

I'm leaving with a head full of kid's faces and book's places that I probably won't need to use again.

This year will be the last year that our school system has professional librarians, so there's an end to my on-again off-again library work.

I'll still be subbing for a few days at other school libraries this Spring, and that will be it.

It's hard enough to leave after just months of being in this school, think how awful it will be for the librarians who have years invested in their schools and in their library programs. They'll leave knowing that the valuable services they provided for both students and teachers were never respected nor appreciated by boards or superintendents or governors.

Especially by governors. Especially Indiana's governor. But librarians are not alone in that. Any public school teacher at any level could say the same thing about Indiana's governor.

Spring Birthdays

Although each of the early Spring birthday people had a little celebration on their actual days, the family gathered for a traditional group party last weekend.



We admired HoosierKitty's new hairdo...

set the table....

and got caught up on every one's news as we chatted in the living room.



This involved some looking things up-

and some explaining things-

as usual.

Lunch was simple but tasty, and followed by cakes.

One match did not serve to light all the candles...

but when they were lit, the three honorees blew them out with one breath.

Presents were piled high...

and the occasion was documented with lots of pictures.

Chocko was eager to help open presents

especially the smelly ones

and a good time was had by all.