To shop, to entertain

Shopping with family and friends...

always entertaining...

Preview of upcoming events

Just a note to say that today's birthday will be celebrated and blogged at a future date.

March First...

...and then I'll wish you a Happy Birthday, HoosierKitty!

Thank you cards from First Grade

They may not be the most coherent of writers...

but they know how to touch my heart.

Whale watching

Another "bit-of-the ordinary-day" post, for those manatee-watching readers. This is my deep sea post- there are the mama and baby whales who swim gracefully above the 500's in the school library. They are cleverly hung just where the heating system will keep them slowly dipping and circling all day.
Sitting at the circulation desk, I often stare at them while pondering deep thoughts (also known as zoning out).

Warm enough...

...for outdoor recess! I pull up in the parking lot for an afternoon stint in the library and just watch, fascinated by the color and movement, the sheer exuberance of being outside again.

The year of the tiger begins

I filled the display case outside the library with New Year wishes and books.What will the year of the tiger bring?

Nothing good for school libraries, I fear.

Happy Birthday!

Here's to a year of happy memories pastand to a year of many happy ones to come.

Sad Times for Libraries

...but the school board is just plain nuts. Tuesday the school board will vote on a proposal to cut all school librarians from Elementary and Middle schools. We all knew cuts were coming, we felt that some librarians would be cut, we knew that there would be no more money for books -
but all the professionals? Who will teach information literacy? Who will create the procedures and policies? Who will evaluate and develop collections? Who will collaborate with teachers on thematic units and research projects? The board assures us that they will still keep libraries open - but I'm sorry, what they will keep open are rooms full of books. Increasingly old and irrelevant books. Not libraries.

Valentine's Day

A look at Valentine's Day... Outside
Inside

In my dreams.

Another Snow Day

No school? Again?

We have to amuse ourselves somehow... it's this or clean house.

P.S.

We didn't buy the stuffed raccoon, although it was very tempting!

Froggy chocolates hop away

I seem to have difficulty eating things that look like something...
Chocolate that appears to be cute lady bugs, for example.

Or cute little hedgehogs.

Or even a chocolate Swiss Army knife. I know some of you recognize some of these tidbits and realize how many years they've lingered uneaten due to cuteness.

Wasn't it clever of Hoosier Kitty to give me so many little green froggy chocolates that I didn't mind eating them?

Before I knew it, they were all gone...

But I still have my marzipan piggies for good luck!

A weekend visiting Cousin Edie

Lucy, the cat with kalidescope eyes, shares a home with Edie. Lucy couldn't understand all the fuss.
Why was Edie having all this company?
What's an 88th birthday, anyway?
Most importantly, did those visiting people remember to bring a cat present too?

Completed

After weeks of slow work, putting a piece here and joining another one there, suddenly the difficult puzzle pieces are flying into place. Those tricky shapes seem to slide right in.
It is a super puzzle solver who has arrived to assist the frustrated puzzler.

But Granddad has the last piece up his sleeve. There it is! The puzzle is complete.

And it may stay on the table for another month or so, because no one can bear to take it apart.

Treasures

I have been reading a book called The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World, by Paul Collins. It is absolutely fascinating - so much I didn't know about the business of printing and publishing in 1617/18; so much about the rare book trade - and the personal anecdotes about tracking down First Folio read like the best of travelogues.

So I was excited to discover that there is in fact a First Folio here in my own little town. AND it was going to be on display! A must-see exhibit!

Off we went to the opening reception, expecting to find the First Folio the star of the show.There it sat, open to the famous portrait. I was thrilled.

And then we looked in the nineteen other cases...
Oh - here's a first edition of The Canterbury Tales...printed by William Caxton, England's first printer.
Here's the Gutenberg Bible...
Marco Polo in manuscript from about 146o...
Euclid: Elemnta Geometria - first edition ...
Ptolemy"s Geographia (1508)... The Nuremberg Chronicle (1493)...
Copernicus...William Harvey...John Milton...Marcus Aurelius (from the library of John Adams and John Quincy Adams with John Adam's annotations!)

And there's more...a manuscript of the original Peter Pan...the first (suppressed) edition of Alice in Wonderland...

William Morris' signed copy of the first book printed at the Kelmscott press...

Oh and more:

the letter from George Washington accepting the Presidency - the first U.S. census - the first printing of the Declaration of Independence - the first printed draft of the Constitution...

It just went on and on:

TWENTY cases of priceless, rare treasures!

It was the Audubon that held my eye longest.
The double-elephant folio edition of The Birds of America was open to the page of "Raven"-
my now-favorite Audubon print.

The i-phone-picture can't do it justice. The prints in Goggle images are inadequate.
You'll have to come visit and see this exhibit in person.

It's on until May 8th.

Reserve your weekend now!

How to occupy a wintery month

Granddad sits down to a terrifically difficult puzzle. All the pieces are about the same size and shape. They "fit" everywhere!

The colors and lines are subtle. At night I take apart the ones that he's put together in obviously wrong places.

This will keep him busy for a month or so!

Thanks, Vacationeers!

A little Winter green

Outside the weather is cold and the tree branches are bare. Bits of dead brown grass show between patches of snow. Spring seems a long way off.

But inside the school is a little patch of green and growing vegetation. Just down the steps outside the library door you can glimpse a tiny tropical jungle.

The hall goes around it.The skylight over it mirrors the curiously hexagonal architecture of the school.
There it is - our little bit of tropical green in the middle of winter - with a quiet jaguar crouched in the center.

Making music modernly

One of the delights of a family get-together is music making. Guitars and violin come out and old songs fill the room.

There was a new twist, however, this year.
This year when we couldn't remember the words, we found them on the iPhone.

Stillwater Marsh on New Year's Day

The first day of the new year was bright and cold.Deeply cold. The marsh was frozen solid. What appears to be water is ice.

Even the distant trees seemed frozen against the dark background of the hills.


It was quiet. Nothing stirred, only an occasional leaf skittered across the ice.
Our footsteps seemed loud as we crunched across the dike over to the stream.

There the running water was open, reflecting the bare trees and the frosty sky.
A flock of tiny sparrows flew up from tangled weeds.


It was a landscape from fiction - the very image of the cold land emptied of life.


The three of us walked through the winter chill in good companionship.

So our new year began.

Sorry, Doggie.

A little post-Christmas appology:

Christmas kitty is sorry

really sorry

for teasing Santa dog.
Who knew he'd take it so seriously?

Or carry it to such heights?