A better cat

Behold the best designed cat for Canadian girls under six, or anyone really. A better cat could not be made.





Replete with, even, the Colin and Justin oversized boutonnière! The resemblance is uncanny. Il est un dandy!

Cover Ups

So like I'm pretty old, right? So I remember the "fall of communism". I remember 1989 crystal clear. 20 years old it was one of the best years. I was newly independent, trashed with the two jobs I held and in my third year of a degree program I loved. So lucky, and happy, hopeful. I could do things and I loved that a lot.

I remember when The Wall fell.

What I remember is the celebration of it the following summer. That July and August my summer in the UK. An archaeological dig and new friends to pass the time. Lucky ever more. The dig program began with many having come from the celebration concert in Berlin backpacks weighty from the pieces of graffiti'ed concrete. The Wall undone.

In only three weeks this end would prove itself nothing but an intercession. I stood at the Tie Rack in Victoria Station behind three ladies in their burquas. Their credit cards declined. Arguing most vigorously as, apparently, Kuwaiti ladies in burquas do when they can't expeditiously secure a new scarf due to a turn in the tide of world politics. There was no end. Kuwait had been 'invaded' and the red menace had been replaced with a fresh foe.

All this revelry is depressing the hell out of me. It seems like all it took was those four weeks in the summer of 1990 to unearth interminable strife that will stay with my children into their twenties. Lame, civilization. Lame.

Social Networking

The thing about social networking is that ... women are so conversational. The old librarian data to knowledge pyramid didn't have a strata for gossip so I'm lost.

Bibliodiversity

I am predicting that physical collections at our schools will shrink by 15% over the next couple years. A combination of the rise of good information online, budget cutbacks over 17 years that have made buying good books harder and harder, increasing virtualization, format creep** and a culture of hoarding = frugality have caused us to reach this point.

I am excited. I keep harping on the shortness of distance between the libraries and production as these changes come. A dream that change will come and we will find our way to keep what we value and need. It's probably all Pollyanna but in my heart I hope I am at the cusp of a metamorphosis in resources for learning and living .. and not the death of library system.

But who knows?



** Format creep is what I bill as "It's the 70's all over again!" Listening centres are back, video streamed clips are the new film strip, models are huge and we are all media makers. How can this not be awesome?

JDG image above first seen on this post. Now part of a show at the David Weinberg Gallery, Detroit.

Let's get small

I have tried twitter. It's tiring. But as fall approaches I wonder how many bloggers will be coming back to blogger. Twitter is certainly buzzing but I'm glad for blogs. Even if I haven't had the energy to write a real post for over a month.

Those things happen.

The most valuable thing I have taken from twittering is the 'nano' of everything now. It is reassuring that things are gonna 'get small'. You know I'm a Steve Martin fan so that's good. As a librarian I spent so much time recently trying to help people survive an overnight in a chilly sea of information without a survival suit. Didn't we all get bit by 22 apps last year at work? I look forward to a new outlook where all I have to do is get them to grocery store or the bank or where they are actually going. Obsessing about how we could go anywhere now that was tiring.

Sure do

Some days their vulnerabilities sure press to make us better people than we are.

I like traffic lights

We went on our annual summer trip 6 hours away to MIL-land. It was fun. There was a lot of lake time and ponies to feed. We drove.

The blithe road trip is such a great Canadian fixture I can barely confess the transformation I have undergone to be in this place of hating it. We drove up the night before our first holiday to avoid the traffic. The road trip is torture for me. I used to get right into the high speeds, junk food, rest stops and 'sense of freedom'.

Now it is all sense of dread. The recognition that this trip is the most dangerous thing we do with our family. Testing the odds and driving holiday weekends when everyone is crazy, kids hot and yappy, 'pushing it' and, yesterday, rubbernecking at a roadside forest fire!

1km on, a sight out of my minds eye, a family vehicle flipped. I understand a 9 year old boy was thrown clear. There but for the grace of god...

I traveled a lot by car as a child. My dad was always the one helping some guy out of a drift in Wells Grey Park in the pitch dark of nighttime December. I know of a dozen gas stations that sell headlamps for early 80's Caprice Classics. I sigh knowingly at overheats, poor devils. It used to be all good. Go see Granny.

I hope I can get there again with a decent measure of careful on the side. In the meanwhile I am grateful my husband is as good a driver as he is. That he shares the driving to be smart.

I'll tell you I am so enjoying people cutting in front of me at 40km/hr. Cross-town traffic never looked so good!