Cathy the Librarian

I’m going to try and get another grant… or two. I can’t remember if I posted earlier about this, but I was involved in a homeschooling grant with Cathy Henderson, the librarian from Greece, Jennifer Lindsey, the librarian from Chili and Adrienne Furness, the librarian (or uber as I like to call her) from Webster. So we officially got this grant for $35,000. Woe. Anyway, each of us was supposed to specialize in a different area. Hilton was going to specialize in the Arts. Then I found out about the grants available through the Arts and Cultural Council for Greater Rochester. There’s two of them: one for specific programs and one for advancing a cultural institution. Both sound great, but I’d have to have them in their office by November 10 at 5 PM. This does not give me much time to get everything set down on paper and completed. EEK! Needless to say, I would have to get started on this, whatever I’m going to do, almost immediately. I would like to do some Art History or Art classes for people that would relate to the homeschooling program. I would also like to get money for classes for one of the staff members to learn html, so that our website can be better developed. I just need to start writing everything on paper and sorting it out in my head so it makes sense.
Okay. Time to go to sleep. I can worry about this tomorrow.

I just looked up uber in wikipedia and found out quite a few things:

1) uber should have an umlaut, which, imho is pretty freaking cool

and

2) it means super in Latin

and

3) it means over or superior in German

and

4) it means super cool in English

and

5) it means awesome librarian in Rochester…

Okay so I made that last bit up. Who cares.

Good night again.

Yup. Walter the Farting Dog. He was banned (or challenged) this year. Poor Walter. He can’t help his flatulence. But somebody out there didn’t like the idea of a farting dog. Or probably a farting anything. But kids love farts and they love dogs! Who could imagine a more perfect combination. Granted the family in the book doesn’t really care for his flatulence, but they learn to appreciate it when the gas saves their lives from some evil robbers. There’s really not much more to say, except everyone in the world should read Walter and I’m really bad at book talking… which is why I will quite soon need the help of Ms. Uber-librarian herself, Adrienne from Webster Public Library.

Good night!

Today started banned books week, and I thought that each day, I would talk about a different banned book that I have read… I just came up with that a second ago and I love it! I had some of the pages and one of the clerks go through the list of banned books from 2004 and find the ones that we had in the library for a display I wanted to put up. My director and I decided that we would put all the books in some sort of cage or chain them up somehow. We wouldn’t let anyone check them out, to give them a small taste of what it would be like to be told you couldn’t read certain books. Unfortunately, while we were looking for the books we couldn’t find quite a few. They were supposed to to be there but no one could find them. People looked about five times, but no one found them. Personally, I think it was because people didn’t want us to find the books, which included: Doing It, It’s Perfectly Normal, and Holly’s Secret. SEX, SEX, SEX. People want to “protect” their children from everything. Teenage sex, their own sexual organs and homosexual sex. Anything to do with sex is out of bounds for these teens, and their parents are going to make sure that no one else gets to see them either. Or else its just some crazy teens who were too embarrassed or wanted to keep the books for their own collections. Needless to say, I’m pretty ticked off. I thought I would go back through the list of banned books and make a list of all the books that are “supposed” to be their, but aren’t. I thought it would be a good way to show everyone that a few people had to ruin everything for everyone else and now no one can read it. BTW, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m pretty ticked off. I am all about parents monitoring what their kids read, and if they don’t think its appropriate, not letting their kids read certain books. However I am NOT for a small group of people deciding what everyone reads. That’s why when I purchase books for the library, I buy christian fiction, science fiction, mysteries, war fiction, romances and lots of other kinds of books. I try to take into account that there are lots of different people with lots of different tastes and I need to respect everyone’s opinions. Whew! Now that I’ve got that off my back, I can go on with my life!

We spent most of the day today at the Riverside Convention Center watching Battlebots! My tushy hurt after a while, because the seats were REALLY uncomfortable, but the robots were pretty awesome. There were a few good fights, but quite a few fights ended really quickly. At about 1 pm we took a lunch break and went to Bennigan’s Restaurant. Our food arrived, and after the waitress put my salad on the table, Jeff’s hamburger somehow flipped over off the tray and fell on my jeans and my nice new soft sweater. The rest of the day I walked around with hamburger greasy clothes. Yuck. They didn’t even give us a discount or free desert or anything. It took us almost an hour and a half to get out of the restaurant. Beh. Oh well. Jeff and I had a lot of fun watching robots kill each other. Oh and one of the teens from my library was there too, so we got to chat for a little while too. Fun, fun!

I just looked up uber in wikipedia and found out quite a few things:

1) uber should have an umlaut, which, imho is pretty freaking cool
and
2) it means super in Latin
and
3) it means over or superior in German
and
4) it means super cool in English
and
5) it means awesome librarian in Rochester…

Okay so I made that last bit up. Who cares.

Good night again.

Yup. Walter the Farting Dog. He was banned (or challenged) this year. Poor Walter. He can’t help his flatulence. But somebody out there didn’t like the idea of a farting dog. Or probably a farting anything. But kids love farts and they love dogs! Who could imagine a more perfect combination. Granted the family in the book doesn’t really care for his flatulence, but they learn to appreciate it when the gas saves their lives from some evil robbers. There’s really not much more to say, except everyone in the world should read Walter and I’m really bad at book talking… which is why I will quite soon need the help of Ms. Uber-librarian herself, Adrienne from Webster Public Library.

Good night!

Spark Notes

In all honesty, I can’t remember much about the book. I read it when I was in college at Geneseo, when I was an English Lit major and reading a lot of books at the same time. I do remember that I loved it, especially at the end when I distinctly remember crying quite a bit. I felt that the book was excellent, and fully intend on rereading it as soon as I can.

According to the American Library Association’s website:

85 Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Reason for challenges: racism, sexually explicit, offensive language

It seems weird that a black author could charged offensive by writing “racist” language. I mean, sure I know its possible for a black person to be racist, just like its possible for a white person to be racist. However, considering that almost all the characters in the book are black, it seems strange that Morrison would be considered racist against black people, which is where I assume they are trying to go with it. I’m also getting really bored with the “sexually explicit” claim. People have sex. Sex is life. That’s all there is to it. Granted, the main character, Milkman is in a relationship with his cousin, but that doesn’t stop it from being real life. Also the “offensive” bit. I’m going to assume that the “n” word is probably used quite a bit, since the book is not supposed to take place in the present. But even if it did, young black people still say the word, you can hear it in the music etc.

I am of the opinion that people need a reason to complain. They can’t handle it when a book that takes them out of their own comfort levels is really, really good. So they complain and try to wipe the existence of the book off the face of the planet. All I have to say is, shame on you. Shame shame shame.

I will remember to read this book again, because at the time of reading it in college, it was really good. Take that book burners!

Banned Books Week

Today started banned books week, and I thought that each day, I would talk about a different banned book that I have read… I just came up with that a second ago and I love it! I had some of the pages and one of the clerks go through the list of banned books from 2004 and find the ones that we had in the library for a display I wanted to put up. My director and I decided that we would put all the books in some sort of cage or chain them up somehow. We wouldn’t let anyone check them out, to give them a small taste of what it would be like to be told you couldn’t read certain books. Unfortunately, while we were looking for the books we couldn’t find quite a few. They were supposed to to be there but no one could find them. People looked about five times, but no one found them. Personally, I think it was because people didn’t want us to find the books, which included: Doing It, It’s Perfectly Normal, and Holly’s Secret. SEX, SEX, SEX. People want to “protect” their children from everything. Teenage sex, their own sexual organs and homosexual sex. Anything to do with sex is out of bounds for these teens, and their parents are going to make sure that no one else gets to see them either. Or else its just some crazy teens who were too embarrassed or wanted to keep the books for their own collections. Needless to say, I’m pretty ticked off. I thought I would go back through the list of banned books and make a list of all the books that are “supposed” to be their, but aren’t. I thought it would be a good way to show everyone that a few people had to ruin everything for everyone else and now no one can read it. BTW, if you haven’t guessed by now, I’m pretty ticked off. I am all about parents monitoring what their kids read, and if they don’t think its appropriate, not letting their kids read certain books. However I am NOT for a small group of people deciding what everyone reads. That’s why when I purchase books for the library, I buy christian fiction, science fiction, mysteries, war fiction, romances and lots of other kinds of books. I try to take into account that there are lots of different people with lots of different tastes and I need to respect everyone’s opinions. Whew! Now that I’ve got that off my back, I can go on with my life!

We spent most of the day today at the Riverside Convention Center watching Battlebots! My tushy hurt after a while, because the seats were REALLY uncomfortable, but the robots were pretty awesome. There were a few good fights, but quite a few fights ended really quickly. At about 1 pm we took a lunch break and went to Bennigan’s Restaurant. Our food arrived, and after the waitress put my salad on the table, Jeff’s hamburger somehow flipped over off the tray and fell on my jeans and my nice new soft sweater. The rest of the day I walked around with hamburger greasy clothes. Yuck. They didn’t even give us a discount or free desert or anything. It took us almost an hour and a half to get out of the restaurant. Beh. Oh well. Jeff and I had a lot of fun watching robots kill each other. Oh and one of the teens from my library was there too, so we got to chat for a little while too. Fun, fun!

I know I could never be as awesome as these guys are with their kid (you need to click on the title to see what I mean) but I’ve decided I really need to try. I’ve seen so many “teen coming of age” movies where the parents are complete losers who seem to have no idea what these things called teenagers are doing living in their house. The parents are completely out of it, don’t know how to talk to their kids, and if they do talk to them, they never know what to say. After watching all those 80’s teen movies, I don’t know how there are any people alive who are in their thirties.
This whole rant all stems from watching the movie Whatever, which actually came out in 1998, but takes place in 1981. Everyone is completely f**ked up, smoking up, snorting blow and drinking gallon jugs of Jack Daniels. The whole time I watched the movie, I was fascinated by it, yet completely disgusted at the same time. Does anyone talk to their kids? Do parents tell their kids about these great new things called CONDOMS? I mean Gawd! if you’re going to have sex with every friggin person in your school, you could at least make sure that they used a condom!
Jack if you ever read this, I hope that you like me enough when you’re 17 to talk to me about all those taboo teen things that parents and teens don’t talk about. I mean, if I’m going to be honest, I’m not the purest angel in the flock! I’m quite sure that I gave my dad most of the white hairs he’s got right now. I wasn’t horrible of course, but I did some stuff that makes me shake my head even now. ANYWHO! I really don’t think I’m going to turn a complete 180 in the span of time that it takes Jack to become a teen. If I do, well… I apologize now for having to jump off that bridge.
Wow. Talk about rambling.
If you read yesterday’s post about Buster, we did talk it over some, and we decided to return Buster to the greyhound group that we got him from. It really sucks, but I think that we’ll all be happier in the long run. I still feel like shit though.

Okay, I figure with teething, there will be some drool. I didn’t think that there was going to be the Niagra Falls of drool coming out of my son’s mouth. But there is. He drools and drools and drools. I can’t toss him in the air anymore (please don’t call social services on me, I don’t let go of him) even though he loves it. I end up with drool in the eye or drool down the cleavage. Believe me, you have not lived until you have your own son’s drool down your cleavage. I go through HUGE amounts of onesies, and baby blankets and you’ll never see me in a silk shirt (not that I wore that many beforehand anyway). My wardrobe consists of t-shirts in different colors and pants that can handle being peed and pooped on. If I don’t change his onesies soon after they have been soaked with drool, they end up getting mildewy WHILE HE’S STILL IN IT! I don’t know what I can do, but this needs to end, SOON. My son doesn’t seem too upset, but my husband is losing his mind, because he can’t handle drool, and I’m even at wits end. People will hold him and come away drenched. This is not very nice if I get tired of holding him. Anyway… HELP!

BTW, he’s almost 6 months and he’s HUGE! He’s not huge in the fat way, he’s just really big. The last time we went to the doctor (I don’t know if I mentioned this last time) he was 90th percentile for both height and weight. He’s a BIG boy! There’s just so much of him to love! That’s okay though. He loves to play hard already, and he’ll play in the jumperoo until he falls asleep. Ahhh….