Dinosaur Stomp May 13, 2008
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OMG! May 13, 2008
Fraggle Rock consumed my childhood; my mom used to say, “”FR” is on, don’t turn on the television.” I always knew what she was talking about. A huge FR poster hangs in my classroom and I cannot wait to watch it on the big screen.
Guess what? It’s time to “Dance your cares away/ Worry’s for another day/ Let the music play/ Down at Fraggle Rock!” The Fraggles are back! According to Variety, the Weinsteins are teaming up with Lisa Henson of the Jim Henson Company to bring a live-action, half-human half-puppet Fraggle Rock extravaganza to the big screen.
14 Days to Have your Say May 13, 2008
http://www.library.wwu.edu/14days
Promo video for Western Washington University Libraries 14 days initiative
Scribd iPaper May 13, 2008
iPaper is a document viewer built for the modern web. It’s the first full-featured viewer that runs in a web page with no additional software. Using iPaper on your website offers the following fundamental benefits:
- A great user experience
- Increased traffic to your documents
- Enhanced security
- Monetization of your documents with contextual ads.
2007-2008 Tony Award Nominees May 13, 2008
I am disappointed in the number of Tony nominated shows I saw this year. Last year I saw all but one of the Best Musical nominees. Oh well…I guess it’s time for another trip to NYC! The nominees are as follows:
Best Play:
August: Osage County
Rock ‘n’ Roll
The Seafarer
The 39 Steps
Best Musical:
Cry-Baby
In the Heights
Passing Strange
Xanadu
Best Book of a Musical
Cry-Baby, Mark O’Donnell and Thomas Meehan
In the Heights, Quiara Alegria Hudes
Passing Strange, Stew
Xanadu, Douglas Carter Beane
Best Original Score
Cry-Baby, Music & Lyrics: David Javerbaum & Adam Schlesinger
In The Heights, Music & Lyrics: Lin-Manuel Miranda
The Little Mermaid, Music: Alan Menken and Lyrics: Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater
Passing Strange, Music: Stew and Heidi Rodewald Lyrics: Stew
Best Revival of a Play
Boeing-Boeing
The Homecoming
Les Liaisons Dangereueses
Macbeth
Best Revival of a Musical
Grease
Gypsy
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Sunday in the Park With George
Best Performance By a Leading Actor in a Play
Ben Daniels, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Laurence Fishburne, Thurgood
Mark Rylance, Boeing-Boeing
Rufus Sewell, Rock ‘n’ Roll
Patrick Stewart, Macbeth
Best Performance By a Leading Actress in a Play
Eve Best, The Homecoming
Deanna Dunagan, August: Osage County
Kate Fleetwood, Macbeth
S. Epatha Merkerson, Come Back, Little Sheba
Amy Morton, August: Osage County
Best Performance By a Leading Actor in a Musical
Daniel Evans, Sunday in the Park With George
Lin-Manuel Miranda, In the Heights
Stew, Passing Strange
Paulo Szot, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Tom Wopat, A Catered Affair
Best Performance By a Leading Actress in a Musical
Kerry Butler, Xanadu
Patti LuPone, Gypsy
Kelli O’Hara, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Faith Prince, A Catered Affair
Jenna Russell, Sunday in the Park With George
Best Performance By a Featured Actor in a Play
Bobby Cannavale, Mauritius
Raúl Esparza, The Homecoming
Conleth Hill, The Seafarer
Jim Norton, The Seafarer
David Pittu, Is He Dead?
Best Performance By a Featured Actress in a Play
Sinead Cusack, Rock ‘n’ Roll
Mary McCormack, Boeing-Boeing
Laurie Metcalf, November
Martha Plimpton, Top Girls
Rondi Reed, August: Osage County
Best Performance By a Featured Actor in a Musical
Daniel Breaker, Passing Strange
Danny Burstein, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Robin De Jesús, In The Heights
Christopher Fitzgerald, The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Boyd Gaines, Gypsy
Best Performance By a Featured Actress in a Musical
de’Adre Aziza, Passing Strange
Laura Benanti, Gypsy
Andrea Martin, The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Olga Merediz, In The Heights
Loretta Ables Sayre, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Best Direction of a Play
Maria Aitken, The 39 Steps
Conor McPherson, The Seafarer
Anna D. Shapiro, August: Osage County
Matthew Warchus, Boeing-Boeing
Best Direction of a Musical
Sam Buntrock, Sunday in the Park with George
Thomas Kail, In The Heights
Arthur Laurents, Gypsy
Bartlett Sher, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Best Choreography
Rob Ashford, Cry-Baby
Andy Blankenbuehler, In The Heights
Christopher Gattelli, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Dan Knechtges, Xanadu
Best Orchestrations
Jason Carr, Sunday in the Park with George
Alex Lacamoire & Bill Sherman, In the Heights
Stew & Heidi Rodewald, Passing Strange
Jonathan Tunick, A Catered Affair
Best Scenic Design of a Play
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps
Scott Pask, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Todd Rosenthal, August: Osage County
Anthony Ward, Macbeth
Best Scenic Design of a Musical
David Farley and Timothy Bird & The Knifedge Creative Network, Sunday in the Park with George
Anna Louizos, In the Heights
Robin Wagner, The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein
Michael Yeargan, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Best Costume Design of a Play
Gregory Gale, Cyrano de Bergerac
Rob Howell, Boeing-Boeing
Katrina Lindsay, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Peter McKintosh, The 39 Steps
Best Costume Design of a Musical
David Farley, Sunday in the Park with George
Martin Pakledinaz, Gypsy
Paul Tazewell, In the Heights
Catherine Zuber, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Best Lighting Design of a Play
Kevin Adams, The 39 Steps
Howard Harrison, Macbeth
Donald Holder, Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Ann G. Wrightson, August: Osage County
Best Lighting Design of a Musical
Ken Billington, Sunday in the Park with George
Howell Binkley, In the Heights
Donald Holder, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Natasha Katz, The Little Mermaid
Best Sound Design of a Play
Simon Baker, Boeing-Boeing
Adam Cork, Macbeth
Ian Dickson, Rock ‘n’ Roll
Mic Pool, The 39 Steps
Best Sound Design of a Musical
Acme Sound Partners, In the Heights
Sebastian Frost, Sunday in the Park with George
Scott Lehrer, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific
Dan Moses Schreier, Gypsy
Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Theatre
Stephen Sondheim
Regional Theatre Tony Award
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
Special Tony Award
Robert Russell Bennett (1894-1981), in recognition of his historic contribution to American musical theatre in the field of orchestrations, as represented on Broadway this season by Rodgers & Hammerstein’s South Pacific.
How many nominations each show received:
In The Heights, 13
Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific , 11
Sunday in the Park with George, 9
August: Osage County , 7
Gypsy, 7
Passing Strange, 7
Boeing-Boeing, 6
Macbeth, 6
The 39 Steps, 6
Les Liaisons Dangereuses , 5
Cry-Baby, 4
Rock ‘n’ Roll , 4
The Seafarer , 4
Xanadu , 4
A Catered Affair, 3
The Homecoming, 3
The New Mel Brooks Musical Young Frankenstein, 3
The Little Mermaid, 2
Come Back, Little Sheba, 1
Cyrano de Bergerac , 1
Grease , 1
Is He Dead?, 1
Mauritius, 1
November, 1
Thurgood , 1
Top Girls , 1
Ellis Island: A True Book May 12, 2008
Title: Ellis Island (A True Book)
Author: Elaine Landau
Published: 2008
Schu’s Rating: 4 J out of 4
Ellis Island consumes my thoughts. This may very well be one of the best informational text for children. It is part of the Scholastic “True Book” series. It opens by informing the reader that everything he/she is about to read is true except for…1. Millions of people had their names changed on Ellis Island because inspectors could not understand them. 2. An immigrant could get sent back across the ocean for having an eye infection. Both questions hook the reader and develop a reading purpose. (Which question is false?)
There is a simple explanation of the steerage section, the area at the ship’s bottom. As many as 2,000 people crowded together. There is a comprehensive chart on page 19 that shares the following information:
*A passenger and his belongings had to fit in a narrow bunk.
*Mattresses were filled with straw or seaweed?
*Floors were often covered in dirt and vomit.
*As many as 300 passengers shared two bathrooms.
*Passengers ate small portions of meat, bread, and potatoes, scooped from large kettles.
*Passengers played cards, sang, danced, told stories, and practiced English.
My students will enjoy the “Getting Around the Island” graphic on pages 24-25. It explains each section of the island. (The island is broken into Island 1, Island 2, and Island 3.) The following sections are discussed:
1. Baggage and Dormitory Building: Immigrants left their heavy baggage in this building. They proceeded to dormitory bunk beds. The beds held immigrants who didn’t have permission to leave the island yet.
2. Cafeteria: Here immigrants had their best meal since leaving home. Some tasted ice cream for the first time.
3. Ellis Island Hospital: Sick immigrants were cared for at the hospital. Three hundred and fifty-three babies were born here. (Ellis Island: Ghosts of Freedom takes you inside the abandonded hospital buildings.http://mrschu81.wordpress.com/2007/11/05/ellis-island/)
4. Stairs of Separation: Doctors watched immigrants as they climbed the staircase. They looked of signs of illness, such as sweating or shortness of breath. People with these signs had to have a more detailed checkup. Approximately 2% of immigrants were not admitted because of sickness.
5. Registry Room: Inspectors interviewed millions of immigrants in this room. Immigrants waited, often for hours, for their turn.
6. The Kissing Post: J This was the last stop for new Americans. Here, they had reunions with relatives already living in America. There were tons of tears and kisses!
11-year-old Gives to Campaign May 12, 2008
Dalton Hatfield is an inspiration! 
WILLIAMSON, W.Va. — Everyone who knows 11-year-old Dalton Hatfield sees it. There’s something special about the young man. His mother Vickie says all who come in contact with the Kentucky elementary student look at him and say “He’s going to be something” when he grows up.
Apparently that goes for former presidents, too.
When Hatfield presented former President Bill Clinton with a check for $440 after Friday’s rally at the Williamson Fire Station, the man who was once the leader of the free world seemed to nearly come to tears.
“You sold your bike to get this?” Clinton asked the McAndrews, Ky. native.
The reply was “yes” and a whole lot more.
Hatfield feels so strongly that Hillary Clinton should be the next president he not only sold his bicycle, but video games and anything else he could find that “I could make money with” to donate to the former first lady’s bid for the Democratic nomination.
“I was thinking one day how could I make money for the campaign,” he says. “And I just went through my closet and found things I didn’t need.”
“I though he was raising vacation money,” says Vickie Hatfield, who along with Dalton’s father, Bruce Hatfield, accompanied him to the event. “When I found out it was for Hillary, I told him to go for it.”
The result was a donation that for the most part left the former president, who is known as a great communicator, speechless.
Happy 100th Anniversary May 11, 2008
I wish each mother a happy, restful day. Here is the history of Mother’s Day, as told by Wikipedia…
The United States celebrates Mother’s Day on the second Sunday in May. In the United States, Mother’s Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, she wrote the Mother’s Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother’s Day for Peace.
Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers’ Work Days. She organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.
When Jarvis died in 1905, her daughter, named Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. In 1907, she passed out 500 white carnations at her mother’s church, St. Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia—one for each mother in the congregation. The first Mother’s Day service was celebrated on 10 May 1908, in the same church, where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Anna chose Sunday to be Mother’s Day to be a Sunday because she intended the day to be commemorated and treated as a Holy Day. Later commercial and other exploitations of the use of Mothers Day infuriated Anna and she made her criticisms explicitly known throughout her time [2].
Originally the Andrew’s Methodist Episcopal Church, the site of the original Mother’s Day commemoration, where Anna handed out carnations, this building is now the International Mother’s Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on—spreading eventually to 46 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912, beginning with West Virginia. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother’s Day, as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.
Nine years after the first official Mother’s Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother’s Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother’s Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.
For example, according to IBISWorld, a publisher of business research, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts — like spa treatments — and another $68 million on greeting cards [3].
Mother’s Day will generate about 7.8% of the US jewelry industry’s annual revenue in 2008. Americans are expected to spend close to $3.51 billion in 2008 on dining out for Mother’s Day, with brunch and dinner being the most popular dining out options [4].
Spell Check Poem May 11, 2008
A librarian posted this on LM_Net. It reminds us of the importance of understanding homonyms and why students need spelling skills.
‘Spell Checker Blues’
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rarely ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect in it’s weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.
Anon
Friend Connect May 11, 2008
Google does it all…
Google is expected to join the social network data portability crowd with “Friend Connect” on Monday. TechCrunch speculates that Friend Connect will be a set of “APIs for Open Social participants to pull profile information from social networks into third party websites.”
Google will join Facebook and MySpace, which launched ways to port user data to partner sites this week. Facebook Connect will provide the hooks to let users port their friends, profile photos, events, and other data across the Web to partner sites. MySpace on Thursday announced Data Availability, with Yahoo, eBay, Photobucket, and Twitter as initial partners for its effort to let members port their data.
Blind man bowls perfect game :) May 11, 2008
A 78-year-old legally blind man nicknamed “The Hammer” has bowled a perfect game. Dale Davis of Alta, Iowa, nailed 12 consecutive strikes and reached 300 on Saturday night during league play.
“It’s a great sport. It’s something the young, the old and the handicapped can do,” Davis said Thursday. “I guess I count as the old and handicapped.”
Davis has suffered from macular degeneration, a chronic eye disease, for the past decade. He can’t see out of his left eye and has limited peripheral vision in his right eye.
Davis’ perfect game came at a roll-off to conclude the league season at a four-lane alley in the small northwest Iowa community of about 1,800 people.
Century Lanes owner Clem Ledoux said Davis’ game didn’t draw much attention until he reached 10 strikes. That’s when folks poured out of the bar to watch his final two shots.
Davis, who stands 5-foot-8 and just 115 pounds, threw a “Brooklyn,” where a right-hander strikes the left side of the head pin, for his final strike. The feat brought wild cheers from Davis’ fellow bowlers and onlookers.
“It went down there and somebody hollered ‘Brooklyn!’ It was just a solid sound in the pocket,” said Davis, whose average score is 180. “It was quite a thrill. For just a few minutes there I felt like a pro.”
Davis, who earned his unique moniker as a child from his blacksmith father, moved from California to live with his sister in Iowa shortly after losing sight in his left eye in 1997.
She encouraged him to start bowling again. Davis now bowls twice a week, and his fellow bowlers help him with pin placement and in making sure he picks up the right ball.
Davis said the only time he sees the ball is when he picks it up, but he can usually tell how his throw went by sound. All 12 tosses sounded great to Davis, who bowled the first 300 that Ledoux could recall at the alley since he took over in 1984.
“He’s got good coordination. He’s got good timing,” Ledoux said. “We’ve always kidded him that we think his bowling ball has eyes.”
Retrieved from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080509/ap_on_fe_st/odd_blind_perfect_game
Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library May 10, 2008
Dolly Parton performed her heart out last night at the Chicago Theatre. She told the story behind many of her classic songs and reflected on her childhood in the Smoky Mountains. In 1996, Dolly launched her Imagination Library to show the children of Tennesse the power and beauty of books. Dolly mailed a copy of The Little Engine who Could to every child under age five in Sevier County, Tennessee. The program was such a success that Dolly expanded it across the country and now provides books to hundreds of thousands of children. For more information about the program and to learn how to get involved, visit http://www.dollysimaginationlibrary.com/home.php.
