Sounds good to me January 13, 2008
Motorcycle weathervane (1), originally uploaded by Travelin’ Librarian.
Elf or Scrooge yourself December 24, 2007
If you have not already”Elfed” yourself this holiday season, head on over to www.elfyourself.com. You can see mine at http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1745943959. If you’re not feeling the holiday cheer, head on over to www.scroogeyourself.com. 
Here’s mine http://www.scroogeyourself.com/?id=1746014453
Better late than never :) December 18, 2007
Wow! I really want to know the true story!
A postcard featuring a color drawing of Santa Claus and a young girl was mailed in 1914, but its journey was slower than Christmas. It just arrived in northwest Kansas.
The Christmas card was dated Dec. 23, 1914, and mailed to Ethel Martin of Oberlin, apparently from her cousins in Alma, Neb.
It’s a mystery where it spent most of the last century, Oberlin Postmaster Steve Schultz said. “It’s surprising that it never got thrown away,” he said. “How someone found it, I don’t know.”
Ethel Martin is deceased, but Schultz said the post office wanted to get the card to a relative.
That’s how the 93-year-old relic ended up with Bernice Martin, Ethel’s sister-in-law. She said she believed the card had been found somewhere in Illinois.
“That’s all we know,” she said. “But it is kind of curious. We’d like to know how it got down there.”
The card was placed inside another envelope with modern postage for the trip to Oberlin - the one-cent postage of the early 20th century wouldn’t have covered it, Martin said.
“We don’t know much about it,” she said. “But wherever they kept it, it was in perfect shape.”
Retrieved from here.
Give the Gift of Books December 18, 2007
Uploaded by coeur on 7 Apr 07, 11.49AM PST.
The famous Erasmus quote hung in my college dorm room: “ When I get a little money, I buy books; and, if any is left, I buy food and clothes.” Books are my weakness. Nothing exhilarates me more than browsing through new books (oh, the smell…) As discussed in an earlier post, reading is in trouble. I am making it a point to give more books this holiday season, albeit I am always reminded of this student’s response…
I spent hours at the Scholastic warehouse finding books to match the interest and reading ability of each student. The day of our holiday exchange, I was so excited for everyone to unwrap their treasures. One boy sat crying. I thought, “Oh, wow! He’s really touched by this book.” Fat chance! He said, “That’s all you got us was a book.” Yes, “just” a book! Sad 
Everyone has a weakness. Captain Ahab had the white whale Moby Dick. Superman has Kryptonite. For me, it’s Amazon.com. That’s right, the online bookseller.My wife once gave me a sweat shirt with a quote from the Christian humanist Erasmus: “When I get a little money, I buy books; and, if any is left, I buy food and clothes.” Erasmus would have loved Amazon.com. Almost any book, just a mere mouse-click away, and it shows up on your doorstep.Unfortunately, though, reading in the United States is in trouble. That’s what a study from the National Endowment for the Arts published last month reported. That’s not good news for any of us. “To Read or Not to Read” pulled together data from 40 studies on reading habits and skills among children, teens and adults. The findings make clear that Americans in general are spending less time reading than in years past, with the trends particularly bleak among teenagers and young adults. Nearly half of all 18- to 24-year-olds read no books for pleasure, and the percentage of 17-year-olds reading nothing for fun doubled in 20 years.
Reading less, of course, translates into reading less well.
Reading scores are down for high school seniors, and reading proficiency rates among adults are stagnant or falling. The report found that reading for pleasure correlates strongly with academic achievement. And good readers generally earn more, have better career opportunities and participate at higher rates in cultural, sports and civic activities. When people read more, the individual and the society benefit.
So what are people doing instead of reading? No real surprises here: The report noted that among Americans between ages 15 and 24, leisure reading averaged 7 to 10 minutes per day, compared to 2 to 2 1/2 hours of watching television.
And in the July issue of the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, researchers Hope Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater found that video gamers between ages 10 and 19 played for an average of an hour on weekdays. Gamers wound up spending 30 percent less time reading and 34 percent less time doing homework than nongamers.
In addition, the research firm Media-Screen reported in May that broadband users spend 48 percent of their free time, or one hour and 40 minutes, on the Internet on a typical weekday.
So, technology can be a challenge. But can it help as well? No doubt, people are doing more than just watching lousy YouTube videos while they’re online. Many, presumably, are reading.
It’s also worth noting that in October, the Pew Internet & American Life Project reported: “Teens are far more likely than their parents to view technological devices as playing helpful roles in their lives.”
Why not take advantage of this to boost reading?
That brings us back to Amazon.com, which last month introduced the Kindle. It’s a sleek, portable reader that weighs a mere 10.3 ounces and can store hundreds of books. Though I’m mainly a paper guy when it comes to books, the Kindle is cool. It has an easy-on-the-eyes, high-resolution display, and it’s simple to use right out of the box.
Books bought on the Kindle or through the Amazon.com Web site are downloaded directly to the device in less than a minute. Some newspapers and magazines are available as well. And while the Kindle is pricey ($399), the books cost less in this nonpaper format. In the end, it ranks as a fine addition to the reader’s tool kit.
So, why not books for Christmas this year? For some, the right present is the traditional paper book - a technology that never gets old. For others, it might be new technology like the Kindle.
Either way, Erasmus had it right: The gift of reading has a deeper impact than food or clothes.
Retrieved from the Chicago Tribune.
Happy St. Nicholas Day December 6, 2007
Did you find anything in your shoe this morning from St. Nicholas? St. Nicholas is the patron saint of Greece and Russia. He was a bishop in Myra (present day Turkey) and was known for his generosity, particularly toward children. Here are some picture books to help celebrate this special feast day.
34 Microseconds December 3, 2007
If only I were Santa…34 microseconds, eh?
Christmas is hectic for all but particularly for Santa, who must live in Kyrgyzstan and make his rounds at lightning speed if he is to deliver gifts to all the world’s children on time, a Swedish consultancy has concluded.
Between Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, Santa Claus’s route around the planet includes stops at 2.5 billion homes, assuming that children of all religions receive a present from the jolly man in the red suit, Anders Larsson of the engineering consultancy Sweco told AFP.
“We estimated that there are 48 people per square kilometer (120 per square mile) on Earth, and 20 metres (66 feet) between each home. So if Santa leaves from Kyrgyzstan and travels against the Earth’s rotation he has 48 hours to deliver all the presents,” he said.
Father Christmas has long been believed to reside at the North Pole, although a number of northern towns, including Finnish Rovaniemi, claim to be his true home.
But Sweco’s report on Santa’s most efficient route — which takes into account factors like geographic density and the fewest detours — shows that he wouldn’t be able to make his round-the-world trip from there in time.
“He has 34 microseconds at each stop” to slide down the chimney, drop off the presents, nibble on his cookies and milk and hop back on his sleigh, Larsson said.
Santa’s reindeer must travel at a speed of 5,800 kilometers (3,604 miles) per second to make the trip on time.
Another report circulating on the Internet suggested however that Santa’s sleigh, weighed down with presents and travelling at supersonic speed, would encounter such massive air resistance that the entire contraption would burst into flames and be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second.
Retrieved from Yahoo! News
The Original Search Engine November 24, 2007
This t-shirt may top my Christmas list, even though I’m ”only” a library student. Available for purchase at Black Mambo.
