Greg & Cathy - Goodnight!

Each night before he goes to sleep my 2-1/3 year old insists on being sung at least one song...the same song, night after night: Country Roads, by John Denver. Since I am a native Vandalian, that's alright with me.

Cathy & Dave's fav films watched at home, 2008

OK, I know I'm late with this. The new year has gotten off to a slow start. But I want to start using this blog again, so here is something I sort of half composed over the Xmas Break, in answer to all those who send me a list of their fav books of the last year. Since I don't have time to read, here's my list of fav films.

1. Lars and the Real Girl
Quirky, funny and intelligent. Highly recommended.
2. The Pursuit of Happyness
Anyone who's followed Will Smith's career knows he's no lightweight actor - this is one of his best!
3. Shut Up and Sing
What started as a tourfilm of the Dixie Chics ends up a chronicle of their courageous fight to express opinions unpopular with many of their fans at the height of war-hype by the Bush Administration. A must-see!
4. March of the Penguins
All the hype about this film was right - makes you think thrice about Global Warming.
5. The Queen
Fabulous Helen Mirren portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II at the time of the death of Diana Spenser - you don't have to be a royal watcher to enjoy it.
6. Joyeux Noel
This French film is not new, but is based on real events during World War I, when an informal Christmas armistance by the men fighting in the trenches was brutally supressed by their superiors.
7. Downfall
Recounts the last days of Hitler as seen through the eyes of a young woman hand-picked by Hitler to be his personal stenographer, as remembered at the end of her life. Bruno Schulz, veteran of many Wim Wenders films, gives the best portrayal I have seen yet of Hitler.
8. The Lives of Others
This German portrait of life under the brutal East German "Stasi" is both historically informing and deeply moving, and a worthy film to follow the one above.
9. Recount
BTVS fans will remember Danny Strong, the actor turned screenwriter who won top awards for this re-telling of the 2000 election aftermath. Infuriating to watch if you're a liberal, but informative for everyone, especially since Strong asked for and received help from all participants on the right and left. Worth listening to the commentary.
10. Who Killed the Electric Car?
A tremendously entertaining documentary about short-sighted corporate opposition to anything which even remotely smacks of "environmentalism" - even at the expense of profits and to the delight of foreign competition. You can't afford not to watch it, especially if you've ever owned GM stock.

Prague

In the summer of 2004 I finished my MSLIS degree by spending two weeks in the Czech Republic. Here is a video from that experience: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVixafKyH6s.

Finish Line!

I just came back from the final in-person event at the BPL. It was great to meet so many of you in person - to shake hands and chat! Especially Jennifer and Michael, who made this program possible for all of us. Jennifer invited us several times to applaud ourselves - but as Michael pointed out, this great program would not have happened without her very hard and dedicated work, so I applaud her once again! And thanks to all of you, whether I met you this morning or not, for participating and making this all work. I will keep you in my blog roll.

Thing 25: It's Thanksgiving, let's eat!

Hi everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving! I have journeyed to Syracuse with my wife Cathy and son Gregory, where my mother-in-law Lola is preparing to fete us all with her usual aplomb! I can't wait.

Looking over the food blogs Jennifer gave us in this Thing is only whetting my apetite. I couldn't resist "What's for Lunch, Honey?" - one of the food blogs in the blog roll "Simply Recipies". Maintained in Weimar Germany by an Indian-born cook and mother, Meeta, it has a very nice look and feel. Here is her take on how to do the Thanksgiving Day feast. As you can see, she does a great job of both dispensing advice for planning and preparation as well as focusing on the food. Very useful!

In a similar vein, Epicurious has a nice page on how to create a heart-healthy Thanksgiving Day feast. Their recipe for Ginger-Pumpkin Souffle really appeals. Too late for me to integrate any of this advice into my Thanksgiving Day this year - but maybe next. At least I now know where to go for the recipes!

Thing 24: microblogging

At SLA mid-winter earlier this year, Stephen Abrams put up the view of all the people who were twittering the conference, including him putting up the blog of al...you get the picture. It was very funny, and a good illustration of the power and immediacy (or should I say the power of immediacy...) of microblogging.

How could it benefit our library? Well, we serve a patron base of just over 300 students and faculty - most of whom are taking the same limited number of classes. I wonder if we could somehow facilitate their team-based exercises using twitter. (I wonder if they are doing that already.)

This might be especially useful to our reserves, which are open stack and self serve...and because of our self checkout machine, which does not self check in, they are also non-catalog based regarding checkout (ie, we use a pen and paper). Could we set up a twitter site to help students keep track of what's in and out? It would only work well if everyone who took out a reserve voluntarily opted-in.

Thing 23: online music

The Tolkien Ensemble is a group of Danish musicians who came together to try to set the poetry J.R.R. Tolkien created to music - and to try to interpret and express the various moods of Tolkien's works with original music as well.

I was delighted that a search on Seeqpod brought up several of their recordings I was not familiar with, including this musical interpretation of Tom Bombadil's Song. I quickly learned to manipulate the search in Seeqpod to include video as well as audio, but found that loading was slow, at least with my home connection, and it was easier to go to YouTube and view the videos.