IS READING GOING OUT OF STYLE?

I have kept a list of all the movies I've seen and books I've read since 1985. On paper and occasionally I update a list but since the computer keeps changing or the program changes I have had to start over a few times in the 22 years I've been doing it. Yikes, that's a long time! My goal is to read more books than see movies but do I count books on tape/CD (and now ebooks)? Sure, why not! A woman in my book group doesn't even read the book if she can help it; she prefers to listen to it!

A recent study says that people are reading less and less. The most depressing statistic: "Almost half of Americans between ages 18 and 24 never read books for pleasure." (a new report released today by the National Endowment for the Arts, November 19, 2007)

Ian Frazier wrote a hilarious piece for the Nov. 13, 2006 New Yorker titled, "Downpaging". In it he talks about buying books as a terrible addiction that is bankrupting people. Here is a sample from it:

"Few people know that the leading cause of personal bankruptcy in the United States is the ‘Clan of the Cave Bear’ novels. You overspend on one, and, just when you begin to dig yourself out, the next installment comes along."

The Sex-Positive Librarian Will See You Now is a new posting on Susie Bright's blog, the sex educator. She interviews Steve Harsin, a librarian, about sex books and censorship in public libraries. You can hear an interview. It's fun!

http://susiebright.blogs.com/
see October 21st entry

Tango

postcard from 1919

Daniel Trenner

It looks great but it is supposed to be one of the hardest dances to learn. Yet men who don't even dance much say they want to learn it. I wonder why...could it be that it's so sexy and you have to dance very closely? But I think that is a mistaken notion because there are some tango dancers who have the usual separation and others who are so close they can't look at each other in the eye.

This is what one tango teacher has to say:
"Many men are attracted to the elegant masculinity of male Tango dancers. Men who love football will recognise many of the signature moves of great football players mirrored in the Tango, and those who enjoy Martial Arts find that there are many resonances with the Tango. In fact Tango has been described as the tender Martial Art. And they get to practice it you in their arms!"
http://www.totaltango.com/acatalog/tango_beginners_guide_42.html



Wikipedia has a lot to say about the tango but I found this:

"Argentine Tango consists of a variety of styles that developed in different regions and eras of Argentina and Uruguay. The dance developed in response to many cultural elements, such as the crowding of the venue and even the fashions in clothing. The styles are mostly danced in either open embrace, where lead and follow connect at arms length, or close embrace, where the lead and follow connect chest-to-chest."

A LONG WEEKEND IN BELLINGHAM

I went up to Bellingham with the boyfriend and we broke up. It's a romantic setting for a break up! Actually, we were in the Travellodge which was expensive and a bit shoddy. Damn, I never even got the opportunity to call him a boyfriend! We were going to look for a better motel but inertia took hold. The pool was small and in the middle of the parking lot, decorated with wire and one lone life preserver. Ah, maybe it was the fault of the motel.

The photo was taken in Fairhaven, a sweet historic district. I like the Colophon Cafe and the attached bookstore. There is a plaza with live music on Sunday afternoons and outdoor movies at night.

Chuckanut Drive is very close by and offers many good hikes in the woods. Of course, if you want more there is Mt Baker not that far away.

IF YOU DON'T TALK TO YOUR CAT ABOUT CATNIP, WHO WILL? (an adult man of color)

I GOT OUT OF BED FOR THIS? (a thirty-something man)

YOU ARE ENTITLED TO MY OPINION (a male teenager)

IF AT FIRST YOU DON'T SUCCEED, LOOK IN THE TRASH FOR THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL (a boy)

MID-LIFE CRISIS IN PROGRESS (young Hispanic male)

These are t-shirts that people in the library are wearing

People seem to be expressing themselves through their t-shirts more and more. I saw a young woman with a shirt that had the UPS logo but it said OOPS and in small print underneath, lost your package.

I remember the shirts in Latin America were hilarious, at times by mistake. Sometimes the juxtaptosition of the wearer and the slogan were funny.

It is getting harder and harder to find clothes without advertising some company.

YouTube is addictive! I have found it so before. Looking at one video can lead you to another and another and another. I now have at least 6 videos on my myspace page. I love the ones of Margaret Cho and the ones of "bad cats". I love the one of the little boy, perhaps 5 years old, reciting all the capitols of the U.S. He is amazing! I am still looking for the one of the blonde TV moderator who is describing a particularly winsome tiger or lion and makes a slip of the tongue. That is hilarious!
I've enjoyed podcasts for a while, perhaps soon after I got my iPod. There are too many to even listen to. I used to pay Audible.com to listen to This American Life and it feels like a minor revolution that it is now available FREE as a podcast! You mean I don't have to be chained to the radio every Friday night or Saturday morning? There are many sexy podcasts but not that many funny ones. Harry Shearer and his Le Show is pretty funny but he talks more about politics and the show is too long.
I have experience mainly frustration with ebooks, specifically eAudio books (I tried to listen to Da Vinci Code and it put me in the 46th chapter to start with and I couldn't get to the first chapter) and Playaway (I couldn't hear it well enough to listen to in the car so I had to give up on that). Since I am in the dark ages and still have a cassette player in my car, I think I'll just stick to books on tape (that is, until I get that mp3 player and am able to download books for free!).

Okay, now I have a nice new clean Myspace page (now deleted). Oops, I wasn't supposed to say that. At any rate, I made my "real" profile private because I was tired of impudent males asking stupid questions. Can I block them in my real life, too? No, I suppose not. But it's so easy on the computer; it's also easier to overreact or take things personally!

But how much personal stuff do you really want out there? Think of the elected official, Rob Smoke, article below. Do you really want to invite trouble?

"The Boulder city council is set to discuss new rules of conduct for those who serve on boards and commissions after one staffer received heat for material posted on his MySpace page.
A member of Boulder's Human Relations Commission was criticized by the city council for comments he posted on his personal page.
On his MySpace page Rob Smoke said, "I'm tired, I'm hungry, I'm horny, I'm stoned ... and I'm a city official."
Many of Boulder's elected officials consider the postings inappropriate. On Tuesday, they will debate a resolution that would, in part, require board members to show respect for the law. Those who don't could be fired.
Smoke said it shouldn't be up to the city to determine what speech is and isn't offensive and that the questionable posting is a joke. He said that part of the quote was taken from lyrics of a song sung by The Doors' Jim Morrison.
On his page he also jokes about marijuana and getting arrested.
The city council said the resolution is meant to clarify expectations.
"What the city council is saying now is that they want to be able to eliminate commission members at the drop of a hat if they deem your discourse disrespectful in some way," said Smoke.
He said the city council is trying to stifle dissent and he's not a city employee -- he's a volunteer and his MySpace page is clearly personal.
"They're saying that anything you say is subject to scrutiny," Smoke said.
He said that the new rule would expand the city council's power and that people should be allowed to vote on it. The public will get a chance to comment Tuesday night. "
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/11056200/detail.html

Social ambiguity: As discussed earlier in this article, the missing face-to-face cues of e-mail makes it potentially ambiguous. Even sophisticated e-mail users will lapse into moments of miscommunication. It's very easy to misunderstand what others mean, resulting in worried efforts to decipher their possible intentions. That social ambiguity tends to draw out and heighten one's own anxieties and insecurities.

John Suler's The Psychology of Cyberspace

"What do you think about libraries taking part in social networking sites? Create a blog posting with your thoughts."

I hear the U.S. Army tried to use Myspace as a recruiting tool but it backfired when there were some rumors of child predators using their page. Don't ask me how...I think the same could happen to library Myspace pages but hey, sometimes you have to take a chance.

Besides that, is it really owned by the evil Rupert Murdoch? Fox News, Myspace, what's next in the evil empire? Wow, I just found a Myspace page purportedly of the Rupert. Un--*(#&A(-believable! here are his interests: "Global domination and the conjunction of church and state.Censorship of private or liberal interest groups.Censorship of MySpace pages that do not agree with my views.Dictatorships are fun... as long as I'm in charge." And under his blurb: "I just bought MySpace.com, soon I will own the rest of the internet.I aspire to become the most powerful man in the world. I promote the efforts and conjunction between right wing conservatism and government. I encourage my television and radio stations to become Republican soapboxes. There are many important benefits to fascism." There's even a segment about Fox with Jon Stewart that ends with a link to www.outfoxed.org. The wonders of the Internet (really the WWW) never cease!

Bell's Palsy is not fun

A victim of Bell's Palsy! Doesn't she look sad? She is trying to smile. The pic above is from the first week of Bell's, paralysis of half of the face. First the rash from Lyme disease, then the Bell's. Reiki, acupuncture, nasty herbs, MSM, injections of Vitamin B and the traditional medical treatment of steroids, and a week later, almost normal!
Still not quite normal looking but not being pointed at and scaring small children. Or being stopped by neighbors asking if I'd had a stroke!

DIA DE LOS MUERTOS



Why is Dia de los Muertos so appealing? I was in San Miguel de Allende this past November and there were a ton of Americans (estadounidenses), maybe because people weren't going to Oaxaca for that holiday due to the political problems there. So with all the Americans celebrating Day of the Dead and quite a few people doing the ol' Trick or Treat shtick, the plaza was crowded! Some of the Mexican parents were teaching their kids to ask for candy and that disturbed me; although I like the holiday, I didn't think we should teach the kids begging. Their own customs are so rich! The little girl dressed up as a skeleton with her confused and lost expression seemed to stand for the changing customs in Mexico and especially in San Miguel.

SMOKING IN THE LIBRARY--NOT!
A nice thing about working in a library is that no one smokes in the library. It's true we have to help stinky patrons (and why is it that the big men with big bellies like to lean in and breathe all over you?) and can't state a preference for non-smoking patrons. But I can't think of a single co-worker who smokes and that is wonderful. I think of them as the Gray People; not as in Grey's Anatomy but as the people who will eventually turn grey like the color of cigarette smoke; their skin gets that awful pallor when they are older. You can quickly tell--usually-- when a middle-aged person is a lifelong smoker.

YOU TOO CAN HAVE A CAPTIVE AUDIENCE FOR YOUR MUSINGS

(besides this one)

WriteAPrisoner.com - A website hosting personal and or legal ads for prisoners seeking correspondence with the outside world. See their photos and here the stories of how they were incarcerated. Write them directly at the prisons. Their addresses are posted free to the public. This site also has an "In The News" section to keep you current on events in the correctional system. Stop by. And please, write a prison pen pal today! http://www.writeaprisoner.com/homepage.asp
Also, look at some of the art produced by prisoners!
You can have your portrait done using a photo!
http://www.prisonart.org/

I started writing to 2 prisoners and now it's three. I like making these people happy, even if it is momentary--men who have some good in them and perhaps have made some bad decisions and lived a hard life through no fault of their own. One prisoner said, "to say how happy it makes me feel to receive a letter from you is beyond my ability to put into print, after all the time I have spent with so little contact from outside these fences and walls, I am so overjoyed to have met someone as friendly and exciting as you."

me loves cartoons and I'm no kid
I love cartoons! I even subscribed to a cartoon service for a year! You pick which ones you like and then they email them to you every day. Yes, it's easy to fall behind. Here are some good ones: http://www.minimumsecurity.net/index.htm Stephanie McMillan's very political cartoons
http://www.overduemedia.com/ Yay, librarians!
http://comics.com/
http://www.artbabe.com/home.html (Jessica Abel's Perdida comic, about her heroine Carla living in Mexico and learning Spanish and getting into trouble)

the BIG and ferocious Min cat!

Everyone thinks my cat Min is fat and spoiled. She is big but she has been on a diet, like so many of us, and suffered the indignities of very slight hunger and not eating food every time she meows. She must be part Maine Coon or raccoon or Bigfoot. Maybe she has worms...She probably is spoiled, however. Not having kids, of course I focus my affection on my cat! She is not named Min as short for Mini or Minnie; rather, she is named after Minnaloushe of the W.B. Yeats poem, "The Cat and the Moon".

27 Things to do for Learning 2.0, Seven and 1/2 Habits of Highly Successful Lifelong Learners, don't we just love numbers? They are comforting, giving us a grasp, although it might be feeble, on information and problems.

On the other hand, they can alienate. At Toastmasters we are told to give low numbers for things people can do to combat a certain problem. Last night, Don wanted us to do 7 things for the pet overpopulation problem (number one, Spay Day today!); he was told that seven was too many and didn't he skip #2? The old boyfriend loved numbers which I found funny sometimes especially since I have a problem remembering numbers such as population statistics--until he said that he wouldn't be physically abusive again for another 3 years (I guess since we had been together for that number of years before the first incident). Oh, that was comforting--NOT!