Monday, November 5, 2012
Happy Guy Fawkes Day!
In honor of Guy Fawkes Day, or rather, in honor of V, the character created by Alan Moore and designed by David Lloyd to be dressed in Fawkes' likeness...I bring you a summary, author bio and book discussion guide of the iconic graphic novel V for Vendetta by Alan Moore & David Lloyd.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
My First "Story"
I have my first article in the Decatur, IL online Community Newsletter Re:Decatur! It was about my relationship with my former "Little" in Big Brothers Big Sisters. I am a huge fan of the organization, what they do, and how they assess the positive affects of their work. I strongly suggest that anyone out there in cyber-land who has any interest in forming a forever bond with a child looks into their local BBBS organization. Prospective mentors go through a background screening and an interview process in order to match them successfully with a child. They only ask that you commit for one year! If you cannot be a mentor at this time please consider donating to your local BBBS organization. They estimate that supporting each match for one year is $1000.
Title of the article: The Heart of a Mentor, Being a Big Sister October, 2012
"Start Something!"
Here is the text of the article, as the website is now defunct:
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” Desmond Tutu
So many of us wonder what one person can do to make a difference. Be it one vote, one statement, one blog post, we think it is a small voice in a sea of louder, or at least numerous, vocalizations. I know the older I have become, the more I can get bogged down by details. Meeting a young woman in the fall of 2008 changed my perceptions about the impact a single person can have. Choosing to be a mentor gave me the opportunity to share values and skills with a young person who shared important life lessons in return, and my life was certainly altered.
Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) is a mentoring organization present in almost 370 communities in the United States. The organization visited my workplace with a proposal: visit a child for one hour, once a week at school, for one year. The process in becoming a Big is very thorough, because they truly want both the Big and the Little to be happy in the match. After a background check you have an interview where you discuss the person you are, the interests you have as well as who you envision as your prospective Little: ages, interests, etc. They ask you to commit to the match for one full year. They do the same with the children looking to be mentored. They find that positive matches, which last at least one year, have lasting effects including increased self-esteem, behavior improvements, school achievement and stability.
After being matched, I had my first meeting with M. at her school with our BBBS case manager. We filled out “getting to know you” quizzes and learned the program rules. Following that initial meeting I would visit M. every week on the same day at lunch. We would share in the unique flavorings of the school cafeteria. On special occasions I would bring lunch as a reward for a job well done or a good week. We worked on schoolwork, but most importantly, we formed a bond. We talked about her fears, her frustrations and her joys! M. did not think she liked to read, but we read short stories together. I introduced her to S.E. Hinton, a writer who started young and whose characters have more difficult childhoods than some. She read Hinton’s book Rumble Fish in two days and was eager to let me know. She started sharing the plots and her opinions regarding books for school. Just as I introduced her to things, she shared her interests with me. From almost the first day of our meeting we could talk about everything. She has an extremely high regard for honesty and she demonstrated it to me, and expected it in return. When she began junior high the following year, we became a Community Based Match, meaning I now could do things with her outside of school. We would go for walks in the park (Dreamland Lake was one of our favorites, and the inspiration for the artwork we did together above). We would swing on swings, see movies, grab dinner, and through it all we would talk. The amount of trust she had in me was humbling, and indicative of the place I held in her life.
M. has a lot of passion for life and for what she believes. She was never as angry or hurt as when someone implied she was dishonest. She sometimes had a hard time displaying her passion in constructive ways, and this was one of the things we worked on changing. However, the important part was giving her the security of knowing someone was always in her corner, no matter what. Due to new challenges and changes in her family, our “official” match has ended, but we will always be “sisters” and have been forever changed for the better. I would like to be there to watch her graduate and I will never forget the lessons she taught me. I can only hope she carries with her my conviction in the person she is, her strength and her potential. M. taught me that children are stronger than we think and wiser than we know. She taught me that friendship is a powerful catalyst for growth and that honesty is paramount.
Title of the article: The Heart of a Mentor, Being a Big Sister October, 2012
"Start Something!"
Here is the text of the article, as the website is now defunct:
“Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.” Desmond Tutu
So many of us wonder what one person can do to make a difference. Be it one vote, one statement, one blog post, we think it is a small voice in a sea of louder, or at least numerous, vocalizations. I know the older I have become, the more I can get bogged down by details. Meeting a young woman in the fall of 2008 changed my perceptions about the impact a single person can have. Choosing to be a mentor gave me the opportunity to share values and skills with a young person who shared important life lessons in return, and my life was certainly altered.
Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) is a mentoring organization present in almost 370 communities in the United States. The organization visited my workplace with a proposal: visit a child for one hour, once a week at school, for one year. The process in becoming a Big is very thorough, because they truly want both the Big and the Little to be happy in the match. After a background check you have an interview where you discuss the person you are, the interests you have as well as who you envision as your prospective Little: ages, interests, etc. They ask you to commit to the match for one full year. They do the same with the children looking to be mentored. They find that positive matches, which last at least one year, have lasting effects including increased self-esteem, behavior improvements, school achievement and stability.
After being matched, I had my first meeting with M. at her school with our BBBS case manager. We filled out “getting to know you” quizzes and learned the program rules. Following that initial meeting I would visit M. every week on the same day at lunch. We would share in the unique flavorings of the school cafeteria. On special occasions I would bring lunch as a reward for a job well done or a good week. We worked on schoolwork, but most importantly, we formed a bond. We talked about her fears, her frustrations and her joys! M. did not think she liked to read, but we read short stories together. I introduced her to S.E. Hinton, a writer who started young and whose characters have more difficult childhoods than some. She read Hinton’s book Rumble Fish in two days and was eager to let me know. She started sharing the plots and her opinions regarding books for school. Just as I introduced her to things, she shared her interests with me. From almost the first day of our meeting we could talk about everything. She has an extremely high regard for honesty and she demonstrated it to me, and expected it in return. When she began junior high the following year, we became a Community Based Match, meaning I now could do things with her outside of school. We would go for walks in the park (Dreamland Lake was one of our favorites, and the inspiration for the artwork we did together above). We would swing on swings, see movies, grab dinner, and through it all we would talk. The amount of trust she had in me was humbling, and indicative of the place I held in her life.
M. has a lot of passion for life and for what she believes. She was never as angry or hurt as when someone implied she was dishonest. She sometimes had a hard time displaying her passion in constructive ways, and this was one of the things we worked on changing. However, the important part was giving her the security of knowing someone was always in her corner, no matter what. Due to new challenges and changes in her family, our “official” match has ended, but we will always be “sisters” and have been forever changed for the better. I would like to be there to watch her graduate and I will never forget the lessons she taught me. I can only hope she carries with her my conviction in the person she is, her strength and her potential. M. taught me that children are stronger than we think and wiser than we know. She taught me that friendship is a powerful catalyst for growth and that honesty is paramount.
Tuesday, April 24, 2012
Harvard Sets the Stage
This post came up in Planet Cataloguing today, and although it has nothing to do with cataloguing, I wanted to talk about it anyway!
Jonathan Rochkind wrote in his blog “Bibliographic Wilderness” about the news that Harvard’s Faculty Advisory Council has made a statement related to rising journal costs. They are basically setting the stage for a push to Open Access publishing by their faculty as well as becoming an example to the rest of the academic community to push harder for the rates and policies of some journals to be reduced.
The question of ownership is a tricky one, as having current access to an e-publisher does not mean having access to any of those journals after canceling an account. You buy print journals, you can have them "forever"; you pay for e-access you have them until you don't pay anymore. Libraries pay for the use of electronic journals and possibly physical copies (when he talks about the Copyright Clearance Center or CCC, it all depends on what you pay for). I have no doubt that Harvard is questioning the big picture. This issue does not belong to journal publishers alone; law libraries many times have to carefully consider whether they can keep up with subscriptions to LexisNexis and Westlaw in the long run, as these publishers also raise their prices at an exorbitant percentage.
The question of cost is a big one and an important one. I, for one, feel that Harvard is on the right track. If talent is sent to OA sources, and peer review still happens, well, the rest of the academic community could fall in line. I come from a scientific background and peer review and general "distinction" reign supreme in popularizing journals. If Harvard leads this charge and other universities follow suit, it might actually make a dent. I, along with Mr. Rochkind, question the sustainability of pay per use, but I still think Harvard’s gesture is a well thrown gauntlet.
Here is a news article in The Guardian that I also liked on the topic.
Thoughts?
Jonathan Rochkind wrote in his blog “Bibliographic Wilderness” about the news that Harvard’s Faculty Advisory Council has made a statement related to rising journal costs. They are basically setting the stage for a push to Open Access publishing by their faculty as well as becoming an example to the rest of the academic community to push harder for the rates and policies of some journals to be reduced.
The question of ownership is a tricky one, as having current access to an e-publisher does not mean having access to any of those journals after canceling an account. You buy print journals, you can have them "forever"; you pay for e-access you have them until you don't pay anymore. Libraries pay for the use of electronic journals and possibly physical copies (when he talks about the Copyright Clearance Center or CCC, it all depends on what you pay for). I have no doubt that Harvard is questioning the big picture. This issue does not belong to journal publishers alone; law libraries many times have to carefully consider whether they can keep up with subscriptions to LexisNexis and Westlaw in the long run, as these publishers also raise their prices at an exorbitant percentage.
The question of cost is a big one and an important one. I, for one, feel that Harvard is on the right track. If talent is sent to OA sources, and peer review still happens, well, the rest of the academic community could fall in line. I come from a scientific background and peer review and general "distinction" reign supreme in popularizing journals. If Harvard leads this charge and other universities follow suit, it might actually make a dent. I, along with Mr. Rochkind, question the sustainability of pay per use, but I still think Harvard’s gesture is a well thrown gauntlet.
Here is a news article in The Guardian that I also liked on the topic.
Thoughts?
Thursday, January 5, 2012
The Last of the Long Reviews (and the beginning of what this blog might be)
I've been cheating by using old reviews to start off this blog, and thus have not been thinking about what I really want to say. I will need to get into a habit of writing on the blog, but will it be only library related, life related, personal? I tend not to be able to separate the personal from everything else, so it no doubt will creep in. Ah well, here is the last of the "assignment" reviews.
Kevin Henkes’ Words of Stone
Have you ever met someone who is everything you are not? Who seems to be the opposite of you in every single way? Then friendship reveals the inner truth that you are not as different as you might have thought. This is the kind of friendship that unfolds for Blaze and Joselle in Kevin Henkes’ Words of Stone. Henkes’ provides complex characters living real lives and surviving real heartbreak. This story also uses a great deal of imagery with impressive results, fleshing out emotion and letting us see inside the characters heads. Words of Stone is a great coming of age story with important themes of loss, family, friendship, understanding and the importance of forgiveness.
Blaze is a shy, fearful and introverted ten-year-old boy who lost his mother at age five to cancer. He has nightmares that reveal a great deal about his fears and his inability to change the past or save his mother. Blaze goes through life with his invisible friends, a jar of keys and an old Noah’s Ark toy with only one of each animal that represents much more to him than he lets on. He avoids talking with his father about his grief because he cannot bear to make him sad. Although liked by everyone, he has no close friends. He fears fire, the dark, wasps and nightmares. He wants to control his fear desperately; he wants to take charge of his life but does not know how.
Joselle is an outgoing, seemingly fearless girl that appears to be everything Blaze is not. She loves playing music on her “big” front teeth, and freely expresses emotions. However, she has loss as well. Her mother has been more of a friend than a parent throughout her life and she does not have any knowledge of her father. The emotions she freely expresses tend to be anger because she cannot quite handle the loss in her life. She seeks to complicate Blaze’s life, because, as her grandmother says, “Misery loves company” (37). However, she also learns that she has more to give, such as helping Blaze get to know Gary, the “terrifying” German Shepherd next door.
When Blaze first sees the words of stone on the hill facing his room in the early morning light he tells no one and rearranges them so his father cannot see…or so he does not have to admit it may only be in his head. Between the mystery of the stones, his father’s new girlfriend and Joselle, he barely has time to think. Pain comes crashing down on both Joselle and Blaze in this book. Both are betrayed by the people they trust and both must come to a place where they choose to move ahead, to forgive and to try again. Blaze and Joselle learn from one-another and become more complete people because of their friendship and their trials. Real relationships take work and forgiveness, they can be tenuous but they can also free you from your fears and your chains.
Henkes is most famous for his children’s picture books: Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse, Chrysanthemum, Kitten’s First Full Moon. While his illustrations are necessary to that work, he also uses a great deal of literary imagery to push the emotions in Words of Stone. The first word of stones on the hill spell Blaze’s mother’s name “Reena”.
“Squinting, Blaze leaned on the windowsill, his nose pressed to the screen, then pulled back. The word was still there. It seemed to fill the window. The window seemed to fill the room. Blaze was smaller than ever.” (13)
Joselle writes words on her leg, at first for fun and then to remind herself of what she must atone. Blaze has vivid dreams related to his fears and perceived failures. Henkes begins with the images: snakes, keyholes, and fire, and proceeds to unveil little by little what these images mean. There are the stones around the tree that represent the “death” of Blaze’s invisible friends married with the stones on the hill spelling his secrets. Glenn, Blaze’s father, is an artist and it becomes clear that Blaze is one as well. The act of creating art is portrayed as cathartic for Glenn. Blaze is as timid with his art as he is with his life, and the story mirrors his progress as an artist, as well as painting another picture of what Blaze values and needs.
Words of Stone is identified for ages 8 and up. Children will identify with the story and the honestly depicted characters who are dealing with things many children will just be beginning to come to terms with. It is a strong tale of becoming as well as of what friendship requires. This book would be a good read-a-loud in the classroom and could lead to great discussions about life and friendship. The book also deftly discusses the emotions children have when dealing with very serious loss: the death of a parent or the abandonment by one. This book can be a safe place to begin for a child dealing with such issues and they will find confidants in Blaze and Joselle
Cover image and quotations from:
Henkes, Kevin. Words of Stone. New York: Harper Trophy, 2005. Print.
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