Round Up

R.I.P. Eunice Kennedy Shriver and Edward M. "Ted" Kennedy. There are so many that have a lot and do nothing. These two had a lot and did a lot.

R.I.P. Karla Kuskin-children's book author and illustrator.

Today, August 28 is the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s I Have a Dream speech, which called for racial equality in the United States. I think Dr, King would be proud of far we have come, but we have light years to go. Every time I hear Dr. King giving this speech, every time I see this video and see all of the people marching on Washington, the blacks, the whites, the young and old, women and men, my heart just swells. I also end up in tears because I am an old softie (don't tell anyone, you'll ruin my street cred!!)






Timber Talk

I've been bumping into a lot of interesting lists of late, and you all know how I love lists. These are all from Wikipedia.

List of scandals with "gate" suffix

Blue plaques. Blue plaques are commemorative plaques that are placed in a public place. Quite a few cities have them, but I am most fascinated with the ones in the United Kingdom, specifically in London. Here is the history of London's blue plaques and here is another site about London's blue plaques. (Wikipedia has a list of the plaques as well, but there is a problem with the page at this time).

I actually like plaques period. I use to drive my family nuts when we were on vacation because I had to collect all of the pamphlets and read every plaque and every sign.

List of tool-lending libraries (yes, I like all sorts of libraries).



Gardiner's Sign List is a list of common hierglyphs complied by Sir Alan Gardiner.

Ladies are you freezing at work. I have always been a super hot person, but I too get chilly with the excessive air conditioning that is used at my place of employment and on the commuter bus I take each day. I have a couple of trusty shawls that I have had for years that I carry with me in the summer, and I always keep a sweater at work. I love that the Chilly Jilly Wrap can fold up so small and fit right in your bag.

I think trees are wonderful and I've been known to throw a fit when I see trees being cut down in the name of "progress", which usually means some stupid, modern steel office building or worse yet a whole garden of McMansions. Anywho, as much as I like trees, I also like wood. You see my dilemma. I am gaga for wooden boats. Apparently I am not the only one.


New words for 2009.




Dad posts his art, his young daughter comments on it-Tiny Art Director blog.


Am I the only one who thinks sea stacks are beautiful.











Since Blogger appears to have a bee in its bonnet, I am going to save the rest of the links for next week.

I think we all could use a bit of cheering up this week so I leave you with Laurel and Hardy like you have never seen them before.




"There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power." - Washington Irving

Round Up

Before I post some links, I want to go on a bit about a couple of pet peeves of mine.

Firstly, I am so annoyed with all of these low literacy, mental midgets who are going on and on about government-controlled health care. Get real!! Haven't any of these people heard of Medicare, which most of them will be using at some point in their lives. It's government-controlled and yes, there have been problems, but for the most part it works. I am also sick of people talking about socialism. I think they really want to just replace the word socialism with the "n" word anyway. They may think they are fooling people, but they aren't fooling this woman.

My second pet peeve is about television programming in general and in particular. When the first forensics shows were televised I was so excited. I love science and medicine and these shows just seemed perfect to me. The first couple of seasons of the various CSI's were enough for me. First of all there are too many of them. Now I watch Bones and I love it. What annoys me is something very shallow, but I think it speaks to a larger issue. Why must they lighten the female actors hair? When Bones first aired, Emily Deschanel was brunette. An attractive brunette. Now with each passing season her hair is getting lighter and lighter. It looks nice, but I can just see that if the show goes on for another few years she is going to be blonde.

They do this on so many shows. What annoys me even more is when there are two dark haired parents and all of the children are blonde and have blue eyes. On the rare occasion when I would watch Everyone Loves Raymond (until I found out about Patricia Heaton's conservatism, and then I never watched again) it would astound me that these two dark-haired individual had 3 blonde children.

I could go on and on about this, but I'll stop. I get on these tangents every once in awhile.

The world's smallest deer.

This blogger is living without a fridge.

There is information on over 35, 000 slaving voyages (it makes me shudder to type that number) at the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

I think this is so cool-John Quincy Adams is tweeting. The tweets are taken from one of his diaries.

An amazing Flickr success story over at Archives Next. I had seen this photograph of Phineas Gage before and never gave it a second thought. This is excellent and shows how amazing the Internet can be.

The National Archives has joined Flickr.

I can't wait for Ken Burns' new project The National Parks to air next month.

Books to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Woodstock. I was to young to actually attend Woodstock, but if I had been older I so would have been there with my bell bottoms, my Angela Davis Afro and a purple dashiki, I would have been there and loved every single minute of it.

I am getting a huge kick out of Jane Mount's bookshelf portraiture.

Maira Kalman has done it again. She has made me love Benjamin Franklin even more than I did before.

Fantasy and Science Fiction writers and their work spaces. I'm such an author groupie that I enjoy seeing where these incredibly talented folks create.

Oh, I am in awe. Some treasures from the New York Public Library.

An unpublished story by Langston Hughes discovered.

Look at the cutie that is modeling clothes for Lark.

This "HOLD ME" tape is funny.

Yippee!!!! Chalkboard paint now comes in colors.

That's all for now folks. Have a wonderful weekend. I leave you with a Woodstock classic by Richie Havens-Freedom. (if you scroll down the comments you can read about the song and Mr.Havens' dental situation).


"How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!" Emily Dickinson

Round Up

R.I.P. Naomi Sims

The Texas Library Association raises money for hurricane victims with a calendar. Just in case you wanted to make a purchase.

27 Hot Television and Movie Vampires

A book that I must read: Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt.

It's time for the 127 Sale-The World's Longest Yard Sale.

List of 60 Best Books of the past 60 years.

People Pencils-color pencils in a range of colors to represent people's skin tones.

Yes, we all have them. Family photographs that we feel should be hidden away somewhere and never to see the light of day. Or you could take another tack and sent them to Awkward Family Photos. Lots of fun stuff on this site.

Did you know that you could contribute words to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)? And speaking of the OED, this September the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary with Additional Material from a Thesaurus of Old English will be published. And guess what, it has been 40 years in the making. This two-volume set not only groups words of similar meanings, but words are also arranged chronologically. The chronological arrangement allows the reader to trace the development of English words throughout history. At 3,952 pages this wondrous tome doesn't come cheap. It lists at $395.00. My idea of heaven would be to rent a beach house on one of the many Maine islands and sit on the deck with this wonder and read, read, read.

Ninjawords-a really fast dictionary.

40 farmers under 40.

What fun-A Pie-a-Day project.

NativeWiki is a free, open-to-the-public library of information about indigenous nations and peoples of the world.

13-year old, yep that's correct, 13 year old Sophie Epstein has a YA literature blog, Mrs. Magoo Reads. Her blog contains book reviews, author interviews and video reviews.

Library lovers target Ben & Jerry's.

Some ways that your library can make the most of Twitter.

Have a great weekend. I will leave you with the fabulously incredible Renee Fleming singing Dvorak's Song to the Moon Rusalka Gala Tucker 91.



"Music is love in search of a world." Sidonie Gabrielle