Thanksgiving Memories

Memories of Thanksgivings past are associated in my mind with aunts, uncles, cousins, parents, and brother gathered around a graciously set dining table and sharing the same menu of holiday dishes each year. Real fine china was used for those dinners, not the disposable "fine china" we sometimes use today to save time on clean up. Following dinner everyone helped to clear the table, wash and dry the dishes, and return them to their assigned place in Gram's pantry.

Then we all gathered in the living room to visit and watch the annual telecast of The Wizard of Oz. Wonderfully scary yet entertaining, both children and adults watched with enjoyment the good witch, the wicked witch, flying monkeys, lessons learned by the wonderful group of pilgrims following the yellow brick road looking for help from the all knowing and powerful Wizard of Oz. And who can forget the satisfaction of the house landing on the wicked witch, allowing Dorothy to gain those magical ruby slippers?


Oh, those ruby slippers! Highly prized by memorabilia collectors, one pair of the original ruby slippers loaned to the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids, Minnesota (birthplace of Judy Garland who played Dorothy in the movie) was stolen in 2005. They have yet to be found although occasional rumors surface that indicate authorities may be close to recovering them. One might wishfully hope that the thief would suffer the same fate as the witch--it would be fitting to have a house fall on the perpetrator.

These thoughts came to mind recently when assistant Pam's sister brought in a quilt she'd made for another sister who's a fan of the film as well. Barb Mayer made the quilt in a really short time as a gift despite an injured shoulder so it really was a labor of love. We had to take some pictures as we all have such wonderful memories of watching the movie with rapt attention as children.


If wishing could make it so, perhaps that house will fall on the thief and the ruby slippers will be returned to their rightful owner.

Exploring 2D barcodes

They're ubiquitous, those little squares with funny markings inside them. I've seen them everywhere and often wondered about them. What are they for? What do they mean? But I've never taken a step further to find out more about them. I recently bumped into their name, 2D barcodes, and finally decided to find out more about them.

They can hold a lot more data than the single numeric barcode we use to identify library books. They're generally read from the center out, rather than the linear right to left of the barcodes used by libraries. They grow in size depending on the amount of data encoded and are based on a square grid.I chose the Aztec code for my example, but there are many others. And I suspect we will be seeing them more and more as the code is well suited for display on cell phones and other mobile devices.

I found a free barcode generator online and just to experiment put in my name, title, organization, city, state and ZIP code. Here's what it looks like along with a plug for the generator's company.

TEC-IT Barcode Software

Me as the Dewey Decimal System ?

It was just too fortuitous that I bumped into this little quiz which purports to show you as the Dewey Decimal System. Your name is converted to a class in the Dewey Decimal System; That's right... somewhere between 000 (Generalities) and 999 (Extraterrestrial worlds) you have a place, and through the magic of internet this quiz can find it through random arbitrary letter decoding. Plus this gives a chance to mention how wonderful libraries are... don't forget to go read something, yes?

So I just had to take the test and find out where I'd be classified on the shelf by Dewey. The beauty of this quiz is that it gives you three choices and you can take your pick of the one that you like best.

Where do I Dewey? Here's the first result the quiz gave me;

Linda Wadman's Dewey Decimal Section:

864 Spanish essays

Linda Wadman = 29441314314 = 294+413+143+14 = 864


Class:
800 Literature


Contains:
Literature, criticism, analysis of classic writing and mythology.



What it says about you:
You're a global, worldly person who wants to make a big impact with your actions. You have a lot to tell people and you're good at making unique observations about everyday experiences. You can notice and remember details that other people think aren't important.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Or I kind of liked this third selection:

Linda Wadman's Dewey Decimal Section:

638 Insect culture


Class:
600 Technology


Contains:
Health, agriculture, management, public relations, buildings.



What it says about you:
You are creative and inspired to make the world a better place. You can work hard on something when it catches your interest. Your friends have unique interests in common with you.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Fire in the Old Downtown Mountain Iron

My husband and I had just come back from grocery shopping and were putting the groceries away when we observed some smoke coming from the young neighbor couple's chimney. At first it looked like the wood fire was being stoked, but it quickly became apparent that it was more likely a chimney fire. After I called 911 to report it, I grabbed my Flip video camera to record the events.



Neighbor AnnMarie, with all too vivid flashbacks of the fire which burned her garage two years ago, was on hand with hugs and some warm gloves for Kate who got out of the house with pretty much only what she was wearing. I can only imagine the shock such devastation has brought to their lives.

DJ as another puzzle

DJ as another puzzle
Originally uploaded by linda_wadman

I used that favorite picture to turn grandson DJ into another puzzle using Dumpr, an online photo effects application. You don't need to sign in to Dumpr to create your project.

What was really cool about Dumpr what that you could not only easily save your project to disk, you could just as easily save it to your Flickr account. After doing that you could use Flickr to post it to your blog. All this was pretty much seamless except for giving permissions to each application to access your accounts to do so which worked very smoothly. It looks like I will have to edit the blog post to insert the link for Dumpr, because I can't see any way to do it in Flickr's interface, but how cool is that anyway. Great the way these apps can work together.

Make It Special - Book Gifts for Kids

Having loved books myself ever since I can remember, it's often what I turn to when selecting gifts for others. When giving the gift of a book to a child (or anyone else for that matter), you can make it special by adding a personalized bookplate to it.

There's a lovely selection of bookplates of all types and sizes at My Home Library. The bookplates can be used any way you like (except for commercial purposes). There's a lovely and growing selection contributed by well known illustrators of children's books. You're sure to find something suitable to make your gift of a book unique for that special person from among the many sizes and styles, color or black and white.

I found this simple one by Joan Aiken that appealed to me.

Where Kids Can Learn to ' Be'

While I was reading blogs several days ago, I ran into a blog Carrie and Danielle: How to live an inspired life, be true to you, and make a difference in the world where this question was posed: What is your favorite cultural activity that doesn't cost money?

There were lots of answers to this post, but the one I liked best was from Frances who gave this reply:

"It's the Library for me! I can travel the world, explore new science, learn any craft or skill right from our little Town. Any one can jump on the web super highway with access to special data bases paid for by the Library.

The Library is a meeting place; a place of arts/crafts; of meeting authors and it's the first place our kids can learn how to 'be' in our community.

Libraries aren't the stuffy, hear-a-pin-drop kind of places any more. They are vibrant, engaged inclusive places.

They are communal places that are built by and for the community and reflect the community's history and taste."

I love that idea the first place our kids can learn how to 'be' in our community.

That perfectly describes my rural library and many more like it that I know. How does yours measure up?