Possible Lead

At the Dutch Royal Institute For Cultural Heritage they have a set of tapestries that include pictures of period Rom interacting with the locals from about 1500. Down at the very bottom left of the tapestry called "The Fair" there is a female figure who I think might be a dancer. She's wearing the ever popular white turban and a v-necked kirtle, similar in shape to the Spanish vertigale gowns you can see on the ladies in waiting here. This picture is by a Spanish painter Pedro Garcia de Benabarre and is dated between 1470 and 1480.

It is possible that the small female Rom is actually supposed to be a child. I've read a few commentaries on how the locals in an area often despised the Rom for the tatters they dressed their children in and the figure is smaller then the nobles. However, if the figure is only smaller because they were still working out perspective for use in tapestry, this may be one of the links I've been looking for.

It's exceptionally hard to document information on a physical art form such as dance or acting. We normally have to rely on written records from the past or clues in the play we perform to get our cues. However, even today the Rom are not known for writing things down. Most of the historical records I've found for them come from an outside source documenting their arrival or passage. That's why this tapestry may be so important to me. I'm looking for the earliest documentable "Gypsy Dancer" and this is the first one I've seen a picture of so far.

Why do I think she's a dancer? The belt around her waist is very hard to make out, but I suspect it's a set of the large acorn-shaped folly bells like the ones Cynthia du Pré Argent talks about for her

houppelande. The other forward lady, down right of the tapestry, looks like she's holding one in her hand as well. Then, around her left wrist, there's a length of ribbon floating out from her body. Her arms appear to be moving, spread out away from her body and her leg is pretty easy to see as well. In fact, I don't see a long chemise to cover that leg, just a shirt under the gown. Maybe the chemise had a slit in it? Maybe I can't see a detail on-line that's visible in a different picture? I need more evidence!

I'd like to try and find a few more pictures of dancers from about 1500 and compare them. If I can find them I may be able to start reconstructing actual dance steps as well as period-correct costuming. This could be really cool.

Kings College went well.

The Rom clothing was a success! While it wasn't exactly visually stunning, it was comfortable, light weight, and easy to get into and out of in the back seat of a car. Those of you with access to fancy dressing rooms may sniff but I've gotten used to speed dressing at events in the weirdest places.

The outfit was visually period which was very important to me. The next version of it will be even better. I have some coral colored linen for the drape and enough black linen for the re-enforcing stripe. I think I may be able to make some nice ribbon ties out of the scraps as well.

For this drape I scavenged an old poly-cotton striped skirt from an unwanted dress. The stripe of black cotton sheeting was sewn down on the top, then I ran out of thread and time. Also, I couldn't figure out why the pattern I was using wanted the stripe 18 inches from the edge. That would have put my little bit of material almost in half making it very bulky, so I only put it 6 inches in. After everything was put together did the penny drop. That extra fold of material becomes a pocket! I was able to carry a small bag with my notes, phone, and wallet in the little pocket I had made. Next time I think I'll make it a 12 inch fold since I rarely need to carry much more then that. The drape itself didn't come down past my knee which is a little bit short looking at the pictures. The next one will be wider. I also am very tempted to start carrying documentation for the outfit in the pocket as well. A few people did ask about it and were totally shocked that it was a "Gypsy" outfit.

The white linen chemise held up fine and the silk turban worked well, particularly since I made my hair into a bun before putting the turban on. That's not normally how I do it, but it kept the thing balanced better. I'm really looking at all the bizarre and interesting hats that keep showing up in these pictures and thinking I'm going to need to sit down and play with some lengths of fabric for awhile. There's this huge almost Chinese coolie looking hat that's seen fairly often. I usually see it more on males then females, but I've got a Bruegel painting that *may* have a female telling fortunes wearing one of these whoppers.

Bruegel was known for putting daily details, common things that his audience would have already known, into his paintings to add verisimilitude. His painting of The Sermon of St. John is dated roughly 1566 which is about 66 years later then I wanted, but includes lots of costumy goodness. Many costumers of my acquaintance use Bruegel as a reliable source so I hope I can do the same.

I'll keep looking around to see what I can find and build. While the outfits themselves seem pretty straight forward, the hats are going to be a little more complicated if I do them right.

Crafty in Summer

I don't know about where you live, but around here we tend to hide from the summer heat as much as possible. Often, I accomplish this by means of doing crafty stuff but I just can't quite get up the urge to knit when the sidewalk out front just melted. Ok, I exaggerate for effect. The street is melted though, around the edges, no joke.

So I was doing a little research on-line. Some people just call it fooling around on the computer but I had sort of goal in mind. I wanted a summer outfit for the SCA that was different enough to stand out, but as light-weight and comfortable as possible. Also, it had to be seriously period and Western European according to our organizational charter. Right now, you can't throw a rock at an event without hitting someone in a sari (outside of place) or a chiton (outside of period).

When I was first getting started in the SCA I made a newb mistake. At my very first meeting I introduced myself as "Lady So-n-so of Other There"(not what I actually said). When it was kindly explained to me that 'Lady' is the title of an award given by the King, I was sure they were going to toss me out on my ear. Instead, a sweet lady pointed out that there were a group of people in period who had a habit of giving themselves Really Great Titles and that I should do a little research on the Rom or Gypsies. I jumped head first into that information, but I've never gotten around to making a proper, period Rom outfit. For one thing, they're just not really flashy.

Now I find myself looking for lightweight period gear and I think it's time to make that later period Rom outfit. First we consider the period sources. I've tried to put a few down at the bottom here. Then we see what other people have made along the same lines. Old Marian was one of the better researchers I know of and she died just recently. I'd be proud to wear her pattern.

So I took apart an unused Italian Renn styled gown for the large rectangle of skirt fabric. The fabric itself is a mid-weight gold and green striped poly cotton (ugh! hot) and I'm sewing a line of black cotton sheeting made into trim down it for the contrasting stripe. I've got some black ribbon I'll use to attach the drape at the shoulder and I'll be wearing it over a round necked linen chemise I made last year. I've got a rectangular silk drape with lots of hand embroidery on it that I can use for the turban and I'm hoping I can find ghillie shoes. If not, I may just wear leather sandals.

Later on, if this outfit proves comfy, I'll work on developing new and better turbans. Some of the ones in the pictures are huge and I'm sure there was a trick to them.

Back to sewing for me! What do you do to stay cool and alert in the summer?

Another batch of Neruda

If you haven't heard of Pablo Neruda then I am very sorry for you. This poet was from Chile and unlike many of the other poets I prefer was alive during the 20th century. I'll lift a bit here from his Wikipedia entry to save you the trouble of looking for the basics.

"Pablo Neruda (July 12, 1904 – September 23, 1973) was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean writer and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. With his works translated into many languages, Pablo Neruda is considered one of the greatest and most influential poets of the 20th century. He chose his pen name in honour of the famous Czech poet Jan Neruda."

The article goes on to mention that he wrote many different styles of poems, but honestly I think his best work is in his love poems. Steamy like a South American jungle at midnight, I tell you. Here, I'll let you have a sample:

If You Forget Me I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: if I look at the crystal moon, at the red branch of the slow autumn at my window, if I touch near the fire the impalpable ash or the wrinkled body of the log, everything carries me to you, as if everything that exists, aromas, light, metals, were little boats that sail toward those isles of yours that wait for me. Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land. But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine. Pablo Neruda If your toes didn't just curl a little then I say to you there is no romance in your soul! The idea of a love almost lost or remembered in a sweetly melancholy way is often in his works. He also loads his poems with taste and scent words, speaking to the senses poets often overlook. Many of his poems talk about the idea of a perfect woman but there are also poems that are just admitting total lust with someone. These are not poems to read out loud to your mother. Personally when I found out that Borders had a copy of The Poetry of Pablo Neruda for about $20 I had a small moment of "SQUEEE!" then ran over and bought it. I keep it handy for rainy days, or for dropping on small yappy type dogs since it's a fairly heavy book. Don't let the size fool you though, once you get into it you'll hate to let it end. Stavans, Ilan. Editor. The Poetry of Pablo Neruda New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003

Coffee and Rum

Otherwise know as, The Difference Between On-Line and Reality.

One of the more curious parts of life on the internet is the fact that we get a chance to stand out on the merits of our minds and personalities first, before people ever see our faces. We get to know, respect and admire people without even learning their gender, skin color, or age. For the good people who want to interact with other good people, this is a really nifty thing. For the bad people, that's a different post on Mask Syndrome.

On-line as in Real Life we all try to stand out. Our habits and personality traits tend to become more focused and sharper, since we don't have the softening edges of body language or outside stimuli to distract from what we're saying. If your personality is naturally abrasive or sarcastic you find that it doesn't always translate well. Equally, people who are shy and not self-promoting often vanish into the background in an online social setting.

My own observation is that since humans like labels it's easier to remember one or two personality points about them on-line and, if you like those points, open yourself up for a more in depth relationship. Moving from Acquaintance to On-Line Friend to Real World Friend can happen very quickly, slowly, or not at all, depending on the basic original points of communication. If the first interaction someone has with you is unpleasant to them, you have little or no chance of ever moving beyond that first impression without changing your handle. In that respect, it is easier to live down a bad first contact on-line but it's not guaranteed.

Once upon a time, I used to drink a lot. Every night I'd crawl into at least one bottle of wine or more. I'd lost my job, my kid hated me, I failed in everything I put my hand to. I hated myself, but when I drank I didn't have to notice how much I sucked. In fact, I could blame all my bad behaviors on the booze. How easy and convenient!

Of course when I drank I could stay up very, very late indeed. That meant that I required a pot of coffee to make it through the next day, so I could drink again. Coffee only works for so long though before your body gets used to it.

I had mentioned in passing to a friend I regularly drank with that I wasn't going to drink sodas anymore. They're really bad for you and it wouldn't hurt me to cut the extra sugar out of my diet. He laughed at me, reminding me of all the other things I put into my body on a regular basis. I hate having my logical inconsistencies pointed out, particularly when I'm feeling so self-righteously healthy. Most people do I believe.

Since then I've learned moderation. I try to limit my drinking to one or two glasses of wine a week and I'm down to a single cup of coffee per day. But all the people I met on-line don't know that. They met me when I reveled in excess and there's very little I can do to convince them that I don't actually swim in barrels of rum every day.

There are worse faces to show the world, but I still feel a little pang when I'm reminded of how very foolish I can be. Moderation may not be a very clever way to get people's attention on-line, but perhaps I've had all the attention I need for now.

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

So the other day my new room mate was watching over my shoulder as I navigated one of my pixelated darlings through the caves and sewers under Paragon City. I was showing off my favorite computer game, City of Heros and I lamented that my system is just a little old. I couldn't show off all the really awesome graphics and fabulous reflections because I had one measly little gig of memory and a video card that sometimes grinds its teeth and growls at me.

"I've got some spare memory," he said "You can have it if you want."

I jumped on that like a duck on a june bug and we got it into the rig last night. I was able to play for several more hours afterwards with the game just humming along. No more avoiding teams because it takes half the mission for me to get through the door! No more avoiding Atlas Park because I have to move one frame per second!

This morning I got up and turned the computer on. It began to loop, refusing to boot up at all. Eventually, I got it to come on in safe mode and called my husband who handles my tech issues and nervous breakdowns regularly. He suspects the memory might have been bad and that the image on my hard drive may be corrupted. *sigh*

Later today I'm going to be attempting to broadcast my streaming radio program by using my laptop for the game-side and a separate music machine. I envy the octopus who knows where each of his arms is at any given time.

Today I am thankful that I have a laptop, grateful that there is a work-around, and vowing to keep my mouth shut and be happier with what I have in the future.

Think Globally, Eat Locally

One of the big social concerns right now in the Western Hemisphere is how to reduce our oil and gas use. One of the other big social concerns is how to reduce the size of our butts. Oddly enough, in many ways the answers to both of these questions are related. No, I haven't developed a car that runs on human fat (yet).

In many places in the U.S. there exists something called a 'food desert'. According to the website Market Makeovers a food desert "is a term that describes geographic areas where mainstream grocery stores are either totally absent or inaccessible to low-income shoppers. Though these may be located in the vicinity, they remain unavailable to low-income residents because of high prices and inadequate public transit. While the phenomenon is typically associated with large, urban communities, it can also occur in rural neighborhoods."

The Local Food Movement is a handy label for a group of people who think that food deserts and general lack of healthy edibles also help contribute to the dependence on fossil fuels. Mother Earth News has an article that sums this idea up very neatly by saying "With the fast-growing local foods movement, diets are becoming more locally shaped and more seasonal. In a typical supermarket in an industrial country today, it is often difficult to tell which season it is, because the store tries to make everything available on a year-round basis. As oil prices rise, this will become less common. In essence, a reduction in the use of oil to transport food over long distances — whether by plane, truck or ship — will also localize the food economy."

So what does this mean for you, me, and the loud guy in the apartment down the hall? Well it's getting easier to find local farmers markets. They're even staying open later for those of us who stay out to late on Friday nights. It's also getting easier to find a neighbor in the area who has chickens, or somebody growing tomatoes and peas on the roof or in a corner of the yard. Lots of people (including the First Lady) are putting in vegetable gardens or subscribing to a produce delivery service like Greenling. Finding local green food is getting easier and that means healthier people and hopefully less use of gas.

If you happen to be able to strap a cooler to your bike and ride over to the local farmer's market, you'll be arriving in style. If you're like me and have to drive to get there, make sure to take a cooler with wheels, a few ice packs, and some comfy walking shoes. Lots of places give out samples but you'll probably want to bring along a full water bottle of your own just in case.

Personally, I'm going to take a crack at eating better closer to home by going to visit Boggy Creek Farm as soon as I can. I need to go make friends with some chickens. I'm also planning to get a few dwarf fruit trees for my lot to go with the tomato and pepper plants I already have. I might even go crazy and get a row of corn in before the summer gets too hot.

What brought this all up today? I had to mow the lawn. More garden means less to mow and if I'm going to be watering all of that anyway I'd rather be able to eat it.

Not Another Review!

So far, this blog has clung fairly tightly to things I feel I'm educated enough to speak about. Now we face a different animal altogether: Mansmell.

One of my umbrella hobbies is the SCA. I call it an umbrella hobby because it allows me access to a wide range of nifty things to do, classes teaching me how to do it, and groups of people to do it with. Restrain your snickering. One of the minor hobbies it allows me to indulge in is travel and meeting new people with similar interests.

One of the gentlemen that I've known around the group for a few years has had a conflict with his girl. In passing a few months ago I told him if he needed a spare place to stay he was welcome to crash at my place for a little while. He thanked me, and passed it off as something he hoped wouldn't be needed.

Last night at midnight he showed up on my doorstep with a U-haul full of gear and a serious expression. She had broken the lease and told him to get out. He has a job interview here today and could he possibly use that couch? Of course I said yes. I admit I'm a soft touch for the Big Sad Eyes routine some days, particularly very late at night.

So today he starts moving a few things in so he can see out of the truck and I remembered why I had toyed with becoming a nun when I was younger. Please don't mistake me, I've very fond of men on the whole. Some of my best friends are male. But Oh Dear Bast do you guys tend to stink! Men have a way of making innocent laundry develop the most disgusting odors in less time then it takes to say "Hey, how about a shower?"

Out in the open, when I'm fighting for example, it's no big deal. If a guy has padding that's so foul it can walk on its own, I can get upwind. If he hasn't showered in a week and we're camping I can give him personal space. But, trapped in the confines of my own living room with two grown males in the house, my sensitive nose is wondering if I can get Fabreeze into every corner of the room every hour on the hour.

Currently I'm doing the new roomie's laundry. It's partially because I'm a nice person and partially self-defense. How many times can one wear the same pants before they are "Too foul"? How do men survive living in barracks together? Are they just not as sensitive nose-wise?

It's going to be an interesting month.

Blowing Things Up

Every now and then I get really frustrated with some inanimate object and I threaten to blow it up. Animate objects tend to be threatened with being lit on fire. I have just decided that this recently attempted book is so bad it should be both set on fire and blown up. I simply haven't figured out which to do first.

I've been attempting to read The Mother Tongue: English & How It Got That Way by Bill Bryson. Mr. Bryson has advanced several theories on the forming of English and he attempts to use this book to back them up. It's not really a scholarly tome, since he's pretty hit-or-miss about where he got his information from. Sadly, it's also not a humorous book either, since it seems to consist primarily of lists of words. Not exactly a thrilling read.

Mr. Bryson wanders around poking at the beginnings of English in a half-hearted way in the first part of the book. If you took everything he claims literally, then English was more or less invented by Shakespeare. I'm fairly baffled by that and I'm sure Chaucer, Marlowe, and Ben Jonson would object as well.

He makes a stab at interesting information in chapter 7 when he starts talking about regional varieties of English. Sadly, he wanders into jargon and word lists again really quickly. Just because I happen to know what a shibboleh is, doesn't mean that many people picking this book up randomly will. In fact, most of the book wanders back and forth between scholarly jargon and speculations, and a sort of buddy-buddy storytelling that doesn't even pretend to be able to back itself up. Of course, you have to fight your way through the maddening lists of words that seem like someone was just trying to pad out the word count.

While I generally try my best to read all the way through a bad book, particularly one recommended to me by someone I respect, I had to quit reading this one. Around chapter 10 I was so fed up with the circular logic and random word lists that I pitched the book across the room. Please don't sic the librarians on me.

Bah! Lucky for this book, it belongs to the library. I'm going to take it back there today and try to locate something better written and with decent footnotes. Or maybe just a nice juicy romance novel, whichever.

Bryson, Bill. The Mother Tongue: English and How It Got That Way

New York. William Morrow And Company, Inc 1990

Double Shot Friday!

You celebrate your Friday in your way and I'll do it in mine. Today that celebration is a two-for-one review of Cool Stuff I Found (I'd trademark that, but it would be way too much work).

I have a habit of looking for new and unusual music, strange mixes of songs already loved or just blending of genres that come out well. Recently I found a CD at my local library that mostly fell into the Celtic music category except the song that starts off the show.

The first song on the Austin Celtics album created by the Austin Celtic Society is yet another rendition of Scotland the Brave. I know, I know, you've heard it. You can hum it. It comes free with every bagpipe purchase ever and you're pretty well fed up with everlasting Scotland The Brave. Yeah, but have you heard it with samba drums? You read that right, samba. Brazilian Carnival music. The group is called Samba Thistle, I think they are from Brazil, and I've got to go find more of this stuff. Anything that makes me actually want to listen to Scotland the Brave has got some serious amusement factor to it.

I played the song for a few people and have since been informed that I melted a few brains. I need to see if these folks have an album of their own I can buy. Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha!

There are other excellent songs on the album including a slightly funny, slightly sad song about a bagpiper called Amazing Grace (Again) by Wolf Loescher and a seriously goofy drinking song called No Place For Drinking by Hair of The Dog. All in all, I'd say this is a good sampling of the kind of Celtic music you can find in Austin. Which, I suppose, is the whole point.

The other cool find I wanted to share with you is from my own bookshelf. Everyone has a few books that they keep going back to after they read them. Most books are good once or twice but some you just keep reading over and over. This is one of mine.

A few years ago I was desperately short on new stuff to read so I toddled on over to the Baen Free Library on-line and started looking for something new.

MINOR SIDE NOTE: You don't know about the Baen Free Library?! Where have you been the past few years??

But I digress, often. I started reading March Upcountry by John Ringo and David Weber and I really liked it. Then I read 1632 by Eric Flint and David Weber and that was good too. I went over to the local bookshop to buy them and there was a whole shelf of David Weber's Honor Harrington series, which was very tasty indeed. I started picking up anything with the man's name on it, I didn't want to miss a single book.

Then I found a book called Path of The Fury. Oddly enough, this is the one I come back to over and over. It's a stand-alone book, no series to it. It's space opera of the highest sort and there's plenty of Navy-jargon and ambitious space travel science. There's also a pretty amazing body count, with 25 pirates and the main character's entire family getting taken out in the first scene, but it's not exceptionally gory.

I've often enjoyed Mr. Weber's female characters who seem equally competent and modest about their abilities, but in the past I've sometimes cringed a little at the almost constant "right woman in the wrong place" coincidences that occur. In this book if you can get past the original weird plot twist then the rest of it makes perfect sense. This book is an action movie waiting for the right director and a sympathetic screen writer. Its got the explosions, the espionage, the witty patty, and the possible hint of a love interest.

As a card carrying member of "If It's Printed, I'll Read It", I find it refreshing to have a book I can enjoy re-reading over and over again. I must recommend it.

Weber, David. Path Of The Fury.

Riverdale, N.Y.: Baen Publishing Enterprises 1992

Austin Celtic Association. Austin Celtics

Austin, TX: Produced by David Armstrong 2000

Bibliocide by Cataloging

"Librarians have long tried to catalog the world in all its complexity. They want to describe things accurately, find the right name for this rare bird or that; but they are also looking for a description that fits into the architecture of information, that shows where the bird fits into its family, genus, species and so on. They argue passionately about the facts." [pg 120, This Book Is Overdue!]

Human beings like labels. For whatever reason, we all enjoy an easy way to divide up and quantify the world around us. Back when there weren't as many labels for things, we made tales of evil in the forests or gods at the bottoms of sinkholes. Putting a label on something allows a human being to relax slightly because that means we Know What It Is and can probably deal with it.

But what if something isn't easily labeled? What if the things you're trying to describe is neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat? Some times, in the past, we made up another label and just stuck it on there. Check any local plant guide to find out how many names your area has for Queen Anne's Lace. More recently though, I've noticed a trend towards "tagging" and that makes me nervous.

A Tag isn't a bad thing. It's a search term added to something in a database that allows whatever you're looking for to be located by subject. Generally a generic, but useful feature. This blog so far could be tagged "bibliophile", "Books" and possibly "lunatic". The trouble with tagging though is that the choice of tag is often dependent whoever created the entry in the database, and what they think that entry is. Totally fine if it's a piece about the mating habits of the common goldfish, but what if you're talking something new here? What if you found a rare anti-gravity goldfish who lives in trees and shoots tiny black holes out of its eyes? How do you tag something that's new, that doesn't even have a name or a jargon attached to it? and that's where things get sticky

I like to watch movies on one of the gamines consoles at the house. The program I use accesses a massive database and allows me to flip through and pick almost anything I want to watch and then streams it to my place. I don't even have to locate my shoes if I'm craving a film. The trouble with it is, it's a tag-dependent system and the entries were made by someone who really doesn't see films the same way I do. If I tell it that I really like one particular Shakespearean film it will assume I like all of them. But what if I only liked it because of a particular actor or a really spiff hat? I don't have a way to search the database for movies "With dialog like Lion In Winter, heavy sci-fi action, and a great musical number half-way though" because no one else makes tags like that. Ok, the movie in question may not exist but how am I to know?

In the long run I'm curious to find out how many pieces of information we've lost or missed out on because somebody really needed to hang a label on it and define it once and for all. Now if you'll excuse me I need to go find my umbrella. There's something shining in the treetops and I want to keep the goldfish out of my hair.

I Practice Bibliomancy...

the art of Divination by jolly way Looking It Up!

I was unaware that there was a term for this special gift of mine until I happened to pick up a book at my local library. The book is called "This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All" written by self-described "librarian hunter" Marilyn Johnson.

Ms. Johnson has written a book cheerleading and praising many new developments in libraries, which may not seem like a big deal to most people. However, since we currently live in a world that is drowning in information, it doesn't hurt to be a little more interested in the people whose job it is to sort, sift, and otherwise focus the incoming noise into whatever it is we're looking for.

While many of us can operate a basic query in an on-line search engine, what happens when that query comes up blank? Or worse, when it returns 80000 entries? Ms. Johnson's book points up the fact that all of us need a little human help now and then. The librarian is the person who gets paid to provide that help, plus they keep it private. Like a bartender, a good librarian will hear pretty much everything and tell none of it.

The book itself is written almost like a collection of short essays grouped around a theme. She touches on the conflict between new information services and old library science, "information sickness", IT issues, The PATRIOT Act, Social Justice, Librarian Stereotypes, Bloggers, and Archivists. Most of her material comes from interviews with real librarians or archivists, with a healthy smattering of research from actually going into the libraries in question. That gives it an immediacy that makes it particularly appealing to me, since the copyright is 2010. In fact, I'd like to read it again in about 10 years or so to see what may have changed.

The most of this book had me bouncing around the room exclaiming and reading parts of it out loud to whoever was unfortunate enough to be in the house with me. The chapter on the "master's in Liberal Arts with a Concentration in Global Development and Social Justice" actually was so compelling I got up and ran to the computer to look up more information about St. John's University. I narrowly manged to talk myself out of another master's degree.

The only portion I didn't care for was the chapter and concentration by the author on the library systems in Second Life. Back in the day when I worked for IBM, Second Life was widely touted as an excellent product, easy to use, and recommended as the platform of the new Global Market. So I grabbed myself an account and jumped in. For a month I wandered around Second Life and I hated pretty much all of it. The graphics and UI were clunky and slow, everything cost real money for fake items, and I never saw another real human at all. I was bombarded with ads, but couldn't get any real time help ever. While the author seems to have had a really great experience in Second Life, I didn't. So there was no way for me to relate to her obvious enjoyment of the game. This was the chapter that allowed me to put the book down and go to sleep however, so there's a silver cloud in everything.

All in all, this book really helped me to take a renewed interest in my own long term goal of becoming a research librarian. I'm currently in school, working on my bachelor's degree in history towards the master's in Information Science and this book encouraged me to keep working on it. Even though I picked it up from the library, I'll probably go and buy this one just to keep it on hand as a pick me up when the work-load gets to me later.

Johnson, Marilyn. This Book Is Overdue! How Librarians and Cybrarians Can Save Us All

New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. print

Mirrors and Truth

According to The Oxford History of Literary Translation In English: To 1550 by Roger Ellis "A Glasse Of The Truth, published three times between 1530 and 1532, and possibly written by Henry VIII, was translated into Latin (by Nicholas Hawkins) and French ( by John Psalgrave) in 1532." [pg 108] Henry was pretty hot to get out his opinion on the world at the time, in particular his thoughts on his on-going fight with the Catholic Church in general, and the Pope in particular. He was upset because he figured that he was a big boy and nobody should be able to tell him who he was going to be married to, particularly not some guy all the way over in Rome.

Myself, I'm not really worried about the Pope. I do, however, need a place where I can develop (or possibly locate) my own literary style and give out my own opinions on the world at the time. So I've gone ahead and borrowed Henry's rather catchy title. If he objects, he's free to drop me an email and we'll talk about it.

One of the reasons I wanted to use the term "glasse" was that in earlier times a mirror wasn't a false reflection of the things around us(See Christine de Pisan's Book of The City of Ladies) Instead, it was an accurate way to look at things without all the clutter of daily life. Into the Looking Glass was the way to see reality instead of all the false faces around a person. Do I expect to be able to "hold up the mirror" and show everyone the truth? I can try. I sort of doubt it'll be much more then my own opinion on things but I'd like to hope that's fairly well-thought out.

Who am I? Now there's a loaded question. Depending on the context it's asked in I am a wife, mother, ex-wife, girlfriend, sister, daughter(in-law), student, teacher, maid, actor, cook, researcher, director, fighter, healer, chauffeur and general danger to others. Professionally, I am unemployed. Socially, I am over-committed. Spiritually, I may be a speed bump. Habitually, I am a writer.

I am afraid the topics in question will veer wildly. I expect random book reviews, occasional rants, theatre and dance kibitzing, costume malfunctions, and selections from cookbooks. There may be commentary on video games, teen-agers, potatoes, podcasting, and cats. There probably won't be very many pictures but who knows?

I'm curious to see what happens next.