nichole's auxiliary storage

Dining rooms repurposed

So there's been some good discussion over at Apt. 11D and elsewhere of how today's modern, swinging families should use the formal dining rooms so common in houses of a certain age. Palabreria weighs in (mostly baby talk), and Mental Multivitamin has some gorgeous pictures of their dining room library.

I wouldn't have given this thread a second glance until now, but we've been house hunting and it's likely we'll end up with a formal dining room, though not by intent. We've considered making a dining room into an office, but the idea of more purpose- and community-driven uses, like a games room, is appealing. But

so much depends
upon

how many
people

are in a
family

and the house's
floor plan.

ugh - sorry.

Oryx and Crake

I liked it.
So for those who've read the book, what do you think happens after the end?

Power line pole proto-taxonomy

When JM was five, he devised names for various types of power line poles and his parents helped him make a photo album documenting them. This will be the cutest thing you see all day. Maybe all week.

Thanks to the In-ter-net, I recently asked some real linemen if the poles have nicknames. Alan at Northwest Lineman College, home of a nifty museum, wrote back:

"Poles do have some slang names that lineman have given them over the years. The name is typically associated with what the pole supports and the direction of the line. As an example if the line stops at a certain pole it is called a 'deadend pole' another example would be if the pole had a transformer installed it would be called a 'transformer pole'. I have never seen a compiled list of all the possible names but It would be a long list for sure."

Wayne at Utility Innovations, which has compiled a neat glossary of terms and other bits of lineman culture, wrote:

"I don't know any real slang terms for poles or crossarms. Poles are normally referred to by height and class (diameter) and for wood the type of treatment, eg, penta, CCA etc. I don't know any other words for a cross arm but there are terms for the framing configurations, eg christmas tree, wishbone, buck arms (double). that's about all the help I can give you. Good Pictures."

So a double Eau Claire is probably really a buck arm, and an Edith is likely a wishbone. Those are pretty cool names, actually.

Northwest Lineman College's site also referred me to the standard professional text, "The lineman's and cableman's handbook." I took a look at the third and ninth editions (thanks, Wendt) and learned a few more terms for power line poles.

While precise, they weren't very imaginative. What would you rather say, "H-frame structure," or Style? How about "Transformer pole" vs. Moustache? "Four-legged rigid-type 230-kV transmission tower," or Armstrong? I think the choice is clear.

As for the photo album, in a heartbeat I'd run back into a burning building to save it. There's just something about the way the bright, fading autumn sun saturates the snapshots. That, and imagining what that day in 1982 must have been like - a dad and his son, spending the day together out driving around the Wisconsin countryside in their little red Tercel, photographing power line poles.

After the pictures came back, JM probably sat at the kitchen table and wrote his names for the poles on those slips of spiral notebook paper while his mom helped him put them into the album in the right order.

Years and years later, JM showed the album to me and I about swooned, thus clinching the whole marry-me deal. All's fair, I s'pose, including appealing to my classifying nature and my girly sentiment with one fell punch in the throat.

Who's responsible for what

More on health care and jails, this time from p. 6 of the June 25 issue of the Isthmus.

So the Madison police shoot a guy, who ends up in the UW Hospital for an extended stay. He doesn't have insurance (of course), so finger-pointing ensues over who should pay.

Is it the cops, who often don't book injured people until they're discharged from the hospital? The county, which would be responsible "as a last resort," according to jail administrators? The hospital, which can pass the costs of inmate health care to paying customers? The squabbling doesn't do much for inter-agency cooperation, to say nothing of the people who need the actual health care in these situations.

But then, when you can't trust a dangerous suspect to produce authentic ID, it's hard to imagine a way for a scenario like this to go well.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is wrangling the appeal of a related case, Meriter Hospital, Inc. v. Dane County (more in this 37K pdf) this year. We'll see...

"Let the weeping of librarians begin."

Check out this book drive for San Diego Public Libraries on pamie.com, eh?

Bobos in paradise

I read David Brooks' "Bobos in Paradise" three years late but just in time to prick up my ears at Apt. 11D writing (briefly - I can only hope for more later) about Norman Podhoretz's Medal of Freedom.

So anyway, Madison is infested with bobos, natch. It's one of Brooks' "latte towns," along with Boulder (but, I would argue, not nearly as bad.) Here I've tried to adapt Brooks' ideas to help me discern and avoid bobos where I work and bank.

At the ReStore, the bobos are the ones who:

• shop for glass doorknobs and wood stoves. Non-bobos buy stuff like nails and doors.


• Compare the ReStore to Restoration Hardware, but feel even better about themselves because it's for a good cause. This self-esteem is manifested in a general feeling of goodwill and warm smiles for the non-bobo tradespeople in their work clothes.

At the farmer's market, the bobos are the ones who:

• Wear backpack baskets.


• Will only buy Mark David's bread.


• Generally look down their noses at the suburban SUV-style-stroller pushers from behind the righteous straps of their Baby Bjorns.

At the library, the bobos are the ones who:

• wait, you'd only see them at a library if it looked like a Borders or had that tightly-knit neighborhood charm.

At the grocery co-op, the bobos are the ones who:

• who am I kidding? Everyone at the co-op is a bobo or a wannabobo.

Unlike Brooks, I tend to find bobos insufferable. It's not because of the stuff they buy, it's why they buy it. Hell, I've shopped at Home Environment, but I never considered that buying a Sunrise Alarm Clock would tune me up with Nature, just that it would make a good xmas present for JM and wake him up in a better mood.

At any rate, I guess I'm less bobo than I might be. While my food shopping evinces dangerously high levels of boboishness, in most other ways I'm reassuringly far from it. (But blogging gets mega bobo points for narcissism.)

For now. We'll see what a few more years in Madison will do.

Home economics

Home ec must have enjoyed some modicum of respect in academia in the earlier parts of the 20th century. Pretty much all I know about it is from a short film (in episode 317 of MST3K) entitled "The Home Economics Story" and what I've seen of the home ec master's theses I've been retro-cataloging.

There aren't many, but they range from the shallow - like 1928's "America's first ladies of the twentieth century: their personality, dress and influence," which someone scrawled "sexist!" upon in ink - to the scientific - like a study of hemoglobin levels and their correlation to rural children's diets, ca. 1940. This leads me to believe that "Home Economics" as an academic discipline was whatever women happened to do.

Go, SLISters, go

My SLIS cohort's garnered mad praise in the June 18 UW libraries newsletter - there's Nikki's humanities book review guide, Kristin's new job, and Dave's article in Progressive Librarian.

Please.

A recent request to the jail library said simply:

I would like a couple books on prison, jails, and there main reasons for existing. Please.

"Monkey" by Shari Elf

Attention monkey lovers and Mel and Floyd fans! Here's a sneak preview of what could be the killer premium in WORT's next pledge drive.

Shari Elf handcrafted him from trash and personalized him with Mel and Floyd fans in mind. He's on his way to my house for a brief layover, then to WORT. Stay tuned!

Punctuation kerfuffle

There are hazards to working in two cataloging departments simultaneously. I got into a classic cataloging kerfuffle recently over the ending punctuation of the 504 field. One bunch of catalogers said this was right:

504 Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-117).

and the other this:

504 Includes bibliographical references (p. 113-117)

Neither OCLC's Bib Formats examples nor the MARC homepage were much help. Enter Judith Hopkins' memo and Adam L. Schiff's cheat sheet, followed by a turn through the LC Rule Interpretations in Cataloging Service Bulletin, and I think what it boils down to is that the definition of punctuation depends on the field, and in 5xx fields, it seems parenthesis aren't punctuation. Hence, ). isn't the dreaded double punctuation - unless there's an exception to the exception...

By the way, I love Dorothea's "belt and suspenders" take on this whole glorious deal. Aah - fresh air!

El Paso sweats

So, arid El Paso, TX has been named the sweatiest US city. While I was there, I saw billboards commanding the citizenry to "Take a three-minute shower!" Maybe that wasn't part of a water conservation campaign after all.

Shmemail

So Yahoo Mail's upped their free storage limit to 100MB, and message size to 10MB. I wonder why.

Pet names

I want to get two dogs and name them S'pose and Prolly.

"S'pose, you want a Liva Snap?"
"Prolly, time to come in!"
"S'pose, I know who made this mess!"

Dogs and cars and Mel and Floyd

Thanks to Dorothea, I read and enjoyed Language Log's rant on the German dogs that supposedly understand language. Later this afternoon I heard Mel and Floyd pick up the story and give it a cursory riff or two - but it was too late. I couldn't laugh at their jokes, which didn't pick on the ridiculousness of the science but the novelty of the whole German dog thing. Man!

I've been easing symptoms of my MF withdrawal by getting news of the weird via fark (a guilty pleasure). But I am really glad I caught them today, quoting a story out of Paris which called the typical SUV a "caricature of a car."

sprites

Following Her Around: Stalking has never been so sweet.

Jail library move

I've been putting off posting about the jail library move. It's a classic tale of hurry-up-and-wait with a decently happy ending. More than one might expect from a gov't situation, at least.

Starting in late April (i.e., finals week), JLG heard rumors of how the space crunch - caused in part by rapidly expanding inmate medical records - would affect the library. Jail staff, including our truly amazing advocate the volunteer coordinator, seemed to be working on finding the library a new room throughout May as we finished the school year.

We held our traditional potluck meeting on May 21st with little new information on the move. On May 25th the news came down that a new room had been found and "it would be a good idea, if possible, to go through your collection to reduce the collection size by June 1st," i.e., three work days later, since Memorial Day was May 31st.

About a bajillion breathless emails later (at least six fifths of them from me), we figured out who was doing what. So from the Thursday before to the Thursday after Memorial Day, five JLG volunteers cleared out our old library room. We weeded about 40% of the collection, waited for staff to move and reinstall our metal shelves, and then shelved the remaining books. The much-loved flagship Kids' Connection program office still needs to be moved, but has several outstanding offers for new space.

Peripherally I heard about other jail staff shuffling into smaller offices as well. As we were moving, deputies would walk by our new 8x14 library and say, "How do you rate a new office?" and I'd offer to show them the piles of weeded books in the old place.

In contrast, many jail staff were extremely helpful, especially the folks stuck working on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend when we did the most moving. They brought up boxes and a pallet for us to use. As I sat in their office, literally hat in hand waiting for the go-ahead to move, their brown uniforms and that particular flavor of (para)military guy banter brought back vivid memories of growing up Army.

I got to meet a volunteer from the Sun Prairie Volunteer Fire Department, whose day job is at the jail, and his colleagues kept trying to get me to call him "Chief."
"It'll make his day," one said.
"Week, more like," said the other.
I did call him Chief once - he did a double take, but let it go. He and the two others did debate at length how big Sun Prairie was compared to other towns with volunteer fire departments in Wisconsin, clearly a point of pride and some controversy.

Upon reflection, the new library room won't be so bad. I had some trouble reconciling my we'll-make-do, grow-where-you're-planted optimism with the nagging thought that I was selling out, complicit in my own cause's downsizing. I didn't feel like much of a revolting librarian who was in a position to fight for a larger library room.

But the other volunteers pointed out many things that put the move in context:

• everyone in the jail is feeling the pinch, worst of all the "reassigned" inmates who have to take their own matresses with them as they get shuffled around.


• the new PSB room is still as big or bigger than the CCB room.


• about half the books we tossed, we tossed with a clear conscience (a tattered biography of the Von Trapps? A large print edition of "Congo Nurse," ca. 1962? A ten-year-old travel guide to Missouri? Please!)


• we have a window now and are on a main traffic route. More people will notice us now, which in turn should encourage more to use our services. The information needs of the inmates are incredible - I can imagine very few situations that are fraught with as much ambiguity, uncertainty, and sheer boredom.

Recently the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that prisoners' health costs have quintupled in the last 11 years, due largely to the greying of the prison population, the incredible numbers of people in the system, and the same astronomical rise in health care that's affecting the whole country.

One JLG volunteer quipped that maybe better food, exercise, and preventive medical care would have helped curb the ballooning medical record files that are taking over jail space. Who knows. This situation is desperate - something has to give, because you can only squeeze so hard...

Eating in Madison A to Z

JM and I have a new hobby. We're going to eat at every restaurant in the Isthmus Eats guide in alphabetical order. So far, so good.

Foreign Legion

"Roommate joint" by Foreign Legion reminded me that househunting might not always be fun, but it's better than some alternatives.

Well my room ain't the library, where's that Lolita book, where's my Ray Bradbury?

Found via 3hive's archives.

Critters

So John Kovalic's got a peacock in his yard, and there's a couple in NC with an unidenitfied mammal in theirs (via MeFi).
We've not been cheated - we have hungry sawfly larvae. Ah, spring.

Lessig's jailhouseblog

Thanks to Steve for pointing out a developing project over at Lawrence Lessig's blog:

A journalist friend of mine has been writing about prisons. She has discovered in the process an extraordinary wealth of amazing and reflective writing by prisoners. I’d like (and they’ve agreed) to turn some of this writing into a blog, since the prison won’t permit them to publish the writings in the prison paper.

Must keep an eye on this one.

Delightful Dharmapalooza design

Go Kayla!

(so, for the uninitiated...Kayla and I aren't actually going to Boulder to hang out with Stuart Davis fans and Ken Wilberites, but that didn't stop her from making a kick-ass poster for them. It captures what I hear is the essence of the weekend - busy, with lots o' nature and bald guys.)

Pennies from Heather

...or someone. Word got out at work that I've been amassing pennies minted in my birth year since I was a kid. Now little piles of them appear on my desk from time to time.