Gifts in the mail (Or: Kindred Spirits in the Library)

Something wonderful is going on up north and most people don't even know about it.

A year long celebration is happening in the tiny Canadian province of Prince Edward Island.
I've never been to Prince Edward Island, (commonly referred to by it's initials PEI), but have often sighed over pictures of the place; it is a jewel box of a place from what I can see.

When I returned to Houston after my time in San Diego I found a box had been delivered to my house from Canada.

The many colorful stamps with a red haired lass and other stamps depicting a house with green gables provided a clue about what was inside.

A closer look at the girl on the stamp filled in all the details: This year is the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of the children's book "Anne of Green Gables", written by the prolific and highly regarded author Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Montgomery's books about the adventures and misadventures of a young red headed orphan girl living at the turn of the last century has entertained at least four generations of readers. PEI was the setting for the story and when the book later was made into movies and television series, the lovely landscapes of Anne's world became familiar and beloved by a population much larger than the 14,000 inhabitants of the island today.



Inside the box was a book mark and an inviting bag of tea. The package was a gift/reward from a fellow blogger/ school librarian/PEI resident "Kathie" who writes the blog Island Sparrow . A month or so back she had a prize contest for people who would send her the names of their favorite children's books.

Kathie also had a mystery: One of her favorite books that she had read as a child was about a boy who had been taken captive by Indians. The boy was not accepted until he learned to hoot like an owl. Kathie said she could remember clearly the illustrations, but had never been able to find a copy of the book today, nor could she remember the title or author of the book.

She offered a "super reward" to anyone who could solve her mystery.
I read her post at reference desk, ( s-l-o-w night....) and pounced on the chance to win.
Using a myriad of highly sophisticated proprietary databases, and my own brand of "thinks different" approach to the problem, I soon had the title, author and illustrator of the work, as well as the name of the nearest public library with a copy in their collection.

Ta-da!

I won!
(The title? "Hoot Owl". The illustrator turned out to the be same illustrator that Kathie has been writing about in her post. No wonder she remembered that book's illustrations!)

Anyway...good to her word, Kathie not only sent me a bookmark and tea, she upped the package content with a honest-to-goodness Anne of Avonlea/Anne of Green Gables signature straw hat with Anne style red braids attached!

How sweet!

Then she put some mustard on the gesture:

"We want to see a picture of you wearing this in your library!" Kathie added.

(You should never trust a Canadian. They are a sneaky bunch who will always slip a twist into an activity whenever possible. I personally think this is why they have two official languages in their country, English is for everyday use, and French for when they are plotting ways to tease Americans. They usually do their plotting and planning in those Provinces that we Americans can never spell correctly and therefore never visit. If you can't spell names like Sasakawa (which even spell check in blogger isn't sure is the correct spelling) Manitoba and Saskatchewan, you can hardly book a flight to the place, let alone go about asking for directions, right?
And don't get me started about that provinces with that they ambiguously referred to as Northwest Territory. I mean really, what exactly is it? Is it a territory or is it a province? Why not just call it a "state" or "Vast Desolate Cold Unpopulated Area" and be done with it?)

(B. and I even had to have a discussion about what Canadians call what we call "states"...it took a bit and we thought they were called "providences". I used that spelling in my original posting and have since corrected it after Lovella pointed out that actually they are called "provinces". I wondered what Vince did that made everyone be so in favor of him so I looked it up. Sure enough, it was from a French word, which as I noted above, is the language Canadians use when they want to be tricky....)

Where was I?

Oh yes, the hat.

Being a really good sport, and because I too LOVE Anne, I decided we here in Houston should also take a moment to take part in PEI's celebration.

With the cooperation of my fellow librarians, we declared "Anne of Green Gables/Avonlea/Lucy Maud Montgomery Day" at North Harris College.

Hope was on board, naturally. She is a kindred spirit of the finest kind. Cajun girls like her welcome fun whenever and wherever fun can be found.

Oh yeah...Let the good times roll!

New on staff Librarian Norma (who speaks with a native Spanish accent,) was also willing to be called "Carrots" for a bit.

(I think she preferred to be called "la zanahoria" though.)

Librarian Karen was good for a moment of channeling Anne to Texas.

Our Olia, the librarian with Ukrainian ancestry, was game too.
I wonder if the Anne books have been translated to Ukraninian? And if Canada would consider naming any future provinces "Ukraine" because it is also tricky to spell?

And here I am, as promised, decked out in a white summer dress, feeling decidedly "Anne-ish" as I go about my duties.

(Note to Lovella: About your haircut today: Have you considered going with a nod towards Anne's hairstyle, to show solidarity with your country's stylish icon? They can do amazing things with hair extentions now you know. It would only have to be that way until the end of 2008...that's only four more months, and you could enjoy wearing a hat every day to boot! I know you are proud to be a Canadian...this is your chance to prove it!)

(Tiggie, the Faithful Orange cat declined to participate.)

~

Party on, PEI!

We here in Texas salute you!

It's A Colorful World (or: Librarians on the Loose!)

I got back from San Diego late Thursday night, collapsed Friday, and on Saturday was off on another adventure.

My fellow librarian Hope (of great office art and wine tasting blog post fame...) wanted to preview some of the Houston sights that I had talked about, in view of an upcoming visit from her mom.

It was hotter than heck, but what the heck, let's go!

Hope's mom LOVES butterflies.
That little bit of information had come up while we were at ref desk one evening, and I had mentioned that the Houston Museum of Natural History had an awesome butterfly exhibit.

I've actually dragged my readers to the Museum twice before to see Snakes Alive! on a date with Bernie, and also to see some gems and minerals.

How could I miss a chance to drag you readers along (once again) in order to see this?
I obviously couldn't.
Please settle in and plan to read on.



Inside the rain forest like exhibit we were surrounded by gems come to life:

(Wow! I actually got a shot with the little nectar sipping tongue curled out!)

Hope and I sat on a bench and watched the butterflies fluttering all around us. In front of us was a tall bush with arguably fifty butterflies at rest among it's leaves.

Butterflies swooped by our faces, considered landing on our knees, and made marvelous dance moves over our heads.

I was constantly hopping up to attempt to get a photo of a butterfly at rest.

The flowers were pretty interesting too, but I more interested in the butterflies.

Children were walking around with laminated guides to the butterflies, I wanted one too just so I could keep track of which kinds of butterflies I had seen.

A butterfly fast food restaurant? In McDonald's colors? Hmmm....maybe I should build a feeder like this in my garden!

Over ripe fruit: Not just for making banana nut bread any more!
(See the blog "Mennonite Girls Cook Constantly" for other great recipes ideas using fruit!)

Some of the butterflies were soooo big.

Others seemed interested in posing.
Cats, squirrels and now posing butterflies.
What next....

Butterfly twosomes!

Charming well behaved children enjoyed an opportunity to touch dead butterflies that had been gathered by the exhibit volunteers. The volunteer patiently explained how butterfly wings get their color, and encouraged the children to gently stroke the silky wings.

I was so glad Hope and I could take the time to just sit and take in the exhibit. I have been there before when there was a bit of a rush, and you just can't really see how many butterflies there are unless you just sit and observe for awhile. They really were absolutely everywhere!

One tip to anyone planning a trip to similar exhibit: Wear red or hot pink. The butterflies were drawn to those colors, and regularly landed on people sporting those hues.

Another tip: Use your finger extended sideways in front of the butterfly that is feeding or resting, and sometimes they will step up on your finger, sort of like a parakeet does.

From the museum we went passed these three fountains where a quinceanera party was being photographed. A quinceanera party is the Hispanic traditional celebration of a girl's fifteenth birthday. She is given one last doll, and changes from flat shoes to high heels and takes her place as a woman in society.

They are HUGE events in Houston; and you quickly learn that a photo being taken of a group of girls in fancy gowns that match, and another girl in a non-matching fancy gown, (often but not always white) and a bunch of guys in tuxedos usually isn't a wedding.

We headed to the Museum of Art and got a lunch there, then headed to the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft. It is my favorite gallery in Houston, and always has jaw dropping amazing pieces on display.

This time it was a display of Texas crafts; blown glass, wood carving, weaving, metal work...and this piece of cut paper art:

One piece of black paper.
A-maz-ing.
I shot the picture before I read the sign: NO PHOTOGRAPHY.
Oops.

Next we headed to High Fashion Fabric.

I'm still a sucker for this place!

I told Hope it is like the scene in every historical romance novel where the poor heroine is taken by the wealthy hero to a dress maker for a "fitting" wardrobe for her new dreamy life of luxury.

It makes me shake my head to realize that there actually are REAL people who go here to have exactly such wardrobes created.

Hope fell in love with this fabric and gave a Cajun insight into all of this loveliness.

Seems my Louisiana born friend has attended more than a few Mardi Gras extravaganzas in her day. She had heard of "the fabric shop in Houston" where people shopped for the fabric to create the amazing gowns and costumes for the various Mardi Gras balls and parades.

My English manor house ball room fantasy suddenly took on a New Orleans style twist.



I blew right past these fabrics; Hope crowed that she had seen some of them used in Mardi Gras costumes, and started telling me about what fanciful parade get ups and performances that she had seen where people were dressed in these wild fabrics.

Oh yeah....I did miss seeing the real Mardi Gras while I lived in the South.
Dang.

I have been quietly mourning the fact that once I leave Houston I will no longer be able to make little fabric lust jaunt to HFF.
What ever will I do for inspiration?
(I've heard this sort of obsession crassly called "fabric porn." Yeah, that's just about what it is...I get totally turned on by the stuff.)

The good news is that I have learned the HFF is now putting pictures of all their amazing fabric on their website!

Oh goodie! INTERNET Fabric Porn!

Yipes.
Wonder if I should try to install a filter?
Nah.

We pulled ourselves away and next headed down into the heart of Houston, AKA

"Houston Public Library"

The downtown main branch of HPL has been closed for about a year now while they did multiple millions of dollars of infrastructure improvement on the old building. I had read about the "new and improved" library interior design and was vacillating between skeptical and alarm.

Who better to go see "what was what" with than my fellow librarian Hope?

The retching sounds we made really did sound impressive in two part harmony.

Seriously...orange speckled tile floor and orange furniture with orange dots?

What is this...Switzerland or something, where EVERYTHING is orange?

And what the heck is with the painted concrete out front?
The whole thing looks like a Fisher Price toy gone amuck.
As citizens of Houston and card carrying members (OK, lapsed members) of the Texas Library Association all I can say is I felt deeply ashamed for our city's flagship library.

Every year the American Library Association features award winning library remodels and designs, and every year I wait to see how various cities have made their libraries classier and more welcoming structures.

When ALA see what Houston has done, we will be a laughingstock.

( I wish I had videoed Hope going off on the whole thing. I thought her head was going ot explode! You will be pleased to know that we both made it OUTSIDE of the library before letting fly with our evalutation of their remodeling efforts.)

We decided to take a peek at the park across from the library to wash the bad taste out of our eyes, so to speak.
The Caladiums were spectacular, and so fresh looking in the humid park.

It only took a few more minutes of walking about the downtown parks, and we were ready to head back home.

Travelogue: San Diego day 7, last day

Thursday July 24, 2008
La Jolla California

I work up really early after a pretty good night's sleep. A sore throat and stuffy nose had plagued me the entire visit, and each morning I had woke up feeling pretty crummy until I got moving around.
On this particular morning I got up around six, took a look around outside...

Admired the Belladona lily, and went out front to get the newspaper. I settled back into bed to read the San Diego Tribune from cover to cover. That took about an hour or so. After that I heard my mom rustling around, so I got up again and headed down the hall.

Old Rufus had also enjoyed an unsupervised visit to the garden. And he had caught and killed a rat! No small feat as he has been declawed...

Mom was in the bathroom, and my dad was still abed with the door closed. I can assure you that if the bedroom door had been open, my dad would have been awoken with a freshly killed rodent being dropped on his chest!

What a way to start the day.

Goofy cat...

La Jolla is a community with lots of fruit trees and avocado trees and pets with pet food dishes out in the back yard. Swimming pools and fountains also abound; all of which makes for a paradise for Norwegian rats, also known as brown rats or wharf rats.

Happily settled in around housing with posh zip codes, the rats run along the telephone wires, and scurry about getting food and drink on the run. Just about everyone has a story about exterminators and traps, plus encounters with stubborn rats who have taken up residence in garages and garden sheds.

Well, all I can say is Hurrah for Rufus, the ecologically sound rat killing machine. And boy, just wait until Tiggie and Hart hear about this! The rat Hart caught last January was hardly worth mentioning compared to this mega rat.

The sun broke through the gloom early, and I decided to get a swim in before my flight took off. The water was 72 degrees at La Jolla Shores; the waves were small and clear as glass. I swam and body surfed for an hour by myself, then sat on the sand for a bit, before plunging into the water again.

There is always a bit of melancholia about the last day of any visit home. I encounter myself as a child digging holes and making sand sculptures with my friends who are now out of touch with me. None of their parent's still live in the neighborhood, and sometimes I feel like a place marker of another time.

I watched young women reading on the beach, belly down on a towel, baking in the sun, glistening with lotion. I was one of those women once, a teen, a twenty something. Now I am too antsy to read in such a beautiful setting, and my mind and skin is sensitive to the damage that the sun can bring.

I watched young mothers corralling their babies and remember the years when I arrived at the beach with sand toys and snacks for my own little ones.

I saw older women in funny hats walking with prancing children, clearly grand children pleased to go to the beach, unaware that their grandmother is even more pleased to have them there to share her day. I remember my own mom and her time with my two at the beach, and wonder if one day I will be the one walking grand kids along the shoreline.

In front of me sat a cluster of children under a tarp. They wore matching tee shirts with the words La Jolla YMCA Surf Camp emblazoned across the front. Has it already been twenty years since my own children wore that same shirt, and sat under the tarp on this beach too?

I was reluctant to leave the beach. Time is rushing by too quickly; once I leave, the waves will continue to break and the tide will continue to ebb and flow as it has since the dawn of time, but my life will change and change again before I return in another season of my life.

I loved being with my mom and dad eating our meals outside at the picnic table. That table has been in use there for 50 years now; yet it still is as sturdy as ever. My mom has always been a "hostess with the mostess", and I was lovingly served colorful and tasty meals each night.

Many Siamese cats have prowled this garden, and the landscaping has changed little over the years.

Before I went to the beach I planted the fuchsia tree. I think it will do well there, and the two smaller fuchsias should grown just fine there too.

(And if you look closely, you will see the "Anti-Rufus Jumping Over the Fence" security measure that my Dad has carefully install up top the redwood fence. I post this so if there is any question about how long ago my Dad lost his marbles, we can refer back to this!)

Mom and I spent a little time going over some family genealogy. I was curious as to exactly when my mother's grandparent's arrived from Germany to Salt Lake City back in the late eighteen hundreds.

Mom pulled out some paper work that a relative had given her; paper work that I had seen many times before. This time some side notations suddenly had meaning. And the reason why the family came over from Germany became more interesting due to some current reading that I have been doing about the history of Salt Lake City.

Oh how true it is: Knowledge is Power, Ignorance is Bliss and No Information Is Ever Innocent. Those simple notations that we had shrugged off as irrelevant may provide an entire new chapter to my family history. I do love a genealogical mystery, and boy howdy, does SLC have the best library in the world for unraveling such a thing.

(If you are interested in family genealogy, and want to really "do it", and you want to come to SLC to research, let me know. I am a total genealogy research junky and would love to go to the library to research with you!)

All too soon I had crammed all my belongings back into a suitcase and it was time to head out to the airport.

Our family gardener Carlos was on duty out front. Carlos has been with the family for years now; he works cheap, and is friendly to the neighbors. We only have one complaint about Carlos: we wish we could get him to stop dressing in such ratty clothes while he is gardening out in the front yard. It is so embarrassing!
The neighbors surely must talk!

(Love ya Dad!)

It was time for a quick ride to the airport, and a slightly sniffly goodbye (my mom always gets a bit blue when we part, only recently have I understood the feeling as I have had to say good bye to my own adult daughter so often.)

Up in the air I watch the scenery change from sparkling Pacific water to mysterious desert landscape.

Hurricane Dolly has come through the area; I wondered how it was to be on the ground beneath this towering cloud.

I watched an in flight movie...and don't even remember what it was.

I think my mind was just too full of other newly made memories to even care.

Seven days of wonder...seven days of memories to enjoy forever.

(Side note: Yes, we are under a hurricane watch, and there definitely will be at least a Tropical Storm bearing down on Houston tomorrow morning. I am at work, the campus will close a half hour early. I've watched as dead trees have been taken down outside in preparation for the high winds that are expected, and lighted signs on the freeway warn drivers to be sure they fill their gas tanks before the storm hits. Oh boy...wonder what tomorrow hold. Sometimes I can hardly believe the adventures of my life!)