Oh, the Places You'll See

"I am reminded of all this because PBS has been promoting its series on the national parks beginning this fall. It should be stunning. Although I have not been to most of the parks, I love looking at the books and planning trips that we hope to take some day. In the meantime, we can all be armchair travelers with some of the following books at the library:
America’s National Parks: America’s Best Idea by Dayton Duncan is a beautiful and informative book published in conjunction with the PBS series.
Great Lodges of the National Parks by Christine Barnes, volumes 1 and 2, illustrate the ideas and industry of our predecessors in building these magnificent structures.
Fodor’s Official Guide to America’s National Parks gives a brief, state by state description of 391 parks.
Frommer’s National Parks with Kids by Kurt Repanshek highlights great family activities at 14 parks including Acadia and the Cape Cod National Seashore.
·“Haunted Hikes: Spine-Tingling Tales and Trails from North America’s National Parks” by Andrea Lankford, which unfortunately does not include any New England parks.
There are many more books about the national parks to consult if you are planning a trip. It is never too soon to start thinking about next summer. If we do not have a specific book in our library, you can request that it be delivered here. Marie Lydon, Reference Librarian at the Morrill Memorial Library

Read Marie Lydon's entire column in the Norwood Transcript and Bulletin this week.

How To Handle a Hammer

Image from the Art of Manliness. A great post by the Art of Manliness blog. I was totally clueless. Who would have thought there were so many named parts to a hammer.

Alison's Kindle Quandary

"Still, at some level, digital readers seem more a regression than a sign of progress. I’m reminded of the scene in Little Women when Jo is craving a new novel, but it’s too pricey for her meager budget. Books were expensive then, prohibitively so for many. At $299, Kindles are expensive now. We built public libraries to make reading affordable for everyone. But any time we require new devices in order to read, we are creating barriers to learning and literature, not eliminating them." Alison Lobron, September 27, 2009 Boston Globe Magazine.

Read Alison Lobron's article in the Sunday Globe Magazine, "My Kindle Quandary". It certainly sums it up for me. Re-read my article in the Daily News Transcript, March 19, 2009, "Animal, Vegetable, Kindle?"

Compare more e-Readers.

Back to Business

And so, in true librarian-mother form, I decided to make up a bibliography of must-read business books for my youngest daughter, already in an MBA program, and for the eldest who will begin next fall.

There were plenty of places to go online to gather information for this list. Some of the best online spots are Business Week Online, Personal MBA, Forbes, etc. However, as often is the case, I might have actually found a good answer right on our shelves. It’s “The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You” by Jack Covert and Todd Satterson.

Read my entire column in this week's Norwood Transcript.

eBook Universe!

Great eBook Universe graphic by TechFlash. I just looked at Shortcovers with downloadable books for most 'smart' phones including the iPhone. Interesting war going on here. Will this go the way of Beta and VHS for video?

Twittering: 19th Century Style

"Old newspapers are fun to browse. Read the front page of one and you’ll find “Twittering” is not just a present day phenomenon. The local news back then included reports of who went where and when, fell down their front steps or broke a bone, put in a cement sidewalk, painted their house the same color as their brother’s, bought a new team of horses, or seemed a little corpulent at their birthday party.

Twitter, indeed."

Read Shelby Warner's entire From the Library column in the Daily News Transcript.

Compare

Comparison-shop for an e-Reader here.

eCycling

Recyle your electronics using this EPA guide, Where Can I Donate or Recycle My Old Computer Equipment.

Vulnerability

Who can forget what it was like to get this and nothing else from CNN on the Internet on September 11, 2001. From the digital collection of Interactive Publishing.

WTC Memorial Site

You can find about the project, watch the live webcam and view the proposed memorials here.

Other sites for remembering: The Library of Congress: Remembering 9/11, the September 11 Digital Archive and NPR's America Transformed archives.

Chilling Mysteries From the North

Last but not least I love the Icelandic author Arnaldur Indridason, whose atmospheric, involved mysteries take place in Reykjavik and feature police inspector Erlendur.

“Silence of the Grave” is absolutely haunting. A young female skeleton is found at a building construction site and is finally determined to be around 50 years old, putting her death back around World War II. Strands of stories and long forgotten family secrets of abuse in the Icelandic countryside make for a riveting mystery.

Should I see a therapist? Nope. Reading is therapy no matter what one reads. Books, and tapes and CD’s are all free for loan from the library. Therapists cost money. I’ll stick with my library. Margot Sullivan, Retired Adult Services Librarian

Read Margot's article in the Daily News Transcript this week.

Speaking: It's an Art

President Obama, September 8, 2009 to the schoolchildren of America:


Here's the transcript. Created with Wordle.

Imagine Yourself There

This extraordinary painting by Taiwanese artists Dai Dudu, Li Tiezi and Zhang An (they are in the painting) can be seen here with a fancy zoom tool for you to see everyone listed below. First try to identify each of the 103 people in this painting. Then check the list.



Bill Gates, Microsoft founder; Homer, Greek poet; Cui Jian, Chinese singer; Vladimir Lenin, Russian revolutionary; Pavel Korchagin, Russian artist; Bill Clinton, former U.S. President; Peter the Great, Russian leader; Margaret Thatcher; Bruce Lee, martial arts actor; Winston Churchill; Henri Matisse, French artist; Genghis Khan, Mongolian warlord; Bonaparte, French military leader; Che Guevara, Marxist revolutionary; Fidel Castro, former Cuban leader; Marlon Brando, actor; Yasser Arafat, former Palestinian leader; Julius Caesar, Roman emperor; Gen. Claire Lee Chennault, WW II U.S. aviator; Luciano Pavarotti, singer; George W. Bush, former U.S. President; The Prince of Wales; Liu Xiang, Chinese Olympic hurdler; Kofi Annan, former UN Secretary General; Zhang An, the painter; Mikhail Gorbachev, former Russian leader; Li Tiezi, the painter; Dante Alighieri, Florentine poet; Dai Dudu, the painter; Pele, Brazilian footballer; Guan Yu, Chinese warlord; Ramses II, Egyptian pharaoh; Charles De Gaulle, French general; Albert Nobel, Swedish chemist who founded the Nobel prizes; Franklin Roosevelt, former U.S. President; Ernest Hemingway, American novelist; Elvis Presley, American singer; Robert Oppenheimer, U.S. physicist; William Shakespeare, playwright; Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, composer; Steven Spielberg, U.S. film director; Pablo Picasso, Spanish painter; Marie Curie, physicist and pioneer of radioactivity; Zhou Enlai, first Premier of the People's Republic of China; Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe, German writer; Laozi, Chinese philosopher; Marilyn Monroe, American actress; Salvador Dali, Spanish painter; Dowager Cixi, former ruler of China; Ariel Sharon, former Israeli Prime Minister; Qi Baishi, Chinese painter; Qin Shi Huang, former Chinese Emperor; Mother Teresa, Roman Catholic missionary; Song Qingling, Chinese politician; Rabindranath Tagore, Indian poet; Otto Von Bismarck, German statesman; Run Run Shaw, Chinese media mogul; Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Swiss philosopher; Audrey Hepburn, actress; Ludwig Van Beethoven, German composer; Adolf Hitler, Nazi leader; Benito Mussolini, Italian fascist leader; Saddam Hussein, former Iraq president; Maxim Gorky, Russian writer; Sun Yat-Sen, Chinese revolutionary; Den Xiaoping, Chinese revolutionary; Alexander Pushkin, Russian author; Lu Xun, Chinese writer; Joseph Stalin, former Soviet Union leader; Leonardo Da Vinci, Italian painter; Karl Marx, German philosopher; Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher; Abraham Lincoln, former U.S. President; Mao Zedong, Chinese dictator; Charlie Chaplin, British actor; Henry Ford, founder of Ford motor company; Lei Feng, Chinese soldier; Norman Bethune, Canadian physician; Sigmund Freud, Austrian psychiatrist; Juan Antonio Samaranch, former International Olympic Committee president; Chiang Kai Shek, Chinese general; Leo Tolstoy, Russian novelist; Li Bai, Chinese poet; The Queen; Corneliu Baba, Romanian painter; Auguste Rodin, French artist; Dwight Eisenhower, former U.S. President; Michael Jordan, U.S. basketball player; Hideki Tojo, former Japanese Prime Minister; Michelangelo, Italian Renaissance painter; Yi Sun-Sin, Korean naval commander; Mike Tyson, American boxer; Vladimir Putin, Russian Prime Minister; Hans Christian Andersen, Danish author; Shirley Temple, American actress; Albert Einstein, German physicist; Moses, Hebrew religious leader; Confucius, Chinese philosopher; Ghandi, Indian spiritual leader; Vincent Van Gogh, Dutch painter; Toulouse Lautrec, French painter; Marcel Duchamp, French artist; Osama bin Laden, founder of al Qaeda.

Privacy on Facebook

While the ACLU can seem like the little angel AND the little devil on your shoulder sometimes, here's a great quiz they have developed on Facebook. It's worth it to take some time and really look at your own privacy settings. A bit of a 'yikes!' moment will come if you take the quiz and see all the information that others can see. Shocking, at worst, eye-opening at best. The ACLU of Northern California shows you everything they can know about you. Go on, take the quiz.

iPhone to Heaven

Read another great Mashable recommendation: Mobile Melodies: Top Ten Musical Performances for Cellphones.

Creatively Cool

Mashable is one of my favorite sites for all things technie ... or not. 15 Places to Make Money Creating Your Own Products is a great compilation of links to sites that fire up your own creativity. From book publishing to fabric design you'll find something to pass on to a friend. Tastebook and GameCrafter are two to check out.

Investment in the Future

When we prepared to return to the States and I was packing up our household 25 years ago, one of my last tasks was to truck the coins to a local Irish bank. I chose the EBS or Educational Building Society and deposited the heavy packets of coin into an account for my daughter who was only five months old. I had fantasies that the 50 plus Irish punts (or Irish “pounds” worth about $99 at the time) would grow and be somewhat meaningful to her one day.

She had a “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” or so we told her over the years. We added gift amounts to the fund a few times early on and that money accrued interest for the last quarter of a century when we basically forgot about it in the last two decades.

Read my entire article in the Daily News Transcript this week.