The Right Funeral Can Solve A Lot of Problems

My late and extremely beloved Papa John was a “Pentecostal, full gospel, fire-baptised, Holiness” preacher. By way of explanation of what a “Pentecostal, full gospel, fire-baptised, Holiness” church is, let me just say this — if you know what one is, good. Email me and we’ll swap stories; I’ve got some great ones. If you [...]

Seemed Perfectly Logical to Me

We just finished MAP testing (NWEA anyone?) today and at supper tonight, Budge brought up a painful, but now side-splittingly hilarious story centering around my second year as a librarian and my first year as school MAP testing head person in charge. I thought I would regale you with this so the next time you [...]

My Policies and Procedures Manual . . . um, Email

You know, some days I don’t think I do a very good job of being a librarian, but I still get up and strap in every morning for the ride. Some days I’m the pigeon and some days I’m the statue.
One thing that’s always been WAY up on my list of stuff to accomplish in [...]

Houston, We Have a Problem

Pointing fingers and calling out our profession isn’t something I do well or often, but sometimes I figure it needs doing whether anyone pays any attention or not.
That said, we do have a problem and it’s a pretty serious one at that.
By “we” I mean librarians, media specialists, information technologist, or whatever other dolled-up title [...]

Of Cheetos and Scriptos

Our school was broken into TWICE this passed weekend.
Folks, as educators, we often don’t realize how much our schools are truly like our second homes until something like this happens. When I checked my email and saw our principal’s message that we’d be burglarized, I immediately started worrying about the library. I got there early [...]

Who Comes Through Your Library?

My beloved Budge and I were on the way to supper tonight and we passed Mary walking down the side of the road. All of you have seen Mary or one of her sisters or cousins or brothers. Mary is probably not her real name, but the locals at the stores all call her Mary [...]

Where were you when the world stopped turning?

When I was little, I remember Mama always talking about remembering exactly where she was when she heard that President Kennedy had be shot. She was in gym class for the last period of the day and their principal came over the intercom to announce the news. She said everyone went into a daze.
I remember [...]

Librarianship and the Art of Metal Fabrication

Gaylord Brothers does not sell double bottoms to their metal shelving separately. That particular fact becomes important later.
For the present, suffice it to say I had an interesting summer. For the first five weeks of the break, I fulfilled the “in sickness” portion of my marriage vows tending the needs of my beloved wife who [...]

Please tell me I didn’t just do that!

I have this great Excel spreadsheet on my computer at work. It has all the equipment numbers and IP addresses of every piece of equipment in the school along with the teacher(s) assigned to the stuff, room numbers, copier codes, phone extensions. You know the file. It’s my one-stop lifeline for tech support and troubleshooting. [...]

It Can All Be Gone In An Instant

Many times I think educators in general and librarians in particular get so consumed in minutiae that we don’t realize the really BIG picture. We get caught up in book orders and classes coming in and out and trying to keep up with the latest Web 2.0 tools that we often don’t pick our heads [...]