So, the winner of this year’s Newbery medal is “The Higher Power of Lucky”

…

Yeah, I never heard of it either.

According to Amazon, it was published in November 2006. What the heck? Are the Newbery Awards now the Oscars, with books packing in the last few months of the year so they remain fresh in the minds of the voting committee?

But just in case you thought the Newbery Committee had gone out on a limb and picked a book that hashed out new and interesting themes, let me reassure you: based on this review from School Library Journal, it’s the same drivel they love to choose year in and year out.

When Lucky’s mother is electrocuted and dies after a storm, Lucky’s absentee father calls his ex-wife, Brigitte, to fly over from France to take care of the child. Two years later, the 10-year-old worries that Brigitte is tired of being her guardian and of their life in Hard Pan (pop. 42) in the middle of the California desert. While Lucky’s best friend ties intricate knots and the little boy down the road cries for attention, she tries to get some control over her life by restocking her survival kit backpack and searching for her Higher Power. This character-driven novel has an unusually complicated backstory, and a fair amount of exposition. Yet, its quirky cast and local color help to balance this fact, and the desert setting is fascinating. Lucky’s tendency to jump to conclusions is frustrating, but her struggle to come to terms with her mother’s death and with her new life ring true. Phelan’s cover and line drawings are simple and evocative, a perfect complement to the text. Fans of novels by Deborah Wiles and Katherine Hannigan will be happy to meet Lucky.

This is from the Nashua Telegraph:

BROOKLINE – Privately owned land on Main Street and the town-owned ballfields on Route 130 have emerged as top contenders for a future library.

Brookline’s facilities committee has been working since spring to identify potential spots for a new library because the current library, in the former Church of Christ, is squeezed for space.

Okay, that’s fine… a lot of libraries are squeezed for space right now. There was a huge flurry of library building activity around the turn of the last century, and naturally the towns have outgrown those buildings. The one where I work certainly has.

The current library is 6,000 square feet, and in 1993, the space was ideal, she said. The library moved there from Town Hall, which was too cramped to house it.

At the time, the church was projected to accommodate library services for the next 20 years.

Between 1998 and 2000, Brookline’s population grew much faster than anticipated, Tochko said. But now, the nooks and crannies are filling fast.

A community area once roomy enough for 40 people has been slimmed to seat 20 because of a ballooning young-adult book section, she said. There’s no place to put new books, so the library uses two donated storage areas in town.

Compare to ours: storage is two houses the library owns up the street, all the fiction out in a double-wide trailer that takes up half the parking lot. No meeting space; they lost that 30 years ago when they had to put the children’s room in the basement.

In 20 years, the town’s population is anticipated to be 8,000 people, she said. It’s now estimated at 4,755, according to the N.H. Office of Energy and Planning.

A 12,000-square-foot library would best suit those numbers, Tochko said. The hope is the town will buy property big enough for a second addition in the future because in 40 years, Brookline’s population is expected to soar to 10,500 people, she said.

Le sigh. And we again compare. Our current town population is 24,000 for a library the same size as the one that’s supposedly too small for less than 5000. If we’re lucky, we may possibly be getting a 15,000 sq. ft library… three years from now. But it hasn’t even been approved to be voted on yet.

Today at work we had 5 books come over from tech services in a pile of newly arrived items. Neither of us at the desk had seen them before, yet all of the books had dates stamped on them stating they had arrived in October 2005. None of them had any circulation.

?????

I went to Pittsburgh in the middle of July for the on-campus part of my online courses.

It was a pretty good trip, though it was ridiculously hot there (a trend which unfortunately continued at home through much of last week) and my hotel did not have free internet in the guest rooms.

As a result, I did not once turn on the television in my room. Not once.

Anyway, since it was so very hot and by the time classes were done for the day I was tired and just wanted to lie around in an air conditioned space, I did not actually go out to see much of Pittsburgh beyond the Oakland area where the University is located. Also at the time, I had our new camera, but only a v. v. tiny memory card, so I could only take 7 pictures at a time. When I finally upload them, I’ll write a bit more about the small amount of stuff I did see on my visit.

What I did do was eat at a different restaurant for every meal that I actually ate, and though I did hit Arby’s, Panera and Starbucks, I didn’t actually repeat any restaurants, during the visit and I tried to stay away from chains as much as I could. A college is a natural breeding ground for random places to eat, and since my hotel was quite some distance (about a mile) from where class was held, I got to walk past them all twice a day. More about the food later, too.

And, ha ha, more about the classes later, too. I may actually investigate Wordpress’s ability to lock entries for that one. The experience was good, for the most part, I just have some opinions on a few topics which I think I’d rather not have indexed in a search engine…

Dunkin Donuts.

Those of you from the area know that Dunkin Donuts are thick on the ground around here. The best way to tell you’re out in the boonies is when you stop passing them every 50 yards. Then they’re only 100 yards apart.

But one town is fighting the good fight. That town would be Wellesley.

And I am amused.

Well, after I got the mail this morning and there was no response yet from the school I’d applied to, I spent the walk back to the house and the drive to work sort of composing a grumbling blog entry in my head.

It’s not even so much that I hate waiting, it’s that I hate having plans unsettled. And not knowing where or if I would be going to school next year was a big unsettled.

But then I got to work and snuck on to check my email and there was an acceptance letter in the inbox.

It seems like every couple of years or so I start to get the urge to go back to school. Most recently I’ve been considering getting a Masters in Library Science (MLIS or MLS or various other abbreviations.)

As a consequence, I’ve been doing some research into schools, and I’ve found the following things: The school’s program needs to be ALA accredited, or the degree itself wouldn’t be worth much. Which means the list of schools in the US which qualify is comparitively small.

And because I’m sort of snobby that way, I’d really prefer it to be a school with a good reputation in the field. So after hunting around for a bit, I’ve come up with 3 possibilities. More searching might reveal a couple more, but these seem representative.

1. Simmons: the “local” choice. Simmons is in Boston, which means it’s driveable, if rather inconvenient (and expensive, should gas prices shoot up again) to get to. However, depending on how ambitious I was, it might be possible to swing full time and finish in a year. Or it might not. It’s not the best school in the country, but everyone in the region knows about it, so it has name recognition.

2. University of Pittsburgh: An online choice. Pittsburgh is (surprisingly?) known for having a good library program. I had actually known this before, so their reputation isn’t confined to just the library science field. This program is online, requiring a few visits to Pittsburgh during the course of the program. Pittsburgh is pretty far away, but it’s within driving distance for once in a while trips.

3. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: An online choice. Their program is structured similarly to Pittsburgh, but requires slightly longer visits. US News and World Report ranks them slightly above Pittsburgh (they’re tied for #1 while Pittsburgh is tied for #3). It would definitely require flying. But I know they also have a kickass CS department, and CS overlaps a lot with library science.

All 3 schools have comparable tuition costs.

Resolved: I will no longer write posts about how I want to write posts but I either have no ideas or I’m too tired to do so. As I was going through my archives, titling all the entries, I discovered far too many of these stupid little entries. Even as an historical record they are interesting to no one, with their author being no exception.

So if I’m too tired to post, I just won’t post. Amazing.

Yesterday I went out to lunch with C and D from my old work. We went to Brigham’s, which was advertising a truly horrific dessert: A full sized sundae topped by a full sized piece of pie. I cannot find mention of any of these insane items on their website, but there were posters all over the store (looking as if someone had badly Photoshopped a piece of pie on top of a sundae) advertising the stuff.

Today and tomorrow mark the middle of a long two weeks for me. Long because several people at work are out on vacation, meaning that I just worked 5 days in a row and will be working Mon-Sat next week. Throw in the Breast Cancer walk on Sunday and I get to get up early 7 days in a row. (With a brief respite on Thursday, as I work 1-9 instead of 9-5).

It’s not uninteresting work or even very taxing, but it is tiring nevertheless. I’ve found it nearly impossible to get to sleep before 2am, no matter how exhausted I have been during the day. Events just conspire to keep me up that late every night.

Next week I get to teach an Intermediate (read: I can’t call it Introduction anymore, but it so still is) Internet course to some of the patrons. I’m not sure how it will go. We call it internet, but really it’s the web, and if you want to get comfortable with the web, you just have to use it on a regular basis. At the very least I can help them figure out why they might want to do that. (My biggest carrot: The Internet is a GREAT place to answer all those annoying random trivia questions. Who sang that song? What are those lyrics really saying? Who was that guy in that movie? What year did so and so put out that book?)