Westward, Ho!

A friend recommended this cat toy, and my life hasn't been the same since. The packaging says it's the NordicTrac for cats, and they're not kidding. It also says the lure is simply rolled cardboard. Yeah, like a joint is rolled hemp, IMO. My cat Roxy finds this thing irrestistable, and addictive. She can, literally, play for hours. I tire out long before she does--my wrists aren't in shape. :-) She whines at me to go get it on weekend days.

When not in use it lives in my bedroom, which is off-limits to kitties. One day she and Sugar burgled my bedroom door while I was at work. The only sign of the two of them having had access to The Forbidden Zone all day is that the CatDancer was sitting in the middle of the living room floor. Even though she'd presumably had access to it all day, she still played w/ it with me for an hour that night.

Even Sugar, who is Not Playful, will bat at it when I put it right in front of her.

They're now marketing one that actually does have catnip in the lure. That's redundant, and very possibly dangerous! Like giving a street drunk a bottle of grain to top off his binge on cheap red wine. Given how zany Roxy is about the plain version, I can't imagine adding catnip to the picture! Although it's two-ended, w/ the regular cardboard at the other end. Maybe I could have Roxy going on the cardboard end while enticing more sedate Sugar w/ the catnip end.

Balls don't amuse Roxy. The feather-lure-tippedlleopard-spotted felted bungee cord I got to hang over the doorknob so she can play w/ some prey-like toy during the day? She won't even sniff it. The fishing pole toy w/ a feather lure? Of only marginal interest. The CatDancer? Beyond riveting.

comicreaders.com - Rex Libris - Interview with creator James Turner

What a wonderful service these volunteers provide! They sit w/ medevaced soldiers until their families can arrive, so they're not all alone at Walter Reed; they serve as liaisons for the families to help them w/ the logistics of having resettled across the country temporarily on short notice, etc.

For Battle-Scarred, Airborne Backup

Sweet, serious Sugar at rest in one of her two cat beds....

The photographer insisted on showing off my chest...




Roxy, Bible Scholar, taking a study break

Roxy, library cat to be?





Roxy on sofa back

When the War Won't Stay at Bay

One of many excellent articles of late about the war in Iraq. Where were all these folks (the media, I mean) in 2003?

Avant Game: the ministry of reshelving

A project by secret vast leftwing conspiracy bibliophile operatives to reshelve bookstores' copies of George Orwell's _1984_ from "Fiction" to "Current Affairs" or other more apropos bit of shelf real estate.

Results/recon reports are posted here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/topic/69875/


Perhaps Handmaid's Tale could be given a similar treatment?

SignOnSanDiego.com > News > Features -- Former president takes dive in submarine named for him

I wish I'd been old enough to vote for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and 1980. I was a fan even before the rest of the world was.

My green Mazda, cost approx $18K a year ago, on the left. VW Phaeton, cost somewhere in the $70K range, on the right.

Feel-good Librarian: What Books Do

A librarian provides pastoral care.....

Yesterday I spent some time at B&N skimming books about cats and cat care. In one of them I read about how to use a fishing-pole toy the "right" way--how to have the toy mimic prey and trigger your cat's hunting instinct. Turns out I was doing it all wrong. This morning I used the approach the book described, and we had a much more interesting session of Stalk the Feather.

I think Roxy is actually very young, barely an adult. She wants to *play* with Sugar. Sugar is not interested. When Sugar is stretched out, Roxy will come up and gently bat at her paws. When Sugar was standing in my lap getting some loving, her fine striped tabby tail (which is quite beautiful) was draped over my shoulder and swaying w/ contentment. All of a sudden I felt Roxy's paws on my back, as she tried to play w/ Sugar's tail. These advances are usually tolerated for about 20 secs., after which they are met w/ a sound paw-swat at Roxy's face.

These are the rules of the house for Sugar and Roxy. Offenses punishable w/ sprays from water-bottle:

1. Use the litterbox, always. (So far, no problem w/ this at all--knock on wood.)

2. No scratching on furniture--only on scratching po st.

3. The bedroom is Off Limits. (That's why the door is always firmly closed.)

4. Do not get *on* the dining room table while I'm watching. (I am not so naive as to think you won't when I'm not around.)

5. Do not use teeth on people. Paw-bats (claws-in) and quick mouthing w/o biting down are marginally acceptable ways of expressing your opinion. Teeth and deliberate clawing are not.

I think those are a sufficiently minimal set of standards. We'll see what Sugar and Roxy think as time goes on. :-)

The cats are obviously having some sort of
territory/dominance negotiation thing.  Not a
physically violent one, but some sort of pecking order
being contended for in signs I don't understand.  At
first I thought Sugar was clearly Alpha cat, b/c of
the way she aggressively face-marks everything and was
always coming up to me first for pets and nuzzles,
while Roxy hung back. 

But in the past 24 hrs something has changed.  Shug's
become much more reticent and Roxy much more forward.
Last night Sugar spent a lot of time in the bathtub.

Meanwhile Roxy curled up on my lap as I sat on the
sofa, then when I stretched out longwise on my side on
the sofa she curled up on my top side and slept there,
eventually moving to nestled between my feet and the
pillow.  We both slept on the sofa til I woke up at
about 1 am  and retired to my bedroom.

This morning Sugar wasn't around and I finally found
her--holed up in the litter box.  Not relieving
herself--just hanging out in there.  I called her out
and gave her some stroking, which she accepted. 

When she's not in the bathroom she's hiding under the
lawyers' bookcase, where Roxy can't get at her.
Obviously something Went Down yesterday while I was at
work.  Roxy, I think, just wants to romp and
play--playful bats, no hissing or back-arching.  Sugar
does not.

Roxy seems to like the open-metal-ball-w/ little mouse
and bell inside--I put that toy down and she batted it
around.  The pink plastic ball is less appealing.  The
little felt mouse has disappeared, only to emerge from
under/in something when I move out of the apt, I
suspect.  They both like chasing the suspended
feather, or the fluffy-mouse-on-a-string.

Dogs are much easier to figure out.   

Today I've been fairly productive, considering. Have vacuumed and scrubbed the kitchen floor, done some other tidying, and some laundry, and actually *cooked.* Well, marinading and bbq'ing may not qualify as full-bore cooking, but it worked, and is the traditional holiday weekend thing to do. I raided my cupboard and put together the basics of a satay-style sauce, and then let a bunch of skinless boneless chicken parts marinade in it for several hours. Then fired up the Weber portable grill on the balcony and made the smoke billow. There was *just* enough propane in the little tank to finish the job. Ate the chicken over white rice, with a side of peaches. Next time I need to let the chicken marinade longer, but it was still pretty decent. Better than mac & cheese or Healthy Choice Green Box D'Jour, which are my normal default dinner options.

The Geisel Library at UCSD (named after Theodore Geisel, aka Dr Seuss--what other major research campus can say its library is named after Dr Seuss?) is a rather distinctive building, architecturally.

It is the inspiration for the UCSD logo

I'd always thought the odd graphic design was supposed to evoke the image of the stepped decks of a large ship coming into port--since one of UCSD's specialities is marine biology.

But, no. It's an abstraction from the library's facade, which looks like this:

Here is a snippet from an interview with the University Librarian:

Schottlaender: I love the story that Audrey Geisel tells of how she and Ted came up to campus for a walk and first saw the main library. Now remember, in those days this building was much more isolated than it is now; it literally rose up out of the ground. As Audrey recalls, Ted said, “Wow! If I were an architect, that’s the library that I would build.” And so when Ted passed away, Audrey decided that this would be Ted’s library.

There is an old saying in the academic world about the library being at the heart of the institution, and I think that’s always true. Here at UCSD, it is wonderful to work at an institution where that is geographically true—Geisel Library actually is located at the center of campus—and metaphorically true as well, because the abstraction of the library building serves as the campus logo. I don’t know of any other university where that is the case.

and, a closer view, from the entrance area:

From the fifth floor, the study area near the BX3880 section (that would be the books about Episcopal church history, for those of you who don't have your LOC numbers memmorized....) the view is thus....looking northwards. Not a bad view for a campus library!

Sugar says, "If I stay under this director's chair, I can swat at the Writhing Feather Monster, but it can't get at me."

Hi, I'm Roxy! I've decided the dining room chairs are almost as comfie a place to stretch out as is the back of the sofa.

Sofa-back detente

Telegraph | News | Thriving women-only village is attacked by jealous locals

Read this story about an all-women village in Kenya, started by women who fled their abusive husbands. And male reactions to it.

Here is a Washington Post article on the same village.

Roxy really likes the back of the sofa.

















Sugar loves to have her chin scratched.

Giving Hitler Hell

An amazing story.

This week in my Reference class we had another article review to do. We had to choose a recent article of at least 10 pages from a professional journal focusing on reference work (aside: I didn't know, until taking this class, that there are multiple journals on this very thing) and provide a 2-paragraph summary and critique. Here's mine. I'm rather fond of my last few sentences.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Stover, Mark. (2004) “The Reference Librarian as Non-Expert: A Postmodern Approach to Expertise.” The Reference Librarian, 87/88, 273-300.

Stover discusses the shift from the “modern” approach to knowledge and expertise, in which the professional in any field is deemed to stand in a superior relationship to the client by virtue of the expert knowledge he has attained, to the “postmodern” view, in which experts work collaboratively and co-equally with clients to help them discover and construct the knowledge they need. He draws an analogy between how this shift has affected the practice of psychotherapy to how it can inform the practice of reference librarianship. In each case the post-modern practitioner eschews the diagnosis/prescription/treatment model for one which involves dialogue and mutual discovery, in which the client is seen as a competent co-agent. Stover argues that postmodern reference librarians should abandon any sense of superiority to the patron, or any assumption that their expertise gives them a privileged position which entitles them to define the patron’s information need and determine which information should be dispensed to satisfy it. Instead the postmodern reference librarian will be a reflective practitioner who will focus on process and interpersonal skills as much as information content, and will forego the posture of a detached expert while sharing their expertise in a relational and collaborative manner.

I found parts of the article interesting—the discussion of the difference between the modern and postmodern views of knowledge and expertise in general was helpful. Having been trained to be a reflective practitioner in my previous profession (adult religious education), and being trained to always be aware of the dynamics of power and privilege and perceived “expertise” in all interpersonal relationships, the advice Stover gives was nothing new to me. Having not worked as a reference librarian (yet), I do not know how common the “modern” approach is versus the “postmodern.” This article could be useful for a supervisor of reference librarians who needed to design an inservice day on customer service/patron satisfaction. It could provide the background for a good dialogue on how reference librarians perceive their roles. My most serious quibble with the article is Stover’s advice that reference librarians avoid jargon and “professional” terminology which is meaningless to the patron and merely serves to reinforce the librarian’s superior position. I totally agree with this recommendation. I simply note it falls rather flat in a 20-page article which contains 140 citations to scholarly journals and uses such vocabulary as “univocal metadiscourses,” “metaknower” and “therapeutic modalities.” While Stover may well function as a postmodern practitioner when he is behind the reference desk, he clearly follows the conventions of modern expertise when functioning as a scholar.
- - - - - - - -

How postmodern of me--to critique the article for having a mismatch between content and form/process...... :-)

We'll see if the professor (a PhD in English Lit who then got his MLIS and works as a subject specialist at Yale University's libraries) appreciates the point ....

I was sitting here working on my sjsu homework, when the skies opened. I
could hear the water pelting on my roof and balcony and the sidewalk. While
rain was forecast, it hadn't looked or felt like it was forthcoming, so I
was very surprised. It seemed to be coming from the north, which seemed a
bit unusual. I went out to the dining room to see just how it was coming
down, and to make sure the balcony sliding door and kitchen window were
shut, b/c it sounded like it was blowing sideways pretty fiercely.

Very odd--the parking lot lights were not dimmed by this torrential downpour.

Looked out over the balcony, which was being drenched, and realized the
water was coming *up*, not down. **Beyond** odd!

Looked more closely, and saw that the source of the downpour, err, up-pour,
was a broken in-ground-sprinkler head. A strong plume of water was
erupting from just across the sidewalk from my apt. The plume was arc'd
such that it was aimed right at my roofline. After the water scrubbed my
roof and half my balcony it tumbled down to the apt below me, where it was
rapidly forming a lake inside the walled patio. Robert, my downstairs
neighbor, quickly appeared on my doorstep, the pager number for maintenance
emergencies in hand. Evidently we both put in pages simultaneously, b/c
the water was shut off w/in a few minutes. (Sam, our maintenance guy, is
muy fabuloso.)

So, no rain. Alas.

Kitties' first night home!

Roxy (the tortie) and Sugar (the tabby)