Springy Thingie

Spring, finally!! I haven't seen a crocus, which is supposed to be the harbinger of spring, but everything is certainly coming up daffodils. I just hope that while I was photographing the daffodils, I wasn't wallowing in poison ivy/oak/sumac like I did last summer while... well, taking pictures of flowers, actually. Maybe I should've learned something...

Anyway, the very moment things started to look greenish, the boys and I bounded out the door and have barely come in to sleep since. In addition to seeking out new and inventive ways to acquire allergic rashes, we have been having particular fun with ponds these last couple of weeks.

There's a pond right at the top the hill adjacent the holler that we like to visit to keep tabs on its level, relative slushiness, and visible wildlife. To our delight, on our last trip we found several clutches of frog eggs out at the pond edge where we could poke at them and feel their sliminess. A few of the poor little eggies found their way onto my kitchen counter (in a jar of water) where Charlie checks their progress every 30 seconds or so and asks me if they've hatched yet. The joy of boys.

This particular bout of beautiful weather also has brought with it a canine interloper. The doggie showed up on Monday this week and has been called a different name for every day he's been here. No, not those kind of names. He started out being called Copper, after Disney's Fox and the Hound. After I vetoed this for sheer lack of originality, we tried Ebenezer. Charlie imediately shortened that to Neezer. Then, while watching The Great Mouse Detective Charlie decided that we ought to call him Tobey. This fellow looks like an English Foxhound or a giant Beagle, and has taken a particular dislike to Boots the Cat. So now, when we're trying to get him to stop baying in the middle of the night, we run the whole gamut of names. Finally, I resorted to chaining him up by the old chicken coop using a walking harness that fits around  the neck and the ribs behind  the forelegs, with cables along the back and chest connecting the two. Two nights running, and twice on one of said nights, he's managed to slip out of the harness. So I'm thinking that the name Houdini might be on the horizon... if we can keep the escape artist long enough for a name to stick.

If Librarians Ruled the World

If librarians took over the world, you would not have to worry about any silly irradication of ethnic groups or suppression of ideas. (We are in the idea business, after all.) No, if librarians had aspirations to world domination, it would only be about one thing: books:

1) No more tiny books, no more huge books. Uniformity of size, people! Do you know what a pain it is to shelve all these oddly sized books in conjunction with the Dewey?

2) Sorry, J.D. Robb, but if you don't start numbering your Inanity in Death series, you will be facing a firing squad. And that goes too for any author who plans on writing a series that goes on forever. Recognizable sequences, or death.

3) Sorry about your luck, L.J. Smith, but you won't be allowed to republish books you wrote ten years ago under a different publisher with a new copyright date. You can republish all you want, but that original copyright date from that original imprint stands. You don't reissue a birth certificate when someone gets married and changes their last name, do you!? No. You're not fooling anyone.

4) Oh, and authors, if you're planning on genre-hopping, you'd better have a healthy imagination for pseudonyms. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to hand a blue-haired old lady the newest book from an author who has heretofore been family-rated and down-to-earth only to have her return it reporting that it contained vampires and *gasp* nudity!? New genre=new pseudonym.

5) James Patterson, you unmitigated fraud, if you want to help out unknown authors whose books you feel deserve to be published, set up your own publishing imprint. Slapping your name on the front of the book along with the real author is just fraud. Plus, after reading Sunday's At Tiffany's, we question your taste anyway.

This is life under the Librarian Reich!

Guest Blogger-- Flat Stanley!

In 1964, a fictional character was born who has grown to national renown. In the original book, by writer Jeff Brown and illustrator Tomi Ungerer, Stanley Lambchop wakes up one morning flattened by his bulletin board. Keeping a positive attitude, Flat Stanley soon discovers advantages to being flat: he can go under door, fly like a kite, and even mail himself to California. Inspired by Flat Stanley's trip to California inside an envelope, Canadian educator Dale Hubert created the Flat Stanley Project for his grade three students and in 1995 put it on the Web. Classrooms around the world exchange cut-out Flat Stanleys and keep journals as a way for kids to learn about other parts of the world. Over the years Flat Stanley has become a pop culture phenomenon as well as an educational tool. He has "met" world leaders such as Bill Clinton, made appearances on television shows such as The West Wing and Jeopardy!, been aboard the U.S. space shuttle Discovery and made trips all over the globe, including to Mt. Everest and the Taj Mahal. On the red carpet at the 2005 Oscar ceremony, actor and filmmaker Clint Eastwood flashed a Flat Stanley for photographers... And most recently, Flat Stanley came to visit the Pearsons. So without further ado, I give you guest-blogger Flat Stanley! (No relation to the blog owner's father...)

Hi blog readers! I'm visiting for a couple of weeks with Charlie, Abraham, Joe, and Hannah doing the things they do.

Charlie is a great inventor and adventurer. He and I worked on an invention together the first night we met. It was a little tin steam engine. Then we had a sleepover.

The second day I was here, I went to work with Hannah, Charlie’s mom. She works in  a very tiny library, but a fun one. Hannah let me play hide-n-seek in the books, and then she let me try to drive the bookmobile! Too bad I couldn’t reach the pedals. (I didn't say he could drive. He locked me out when we went down to get a book for a patron. If the police station wasn't two doors from here, I don't know what would've happened! That flat kid is a menace!)

On Saturday, Charlie, Abraham, and their mom took me to McDonald’s for supper, and then we did some shopping at Walmart. I rode around in Hannah’s purse through the store, but she let me go swimming in the fish tanks when no one was looking. Then Charlie, Abe, and I tried out the bikes. I rode with Abe because Charlie goes too fast! I got my picture taken with some Barbie dolls that Hannah thought were funny. Then Charlie and I tried on hats. Isn't he dapper? (On the Flat Stanley website it says to take pictures of him with local landmarks. How's Walmart for a local landmark, eh?)

On Sunday afternoon, all of the Pearsons and I went for a walk in the creek that flows from the Holler Hills to the Licking River. The Licking River had a very bad flood about 12 years ago that put all of Falmouth under at least 10 feet of water! The creek was rushing the day we visited, but it wasn’t that high. We found the ruins of what is often called a “slave wall” down near the creek. Slave walls are walls made of field stone stacked carefully together, and were actually not built by slaves at all, but by Irish immigrants in early Kentucky settlement days.

Next time I visit Kentucky, I want go somewhere besides Walmart. Maybe Natural Bridge or Mammoth Cave or something. (Little complainer. I offered to mail him there, but he said he didn't know anybody. Maybe I should've taken him to Kincaid Lake and shown him the "landmark" golf course.)

Anyway, I had fun with the 'Tuckians even though going to McDonald's is their idea of a special occasion. You should visit sometime!