index and quotient, he knows what to do

maura @ 8:38 pm

Today I wrote a post for my other blog. But I almost put it here, that’s why I’m linking to it. I had trouble deciding which one is a better fit (it’s kind of a love letter to my iPhone). Probably here, but I haven’t posted at the other one in ages so I decided it needed the attention more.

Back to your regularly scheduled mauraweb! next time.

everything you say, everything you do

maura @ 9:48 pm

Okay, that last post was kind of a bummer. Sorry about that. We finally turned on the air conditioner which helped enormously with the sluggishness I was feeling (and now it’s cooler again, phew). It’s been on so little this summer that I kind of keep forgetting that we have one (duh).

Last week we took a short but lovely vacation. We drove up to my dad’s in Vermont, stayed overnight, then left Gus there to frolic in the nature with my stepmother’s brother’s kids (who are about his age) while we hightailed it north to Montreal. Bonjour!

After driving an hour or so in the green hills it cracked us up that everything seemed to flatten out as soon as we crossed the border. Who knew so much mais sucre grew in Canada? We passed a hilarious pizza place called Arrete Papa! but went by too fast to get a picture.

We left a little later than planned so by the time we got to the hotel it was past lunch and I was starving. Montreal has a petite but tres charmant Chinatown that seemed about 50% Vietnamese restaurants, so we popped in for some pho + spring rolls, yum. Across the street was this awesome graffiti. Yay for recycling! If only my toilet paper was this happy.

After lunch we went to the library, of course! It’s a really cool huge library, 5 floors and very modern. An entire floor is devoted to music + movies (w/listening + watching stations), and another floor to the kids collection (also watching stations, kid-sized!). There was an art exhibit in the basement and loads of comfy-looking chairs and tables w/desk-type lighting + wifi everywhere. If I lived in Montreal I’d be there every weekend, seriously. Plus there was some more excellent graffiti in the alley near the back door.

We stayed in a small hotel in the historic part of the city (a birthday gift!). Among the lavender-scented soaps-n-things was a box of Everything. I know, seems small, right?

The next day we explored the city. This is the Palais de Congres (Convention Center) which looks like a kaleidoscope.

We walked through downtown which is just like every urban downtown (Starbucks? Non!). But on our way up the hill to see McGill University we passed this crazy sculpture of a crowd of people looking at something. All of the people in the front of the crowd are intently peering skyward, but as you walk towards the back of the sculpture things get kind of weird. Voici le petit homme mysterieuse! (I think I’ve got some gender issues in that sentence, oh well. High school was a long time ago.)

OMG there is an actual mont right in the middle of the city. After hoofing it up intense hills through McGill’s campus we got to the Parc du Mont Royal. These cool stripey rocks were near the bottom of the mont, and begged me to take their photo. How could I resist?

Then we climbed stairs/hiked practically straight up the mont, quite a workout. Luckily it was a gorgeous day, sunny but breezy and not too hot. The reward was this awesome view.

Then we had a little Mont Royal snafu. We wanted to head northeast out of the parc to the Plateau neighborhood to have lunch. But the parc is not very well-signed so in our efforts to not go back the same way we came up we kind of messed up and ended up walking forever only to emerge all the way on the other side of the parc BUT about the same distance from our destination as when we’d started, doh. All hail public transportation! We waited 15 minutes for a bus and were eternally grateful that it accepted paper money as well as coins.

I was starving (again) and exhausted by this point, and happy that we’d planned to eat at Cafe Santropol, a sort of funky crunchy crafty lunch place. There was an enormous garden and we snagged a table so far back next to the little pond that it was nearly hidden. And there was a tuba planter on the fence behind Jonathan.

This is my amazing and delicious sandwich, the Sweet Root: carrot salad with raisins and walnuts and curry on brown bread. Plus lots of extra fruits + vegetables. I’m getting hungry just looking at this, it was so good.

After lunch we thought about going to the archaeology museum, but I was too tired to read exhibit signs so we just went down to the river and hung out and read and watched the boats and people. There were some segway tours so of course we gawked at them, how could we not?

The next day we were headed back to the US, but not before going to the depanneur (= bodega) to buy a whole mess of chocolate bars in varieties not available on domestic soil. On our way out we stopped on two island parks in the St. Lawrence River. One was natural and one created for Expo ’67 (the world’s fair). Some of the old pavilions are still there and used for various purposes. This Buckminster Fuller-designed one was the US pavilion and is now a small environmental museum.

And then it was time to say Au Revoir, Canada. I’d like to go back sometime with Gus — we didn’t hit any museums and it seems like there’re lots of kid-friendly things to do. Not that he missed us, what with all of the canoeing and swimming in the pond and riding the alpine slide and making ice cream he did with his grandparents.

On our last night we made smores over a real campfire, though Gus preferred his toasted marshmallows solo. Because I hate marshmallows I just ate chocolate and graham crackers. Together we make a smore!

lose yourself in the sound

maura @ 10:00 pm

This summer’s been weirdly paced, slow yet fast. It seems like it’s just begun, yet it’ll be over in a few weeks. For me, at least — Gus doesn’t start school until Sept 9 because there is a rule that public schools don’t start until after Labor Day which this year is on 9/7, as late as it can possibly be. Maybe it’s because it rained all of June (and also I was strangely busy at work until well into June). And then it was cool in July (which I loved). But now it’s August and hot and I’m sluggish. All of which contributes to the fast slowness.

There’s also the thing about not having a lot scheduled at work which can sometimes perversely make it harder to get things done. It can be nice to have a couple of meetings, classes or ref desk shifts sprinkled around the week, just to have something to hang yr schedule on. I’ve gotten a fair amount done so far this summer — had a couple of big projects planned at work — but not as much as I feel like I should have. And I am still procrastinating weeding (tho I feel like I read/hear that everyone does).

But it’s a little scary to realize that there’s only a couple of weeks left to my summer. We’ve got one more vacation coming up and then it’s orientation + first week of classes. I’d love to have one more week of summer, one week for just research/writing. I’m in the middle of an article and have a bunch of smallish things to do for this year’s big research project and have a malformed mini-draft for another article and am trying to come up with a topic for presentation at a small local conference. And I’m sorely neglecting my personal academic/library blog. And I should write another post for the official academic library blog. Last week I thought I’d write about the slow fastness of summer, but now I can’t figure out how to do it that doesn’t sound all trite + whiny (which is the raison d’etre of this blag only, not the others).

I’m thinking about that whole “get up early + write” thing, the standard advice that all the real writers dole out. I try hard to force myself to work at night but in my old age I’ve realized that I’m a morning person. Gus’s current camp is really close to our house so the mornings will be more relaxed for a little while — this is probably a good time to try it. But of course then I will need to go to bed early, too. Funny how the real writers never mention that. Don’t they need sleep?

it’s getting later and later

maura @ 5:27 pm

I think it’s fair to say that I am a bit obsessed with tiny houses. I’ve been decluttering a lot, downsized from a desktop computer to a laptop, am checking more books out of the library than I buy, etc. So it makes sense that the tiny house would be right up my alley.

My daydream is that when we retire we’ll get a bit of mountainy foresty land near a stream and plop down a tiny house. Something like this one, the Harbinger, looks like a good fit for us. It’s 300 square feet plus a sleeping loft. Yes, we’d have to get rid of a bunch of stuff. But I’m ready to get rid of most of the knick-nacks (and paddywacks). By then I will have digitized all of my LPs and CDs so they can go, too. We probably won’t want to part with all of the books, but I bet if we invest in some custom-built shelves and arrange the books by size we’ll be able to get most of them in there.

What about the kitchen? Will we eat tiny food*? Some of these houses have tiny little kitchens w/hot plates + dorm fridges, but the Harbinger has enough space for a modest but real stove/oven + fridge. Yes, we’ll need to go shopping more often, but we’ll be living just outside of a cute little town and I will ride my bike** to the store every few days. Also, we’ll have a (tiny) garden where we’ll grow (tiny) fruits + veggies.

* On tiny plates! Like in Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle’s Slow-Eater-Tiny-Bite-Taker Cure.

** Gus + I got bikes! But that’s a post for another day, Pee-Wee.

You can add another bedroom onto the back, but I think that instead we should get another even tinier house as a guest room, maybe the Epu? Gus should be fine there when he comes to visit. We will probably also need a shed to hold bikes, gardening tools, push mower, cross-country skis, snowshoes + sleds. We’ll have to get a car but it can be small, too.

After I outlined all of this Jonathan said “so really it’s a tiny compound!”

everything looks beautiful on video

maura @ 9:43 pm

It’s been a crazy kid week in the mauraweb! household. Gus learned to make farting noises in his armpit (thank you, private school day camp!), and has of course been showcasing this newfound talent at every opportunity. Tonight I had to act like a parent and bust out with “no farting noises at the dinner table!” On the other hand, he’s really quite good, so I can’t help but feel a *little* proud.

He also got a haircut yesterday for the first time since last September. In our crunchy, progressive-school corner of Brooklyn it’s pretty common for boys to have long hair. But on our recent trip through a non-NYC airport the security guard used a female pronoun while referring to Gus not once but *three* times (though it didn’t seem to faze him). And it’s gotten increasingly difficult to comb, esp. since we’ve entered the shower-every-day camp phase of the summer.

I really liked his long skater kid hair so initially I was sad, but when I got home from work last night I was relieved to discover that the cut turned out really well. It always surprises me how much older he looks with shorter hair. I tried to take a picture, but he was all moving and weird faces and everything.

We accidentally let him stay up too late tonight and he started to get a little rammy in the shower. Suddenly he was rapping: “yo yo yo, my name is Joe, I like to wear my pants down low.” It sounded like something he didn’t make up on his own, so I googled it and looks like it’s a YouTube meme. For kids. Very odd. I couldn’t find the exact words though (the videos I watched all had the same beginning but different ends to the rhyme, e.g. “I stubbed my toe on a cheerio”). So maybe he did make up that part.

january, february, march april may

maura @ 10:16 pm

It’s been a while since I blagged about the cats, and I know how much you’ve been wondering about them. Yes, even you!

Well they’re certainly bigger, which means that they’re hairier and poop more. Caramel is still needy, though he’s thankfully stopped waking us up in the early morning hours. He does still meow pitifully at breakfast time, as if he can’t quite bring himself to believe that we are actually going to feed him (which of course we do every day — he’s not so smart). Gummy is still somewhat aloof, though he’s been following us around a bit more lately. He’s very picky about where you pet him and wants you to sit on the floor with him (no couches or bed) and pet him while he walks back and forth.

Not to excessively anthropomorphize them, but we’re making some changes around here related to cat products and I feel like they’ve both been sort of crabby about it. I am about to lose my mind with the cedar litter we have that gets tracked all over the apartment (it’s very light and clings to their fur easily) so we are trying to switch them to these pine pellets (which are cheaper and sold at our food coop so don’t require a special trip to the pet store). We are trying to do the switch very slowly so hopefully they’ll be cool with it.

We’re also changing their food. We used to do canned food in the AM and dry in the PM, which was very generous of us, I think, given how awful the canned food smells. But Gummy’s never been very interested in the canned food. He used to eat just a little bit then walk away, and Caramel would trundle his (fatter) butt over and polish off the rest. When we finally figured that out we started sequestering Gummy’s food and bringing it out later while Caramel was closed in the bedroom. Which is just kind of an insane amount of hoop-jumping for cats in the morning when we are trying to get the people to school + work.

So we’re going all dry food all the time (which is cheaper, too). Gummy seems nonplussed; he clearly eats to live. Caramel, on the other hand, is practically despondent in the mornings. We weaned them off over the course of a week but he still cries every morning while I’m making Gus’s breakfast. On the plus side, he’s much less interested in the dry food so I think he only eats his own portion and not Gummy’s, too.

The other weird thing about Caramel is the chewing — cords, chopsticks, the handle of their brush — but I think I’ve bored you with enough cat talk for one evening.

i’m a robot man

maura @ 11:03 pm

It’s finally summer here and even though it’s not too hot yet my brain has been kind of slow lately. We went on our fabulous midwest vacation last week and though I’m back in the groove at work I’m having trouble shoving myself into a writing frame of mind. Also since it finally decided to stop raining this week I started riding my scooter to work again, which means that I’m more tired than usual at night.

So hi, internets, how’ve you been? I feel like I should have something more interesting to say than that, but sadly I do not.

We had a great time last week. Gus was treated to all manner of grandparental spoilage including go-kart construction, pottery making, junk food eating and late night TV watching. I slept for eight hours EVERY night and spent enough time lying around reading that I think I actually gained a few pounds. We all got to pet adorable baby goats at the zoo.

Jonathan and I also went to Chicago for 2 nights which was a blast. It was fun to see old friends and spend time walking around the city without having to give someone small a piggyback ride. We went to the newly-expanded Art Institute, and though I was a teeny bit disappointed that the Chagall stained glass windows aren’t back up after the renovations it really was lovely. There’s so much space now that lots more of the collection is displayed than before. The Cornell Boxes were among my favorites – so interesting + creepy. We rode my favorite El line and took advantage of our friend’s knowledge of architecture to learn about all of the new buildings. And I stood under the bean and took a picture of us:

(Please note: unless your name is Anne or Tex you are probably not at all interested in this paragraph. Feel free to move along.) On the way into the city we stopped in Hyde Park to eat garbage pizza and drink (strong!) coffee at the Med and wander around campus. The new dorms by the Reg are intensely orange (and not really in a good way) BUT they have the old house names from the now-demolished Woodward, which is kind of cool. And the new GSB building is handsome but kind of pushes Ida Noyes even more to the periphery than it was before.

Mostly I really wanted to ogle the new library construction. Instead of offsite storage they’re building this crazy oval-shaped dome-covered subterranean library next to the Reg. It’ll be closed stacks with automatic book retrieval (read: robots!). I’m calling it the underground robolibrary in my head – you should, too.

i saw you running through my playground

maura @ 9:38 pm

Last week on my walk to work I listened to a podcast interview with Alison Pugh, a sociologist who just wrote the book Longing and Belonging: Parents, Children and Consumer Culture. She spent three years observing kids and interviewing parents of varying socioeconomic statuses in Oakland, CA. The results of her study suggest that kids want what their peers have much more than what consumer marketing tells them to want (though advertising does still influence their consumer desires).

She found that often the most desired toys are electronic and that most kids tended to have these toys, regardless of their family’s income level. One interesting finding is that affluent parents were much more likely to buy items viewed as basic or necessary toys (bikes, blocks, etc.) in addition to the coveted electronic toys. Poor parents tended to buy only the items that carried the most social weight so, for example, they wouldn’t have a bike but they would have a Wii. And, many affluent parents eschewed electronic toys altogether, though they bought plenty of other toys for their kids.

Two things that my brain’s been chewing on ever since:

1. This pattern totally fits with what I’ve observed in my (and Gus’s) lives and interactions with his peers and their parents. And I find it so interesting when compared to James Paul Gee’s thesis from What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy. He concluded that video games can teach kids lots of good stuff (reading, problem-solving, critical thinking, etc.) in ways that make them eager and excited to learn. But he cautioned that poor kids aren’t getting the same opportunities to experience the benefits of video games as are more affluent kids. According to Pugh’s work, most kids do have video game systems, regardless of their family’s income level. So that’s good.

2. About halfway through listening to the podcast I thought to myself, “well, that’s totally obvious.” Which was the same reaction that Jonathan had when I told him about the interview later on. And then I realized OMG, we are the studied! I’m the target population, so of COURSE it seems obvious to me – I live it. I’ve been getting reading and thinking about anthropology lots lately (and, w/my new research project, even doing some), and it was a weird feeling to realize that I was on the other side of the table, ethnographically speaking.

Sounds like a cool book — I definitely plan to read it.

here’s your future: it’s gonna rain

maura @ 9:39 pm

I’ve been mentally blogging all day in discrete paragraphs rather than sustained narrative, so I’m going to kick it list-style here tonight:

1. After multiple recommendations I finally got my hands on some Thermals records. And they are awesome! Good for listening to while cleaning the stacks of papers off your desk, arranging the fall workshop schedule, and doing the dishes. Since it has rained here for a million billion jillion days straight, the line that’s the title of this post seems particularly apt.

2. Seriously, it has rained for a million billion jillion days straight. I mean, I used to dig in Ireland, I know from rain. I finally bought some big tall boots, but this is still getting pretty old. No rain today but the forecast for the weekend looks ominous, bah.

3. Last week we went to the curriculum share at Gus’s school to see all the fantastic work they’ve done all year. I am completely in awe of his teacher: she took those 27 kids on a ton of field trips all over the city (they studied a lot of architecture this year), including walks over the Brooklyn, Manhattan AND Williamsburg bridges (not all in the same day). Among the work Gus showed us was a book he made entitled “All Kinds of Awesome Poems By Gus.” Which makes me giggle every time I think of it.

4. I finally cleared a whole bunch of random old photos off my phone recently. Here are two:

This is from a crazy place with tons of inflatable stuff to climb on called Bounce U that we went to with friends earlier this year. Gus had a blast, predictably.

There’s a fun public art project all along a street near my work for which lots of people knitted cozies for the parking meters! It’s amazing, very Doctor Seussian. I took this photo right after the cozies were installed — they look much more droopy now that they’ve been rained on for a month. You can get a better look in the nice Flickr photostream and there’s also more info in the Times.

heads roll and heads roll

maura @ 11:26 pm

My birthday was last week. It was a good day: I went to Library Camp and ate chocolate cupcakes w/vanilla buttercream frosting, yum. (not at the same time, though.) I am also old finally enough now. “Old enough for what?” you may ask. And I will answer: “everything.”

Among the lovely wishes + gifts, I got the latest release by 50 Foot Wave: “Power + Light.” 50 Foot Wave is Kristin Hersh (of Throwing Muses fame)’s other band, and they are loud + rocking. Lately this old lady has been all about the rock music, and I am happy to report that this scratches my rock itch. (Which sounds kind of yucky, actually.)

But that’s not what I want to blag about. What I really want to do is give big ups to Kristin & Co. because they have escaped the shackles of the recording industry and are kicking it open access-style. They founded Cash Music as an alternative means of music distribution. They released this new record on beautiful vinyl (choice of 4 colors! I picked cyan), which you can buy. And they also made the mp3 of the whole dang record available to download for free. Which kicks ass for me because now I don’t have to sit there making sure the cats don’t mess w/things while the USB turntable rips the vinyl to mp3. And of course the whole dang thing is Creative Commons licensed, so others can mix + mash these tracks as the spirit moves them.

I’ve been interested in open access/source kinds of things for a while, I guess, but I’ve gotten more and more passionate about those issues since I became a librarian (don’t get me started on the absurdities of scholarly journal publishing). Of course music/content/art producers need to get paid for the good work they do, but so many of them are held hostage by the recording/publishing industry. These models are broken. I’m not sure what the answer is — I don’t think we’ll know that for a while yet — but I’m 100% convinced that things like Cash Music are a step in the right direction.