Sorry, Micky J. , couldn’t help meself 🙂

So, what’s the buzz with Interactive Whiteboards? Our district is in the middle of a push to put them in every classroom. We use SMARTboards. My wife’s district is in the middle of a push to put them in every classroom. They use Promethean. Now, I will say this . . . I like SMART better than Promethean for one simple reason: Promethean has a godawful pen. Board costs over a thousand dollars set up and ready to go; pen costs around $19.95 and looks and feels like it should be less. I mean, come on, Promethean people, get a new pen design! Yes, I’ve seen the wand. It looks useless as well. The Promethean boards seem much sturdier, but I gotta go with the board that lets me use my finger to write on it. But design flaws aside, what’s the point of a IW?

Okay, when I was in kindergarten, Miss Collins and Mrs. Batette wrote on a blackboard with chalk while we sat and got. Then, when I was in high school, Mr. Miller wrote notes on an overhead projector and we sat and got. College? Lecture theater and REALLY BIG overhead projector. Us? Sitting and getting. When I started teaching, I noticed someone had come up with the brilliant idea of hanging white showerboard on the old chalkboard and writing on it with Expo dry erase markers. I went to Lowe’s and bought three 8′ sheets of the stuff with some sheetrock screws and I had a “whiteboard” instead of a chalkboard. My allergies thanked me; my students, not so much BECAUSE, I wrote on the whiteboard with my dry erase markers and they . . . sat and got. Anyone see a pattern here?

Okay, so now I walk through my school, I see teachers on the internet, I see other teachers in other places and they’ve all got IWs. New buzz . . . we’ve all got to have IWs. So teachers all have IWs. I see these IWs in use and what is happening? Well, in 9 cases out of 10, the teacher is writing on the IW with something, maybe her finger, and the students are? Yep, you guessed it, sitting and getting.

Oh yes, and while I’m on the subject, if your “getting” isn’t rhyming with your “sitting” in your head, you aren’t saying it right because you have had the misfortune of being born outside the glorious Elysian Fields that is the American South. Yes, we are backwards in a lot of ways and yes, things are a might strange at times here in Dixie, but no one can deny that we have one awesome accent. I know my gumbo delta mud speech patterns kept me in liquid refreshment all through college courtesy of a group of wild eyed New Jersey boys who would buy all night as long as I kept talking.

But I digress, as usual.

So what I’m asking is why are we investing so much into a technology that costs a ginormous amount of money and yet, as most of the teachers I’ve seen use it, performs the same function as an $8 dollar sheet of showerboard and a pack of four Expo markers? Personally, I think the problem lies in the difference between knowing how to “work” something and knowing how to “use” something. Lots and lots of teachers today can “work” an IW. They can write on it with their fingers and pull things around and click on the Web without going to their computers. But that’s all.

So, what’s the problem? Fear. This piece of equipment costs tons of money. God forbid we should let the children near it! They might mess it up! They might puncture it, dirty it, ruin it!

Yes. They might. Or they might get engaged by the technology and, be still my beating heart, actually get interested in the lesson content. They may even, and now we’re stretching it, but we can dream, they may even stay awake in class because something they can relate to is going on using a tool they WANT to use. Make no mistake, students are fascinated by IWs. They enjoy them. I’ve even had one lad perform a genuine scientific experiment with one while I was in the room working on his teacher’s second computer. He hurled a pencil at the board as hard as he could. Once the teacher calmed down enough to speak in coherent sentences, she asked him why he’d done that. His reply? He wanted to see if he could make the screensaver go away. Experimentation and scientific method if you ask me. Crude, but scientific.

So, today’s take home point. We are wasting money on IWs if we don’t find some way to get teachers to allow students to I with the W. Sitting and getting has very little place in a 21st century classroom or at a 21st century conference for that matter. The students love the tools ONLY as long as they get to use them. Otherwise, it’s just an expensive toy that will eventually turn them off because they don’t have a stake in it’s use.

So . . . I see a line of boards and they’re all painted white . . . and have electronics in them and computers hooked to them and kids are USING THEM and not setting and getting!!!

Have a good weekend y’all, and don’t forget to . . . well, you know! 🙂

Sorry I’ve been away for awhile folks. To be honest, I’ve been in a good old fashioned funk. Thanks to “The Great Recession”, I’m probably going to be job hunting again (anyone need a slightly used, fully trained and housebroken male librarian?)  and I hate that with a purple passion, but, as the Spanish say so eloquently que sera, sera. Anyway, just as I was on the verge on swearing off blogging (and most of the rest of the real world), throwing my laptop into the creek, and taking to my bed in the fetal position complete with thumb in mouth, one of my two readers besides Mama and Budge asked me to post again and I can’t disappoint someone who thinks what I have to say is important. So, with no further ado.

I was listening to NPR’s “Whad Ya Know” with Michael Feldman and he was interviewing the curator of Rowan Oak House in Oxford, MS. Of course, as every good grit eating Southern boy and every burger flipping English major knows, Rowan Oak is the former home of one William “I can’t write a short sentence if my soul depends on it” Faulkner. The curator was describing the tour he’d recently given a group of fifth graders. He related that they seemed sufficently awed by the experience so he took them into Faulkner’s bedroom / study / studio where he’d done most of his writing. On the antique hardwood desk sat the very Underwood manual typewriter that had tapped out The Sound and the Fury, Go Down, Moses and my personal favorite, the deliciously macabre “A Rose for Emily” among others. The curator noted he was quite pleased with the hushed restraint that the youngsters showed. It was the hush in the room that allowed him to hear one young lad lean over and whisper to his comrade, “Dude, check out Faulkner’s laptop! Where’s the screen?”

Predictably, the audience laughed, but when you stop to think about it, the young boy was simply using what he knew to apply to the situation. He saw a keyboard and assumed “laptop”. Why shouldn’t he? When was the last time anyone of us seriously used a typewriter? I remember well writing my last theme in Senior English for Ms. Howell with a Brother portable correcting typewriter that had a newfangled ribbon that “melted” type onto the paper. All through college, I used a series of brand new Apple IIes and Macs and when a new product called Windows 3.1 hit the big time, we started using PCs.

What technology we now take for granted will be unrecognizable to the next generation or at least the one that follows it?

Being a huge music lover, I thought back over my four decades at the dizzying advance of audio technology. When I was born, it was no Baby Einstein for me. I listened to Janis Joplin LPs played on Mama’s console stereo. AM radio was king of the hill. I could lay awake at night and listen to stations in another STATE on our AM receiver Daddy had attached to the TV antenna. By the time I was six, Daddy had put an 8-Track with bass boost in his Camaro. Now that was a useless piece of equipment. Anyone who ever complained about programming a vcr should have had to try to “fast forward” to a chosen song on an 8-Track. It was an exercise in futility.

Cassettes were king of the Eighties as I started riding around in my ’79 Mustang and then Marilyn, my ’69 SS Chevelle. I had a cassette case full of Southern Rock and Metal. I must have had 300 cassettes in that thing. It stayed in the car because it would have necessitated a forklift to transport it to the house. I remember clearly the night at American Legion Boys’ State when I heard “The Ballad of Curtis Lowe” by Lynard Skynard in the clearest register I’d ever heard. I followed the sound to a counselor’s truck and a new format called the Compact Disc. He had one of the first car mounted CD players in the state. Of course, he still depended on the radio for music while driving because 2X oversampling didn’t go well with the local roads. Skipping was a nightmare and no one wanted to risk ruining a $50 dollar CD!!

Now, we have iPods. I’ve got a little black iPod Classic that fits in the palm of my hand with room left over and that little device can hold every song on every one of those 300 cassettes that used to accompany me on my midnight rambles and still have memory left for a season of my favorite TV show . . . if I watched that much TV. We also have satellite radio, if it survives the current economic downturn. I can lay awake at night now and listen to music from another COAST, forget the next state over. No more long rides through places like the Plains with no station to listen to. Just tune in the old XM and let it rock.

It’s been a long and fast ride for us audiophiles, but not everything has been for the best . . . at least in my mind. For one thing, I miss browsing at the local record store. Anyone remember “The Record Bar” chain of stores? iPods have great sound, but where are the liner notes with the band thanking everyone from their nanny on down for the success of this one shot wonder album? Somehow, I don’t forsee an iPod with a recording of “The White Album” by the Beatles going for five figures like an original vinyl LP recently sold for.

Most of all, iPods have taken all the fun out of new music releases. Anyone ever stand in line outside a record store waiting for a midnight release? Guns and Roses Use Your Illusion I and II, baby. Remember it like yesterday . . . rocking out in the parking lot with the local rock station. Man, those were the days. Of course, the ULTIMATE irony is that the real hardcore audio junkies who listen to Classical and such rely not on iPod downloads or even CDs. The REAL DEAL setup? Vinyl LPs played on a turntable worth more than my house. It’s a crazy world. What’s next? Maybe we’ll get direct implants to beam the sound into our brains? Never say never . . . remember, the future is now, and since it’s here I WANT MY FLYING CAR!!! I was promised a flying car and I want it NOW!

Of course, if I had a flying car, it’d be hard to work up a good case of GSF, now wouldn’t it 🙂

Rock on, y’all . . . and don’t forget to wash your feet.

Okay, my mentor and bud Cathy-Jo tagged me for a meme about goals for 2009. Now, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t do a little raging against the machine, so here are some of my educational goals for the upcoming year.

#1) Continue fighting “The Test”: I hate Scantrons, bubbles, and stupid acronyms that amount to euphemisms for “pure Hell in the Spring.” Librarians aren’t represented on tests, no matter what anyone tries to make up to the contrary, so we get constantly shafted. What gets tested gets taught and it gets paid for as well.

#2) Fighting the 800 pound gorilla at the Redmond, WA Zoo. I don’t much care for rich people. I like greedy rich people even less. According to legend, a report asked John D. Rockefeller late in the millionaire’s life how much money would it take to satisfy him, especially since he had about a gadzillion dollars. The old Standard Oil man thought a moment before replying, “One more dollar.” Now don’t get me wrong, I know Wild Willy from Redmond City didn’t STEAL any of his money or anything, but it brings to mind a Russian short story called “How Much Land?” In this case, how much money does a man need before he says, “Know what? Education is in bad shape in this country. I think I’ll quit setting up stupid programs that don’t work and give away chunks of my billions AND this godawful software to schools who need it.” How do we fight this fight? Two words: Open Source. OpenOffice 3.0 is sweet. Linux is getting more and more user friendly. Free is good.

#3) Push any book not concerned with VAMPIRES! My RHM Chris P asked me yesterday, “You know what the easiest question I get asked in this library is? ‘Do you have Twilight in?’ Answer: nope, try again tomorrow.” Seriously, put a bloodsucker on the cover and BOOM, bestseller! I am glad they are reading, but, geez, how many copies does a poor rural librarian need? Apparently, one more.

So, it’s not a great and glorious list, but I like it and think they are worthy goals. I don’t know who to tag so if you read this and haven’t been tagged, consider yourself tagged . . . and wash your feet!

I love the movie ConAir. It’s the type of fatalistic gallows humor I can truly appreciate. At one point in the movie, which is set mainly on an airplane, one of the convicts is dancing to that Southern Rock standard “Sweet Home Alabama”. At this point, Steve Buscemi’s character turns to Nicholas Cage’s character and says, “Define irony. Bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash.”

Now, what makes this particular film reference so very apropo to the situation educationally? Well, define irony. “Bunch of politicians moving educational financing in this state from the relatively stable bedrock of property taxes onto the back of the caveat emptor beast of burden state sales tax . . . right before the largest downturn in the American economy since the Great Depression.” People don’t buy stuff when they are going broke so sales tax revenue plummets, taking school funding with it. Oops, their bad!

My district got an email memo containing the minutes of the latest Teachers’ Advisory Council meeting laying out possiblilities of program, position, and pay cuts. Later that same day, we got a letter from the State Superintendent of Education letting us know that this year’s COLA raise was nixed and, barring a serious uptic in funds, this would be the last year for National Board Certification bonuses. He also mentioned that we might be facing statewide teacher / administrator / librarian pay cuts. If anyone has doubted it up to now, well brothers and sisters, the poo-poo has officially hit the fan.

The SSoE had a very valid point. Teacher salary makes up 85% of a typical district’s budget. Quite simply, we’re running out of room to cut. Much like a body that has burned all the fat off in a starvation process, we are down to consuming muscle.

My daddy always put it this way: “You cannot, no matter how much you try or how fast you move, put ten gallons of water in a five gallon bucket.” Personally, I don’t feel hopeless . . . more like “guarded.” I’m waiting on the other shoe to drop. This is one of those times when being a closet pessimist comes in handy — expectations are low so surprises will be few.

To close, let me cite another great Hollywood flick — All About Eve — with the inimitable Bette Davis when she, as Margot Channing says, “Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.”

And, if I might add, you may want to wash your feet, y’all. Water’s about all I can afford . . . at least for now.

Holy Sara Palin on a skateboard, Batman, it’s 2009 and the second semester is already here! Somebody please tell me how in the world that happened when I hadn’t gotten a quarter of what I needed to do for the FIRST semester done.

Okay, I need some reassurance here that I’m not the only person who feels like an old dog used to lying in the sunshine on a country road who is suddenly wrapped around the axles of a flying Ferrari from far away nowhere. See, I have all these ideas . . . really I do. I came back to school this year FIRED UP! I was going to do this and I was going to do that and brothers and sisters, I had a PLAN.

Yep, that lasted about fifteen minutes. Then stuff started tearing up, computers started crashing, SMARTboards needed setting, MAP needed administrating, and here come all my pretty ones in a row ready to check out books. By the time I had time to pick my head up, it was Halloween so I took a quick breath and dove back in again fixing this and helping out with that and in no time at all, Joseph’s your uncle and Mary’s your aunt, it was Thanksgiving.

Then the textbook audit hit me blindside like a cut rate doll prop in a sadistic Whac-A-Mole game from Hell. Between trying to figure out how in blazes the State Department came up with the numbers they did, keeping my building full of Triassic Age computers running and checking out books for all my lovely ones, it was Christmas. Of course, my AP and I did manage to find the flaw in the audit. I think the auditor got her numbers with some unholy combination of goat blood and chicken bones.

Still, FIRST SEMESTER IS OVER!! I didn’t get what I wanted to do done at all. Jeez ma-ninny, y’all, I just TODAY found a home for the last of the “material” that came with the consolidation of our sixth grade center with my middle school. I’m still getting five or six books a day that aren’t in the catalog and have to be entered with zMARC. I just need one of those “Time Turner” things Hermione had in Prisoner of Azkaban so I can go back to August and do what I wanted to do this year.

Of course, that’s not going to happen, so I’ll just have to do like a losing football team at halftime and regroup, readjust and try to make the best of the second half. Still, it’s unnerving to hear everyone already making plans for “what we need to do NEXT year.”

So tell me, am I out here alone or is the world just flying by a WHOLE lot faster than it used to? I mean, wow, I remember when Christmas took at least a decade to get here and summer lasted slightly longer than the Laurentide Ice Sheet from the last great ice age. Now, well, like a sign I saw online today said “only 358 shopping days ’til Christmas!” I may seem crazy, but that’ll be next week the way things seem to be going.

I guess that’s just about enough time for us to wash our feet, y’all!

In any event, I hope all your New Years’ resolutions last past Valentine’s Day and that 2009 brings . . . well, brings y’all something good. 🙂

Saw something right unusual yesterday afternoon and I wanted to share it with y’all. I expect it’ll be about as divisive as most of my opinions tend to be.

Budge and I were going to lunch on one of the busiest roads in our area and as we passed “the” Super WalMart, I noticed a guy standing on the sidewalk with a sign. Now that in and of itself isn’t unusual for that stretch of road because the homeless of the area often ply this particular region with “will work for food” signs and the like. Luckily, I didn’t dismiss this sign as “usual” and as we got closer, I noticed the holder wasn’t usual either. I’m thankful for the heavy traffic or I might have missed the whole thing.

Turns out, this was a teenaged boy and he was holding a hand lettered poster that read “I stole video games from WalMart. I am a thief.” I looked down below him and saw a woman in dark sunglasses sitting on the hood of her car, arms crossed, ill look on face. I pointed this scene out to Budge and she said, “I’m pulling in and talking to that woman. She is my new best friend.”

Well, we did. The boy was this woman’s 17 year old nephew. She has custody of him because his mother is a drug addict. She’s raised him all his life. From the looks of the pair’s clothes and the Lexus she was sitting on, she had the means to provide for him. Seems the young man celebrated his birthday by shoplifting two expensive video games from the store he was now unwillingly advertising. “Aunt Jane” (identified as such by interspersed tearful, plaintive cries from the sidewalk above) asked (probably more like pleaded with) the store manager not to press charges with the understanding that, “Aunt Jane” would handle it. This sidewalk show, scheduled to last two hours, was step one. A day spent touring our local maximum security prison’s general population was step two.

I should mention that the entire time “Aunt Jane” was explaining all this to us, tears were streaming out from under her Gucci sunglasses. She said, “He thinks I’m a monster, but I have to make him realize what stupid choices can lead to. I’ve taken the day off work to put him through this.” She even asked Budge and I if we thought she was being too harsh. We both told her that, as a pair of educators often working with undisciplined children, she was our newest hero. She smiled at that.

As we drove away, I looked back and saw her climb the bank and stand beside her nephew. She didn’t hug him or pat him on the head and she made him hold the sign up where its big black letters were clearly readable, but she stood beside him in her beige business suit and pumps. To my mind at least, she was doing what Papa called “raising” the boy.

Personally, I thing she was doing something worthwhile and effective. The lad will not likely forget his two hours on display, as Mama would say, “In front of God and everybody.” I know of other parents who wouldn’t have cared that the boy shoplifted at all. I know of others who would have stormed WalMart, retained family of lawyers in tow.

I don’t have children of my own. I have cats and they, by their very nature don’t listen to me because, for those who don’t know, 6000 years ago in Egypt, cats were worshipped as gods. They, as a species, have never forgotten this. I do work with children though and I can say that those with parents who make and enforce rules usually do better than those with Devil-may-care guardians.

I do have one concrete example. My beloved neice who I see entirely too little moved to live with her father, my B-I-L, for the 2007-2008 school year. She was a rebellious 16 year old and somewhat violent towards her stepfather and mother and she’d managed to fall in with a bit of an unsavory bunch. Her grades were Cs at best with more Ds and Fs. She was already a grade behind. She had NO curfew and basically did as she pleased. By the end of the year with her father and stepmother, she was in honors classes, playing varsity soccer, holding a steady afterschool job, and generally showing signs of having her head on straight. She had even started contacting colleges.

Then, she spent two months back with her mother and found out her despised stepfather was going on a six month overseas tour of duty. She promptly moved BACK to her mothers. I spoke with her father at Christmas while she was down visiting. Her grades are in the toilet, she is in general track classes with her “friends”, she’s been caught smoking pot in the back yard twice, and she’s setting her sights on “a local community college or something,” assuming she graduates.

I love this child dearly and Budge hates me for saying this, but I foresee her, barring a miracle, with a GED (maybe), married to and abused by one of the local riff-raff, living in some sort of “project” housing, with at least two children and no future. All because her mother wants to be her “friend.” Well, I realize there’s more to the situation than that, but I do know my niece needs a PARENT not a 30something “BFF!”

So, back to our young man on the street. Is his aunt a monster? Is this a form of child abuse? Is his self-esteem irreparably damaged? What should she have done? What could she have done? What would Dr. Benjamin Spock do? What do y’all think?

I don’t have the answers.

I just know that boy is DEFINATELY going to need to wash his feet!

Okay, since one of my best buds, Cathy Jo Nelson, tagged me for this meme, I suppose I’ll take my best shot at it.

1) I’ve been engaged six times. Budge was my sixth fiancee’ and wears the third diamond ring I’ve purchased. Hers is hers alone. I didn’t try to recycle with her. That may be why we’ve lasted so long, going on 13 years as of this writing, while six of the seven other couples married the same year we were have already divorced.

2) I can’t swim AT ALL. Whoever said fat people can float well are either full of poop or they don’t know many fat people. I float like a ’59 Cadillac carrying six rhinos and a baby elephant. Since I can’t swim, I don’t particularly like water, the lone exception being rivers (ironic, isn’t it?), so when I have to attend pool parties or lake outings, I wear the loudest colored neon swim trunks imaginable. That way, when I go under for the third time, I’ll be easy to spot from the surface . . . I hope.

3) In my younger and wilder teenage years, I was involved in a couple of high speed chases in Marilyn, my ’69 Super Sport Chevelle complete with a 396 ci big block engine. One time, I thought I’d gotten away scott free only to sneak home and find the trooper in the front yard waiting for me. He was my mom’s second cousin and knew my car as soon as I went by him at, well, at pretty high speeds. He didn’t even bother chasing me; he just went home and told Mama and the two of them waited for me to get home. One look at how Mama looked at me and he didn’t even write me a ticket, even though I asked him to take me to jail. It’d have been better than what Mama had in store.

4) I was the final recipient of the “Silver Flounder” trophy after my freshman wrestling season. This award was given to the worst wrestler on the varsity team and, believe me, I was the worst wrestler on the team. My record was 1-24 and the lone win was by forfeit because my opponent-to-be tripped getting off the team bus and knocked himself out on the pavement. Other than that, my “best” match was getting pinned in 45 seconds. Most of the time, I didn’t make it past 25 seconds.

5) I have a ginormous indented scar on the outside of my left thigh where a piece of wooden jeep bumper went through my car door and into my leg down to the bone. I was on the way to visit my grandparents when I ran a red light in my ’79 Mustang. My thought process was interesting, but much too involved for such a short blog post.

6) I once rolled my own arm up in the electric window of my wife’s car. She was standing outside the driver’s side door talking to me and anyone who knows me knows I talk mostly with my hands. So I had one arm out the window and was rolling the electric window up with the opposite hand until I realized that I’d pinched my upper arm in the rising window. It was bad enough that I had a red welt all the way around my left arm. Budge maintains it is the dumbest thing she has ever seen me do.

7) I am an ice cream addict. I’ve managed to give up my other, multitudinous vices, most of which wouldn’t do to elaborate on in a family oriented blog, but I’ve not quite managed to kick the ice cream monkey off my back. People ask me what my favorite flavor is, but that’s an impossible question. No such thing as “bad” ice cream exists. ANY ice cream is better than NO ice cream 🙂 Budge knows of the other vices I’ve managed to overcome, some with her help, so she indulges my ice cream habit.

So, there’s seven things you probably could have led a wonderful and fulfilling life without knowing. Let’s see, Cathy Jo has already tagged most of the people I know, so I’ll tap three people and, actually, only one of them knows I exist. Picachu I choose Doug Johnson, the Blue Skunk; Scott McCleod, of Dangerously Irrelevant; and Rob Darrow, of California Dreamin‘. Now, I know Doug is spending the week South of the Border like a good Minnesotan should so he’ll probably get this late. Hopefully, the other two will have something set up that alerts them that they are now “it.”

Well, I hope right now you are either enjoying or recovering from enjoying the celebration of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth around 2008 to 2011 years ago. I shy away from religious discussions like the plague because, regardless of my reputation, that is one sensitive area I prefer not to insult or challenge people with. All I’ll say on the matter is regardless if you are atheist, agnostic, or true believer in something, one could do much worse than trying to build a life around the teachings of the humble carpenter from Galilee. My only wish is that more of the world believed his message of peace, if not his path of salvation.

It’s been a good holiday season here in the grocery store world 🙂 We got the library closed down and cleaned up in time to leave at a decent hour last Friday. Budge and I have been to three wonderful Christmas parties thrown by the various important people in our lives, and last night Mama had the annual Christmas Eve gathering at her house. It was a bit more poignant this year. When Mama started the tradition fifteen years ago, we would stuff nearly thirty-five people into the house. This year, however, we have dwindled down to ten. The rest we have sent on before us into whatever lies beyond.

In just a bit, we are on our way to Budge’s family dinner and then we’ll finish our Christmas obligations for this year at my daddy’s house for supper. Hopefully everyone will be in a good mood and the day will go smoothly, but experience has taught me that this is not guaranteed.

In any event, wherever you are, Merry Christmas from Budge and me. Thank you for reading this modest little blog for the last few months and I hope the new year brings with it all the joy and promise you could ever hope for.

And of course, since this IS Christmas, wash your feet, y’all.

Love to you all, peace on Earth 🙂

This post arises from a meme, Paul C at Quoteflections “respectfully” began this meme: Life is One Big Top Ten (2008). Doug Johnson and Cathy Jo turned me on to it, so I had to come up with something of my own. I picked mysteries. I am facinated by what cannot be explained and the following is a list of what interests me most, in no certain order.

I’ve added a link for each, but the links are by no means exhaustive. Enjoy and debate if you will. I love this stuff and half the time, I can’t tell you what I believe about them from day to day.

The 1908 Tunguska Event. http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/science/07/04/tunguska.anniversary/index.html

The Nazca Lines http://www.crystalinks.com/nasca.html

Coral Castle http://www.coralcastle.com/

Crystal Skulls http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_6_1.htm

Ark of the Covenant http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/ark.html

Cryptids http://www.cryptozoology.com

Easter Island http://www.netaxs.com/~trance/rapanui.html

Roswell Incident http://www.ufoevidence.org/topics/roswell.htm

Supernatural Entities http://library.thinkquest.org/27661/docs/supern2.htm

The Marianas Trench http://www.marianatrench.com

Wait’n on a train and that train may be about to hit us square in the mouth.

That train has a name and it ain’t “The City of New Orleans” or “The Orange Blossom Special.” It’s a freight train of budget cuts, recession, and assorted other economic woe. It’s headed this way and it’s moving at express speeds.

So, in light of this coming misery, I’ve got another one of those nasty questions for y’all to ponder, namely, how likely is your program to go under? Think about it very rationally and dispassionately for a moment. Throw all the studies out the window. Get your nose out of Information Power for a minute and go over to Doug Johnson’s Blue Skunk Blog and read the memo he just had to send out to his constituents.  If that doesn’t chill you with a Minnesota blue norther, check out Rob Darrow at California Dreamin’ and see that the Left Coast libraries aren’t faring much better than the Midwest or the South.

I don’t care if the pundits on Wall Street don’t have the guts to say it . . . I do. We’ve passed “economic slowdown” and are firmly in a recession and if things don’t get better pretty fast, well, I’ve always loved the stories Papa and Granny told about the 1930’s. Looks like I may end up with some of my own. Take a look around, folks. As my beloved Waylon Jennings used to put it, “This here outlaw bit has done got out of hand.” Read this article from the Associated Press about the latest on the government bailout of the banks. Over $700 BILLION of our money is going to try to act like Liquid Plumber and unstop the credit clog that has effectively shut down our economy. I may not be popular for saying so, but I’m all for it because if we have many more crashes like WAMU or Wachovia, well . . . I don’t know what’ll happen, but it sure won’t be good.

Oh yeah, now there’s this little matter of the Big Three car manufacturers asking for a bailout as well or they are going to have to file bankruptcy and most likely go under themselves. That is going to draw another massive amount of money — I’ve seen figures from $8 billion all the way to $25 billion. Should the government refuse to bail Detroit out this time, the recently released 6.7% unemployment figures for November will be a pleasant memory.

So what does all of this mean to us in libraries, especially school libraries? Simple. When the well runs dry them what depends most on the water dies first. I’m already hearing reports from colleagues in other parts of my home state that funds have been frozen. One librarian posted on our state association’s listserv that, “I’m not planning on being able to buy ANY books this year.” The district where my wife works (incidentally one of the richest in this state) has suspended all travel and professional development conferences indefinitely. Budge and I always attended our state technology conference together as sort of a working vacation, but not this year. I’m lucky our state’s association conference is near enough for me to drive to every day so I can stay home or I wouldn’t be going to it.

I know lots of you are in the same boats. What are your plans? Like I said before, look hard at your program. Can you justify it? Can you even justify your job position in the face of massive budget cuts across many boards? (Our state funds were slashed 3% at the beginning of the year and then by 3% more six weeks later.) Put yourself in an administrator’s shoes for a bit. The DO has been informed by the state DOE that X% of funds are GONE. Since poop has always flowed downhill, the DO goes to the principals with the message, “cut deep and cut now then plan on cutting more soon.” How safe are you in your library office? Can you REALLY put together something for your principal or school board that will sway them enough to keep you in business when every dime counts double?

Let’s face it, huge chunks of our jobs that the public sees can be done by someone else for cheaper. We don’t want to admit it because that’s just the way we are, but lean times have a way of punishing the type of hubris I’ve seen in many of my colleagues. Aides can open and close the library and check out and shelve books. A computer lab monitor can take care of the lab and, whether we like it or not, the teachers can teach research and information skills. I know I taught all the facets of the research process in my ten years as an English teacher. I had to because my school’s librarian was a Library Dragon who seemed appalled by the sight of children near “her books”.

Answer this question HONESTLY, brutally honestly, What do you do in your position that, given the present economic circumstances, NO ONE ELSE in the building can do? What makes you INDISPENSABLE? Don’t even bother saying something like collection development because if the district and the state are broke, nothing is going to be available to develop a collection with. Face it, our specialties are not tested on NCLB high stakes tests so in these lean times, our programs are dangerously close to being considered very expensive luxury liabilities.  Say I am a traitor to our profession. Call me a rank pessimist if you wish. Just remember that pessimists are very seldom blindsided since we always expect the worst.

Speaking of “the worst”. Let’s talk “Worst Case Scenario.” Your principal comes to you and says, “Ms. Smith (or Mr. Jones), I’m sorry, but we can’t afford a full time librarian next year. The budget cuts are just too much. Your aide will run the day to day library next year. Since you have so many years of service, we’d like to offer you a position back in the classroom. You’ll be teaching _____ next year.”

What do you do? I’d collapse into the fetal position and cry since one reason (far from the only and definitely not the most important reason) I became a librarian was to leave the classroom and still be able to help children and students. I haven’t had to deal with testing pressure and the daily grind of grading essays, checking homework, and lecturing and planning three ninety minute blocks of instruction in four years. To have to go back to that would be, for me, horrible to contemplate. Of course, I wouldn’t have a choice since I’ve grown accustomed to running water, inside toilets, and hot food. I certainly wouldn’t like it. It would be an emotional blow. How about you? Could you stand losing your office, your position, your program? If you don’t think you can, you’d better find a way TONIGHT to make yourself and your program so valuable AND so COST EFFECTIVE that you can weather the storm when the budget axe starts to fall. Otherwise, it could be a long road ahead.

Wash your feet while you’ve still got a tub to wash them in, y’all.