Free Learning Sites

If you Know a student who is online often (and what student today is NOT?!) , here are two free online learning sites to help them brush up on skills or learn something new:

KAHN ACADEMY www.khanacademy.org/
Thousands of educational videos and hundreds of practice exercise on a wide variety of K-12 topics ranging from history to chemistry to arithmetic to venture capital.  This website started with math videos prepared by Khan for a relative in another city, but has expanded exponentially to become one of the best free online learing sites available.   The ABOUT section of their website includes the following description of their goals:
"The Khan Academy is an organization on a mission. We're a not-for-profit with the goal of changing education for the better by providing a free world-class education to anyone anywhere. All of the site's resources are available to anyone. It doesn't matter if you are a student, teacher, home-schooler, principal, adult returning to the classroom after 20 years, or a friendly alien just trying to get a leg up in earthly biology. The Khan Academy's materials and resources are available to you completely free of charge."  I wish such a comprehensive resource had been at my fingertips when I was preparing for academic tests. Bravo!

GCF LearnFree  www.gcflearnfree.org/
a simpler set of free online lessons on Computers, Reading and Math from Goodwill Community Foundation. Yes, that IS the Goodwill Industries who have the the thrift stores and work programs for people with disabilities that we are all familiar with. GCF has now made lessons in basic skills available to all.  There are even mobile apps, so that online learners can put free time anywhere, anytime to good use learning and practicing these important subjects.

A Comment !!!

A comment on my blog from a heretofore unknown person...!  Huzzah!! 
It made me think of the seen in JULIE & JULIA where Julie gets so excited about a comment form someone other than her mother.  :-)  Does this make me a REAL blogger now?

But the best part is that I discovered a fellow blogging bookie and a new writer (ANN SUMMERVILLE) who does my favorite kind of mysteries.   Her blog, COZY IN TEXAS is now one that I am following and I am looking forward to being able to access the Kindle edition of her ebooks.

I knew right away that we were kindred spirits when I saw the number of book-related blogs she is following.  Now THOSE are on my lists of new things to check out, too.

DPL Holiday Used Book Sale

Guess who just found some of the cozy mysteries I blogged about yesterday down in the DPL Holiday Used Booksale!  Woooo-hooo!!  Two MC Beatons that will go onto the Christmas Books shelf at home.  Yes!

Looks like I will be going down again today when my day ends and maybe I'll even come back tomorow. The selection is great and the prices very reasonable.  Think I will hunt for some gift books a little later.  There is still lots to choose from.

Cozy Christmas Mysteries

Noticed a "cozy mystery" with a Christmas theme on a colleague's desk today and it jogged my memory that FIND CHRISTMAS BOOKS is still on my TO-DO List, along with find CHRISTMAS CARDS.  Yes, I am terribly slow at sending out my cards and some years don't even make it to the post office in time.  One year we sent out Groundhog letters instead!  But this year.....I resolved to do better...and I still have time....

But regardless what happens with the Christmas Cards, we ALWAYS get out the box of Christmas books and usually get around to re-reading a few old favorites. We especially like reading A CHRISTMAS CAROL aloud and have even gathered with other Dickens aficionados to make an event of it. I wonder how his CRICKET IN THE HEARTH would stand up to the same treatment. Might be worth the experiment....

But back to the cozy mysteries with yuletide themes.  Some of my favorite authors do series with repeating characters: M.C. Beaton has both the Agatha Raisin stories and her Scottish detective Hamish Macbeth.  Here are some of their seasonal novels: For those who like Agatha's feistiness try KISSING CHRISTMAS GOODBYE (2007) or BUSY BODY (2010). And although it is older, HIGHLAND CHRISTMAS (1999) with Hamish made for a nice cozy evening a few holiday seasons ago.

Another cozy mystery writer with a couple set during the holidays is Joanne Fluke. I liked CANDY CANE MURDER (2007) and Hannah Swensen, the cookie baking sleuth in PLUM PUDDING MURDER (2009)--a lot--as much for the cookie and other dessert recipes as the nice mysteries with likable townspeople.  I have become almost as  fond of the folks in Lake Eden, Minnesota as the colorful cast of characters who populate that little town down the road called Lake Wobegon.  Who wouldn't like cookies, mystery and Christmas all in the same book!

And that reminds me of yet one more item for the TO-DO List:  bake Christmas cookies!   Happy Holidays to you and yours.....

Tech Petting Zoo--highly recommended

WOW.  What a great way to get to see and hear about features of the MANY eReader devices out there without it costing an arm or a requiring a trip to a big box electronics store!

The Reference Services team just finished a whirlwind tour of eReaders and free downloads from the DPL eMedia page with a self-acclaimed "technophobe" staff member at the control panel.  With CTC staffer "Squee" Mueller's  instructions and exuberant encouragement we got through Overdrive Media Console and Adobe Digital Reader installs with little muss or fuss. It seemed the kind of process we actually COULD walk a customer through on the phone or at the Reference Desk on our own.  And then to put the frosting on the cake, she downloaded to the Reference Folder on the shared drive WORD files with buttons boldly highlighted in red that say and show all the steps. This is just the thing that this somewhat technically challenged, visually-oriented old library dog will need to perform this trick and amaze and astound novice eMedia users.  Abracadabra!  And best of all, the files for specific formats of eMedia can be emailed to customers so they can refer to them, too.  While this is a little like pulling the curtain aside and letting our customers see the little man operating the controls, I am very grateful for this vaulable tool to be able to share with our customers. Thank you to the real wizrds up in the Community Technology Center for creating the handouts, staff trainings and tech petting zoo and other opportunities to demystify the gadgets that are becoming such a big part of our lives. Bravo!!

THE MAJESTIC

We recently watched Jim Carey in THE MAJESTIC (2001), a wonderful film that runs "against type" for him. In it he plays a serious dramatic role as a Hollywood screenwriter who has just been summoned before the Congress as a suspected communist. Before he can testify, though, Peter Appleton is involved in an auto accident and nearly drowned. When he awakes on an unknown beach with a concussion and amnesia, he is mistaken for a WWII veteran named Luke Trimble who was reported missing in action, and welcomed home as a long lost son. Martin Landau plays Harry Trimble, the father who wants desperately to believe that the stranger is his son Luke.  The two are "reunited" and the whole broken-hearted town begins to heal as it pitches in to restore The Majestic, the town movie house that as been closed since the townspeople went into mourning over their lost sons, fathers and husbands in the '40s. In one emotional scene, a war memorial given to the town in recognition of their sacrifices by Pres. Roosevelt is finally installed in the town square after languishing in the basement of the town hall. Townspeople raise pennants with blue and/or gold stars--blue for a member of the armed forces serving, gold for family members who are MIA or were killed serving their country. There were dozens of them from this small town that had sent more than its share of young men to the War--and lost 62 of them during the fighting. A devastating number for any town...

Since then I have noticed similar banners in windows in my nieghborhood. So out of curiosity I looked up Blue Star Mothers online and forun the following explanation from a local chapter in Colorado Springs:
rrbsm.webs.com/whoweare.htm and a whole set of Resource Links compiled by these moms and families with ways to support active service men and women rrbsm.webs.com/apps/links . With the holidays coming up, there is still time to get involved and send encouragement to someone far from home or their families here at home.

Dr. Zhivago revisited

The other morning I listened to a recorded version of Boris Pasternak's DR ZHIVAGO on my laptop while I worked on the laundry. It is a CD that I checked out from the library. There is also a Large Type copy in transit from another branch that will be available for checkout soon.  I plan to have it on my nightstand for bedtime reading for the next few weeks.  That way I can go back and double check passages that I have heard online, or pick up where I left off before sleep overtakes me.  Actually, the recorded version is helping keep that cast of thousands with the complex Russian names from getting so scrambled.  I like this!  I wonder what Pasternak would think.

My Aunt Shirley

Last week I spent a couple of days in Washinton, DC with cousins.  We were there for the funeral of my Aunt Shirley who was buried with her husband Bruno at Arlington National Cemetary. Her epitaph will appear on the back of his headstone.  She always did have his back....and was there behind a lot of people, encouraging, loving, challenging us to be our best.  Shirley was also a great role model. She started college when her youngest child started kindergarten and then went on to teach at a "tough" high school in the Calumet Region of Greater Chicagoland. Chatting with the Army Chaplain before the service, I told him about Shirley's family and career as a high school English teacher. My cousins mentioned the ten years that college degree took with awe, especially when they remember all the rest of the things that made up their full family life at the time. She was a mentor to her students and family...and a friend to us all.  Her kids fondly recall Shirley's humor, called her a great cook, an expert at counted cross-stitch, and even her obituary mentioned her enthusiastic card-playing. More than one midwestern family has bonded over the card table! Pinoncle and games with crazy names like euchre and over-the river and even stranger "house" rules that take hours to play; these are some of my fondest memories of family in Indiana.  That and family get-togethers involving sitting for hours around the kitchen table, playing cards, eating, reminiscing and drinking bottomless pots of coffee, and then eating again. And laughing....there was always lots of laughter.

When I asked her for a suggestion for a good book report for my World Literature class, she gave me her tattered paperback copy of Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. When my eyes got big, she just smiled and said "Don't let the length of it spook you!  It's a love story.  You'll like Anna.  She's a strong woman, just like you. I wouldn't give it to you if I didn't think you could handle it."  She was right--of course.  I did get through it and I loved it.  Maybe it is time to re-read it...and maybe Boris Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, while I'm at it (another of Aunt Shirley's recommendations).

Rest in Peace, Aunt Shirley, rest in peace.  Thank you for everything. We will miss you.

Goodreads

Just let me say how much I LOVE Goodreads!!!  After a hiatus of many months, I gave this readers advisory website another try as part of the DPL Learning program for self-paced tech training. This time, my experience has been totally different......maybe because I am reading and tracking my reading in a new way...and as part of a community of readers.

A few days ago I finished a book of "new" Sherlock Holmes stories by Donald Thomas entitled Sherlock Holmes and the ghosts of Bly: and other new adventures of the great detective.  It has been my lunchtime reading book.  You know--the one you keep at your desk and read in bits and pieces....So by the time I finally finished it, I was hungry for more Holmes.  So I posted a question on Goodreads asking for other books of Holmes stories by contemporary writers.  Lo and behold, I received an email alert of suggestions from other mystery buffs on Goodread, including excellent suggestions form Harvey.  Thanks to him, I have three new want-to-read titles on my list:  The HOUSE OF SILK by Anthony Horowitz, The BEEKEEPER'S APPRENTICE by Laurie R. King (featuring a female protege for Holmes named Mary Russell, and The SHERLOCKIAN by Graham Moore.  Even found a juvenile fiction series of tales starring Holmes' younger sister Enola.  Who'd have imagined such a thing......!  And here I was about to dust off my old copies of the Holmes canon as I prepared for my winter hibernation and reading binge that begins every year once snow flies.  While I will still dabble in the old faves, I am even more excited to be able to explore Holmes' London and environs from these new perspectives.  The game's afoot!!!!

DPL Learning

For the past few weeks I have been working my way through a set of Activities on the DPL Self-Paced Tech Learning program on wikidot.  It has been quite a ride!  But after a few false starts, I began to made steady progress. Now I have Google + Circles, get Alerts, use Doodle to schedule events, have an online calendar that I hope to use to coordinate our hectic household schedule(s), have Pandora stations that I can listen to online, have a Queue on Hulu, share and find good books with colleagues on Goodreads, and more.  It is a brave new world and this old dog earned earned herself an MP3 player!  Not bad, if I do say so myself.

Dewey the Library Cat

Over the years I have heard about Dewey the Library Cat and seen pictures of him.  So I was intrigued when the book group at my church decided to read Vicki Myron's book about him this summer.  I quickly discovered that Dewey: the small town library cat who touched the world was available in multiple formats at my local library (DPL of course).  The CD book turned out to be a good one for me.

When I finished listening to my book, I was still curious and when looking for more info.  Here is the link I found :  http://www.iowabeautiful.com/northwest-iowa-tourism/dewey-the-rescued-library-cat-spencer-iowa.html

Looks like old Dewey really DID touch a lot of lives!

Wonder if there are any library dogs out there?  If so, I have an awfully cute sheltie to nominate.

 

Old Librarian's Dog

This is Sadie.   

She came to us last winter from Colorado Sheltie Rescue.  They are good people doing good work for one of the nicest breeds of dogs around.  Ok, so I am biased!

Her picture is shown on the HAPPY ENDINGS section of the CSR website @ www.sheltierescue-co.org, along with all of the other dogs who found new homes.  They called her "Katie V", but we had to change her name.  My mom's name is Kate and her closest friends called her Katie...so it just didn't feel right.  SO we went with Sadie, which sounded enough alike to her that the transition was easy.  Now our Sadie-Sadie-Furry-Lady is a fully integrated part of our family.  In fact, it is hard to imagine our household without her cheerful hopefulness.

 If you have a soft place in your heart for shelties, you might take a look at their website.  There are some great dogs there.  And the volunteer opportunities are definitely something that I will take a second look at.

Pumpkin Dip

Looks like it is time for this Old Library Dog to become a Blogging Dog!

Learned this autumn recipe from my daughter Rachel.  It is sooooo easy!

PUMPKING DIP

• 3 ounces cream cheese, softened
• 1/2 cup powdered sugar
• 1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
• 1/8 teaspoon ginger
• 8 ounces Cool Whip

Directions:

1. Beat cream cheese and powdered sugar until smooth and creamy; add canned pumpkin and spices.
2. Fold in Cool Whip; mix until creamy.
3. Serve with apple slices/ginger snaps/graham crackers (try cinnamon ones)