Podcasts of Note

Here are some I like...

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=37&agg=1
From National Public Radio... lots of good music news.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2007/10/08/071008on_audio_ross
From the New Yorker ... a synopsis of the weekly magazine and what is new in the New Yorker.

Heck, there are even knitting podcasts...here is one on empowering "Sock Knitters..."
http://knitpicks.libsyn.com/index.php?post_id=317468#

I am going on a trip to London, England tomorrow and plan to take my National Gallery Podcast that I have downloaded to my ipod to the gallery. Apparently they will give me a map of the paintings that are highlighted in the walk...

http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/podcast/beinspired.htm

The Be Inspired Tour leads you to some of the best-loved paintings in the National Gallery, as well as many lesser-known and often overlooked masterpieces.

Paintings have inspired poets, cartoonists, photographers and even chefs - you can listen to them talking about their favourite National Gallery paintings.

Cheerio!

Measuring out my life in sent emails

Today I created my Google Mail account and posted a link to our 23 things blog as requested.

I found Google Docs to be an intriguing concept but less exciting when I went to use it. I used the "Block Quote" section to get a bit creative, I thought. I put one of my favorite quotes in that area, T.S. Eliot's' "I have measured out my life in coffee spoons" because this is how I feel most of the time -- so much of my day seems to be spent dealing with niggly little "coffee spoon" things to do with emails -- re-sending emails, looking for lost emails, deleting emails, putting draft documents together with people's email comments and feedback, looking at pictures in emails and reading forwarded emails with jokes and warnings.

Of course all of this isn't a really a bad thing! Email is a way to share information with people and keep in touch with so many people at once. AND, I like the promise of Google Docs -- that you can now do a lot of communal work on a single document on the Internet, avoiding the hassle of keeping track of a variety of drafts.

This leads me to a bit of a rant (again)... Why does Google Docs not have all the fonts that MS-Word does? I didn't see a "Times New Roman" and that is what I like to write in...it seems to have a lot less options than MS-Word. Or perhaps I just didn't understand how to use it... I will try some more things on it and I might try posting a video as well as that would be useful for my upcoming parent's workshop. There are a few good videos instructing children how to read on the Reading Rockets website and it would be great to show them....

That's all for now. I guess the jury is still out on Google Docs.

Two magazine covers

Today I had some fun...

Making two magazine covers...

The first one for the Leading to Reading Program to show off the work of a child at the Birkdale Women's Shelter done last August. The very talented leaders, Elton and Vicky, in the Summer Leading to Reading Program used altered board books to have the children write stories in and decorate using collage techniques. The children really enjoyed this and it was a great way to have them understand how to put a storyline together and develop their narrative skills.

The second one for my little dog Penny who just came home to me from having five puppies -- three girls and two boys. I had fun using the "What to Expect... When you are expecting" books as my inspiration. AND, I apologize in advance if I offended anyone by using the "B" word but that is what female dogs are called. Especially in the dog breeding world!

Oh, and that is Bridget, one of Penny's little girls, having some fun on the deck in the first picture. Seven weeks new and full of terrier spunk!

Reading in Bed

I have called this post "reading in bed" for a reason that will become apparent as finish writing...I have subscribed to a total of 18 new rss feeds today. Probably too many...

http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs

and while I am sure that many of them are interesting it all seems like information overload to me at the moment. I subscribed to a couple of dog ones and the most interesting thing I saw was a video with a debate about whether or not dogs should be able to wear clothes. I learned that pug owners like to dress up their dogs in frilly dresses...

http://www.friction.tv/debate.php?debateno=651&gclid=CJvo6bfw3ZICFQKwPAod4QhImg

I have just gotten back from being off for three days, clearing my voicemail and deleting my emails for the past four hours after updating my facebook at home this morning and ordering tickets online for an upcoming trip. I am tired of being in front of a screen! I sometimes secretly wish all of the computers would crash at work and we would have to talk to each other -- "face time' as it is called now....

This leads me to my point. I think back to a couple of years ago at one of the libraries I work in -- a high needs suburban neigborhood where there are lots of problems with violence and youth at risk. This is mostly due to people not having enough choices in their lives or the ability to make a proper living. I was conducting a parent's workshop called "Raising a Reader" to help parents make their children better readers. I was asked by one of the parents the following question --

Is it ok to read to your children in bed?'

I was taken aback by this and I wondered why this would not be a good thing. I told the man that it was ok to do this, an excellent thing, in fact. But the question has stayed with me to this day as I wonder why he asked it. Did he think that his children would fall asleep and that would be a bad thing? Did he think it was not appropriate as children should only read while sitting up at a desk? Was it was a cultural issue and did it have something to do with family members sharing a bed? I will never know.

I think back to some of the best memories I have of my own father. He told us stories of Icarus, the Trojan Horse and the Three Little Bears in bed and I remember how much I enjoyed it, the familiarity of the stories, the quiet time together at the end of the day.

What I want to say now to him is, YES, read or tell your kids stories that you love while they are still young enough to enjoy it before they spend so many of their waking hours in front of a computer screen.

Yes, mister, have some face time with your child and please, please, please read to your children in bed.

23 Things Assignment #2

Stewie looking outside for his friends.

Flemingdon Park Summer Leading to Reading

Flemingdon Park "Word Tree"

On helping kids to read ... and a bit of a rant

Well, it is Friday afternoon, almost time to go home but I meant to update this at least one more time this week with a couple of things so here goes...

For anyone who wants the "BEST" website on how to help kids learn to read, I cannot say enough good things about Reading Rockets ...

http://www.readingrockets.org/

This is a monthly newsletter that gets mailed to your email inbox with all kinds of things to delight a librarian's heart -- booklists, webcasts about how we need to do more to help kids read, spell and write, videos of inner city schools showing inspirational teachers teaching kids how to improve their literacy skills, a section to help parents understand how to help their struggling readers -- the good stuff just goes on and on. Sign up now please!

Please indulge me while I speak for a moment about my favorite subject -- small dogs, being the proud owner of two. Why is it that the latest cutesy dog food's website "Caesar Living", with its Poster-Westie, Maggie, has no pictures of Cairn Terriers on their photo-gallery of breed indexes?
Penny and Stewie, my two cairns, told me that they'd like to be included in the gold picture frames too...

http://www.cesar.ca/index.aspx#null,null,null,breedsindex

Thanks for listening!

A postscript (written on May 2/08) - I emailed the dog food company's website and they told me they appreciated the "feedback" and would take my comments to their advisory board -- oh, the bureaucracy! Not sure what that means or if the cairn terrier will make it onto their website.

23 Things Assignment #1

Hi there,

I hope to learn more about blogging for my work and for my personal life. I already have a facebook account and I think that this will make it easier for me to learn about blogs. I am involved with volunteers in the library in the Leading to Reading Program and I think that it would be great to have something like a blog for them to access with information for them to help them help kids with reading.

In case you are wondering, I choose the name "Cathy's Cairns" for the title of my blog, as I have two Cairn Terriers and I love to talk about them with anyone that will listen.

I also had a blog for one of my dogs a few years ago (written from my dog's perspective) and let it lapse, so perhaps this will inspire me to create another one... I guess that is a good question --should dogs be able to have blogs?

Thanks for the opportunity to have some fun and learn something.

Cathy