We Need Your Help

The following letter is from Glenn Miller, the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Library Association. Between the ongoing budget debate in Harrisburg and the City of Reading's budget dilemma, the Reading Public Library is in extremely dire straits. Any of the existing proposed budgets would be devastating to Pennsylvania libraries, eliminating core services and crippling our ability to serve our patrons in a time when it is most needed.
Please write or call your representatives; your efforts can make a difference.

Good morning library supporters.

Thank you for your great work last week during PaLA Call-In Week. Without question, our message is being heard and it is your determination and commitment that makes the difference. Our challenge now is keep up the pressure for as long as it takes.

As you probably know, face-to-face budget negotiations are underway. Unfortunately all signs point toward an extended process before agreement will be reached. More on those details a bit later. For now, please know this: The library message IS GETTING THROUGH.
Just today, library funding was one of only three education topics discussed at
the House-Senate Conference Committee. Over the last two weeks, libraries
were frequently mentioned during floor debate in both the House and
Senate. What’s more, in an interview that aired yesterday (July 30) on the
cable channel, PCN, Governor Rendell discussed libraries at length describing
them as “lifelines for our communities” and “lifelines for our kids.” It seems now that libraries are a frequent topic in budget meetings, news accounts, and on TV. This is a very positive and encouraging sign and it’s all because YOU are doing a magnificent job making the case for our libraries.

Action Needed:
(1) Message
(2) Budget Deal Makers
(3) Q&A Background

MESSAGE
Keep the pressure on. Recruit any and every library supporter, young and old, to write a note, place a call, attend a town meeting, or send an email. Even if you’ve written before, this process is so long that a second or third message is A-OK. From this point forward, our basic message—asking that libraries be a priority for level funding in any final budget deal—remains in place but the delivery strategy
changes just a bit.
1. Thank your Senator, Representative and the Governor for her/his past support of public libraries.
2. Because libraries are a lifeline for the unemployed and their families, urge her/him to support library funding as one of the priorities for level funding in the negotiations for a new state budget.
3. Tell her/him that public libraries all across Pennsylvania are busier than ever during this recession serving those looking for work, many without Internet access at home, and hundreds more of their constituents and families who need the library open more hours not fewer. (If you can, offer some specifics about just how
much the library means to you in these tough times.)
4. Remind her/him that the drastic, steep cuts (55%) included in the Senate amendments to the budget bill will force library closings and service cutbacks at a time when their constituents need libraries to be fully open and equipped to serve.
5. Inform her/him that Pennsylvania stands to lose between $1.9 million and $4.3 million in federal money if any of the budget plans currently under consideration pass with deep cuts in library funding.
6. If your State Senator or State Representative is on the list below (“Top 10 State Budget Deal Makers”), urge her/him to support libraries as a priority for level funding in the conference committee budget negotiations.
7. For everyone else whose Senator and State Representative is not on the Top 10 list below, the message is slightly different. You should urge your Senator and Representative to contact the budget negotiators from their caucus and urge them, in turn, to make libraries a priority for level funding in any final budget deal.
8. When you contact the Governor, urge him to make level funding for library services a priority in keeping with his strong commitment to education, to the unemployed, and to Pennsylvania’s children.

STATE BUDGET DEAL MAKERS
Here are the Top 10 State
Budget Deal Makers:
1. Representative Dwight Evans (D) Philadelphia—Budget Conference Committee member
2. Representative Todd Eachus (D) Luzerne Co. —Budget Conference Committee member
3. Representative Sam Smith (R) Jefferson Co. —Budget Conference Committee
member
4. Senator Dominic Pileggi (R) Delaware Co. —Budget Conference Committee
member
5. Senator Jake Corman (R) Centre Co. —Budget Conference Committee
member
6. Senator Jay Costa (D) Allegheny Co.—Budget Conference Committee member
7. Senator Joseph Scarnati (R) Jefferson Co—President of the
Senate
8. Representative Keith McCall, (D) Carbon—Speaker of the House of
Representatives
9. Senator Robert Mellow (D) Lackawanna—Senate Minority (D) Floor Leader
10. Representative Mario Civera (R) Delaware—House Minority (R) Appropriations chair

If your Senator or Representative is on this list, urge her/him to make libraries a priority for level funding in the next state budget.

If not on this list, urge them to support libraries and ask them to contact the negotiators from their own caucus to urge for level funding for libraries.

If you’re not sure who represents you, following this link and type in your zip code in the upper right-hand corner: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/index.cfm.

Q&A
BACKGROUND
Here’s some additional Q&A that you should know for advocacy
in the immediate future:
Q. Since the budget debate is now in a small committee, what’s the point of contacting my State Senator and Representative?
A. The six main budget negotiators will listen to the priorities advocated by their colleagues. The more such pressure we can garner for libraries, the better.
Q. What is the difference in approach between the two sides?
A. In brief, the Governor and Democrats first want to establish priorities and needs for the state and then figure out how much money is needed. The Republicans prefer first to establish how much money is likely to be available in the next year and then fit spending priorities within that revenue total.
Q. What is the difference in dollars between the two sides?
A. Most analysts believe that the sides are between $800 million and $1.6 billion apart, a sizable gap.
Q. Regardless of what happens in the budget conference committee, aren’t we going to be stuck with either the 15% cut in the Democratic plan or the 55% cut in the Republican plan?
A. No! Absolutely, positively, not. The budget conference committee can choose any amounts in the final budget. That’s why keeping up the pressure on behalf of libraries is so crucial.
Q. What is all this talk about a stopgap or “bridge” budget?
A. On Tuesday, August 4, the House will OK the Senate-passed budget bill (S.B. 850) and send it to the Governor but only as a stopgap/bridge vehicle NOT as a state budget. When the bill hits the Governor’s desk, he then promises to use his line-item veto authority to eliminate all program amounts leaving only the budget lines needed to keep state government open and insure that state workers get paid.

As always, thank you so much for your amazing resilience and great energy. Our chances for a better outcome increase if we can keep the consistent message coming from all directions from many people for as long as it takes.

And one last thing to remember throughout—a cut of 55% is not “sharing the pain” but, in fact, shouldering the burden. Why libraries, which represent three-tenths
of one percent (0.3%) of the entire state budget, face cuts of 55 percent is beyond comprehension. But more to the point, libraries are the emergency room for the unemployed and their families, and we are busier than ever. Forcing libraries to close during these hard times simply slams the door of opportunity shut in the faces of thousands and thousands of Pennsylvanians who need open libraries to find work, apply for work, and gain professional advice and training for their job search. And this is why level funding is needed and justified, even in a bad economy.

We’ll do our best to keep you updated through email and our website, and we expect to add some new advocacy tools very soon. Stay tuned.

Glenn


Glenn R. Miller
Executive
Director
Pennsylvania Library Association
220 Cumberland Parkway, Suite
10
Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania 17055
phone:
717-766-7663
fax: 717-766-5440
e-mail: glenn@palibraries.org

Sovereign Center presents the Lipizzaner Stallions

Once again, the Sovereign Center has expressed their generosity toward the library and the community by providing the grand prize for our Adult Summer Reading Program.

One lucky reader in August will win 4 tickets to see the World Famous Lipizzaner Stallions perform at the Sovereign Center!

Weekly prizes are being given out as well, so start reading and filling out those entry forms!

Big Thanks to our weekly prize sponsors:

Reading Phillies Baseball Club

Redner's Markets

Brewer's Bar & Grill

Wal-Mart

Sam's Club

Adult Summer Reading Program 2009

NAMES FOR THINGS YOU NEVER KNEW HAD ONE!

The Whatchamacallit: Those Everyday Objects You Just Can't Name (And Things You Think You Know About, But Don't) by Danny Danzinger and Mark McCrum, Hyperion, 2009
NEW 422 Dan

After such an exhaustive title there's no need for me to explain what this book covers. Faithful readers of my entries already know I am mad keen on English vocabulary, and this little treasure has proven most illustrative.

I first gazed over the table of contents, which is a list of the terms explored, and tried finding some which I already knew. I was pleasantly surprised at recognizing several of them:

aglet, the plastic casing which seals off the end of a shoelace

borborygmus, gurgling sounds emitted from the stomach

crozier, the ceremonial shepherd's crook bourne by bishops, cardinals, and the Pope

fontanelle, the soft spot on a baby's head

interrobang, a double-duty punctuation mark that looks like this ?!

philtrum, the small indentation between the upper lip and nose

Of course I was terribly interested in the many other words I'd never learned. Some of the more interesting ones include:

caruncula, the tiny pink corner of the eyeball (and the medical term for "sleepy dust" is rheum, which accumulates in the caruncula)

drupelets, the little globules that compose a raspberry or blackberry

grawlix, a string of symbols used to represent a spoken obscenity in a cartoon

muselet, the small wire cage used to keep the cork in place on a champagne bottle

purlicue, the span of measurement made between the extension of the index finger and thumb
rowel, the spiked, revolving wheel located at the tip of a spur on a cowboy boot

tmesis, the deliberate hyphenation of a word for effect (i.e., un-freaking-fair)

The authors not only elaborate as to what each word describes, but many articles list similar terms as well. An example is the entry for tmesis, which also elucidates the reader on other lesser-heard figures of speech, such as antonomasia (using a proper name to describe someone, such as "She's such a Martha Stewart" for a woman who is freakishly obsessed with crafting overdone dinner parties) and metonymy (using the name of a facet of something to describe the thing in it's entirety, such as referring to Harrisburg when one really means the state government of the Commonwealth).

Each entry’s language of origin and, where applicable, inventor (grawlix is apparently but one of a lexicon of cartoon terms coined by Mort Walker, author of the venerated strip Beetle Bailey) are very capably discussed as well.

The Whatchamacallit is certain to entertain and edify the vocabularean in all of us.

Wolfram Alpha

“Today's WolframAlpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and WolframAlpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer. Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing…”

This is more significant than just a new search engine; this is the first computation engine widely and freely available. You submit queries and computation requests and WolframAlpha returns an answer. Unlike search engines you may be used to WolframAlpha does not return web pages matching your keywords but instead offers discrete answers and supplementary data. You input "$250 + 15%" Wolfram anwsers $287.50. You ask Wolfram “How old was Queen Elizabeth II in 1974?" it simply tells you 47 years old.

For better or worse we are entering into a new phase of internet use.

Try the following queries in Wolfram for fun:
* Flux Capacitor
* How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
* How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?
* What is the meaning of life?
Here are some more fun queries to try.

Main Site: http://www.wolframalpha.com/
See Also: Example Searches
See Also: Overview Video
See Also: Wikipedia Entry

Keep Searching,
Librarian Carl

PS – Keep your eye out for Google’s answer to WolframAlpha called Google Squared which should be launching by the end of the month.
See Also: Tech Crunch, What is Google Squared?
See Also: Wikipedia Entry

GATEWAY TO SUMMER

Earlier this week we marked the observance of Memorial Day. Customarily a solemn remembrance in honor of the many armed servicemen and –women who valiantly made the supreme sacrifice for our nation, Memorial Day is also considered the unofficial gateway to the summer season.

In celebration of the arrival of summer, I’ve collected a few titles on subjects pertinent to the season most people anticipate with glee:

The American Amusement Park by Dale Samuelson (with Wendy Yegoiants), 2001
791.068 Sam

A visit to an amusement park is a vital part of enjoying the summertime in America. Pennsylvania has a healthy number of such fun and frolicsome venues: Hersheypark, Dorney Park, and Dutch Wonderland are all geographically close to Reading. My personal favorite is Knoebels Amusement Resort in Elysburg, PA, if for no other reason than parking and admission are both free. Knoebels has a special place in my family as well. My grandparents met at the roller skating rink there in the 1930s. As a matter of fact, if Pap-Pap were still with us, he and Mam-Mam would be celebrating their 73rd wedding anniversary this very day. My mother and her siblings have their memories of youthful merriment at Knoebels, as do my sister, our numerous cousins, and myself. Now the fourth generation of our clan are making their own happy recollections of having visited there. I recommend a visit to Knoebels to anyone who’s never been there, it’s well worth the drive!

American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn by Ted Steinberg,

2006
635.9647 Ste

Author Steinberg takes on a singularly unique American phenomenon: the relentless pursuit of a flawless greensward. I read this text when it first arrived on our library’s shelves and was flabbergasted at the financial statistics the author reported as to how much many Americans lay out annually on things such as weed killer, lawn feed, watering, and maintenance. I felt the message (which was rather heavy handed at points) that yard turf shouldn’t be quite such a monumental national priority was fully justified. American Green is a verdant gem of a book on a topic most people wouldn’t imagine could take up two hundred and ninety five pages.



Contested Waters: A Social History of Swimming Pools in America by Jeff Wiltse,
2007
306.481 Wil

When the canicular days of soaring temperatures and oppressive humidity descend, nothing beats a cool dip in the pool. Wiltse details the history of the swimming pool in American society, focusing much of the book on the roles of the municipal natatorium (to be honest, a natatorium is an enclosed, indoor pool, but it’s pleasant to use a synonym and that’s close enough) in community life. The emphasis on children’s physical fitness, which was born in part due to the frightening polio outbreaks of the years before Salk’s vaccine, played a key role in the pool becoming a mainstay of many cities and towns. The author also addresses the injustice of racial segregation and its affect on access to such pools.

Iced Tea : 50 Recipes for Refreshing Tisanes, Infusions, Coolers, and Spiked Teas
by Fred Thompson, 2002
641.6372 Tho

I am always happy when a book title brings a new vocabulary word into my personal lexicon. Before landing upon this book about iced tea, if someone had asked me to identify tisane I would likely have answered, “Isn’t that the capitol of some nation in Africa?” Apparently a tisane is a beverage, hot or cold, made by infusing parts of any plant except that of the tea bush. “Tisane” and “herbal tea” are not interchangeable because a tisane is not really a tea…fascinating! In any event, I am partial to iced tea, and this book provides many curious and delightful twists on an old summertime favorite.

Whether your estival pastimes include mowing a lawn, taking a swim, visiting an amusement park, or sipping an iced tea: Happy Summer!

SCRIPT AND SCRIBBLE

When I was in kindergarten I remember wandering up to the desk of my teacher, Miss Cindy (we never knew her last name), and beholding her rapidly jotting down a note in cryptic, connected shapes. “Why are you writing sloppy?”, I asked confusedly, mystified at what may as well have been Egyptian hieroglyphics from my childish vantage point.

Miss Cindy raised her eyes and indulgently replied: “It’s not sloppy, it’s cursive writing”. Unconvinced, I told my mother that afternoon how Miss Cindy couldn’t make her letters and instead slashed strange scrawlies all over her paper. Mom smiled and told me it was real writing for grownups. I promptly forgot all about it as I prepared to play with my toys, secretly convinced yet again that adults were more then slightly bonkers.

Then it was my turn to learn cursive. It was third grade and Sister Regina Eileen patiently watched twenty-some students laboriously drawing circles on practice pads. Up, down, up down--the monotony, I recall, was stupefying. The Palmer Method was rigorously applied, and while I could barely move past basic arithmetic in the afternoon, penmanship class in the morning found me a most willing and capable student. And I felt so very sophisticated: I was writing like grown-ups while block letters remained the province of little kids like my sister. I won a Palmer Method Award for the best penmanship when I was in fifth grade and am still proud of it; mostly because my overachieving sibling, who won veritably every other academic honor in both grade- and high school, never had one bestowed on her (tee hee--love ya, Heather!)

Script and Scribble: The Rise and Fall of Handwriting by Kitty Burns Florey details the history of how the art and craft of penmanship came about and its current status of rapid decline. Burns Florey was a parochial schoolchild herself, having been instructed in Palmer ways by Sister Victorine. However, Palmer Method was the most utilized instructional tool for cursive script across America’s educational frontiers for decades. The volume does more than detail Palmer Method. The very history of writing tools, from cuneiform and hieroglyphics to quills and ink are thoroughly yet engagingly addressed. Graphology, the pseudo-science of examining personal script and learning about the psyche of the writer therein, is also covered. Palmer’s immediate predecessor, Spencerian script, was something I could not have identified before reading Script and Scribble. For an example of it, consult any can of a certain soft drink—the Coca-Cola trademark is written in Spencerian script.

Not much is made of the Zaner-Bloser school of handwriting, which I’d only heard of recently. A direct descendant of Palmer, it's more truncated and, frankly, much less appealing visually (even if it supposedly easier to learn). I scoff at it. Palmer is the only way to go.

Along with Ms. Burns-Florey, I decry the inattention penmanship receives in our day, particularly where pupils of elementary school are concerned. Penmanship is the most personal tool anyone possesses as a means of communication. Our hand is as unique and special as our voice. I personally enjoy calligraphy (the art of formal script) and am thankful my parents gave me a Sheaffer fountain pen set for my birthday when I was thirteen. Keyboarding is a wonderful tool; I am typing this entry up on a computer keyboard this very moment. I can scarcely imagine not having access to word processors or email. I receive dozens of handwritten requests for genealogy every year which I strain to decipher while silently pleading with the writers of said missives to discover the wonders of Microsoft Word.

However, there’s an incomparable grace and elegance to a carefully scripted greeting, and I hope more of us pause to reflect on our handwriting habits (or lack thereof) upon considering Script and Scribble. The Main Library's copy of this delightful tome is at NEW 652.1 Flo; our collection also boasts several volumes on how to practice calligraphy as well as three actual textbooks on the Palmer Method. Austin Norman Palmer (December 22, 1860– November 16, 1927), R.I.P.