He reeks of death.  But death is his trade and he has a taste for it.  Yet he’s never “killed in hot blood” before, never killed in war.

As Mord, the royal executioner and ally to King Richard III (Basil Rathbone), Karloff personifies the cruel representation of political violence behind the throne, the workmanlike brute force that does his master’s bidding to preserve the peace.

Mord may hide behind the throne, but Karloff’s gleefully morbid turn is nakedly, aggressively terrifying.  He is the prototypical executioner, the death dealer of our childhood nightmares.  The first moment we see the powerfully built but cadaverous looking Mord–hunched over his grinding wheel, sharpening his oversize axe with a black raven perched on his shoulder–it’s like watching Cain himself readying the next murder.  But where Cain acted impulsively, emotionally… Mord is pure professional.  There is little overt art to his blood-letting, hence why he yearns for something a little more exciting, creative, arousing.  Karloff is almost touching as he pleads to Rathbone to take him into battle.  Warfare must be a wonderful, crimson bounty for a man like Mord.  The opportunities for passion are no doubt endless.  God knows how energized Mord will be when he returns from murder on such scale.

The Boris Karloff blogathon is now loose upon the world. You can read more about the week-long event here and the first post here, which includes a message from Boris’ daughter Sara Karloff.

I’ll be contributing at least one post sometime this week, although I hope to get two done if time permits.  I do love me some Karloff.

Hope to hear from some of you here or on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else.  And I’m looking forward to reading some of the more than 100 various bloggers who are joining in.

I realized that most people are more honest when they’ve consumed alcohol. Maybe it’s because boozing up makes a person let his/her guard down. Of course, there are instances where drunken people are just.. drunk. They get comatosed or just get overtly random. Well, Kay got quite drunk last night.. again. And as usual, he calls me at the wee hours of the morning as he drives home.. again. I almost got into trouble with the man of the house but I managed to “tai chi” my way out. Haha.

Anyway, we chat random stuffs again as usual; most of the time I was laughing at him since I find him really cute and silly when he is drunk. He was in high spirits yesterday since he had a great work day being appreciated by his MD and many other associates. He also got another job offer and he was quite proud of it. But I noticed he pours out his feelings more when he is alcohol infused.

He said, “You know, it is true when you said I have no heart and have forgotten how to love”. Wow. He admitted it. Then he continues saying “I want to change to be a better, more balanced person and learn to love but I don’t know if I can. Do you think you have what it takes to change me?” WTF. Is that a business proposal or a challenge?

He also said, “It’s easy to get attention. I can get that anytime. But it’s hard to find someone I can really talk to.” So naturally I asked if I was someone he can talk to. He became his usual again by replying, “Yeah, you’re amusing and a jackass”. Sigh. Back to that jackass thing.

The line that takes the cake was, “You know, I find you stupidly cute. Or cutely stupid.” Okay. Cute is the FIRST compliment that is personal. But was that an insult or a compliment? Seriously Kay is an enigma. Haha. At times I just want to strangle/kick/slap/smack him and pull my hair/fantois, yet at the same time I find him interesting and fascinating. He is egoistic and quite capable in terms of work and other logical stuff, but he is a silly kid when things are illogical or emotional. He just sucks at anything that is based on faith/emotions. I do want to do what he wanted to try out; slap him and then kiss him. Hahaha.

I’m seeing him tonight for dinner. I hope he is coherent enough to be normal and not still suffering from hangover. He asked what I wanted to do/go, but frankly I kind of want to visit Wern at his blogathon thingie and tease him a bit. Since the rest of the media gang will be there to “support” as well. Haha. Well, maybe I should start being a little more assertive and not cater to him too much. I really want to see him, but if he is going to be incoherent, I might as well do something else.

Damn. I think I’m playing with fire.

Contrary to the rumours going around, I do in fact register on film and even show up in mirrors from time to time, though never for very long, lest I shatter the glass. I learned my lesson from that portrait session; replacing lenses is pricey!

So her is a shot of me and my pal Uni Corn at Workspace (RIP), just to prove that not only can we both be caught on film, but also nuts to all the people who say I no longer qualify for hanging out with unicorns, so there nyeah. I am a Charter Member of the Royal Society of Unicorn Watchers, I’ll have you know.

He says: “Web Cafes are a great place to pick up chicks” and we all know that chicks love a unicorn!

We are currently in discussions to form an alliance against the Meerkat Conspiracy. Will keep you informed! A coalition of unicorns, fairies, and raincoaster’s army would be insurmountable!

So to speak.

This week featured two focal points: continuing our work on our drafts for our first formal persuasive essay and exploring social media for social good.

The Blogathon for the Louisville Free Public Library

On Monday, we engaged in the blogathon for the Louisville Free Public Library.  Students enjoyed a personal video from blogathon organizer Andy Woodworth and then spent the period writing about “why libraries rock!”  You can see the 5th period blog posts by clicking here; 7th period blog posts are available by clicking here. I included a RSS feed for the blogathon Twitter hashtag  in our blogathon pathfinder so that students could see how hashtags work on Twitter; several seemed impressed although they have yet to realize the full power of hashtags and Twitter.

I was moved by many of the student blog posts—I wish every legislator in Georgia and across the country would read them because the students articulated what they loved about our school library and how it helps them.   My favorite quote from the student blogs came from Betty in 7th period, who said, “Libraries are where people start their dreams.”

Writing Triage

On Tuesday and Wednesday, Ms. Lester engaged in  some writing triage to help students strengthen and polish their drafts.  Students were given class time to work on their drafts and engage in in one-on-one writing conferences with Ms. Lester as she provided direction and feedback from the second round of rough drafts.

In spite of a day in which Ms. Lester spent with students discussing some common issues (not fully responding to the writing prompt and some weak areas of content development in spite of the “shaping sheet”) and our posting those writing “fix it” areas on our class wiki, many students still struggled with these issues.    Although we have spent extensive time providing oral and written discussion of the writing prompt and writing strategies, we have quite a few students who have needed intensive help.

One helpful activity Ms. Lester used was showing exemplary drafts on the SmartBoard (which was easy since we each had access to the drafts via Google Documents!).   Several students commented that seeing a model draft from a peer was helpful in visualizing the development of the thesis and the body paragraphs.

Social Media for Social Good

On Thursday, we began our exploration of social media for social good by reading and responding via our blogs to “10 Ways to Support Charity with Social Media.”

Students also drew for article readings (see our pathfinder) and composed their reflections on their Google Sites.

On Friday, we engaged in what I call “Speed Dating” article interviews—(see pathfinder page)students followed the instructions below to interview each other about their articles.  I devised four “big” questions for each group; I randomly assigned questions to students.   This inquiry based interview activity, designed by one of my favorite teachers of all time, Dr. Bob Fecho of the University of Georgia, engaged students in discussing their articles and teasing out the “big ideas” of the articles.

One bit of advice I would recommend if you are working with teens—use index cards to create “placeholders” for each question at your tables.  It was a little confusing getting students seated in groups even though I had provided a diagram.  For the 7th period, I was prepared with the placecards taped onto the tables, so students seated themselves appropriately much more quickly.

In spite of the fact Friday was frenzied with anticipation of our first pep ralley and big home football opener against our primary county rival, the students stayed focused and in walking around and observing, I thought most students seemed engaged in the interviews.   Some students who came unprepared found out quickly what a disadvantage they had created for themselves as did those who were interviewing them; Ms. Lester and I hope those students will learn from their mistakes and understand why it is so important to complete any unfinished work at home (they had a good bit of time in class on Thursday, but several still needed additional time) before the next class session.

I had originally planned to do two rounds of interviews, but due to the shortened periods because of the pep ralley schedule, I punted and went with just one round.  We also had to cut short the wiki part of the activity, but we will finish that next week even though I fear the holiday break will diminish that part of our inquiry because of the time gap.  However, as you all know, sometimes you have to make the best of the situation.

I also plan to do an assessment with a poll or short response via the blog to see what students thought about this inquiry based activity.  Stay tuned to next week’s reflections for more on their thoughts!

Other Developments

• After some thought last weekend, I wondered if we should move our presentations of arguing for or against the use of social media in the classroom from late September/early October to December.  I felt that students would have more time to collect research as well as to gain more extensive firsthand experience of the use of social media tools as researchers for our upcoming unit of issues in Africa and would be better prepared to speak with a more informed view.  Ms. Lester agreed with this, so we have made the decision to push the final student presentations to December.
• I have recruited five more teachers (five Social Studies; one Health/PE; one English) to incorporate the use of Google Sites into our class projects!  Some teachers are starting by using these as a means of going paperless, but other teachers are using the Google Sites as a means of not only building student portfolios but also to incorporate the use of Web 2.0 tools for representing student work using tools like Prezi, Glogster, VoiceThread, and OneTrueMedia videos.  I will try to find more time to blog these lessons and feedback from teachers/students in the next few weeks over at The Grizzly Lounge blog, my vehicle for sharing ideas and tech tips with our faculty.

“Libraries are where people start their dreams.”
~Betty, 10th grade~

Today, my Media 21 students participated in the blogathon for the Louisville Free Public Library. The blogathon was the kickoff to our mini-unit on how social media can be used to create positive social change/social good.  I have been rather moved and humbled tonight in reading students’ blog posts and their thoughts on why libraries, especially our school library, matter.  I hope that I will always honor the qualities they mentioned in their blog post—at the end of the day, the library is about and for the students.

As a little girl, I was most fortunate to have Joy Mauldin as my librarian at Midway Elementary in Forsyth County, Georgia.  Back in the 1970s, the Midway community was a sleepy little rural section of southern Forsyth County  in which everyone knew everyone and there was a real sense of community.    When I entered Midway, I arrived a reader (started at age three), but Ms. Mauldin was one who nurtured that passion by allowing us to check out whatever books we wanted; she never said that we could not read any particular section, nor did she discourage the rereading of favorites.  I can still hear her voice undulating in soft tones during storytime—every weekly class visit to the library always held the promise of some new magical adventure.  Even now, over thirty years later, my memories of that library seem like something akin to a trip to Narnia.

When I was lucky to enough to get the job to open the library at Creekview High School, it was a dream come true.  I wanted to create a high school library experience like the one I had as a little girl at Midway—many people fondly recall their elementary and even their middle school library experiecnes, but very few people seem to share those sentiments about the high school library.  I wanted to create a library program that made a difference in the lives of students and teachers, a program that was cutting edge, authentic, and meaningful.

Why?

I believe that with all my heart, libraries matter more than ever—whether we are helping cultivate one of many literacies, including information literacy which is now an essential literacy, helping a student find the perfect book, teaching cloud computing, providing a safe haven in the day to a stressed out teen, giving students a sense of belonging, or just providing a friendly smile, we are the bridge from past to present to future for our students.

I feel incredibly blessed and fortunate to do something I love so very much each and every day.  How many people can say they get to live one of their major passions for a living?  How many people get to learn something cool and new on a regular basis?    Even on days in which I feel discouraged, I always find something positive that keeps me focused on my mission of creating a library that will hopefully help cultivate a love for lifelong learning and libraries.

Long may libraries be the places where dreams begin and are nurtured.  I urge you to discover how libraries can support your passions and even uncover new ones.   Let us never relent in our efforts to create libraries and patrons that dream big!

This contribution is part of CJRLC’s Louisville Free Public Library Blogathon entry. Many thanks to CJRLC for rallying the Central New Jersey troops to raise awareness (and money) for the LFPL!

Why Libraries Rock

It’s pretty simple, actually. Very similar to ROCK, libraries relate to the masses in a variety of ways. They provide access to books, DVDs, and CDs that allow our patrons to get lost in the riff of words, sounds, and images, expanding their love of creativity, art, and prose. A library program can bring a community together with similar interests, ideas, and goals. That same library program can open up another person’s heart, eyes, and soul to a new perspective, thought, or revelation.

Flood them with money, my friends. The Louisville Free Public Library’s Library Flood Recovery Fund is accessible online.  Help them get their heads above water.

This is my entry for the Louisville Free Public Library Blogathon. Check out the story behind the blogathon here at the wiki. You can donate the Louisville Free Public Library Foundation by clicking banner below.

I’m going to go out on a limb, but I’m guessing that the majority of the my librarian peers do not have a bachelor’s in biology like I do. My path to biology started at the end of high school with the all important question: what do you want to do in college? My initial inclination was to study physical therapy; it was science based, I got to work with my hands, and I got to help people. I didn’t see myself as someone who would work in an office from 9 to 5 or even a lab, for that matter. But, as things turned out, physical therapy was not for me. This came at the end of my sophomore year and put me in a dilemma: I didn’t want to change majors, I didn’t want to “waste” some of the classes I had taken, and I still wanted something that would meet the previously mentioned criteria. I meandered with classes within the basic biology degree requirements for a year, but I was still very uncertain as to what to do. At the start of my senior year, I took the required “plant” class; it was a core requirement that each biology student take Botany or Introduction to Plants. I took the former since I had heard that the latter was deadly dull. And it was a fortuitous turn; I loved the plant physiology part of the class and that, after college, I wanted to work with plants. I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but having some direction instead of none was a better feeling and guided my class choices as I finished my degree.

After college, I worked for a pair of commercial nurseries in the area over the course of three years. I was fired from each, but it was the parting words of one of the owners of the second business that sparked my path towards library science. He said, “Andy, there are other things in this world that you seem to have more of an interest in. We’re wondering why you’re not doing that.” He was right; while I liked what I did and was able to do it, I didn’t love it. So I started trying to find something I did love. This lead to a year in law school. During the summer after this first year, commiserating about being on academic probation, Kathy (my wife) was talking about becoming a librarian. She was an assistant master electrician at the Delaware Theater Company, but she always had an interest in it. She was looking at taking some classes from Clarion University since they taught Saturday classes at the Philadelphia Free Public Library. That fall, she signed up for a class. When she came back in the evening, she talked about class with such feeling and excitement that it made me think about following her into the field. In the middle of the fall that year, we made the commitment to move out to Clarion, go through grad school, get our MLS’s, and come back as librarians.

And the rest, they say, is history. And I told you that story so as I can tell you why I think libraries kick ass. As a biologist, I believe libraries are in midst of exciting and rapid evolving. Allow me to explain.

If the library was an organism, it would have had a long period of time in which there wasn’t much change. Going back through time to the early age of recorded history, it was a niche resource of learning and information storage available to those who were educated and could afford it. The introduction of the printing press and moveable type created a small time blip on the evolutionary development of the library, but only in that it allowed the educated elite to collect books from other parts of the printing world. Library collections were still private as the the property of the state, nobility, or universities.

Only within the last hundred years, with the spread of literacy and the notion of public education, the library has started to evolve. Communities built libraries to house shared literature and educational resources for the common good. What was once only available to the select few was now available to the general public. This stayed about the same for the better part of a century before technological innovations changed everything.

It is here, within the last twenty five years, that the evolution of the modern library fascinates me. The explosion of communication innovations and modern computation powers have quickly created a new global network of information exchange. The library has been forced to rapidly evolve to incorporate these new tools and technology into our collection. In doing so, librarians have become inventors and innovators looking to dissolve barriers to access, to create simpler presentation models, and to generate awareness to the global information network that exists. These rapid short term changes of the library evolution represent a new age of humanity as the global village finally forms on the basis of true knowledge and understanding: an unfettered idea and information exchange.

This is why libraries kick ass. We are evolving along with the speed of innovation cycles, bringing new approaches and tools as to how we collect, store, and retrieve information in all its forms. There are few things in this world that remain remote, that cannot be reached in one medium or another, and for the first time in history, we have the clearest picture as to what our global neighbors look, sound, and think like. Libraries continue to grow, evolve, and move forward in this bold new information age. There is nothing more exciting to be standing at the precipice of the expansion of human knowledge and to know that this is only the beginning. This is why libraries matter, this is why libraries are integral, and this is why libraries kick ass.

Addendum: I am estimating that there was about 77 people who participated in the blogathon, including 50 students from The Unquiet Librarian’s two media classes. I wish I could gauge what kind of fund raising this created, but I did get a nice spike in blog traffic. Hopefully that translated into some donations for the library. Keep an eye on Steve Lawson’s blog to see how his ‘write a big check for the LFPL’ cause went!

Leah White has started a multimedia project for young librarians called (oddly enough) the Young Librarian Series. With an emphasis on Gen X and Gen Y librarians, it is looking to address what it is like to be a newcomer to the field. Whether it is covering personal experiences or projects being worked on, Leah is hoping to develop it as a librarian community going forward towards our shared future.

Michael Stephens is hosting the project’s space on his website, Tame the Web. Here’s the ‘welcome’ video that Leah has posted.

I’ve contacted her about doing a post for the upcoming blogathon benefit for the Louisville Free Public Library. We are talking about a couple of other entries to do for the project, so stay tuned.

By the by, there is still plenty of room for people to sign up for the blogathon. Check out the wiki for details!

A week or so ago, I was sent a link to Steve Lawson’s blog post about the flood in the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library in Louisville, Kentucky. They had four to six feet of water in their basement, destroying and damaging an estimated five million dollars worth of materials and equipment. Steve has been collecting money on behalf of the Library Society of the World and plans on writing them one big check of the collected funds on September 1st. Steve’s noble gesture got me to thinking of a way to increase visibility of this fundraising effort. Thus, the idea of a blogathon on behalf of the Louisville FPL was born.

I have set up a wiki for this undertaking. Those who are interested can get the full details at the wiki, but here’s the short short version: make a donation to the Louisville Free Public Library Foundation, register at the wiki, advertise the blogathon with your social media and real life peers, write a post based on the selected common theme, and place that post on your blog on Monday August 31st.

Pretty easy!

Sign up at the wiki and start spreading the word! Let’s give the Louisville staff something to cheer about in September! It’s the best kind of karma: good karma!

I can’t wait to read the entries on the 31st!