Jackie's Ramblings

THAT Camp

2011-02-21T09:35:00.002-05:00

Just found a great digital humanities camp that I would love to attend, since this is the direction I seem to be leaning toward with school and work. Good thing is that it's free, bad thing is that it's in Texas. We'll see what happens.

Weather Station

2010-11-30T11:38:00.003-05:00

It's pretty bad when you have to drive for two hours to find out that there is a really cool weather station just 3 miles from your house. It measures temp, wind speed, humidity, precipitation and more every five minutes, so you can see live reports or you can check back and see history. Pretty cool. There are a bunch of these all over the state.

Kentucky Mesonet is the web site and the local station is at EKU's farm. CoCoRahs also has daily precipitation collected by a network of volunteers.

636 Wordle

2010-10-31T16:46:00.001-04:00

Trying to use this Wordle in a newsletter assignment. Hope it works.

Sunrise on the Farm

2010-08-27T07:54:00.004-04:00

The trip to Ashley's bus stop takes me past a great view of the mountains in Estill Co. and this morning the fog was so thick you could see only the tops of them floating in a white mist just before sunrise.

When I got back home I grabbed the camera to see if I could get a sunrise shot of a similar view. From my house the mountains were almost completely covered with fog so I didn't get the photo I wanted, but while I was waiting for the sun to come up I got something even better.

She kept looking at me, stomping her foot, and circling around to get a better view. After about a minute two other deer that I couldn't see ran off and she followed.

I've been trying to get Tori to do a 365 days on the farm, but since she won't I think I'll start off my own 365 days with this.

Controlled Vocabularies

2010-07-30T22:50:00.002-04:00

Here I am whining about controlled vocabularies and subject headings and my favorite website, ravelry.com, just reworked all their patterns to make searching more efficient and guess what? They worked out a controlled vocabulary to describe the patterns available.

Socks are no longer socks, they are now "Accessories - Feet / Legs - Socks - Mid-calf. " What is even more amazing is that almost 160,000 patterns were reclassified by volunteers in one week. A very narrow set of items such as knitting patterns would be easier to classify than books which often cover a large variety of subjects per volume.

Which brings me to a topic I hinted at last post. I have fought for the past eight weeks with subject searches in the library catalog. They either aren't accurate or they are too broad to be effective. For example the heading 'Registers of Birth, etc'. should not be a subject heading for a census transcript. A census is a snapshot of the country at a specific date. Nothing about births included. On the other hand "Cemeteries - United States" is too broad for a handbook on cemeteries and cemetery research.

Subject headings can be effective when conducting meta searches like the metalib search engine at the Kentucky Virtual Library. A keyword search returns so many results across so many databases that it is totally ineffective.

I wonder what the library profession will look like in another decade?

Library School

2010-07-10T17:31:00.002-04:00

I finally did it. Debbie kicked me in the behind and scheduled me to take the GRE back in the winter. I started my first class May 11 and it is complete. One down 11 more to go. Assuming, that is, I make it through this reference class.

I sort of understand the point of the assignments is to make us familiar with reference sources of all types, but I truly don't see the point of beating my head against the wall searching for just the right database to find the answer to a question that can be answered with Google in 30 seconds.

This is the second assignment in which we had to answer 20 questions using only proprietary sources. The instructor wants us to search the library catalog to identify sources which might have the information requested. Then we are to go to the sources and look for the information. At the same time she tells us to search efficiently using controlled vocabularies and subject headings.

I'm sorry, but in my humble opinion this type of search strategy isn't efficient. We have moved way beyond card catalogs and Reader's Guide and static print encyclopedias. The new information world is dynamic, so why are we beating our heads against the wall with static search methods? Yes, I'm frustrated.

This morning I started on this 20 question assignment at about 7:30. I have taken a few breaks throughout the day, but I haven't left the computer for more than 15 minutes at a time. It is now after 5:30 and I still haven't answered all these questions with the proprietary sources we are supposed to use.

To beat it all I finally got into the UK Libguide for reference materials just to see what I might be missing and guess what I found?

Reference Universe: "Unlike your library catalog, which only provides data about reference works, Reference Universe shows you what is inside them, searching deeply into the indexes of more than 40,000 electronic and print specialized reference works from over 750 publishers."

Sure enough this search engine gave me one of the answers I have been over an hour looking for. I would never have come up with a pop culture encyclopedia. Besides a search you can browse by title, publisher, subject headings or an index term. The search isn't perfect, but at least it is a move in the right direction. It also doesn't search all the databases I needed to answer the questions I had to answer. Ideally in the future it will.

The library profession should be putting their efforts into improving resources like this that will make searching efficient, rather than trying to justify their salaries and positions by using out-dated methodology.

Eiffel Tower Shawl

2010-07-03T15:40:00.004-04:00

Another one of those projects that is so cool that it has to be started immediately. This is also a knitalong on Ravelry during the Tour de France.

The shawl can be found on the designer's website.

Here is the yarn I found in Lexington.

LIS Wordle

2010-05-21T08:45:00.002-04:00

Last week was the first week of classes. One of our assignments this week was to come up with three indexing terms for an article we were to read. After reading the article and listening to a video created by the professor, I decided to play around and create a Wordle for the chapter.

The result was interesting.

Blackberry Winter

2010-05-14T07:55:00.004-04:00

Before I forget, Tuesday morning there was frost on the windshield and blackberries are in bloom. This should be the last cold spell. Amazing how it always seems to work.

Floods

2010-05-03T06:13:00.002-04:00

In the 25 years that I've lived on this farm, I've never seen it flood this bad. The pond had a foot of water washing over the dam. The muddy drain at the edge of the woods was a creek 8 feet wide. Meadowbrook Road was impassable even at 10:30 last night.

At my house we had 6.99 inches in less than 24 hours. If you want to see inches across the state check out the CoCoRahs web site. Volunteers across the country record precipitation daily. Since it is volunteer not every county is represented, but there are still a lot of dots on the map.

Locust Winter

2010-04-27T19:26:00.003-04:00

For the past several years I've been watching the cold spells to see if they really do match up with redbud, dogwood, locust and blackberries blooming and amazingly enough they do. I think it was the week before last when there was frost on my windshield and the dogwoods were in full bloom.

It didn't warm up much, but this cold, rainy spell going on right now hit when the locust trees were blooming. If it keeps holding true there is only Blackberry winter left to go. Last year there was frost on my car just after the blackberries bloomed.

Amazingly enough I had 16 hits on my blog a couple days ago using the search term Locust Winter.

I Love Chicago

2010-04-24T03:31:00.003-04:00

Most of the time I like my quiet, little place in the country, but it is nice to be able to get out and see other places on occasion. Thanks to work, I've been able to do a lot more of that in recent years and this week it's Chicago.

Since it's 3:30 am and I can't sleep I thought I would post some of the fun things we've done. I'll do conference things later.

I've been lucky enough to be downtown for both trips I've made to Chicago, so the first thing I always do is walk on the Lakefront Trail. The first day we walked the trail down to Bilboa and then across to the loop. We were looking at the menu of a pizza place, when someone walked by and said "If you want pizza, Lou Malnati's is better." Since I haven't had both I can't say which was better, but "The Lou" was great.

Next stop was Loopy Yarn to pet yarn. I picked up a skein of Lorna's Laces, Shepherd Sock off the sale rack. It was the Pioneer colorway, which is blues and browns. Enough for a scarf or maybe a pair of anklet socks. They had a great selection and friendly staff.

Since Thursday night is their free night, we walked back down to the Art Institute after the conference reception at the Afterwords bookstore and a stop at the world's largest Jazz Store. The last time we went Edward Hopper's Nighthawks was on loan, but this time we got to see it. The rest of the time we spent in the Thorne Miniature Gallery. Amazing details in these tiny rooms completely furnished in period style.

Today, well I guess it's really yesterday, I started off the day with a walk to Ohio Beach to walk along the shore and pick up some interesting glass, shells and rocks. There is something about standing on the shore with your eyes closed listening to the waves coming in that makes everything drain out of you.

At lunch we took the Blue Line out to Division and ate at a really great Polish restaurant, Podhalanka. The owner made recommendations and fed us very well. Fresh, homemade fruit juice, cabbage soup (zupy), potato pancakes, pierogies, stuffed cabbage and bread. The soup itself would have been a meal. Fantastic recommendation from Laura.

The next stop was another yarn shop to pet more yarn at Nina's, just a couple blocks from the L. I didn't buy anything this time, but I loved all the samples and displays. It's nice to actually be able to feel and see the yarns you read about on Ravelry.

Last stop for the night was Atlas Galleries on Michigan for the opening night reception for the French artist Jaline Pol. Her work is bold, bright flowers with vivid colors and great texture created with a palette knife.

No wonder I can't sleep. My brain is on overload from trying to cram to much into a two day trip. This doesn't even include conference sessions.

Random Thoughts

2010-04-08T16:26:00.003-04:00

A friend let me borrow his canoe last night and took me to Owsley Fork for the first canoe trip this summer. It was beautiful. The lake was calm and peaceful. The trees are starting to turn green and the redbuds are in full bloom. There just wasn't enough time to enjoy it fully. Someday I have to get a canoe, so I can go out whenever I need to.

Last day of the cold spell was March 30, redbuds started blooming April 5; I guess that was Redbud winter. Dogwood winter is right on the money though, with the cold spell starting today and the dogwoods just starting to bloom. Two winters down, locust and blackberry left to go.

Proof that cats can get down from trees without fire department assistance. I'm trying to wean Hurley from the house and he climbed this very tall tree to get away from the dogs. I couldn't coax him down, so I went inside. Melissa, texting from Florida, said call the fire department and get my cat out of the tree. The next time I went out he had gotten down and climbed another tree. At least he was not so far up and looked content. The third trip out to rescue him he was on a log and finally reachable.

New Project

2010-03-22T04:32:00.000-04:00

I need a monster project that I can throw myself into completely and escape from other things going on that I can't change. After looking around and thrashing out ideas with T, I think I have it.

One of the things on my 20 wishes list is to build an off the grid small home, and this might be a big enough project to get me through the next few months. I've been walking through the two acres of woods behind the house looking at what's there. If there isn't enough lumber there to build a house, a small barn, a chicken coop and finish the goat shed, it will be close. What isn't already down needs to be cut down for one reason or another.

The first step will be to clean up and sort the timber there. There is pine, red cedar and white ash that will need to be cut for various purposes. The pine will be cut into 1 and 2 inch boards for framing. The ash will be 1" boards for shelving and furniture. The cedar will be barn poles, fence posts, fence rails, cordwood and if I'm really lucky there will be some that can be cut to 1 and 2 inch boards for porch swings a bench and a wood strip canoe.

I picked out the house site that has the best view and actually it will be the easiest to clear. I'm thinking the south wall will be cordwood with lots of windows to generate passive heat in the winter. Solar power, compost toilet, earthen floor.

T says clean up and saw lumber this year, build next year, but I want to build this year as well. Things I'm not sure about are moving big logs and keeping a chain saw running. I guess I'll have to learn some basic mechanics.

Bird Watching

2010-03-08T07:35:00.002-05:00

Several years ago at the Friends of the Library Annual Book Sale, I picked up a Smithsonian Birds of North America, a beautiful hardcover book with a page devoted to each species which tells you everything you need to know about each bird.

I don't use it every time I see a new bird, but sometimes a species unusual enough shows up and I have to go look it up.

Yesterday morning while I was fixing a bowl of cereal, I saw a pair of birds swimming on the pond. That doesn't happen often so I got out the binoculars to see what they were. As soon as I saw the black and white head on one bird, I remembered seeing them last year, but I couldn't remember what it was.

Hooded Merganser
Originally uploaded by Rick Leche

I pulled out the bird book and sure enough I did write down that February 27, last year there was a pair on the pond. They were Hooded Mergansers. This year I tried to get close enough to get a photo which didn't work. If I had waited maybe he would have given me a show like he did last year. They must be on their way back home.

Last Sunday a young Red Hawk landed on the deck railing. I've never seen one get so close.

A Gift of Trust

2009-11-02T08:32:00.004-05:00

Ashley rescued this cardinal from one of our cats and gave it to me to fix. It sat in my hand and let me check its wings and look for injuries. I couldn't find anything that appeared to be serious, so I just let him sit in my hand. After a couple minutes he got more alert and when I decided he was not injured, I opened my hand flat and he flew off into the trees. He let me hold him for about ten minutes and when he flew off I felt honored by his trust.

Roof Repairs

2009-09-27T20:39:00.000-04:00

The worst thing about building your own house is that when something goes wrong, you can't go back to the contractor and get them to fix it. When the problem is with the roof it's even worse.

Two inches of rain in about 24 hours reminded me that I had to fix the roof leak before winter set in. I had been putting this off all summer, now it had to be taken care of.

I borrowed a safety belt from a friend, pulled out the rope and realized I couldn't remember how to tie the sliding knot to attach the belt to the rope. A Google search found it pretty quickly and now I know the name because I'm almost positive I'll need it again, The Prusik Knot or Triple Sliding Hitch.

Next was getting the rope over the roof to tie it off. That wasn't as easy as I hoped it would be, in fact I couldn't throw it that high. Even on the top rung of the ladder I was three feet short of the ridge. Getting it over the ridge required a lot of nerve (read stupidity) and prayer, but at least I'm still alive to tell.

Once up on top, the view was great. I really do need a lookout balcony somewhere. Or maybe just a retreat back in the woods where I have the same view of the mountains from the ground.

The problem was two screws that had worked loose. Unfortunately, while I tightened anything that looked like it might work loose, I found several more screws that weren't grabbing anything, so they will probably be problems in a few years. To do it right I needed someone underneath the roof to hold a block of wood under anything loose.

Unbelievable

2009-09-18T08:35:00.002-04:00

I don't usually do this, but when I walked past this man kicking the daylights out of this couch to get it through a door that was six inches shorter than the couch, I just had to take a picture. Too bad the video didn't get him kicking the couch.

Wild Turkeys

2009-08-06T10:28:00.001-04:00

GEDC0513
Originally uploaded by tormash9

For the past month a flock of wild turkeys and babies near Muddy Creek have been part of the scenery on my morning drive to work. A couple days ago they were across the road on the hill in the afternoon and I was able to get a photo. They were too far away to get a very good photo, but I counted five hens and about 20 babies between them.

Got Curcurbits?

2009-07-30T09:29:00.003-04:00

Doesn't that sound like some kind of bizarre disease? Actually it is the family which cucumbers, squash, melons and the dreaded zucchini fall into.

Last year the squash borers killed all my cucumbers, yellow squash and zucchini before I got a handful of vegetables from them. No relish or pickles in the pantry for us.

My sister said all her plants had all died as well. According to her father-in-law it was because she didn't plant radishes in her garden last year. According to him the radishes discourage the borers. Since no one eats them we both skipped planting them.

This year I sprinkled a few radish seeds down the row and now I've got more curcurbits than I can possibly use. I've canned dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, zucchini relish, yellow squash relish, and dill relish and they're still coming on strong. Since everyone loves bread and butter pickles I'll do another batch of them and another batch of yellow squash relish. And I think I'll try drying some zucchini chips and see how they taste.

Anyone need curcubits? Right now everyone sees me coming with a bag and runs the other direction.

Firefox "Too Much Recursion Error"

2009-07-20T09:25:00.003-04:00

Since this is the second time this has happened I want to make note of the easy fix that I accidentally discovered, because I know it will take forever to figure it out again in six months.

The thing I like best about Firefox is the ability to customize it with add-ons. One that I really like is the One Click Weather Add-on that shows the weather in the bottom of the Firefox window.

Unfortunately this particular add-on sometimes causes an error message that reads "too much recursion" and won't allow Firefox to even open. After several Google searches and only finding complicates fixes, I decided to uninstall Firefox and try to disable add-ons.

There wasn't an uninstall menu item for Firefox, but there was a safe mode which let me open Firefox with add-ons disabled. From there I was able to uninstall the One Click Weather and re-enable the other add-ons, restart Firefox and everything was back to normal.

Much easier than creating a new profile and copying information from the old profile to the new.

It's That Time of the Year Again

2009-07-13T08:05:00.002-04:00

GEDC0494
Originally uploaded by tormash9

Last year I didn't have enough pickles or summer squash to make pickles, so I made up for it yesterday.

Dill pickles in the back for Ashley from Mrs. Wages Mix
Zucchini Relish from page 43 of an unknown book
Yellow Squash Relish from Beth
Bread and Butter for me from Farm Journal Cookbook

I don't usually have very good luck with dill pickles, so we'll see how the mix turns out. The other three recipes I've used or tasted and they're all great.

Unfortunately the stove top got too hot and I actually caught the counter top on fire. I think I prefer a range over a cooktop or an outdoor kitchen would work, too. Keep all the heat and mess outside.

Knitting Treasury Blog

2009-07-01T08:40:00.002-04:00

fancable
Originally uploaded by planetdyann

Melissa and her friend Paige want me to knit laptop covers to protect their laptops while they carry them back and forth to college classes, so I started looking for really cool cable patterns last night.

During this search I ran across this awesome blog that is recreating swatches of the stitch patterns in the Barbara Walker Treasury of Knitting books. Some of these stitch patterns are take your breath away beautiful. Now I need to try to find these books.

Measuring Acres Online

2009-06-29T17:42:00.004-04:00

I've been trying to find someone to cut hay and everyone asks how many acres are in the hayfield. I thought it was roughly eight, but the map I got back from FSA didn't add up, so I went looking for an online tool to measure the field. Google Earth and TerraServer both offer tools to measure area, but they aren't free.

TerraServer actually has satellite images from multiple years, so I could see the farm before, during and after building the house. Really cool. On the most recent photo you can see the horses in the field.

But, being poor I kept looking and found this page. Yes, the field is 8.1 acres and it took only a couple minutes to plot the corners and get an answer for free.

Local Yarn Shop Finder

2009-06-23T11:19:00.003-04:00

No more searching for local yarn shops when I travel. Not that I travel often, but when I do it's nice to know where to find yarn for a souvenir.

http://www.knitmap.com/

Pink Christmas Scarf

2009-06-11T17:12:00.004-04:00

This year for Christmas I'm knitting scarves for everyone. I really liked this pattern, but didn't want it quite so wide, so I changed the pattern.

I cast on 41 stitches and worked the first rows according to the pattern. For the lace part I created this chart to make the design work out.

KEY:
K=Knit
O=Yarn Over
/=Knit 2 Together
\=Slip Slip Knit
I misnumbered the rows as well. These are the right side rows, the wrong side rows are purled. So the actual lace pattern has six rows.

The end result is here blocking.

States I've Visited

2009-06-03T20:54:00.001-04:00

I just found this cool website that lets you create a map highlighting states you've visited.

visited 27 states (54%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or Best time to visit South Korea

Spring is here!

2009-04-02T13:56:00.003-04:00

Asparagus is up, spinach that overwintered is ready to pick, the hens are laying again and just hours after April Fools day, (when Melissa and I both got fooled by Ashley) we have a new baby. We both headed to the barn after work and school to see the new baby, only we were about 12 hours early. Ashley was proud of herself for fooling us.

He isn't a very pretty baby at this point, hopefully he will get prettier, but he had just barely stood up in this photo. It seems like no matter how stressed you are about how you're going to feed all the mouths you have, birth is still exciting and wonderful.

I joined the Flickr group " One Object 365 Days Project" to post a daily picture of him for a year, so I'll link to it when I have more to show.

We had a cold spell over the weekend, but only a couple redbuds were bloomed. I wonder if that was Redbud Winter or is it still to come?

Knitting Obsession

2009-03-19T16:48:00.001-04:00

Members of my knitting group just watched this video.
Here's their response:

"She reminds me of Jackie for so many reasons - obsessive knitting, knitting wherever she is, she's literally on the edge, she's determined (read stubborn)and I've even seen Jackie's hair look like hers!"

I haven't decided yet if this is good or bad.

Just When I Think Life Couldn't Get Any Crazier

2009-03-13T08:13:00.005-04:00

Laugh of the day.

I carpool to work most days which gives me the luxury of knitting while Beth drives. This morning I got in the car like normal and about 1/4 mile down the road picked up the socks that are almost finished, but something felt wrong. Why was the yarn heading out the car door?

Sure enough the socks were in the car, but the baggie with yarn in it was somewhere out in the road.

Thank goodness I was almost finished with the socks and not just beginning. Otherwise I would have had a trail of yarn going all the way back home. Hopefully this is not an omen.

50 MPG

2009-03-09T10:50:00.001-04:00

This weekend I had to drive to Danville, so I decided to just play around and experiment with how I drive. I filled up the car before I left, drove to Danville, watched a concert (KMEA District Honors Band, but more on that later) and drove home.

When I got back into town I filled up again. There was 75 miles on the odometer and it took 1.5 gallons to refill. 50 MPG in my old Camry with 265,000 miles on it. YES!

It has a manual transmission and all I did was clutch and coast the hills and anywhere else I could possibly coast. At 45-50mph I let off the clutch and gave it gas, but at times going down hills my speed drifted up to 60.

Now to try it on normal town and country driving to see how good I can get. Not as many hills, but I think that just by watching how I drive more carefully I can greatly increase my MPG.

Since I am totally unmechanical I don't know what kind of effect this driving style would have on my car, specifically my clutch. If anyone does know, please let me know.

2008-12-18T14:48:00.004-05:00

I took this film clip of Tori's Christmas band concert. The eighth grade band at Clark-Moores playing "Hark the Herald Trumpets Swing."

Political Campaigns in Lincoln's Time

2008-11-11T09:41:00.004-05:00

The history department arranged for the Kentucky Historical Society's History-Mobile to be on campus this week. Local elementary and middle schools were invited to bring their students to visit the History-Mobile and the archives was asked to create an exhibit that would be on display for the same days.

In conjunction with this we decided to create an electronic display that would add information to what was available in the display case. Even though I've drooled over some great online exhibits (my favorite being Not For Ourselves Alone), I hadn't tried to do one myself.

I've been out of the web site creation field for several years now (maintaining a created page doesn't count), so I had a big learning curve to make this page do what I wanted it to do. Fortunately Dreamweaver made it fairly easy to do a cascading style sheet even though I had very limited experience with them. It took several uninterrupted hours of trial and error trying different properties to see what each one would do and how it worked, but overall Dreamweaver made it easy.

The image below shows the physical exhibit and clicking on it will link to the online version which includes more information about each document, including biographical sketches on key individuals of the era, information about the political climate and events and external links to other information. We also scanned some speeches in our collections to OCR to add as links.

Baby Chicks and Hunters

2008-10-14T10:40:00.005-04:00

Baby chicks came in last week and they are so cute. We got Araucanas/Americanas (they lay colored eggs) and brown leghorns for eggs and a few Buff Orpington roosters to fill out the order. Yes, it's late in the season, but the idea was to let them grow over the winter and then they would be ready to start laying in the spring. Now to build a chicken coop.

The girls went deer hunting this weekend. The fact that they didn't get anything didn't keep them from having fun. Ashley wouldn't clown with them, so the picture is one girl short.

Historical Census Browser

2008-10-08T16:20:00.004-04:00

The University of Virginia Library has developed a historical census browser that lets the user pull out statistical information found on the US Census from 1790 to 1960 down to the county level.

It will pull up multiple statistics, for example the total population in a location and the number of individuals attending school to allow users to compare statistics. It will pull the statistics over a period of years for comparison. Then it will map the results for you.

The statistics cover topics such as ethnicity, literacy in different ethnic groups and ages, farm and home ownership among different ethnic groups, employment, housing and more depending on the census year.

What you won't find are the names of individuals on the census, this browser is strictly for demographic information and it is outstanding for that type of information.

Harry the Hamster

2008-10-03T10:04:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I feel like Harry going round and round in his wheel all night and getting nowhere.

And then sometimes my kids do something so awesome that it just makes me stop that wheel and cry.

Living 12 miles from town and being carless makes me feel trapped and desperate. Not a good feeling to have when car shopping. That said, if anyone has a good, used, car that gets good gas mileage to sell, come see me. Desperate buyers are good for the seller, right?

In the middle of worrying about that and everything else, last night my youngest daughter left a note on my bed. On the top it said "Do Not Worry." Below that she had copied the entire text of Matthew 6:25-34.

Fact or Fiction - EKU Trivia

2008-10-01T14:42:00.004-04:00

One major project down only a dozen more to go.

The "Fact or Fiction: Test your EKU Knowledge" slide show has been uploaded to slideshare.net for those of you who really wanted to see it. In Powerpoint there were links to external information and a couple film clips that no longer work.

Maybe I can figure out how to upload the actual presentation with all the bells and whistles.

Fact Or Fiction

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

When Life Gives You Lemons...

2008-09-29T14:06:00.005-04:00

make lemonade. Ok, that's all fine and good, but just what are you supposed to do with a car that looks like this?

Unfortunately, Melissa has been driving the car while I've been carpooling and apparently it really isn't cool to be a high school senior and ride the bus to school. She is more upset than I am that we are temporarily carless.

All I can say is thank goodness that when I was trying to pare down insurance costs, I didn't drop the comprehensive. And a special thanks to the Good Samaratin who made a u-turn to help with his fire extinguisher.

Faith In Action

2008-09-26T15:58:00.002-04:00

Over the weekend I was able to see my old pastor, Tiger Pennington, at a fundraiser for GraceNow and HealthNow, a local foodbank and health care center.

His message was basically "Faith in action is a response to grace."

Isn't it funny that you don't realize how much you miss someone until you see them again?

We Can Do OCR!

2008-09-25T09:37:00.003-04:00

Yesterday afternoon I installed the new Abbyy FineReader software that just came in.

Installation was a breeze and the software is very intuitive to start using. Scanning the first document was simple. I didn't even have to look at the manual to scan or edit the text. It did get a bit more complicated when the document was saved, because there are so many options available.

The end result that I wanted was a .pdf document that looked like the original that, but that had a text layer underneath which allowed the user to search the document. After several tries and reading the manual (imagine that) here is the end result.

To get a document that looks like the original scan select 'keep original image size,' 'text under page image' and 'enable tagged pdf'.'

Some things to note. FineReader automatically rotated the landscape photograph on page 8, but it couldn't read the text that was sideways in the table on page 16. To get that section of text readable I think it would take a lot of extra effort.

I was impressed with the accuracy of the OCR and the ease of use. So now we enter another phase of digitization.

Finishing Knitting Projects

2008-09-20T13:36:00.000-04:00

Since realizing just how many knitting projects I have started, I've been working hard to finish some of them.

The yoga mat bag was the easiest to complete once I resolved the not enough yarn issue, so I ripped out the strap and used that yarn to finish the bag. Instead of knitting a strap, I braided one from the Navaho rope directions in Shear Spirit. So one project is finished except for the drawstring around the top and that doesn't count. Sorry for the blurry photo and the cardboard tube used as filler, but that's what was available.

Then I started on the couch pillow that was mostly finished, only now it isn't. I learned the proper way to make a seam and got excited, but when I put it on the pillow form, I was even more dissatisfied with the flap that buttons down. Since that was the first part knit, I refuse to rip out the whole pillow, so I think I will try unraveling it at the color change, pick up stitches and reknit the flap differently. Isn't the right seam so much prettier? Well at least it is neater.

From Other Blogs

2008-09-19T17:38:00.000-04:00

I picked this up from Eastside Farm Chronicles and want to keep it where I can get back to it, so here goes.

The Wolves Inside You

A Parable

An elder Native American was teaching his grandchildren about life. He said to them, "A fight is going on inside me. It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves.

One wolf represents fear, anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

The other stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith."

"This same fight is going on inside you, and inside every other person, too", he added.

The Grandchildren thought about it for a minute and then one child asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied... "The one you feed."

And from Rosemary-go-Round my next knitting project. I have the yarn in my stash and this one's a keeper.

Horses are Family, Too

2008-09-17T09:20:00.001-04:00

Ashley's Camera 12 2006 070
Originally uploaded by tormash9

Phanton and Bubba Louie have been part of our family for four years. We got them when the girls wanted any horse, just to have horses. The owner was moving and wanted a good home for them. Since they had injuries as weanlings they weren't rideable and as we soon found out, they were extremely high strung. They have been together since they were babies and don't like being separated.

The girls are older and we have acquired other horses that they can ride (a total of 6). With the drought this year and gas prices so high the hay cutter took 2/3 instead of 1/2, we don't have enough hay to carry us through the winter. So we had to find homes for some horses.

I made arrangements with Kentucky Equine Humane Center to take Phantom and Bubba, arranged for a truck and trailer to haul them, took off work and found out at the last minute that they had to have a negative coggins test. We loaded them to take them to the vet to draw blood. Not an easy task. They had only been in a horse trailer once before in their lives and they didn't like the looks of this one. When we finally got them loaded we started talking about how to get them loaded next week for the trip to Nicholasville. Todd, being a cow and goat person, wasn't too anxious to go through that ordeal again and myself, looking at scraping together almost $300 to give away two horses, started talking about what to do with them.

After a couple phone calls we finally decided to take them to the stockyards and let them go through the sale ring Saturday. I'm trying not to think about what will happen to them from there. They are both sweet and I wish they could have lived out there lives right where they were. I feel like such a traitor.

Water For Elephants

2008-09-16T08:14:00.002-04:00

I have always been a voracious reader. If I go for a couple months without reading, then I can't do anything until I've devoured several books back to back. That makes it really hard to get things done.

Then I discovered audio books. Then the public library gave us access to free audio downloads through Kentucky Libraries Unbound and I got an MP3 player. Now I can 'read' books anywhere. While I'm knitting, pulling weeds, cutting up dozens of apples to can, walking, you name it. I'm much more productive and it makes the job I'm working on less monotonous.

Water for Elephants is the first audio book I've listened to that I feel like I need to go back to the real book and actually read it to make sure I didn't miss a single word. It is one of the best books I've read in a long time. Parts of it are heartbreakingly sad, and parts are funny and the twist at the end makes you go back to reread the prologue immediately. If you're looking for a good read, I highly recommend Water for Elephants.

House Renovations Already

2008-09-15T16:25:00.001-04:00

All the canning that has been keeping me busy for the past couple months has caused an immediate renovation project (to a new house). Closet Maid shelving is easy to install and easy to keep clean and is fairly durable in most circumstances. Holding many jars of food is not one of them.

Besides the fact that I'm out of space (a couple dozen jars are on the kitchen counter still) these shelves are sagging to the point that I just know I'll wake up one night to a huge crash.

Over the weekend I gave my daughter the choice to put in new wooden shelves or to slice and peel apples for apple pie filling. She chose shelving. She found the studs, measured everything, predrilled holes, screwed the braces into the studs, leveled everything both directions, cut the shelves and reorganized the jars.

This afternoon she is using the last of the shelving to add one more shelf and eventually all the Closet Maid shelves will be replaced. Since the new shelves are closer together there will be more room to store food.

Just for the record she is 17 and yes, I am just a little proud of her.

The star of the garden this year has been sweet potatoes. These two potatoes alone weigh 5 pounds and there were a couple dozen between 1 and 2 pounds, not to mention the dozens of smaller potatoes. Even though they are huge they are still tender and delicious.

Knitting Has Gotten Out of Hand

2008-09-09T16:45:00.000-04:00

When I woke up this morning the first thing I saw was yarn and knitting needles. Then I started counting works in progress. Yikes! There were seven projects within reach and 5 more that were hiding in a box just out of sight.

Granted 4 of these projects just need to be sewn together and have the ends woven in to be complete. For one I need a larger circular needle than I have right now. One I ran out of yarn and am trying to figure out how to work around that; the dye lots I can find are way off the original, so the handle may get a new color. I cast on a pair of socks for Ashley to knit this weekend that somehow ended up back in my pile of knitting even though I'm positive that I gave them to her and showed her how to do it.

For some reason there is something in my head that just can't wait to start the next new project. Who cares if there are a dozen in varying stages of completion waiting my attention? It must be a sickness, but is there a cure? Help!

Just What I Need

2008-09-09T15:44:00.001-04:00

This post is for reference for an upcoming trip to Athens, GA.

The Cat's Meow
2141A w. Broad Street
Athens, GA 30606
+1 (706) 316 2130
Owner: Heather West
email: thecatsmeowyarnshop@hotmail.com
This is Athens' first yarn store. The Cat's Meow is a full-service shop with frequent classes, weekly knit-ins, and helpful, friendly and knowledgeable staff. The yarns carried here are high quality (Noro, Debbie Bliss, Brown Sheep, Elsebeth Lavold among many others) and there is a large selection of novelty and baby yarns as well. Different brands of needles in a wide range of sizes (Clover, Crystal Palace and Addi Turbos) and knitting notions, books and patterns are also available. This store is a must for any visitors to the Athens area.

Book Terminology

2008-09-05T15:24:00.003-04:00

The Independent Online Booksellers Association has a great list of book terms on their website.

Perfect Corn Revisited

2008-09-05T07:20:00.000-04:00

I tried the cabbage/hot pepper mixture on the corn this year and it worked pretty well. It stunk to high heaven, but I had only a couple ears with ear worms. I had more that was damaged by the worms that bore in through the sides, so next year I'll try spraying the entire ear rather than just the silks.

The biggest problem was pollination because we planted only 2 rows and ran out of seed. It needed at least 3 rows.

Local Food

2008-08-29T12:00:00.002-04:00

GEDC0421
Originally uploaded by tormash9

There is something really satisfying about sitting down to a meal made up entirely of stuff you grew. Except for the dumplings (I'm not quite ambitious enough to try wheat for flour), the entire meal was raised here.

Now if only my kids could appreciate how good a fresh homegrown tomato is, instead of accusing me of starving them.

Knitting - Lessons Learned (Maybe)

2008-08-19T16:46:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine is extremely precise in everything she does. She checks and double checks to make sure she has the right materials and processes before she starts anything. I could learn from her.

I found a pattern on Ravelry for a scarf that I wanted to make as a Christmas gift. It was knit in lace weight yarn which I have plenty of since I ordered a sampler package from Knitpicks. I picked a color I though would be good (a baby alpaca/silk blend), cast on and started knitting. At the end of the first repeat I looked at what I had knitted and was not at all satisfied with the result.

Time to rip it out and pick another yarn, this time a merino with more loft than the alpaca. I finished the swatch and again it looked terrible.

I ripped it out again and moved up to a fingering yarn. I had some sock yarn leftover that I thought would be enough to make a scarf. Again after the first repeat I still wasn't satisfied with the result. It was better, but still didn't look right. At this point I stretched the fabric and compared it closely with the photo in the pattern.

Aha! The problem was that my yarnovers didn't twist. It totally changed the look of the fabric. So once again I ripped it all out and pulled out my trusty Readers Digest Guide to Needlework. It stays on the table beside my bed, so I can refer to it when I have a how-to question. I was working yarnovers for a purl lace, exactly backwards of what they should have been.

Last time was a charm. It looks, well, like it's supposed to look. When I got about halfway through the scarf, I laid down the knitting needles and read the size. My short blue needles weren't size eight, they were size ten. The lace weight yarns probably would have worked perfectly with the proper size needle.

Awesome Friends

2008-08-19T13:50:00.001-04:00

GEDC0415
Originally uploaded by tormash9

You know you have an amazing friend when he'll take you and a friend to the lake with his canoe and a bottle of wine, then sit and read while the two you are out paddling around and relieving stress. Thanks Terry! You are the best!

Preservation 101 Online Course

2008-08-15T11:41:00.003-04:00

Linda Clark Benedict, Alone in the Archives Blog recently had a link to an online Preservation 101 workshop that looks really good. It was funded by an IMLS grant to the Northeast Document Conservation Center and has two study options. The self study is unfacilitated and free of charge; there is also an instructor facilitated study for a fee which earns continuing education credits.

In my spare time I think I'll work my way through the self study.

Maude Gibson Paintings

2008-08-15T08:47:00.011-04:00

Several months ago I borrowed an idea from another archives and started a Find of the Month. The August find was Maude Gibson's paintings. Maude was an art professor at Eastern from 1910 to about 1941 and painted almost her entire life. She died in 1964 at the age of 93 and the painting to the left is dated 1962.

The small paintings were scanned and uploaded to Flickr, but in the process of resizing them I got screen shots of small closeups of the paintings showing the layers of color and brush strokes. These small clips were so cool that I copied several of them from her paintings and uploaded them as well.

Here are some of my favorites. To see the entire collection click on the Flickr link above. If you want to have fun, try to match up the abstract clips with the original painting.

Eastern's Historical Resources

2008-08-13T12:08:00.002-04:00

Eastern celebrated it's centennial anniversary in 2006. The provost provided funds to hire Joyce Miller, who compiled an inventory of the art, sculpture and other historical artifacts that were on campus at the time.

For 2 years that information has been sitting in an Access database not being used by anyone. Now it has been added to the University Archives Photo and Image Database. So anyone can find photos and information on the art and sculpture on campus.

The inventory may not be complete, because Joyce may not have been able to get into every office with university owned art work. For example, I know that she was unable to get into the Blanton House, so nothing in there was inventoried.

If you know of any art that was missed in the Historical Resources Inventory, leave a comment here and we'll photograph and add it. One other shortcoming is that very few of the art works in the University Archives were inventoried.

Perfect Corn with no Pesticides

2008-08-04T11:47:00.003-04:00

My neighbor gave us a bag of corn from his garden this weekend and it was the prettiest ears of corn I think I've ever seen. They were perfect ears with no signs of bugs at all. We took it home and put it straight on the stove for corn on the cob. Delicious!

When I asked him how he kept the worms off, he gave me his recipe. He fermented cabbage and hot peppers in water, strained off the solids and sprayed the silks with the liquid. Since my corn is getting close, I started a batch Sunday. Hopefully it will be ready to use soon.

Quote of the Day

2008-07-31T09:20:00.000-04:00

"A loving person lives in a loving world. A hostile person lives in a hostile world; everyone you meet is your mirror."
- Ken Keyes, Jr.

Simple Pleasures

2008-07-30T10:44:00.004-04:00

The mimosa tree by the road has been in full bloom for about a month now, but about a week ago I noticed that it was full of hummingbirds. They move so fast it's impossible to count, but there must have been close to 10 of them flitting from bloom to bloom and then darting off in pairs to find another source of nectar. After many tries I actually got a picture of one. I know it's not good, but I should have a new camera in a couple days. GE decided that the problem was with the camera and they've sent a replacement.

While I was picking peaches over the weekend I didn't see many hummingbirds, but the tree was covered with butterflies. This red-spotted purple was on the compost pile.

I was able to freeze 3 quarts of peaches and make 8 pints of peach jam, so I was pleased. Every other year the bugs eat way more than we do. One thing I noticed was that the peaches that weren't quite ripe had no bug damage, but by the time they get ripe the worms have gotten to them. So next year the tree needs pruned more, concentrating on removing some of the small branches and the peaches need to be picked just before they get ripe and allowed to ripen inside away from the bugs.

Now if only my kids would eat what is coming out of the garden. You would think I was trying to poison them by feeding them 'raw tomatoes, fried banana peppers, beet greens and zucchini.' Heaven forbid!

Gardening - Tools, Rocks and Weeds

2008-07-22T08:21:00.002-04:00

One of the best things about my garden is that it is where piles of cow manure from a small dairy were left to compost for years. Now the soil has tons of organic matter and and clumps break up easily. It is easy to till and easy to pull weeds.

That's a good thing. Because one of the bad things about my garden is that while it was composting it spent five or more years growing weeds and spreading enough seed to grow weeds into the next millennium. My mantra this year has been 'if it doesn't seed there won't be as many weeds next year.' The new tiller is helping, but by the time I got it, the weeds were already too big for it. Which leads me to tools.

I have always heard to buy the best tools you can buy because they are well worth the money. My dad has said it, Donny always says it, every man I know says it, but it always seems like when I go to buy tools I never have the money to buy good ones. So, the rake I bought early last summer isn't usable this summer and the hoe I bought at good, old Walmart broke the first week.

New mantra. 'Buy good tools.'

Now for the other bad thing about my garden. When all that cow manure was scraped over to the manure pile, lots of rock went along with it. I don't know if I can ever get all the rock out, but with the help of my trusty wheelbarrow (a good one that Donny gave me when he upgraded to a two wheeler) I've been filling the holes in the driveway. Since my driveway is about 800 feet long, I figure that all the holes will be filled about the time the garden is free of rocks.

Now the best thing about my garden is eating a vine ripened tomato warm from the sun during a break from weeding.

Ultimate Relaxation

2008-07-19T10:53:00.001-04:00

Sitting in a canoe in the middle of a lake, knitting and drifting. I wish I could do this every night. If only I could turn my pond into a lake, I'd have it made.

Peaches

2008-07-17T10:31:00.002-04:00

Yes! I found the first ripe peach last night. It was small, but tasted wonderful. I guess that means putting up peaches this weekend. Beetles haven't gotten them yet, so I may actually have a small crop. Maybe Ashley will even make a peach pie. She's turning into a pretty decent baker and she even makes the crust from scratch.

I'll probably can them so I can save freezer space for beef.

Blackberries are Ripe

2008-07-14T17:25:00.004-04:00

May was really dry, but in June we got just enough rain, and the blackberries have loved it. The berries are large and juicy and abundant. We have made two cobblers, frozen 4 quarts for cobblers later in the year and over the weekend I made 9 pints of jam. Another gallon of berries will do us.

There is something satisfying about seeing jars lined up in the pantry and knowing that your family will eat good over the winter from food that grew just outside your door. Peaches will be next. They aren't large, but there are a lot of them and the beetles haven't found them yet, so we should have plenty and some to spare.

Here's the cobbler recipe my grandma used. I love it because it's so easy.

Melt one stick of butter in a baking dish. (I cut this back to 1/2 stick and it's still good)
Mix 1 cup of sugar and 1 cup of self rising flour add one cup of milk to this mix. Pour over the melted butter. Add one quart of fruit and use spoon to make an 'x' through the mixture without stirring.
Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes or until brown on top.

Of course we won't talk about the poison ivy on both ankles and arms or the chiggers that have eaten me alive.

We also got the first tomato from the garden finally. I made my traditional tomato and Miracle Whip sandwich for lunch Saturday, but the girls were not impressed. Next year I need to pay more attention to maturity dates and pick some early veggies so we don't have to wait until July for that first tomato and corn.

Google Reader pointed me to this local eating website that has some good information on it.

Pictures to come when I get them off my phone. Hopefully I'll have my camera back soon. The new one I got at Christmas decided not to power on.

Recycling Things You Never Thought About

2008-07-10T16:28:00.002-04:00

This web page has some great links and ideas on recycling things that you never thought about recycling. Old tennis shoes, wine corks, toothbrushes. Check it out.

Wordle

2008-06-26T15:00:00.003-04:00

I just learned about a new tool through Cindi's blog post. Wordle lets you input text to create a tag cloud. You also have the option to make a cloud out of a user's del.icio.us tags. The EKU Archives cloud turned out really cool.

And I really liked this one. 1 Corinthians 13 is one of my favorite chapters.

Farming the Hard Way

2008-06-19T09:08:00.009-04:00

Last year I finally got smart and instead of paying someone to mow pastures and then buy hay, I made arrangements to have someone cut hay on shares. Duh. Why didn't I think of that before?

Let me start by saying that mechanical things don't like me. If it takes gas and has a pull rope, it really doesn't like me. It's so bad that the tiller I just bought is electric. Don't laugh.

I do have an old Ford Jubilee tractor, but it also doesn't like me. I can't keep it running for anything, so when it was time to put that free hay in the barn, I had to get creative. My daughter and I created a sled out of a sheet of plywood and a piece of 1/2" rope and pulled it with the car. Much cheaper than a hay wagon, but it could only hold 14 bales at a time.

Local Eating Again

2008-06-09T18:53:00.003-04:00

Kentucky Farm Bureau also has a list of farm markets including these in Madison County:

Acres of Land Winery
Baldwin Farm (How could I have forgotten them. We always get our Christmas trees there)
McQuerry's Family Farm Herbs-N-Heirlooms in Paint Lick
Warren Farm Greenhouse

How to Build a Window Seat

2008-06-04T15:52:00.010-04:00

I thought I would go back to an earlier post and show how I built the dormer window seat in the loft. All the wood used for this project was scraps left over from building the house so they aren't pretty, but they are covered up and eventually I'll paint them. The pictures are pretty poor, but hopefully they illustrate what I'm trying to describe.

The first step was to cut a 2x4 to fit across the wall under the window. You can see this at the back of the photo. Place this at the desired height, level it and screw it into the studs with long deck screws. Remember you probably have 1 1/2" of 2x4 and 1/2" of drywall, so make sure there is enough screw to secure this board well and make sure to hit the stud. I would recommend a 4" screw. This seat is almost too high, because the window is so high. It's good because it gives me lots of storage space for blankets and fabric, but it needs a step to actually sit in it easily.

After that I built the front wall like a regular framed knee wall on 16" centers so that I would have studs to nail the cedar to and plenty of support to hold people. The total wall height equaled the height of the first board placed. I placed this wall 3/4" inside the loft wall because I wanted the cedar facing boards to be flush with loft wall.

Then I cut 2x4s to fit along the side walls. Line them up with the front wall and the back ledger board and screw into the wall at the studs. If the height measurements were correct these 2x4s will be level. To support the seat I also nailed a 2x2 in the center between the knee wall and the back board, but this is probably overkill and would only be needed if your seat was wider than 48".

The top is made up of three pieces of wood. First, I covered the framing with a 1x4 along the back wall. (This board is under the cubbyholes, so you can't see it.) This board was joined to the lid (which was made from a scrap of Advantech flooring) with a zipper hinge and a flat handle was attached to the lid. They probably make better handles, but this was all our local Lowes had in stock. The front of the top was finished off with a piece of cedar mitered on the front edge to provide a more leg friendly surface. I left 1/8" between the lid and the front cedar to allow the lid to open and close without rubbing.

Cedar was nailed on the front diagonally to match other cedar walls in the house and was trimmed with thin strips of cedar rounded on the router and mitered in the corners.

The original plan was to cover the entire seat with a cushion, but then I found out that the foam only comes in 24" widths. To make up the difference between the cushion width and the actual window seat width I put together a cedar cubbyhole to hold books, pencils, paper, etc. This is the one item I would redo, assuming I get another spurt of inspiration. It works, but it could be refined to look better.

Hopefully this will help someone build their own window seat. Questions are welcome and I'd love to see the end results if you build a seat.

Eating Locally

2008-06-04T07:36:00.002-04:00

Our family is trying to reduce our carbon footprint and a big part of that is eating locally. We have a large garden, a small flock of chickens, a few goats and I'm seeing a couple cows in our future. Still there are times when we need to buy stuff.

Like coffee. The best place in the county to buy Fair Trade, Organic coffee is Berea Coffee and Tea, Kentucky's first "green" coffee shop. Their long list of coffees can be found here. While you're at their website you can also read about the process they went through to become "green."

Berea College Farms are selling locally raised beef and other meats. You select how much meat you need, how you want it cut (if you select a quarter or side) and then pick it up and pay for it in the fall when it's ready. Berea College is also trying to become sustainable by raising the food they use on campus on their farms.

There are several farmer's markets in Richmond, Berea and Irvine. The organic market in Berea is open on Tuesday and Friday evenings beside Promenade Gallery. There is another Berea market under the stadium beside the pool at Berea Community School, but I'm not sure of the days. In Richmond the market is in the Lowes parking lot on Tuesday afternoon and Saturday morning. There is a list of other markets in the state here.

I mentioned local strawberries in an earlier post, but leave a comment if you know of any other local food options.

Knitting Two Socks at One Time

2008-06-02T16:56:00.002-04:00

After knitting two pairs of socks, I thought I'd try two at the same time, so I don't have to force myself to knit the second sock.

It took knitting for several inches before I got control of the two strands of yarn and cables and could easily pick things back up when I put down the needles. In fact I had to take out several rows because I started knitting backwards and didn't catch it until it was time to change needles. The heel didn't work exactly right, it was very awkward, but I'm past that now, just need to finish the foot and toe.

I do like the idea of having both socks done at once, but I'm getting bored with them, so I started a lace project too.

This weekend was spent fixing strawberries, working in the yard and knitting lace. We went to Marcum Farms and picked seven gallons of berries. They were great, but I noticed later in the day that another farm less than a quarter mile up the road had berries for $6 a gallon rather than $9, just in case anyone wants to pick strawberries.

Here is a quick picture of the lace stole I'm working on. It's like knitting a cloud. The lace is so light and soft. The yarn is Kid Seta by Madil Yarns from ReBelle Girls in Lexington. It is 70% kid mohair, 30% silk and it is luscious. My new camera is on the blink, so none of these pictures are very good. I apologize for that.

Blackberry Winter/Local Strawberries Ready

2008-05-23T10:48:00.005-04:00

According to the local farmers, we just had blackberry winter. Blackberries are in full bloom and the temps were 38 degrees the night before last.

How is it that it always happens that way? I think I'll keep track of it for a few years.

If you're looking for local produce, the strawberries at Marcum Farms just up College Hill Road from Waco are ready to pick. $9 a gallon for u-pick, $11 a gallon if they pick. I haven't stopped yet, but last year they were terrific. Melissa made jam and we enjoyed it up until January, so we need to make more this year.

KCA Spring 2008

2008-05-19T08:24:00.006-04:00

The Spring Kentucky Council on Archives meeting was held at Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY. It was a long, rainy drive but beautiful.

There were three speakers for this meeting:

Caroline Rubens of Appalshop: To Fit Our Own Category: Preservation of 35 Years of Appalshop Audio Recordings
Robert Gipe of Southeast Community and Technical College: Higher Ground: The Role of Self-documentation in the Preservation of Community Identity
Dwight Swanson formerly of Appalshop: Film Preservation at Appalshop: Funding and Process

Caroline's talk centered around the processes related to preserving some of Appalshop's earliest recordings. Most of their work was made possible through grants and they reformatted audio materials three different ways:

Inhouse
With a small production company
Using a large company with conservation abilities

They decided to work with the finished products rather than the raw sound files as the finished audio that had been sold was the closest to the artist's original vision for the music.

Caroline gave pros and cons for each experience, but the end result was that they would use the professional conservator for audio that they planned on selling. Other audio would be done inhouse with their equipment and Adobe Audition for digitization.

Some other interesting items were that they used a food dehydrator for baking tapes with sticky tape syndrome. They were using LTO Data tapes for long term offsite storage rather than a server or external hard drive.

Robert Gipe is the head of Appalachian Studies at Southeast Community College and talked about his project in using art to document the community. They focused on photography, community theater and tile mosaic murals. The photography combined photographs with oral history which was then turned into several tile mosaics and a play. The "If These Hills Could Talk" mosaic is awesome. The tiles making up the hills are stamped with letters and make up quotes from the oral history project.

Last was Dwight Swanson talking about film preservation projects at Appalshop. All their projects were funded through grants from the National Film Preservation Foundation(NFPF). The earliest grants were to have older films preserved and put on new 16mm film. Later grants have included digitization of films as well. The NFPF site gives a list of labs that can do the preservation work as well as grant information.

The cost estimate to preserve and make a copy of 1000 feet of 16mm film (about 28 minutes) is nearly $4,000 and the cost to digitize the preserved film is nearly $1,000. This cost is for a professional film conservation lab to do the work.

Good presenters and good information. Also we got the chance to talk to other colleagues about our Flickr project. There was a lot of interest from other institutions in using Flickr for their photos as well.

Springtime

2008-05-15T08:44:00.007-04:00

There has been so much going on at the farm right now, that I can't seem to keep up with it all. After living in the house for over a year I'm finally trying to get some landscaping done, so every evening I'm planting something or moving dirt.

I started pouring a concrete pathway to the house last summer, but it seemed to take so long and it got complicated when I decided to do a curvy path rather than straight. A few weeks ago I noticed a lot of slate laying on top of the ground where they had recently put in a water line close to home. So every evening I've stopped and picked up slate. One more night will give me enough to do most of the path and it will be much faster than mixing about 30 bags of concrete.

My youngest just turned 13, so it's official, a household full of female teenagers and one menopausal mom. It gets interesting. Somehow she managed to get a four-legged birthday present. That 'S' tattooed on my forehead must be getting bigger.

Once again the peach tree is loaded with tiny peaches, but since they never get very big, I'm trying the advice in one of my gardening books and I'm thinning them. Maybe this year we'll have good peaches and the Japanese beetles won't get them all.

Ashley just started a blog for things that are happening on the farm which finally has a name, Cedar Pond Farm.

Locust Winter

2008-05-12T08:19:00.003-04:00

Well, the locust trees are in full bloom, so I guess this cold spell is officially 'Locust Winter' according to the old timers at the local store. I even had to turn on the heat again last night.

Friends

2008-05-12T08:17:00.002-04:00

Good friends plus a street dance with live music plus a moonlight walk in the woods plus a glass of wine near a gurgling creek equals one of the best evenings I've had in a long time.

A Slideshow From EKUArchives @ Flickr

2008-05-01T09:32:00.003-04:00

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

These photos are from the 1950s set.

Archives Flickr Project Launched

2008-04-29T08:37:00.006-04:00

Back in February our archives set up a Flickr account and started uploading photos to prepare for Alumni Weekend. We’ve talked for a long time about doing some kind of photo identification project to get names on some of the thousands of pictures we have before they can’t be identified.

When the Library of Congress uploaded photos to Flickr, we decided to follow suit. Since February we uploaded, tagged and described over 700 EKU images. We created sets so users could find images of interest more easily, sorting photos by decade and by topic. There are some mistakes that still need to be corrected, it’s easy to flip a negative and scan it backwards. There are some typos and a couple misidentifications, but those problems are easily corrected. We have a couple Flickr problems; for example, you can add a note to some photos, but not all. It is a global setting, so we can’t figure out why it doesn’t always work.

The test came this past weekend. It was Alumni Weekend and we had three opportunities to showcase the project. We made up cards with a direct link so that anyone interested could go straight to our photostream from home.

Friday night before the Scholarship Dinner we set up three laptops with Flickr slideshows and talked to everyone who stopped. Cards were passed out and most people we talked to seemed really interested.

Saturday we set up at the Alumni Breakfast and talked to alumni for several hours before lunch and again in the archives that afternoon. One of the Pioneer Club inductees was the Milestone photographer for the 57 and 58 yearbooks. He was really excited to see some of his photos on Flickr and promised to make as many IDs as he could. Sunday we showcased the project to Friends of the Library.

Tiring weekend, but we got a lot of great feedback, including identifications on several photos we had posted. Before the weekend, our photostream had been viewed about 1150 times, Monday morning that had jumped to 1246 views.

One of our students spent a couple months adding a series of negatives from the 1950s to our photo database and is now scanning some of the late 1950s images to add to Flickr. We chose these years to concentrate on, since most of the alumni we spoke with were there for their 50^th reunion. Later we’ll add more from other decades and see how it goes.

A Late Earth Day Post

2008-04-29T08:36:00.002-04:00

We’re having a real spring this year and everything seems to be staying in bloom forever, because of the cool weather. So to celebrate Earth Day, here are some signs of spring around our farm.

Kittens anyone? We now have 9. The other litter is grays and blacks, with a bobtail orange.

The first time I saw the apple tree in full bloom it took my breath away, it was so beautiful, but the photo of the whole tree didn’t do it justice.

In our family there is nothing that says spring more than having weather nice enough to play with the horses again. Tori got her very own horse for her birthday and is loving it. He just rolled in the pond so he isn’t his usual pretty gray color, more like mud.

Foodwise, spring is great. Lettuce and spinach are ready to eat. The hens are laying three or four eggs a day, so we have more than we can eat right now. And best of all the asparagus is just popping through the ground. This bed was planted last year, so we shouldn’t eat it till next year, but I did steal a few shoots from this plant for a quiche, since they were a really nice size.

The bees were really buzzing around this redbud tree when I was wandering around taking pictures. Minnie and I were talking about the different winters that Kentucky gets each spring. She said that her grandmother always said there were seven different winters, but she couldn’t remember all of them. The first cold spell we got the pears were blooming, but neither of us had ever heard of Pear Winter. The next cold spell coincided with the redbuds blooming, so that was Redbud Winter. This cold spell we’re having right now the dogwoods are blooming, so Dogwood Winter. The others coming up should be Locust Winter and last of all will be Blackberry Winter. Has anyone heard of any others? Neither of us could come up with seven. But in all the years I’ve watched this it holds true almost every year.

Midwest Archives Conference YouTube Presentation

2008-04-19T11:46:00.001-04:00

MAC 2008 Racing Headlong into Archives 2.0: Connecting Collections and Communities

2008-04-19T10:36:00.003-04:00

Chair: Lara Friedman Shedlow, YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota

Kevin Leonard, Northwestern University

Midwest Archives Conference YouTube Presentation. Very funny. Check the last post to view.

Your audience wants things digital. It is important to maintain communication between archives and patrons and Web 2.0 facilitates this.

Google is gatekeeper between collections and users. To keep archives going, keep Google fed. Users are users regardless of where they are.

Potentials of 2.0 extends web presence beyond static page, allowing communication, public relations, build audience, retain interest. We must keep up with technology, instant access to collections. Makes collections more accessible.

Power of search engines will draw users from our collections if we don't keep up with digitization.

Blogs are simple and offer low cost, easy way to communicate with users. Advertise items posted, so users will find them.

Wiki, materials collected through different users. Could be used in academic setting to study and collect materials on our web site.

Folksonomies: Flickr, Steve Project, these sites allow users to add tags increasing useability.

News aggregator/Feed Reader allows users to immediately have access to new information posted on your pages.

2.0 is about sharing, collaboration and third party recommendations.

Library and Archives content is typically hidden and hard to use. Web 2.0 gives us opportunity to make access to collections better.

Elizabeth Yakel, University of Michigan

Polar Bear Expedition and collections. Digitization began as a preservation measure, due to excessive use.

Big problem of converting to digital was how to redefine archival finding aids to make them more useful.

The project allows social navigation by using user profiles and allowing commenting. Have compiled statistics and user information including where the users come from geographically, how long they stay, what they look at and where they were referred from.

For textual records, seeing things online does not generally entice users into your building.

Their users tend to browse rather than search and users do not use the bookmark feature built into the site. Have adapted features from commercial sites. Comments have been most successful and include information sharing about soldier, family and corrections to information. They update finding aids when they get documented corrections. They have even gotten donations through the site.

Considerations:
Critical Mass created in large part by recency
Need for a Personal connection, commenting is most successful feature

Changed from reconceptualizing finding aids to reconceptualizing large collections.

Her delicious site tracks other archives Web 2.0 initiatives.

Kevin Schlesier, North Carolina State University

Talks about using physical exhibitions to draw non-traditional users, by using community curation.

Archives use physical exhibits to show archival materials. Archives increasingly curating collections and interpreting them or presenting themes.

Benefits include showcasing value, research potential and build support and collections. Attracts new patrons and support. In exhibition the curator speaks for the object or document, but not usually first person.

Institution must define community, present goals, expectations, listen to community for input, let community be advisers and assign tasks, facilitate their research. Use wiki or blog for them to dump content, research findings and ideas. That background info can become part of exhibit, preferably after the exhibit is in place. Use actual quotes for labels. Let community label. Add photos and artifacts for visuality.

How can visitors add comments to physical exhibits? Bulletin board, sticky notes, white board, etc.

Make sure exhibition reflects role of institution, stays on target, but mediate multiple viewpoints. Don't be too narrow and don't forget other views.

MAC 2008 Cleaning Cobwebs: Studies in Archiving Web-Based Records

2008-04-18T23:18:00.003-04:00

Presenters:
Rosemary Pleva Flynn, Energy and Environmental Research Center, University of North Dakota
Philip C. Bantin, Indiana University Bloomington
Mark J. Myers, Kentucky Department for Libraries and Archives

Internet Archiving Tools include:

Archive-It
Web-at-Risk: Collaboration between LOC, California Digital Library, New York University and University of North Carolina
Echo Depository Project (WAW): Collaboration between UIUC and LOC
Web Curator Toolset (WCT): Collaboration between Library of New Zealand and the British Library

Some tools let you select specific content, others select domains or directories. You can set quotas and block hosts or domains. The best strategy is to identify series that have long term value and harvest those. Bulk harvest is too large and costly, item by item too slow.

The way your institution uses your website will determine how often and what to capture. Static pages can be captured less frequently. Most crawlers can be set to capture on a specific schedule.

Generally good to capture one link off the domain name, but this can get costly in terms of size and sites can be blocked if too large.

Items that aren't captured include:

Java Script
Streaming Video
Dynamic Database
Protected sites
Form driven sites

The tool must document authenticity by capturing header information and other metadata. Most use a Dublin Core basis which is not designed for records, but more for photographs. Archive-It does not capture metadate as well as WAW and WAS.

The tool must be able to restrict access to copyrighted information. Again Archive-It doesn't do this well, WCT and WAS have better authorization tools.

The search engine must be able to search metadata and full text to be effective.

For preservation purposes the final format must be non-proprietary. The Web Archive file format (WARC) has been proposed as a standard to combine multiple digital resources into an aggregate archival file with metadata. Wayback Machine uses this type of file format.

Whatever service used must be able to migrate information preserved.

Institutions have the option to build a service using existing tool sets or to join a service. Build your own is harder and takes more resources in terms of expertise and server space, but is more flexible to fit your needs.

Mark Myers of KDLA uses pdf as primary file format. Other formats are reformatted to pdf. Pages are captured based on the state retention schedule.

Harvesters available are:

Wayback Machine
Grab-a-Site

They did manual harvesting and consultation with other agency offices. Most harvesters have problems with things like drop down menus. Just guessing, but a Flash menu would probably also cause major problems with harvesting layers.

Other problems arising include boundaries of the harvested site, functionality loss because of loss of structure and content management systems.

Rosemary and Mark are co-chairs of the ARMA Task Force on Website Management which will be developing guidelines and best practices for identifying and archiving websites.

The question remains "Are websites records?" and "to what extent?" In my experience there are a lot of records on websites that are permanent, but most of these are also printed. This will continue to change as we see more and more documents born digital and never in print. And even if they are in print the electronic version is much more versatile due to searchability.

MAC 2008 More Than One way to Meet the Challenge

2008-04-18T22:46:00.003-04:00

Systematic Approaches to the Capture and Preservation of Complex Digital Artifacts

Steve Burbeck, Rockefeller Archive Center, Collaborative Electronic Records Project (CERP)
Glen McAninch for Kelly Eubank, NC State Archives, Electronic Mail Capture and Preservation Tool (EMCAP)
Mike Smorul, University of Maryland, Archival Prototypes and Lessons Learned

All three panelists were involved in developing tools for archiving email and websites. Often dynamic and a challenge to capture and migrate because of attachments, forwards and replies. Web 2.0 will pose even more challenges.

OAIS Open Archival Information System Reference Model:

Submission to archives
Packaged for archiving
Packaged for dissemination

A system designed to delete electronic documents when retention is met won't work for historic preservation because of the chance for accidental deletion.

The system must also be able to handle a variety of formats partly because there are no email standards and many systems. Also attachments. Security of email in regard to viruses and the volume of email also a challenge.

It was interesting that all three projects came up with applications that worked differently at the archives end, but all started with an XML schema to prepare email for storage.

EMCAP's end result was an hmailserver. Users drag email identified as permanent records to an archive folder on their list. These emails can be accessed, but cannot be deleted or modified after archiving.

MAC 2008 The Useful Ten Words of the Ten Thousand: Describing Photographs in Words

2008-04-18T22:31:00.002-04:00

Cynthia R. Miller, Curator of Photography and Prints, The Henry Ford

This session was very basic information. The most interesting thing was the contrast between the MPLP talk the day before and the very time consuming process of researching and identifying individual photographs today. Somewhere there has to be a balance between describing collections enough to provide good access and agonizing over descriptions for every image in out collections.

Main Topic should include details: Who, What, Where, When and Why?

Subject terms will depend on the needs of researchers and the mission and resources of your repository.

She recommended using a controlled vocabulary for consistent search terms. The Library of Congress has subject headings for prints and photographs. The Getty also has an online thesaurus which is better for objects.

The most important thing to keep in mind is what terms the researcher will be searching for. This is the reason that I'm not sure controlled vocabularies are the best method for cataloging. The search term one person might use could be completely different than the search term another researcher might use.

Earthquake

2008-04-18T15:38:00.002-04:00

It's really strange to wake up in a strange bed to find it shaking and hear the door rattling. The first time I thought I was dreaming, but the second time Debbie and Nancy felt it too. Come to find out it was an earthquake.

Window Seat Finished

2008-04-17T22:18:00.006-04:00

Can you tell I'm sitting in a hotel with nothing to do? I just looked at Flickr and saw my latest photo uploads, so I decided to blog them.

When I started this blog I meant to chronicle the building of my house, but it seems so far away that it just doesn't seem relevant. But I have lots of little projects that I want to do and I can blog them as I finish them.

The house has two dormer windows in the front. One is just open to the living room, but the other is open to the loft. The area is so small it really isn't useful, so I decided to build a window seat there that will double as a storage chest.

Before the project began this is what I had. This is actually the window open to the living room, but I didn't take before photos. I haven't decided yet what to do with this window, but it does need something.

This is the completed window seat. The cushion hides a handle and a zipper hinge which provides access to the storage space underneath.

When I went to buy foam to make a cushion, I found out that the only width I could get was 24 inches. That wasn't enough to cover the handle and hinges, so I decided to build the cubbyholes behind the cushion. They hold books, quilt blocks in process, notepads and pencils.

The face and cubbyholes are cedar to match the handrails and newel posts on the staircase. The only change I need to make is to take off the baseboard and replace it with a step. You have to jump to get on the seat.

My youngest daughter uses this space to curl up and read. I usually use it to make to-do lists or to draw out my next project and make materials lists.

The next project will be to add book cases on either side of the window seat. Maybe then I can get all my books out of boxes.

MAC 2008 Plenary Session-The Future Belongs to Archives

2008-04-17T21:58:00.002-04:00

Jennifer Schaffner of OCLC

MPLP - More Product Less Process.

Talked about scanning for access versus scanning for preservation. Quantity not quality to improve access. Funders are more likely to support proposals for large scale access.

To add lots of records easily:

Look at converting preservation microfilm because it is cheap to digitize.
Use a digital camera to give a taste of collections when processed.
Digitize things frequently requested.

This session generated a lot of discussion afterwards for several reasons. First a photograph online with no metadata is useless. In most cases it will never even be found. And collections with limited descriptions are also hard to use and find relevant material. How useful is a collection with several boxes of correspondence with nothing but dates on each folder? We have collections like this and they get no use. But collections with more in-depth descriptions do get used.

Also many institutions depend on use fees and copy fees as a revenue stream. If everything is digitized and online a major revenue source dries up.

MAC 2008 Electronic Document Discovery

2008-04-17T20:59:00.003-04:00

These are my notes from the above session at the Midwest Archives Conference in Louisville, KY this week. Most of it is a repetition of the same things I've heard before, but still important.

Robert Webb - attorney perspective
Paul Engel - vendor perspective
Jim Cundy - records manager perspective

Webb
Electronic records are most important and hardest to manage, especially email because of the number of copies on different networks and servers.

The institution holding records does have the right to push back against requests that would cause undue burden or cost.

Every records manager should sit down with IT and legal departments to see if the mechanisms are in place to freeze routine destruction of electronic records in the event of litigation. The freezing of destruction can be narrowed down by scope and time period.

ESI is Electronically Stored Information

It is helpful to work with IT and prepare a data map tracking the flow of data in, out and through the system.

In the event of a request for records you should keep a record of the efforts made to locate requested records.

Cundy
ESI is addressed early in the legal process and included any record in any location. ESI includes: email and attachments, documents, audio (voice mail), video (teleconferences, webcam), photos from any source, databases, web pages, chat, IM, text messaging, and any other new format that may come up.

It isn't enough to have a retention schedule. Implement it and check up on offices to make sure they are following procedures.

File management is more important for electronic records than for paper, because it is so easy to make duplicates.

Communicate with IT and legal and educate management about value of records management. Work with people outside records management to gain an understanding of other aspects of electronic records.

Engel
Media does not determine importance of record.

The average ediscovery event costs $1.5M and usually targets email.

Be aware of compression issues, compressed files greatly increase cost of discovery.

petrification - changing the electronic document to an unalterable image

Key issues are:
spoliation - changing metadata by improper handling
significant resources
Must know outcome of litigation support software before use to protect metadata

Yarn For My Next Project

2008-04-11T13:27:00.001-04:00

GEDC0644
Originally uploaded by tormash9

At the Churchill Weavers auction last summer I picked up a plastic barrel to use for a rain barrel. The barrel had been used to collect scraps of yarn from the looms and was still full of yarn.

Being the pack rat that I am, I couldn't throw it away, so I sat down and balled up the colors I wanted to use for an afghan. This is about half of it, so I should have plenty. The biggest drawback is that these balls of yarn are made up of pieces about a yard long, so there will be a lot of piecing. The yarn is fuzzy, so the ends shouldn't slip out. I can't wait to see what the colors look like crocheted together.

Knitting Socks

2008-04-10T15:23:00.003-04:00

Knitting has never been my thing just because it was always soooo slow. But thanks to Learning 2.0 I found a couple podcasts that talked about techniques to increase speed. Eastern offered a Knitting Class which Debbie, Beth and I all signed up for and I've now completed my first ever pair of socks.

Actually before this the most I had ever made were some little Christmas ornaments and a washcloth. But I guess I'm hooked now, because I'm almost done with another pair of socks and about half done with a sweater for my great-niece.

Just what I needed was another hobby.

Oral History Preservation 101 Workshop

2008-04-08T14:58:00.005-04:00

Last week I attended the above workshop organized by the Kentucky Oral History Commission. It was only one day, but I came back to work with an overwhelming amount of information. Since I tend to misplace paper, I’m posting some of it here for reference purposes.

Since most of the attendees were interested in reformatting for preservation or improved access or both all three speakers discussed some aspect of that. The first speaker was Harry Rice, Berea College Sound Archivist. He talked about analog audio formats, preservation problems with each and demonstrated repair techniques for each. He shared an article on cassette repair that appeared in the Library Journal November 15, 1989.

Need to know checklist

Chemical makeup
Length
Recording Speed

Most common formats are:

reel to reel which includes:

paper backed tape

acetate tape, curls, dries out and gets brittle

polyester tape, subject to sticky tape syndrome which leaves a sticky deposit on player heads.

Cassette (all polyester)

Places to get supplies:
Tape Center
Bags Unlimited

Best Practices for Audio Preservation:
Sound Directions
Safeguarding of the Audio Heritage

Equipment Sales and Service:
Magnetic Tape Recorder Company, 601 Baxter Ave, Louisville, KY (502) 587-1848
Play it Again Sam’s, (718) 478-6060
Sweetwater Sound
B & H Photo, Video, Pro-Audio

Reformatting/Restoration Providers:
Audio Preservation & Restoration Directory
VidiPax
Safe Sound Archive
The Cutting Corporation
Video Lab

Audio Editing Software:

For PCs
Adobe Audition
Audacity
Cakewalk Sonar Power Studio
Cakewalk Sonar Home Studio
CD Architect
Soundforge
Soundforge Audio Studio

For Macs
Bias Peak Pro
Logic
Logic Express
Spark XL

For Both operating systems
Pro Tools M-Powered (works exclusively with M-Audio hardware)

Video Editing Software

For PCs
Vegas 6 or Vegas Movie Studio

For Macs
Final Cut
Final Cut Studio

For Kentucky institutions IMLS grants are available through KDLA to help provide access to historical resources.

Things to keep in mind are:

Any Digital Audio Tapes (DAT) should be the top priority for preservation as they are the most unstable.
Using high grade, professional equipment will give the best results.
Software and equipment (minus computer) can be purchases for about $1000
Check with radio stations for equipment that they no longer need to reduce costs.
Tapes should be stored on edge rather than flat in a cool dry location.
Don’t freeze audio formats.
WAVE format is the archival standard, uncompressed format.
When making audio accessible online, streaming offers more control as they can’t be downloaded.

Computer Specs are:

Pentium 4 or higher
2 gigs of RAM or higher
40 gig Hard Drive or larger
Drives must be at least 7200 RPM

April Fool's Day

2008-04-01T12:24:00.002-04:00

Chalk one up for my daughter. She got me good.

Since they are on spring break this week, she is at work in the little store she works at. I just got a call with her crying (probably laughing) that I needed to come and get her right now, because the store just got robbed. I believed it just long enough for my stomach to drop to my toes and she said April Fool's.

Now what can I do to pay her back? Any suggestions are welcome.

Learning 2.0 Pays Off in Strange Ways

2008-03-28T15:58:00.003-04:00

Last summer I went to UK to hear Barbara Kingsolver talk about her year of eating locally and the book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which documented that year. I admire her ability to make that happen without giving in to the food addictions of her family. For mine family it's macaroni and cheese that they can't live without among other things like Ale8 and Pepsi addictions.

I have been interested in sustainable living for most of my adult life. Resources are not infinite and the throw-away society we live in really bothers me, largely because of the environmental impact this lifestyle.

Last year we grew a garden for the first time in years, but the weeds took over. I just couldn't keep ahead of them. The most fertile spot on the place was also the weediest of course. So I need another strategy. Gardening guru, Dick Raymond, recommends buckwheat tilled in several times to block and kill the weeds organically. Maybe.

In step with the eating locally effort, we bought 50 baby chicks. 25 heavy roosters and 25 straight run Rhode Island Reds (a straight run is hens and roosters) for more roosters and hens for eggs. We built a portable pen that we could move so the chicks could graze and that worked well. The problem came when the chicks got to be 10 weeks old.

Chicks are ready to be harvested between 8 and 12 weeks for fryers. But they just didn't seem to be real heavy. They needed to gain more weight. It didn't take long to figure out that they weren't going to get any heavier. So I decided to start harvesting.

This is where Barbara and I came to a parting of ways. I have never done anything so awful in my life. I can't even squash a bug most of the time. Especially if it is a big juicy one. Why did I think I could do this? I struggled through 15 birds, before I called it quits.

Later, while helping Ike with some web stuff (teaching him to set up a blog and redesigning web pages) I found out that he is an expert at processing chickens. We traded. I think I got the best end of the deal. Thank goodness for web 2.0. Now to get the kids to eat chicken again since we have a freezer full of very expensive chicken.

To read his column on the experience, click here.

Be Careful What You Ask For

2008-03-27T09:18:00.003-04:00

My oldest daughter is a junior in high school. She has a friend who sleeps on the bus and sleeps in class. M. has taken it on herself to spare this friend the embarrassment of being caught asleep when classes change and getting her off the bus at school and at home.

A couple days ago her friend woke up at the end of class and growled at M. that she was getting real tired of waking up to her voice. Wrong thing to say. They ride the same bus and M gets off right before her friend who lives a half mile down the road.

True to form her friend was sleeping, but this time she didn't get a wake-up call. The bus driver didn't see her and drove right past her house. About fifteen minutes later the bus went back past our house to turn around. Apparently she woke up at the end of the bus route and had to be taken back home.

According to M, revenge is sweet.

Going to Work to Rest

2008-03-24T08:36:00.000-04:00

Have you ever felt like you had to go to work on Monday to rest up from the weekend? Of course sleeping in would be better, but I never seem to have that luxury.

Since it wasn't rainy this weekend and was reasonably warm, I worked outside most of the weekend. I've decided that I need one of three things: a smaller place, someone with muscles who likes to do outside work or machinery.

A smaller place wouldn't have helped much this weekend since most of the work I did was within 100 feet of the house. I don't see anyone with muscles in my immediate future, or long term future for that matter, so I guess the alternative is machinery. Machinery with an engine, not the wheelbarrow kind. But machinery doesn't like me and since I am trying to be environmentally conscious, I guess it will be the wheelbarrow for a while.

I just wish rock and dirt wasn't so dog gone heavy. It is amazing how much the backfill around the house has settled. Dozens of wheelbarrow loads moved Saturday and more to go.

But peas, lettuce and spinach are up, and I got 50 strawberry plants in the ground. The compost bin is built and in place and I've almost moved enough dirt to plant some honeysuckle to cascade over the retaining wall by the deck. And the peach tree is pruned, so maybe we'll have peaches this summer.

Using Flickr to Help Patrons

2008-03-13T12:54:00.003-04:00

I've been working with a woman who is writing a book about Muddy Creek and the Waco community from Civil War to the 1930s. She contacted me to help her get her historic facts straight. Most of the information she needed came from old directories or news articles about the area. Pretty straight forward.

Then she started asking questions about homes on Muddy Creek, and it was starting to sound like she wasn't real familiar with the geography of the area. And a "Tara" style home is really out of place in Waco.

Yesterday after work, I drove by some of the older homes in the area and took quick photos of them, not good photos, but enough that she could see the general style of home. I uploaded the photos to my Flickr account and made a special set for them, so she could find them easily. Finally I placed each of them on a map so she could see how the community fit in relation to the creek and to the main road through the area. It must have really worked to give her a reference point because now she's rewriting.

We'll see what comes next.

Cat Bordhi demonstrates Judy Becker's Magic Cast-On

2008-03-12T18:49:00.002-04:00

I'm learning to make socks and this video shows a really easy way to cast on the first row for the pattern I'm using. Since I had a hard time finding it again, I thought I would post it here.

File Management Tool

2008-03-12T13:09:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago Linda Benedict who writes the Alone in the Archives blog mentioned a freeware program called Renamer, which allows you to rename files. This came in really handy for us recently because we made some minor changes to our file numbering system for the images we've scanned.

The thought of going through hundreds of files to add an accession number to the beginning of the file name or of going through thousands of files to change dots to dashes was daunting to say the least.

With Renamer you define the rule, for example 'replace' dots with dashes and in seconds it has changed 2500 files. This may sound like a petty concern, but the files sort differently with dots and dashes and it gets really hard to find things you know should be there.

Adding an accession number to all files in a folder was just as easy. Tauheeda, the student who was going to have to rename all the files was ecstatic.

Why Is It?

2008-03-05T14:36:00.004-05:00

While the girls and I were driving down the road, we passed a man and a boy walking along the edge of the road. My youngest daughter saw them and made the comment "weirdos." The discussion that followed is not worthy of a post, mostly because it was pretty one-sided. My side.

Why is it that when we see someone walking or riding a bike our first thought is 'weirdo' or something equally derogatory? And heaven forbid, someone tries to be a good citizen while they are walking. If you carry a bag to pick up trash along the way, then you aren't just weird, you're a bag lady, or something equally demeaning.

Yes, I walk. A lot. Yes, I often carry a bag to pick up trash. Yes, I even pick up cans that go to support Habitat for Humanity.

Yes, I've been called weird and a bag lady and not just by my kids. Why is it that I am embarrassed for being a good citizen?

And last but not least, why is it that there are no trash cans alongside the Ravine?

Gmap Pedometer

2008-02-20T10:44:00.002-05:00

This may not qualify as a Web 2.0 site, but it is one that I use all the time and since I was showing a student how it worked, it seemed like the perfect blog subject.

Using Gmap Pedometer you enter a zip code to select any location and zoom in on the streets. About a 15 or 16 works well, but if you make a lot of turns the balloons get in the way at 15, but you can zoom in further without losing the route you have started if necessary.

Find the starting point for your walk or run or whatever and click the "Start Recording" button to the left of the map. Double click on the starting point and at each turning point on your walk. You can see how far each leg of your walk is as you click and at the end of the route you will see the total miles walked.

If you walk the same route each day, you can save the map and refer back to it, like this. Since I tend to walk different routes each day, I use this site on a regular basis.

Ready for Spring

2008-02-18T08:55:00.005-05:00

Saturday was such a beautiful day that I planted peas in the raised bed I made last year. I hauled two garbage cans of composted silage from the old silo which accounts for the black soil on top. That's one advantage to living on an old dairy, there is a lot of compost available for gardening.

I used scraps of lumber still piled up and built a cold frame on the south side of the house to plant lettuce and spinach and start broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts. I'm sure my kids won't eat the Brussels sprouts, but I can hope. I may try to round up another window and build a second one beside this to start more seeds.

Where the concrete and tar are will eventually be creek stone. There are a lot of projects I still haven't finished on the house. The hardest part of laying the stone is actually going out and picking it up and hauling it back home. There aren't any creeks close enough and I don't have a truck.

Two New Baskets

2008-02-08T15:01:00.000-05:00

My youngest daughter spent the first part of this week very sick with the flu, so I took several sick days to take care of her and take her to the doctor. While she slept or read, I make a couple baskets.

Debbie had asked me to make a basket for the Midwest Archives Council Silent Auction planned for the April meeting in Louisville. I wanted something classy that said Kentucky. I actually had a different basket picked out, but getting the handle with the horse head cut into it was going to be a problem. In the meantime I ordered a new basketry book from Amazon. Hey, I only needed six dollars to get free shipping.

This book included a pattern for the 2000 Anne Coleman Derby Basket. I had seen this one, but had never made it. Everything I needed was in the loft, so I decided this would work for MAC. It was woven on a 5x10 wooden base with a combination of 1/2" ff reed in the back and 1/4" fo reed in the front. It was woven continuously with 3mm cane on the bottom and the folded over lapel and 4mm cane for the over 2, under 2 twill that makes up most of the basket. The lapel was woven back and forth so that it gradually tapered to a rounded front. After cutting and tucking the spokes the front was soaked well and rolled over. This part was easier said than done. Even when finished I wasn't completely happy with the way the weaving bunched up after it was rolled. Before I send it off for the auction I need to find a horse shaped pin to put on the lapel.

The next basket was a simple laundry basket woven with 3/4" ff reed for the stakes and 5/8" reed for the weavers. For the design in the middle rows I picked up a braid that was in the new book and wove that in 1/4" fo reed. In my typical style I tried to jump ahead without reading the directions exactly, so it took several tries to master the braid, but once I figured it out it was very easy to do. To make the handle and rim stronger, I tucked the stakes to the outside and inside and used 5/8 fo with #6 round filler and 1/4" fo lashing. I had some small pieces of leather left over from the top basket and earlier baskets that I used for handles with Chicago screws to secure the ends. This basket has already been delivered to Toni's new house.

Pretty productive for a couple sick days. Fortunately, my kids do stay pretty healthy most of the time.