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Episode 204: Travel

 

Travel is good for us. We see new places, we meet new people, we try new foods ? and in all of it we probably realize how connected we are to everything else. Travel lets you explore and broaden your mind. It lets you fill your brain with good (and bad) memories.

This week we explore some new places, read about adventures, and enjoy dreaming about vacations we might take!

Check out our full information page here, where you can find all our beverages, links to the books we read, and links to the resources we share to help you find even more travel books.

Join our Patreon, and help to support the show! We need your help to keep producing new content each week – and of course, to help keep Lady Grey in treats! (Click on our page to check out our Official Office Dog – she’s adorable!) We want to build a nice community of readers, and you can be part of that. For $1 a month, $5 a month, or whatever amount fits the rewards you need, we are ready to welcome you to the community!

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MLA is here – and you can be part of it!!

The Minnesota Library Association annual conference will be in our own backyard this year!
MLA 2018 will be held October 11-12th at the River’s Edge Convention Center in Saint Cloud, and the MLA Board of Directors is looking for volunteers for the Local Arrangements Committee.
Committee members will help with three tasks:
  1. creating and maintaining the Local Arrangements blog (highlighting things to do and see in the Saint Cloud area;
  2. arranging for local-interest conference speaker gifts; and
  3. organizing the Dine Around event at Saint Cloud restaurants (usually held on the Wednesday evening before the conference).

Volunteers should be current MLA members, but conference attendance is not required. If interested in volunteering, or for more information, please contact Jonathan Carlson at jcarlson@csbsju.edu.

Books, Check this out:

Reading Across MN: In the Lake of the Woods

In the Lake of the Woods, by Tim O’Brien

Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes, and it also has many interesting books. In this series, we are sharing some of the books we like from Minnesota, or Minnesota authors.

We are mapping our literary journey around Minnesota, so you can see all the interesting places where our books are set. Follow our progress on our Google Map, accessible by clicking that link or searching for the title CMLE Reads Across Minnesota!

From Wikipedia’s description:

“The main storyline often branches out to flashbacks of significant trees in John Wade’s past. His childhood is constantly referred to as the advent of his persona, Sorcerer. As a child, John was frequently abused verbally and emotionally by an alcoholic father, who was admired by other children for his public persona. John often visited Karra’s Studio of Magic, where he bought the Guillotine of Death, purchased by his father. John was devastated after his father’s death and channeled his grief into magic.

Wade met his future wife Kathy during their college years, becoming intimate with her despite his secretive nature. John spied on Kathy, of which she was aware, just as he was aware of her affair with a dentist. When John was deployed to Vietnam, he and Kathy communicated through letters; some of his frightened Kathy. John became deeply absorbed in his identity as Sorcerer. He is portrayed as a member of Charlie Company, who were involved in the My Lai massacre. While working a desk job in records, John erased his involvement with the Company.

After the war, John entered politics. He was elected as lieutenant governor of Minnesota and later ran for the US Senate, with his campaign managed by the business-oriented Tony Carbo. At one point, Kathy has an abortion, despite her great wish to have a baby, because John felt that her having a child would be problematic for his political career.

After his landslide loss in the senate race, during which there was revelation of John’s role in My Lai, John and Kathy take a vacation at a cabin in Lake of the Woods. They are troubled by the revelation of John’s Vietnam secrets, but pretend to be happy. One night, John wakes up and decides to boil water for tea. He pours the boiling water over a few household plants, reciting “Kill Jesus”. He remembers climbing back into bed with Kathy, but the next morning she’s gone. Continue reading Reading Across MN: In the Lake of the Woods →

Check this out:, CMLE, Conference

Quick MLA Recap

At CMLE we are big fans of going to conferences! You get the chance to meet people, to learn new ideas, and to connect with others who do what you do in your library. So it was great to go to the Minnesota Library Association (MLA) Annual conference in Rochester.

Have you listened to our podcast about attending and presenting at conferences? Check out #209 and get some info about planning your own conference experiences!

The checking in process was fast and smooth! It’s always fun to go to conferences where things are so nicely organized. You can focus on the fun things to do, the sessions to attend, and all the interesting people you are meeting. And there were so many good things to do here – we were jam packed from start to finish!

It’s always valuable to attend conferences for your own professional development. The library profession is a fast-moving one, and the skills we used five years ago – or even last year – are not a match for the needs of today and into the future. Continuing education of all types is a must for providing good service. Conferences not only do that, they make it fun to meet people who like the same interesting things you do! (And I promise you: there is ALWAYS something interesting under discussion at conferences!)

The photo above is a somewhat blurry look at the session “Radical All Along: A Historical Look at Minnesota Librarianship.” Yes, libraries have always been exciting places to learn new things. (And if the current Minnesota Public Library Commission would like to resume their past practice of performing interpretative dances – there was popular acclaim for it in the session!)

Other sessions included:

  • Minitex: Where Libraries are Strong, Staff are Good-Looking, and Patrons are above Average
  • Let’s Talk about Serving Patrons with Dementia
  • Would Trader Joe’s Hire You? Lessons from the Best Retailers
  • Wikipedia as Community Organizing
  • Libraries: Fighting Childhood Food Insecurity Year-Round for a Better Future!
  • Planting the Seeds of Learning: The Library as a Nature Based Learning System
  • RA Crutches
  • When home Won’t Let You Stay: Telling the Story of Refugees Living in Minnesota
  • Blinded Me With Science!: STEAM-based Programs for Toddlers and Preschoolers

And there were so many more great ones! The problem was picking just one session to attend at a time; but that is a pretty high-class problem to have at an event.

We were in Rochester’s civic center, so the public library was easily accessible. Several of us toured through the building – and it’s always fun to see how different libraries arrange things. This library brings in a lot of great visuals, along with an interesting collection of materials, to provide service to their local community members. And they were very patient with the flocks of visiting library people who stopped in to ask questions and admire their stuff!

Conferences are not all networking and educational sessions – there is always time for fun! A fun thing at this conference is the silent auction, with a huge array of things you can bid on – library related and just fun. Yes, I did bid on this Nancy Pearl action figure; no, I did not win it. Drat. But last year I did win the wonderful bear, Orville, who became our Official Office Bear! (You can find his image all over our website – he’s a natural-born star.)

And there are always plenty of fun things to do outside the conference itself.  The planning committee gave a lot of useful information on fun places to go, things to see, groups going to different restaurants, and other good suggestions.  This was my first trip to Rochester, and it was really fun to check out their skyway and subway systems, trudge their walking trails (even in some rain!), and to enjoy meeting library people at all kinds of different restaurants! Attending conferences is educational in so many ways; and getting to know a new place is just one of the valuable things you learn!

This was just a quick, obviously incomplete look at attending a conference. Did you go to MLA? Share your stories with us! Are you thinking about attending another conference? We have scholarships for CMLE members!

Go! Learn! Try new things! Meet interesting people! Libraries are great, and so are library conferences!

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Day Eighty Six of the CMLE Summer Fun Library Tour!

Are you a scifi reader? Are any of your community members scifi fans? That second question has to be yes, and maybe the first also!

You may therefore join me in celebrating our open access to issues of Galaxy Magazine! Thanks to the Internet Archive for making these magazines available!! Check out the issues here.

“Galaxy Science Fiction was an American digest-size science fiction magazine, published from 1950 to 1980. It was founded by an Italian company, World Editions, which was looking to break in to the American market. World Editions hired as editor H. L. Gold, who rapidly made Galaxy the leading science fiction (sf) magazine of its time, focusing on stories about social issues rather than technology.

Gold published many notable stories during his tenure, including Ray Bradbury’s “The Fireman”, later expanded as Fahrenheit 451; Robert A. Heinlein’s The Puppet Masters; and Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man. In 1952, the magazine was acquired by Robert Guinn, its printer. By the late 1950s, Frederik Pohl was helping Gold with most aspects of the magazine’s production. When Gold’s health worsened, Pohl took over as editor, starting officially at the end of 1961, though he had been doing the majority of the production work for some time.

Under Pohl Galaxy had continued success, regularly publishing fiction by major writers such as Cordwainer Smith, Jack Vance, Harlan Ellison, and Robert Silverberg. However, Pohl never won the annual Hugo Award for his stewardship of Galaxy, winning three Hugos instead for its sister magazine, If. In 1969 Guinn sold Galaxy to Universal Publishing and Distribution Corporation (UPD) and Pohl resigned, to be replaced by Ejler Jakobsson. Under Jakobsson the magazine declined in quality. It recovered under James Baen, who took over in mid-1974, but when he left at the end of 1977 the deterioration resumed, and there were financial problems—writers were not paid on time and the schedule became erratic. By the end of the 1970s the gaps between issues were lengthening, and the title was finally sold to Vincent McCaffrey, who brought out just one issue in 1980. A brief revival as a semi-professional magazine followed in 1994, edited by H. L. Gold’s son, E. J. Gold; this lasted for eight bimonthly issues.

At its peak, Galaxy greatly influenced in the science fiction field. It was regarded as one of the leading sf magazines almost from the start, and its influence did not wane until Pohl’s departure in 1969. Gold brought a “sophisticated intellectual subtlety” to magazine science fiction according to Pohl, who added that “after Galaxy it was impossible to go on being naive.”[1] SF historian David Kyle agrees, commenting that “of all the editors in and out of the post-war scene, the most influential beyond any doubt was H. L. Gold”.[2] Kyle suggests that the new direction Gold set “inevitably” led to the experimental New Wave, the defining science fiction literary movement of the 1960s.”