Reference Renaissance Conference

No pictures of the bear at the conference, unfortunately, but I thought that I would mention the conference here anyway. It was a good couple of days. Some of the presenters discussed how to use Facebook to reach out to the users in a library, the disconnect between library school and library practice, and how to keep track of reference questions without using a piece of paper and hash marks! It was a really interesting two days, and I'm glad I was able to attend. Now it's time to think about electronic reserves for the library, orienting the new students to the library, and managing our website. Be back soon!

The Arch

Today was a pretty slow day. I got to sleep late, have a late breakfast, and then we were off to see the St. Louis Arch! That was pretty cool. It towers 630 feet into the air. There’s still plenty of evidence though, right near the Arch of the flooding that has hurt so much of this area, and especially to the south. Take a look at the no parking sign! The water has risen so high that it has flooded the parking lot.


Dinner tonight was salmon, steamed carrots, and mashed potatoes, with chocolate iced bundt cake with ice cream for dessert.

Nashville

Yesterday, we left at three o’clock in the morning so that we could drive to Nashville, Tennessee, to be present at the first profession of vows for 12 women in the community of the Dominicans of Nashville, Congregation of St. Cecilia. The Cathedral in Nashville is very unlike the Cathedrals Basilica of either Denver or St. Louis. It’s very beautiful inside, but is much more nondescript than either of the other two. The service lasted for about two hours, and was followed by a lunch at the Motherhouse, also located in Nashville (too far to walk, but really pretty close). We spent the evening after the reception in and around downtown Nashville, including some time at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge.

Today was a lot of fun. We had breakfast with friends, saw the Grand Ole Opry Museum (which was free), and traveled back to St. Louis through Tennessee, Kentucky, Illinois, and back to Missouri. Back in St. Louis, we’ll probably visit the Arch tomorrow.

Nashville, TN

I've spent yesterday and today in Nashville Tennessee. It's been a great time, and I'll be back later on today with pictures and more description!

St. Louis Science Center

There is a Mass today celebrating the 40th anniversary of Humanae Vitae, which is an encyclical letter written by Pope Paul VI in 1968. The Mass will be at the Cathedral, and celebrated by the Archdiocesan Administrator, Bishop Hermann. There currently isn’t an Archbishop, as Archbishop Burke has been called to an important role in Rome. Before we went to the Cathedral, though, we stopped at the St. Louis Science Center for a visit. The picture is of a person holding a power tool. I realized after I took the picture that the angle to see the person could have been better, but here you are!

Wine Country, MO

On our way to try and get a winery tour or two, we saw the sign for the Daniel Boone Home. It was almost on the way, so we decided to stop and find out about a potential tour. The Daniel Boone Home was actually built for Daniel’s son, and was completed in 1799. The structure and the inside of the house were original, including the furniture and everything, so the site wouldn’t allow pictures inside. So here’s a picture I took outside the house. Augusta, Missouri, is home to a number of wineries in the state. We stopped at the Montelle Winery, and bought a bottle of peach wine. Apparently, peaches grow in Missouri too!

Yesterday and today

We visited the Cathedral Basilica in St. Louis for morning Mass. The Cathedral was just dark enough that no pictures were really turning out good enough to post. I found, on the back of a pillar, the Episcopal Motto of the former Archbishop of St. Louis. The words are Secundum Cor Tuum, and they mean ‘After Your Heart.’ I was able to get a good shot of the bear in front of the Archbishop’s coat of arms.

We spent a good portion of the day at the Missouri Botanic Gardens. It was really a lot of fun, and is way bigger than the Denver Botanic Gardens, judging by the way my feet felt! They have a cool display going on right now. We met one friend and her kids at the Gardens, and had lunch together in the parking lot. After that, we went back to the friends house, in Wentzville, MO, and spent the night. We went to Mass this morning at St. Gianna's Parish, which is currently in a storefront, but they're working on building a church building for themselves.


We’re back in St. Louis now, getting ready for Dad’s birthday dinner. It ought to be really good; steak, Brussels sprouts, salad, cake, rolls, ice cream, mmmm…

Visit to Hannibal, home of Mark Twain

After a nice breakfast at the house, we drove to Hannibal, MO. Hannibal is the town in Missouri in which Samuel Clemens grew up. For one price, the tour of Hannibal is pretty complete: access to all of the museums, the boyhood home of Mark Twain, a one-hour riverboat ride, and access to the Mark Twain Caves, Missouri’s first show cave. We had a picnic lunch in the middle of the day, and came back to St. Louis by a scenic byway.


The scenic byway had lots of little towns and libraries. One town we drove through was Louisiana, Missouri. Looking at the picture, you can see that the MO flooding earlier this year was pretty dramatic.

We actually got back pretty late, but we were still able to have dinner. Chicken stir fry over rice, and fresh fruit. It was really good.

Cardinals beat the Padres

Today has been a good day so far. I was able to sleep until almost 9 a.m. and we all gathered for breakfast. Fried or soft-boiled eggs, sliced tomatoes, bacon, potatoes with green chilies, and peaches & blueberries were served. We talked about going to the St. Louis Cardinals game this afternoon.



The game was fun; the Cardinals ended up winning 9-5 over the Padres with a grand slam home run in the bottom of the 9th. The announcer reported that 41,412 people were in attendance. We had seats that were about three rows from the very top, but that meant we got some shade. St. Louis is HOT, HOT, HOT in July!



There’s a small break in the day right now, but I understand that we’ll be having steak, corn, some kind of potatoes, and brownies. Yum I couldn’t think of how to get the bear alone by the Busch Stadium image, so it’s a little different this time. What do you think?

At home in St. Louis

I went to St. Louis today for a visit. The Denver Airport is way more fancy than the one in St. Louis for sure! My hosts were waiting right outside the secure area. They seem really nice, and have been extremely welcoming. We stopped on the way back to their house (where we’re staying) at the Saint Louis Bread Company (also called Panera in Denver) to get some bread for our lunch. Lunch was really nice, rotisserie chicken on sourdough Panera bread with chips and Coke. I never heard of wasabi mayonnaise before, but it’s good!

We all went to Mass at 5:00 at St. Catherine Laboure parish. That was a nice experience. Once we got back I was able to watch some of This Old House, and an episode of the Lawrence Welk Show, which is on PBS (channel 9) here. Dinner was salmon, asparagus, wild rice, a pepper/piñon nut mixture, and fruit salad cups in the kind of fancy cups that Mom serves shrimp cocktail in. About that size too, except for there’s no stems on these cups.


There are two dogs and a cat. I’ll try to get pictures of the dogs (Sam and Ginger), but I was able to get a pretty good picture of the cat, Ringworm. The other picture is of where I’ll be sleeping, can you find the bear?

Off to see a Cardinals game tomorrow, that means I probably ought to go to sleep now!

Thank you, Riley!

So I got home today, and the very first thing that I saw was this picture from Riley. It occurred to me that this blog exists because of her, so I thought I'd take a picture of the bear next to her work. Thanks Riley, I love it! Stenciling is something I'm still not really good at, so I can tell that this represents a lot of detail work.

I also thought that it's been a pretty long time since I've posted anything here, so I was really excited about the opportunity. I will be taking pictures in St. Louis, so stay tuned...

Home at last

I had a short layover in Detroit, MI. I was able to get these two pictures; one of famous people that have come from Detroit, and the other is a t-shirt of the state. My plane arrived on time at 8:02 a.m., and I made it from Concourse C to Concourse A, which is where my second plane was going to bring me back to Denver.



I got all situated, had breakfast (which was a junior size pepperoni pizza and a drink), and walked over to where my plane was supposed to be leaving from, Gate A9.

When I got there at 8:45 a.m., the gate information said that the plane was leaving at noon and was flying to Ft. Lauderdale! I looked at the Departures screen and saw that my gate had been changed to A74! They really count A1 - A78, so I had to run to the other end of the concourse. I was literally the last person to check in. The lady said she was just closing the doors to the plane. I got pretty lucky!

Au revoir, Canada

I am writing this from the international concourse of the Ottawa Airport. Wow, it's a lot of work to get past U.S. Customs and Border Protection! Hopefully, this is the last time this trip that I have the opportunity to do that. Lines, and lines, and lines. This is really a case of hurry up and wait!
Anyway, I thought I'd share two more pictures that I took yesterday. The statue is Queen Victoria, who was the monarch at the time Canada became its own country (well, kind of, they're a constitutional monarchy that ultimately answers to her). This particular statue is inside the Library of Parliament. You can see the books behind her. I have some better pictures of the Library that I can show.
Canada Day is July 1st, to recognize the date that the country confederated and became its own country. The date of confederation was July 1, 1867. So they were setting up and there were flags everywhere for the celebrations that will happen on Tuesday. I do have a couple more pictures of the bear, but the blog picture upload feature is currently not agreeing with me, and I'll be getting on the airplane in as early as ten minutes from now, so I'll try to post when I get to Detroit. I've got about an hour or so layover there. See you soon!

Touring Parliament

Talk about learning something new every day, I was able to learn a lot about Canada today! There are two tours of Parliament Hill, one outside, and one inside the building. Outside is very interesting; the tour consisted primarily of looking at statues and hearing the history of the country. Did you know that women weren’t even considered people until 1929 in Canada? Five women came together to petition the court to become considered people, but all of the courts in the country disagreed that they were people. Fortunately, at that time the Supreme Court could be overruled by the monarch in England. The court findings were overruled ultimately, and women became people at that time. Library and Archives Canada has a great summary of the case if you want to read it.

After the outside tour, we got to go inside and see Parliament. One of these pictures is of the House of Commons. There are almost 400 people that serve in the House. We also got to see the Chambers of the Senate, but I forgot to take pictures in there. After the tour was over, we had the opportunity to go up into the peace tower. From my other pictures, you’ve seen the highest point on the tower? The peace part of the tower is just 100 feet below the bottom of the clock. So I got to go very near to the top. I was able to get a picture of the bear from the peace tower overlooking the tower of the Library of Parliament. If you want to know more about the Library, click HERE.

Dinner cruise

I forgot to blog about this last night. The evening event for last night was a dinner cruise. After we got totally lost on the way to the previous session at Library and Archives Canada, the bus drivers knew exactly where to take us this time. Everyone loaded onto this sort of long, flat boat with walls and a ceiling, and waited quietly until we were given permission to go to the bar and to eat. The ride was very nice, but the food could have been better. I think that what I thought was a ham sandwich ended up being bologna. I like bologna sandwiches, but I wasn’t expecting one on a dinner cruise! Anyway, the first picture is of the Chaudière Falls . The water is Lake Ottawa, and it runs a really far way, but the part that I was on was the dividing line between Ontario and Quebec provinces. There are some other interesting pictures from that part of the trip, but I thought that this was probably one of the better ones. The second picture shows the bridge that connects the two provinces.

While we were on the dinner cruise, we passed along the backside of the Parliamentary buildings. See on the back of the building (nearest the photographer) in the picture where the roof is gray instead of green? That is the Library of Parliament. They have seven branches, including the main facility, and employ 400 people. Pretty huge library system, eh?

Pay phone

Whew, full day today! This morning began with the new member breakfast, which started at 7:00 a.m. That’s approximately five in the morning for Denver time… On my way to the breakfast, I noticed a pay phone, and decided it would be a good photo op for Riley’s bear. How quaint, a pay phone in the middle of the block in the center of a mostly residential area! The breakfast went well, though, everyone else seemed to be pretty alert, and I got to meet some new people, both new members and people who’ve been around for a while (longer than a minute for sure, I met this guy tonight, and his first ATLA conference was in 1962. That’s even before Mark was born, that’s so long ago!)

I went to a couple of other ATLA conference events too during the course of the day. There’s a new interest group in the association that is focused on Teaching and Learning (that’s actually their name), and the first session that I attended after the keynote was all about how theological librarians can reach out to the faculty in their institutions. Sound kinda like what I described happened yesterday? The program was very similar, and was led by the same person.

Lunch was free because I listened to a sales pitch for EBSCO. They are the company that my library has the most subscription databases through. The company has some new products that will be coming out between January 2009 and December 2010, that they will be selling. So, free lunch isn’t always free, but it was pretty good nonetheless (and there was no monetary cost involved!).




After lunch, I chose to go to the Library and Archives Canada, and hear about what the catalogers there do during their workday. They have 80 people working fulltime just cataloging government information from Canada (national and regional and the “state” level). Because they have a national library (unlike the U.S.), the place where I went was actually in a government building. There were buses hired to take us from the conference hotel to the Library Archives Canada and the bus drivers were given the wrong address, so this one required some searching. English and French are both official languages of Canada, that's why the sign appears in both languages.

Parliament and Diversity Dinner

There were three evening events that I attended tonight. One of them was the new member welcome to the conference. Since the conference actually starts tomorrow for real, the organizers wanted to say hi to all the new people that are at the conference. Following the new member welcome (which was really just a five minute speech and then the President of the Board of Directors for ATLA said, ok now network!), everyone went to the opening reception for the conference. This is the first event that I have seen Michael at; I was able to chat with him and his wife for a while.

Then, ATLA has just formed a Special Committee on Diversity within the association. it only took four years of exploratory committee work to decide that the committee was necessary! We got to go up to the 23rd floor of the Westin to the Bonaventure suite to have dinner with the committee. So this first picture is of the parliament building from above. I didn’t think I’d get another opportunity for a picture like this isn’t it cool? The picture of the bear is in exactly the same place exactly two hours later after it got completely dark. You can’t see the parliamentary building anymore.




The final picture is just insanity. As you may be able to tell from the picture, this phone is hanging directly above the toilet in the suite that the dinner was held in. The part that was the most shocking was that not only is there a phone in the bathroom, hanging above the toilet, but that the message light was flashing. I had this immediate image of being the person in that hotel room thinking, gee, I wonder who could have left a message for me on the phone in my hotel room’s bathroom!?!






Nighttime from the 23rd floor of the Westin hotel. On the balcony outside the Bonaventure suite (room 2318!)

Byward Market and Parliament

This first picture is looking down the street that is called the Byward Market. It’s full of street vendors during the day. Do you see the fenced enclosures? They take those down and put ‘em back up every day. The market is also full of food shops, restaurants, fresh fruit, it’s really quite cool. I get to walk by it on my way to the conference hotel. Don’t mind the homeless looking peeps in the front of the picture, but the green towers in the background are the Canadian parliament. Details about their government and people and stuff are HERE.

Upstairs

I thought that this would be an interesting picture. It actually looks like it ended up pretty boring. So at the base of the stairs is the front door of the b&b, and it leads up to our rooms. There are three rooms on this level. The one behind the photographer (which none of you can see) is where Michael and Suzanne are staying, the open room door is mine, and the one at the end of the hallway belongs to this other couple that are staying here. See the bear? You can click on the pictures to make them bigger if you wanted to.

Also, at the base of the stairs is a doorway (one that leads out, but also one that leads to the other half of the house). To go through to the other side of the house, the b&b has a teeny tiny living room, a dining room, which you can see if you go to the website (HERE) and click accommodations, and the parts where the owners live.

Archdiocese of Ottawa

So, did you know that Ottawa is the seat for its own Archdiocese? And of all the people to run the Archdiocese of Ottowa, they have a Jesuit! He was appointed in 2007, and I thought it would be interesting enough to share that bit of news. Here’s a link to the Archdiocese, in case you’re interested, and here’s a link to the Catholic News Agency story naming him Archbishop. He said that he was frightened at the opportunity to serve as Archbishop!

Teaching and Learning

Breakfast is a pretty involved deal here, I guess. When I went downstairs, the table was set for three, because that’s how many of us were registered overnight. There was cantaloupe, yogurt, jelly (which came from a jar, I could tell), granola, juice, coffee, and place settings for a fine dinner! I think I freaked the guy out (the husband of the husband/wife ownership of the b&b) when I told him I didn’t want hot tea or coffee, that I’d be happy with orange juice. So anyway, after all that, the breakfast was scrambled eggs, fried ham, toast and tomato slices. It was really good!

Today was officially the preconference day. That means that the real conference doesn’t start till tomorrow, but there was a full day of activities nonetheless. I was registered a session called Teaching and Learning: The Wabash Center Experience. It was all day (8:30 – 4:30) and we got to talk about some of the issues between theological librarians and the faculty at the same institutions. They talked to us, we talked in small groups, and there was even a role-playing session near the end! My favorite! The Wabash Center is a supporter of teachers of religion and theology in higher education through meetings and workshops, grants, a journal and other resources to make accessible the scholarship of teaching and learning. Here’s a link to the Wabash Center.

Tonight is a new member reception, and then ATLA has a new committee on diversity that is forming, and they are hosting dinner at 8:30 (6:30 for those of you in Denver!) to talk about this new task force that has been created. Oh yeah, I can’t remember if I did this already, but here’s a link to the American Theological Library Association (ATLA).

Before I started walking ‘home,’ I took this picture of the Fairmont Chateau Laurier. I thought it was cool and castle-looking, and based on some of the government buildings, I thought that this was one of them, but alas, it’s only a commercial business. Still pretty rad looking though! Here's a link to the Chateau.

Guigues Street and the Basilica

My bed and breakfast is located on Guigues St. I have heard it pronounced geeg and geezh, so I’m not really sure on the pronunciation, but apparently he was a bishop for Ottawa. The Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online has a pretty good short article about him

This street runs very near the Basilica in Ottawa. Here’s a good outside picture and one of the inside as well. The attention to detail and the ornateness (is that a word?) are amazing!

Link to the Basilica

The U.S. Embassy and Canadian ICE

The U.S. Embassy is no less scary looking than the Canada Customs Building below, but I’ve only taken a picture of the very front so far. I’ll try and get a better angle tomorrow.

So there is tons and tons of stuff to see while I’m walking from my bed & breakfast to the conference hotel. The Canada Customs and Revenue Agency is one of them. Did they do a good job making this look formidable enough?

This staircase as I was walking next to the river reminded me of the articulated wall in Denver. You know, that wall I appear to be obsessed with and have pictures of almost everyone I know by? Check it out with a link to the Denver Design Center

YOW!

So here we are at the Ottawa Airport. YOW is really the three letter code for this airport. As you can see the bear didn't make it into this picture, but this is a waterfall that is just outside the baggage claim, but still inside the airport itself.



I changed some of my money into Canadian dollars (because I am going to spend a little bit of money here, not much, but some), and talked to the guy at the transportation booth about getting to my bed and breakfast. Turns out it's 50% less expensive to take the airport shuttle to the conference hotel and walk the six blocks to where I'm staying! This picture is on the shuttle.

Making that decision, I realized after the fact that it might have been a good idea to call the B&B because when I got there, apparently the lady and her husband who own this place were all worried that I was late! Oops, that's something to remember... If you're interested in seeing, the web address to my home for the next few days is here.

We've made it to Philadelphia

So, now we've made it to the Philadelphia Airport. Waiting to get on the plane that will take us to Canada, there has been time for breakfast. Too bad they're only serving breakfast in all the places in this terminal, no philly cheesesteaks for us! This is a copy of today's Philadelphia Inquirer. I didn't have to buy it, we had time to look at it in the newsstand at the airport...

Riding on the plane overnight

Riding on the airplane next to Stephen. Not really, though, we had to share a seat because the person next to him was almost as big as he was. Neither of us remember the seats being SO small! It looks huge with only me in it, but each row is only two seats

Riding on the train

Here we are, just after checking in and going through the security checkpoint at the airport in Denver. Right now, I'm riding on the train heading to the gate!