Wildlife in my Backyard

One of the many rabbits I see every day.

I looked this bird up in my birding book. I think it is a PYRRHULOXIA. Or Cardinalis sinuatus. In other words, one of the cardinal family. It is a beautiful bird.

Here is a little ground squirrel who lives in a hole near my back door. Luckily I have lots of windows and a good camera (thanks to Joy, my daughter). I manage to get some good shots without frightening the little creatures away.

Here are some shots of some of the fat quail in my backyard. I have no idea what they find to eat out there, but whatever it is, it puts fat on them. Hopefully, they might be eating some scorpions! Chickens eat them....why not quail?

New Mexico Roadrunner

This little guy was cruising around in my backyard. Fortunately I have very large windows in my back room, so I managed to snap these photos without spooking him. Roadrunners are very fast...as you know...beep!beep!vrooooom!

This bird was particularly fat compared to some. But then, I have about 30 quail and 25 rabbits in my back yard every evening and they all seem to be very fat this year. However, it is getting to be snake time around here with the cooler evenings. They are looking for warm places and sometimes that just happens to be the sides of my house. So, I am having to be a little more careful about letting my dog out in the evening. Let's hope I don't post pictures of snakes next!

Another sunset from New Mexico

Another great New Mexico Sunset

Harvest Wine Festival

Yesterday my friend, Diane, and her sister-in-law, Bernadine, and I went to the Harvest Wine Festival in Las Cruces at the fairgrounds. We tasted a lot of wine and I was pleasantly surprised by many of the New Mexico wines. New Mexico has a lot of good vinyards.

The photo above is a little grape stomping contest they put on. The contestants had to fill a container full of grape juice within a certain amount of time. I was surprised that their feet were not stained when they got out.
Who would-a-thought? Real Pennsylvania Funnel Cakes at a New Mexico Harvest Wine Festival!
These are cheese boards made out of wine bottles! The woman who makes them just puts them in the kiln and melts them down and they just flatten out! She does the etching on the glass. They are really quite pretty. Below is a closer shot.
I forgot to charge the camera battery before I left home, so I didn't get any more photos. My daughter should be happy though! At least I finally got some photos to put on this blog. My photo skills do leave something to be desired! Sorry, Joy!

Anyway, It was a great afternoon and I do recommend New Mexico Wine. I found a very good Sangiovese from a Tularosa Winery and a couple of good Pinot Noir from the Deming Area. The St. Claire winery had a sort of blush wine called "prickly pear" that wasn't bad at all. There were a lot of sweet wines, which I do not care for....and several sparkling wines that were really pretty good! No, I did not buy any. My little wine rack is full and I can purchase these New Mexico wines anytime I want around here. Tularosa is having its own little festival on September 15th....maybe I will go to that and buy some of the Sangiovese.

My medical problem solved

Finally, after six weeks, I have blood pressure and a pulse in my left arm. The wonderful people at Memorial Medical Center in Las Cruces took great care of me. Everyone was wonderful and it was a very positive experience.

I have to thank my friend, Diane for taking me to the hospital and hanging around while they put the stent in and bringing me a capuccino in the recovery room and then spending the night with me. I also want to thank my friend Cathy for taking over when Diane had to leave and for calling me twice a day since to make sure I was alright. Friends are wonderful!

I can't forget Carolyn, who called me at least twice a day before the procedure was done to make sure I hadn't dropped dead at home alone.

I am so thankful to have two wonderful kids who care about me and wonderful friends who have given their time to help me!

Nightmare at Mountain View Medical Center

My visit to Mountain View Regional Hospital
(An experience to forget)
www.mountainviewregional.com/
Prologue

Before I relate the events of July 6, 2007, I should go back in time two weeks so you will know the complete history of this experience to forget.

On June 13th I had just finished mopping floors and was in a bit of a sweat. I decided to sit down with a glass of water and rest a bit. Within five minutes I experienced extreme dizziness and my tongue, the inside of my mouth, and my lips all went numb. Then my hands started shaking uncontrollably. Needless to say, I got scared. After several tries I finally got my fingers to work on the telephone keypad and called a friend to come and get me and take me to the emergency room at Mountain View Regional Hospital. When we arrived there were about 3 people in the waiting room. I had to register then sit and wait…..about 20 + minutes. They called me in….sat me in a room….could not get the blood pressure from my left arm until they had tried about 3 times. (HINT! CLUE # 1)

Finally a Dr. came in, asked me what had happened. I told him. (By now the numbness was gone and my hands had quit shaking) He said, “Well, I don’t think you had a stroke. But you might be having “mini-strokes”. Try taking some baby aspirin and go see your primary doctor tomorrow.” He sent me out to the desk where I paid them $75.00, for nothing.

So, I went to see my primary doctor the next day. She immediately ordered an MRI of my head and an ultrasound of my carotid artery. (She, apparently got the hint right away when her assistant could not get a pulse or a blood pressure reading from my left arm)
I leave with the orders and drive immediately to Mountain View Regional hospital, where I am told that it is 5 o’clock and they are closed. They have no MRI techs in the building and that I need to make an appointment for tomorrow. Okay. So I said, who do I call to make the appointment? Oh, that department is closed until tomorrow. You need to come in early in the morning with your orders.

Next day, Friday, June 15: 8 am: I arrive at reception desk with the MRI orders, which, by the way, say STAT. I show them to the girl. She says, “Do you have an appointment? You have to have an appointment ahead of time for an MRI.” So, I make the appointment. It won’t be until 11 am. By this time I am beginning to get woozy again…and decide to go sit in my car and wait. Oh yes, when I got the appointment they had me pay $238.00 right away.

Fast forward to Monday, June 18th…a 9 am appointment with my primary doctor. She has the results from the MRI and ultrasound. She refers me to a vascular surgeon, because the ultrasound showed carotid artery blockage. Tuesday morning I call the surgeon’s office to set an appointment. Uh oh! I’m sorry , our computer system is down. I can’t make any appointments until the IT guy gets here and fixes it. Leave your number and I will call you back. That day passes with no call back…I call at 4:45…and get an automated message that says to “please call back during regular office hours…8 am to 5 pm. Hmmmm…..guess they had nothing to do since their computers weren’t working, so went home.

Tuesday, June 19th….No call back still. So, I call them. I need an appointment as soon as possible….these are my symptoms…..I have the results from the MRI and Ultrasound. She says, “Oh, it sounds like we really need to get you in here…..BUT….the doctor only sees patients in the office on Tuesdays, as that is the only day he isn’t in surgery. “ So I told her that I tried to make an appointment yesterday, which was Tuesday, only they couldn’t make appointments because their computers were down. At this point I am silently screaming! Well….nothing to be done but wait a whole week for an appointment.

So, I made the appointment for the next week, met the vascular surgeon and set up a date and time at Mountain View Regional Hospital to do an angiogram and put in a stent if needed. And here is where the nightmare begins.

JULY 6TH DAY OF THE ANGIOGRAM

My daughter was concerned for me and took time off and spent the money to fly in from Philadelphia to be with me before and after the angiogram. I arrived at the appointed time for the angiogram and even though I was pre registered they had me go back to admitting all over again. So, I got a number and waited. I finally got back to the Cath Lab at 10:30 am. They put in an IV with saline and gave me two benadryl and shaved my groin area and left me. My daughter was not allowed to stay with me. They told her she could go home and they would call her when the procedure started. I was scheduled for 12 noon.

12:30 comes around and finally someone comes to check on me and let me know that because of a schedule glitch with the anesthesiologist it would be another two to three hours before they could get to me.. Well I felt like crying at that point. My head was killing me, the lights in the room were bringing on a migraine. I asked for something for my headache. Two hours later someone came and gave me two Tylenol. At 2:30 I called my daughter and told her I was still just waiting. Finally at around 2:45 they came to get me. No one introduced themselves or told me what I could expect them to be doing. I got no warning when they pushed the catheter into my groin and I screamed because it was very painful. “Oh, does that hurt? Let me know when it stops.” Then, “okay we’re going to take an x-ray now.” They moved a machine next to me and that is when I got hot all over and thought I had wet the bed. They gave me no warning about the effects of the dye being pushed in. Then….”okay, we’re done”

I said I wanted to talk to the Dr. I said he was supposed to put the stent in today. He told me that in his office and I had to sign a release that allowed him to put in a stent if needed. He denied telling me that and refused to talk to me about it. He told me to make an appointment at his office and we would schedule a time to put the stent in. He said due to the fact that I was under the influence of medication he couldn’t speak to me about this now. I said, “What medication? I got two benadryl at 10:30 am and 2 tylenol at 2:30 and I was fully aware of what was going on around me. He just backed off and told me to call his office on Monday.

Now they roll me back to the same room I started in so that I can be observed for 2 hours to make sure the puncture site in the groin did not bleed. This was about 3:10 pm. I lay there listening to an endless amount of gossip and personal phone calls. No one came and checked on me until 4:30 pm. Finally I was allowed a glass of water and some apple juice and a sandwich. They called my daughter to come after me then and took out the IV and let me get dressed. Then they went over directions about taking care of the incision. In the meantime my daughter comes to pick me up and is told at the nursing station that I am not there. They think I am on the 4th floor. So up she goes and of course I am not there. At this point I asked the nurse to wheel me outside to wait for her and we ran into her at the end of the hall. I was wheeled outside, my daughter got the car and we drove off with me using some four- letter words.

I think that pretty much tells about my ordeal at Mountain View Regional Hospital. I am now trying to locate another vascular surgeon at a different hospital.

Librarians and NCLB

Some notes on Cataloging Books and NCLB

When I took my cataloging class in college, I really hated it. But, I learned how to do it and swore that I would never accept a job as a cataloger. I imagined being buried deep in the bowels of the library with no sunlight and nothing but rows and rows of books. I couldn’t imagine doing that for a living! So, I did not accept the first job offer I got. I turned it down and later accepted a job as a children’s librarian.

As much as I hated cataloging, I was good at it and in later years I found that I did need to do it. When I started working for the public school system I discovered that I needed to catalog the books for the school library. Sometime in the 1970’s I found that certain book jobbers would add catalog cards with book orders…for a price. So, when my library budget was good enough I would spend the money and order the cards. I still had to give them a local call number, sort and file them in the card catalog, but I didn’t have to type each card. That was a great help.

By the mid 1980’s computers were coming to the libraries and there were programs that were helpful for typing and printing catalog cards. And finally, in the late 1980’s companies came out with MARC record programs and barcodes were put on books. This really was major. A librarian could order books complete with barcodes and full processing. Sometimes we would have to change the call numbers or subject headings to match our particular library, but this development was a real turning point. It saved so much time and that time could be spent reading to and teaching children.

By the 1990’s most school districts had processing departments to do the cataloging of materials. At first this was great and then all of a sudden, it seemed we were not allowed to do our own cataloging. When the online web based programs came about, most school districts opted for that system and hired a person to be in charge. The school librarian was no longer in charge of her own school library. We couldn’t even buy paperback books. If we did, we got them back with notes saying they were not worth cataloging. Apparently now we had rules about how thick a book could be, how old the copyright date could be, and were told which publishers we could not purchase from. So, I began wondering why I bothered with all those classes on cataloging and why I took that class in Book Selection. I actually know some librarians just out of school who never had to take a cataloging class.

So now here we are in the 2000’s and school librarians are handed curriculum guides and scripts on how to run the school libraries. What ever happened to individual library programs? My main objective was to show children the wonders of books and how to use them. Somehow this was all disappearing. My last school was very small, only 300 students, so I had a limited budget. My library budget was about $7.00 per student. You can’t buy a lot of hardback books with that kind of money. So, it was all very frustrating. When I did buy books and send them in to be cataloged sometimes it took months to get them back and then some of them were banded together with a note that they were not good enough to be cataloged and that I should give them away as prizes.

And while all this is going on, the teachers are being handed scripts to follow. Teachers used to bring their classes to the library to do reports on countries, animals, and science projects. But with the advent of NCLB this all stopped. The teachers no longer had time in their days to bring their students to the library for research projects. It seemed to me that NCLB really was put there to automate teaching. Teachers are becoming robots and so are librarians. I chose not to be a part of this system, so I retired. I was fortunate that I could retire. I feel for the individual teachers and librarians who became teachers and librarians because they wanted to teach children and thought they had something to offer. Now the various levels of government are telling them what to teach and how to teach and leaving no room for individual creativity. How is this going to help our children? My children are grown now, but if I had small children now I would not send them to public schools. I would home school them or find a good private school that still encourages creativity in their students and teachers.

MUSIC

I was giving my stove a good cleaning this afternoon and while I was cleaning I was listening to the Adult Alternative music channel on TV. My son was good enough to connect my tv to my stereo speakers while he was home at Christmas. The sound is so much better.

Anyway, I was thinking how lucky I am to be 63 years old and have such a rich history of music. Oh, I know, most young people today have heard all the music from the 50’s, 60’s and on, but they have no personal history of that music as I have. They can’t hear Elvis sing “Don’t Be Cruel” and remember the night they first heard it and what they were doing. I, on the other hand, can remember it well. I was at a party and had a fight with my boyfriend, and that song made a lot of sense to me. Every time I hear a song from one of those eras I remember some of my personal history. I can even remember being very young and listening to my mother’s music, jazz and swing and opera. My father liked country, blues, Tennessee Earnie Ford, Harry Belafonte, and the Kingston Trio.

We were a dancing family. I hope my two kids enjoy dancing as much as I did (do). I danced a lot at home, though it seemed to embarrass my daughter. It is good exercise and sometimes I still stop what I’m doing when I hear a good Rolling Stones song and dance a little bit. I can still dance swing, waltz, two step and do the twist.

I know both my kids love music. I learn a lot of the new things out there from them. My son mixes and DJ’s as a hobby. I like the drum and bass. Some of the other stuff is too repetitive for me, but I can listen and enjoy it for short periods of time. My daughter has sent me CDs that she thought I might enjoy and I think she has good taste.

So, if you don’t have music in your life now, do something about it! It is so important. Play music for your babies and continue to have music in your home for them until they leave and make their own homes. Let them experiment with it and make their own musical history. Try not to judge what they might listen to. Let them figure out what they like and dislike without your judgment. If you don’t like it, ask them to put on earphones or keep the music in their room. Let them make their own choices. You brought them up. Trust that they will make good decisions.

Now, back to the kitchen!

Memoirs of a Librarian

Memoirs of a Librarian
Chapter One

THE SIXITIES

I began my library career as a student in 1961 at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas. I doubt that the library science faculty had any idea how their world was going to change! We were not the students who normally came through this school. After all, it was the beginning of the sixties. We argued, questioned and did things that were outrageous.

Every year before Christmas, the freshman class was to put on the program for the staff, faculty and students of the school of library science. In the past there had been book reviews, book talks, etc. We were different. We took the poem “The Night Before Christmas and transferred it to a beatnik poem about books and libraries. I wish I had kept a copy…it was hilarious! I wore a long white turtleneck sweater and black tights and read the poem while brandishing a cigarette in a long cigarette holder. We talked about books like Chaucer, Tropic of Capricorn, Lady Chatterly’s lover and so forth and ended up throwing paperback copies of the books into the audience.. I think we were the only ones having a good time….every one else was in a state of disbelief.

Things continued in that vein until we graduated and went our separate ways out into the big world of public libraries and school libraries. I accepted a position with the Houston Public Library as a children’s librarian in 1965. For a while I worked in the main library in downtown Houston. While I was there the female staff got very excited by an advertisement that came out in Playboy magazine. It was a Tipparillo ad. I need to see if I can find a copy online and add it to this. There was a beautiful woman sitting holding a book…she obviously had no clothes on and the book was strategically placed to cover her…she was looking up over the book. The ad said, “Should you offer a Tipparillo to a librarian? Then in parenthesis it said, “yes, but offer to light it for her, she’ll have to put down that book!”

We purchased many copies of the magazine and posted that ad in every lounge for staff members to see! Thank God! We might be getting free of that awful image of the little old lady with her hair in a bun and a pencil behind her ear!


Then there were those of us that wore mini-skirts. Some patron always seemed to be calling and complaining to the powers that be about those mini-skirts in the libraries! Heaven forbid!

Oh yes…that first job paid a whopping $4000.00 a year! You must remember though, a brand new VW Beetle cost around $1300.00 in those days! I soon got a raise and a promotion to assistant librarian at one of the nicer branches. One of my jobs was to keep track of the overdue books. Once a month a Houston Police Officer would report to my branch to escort me to various addresses where we demand our library materials be returned. Didn’t Stephen King write a story called “The Library Police”? Some of the places we went to were cordoned off with police crime tape and we were informed that everything in the house or apartment was being kept for evidence and we couldn’t get our books back. The library was in an affluent section of Houston and so some of these people had expensive art books out worth hundreds of dollars.

Well, by 1967 I was the Branch Head Librarian for one of the newer branch libraries in Houston. The hours were long and the headaches many. One Saturday morning a patron came in and announced that there was a motorcycle gang parked on the lawn of the library and people were afraid to go past them to enter the library. I called the supervisor of branch libraries and found there was nothing I could do about it…it was public property and if they were not terrorizing people or trashing the place they had the right to be there.

I got married that year and resigned from the public library. The next day I started my career as a school librarian in a Houston Jr. High School. I was there for one year. My husband and I saved all our money that year and then took off to hitchhike all over Europe. But that is a story for another time. We did not return home until 1970. Stay tuned for Chapter 2 The Seventies.

Nature

I just returned from my vacation on Padre Island. I took my digital camera and to my amazement I took more pictures of sea birds than I did of people. That got me to thinking.

When I was a young child I was fascinated by nature. By the time I became a teenager I stopped looking and became involved more with the social side of life. When I was in my 30’s and had small children of my own, I became more interested because I had these wonderful children who were amazed and delighted with bugs, ants, spiders, frogs, etc. I would go to the library and check out books on whatever bug or reptile my children were interested in and we would learn all about them. Then my children became teenagers and lost interest and so did I.

I stopped paying attention to the nature around me until I was in my late fifties. I wonder if that is because I was so busy with other parts of my life…job, children, family. Now I am finding that I am a complete dunce about the nature surrounding my life. I am finding now that I want to know what kind of birds are around me, what kind of trees are in my yard, what happened to all the butterflies, where have all the fireflies gone?

As a young child I watched spiders building webs, screamed when I saw tarantulas, snakes, lizards and horned toads. Somewhere along the line I forgot about all that. Now, here I am at 63 years old and a lot of those creatures that I found so fascinating as I child have just disappeared. I have begun to look for them and cannot find them. I live in the desert of New Mexico. I used to see horned toads daily. Now, I have not seen one in several years. I used to see brightly colored butterflies and now I see a few small yellow ones and small white ones, but that is about all.

When I was about 8 years old my family moved to south Texas and I spent a lot of time at the beach on South Padre Island. I remember the sea gulls as being whitish gray and swooping along the beach, begging people to throw bread at them. This last trip there was a new gull, at least new to me. The other gulls were there but the new ones appeared to outnumber them by about 15 to 1. So now I have a quest. I need to find out where and when these new gulls began appearing and more importantly, why?