Viva Shoe Trees!

Viva Shoe Trees!! Last week-end I was visiting my dad in our Texas Hill Country hometown, a little piece of paradise where he and I both grew up. Since he does not get out that much (gave up driving at age 94), when I am there we always go for rides around town to see what we can see. This time we were almost back to his house and something caught my eye and caused me to detour around a little drive called Bluebonnet Circle. We were just about to return to the main road when I spotted a tree up ahead that looked a bit odd. As we passed by, I realized that it was COVERED WITH SHOES! This was my first experience with SHOE TREES! I did a 360 and went back, and verified that we were indeed looking at a tree whose trunk was literally covered with shoes. I am pretty sure they were not all nailed to the poor trunk, but rather connected one to another in many cases. They extended up about 10 feet or so and trailed out at the bottom for 2-3 feet…shoes…big shoes, little ones, sneakers, brogans, pumps, oxfords, slippers, wedges, espadrilles, you name it, with some boots tastefully displayed at the very top. Wow! I said, gotta have a picture of THIS, jumped out of the car (Dad is somewhat used to me doing this) and snapped some shots with my handy iPhone.

As we were driving home I mused…shoes…a tree…covered with…shoes…and then (yes I am a little slow on the uptake)…exclaimed OMIGOSH A SHOE TREE!!! Dad has some of the OTHER kind of shoe trees in his closet. We were delighted with this play on words, and talked about how San Marcos was such a great town where people were free to put up a shoe tree if they were so moved. We agreed it is every bit as impressive as the car art on display out on the freeway. Our chests swelled with civic pride. Good old San Marcos, home of the shoe tree!

That evening we settled in our comfy chairs for several hours of our favorite pastimes, reading, napping (Dad), and surfing the Net (me). On a whim I Googled “shoe tree” and voila! I discovered that our local display is not unique. There are shoe trees all over the place! In fact one of the first ones to come up was a shoe tree a mere 15 or so miles away in Martindale, TX, near the San Marcos River. I found other trees in Oregon, California, Missouri, and several other states. Further, and this does not come as a surprise considering their popularity, Wikipedia has an entry for shoe trees. It includes the kind I saw and also the ones where two sneakers are tied together by their laces and thrown over things like wires and trees. Also not too surprising, I am not the first person to blog about the phenomenon. Here is the blog entry describing the Martindale tree: http://fimpress.blogspot.com/2006/09/shoe-tree.html There is also a YouTube video about another tree. Big websites like Roadside America and Road Trip America share locations of trees and other fun attractions.

But why is this worth including in a blog about technology and librarianship? I think it is an example of the increased communication and connectivity we have today via the Internet. People have always enjoyed quirky yard art and other displays, such as car art, bottle trees, and other creations. In nearby Wimberley, TX, for instance, you can enjoy the bottle house, again one of many such structures. Now we can share our findings with the world! Kids could enjoy searching the Net for examples of quirky public creations, and perhaps photograph ones in their own towns.

There are even literary tie-ins. E.L. Konigsburg’s The Outcasts of 19 Schuyler Place tells the story of a young girl’s experiences trying to save her uncles’ creation, a wonderful sparkling tower the two brothers had assembled over many years. Some townspeople object to the structure and campaign to have it destroyed. This clash between tastes is being played out in my childhood home town over another creation, the car art planter which showed up several months ago in front of a local business. The local paper has been reporting the fight between those who would remove the “art” and those who love it. Needless to say, Dad and I want to see it stay.

I shared my online findings with Dad, who is becoming convinced that you can find ANYTHING on the Internet. He said in an aggrieved voice, “Isn’t OUR tree on the Internet? It should be up there too!” So this is for you Dad, the tree is now officially online. Not only that, I am posting a picture of the car planter located on the I-35 feeder road in San Marcos, Texas. Maybe some folks will share their local oddities here!

PS. If you are from Texas, check out John Kelso's Texas Curiosities books. I am proud to have visited a number of the locations including Texas Stonehenge, Forbidden City, Giant Pecan, Popeye Statue, The Orange Show, The Beer Can House, and others. Naturally "others" includes Luckenbach, which I do not think of as a curiosity but rather a revered landmark.

Potpourri of Links--Again Learning from Students

Again I am grading...grading...and will be for the coming two weeks as the fall term (already???) comes to an end. Yesterday I started a posting with a GREAT link that I found while going over student work. I could have sworn I saved the entry but now cannot find it. Wonder where it went? I now cannot remember a thing about the link except that I wanted to be sure and share it. Anyway, I will STILL share things I glean from students' work starting with one so far today and then building from there.

• Alan Lew--I somehow missed this leader in Web 2.0 instruction, but just added him to my Twitter list. His page for that venue is: http://twitter.com/alew and from there you can find his other pages.

• TwitterLit! Wow I love this site and, while I had heard of it, had not visited until it was mentioned today by a student. Twice a day you get literary teasers, first lines from books plus links to Amazon if you are intrigued by the lines. There is also a site for kids! You can subscribe via RSS or have the teasers sent to your twitter. Fun site! http://www.twitterlit.com/

• And guess what? While I was typing, I remembered the site I wanted to share from yesterday. It is a site for teaching kids about phishing, and I think will be helpful for users of any age who need to learn about this somewhat confusing term. The site is Anti-Phishing Phil, where Phil the fish teaches the term in a game format: http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/antiphishing_phil/

• I had not visited this blog before, and it is a great resource for YA books and librarians who work with teens: http://www.teenlibrarian.com/blog.html

• Excellent educational use of a wiki is demonstrated at this site, which has received a good deal of attention for its presence. It is maintained by a computer science teacher at Westwood Schools, GA: http://westwood.wikispaces.com/#tochome5
  

Learning from my students again!

One of the best things about my job is grading papers. Yep, that's right, I enjoy it! Many times I get to know students better through their work, and I don't think I ever spend some time grading without learning something new. Today, with the weather gray and drippy outside, and sitting in the den with my dozing Dad and drowsy dog, I am happy to be occupied with grading. One of the best things I have read is that on student, after spending time exploring the ALA website, came to a better understanding of her role in matching readers with books. A first-year librarian, she is just beginning to enjoy this special part of her job, and she related a relationship she has formed with one particular student who started out by asking her the question we all get, "Where are the GOOD books." She was able to interest the girl in a book she had just finished, and now they are reading buddies. This is, of course, one of the greatest rewards of being a librarian.

Also, I picked up some new websites:

• ELGG (http://elgg.org/) is an open source social networking environment that I did not know until today. Doug Johnson shared it in his blog, and evidently it is a good one for school use.
• Truth or Fiction? (http://www.truthorfiction.com/) Like Hoaxbusters or Snopes, this site will help squelch rumors and expose hoaxes.
  
• The Loch (http://www.theloch.com/index.html) There is a whole website devoted to Paul Zindel's book The Loch and, it appears, an upcoming movie.
• The New York Times offers a treasure trove of lesson plans! Take a look: http://www.nytimes.com/learning/teachers/lessons/archive.html
• One of my students had Holocaust survivor/author Inge Aeurbacher as a guest. Here is her website: http://www.ingeauerbacher.com/default.htm
  

Crowded Cranium...Full of Stories!

I am jazzed after a full week of conferencing! I just got back from my all-time favorite conference, Internet Librarian/Internet@School West, held in Monterey, CA. I have tons to say about that but FIRST I need to talk about today's conference at my own university, the 2007 SHSU Annual Book Conference. This wonderful gathering never fails to offer first-rate author guests who entertain, enthrall, and most of all inspire us to do what librarians have always done best and always will do best, share our love of books with readers of all ages. I just want to say a few words about each session that I was lucky enough to attend:

• We started off the day with two very sharp, classy ladies (I am using adjectives my mom always used as the highest possible accolades she could give). First Cynthia Leitich-Smith talked about her life and books. I have already been plugging her blog, Cynsations, at my wiki site, but learned she also has a 2nd blog which is more about the craft of writing and also about spooky stuff which of course ties in nicely with her latest book, Tantalize, which is of all things a vampire story set in AUSTIN, TEXAS! What's not to like about that? I cannot wait to start in on my copy. If you have not been to her sites, stop reading, go now, and then come back! I will give one URL: http://spookycyn.blogspot.com/ Once you go there, you can get to her other sites by the links provided. You will find all kinds of great information and fun for you as well as for your students!
• Next we got to hear from Joan Bauer. I have been a Joan Bauer fan for as long as I can remember. Rules of the Road is one of those books you just cannot forget. And now there is a sequel! You probably know this but I did not, due to the extreme geekiness of my present life and job which focuses so much on tech and not so much on books. Anyway, she was such a memorable speaker. What presence! What a sense of humor! Hearing her was a huge treat for me! You can find her online at: http://www.joanbauer.com/jb.html
  
• Next we went to breakout sessions and I was lucky enough to attend one on podcasting from a dear friend, Dr. Bobby Ezell, also of Sam Houston State University. He did not just talk about podcasting, he had us make one, in less than one hour! I sat with a former student and super librarian, Dean Boyd of Livingston, TX. We made an interview podcast about an upcoming silent auction to raise money for the senior class at his school, and HE IS GOING TO USE IT!!! How cool is that? If you would like Bobby's super easy handouts about how to use Audacity (freeware) to make a podcast and then how to easily save it as a web page just using MS Word, leave a comment or email me and I will send them. Bobby has a great knack for making things easy and his step by step comments will get you up and going in no time, as evidenced by the fact that everyone in the session left with a working podcast to upload. When I get the link for ours, I will share it!
• After lunch I wandered around, thinking I might stop by my office and do a little catching up before the last author talk. But I ran into a great old friend, one of those people with whom you can get right back into a conversation as if you had seen each other yesterday when in actuality it has been several years. She is Lynn Morris, librarian extraordinaire of Frank Elementary in Klein, TX. She was going in to hear De Cee Cowin, storyteller, and I fell in behind her. WAS I GLAD I DID THAT! This man is a fantastic storyteller! He has the timeless ability of storytellers to cast a spell over his audience and take you away to another place, this time Osaka, Japan. Not only does he tell a great story, he then talks about the connections these stories have to all cultures and to the human condition. If I were still a school librarian, I would be contacting him ASAP to ask him to come to my school. We all left his presence a little bit wiser. Here is his website: http://www.deceecornish.com/
• Finally the last session of the day came around. The morning session was for the ladies, with Cynthia Leitich-Smith and Joan Bauer speaking. In the afternoon session, the guys were front and center. First we heard from Cynthia's husband, Greg Leitich-Smith. He, too, is a writer, with several fiction books out for "tweens." He gave a delightful review of his past, and a cute little tyke he was, and also shared a great story of the evolution of the cover for his book, Ninjas, Piranhas, and Galileo. The final cover looks great, and thank goodness they did not stop with one of the earlier iterations. His site is: http://www.gregleitichsmith.com
• Last but not least was Mo Willems, who did not disappoint! He was clever and soooo funny and even got some great audience involvement going where at one point attendees acted out an early reader book, and everyone learned how to draw a pigeon. Yes, even I can draw a pigeon now! He really made me see how the different elements of a picture book such as size, shape, page color, size of illustration, number of words on pages, and other details, are carefuly thought out to achive the desired creative expression. I am sure you know Knuffle Bunny and his other books, and here is his website (I love all the cartoon characters in the bar at the top of the page): http://www.mowillems.com/

It is getting dark on this last day of daylight saving time, and I have not allowed myself supper or any other diversion before sitting down to blog about today. I will be coming in soon with some pictures to accompany the text, but hope I have captured a little of the magic of this special day. Any time you can hear an author or storyteller is a special day, so this one was a banner day for me!