The poems of Emily Dickinson

The poems of Emily Dickinson.— reading edition / edited by R.W. Franklin.— Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1999.

692 p. ; 25 cm.

ISBN: 0-674-67624-6

Include index of first lines

1. Poetry, American – Nineteenth century.

811.4

Life is death we’re lengthy at,

Death the hinge of life.

This is the entire text of poem #502 in this edition, an edition gleaned from the editor’s three volume 2,500 sources variorum set of 1998. Dickinson’s poems are characteristically pithy and short, with idiosyncratic punctuation and grammar. Few were published in her lifetime. And due to the editorial changes made in them, she was very unhappy in those that were. American literature owes a great debt to her younger sister who, contrary to Emily’s instructions, chose to begin publishing them instead of destroying them after her death in 1886. The first full edition wasn’t published until 1960. The twentieth century was far more receptive to the poet’s sudden twists of grammar and thought than her own. As a result her fame and following have grown.

Resistant to the otherworldly evangelism of her family and friends, Dickinson staked all her hopes in the mundane. The poems are full of the delights of this world, sunrise, sunset, trees, birds, seasonal changes, insects, flowers, stars, and most of all in human love and friendship.

An excellent companion to a reader new to her writing is the aptly titled, The Cambridge introduction to Emily Dickinson / Wendy Martin.— Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2007.

x, 148 p. ; 24 cm.

(Cambridge introductions to literature)

ISBN: 9780521672702

1. Dickinson, Emily, 1830-1886.

811.4

This is a concise and readable introduction to the poet’s life, the world she lived in, her poems and letters, and their posthumous publication, editing, and scholarly reception and interpretations.

iHCPL Maps #34: Geocoding and Geocaching

Part 1
According to Mapquest "Geocoding is the process that assigns latitude and longitude map coordinates to addresses."

I watched the Geocache Documentary trailer, sucking up bandwidth for work-related purposes.

The Quick Geocoder was quick, but inaccurate.

The Google geocoder found:Result precision [sic] address
Full address 8080 El Rio St, Houston, TX 77054, USA
Latitude 29.685804 Longitude -95.388943 Coordinates 29.685804, -95.388943N29°41.14824, W095°23.33658

It would be a leaner in horseshoes, the game where "almost" counts. Google put the little green droplet marker in the middle of the divider close to the intersection of Holly Hall and El Rio. I moved the marker and edited the listing, but I have to wait two weeks for the verifying postcard to show up in the mail.

* It was, as happens so often in cyberspace, yet another case of where the woozle wasn't. (In Which Pooh goes visiting and Pooh and Piglet nearly catch a Woozle / A.A. Milne ; illustrated by E.H. Shepard.)


Part 2
I was fascinated to learn the coining of the term geocaching, and how it came to replace the origninal phrase "GPS stash." Of course, if librarians had been in at the creation they would have given it the proper Library of Congress Subject Heading, "Treasure troves," but now the lexicon has been enriched by "Geocaching (Game)." I just hope there's a See Also reference.

For the sake of the exercise, I will post, but not actively seek:

Beat the Heat - +1 #03 BIKING TRAIL, A simple micro cache just off of T C Jester.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=16e9e966-9798-450a-baa9-c6024dac5fcb

Geocashing sounds like a fun game, and a chance to get some healthy out of doors exercise, a nice unvirtual reality game for first life, but currently I feel too overscheduled to start another hobby.

iHCPL Maps #33: Relocating with Online Maps 2

ACTIVITY 2:

Select a potential new home or apartment.

OK, I gave up running away to Vermont and decided to move down the block on West 24^th Street in Houston. Using Urban Living I picked out the above single family home on the corner. It has 3 bedrooms and a surplus of cats.

From this address I am within:

• ¼ mile of the Fiesta Market #2
• ¼ mile of the Texas Cafeteria
• 1/3 mile of Buffalo Fred’s Ice House
• 3/5 of a mile from Hamilton Middle School
• 1 mile from the Heights Branch of the Houston Public Library
• and just a few blocks from the #050 Metro bus route (for a cool map of your route go to http://tripplanner.ridemetro.org/)
  

All this is according to the site Walk Score.

I was a bit disappointed that DiscoverOurTown.com didn’t list the Telephone Museum that’s only 3/5 of a mile from my new dream domicile. Oh, well Google Maps found it right away.

iHCPL Maps #33: Relocating with Online Maps 1

ACTIVITY 1:

APARTMENTS: I imagined that I wanted to take the family and escape to the vicinity of Newport, Vermont (N44°56.16876, W072°12.49236). So I looked for a 3 bedroom apartment which allows cats. I tried Apartments.com, but what I got was five classified ads from the Burlington Free Press, the first one of which said, “no pets.” On the other hand, Apartment Finder and Apartment Guide returned zero, zip, nada results. I got better results from the online classifieds in the Newport Daily Express and the Orleans Caledonian-Record.

But, back to Burlington and the three bedroom – there were no maps associated with the listing, so I went to Google Maps and entered the street. The street map told me how to drive there, the terrain map was just boring, but the satellite map showed me the scenic sand pit at the top of the hill close by.

Natural born charmer

Natural born charmer / Susan Elizabeth Phillips; performed by Anna Fields.— [New York] : Harper Audio ; Prince Frederick: Recorded Books, p2007.

10 sound discs (12 hr.) : digital ; 4 3/4 in.

ISBN: 978-0-06-122719-6

Unabridged ed.

Executive produced by Rick Harris; produced at Cedar House Audio by Kate Fleming.

Compact disc.

1. Artists – Fiction. 2. Children of celebrities – Fiction. 3. Football players – Fiction 4. Love stories. 5. Parental deprivation – Fiction 6. Parent and adult child – Fiction.

813.54

Phillips kicks off this romantic comedy with a wonderful hook for a first line, “It wasn't every day a guy saw a headless beaver marching down the side of a road, not even in Dean Robillard's larger-than-life world.” Handsome Dean is a pro football quarterback and Blue, the angry girl in the beaver costume with the head off is the daughter of a famous political activist and a commercial portrait painter who secretly yearns to paint landscapes filled with fanciful fairies. In a way Natural born charmer is a bit of a fairy tale itself, populated with eccentrics and celebrities with the means to make their wishes come true. And what a witty and well-crafted tale it is, with a plot that moves right along, unfolding new surprises and delights along the way. Fields does a marvelous job of vocal characterization for a full set of different characters in addition to the rapid fire repartee between the hero and heroine.

In January 2008 this production was cited by Library Journal as one of the Best Audio Books of 2007 and by Booklist as an Editors’ Choice audio recording for 2007.

Fat kid rules the world

Fat kid rules the world / K. L. Going. – New York : G.P. Putnam's Sons, c2003.

187 p. ; 22 cm.

ISBN: 0399239901

1. Boys – Suicidal behavior – Fiction. 2. Drug abuse – Fiction. 3. New York (N.Y.) – Fiction. 4. Obesity – Fiction. 5. Punk rock musicians – Fiction.

813.6

His morbid obesity leads Troy Billings to a morbid fascination with suicide. As he’s standing at the edge of a New York City subway platform contemplating jumping in front of the next oncoming train, he’s snatched by a scrawny kid who tells him that since he’s saved his life Troy owes his rescuer dinner. Fascinated by the seeming ability of the other teen to read his mind, Troy takes him to a restaurant, where his rescuer, Curt, suddenly announces that he wants 300-pound, six-foot-one Troy to be the drummer in his new punk rock band.

Curt is greatly in need of a bath, and food, and clothing, and he seems to have some perpetual illness that requires continual medication. He has a bad habit of rummaging through medicine cabinets and popping whatever he finds into his mouth. He also falls asleep a lot at odd times. He also has a habit of disappearing and reappearing after a few days absence. In spite of all this, he actually does play a mean electric guitar and has a lot of street credibility among the punk rock crowd and among the kids at Troy’s high school. Troy, who has to learn how to play the drums at his new friend’s insistence, suddenly finds himself transformed from big man on campus, an object of scorn and humiliation to big man on campus, the coolest guy in the school.

iHCPL: The Next Generation: Maps #32: Current Events

ACTIVITY 1:
1. Look through the list of "100 Things To Do With Google Maps".
2. In your blog, note a hypothetical question that you could best answer through visualization, and list the site you would use to answer it.

Q. Where can I find a wireless hotspot in Crosby at 2 a.m. in the morning?

A. According to hotspoter (http://hotspotr.com/spot/8529-crosby-branch-library), Wireless can usually be picked up from parking lot of the Crosby Branch Library 24 hrs a day. The parking lot is located at 135 Hare Rd, Crosby, TX 77532, USA. Does this completely answer your question?

ACTIVITY 2:
1. Explore Global Incident Map, Terra Server, or National Atlas.
2. Find a map or image that interests you.
3. Post it or a link to it in your blog and write about something you learned.

I looked through all three.

• The Incident Map had the nicest graphics. After all if you're going to be scared, why not make the images as vivid as possible -- like in true crime books.
  


• I was a bit disappointed in the National Atlas. Not much to show in Harris County.
  


• I used Terra Server to find pix of the best wireless hotspot parking lot in Crosby and compared it to Google Map of same. Terra Server at highest resolution is on the left; Google at its highest resoulution is on the right.

iHCPL: The Next Generation: Maps #31: Have Map, Will Travel

View Larger Map

I’ll confess right up front. I did things out of order again. Last week I edited a Google map. This week I watched the Google Create a Map Tutorial. Here’s what I did in a state of either blissful ignorance or intuitively following the directions on the site.

My original purpose for poking about in Google Maps was to follow up on some customer feedback that I’d received by postcard. I was trying to get a satellite picture with enough resolution to see if the flowerbeds were really in as bad a shape as a customer said they were. The resolution wasn’t good enough to properly diagnose the health of the flowers or the shrubbery. A human agent will be sent to investigate the flora. But, while I was there I noticed the marker for the branch was a block closer to FM 1960 than the branch was, so I dragged the marker over to the branch driveway. Then I labeled it Atascocita Branch Library.

But now the plot thickens. After feeling smug about having done so much of the exercise in advance, I clicked on iStar’s link to HCPL Locations on one map. There was Atascocita, but my carefully relocated marker had moved back to FM 1960. Looking back to the Search Results on the left, I realized that there were two listings, one for “Atascocita Library” and one for “Atascocita Branch Library.” Same address, same phone number, but they had two listings and two markers, one about a block farther up Pinehurst Trails Drive than the others.

[Warning: library humor below]
Gentle Reader, I was shocked. My cataloger’s heart was chilled to the core. I was the victim of an unpremeditated folksonomy. It was tagging run amok. Horrified, I decided to try a more general search term on the main Google Maps page to see if innocent customers might be led astray.

At first I keyed in just “Atascocita” and got "Atascocita, Uninc Harris County, TX." It was on 1960 just past Kings Parkway. At this point I got distracted because I started to wonder what a Uninc was and if might be married to an Auntic, or perhaps he might be working as a security guard at a harem. Then I had a moment of enlightenment! Perhaps Uninc might be a nickname for Unincorporated Place. That relieved my mind somewhat, but I still thought it was careless of someone to leave it out in the middle of a busy street like that. I mean, zoom in as close as you can and you can see the oncoming traffic! As soon as the library opens I'm going to call them and get the number of Uninc Protective Services. [Just kidding]

Then I modified my search term to “Atascocita Public Library” and that returned:

Results 1-10 of about 3,949 for Public Library near Atascocita, Uninc Harris County, TX
Categories: Libraries Public, School Public

Atascocita Library - more info »
19520 Pinehurst Trail Dr, Humble, TX - (281) 812-2162

Kingwood Library - more info »
4102 Rustic Woods Dr, Kingwood, TX - (281) 360-6804
Atascocita Branch Library - more info »
19520 Pinehurst Trails Drive Humble, TX 77346 - (281) 812-2162

The library I was searching for turning up twice in the top 3. My fears of misdirected customers vanished. I shall sleep better tonight. :)