Nogo on the ogo!

Or on the internet for that matter .....

Renee has had a parade of three different men in her room to try and fix the internet connection. No go on the google. At any moment we could loose connection. While they were working on Renee's connection I lost mine. That sums it all up.

For the record - I tried the ogo with an open mind. I do love my seaweed on sushi and the tasty snack sticks. The ogo was cold and slimy, probably fresh from the ocean - I just couldn't do it. So ... no go on the ogo! The salads were delicious! However, we were limited to a preselected menu (Renee overlooked the tasty salmon) and the ribs were not on our menu - darn. And we forgot yesterday - we had sandwiches for lunch and a buffet dinner. I have had salad at every meal, but there has been a wonderful smorgasbord of cookies, chocolate, chips, pretzels - heaven! That wraps up the food.

Ok, on to what we are actually doing for a million hours a day the good and interesting stuff! The big event today was a field trip (our final one) on the party bus to the Compton Library, to observe a parent child workshop and view their family place. We also got ten minutes of internet time (kind of like yard excercise in prison - very exciting). We saw wonderful furniture, manipulatives, handouts, and space arrangements. We both loved an alphabet centipede http://www.amazon.co.uk/Large-centipede-caterpillar-alphabet-design/dp/B001JSNNLA
and a stuffed frog. I felt inspired and Renee is motivated. We can really see how we can make this work for us. We have photos, but the iBAHN is not the autobahn and will not load them :(.

We have two piles of c**p - I mean resources - they're just sooo heavy - to bring back. Renee is concerned about gas mileage from hauling them back. They offered to ship it, but we'll just drag it home - we're troopers! Including all of the videos that we saw at the program. I liked today's video because it really showed the impact that this made for the children and the parents.

We also covered space design for all sizes of libraries. An interesting side note - Middle Country in NY is working on an outdoor, hands-on "nature exploration space" - called Explorium. They are partnered with a group that is concerned about children's connection to the natural world. All of the exhibits are to be designed out of natural materials and include: planting, water feature, theater, messy art space. We also got a good tip about the new Monterey Children's museum, which moved from Cannery Row towards downtown. Apparently it is not huge, but has some great exhibits.

Also of note in relation to space, is the mobile Family Place that the Oklahoma City library has created. They have a "playmobile" that they will take with toys, books, etc. to Dr.s waiting rooms and what not. Tempe, AZ is also offering their programs offsite at community centers and then encouraging people to visit the library.

And the rest of the afternoon was spent on collection development - pretty standard stuff that we already know, emergent literacy and programming, which may be very useful as we look at the second floor. We liked a program for toddlers called "The Young and the Restless."

We sadly boarded the party bus for the final tour back to the DoubleTree - which I am calling the bald trees due to internet trouble, showers that don't drain properly and pool around my feet, and too early wake up calls. The staff has been really nice here and it is has been relatively ok; I'm just a whiner.

We went down to the dining room and joined our colleagues for dinner and Renee happened to sit next to Sara from Yolo County (near Davis) and heard her tale of a recent opening day collection delivered by Baker and Taylor. Their patrons have a wonderful selection of travel books to the Pacific Northwest at least it's closer than Georgia. A nice woman from the Beverly Hills library traded travel tips on France and recommended a site for rentals "entravel" although it could be "enboard" - we're tired. It's been two nights of no sleep, so hopefully the third is the charm.

This our final blog post from Carson (we know you are crying). We are supposed to check out first thing (all of us - like 35 people - yeahhhhhhhh) before breakfast at 8 am. So it will be another early day tomorrow ;). Tomorrow we'll be covering: outreach, marketing (we've got that down), Family Place Network Support (we're part of a listserv now), and the all important LSTA grant application. We are supposed to adjourn at 1:00 and we'll hit the road soon after (I have to pick up my car from Renee's). Then the final stop will be VG for a storyteller meeting about Spark of Love to try out our book selections and props. Thanks to everyone for handling those details.

Take a ride on the party bus!

PARTY BUS: The group met in the lobby this morning and were transported to Carson Library in two small passenger busses. Ours actually had the name "Party Bus" painted on the front, and inside neon lights, disco lights, mirrors, a flat screen cupholders, ice bar and stretch seating.

Breakfast at the Library was followed by a long but productive day and we closed the dining room down stairs a little while ago. We were the last ones to leave having made a reconnection with a former colleague of Renee’s who works for the Roseville Library near Sacramento. Now we want to visit their new library which shares a building and lobby entrance with a hands-on energy museum geared to children. It’s also connected to a sports complex and a park designed for special needs children. Road Trip! http://www.roseville.ca.us/library/locations_n_hours.asp

Today we heard from Kathleen Deerr who spoke on family centered services. She talked about changes in parenting, including telecommuting, two parents working, people out of work, grandparents parenting, single parents, teen parents and that we need to target services to this diverse parent culture. She discussed developmentally appropriate programming and encouraged us to view parents as partners.

We did a group activity to discover potential community partners but we already have our main partner, the Family Resource Center, on board.

The highlight of the day was Jennifer Birckmayer, retired educator from Cornell who now works as a consultant. She was a blast and completely low-tech. She spoke on play (whoo-hoo) and emerging literacy. She discussed three developmental stages; infancy, toddler and preschool as they relate to play and emergent literacy. Her latest book is From Lullabies to Literacy and we are both looking forward to reading it. She talked about reworking rhymes to make them appropriate for your audience and gave this example:

Old Mother Hubbard

Went to the cupboard

to get her poor dog a bone.

And when she got there

The cupboard was bare

And so the dog ordered pizza by phone!

She was excellent at modeling the abcs of attention, bonding and communication using a baby doll to model for us to model for parents. She was really inspiring and we would love to have her for a play symposium.

CoLAPL provided laptops for us to check email during the breaks but for whatever reason the ones Angelica and I sat down to would not connect with their wifi. Tonight we have encountered issues with the connection in my room and after two visits by the "help desk" moved to Angelica's room.

Ogo is tomorrow which may test Angelica's usual fondness for seaweed. Ogo and out.

We've got ten minutes

This has been the theme for the day ....

We only ever seem to have ten minutes and every computer we tried to touch has had some sort of malfunction - including the one in Renee's room (which does not have the iBAHN).

And now ... we only have ten minutes until dinner! We promise we'll actually write about the training after the meal.

It was a long but REALLY worthwhile day. We are excited (Impressed :) ) - with the speakers - in particular Jenny Birckmayer. Wow! We are totally jazzed up after seeing her.

Stay tuned ... more to follow (including what we ate for dinner and photos involving the party bus .....)

Ono! Ogo!

Where shall we begin .....

Well, we were fed, introduced, agendized, and ready for 8 am tomorrow. We headed down for dinner at about 6:15 thinking we were early and found a packed house. We sat with Barbara from Middle Country, NY, 3 women from LA county (Library manager from Carson, Regional Youth Services Coordinator, Children's Librarian), 2 from Yolo county, and the lone man from Salinas. We're still working on names - good thing they gave us name badges.

The people from Yolo County were just opening 3 NEW libraries! One of them just this past Saturday. The Salinas library just celebrated it's centennial or 100th birthday with CAKE, big bird costume, and a marching band! They were an enjoyable group of people. It was nice to meet a new group.

Happily, we did not starve. The Family Place crew was very kind and took all of our dietary requests into consideration. I had a GIANT plate (pile) of assorted vegetables - pretty tasty. Renee's was also pretty good - but the carrots were ... tough to start with. There were visions of shooting across the table and hitting someone. They were left on the plate.

Bessie read a message from the newly appointed State Librarian Stacy Aldrich. The gist was we're glad to have you here, this is a great opportunity, etc. and pep speech continues. Bessie says that she will set up a listserv for the future for all of us to communicate on our grant work.

Then we went over the agenda - what we have been most anxious for and discovered we have a couple of 12 hour days ahead of us - including Compton. I'm having flashbacks of my metrolink four hour train ride back from CLA Long Beach through Compton. We're getting site visits at several different sized libraries. I'm most looking forward to the pieces on child development. Renee is most interested in the Parent Child Workshop on Wednesday.

We also received a form for lunch tomorrow at "Back Home in Lahaina" - although it is not really Lahaina - somewhere in Carson. The site actually looks pretty nice. On the menu - the vegetarian option is a tofu salad with ... ogo. What is ogo? No one knew what ogo was. We have since discovered it is a seaweed also used as fish food, which can be found thanks to "The Google." While I do like seaweed - the pictures show an unappetizing looking purple bird nest. I'll let you know how the ogo goes.

We may never write this much again - hopefully someone is reading this. We were quite disappointed to find that no one had enjoyed our previous postings. We are quite humorous (we think) you will enjoy us (you know you will!). Pictures are to follow if we can get everything together - and anything worth shooting ... maybe ogo?

Good night. Sweet dreams. Don't let the bed bugs bite (we checked it should be safe).

It ain't long island but it's got an iBAHN

We have arrived! We are checked in, unpacked, and on the iBAHN. What is an iBAHN - no wireless connection! Ok - Renee just explained that it is supposed to be a fast ethernet connection - the internet bahn - like the autobahn. Ha ha ha. Very clever. I still like wireless better - take that iBAHN.

Renee is speaking German! Let the fun begin! It was a bit of zoo down below at check-in with other librarians toting many bags. Although Renee and I are debating that we had the most bags.

You will all be sooo jealous because we received WARM chocolate chip cookies at check in! The traffic was not too bad in our direction. However, we felt pretty bad about the people going the other way. :( We'll have to remember that on Thursday.

We are comparing our notes and pre-training library assessment to be ready for the big dinner later. Just in case anyone asks. Since we are the star pupils (according to RK)! We want to represent RCPL well!

We'll check back in a bit later with the dinner update!

Angelica and Renee sort of follow in Margaret's footsteps

RCPL is a recipient of one of the State Library's Family Place Training grants so Angelica and I will attend training November 16-19. Luckily this year's Family Place Library training is at the Carson Regional Library of CoLAPL so Angelica doesn't have to endure a cross-country airplane trip with me. And we don't have to drive half the length of Long Island in the dark once off the plane. We just have to navigate via GPS to the DoubleTree in Carson in the middle of the afternoon.

During the training we'll be visiting some LA County Libraries to see how they do Family Place, observe a signature parent workshop and learn how to apply for the money phase of the grant through the State Library. So follow us next week as we absorb all we can about this program so that we can return and determine how best to adapt it to the "Rancho Way".