Family Man Librarian

Sign on a nearby farm, seen by my wife yesterday a.m.: “Farm Fresh Deer Urine For Sale.” My wife thought to herself, how do they collect it? My response: I just don’t want to know.

Today is a beautiful fall day here in Indiana. The leaves are turning brilliant colors, the temperature is around 70 degrees, and the sun is shining. Better yet, the kids — my hooligans — are all either asleep or calmly watching television. In other words, yes, I get an opportunity to write [...]

On Monday when we were getting ready to leave my in-law’s house to go back home, Brinley found a stray pill and decided it was candy and chewed it. Turns out it was Toprol XL, which my mother-in-law takes for her heart. When Michele discovered what Brinley had done, she tried to clean [...]

Life as a husband and father of three boys and a girl has its ups and downs. I dearly love my kids, but sometimes they frustrate me so much that I want to scream or cry. Other times, they say such funny things that I laugh hysterically. For example, the other day [...]

As someone who is still adjusting to the vagaries of living in rural Indiana and who still doesn’t take kindly to being called a “Hoosier,” I thought these Indiana-isms, sent to us by friends and whose source is unknown, were pretty funny. They are funny because many of them are very, very true. [...]

The week before last I made what has now become an annual tradition for the past twelve years or so: a trip back to my alma mater, UIUC GSLIS (the best graduate library school in the country!), to speak to the Hendersons’ Technical Services Functions class. As always, I thoroughly enjoyed talking [...]

Yesterday was a pretty long day for me. Our library is part of the PALNI (Private Academic Library Network of Indiana) consortium and we had a consortial meeting yesterday at PALNI HQ, which is at INCOLSA’s offices. (INCOLSA is yet another library consortium but one that has a broader, statewide membership.) [...]

It’s a beautiful, fall day here in Indiana. Michele and I agree that this area is very pretty in the fall, with the narrow country roads, abundant trees, and the corn and soybeans waiting to be harvested. There is a lot of undeveloped land here, and that means that there is wide variety of wildlife. [...]

We survived the hectic day yesterday — got the perennials planted, the lawn mowed, etc. and then drove up to the western Chicago suburbs to stay with my in-laws in Warrenville, IL. It was a beautiful day and today promises to be the same. On our way there, we passed by lots of garage sales [...]

Another hot, sunny day in Indiana. Went to chapel and heard Dirk Bean give his testimony. He was a member of the original Survivor TV show on CBS who was very open about his faith. It was great to hear what he had to say about standing up for what you believe, relying fully on [...]