What does blogging mean to me?
The granola tagged me with this, so here it is.
1. Are you happy/satisfied with your blog’s content and look?
The content I am happy with, or maybe saying that it makes me happy to write the content is more accurate. As for the look…no I am not happy with that. I am not well enough versed in the art of computer graphics to make my blog look the way I would like it to. Blogger doesn’t have enough choices for me. I would also like to figure out how to add pics and links to my blog. As for the sidebars…they are pretty much nonexistent except for the stuff that Blogger puts there. Again, I need to spend some time and learn how to do it all.
2. Does your family know about your blog?
Define family… My husband, who has never yet read my blog, knows about it. My three daughters are the only ones who have ever visited and left comments. I have not told my siblings or my father about it. I guess I should. Maybe I will. Someday.
3. Do you feel embarrassed to let your friends know about your blog? Do you feel it is a private thing?
It’s never come up. I started my blog as a way to send some of my poetry out into the world, but it has turned into a sort of memoir. I take some risks in what I write in my blog, talk about things that have left a deep impression on me that some people I know would be uncomfortable talking about.
4. Did blogging cause positive changes in your thoughts?
Yes. I have found an authentic voice…one that is my own. It has opened the door to memories I thought I had lost forever. Reading other people’s blogs has opened my mind, has given me insight into other points of view, and sparked my desire to write.
5. Do you only open the blogs of those who comment on your blog or do you love to go and discover more on your own?
I was reading the blogs of those who commented on mine before I had a blog, except for my youngest daughter. I bugged her until she started a blog of her own. I love to read blogs. I usually use one of Granola’s blogs as a jumping off place. She has great blog rolls.
6. What does a visitor counter mean to you? Do you like having one on your blog?
I like having a counter on my eBay auctions. I don’t have one on my blog. I would like that. I just need to be more of a techno babe.
10. Does criticism annoy you or do you feel it’s a normal thing?
Depends on how it’s done. It’s a frequent thing in the world, but it’s only helpful if it’s done right. Never had any on my blog, so I couldn’t say how I feel about it related to blogging.
11. Do you fear some political blogs and avoid them?
No. I am one of the least political people on the planet and I don’t go to political blogs because they don’t interest me. I am not afraid of politics. Several members of my family are very political, including my dear husband. I just get uncomfortable when they rant.
12. Were you shocked by the arrest of some bloggers?
Seems like I heard about it on the news. I wasn’t shocked. I was shocked 10 or 15 years ago when we took classes so we could have foster kids. I had no idea what some children go through. 9/11 shocked me. It takes a lot to shock me these days. I do, however, sometimes get shocked when I walk across a synthetic carpet and touch a door handle. It’s even better when I touch another person, cuz then we are both shocked.
13. What do you think will happen to your blog after you die?
I have started writing it in my word processor, something that took me a bit to figure out. I will make a hard copy, maybe several. It is turning into my life history, a way for my children and grandchildren to know me as a person and not just a mom and grandma.
14. What do you like to hear? What song would you like to link to your blog?
Oh, wouldn’t that be fun!!! I love most music and I would want songs to match the blogs, each one pertaining in some way to theme of the blog. A lot of what I am writing now would need a my favorite rock and roll from the 50's and 60’s in the background.
15. Five bloggers to be the next victims.
I will pass on this one.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Saturday, September 02, 2006
The Library
The best thing about summer was swimming lessons and the best thing about swimming lessons was the library. The Idaho Falls Municipal Swimming Pool was a short couple of blocks from the Idaho Falls Public Library. Woolworth’s was right around the corner, but that is a discussion for another day. My mother, once out of the house and that close to the library, could often be persuaded to drive the extra couple of blocks to the library. Once I entered those magic doors, the rest of the world fell away. It was just me and a big room full of books. Nobody had to tell me to be quiet. It was quite simply the most wonderful place I had ever been.
Looking back, it wasn’t such a large building. The library was made of purplish red bricks with a wide staircase flanked by imposing white pillars, not a common sight in Southeastern Idaho. The glass doors opened to the wonderful smell of old books and bindings. The bottom floor held tables for studying, the Children’s Section, the nonfiction, and, of course, the check out counter. Upstairs on a balcony that went clear around the building was the adult fiction. When I was in high school I heard about the section under lock and key which was also downstairs, inconveniently located behind the circulation desk.
My library card was pink cardboard with a metal piece on it that held my number. I signed that card when I was six or seven. I could check out any book in the Children’s Section by showing that card. I carried that responsibility with all the dignity my skinny shoulders could muster. I was so careful with the books from the library that the wholesale marking of books I was introduced to in college was shocking, a sacrilege. I walked along the stacks lightly touching the spines of the books. I met Pippi Longstocking and Mary Poppins, Caddie Woodlawn, My Friend Flicka, and Misty of Chincoteague Bay. I read about the Bobsey twins and a horse called Fury and Betsy, Tacey, and Tib. I wandered in The Secret Garden and cried over Black Beauty. The hardest thing about going to the library was choosing. I could only check out two books at a time. During swimming lesson season I would race through the books and go back for more the next day. I learned early on to pick long books for the winter, books I couldn’t get through in a day or two. It was much harder to get Mom to drive us to the library in the winter over the snowy roads. It was also harder to race through a book when I went to school five days a week and had homework as well as household chores.
When I reached the mature age of fourteen, I was allowed into the adult fiction section. That first climb up into the balcony opened new vistas for me. Now I read the Bronte sisters and Jane Austin. I fell in love with Heathcliff and Mr. D’Arcy. I got dreamily lost in the jungles of Green Mansions. I thrilled to the swashbuckling adventure stories like The Count of Monte Cristo. I swallowed authors whole and then went on to cultures. A Tale of Two Cities just naturally led to Les Miserables. When I was sixteen or seventeen I read War and Peace and couldn’t stop reading Russian literature until I had absorbed all the library had to offer. My parents were more than a little concerned about my Russian period, my father worked for the government and the Cold War was in full swing.
I graduated from high school and went to college, where I found that libraries could take up more than one room. Summer vacations I went to the library in Idaho Falls and checked out books to fill coffee breaks and lunch hours and those long summer evenings when I felt stirred up and restless. I married young and moved first to Menan, a tiny farming community, then to Shelley, another dot on the map. I read constantly during my first pregnancy, but not library books. I was too far from the library to check books out when I went to town. I just wasn’t sure when I would get back. I read some of the books on my mother in law’s shelf and reread some of my own books. After my beautiful baby girl was born, I found it even harder to get to the library, so I bought paperbacks. And so it happened that I didn’t get back to that hallowed hall before it was remodeled in the early ‘70s. I have driven by the new Idaho Falls Public Library; now even the new expanded version seems small. Worse, it looks modern. It isn’t the same place at all, although it occupies the same lot. The magic is gone.
Rinda Fullmer (who still loves libraries)
Copyright 2006
Looking back, it wasn’t such a large building. The library was made of purplish red bricks with a wide staircase flanked by imposing white pillars, not a common sight in Southeastern Idaho. The glass doors opened to the wonderful smell of old books and bindings. The bottom floor held tables for studying, the Children’s Section, the nonfiction, and, of course, the check out counter. Upstairs on a balcony that went clear around the building was the adult fiction. When I was in high school I heard about the section under lock and key which was also downstairs, inconveniently located behind the circulation desk.
My library card was pink cardboard with a metal piece on it that held my number. I signed that card when I was six or seven. I could check out any book in the Children’s Section by showing that card. I carried that responsibility with all the dignity my skinny shoulders could muster. I was so careful with the books from the library that the wholesale marking of books I was introduced to in college was shocking, a sacrilege. I walked along the stacks lightly touching the spines of the books. I met Pippi Longstocking and Mary Poppins, Caddie Woodlawn, My Friend Flicka, and Misty of Chincoteague Bay. I read about the Bobsey twins and a horse called Fury and Betsy, Tacey, and Tib. I wandered in The Secret Garden and cried over Black Beauty. The hardest thing about going to the library was choosing. I could only check out two books at a time. During swimming lesson season I would race through the books and go back for more the next day. I learned early on to pick long books for the winter, books I couldn’t get through in a day or two. It was much harder to get Mom to drive us to the library in the winter over the snowy roads. It was also harder to race through a book when I went to school five days a week and had homework as well as household chores.
When I reached the mature age of fourteen, I was allowed into the adult fiction section. That first climb up into the balcony opened new vistas for me. Now I read the Bronte sisters and Jane Austin. I fell in love with Heathcliff and Mr. D’Arcy. I got dreamily lost in the jungles of Green Mansions. I thrilled to the swashbuckling adventure stories like The Count of Monte Cristo. I swallowed authors whole and then went on to cultures. A Tale of Two Cities just naturally led to Les Miserables. When I was sixteen or seventeen I read War and Peace and couldn’t stop reading Russian literature until I had absorbed all the library had to offer. My parents were more than a little concerned about my Russian period, my father worked for the government and the Cold War was in full swing.
I graduated from high school and went to college, where I found that libraries could take up more than one room. Summer vacations I went to the library in Idaho Falls and checked out books to fill coffee breaks and lunch hours and those long summer evenings when I felt stirred up and restless. I married young and moved first to Menan, a tiny farming community, then to Shelley, another dot on the map. I read constantly during my first pregnancy, but not library books. I was too far from the library to check books out when I went to town. I just wasn’t sure when I would get back. I read some of the books on my mother in law’s shelf and reread some of my own books. After my beautiful baby girl was born, I found it even harder to get to the library, so I bought paperbacks. And so it happened that I didn’t get back to that hallowed hall before it was remodeled in the early ‘70s. I have driven by the new Idaho Falls Public Library; now even the new expanded version seems small. Worse, it looks modern. It isn’t the same place at all, although it occupies the same lot. The magic is gone.
Rinda Fullmer (who still loves libraries)
Copyright 2006
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