CGHS Library

Pro Football Hall of Fame

Go to the official Pro Football Hall of Fame site and virtually explore the museum, access Hall of Fame members, view multimedia and digital images, and learn about the history of football.

San Francisco 49ers running back Ricky Watters scored a playoff record 30 points and five touchdowns against the New York Giants in the 1993 divisional round of the playoffs.

Vague Recommendations

If you're sitting on the western side of the library and also happen to be using the northernmost computer, then you are in great position to read a good book.  Not only are you in the library, but I can give you step by step instructions on how to find a specific book within the labyrinthine corridors of shelves and stacks; a book you will actually enjoy.  In fact, I guarantee your satisfaction, or I will refund your time.

            It’s simple to find the book.  Stand up and look to your left. You'll see Some Small Shelves. The book isn't on those shelves.  Far to the right of Some Small Shelves are Some Big Shelves.  Head in this direction.  About waist high, you will notice a medium-sized book in cornflower blue.  This is your target.  Once you have picked up the book, you are well on your way to finding the book you want to read.  Place Cornflower Blue back on the shelf and take a right.  Roughly seven and three fourths feet to the left and two shelves down, or up, give or take a shelf, is your book.

Enjoy.

-scott

It Should Come As No Surprise

An unexpected three day weekend--and what a surprise it was--gave me a chance to read Lynne Truss's delightful EATS SHOOTS AND LEAVES:  The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation.  In between bouts of thinking, "Shouldn't I BE somewhere?", I was reading a book about punctuation and, yes, enjoying it. (By the way, how badly did I screw up the punctuation in that last sentence? Somehow, it does not seem quite right.)

Doesn't this author look like she'd be lots of fun?

      

Well, maybe.

". . . I'm well aware there is little profit in asking for sympathy for sticklers. We are not the easiest people to feel sorry for. We refuse to patronise any shop with checkouts for 'eight items or less' (because it should be 'fewer'), and we got very worked up after 9/11 not because of Osama bin-Laden but because people on the radio kept saying 'enormity' when they meant 'magnitude', and we really hate that."  (from the introduction)

Homecoming @ your library

Watchmen

The critically acclaimed graphic novel WATCHMEN has at last been made into a full length motion picture, but, to be honest, I would rather talk about the appearance of writer Alan Moore.  He was actually thrown out of high school for selling LSD and never graduated.  I was not surprised to hear this, because I know how Alan Moore looks.  He has a tangle of long, tousled dark hair with the beard to match.  He looks even more disturbed than Charles Manson.

            WATCHMEN is essentially about normal human beings who choose to be more than what they are.  The heroes of WATCHMEN were not born heroes, and most don’t have powers.  They are simply men and women who have chosen to become extraordinary, and they dedicate their lives to making the world a safer place to live.   The only watchman with any real powers is Dr. Manhattan, whose origins alone make for an entertaining story.   

-scott

Vintage Baseball Cards

This collection presents a Library of Congress treasure -- 2,100 early baseball cards dating from 1887 to 1914. The cards show such legendary figures as Ty Cobb stealing third base for Detroit, Tris Speaker batting for Boston, and pitcher Cy Young posing formally in his Cleveland uniform. Other notable players include Connie Mack, Walter Johnson, King Kelly, and Christy Mathewson.

Cigarette card collector Benjamin K. Edwards preserved these baseball cards in albums with more than 12,000 other cards on many subjects. After his death, Edwards' daughter gave the albums to noted poet and Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg, who donated them to the Library's Prints and Photographs Division in 1954.

Enough Said

Rats

I read Robert Sullivan's RATS over Christmas break.  

I know.

Anyway, Sullivan spent many of his nights over the course of a year in a New York city alley observing rat habits.  His days were apparently spent in the New York Public Library because the man includes way more rat facts than any sane person would want to know.

Go ahead, ask me anything.

If you'd rather take the short course, I thought this blog post was interesting.  

Fictional Fiction

Looking for a good read? Keep looking.  I recently read the recently released release Galaxy Girls.  I don’t know what it was that drew me to the book, but I suspect it was the title, or maybe it was the blaze orange lips on the cover coupled with broken hearts and celestial bodies.  

Galaxy Girls gets right to the point.  It’s about some girls from a galaxy seemingly based on our own.  In the world of the galaxy girls, though, doughnuts are good for you and rollerblading is still cool.  Imagine the future as it’s portrayed in Back to the Future, with worse clothing.  Essentially, five girls in moon boots bounce around their bustling metropolis shopping for crappy outfits and wearing too much plastic.  Of course they’re each beautiful in their own unique and distinguished way and have their share of comic misadventures, particularly with the metrosexual robot-like futureboys.  (All the boys in the future play water polo and are occupied with generally inept skullduggery.)   Who doesn’t love the classic story of the slightly overweight girl with a heart of gold winning the heart of the crew cut, water polo playing, captain-of-the-team type boy? 

I like to rate a book based on how it makes me feel.  After I read the last sentence, I like to lie back and think about the book’s events, mood, and style.  After Galaxy Girls, I can only say that I felt depressed--the kind of depressed that makes you slink your way to the fridge under the cover of darkness so you can eat a jar of strawberry jam while you lock yourself in the bathroom for the next several hours.  The kind of depressed that makes you eat that jam with nothing but your fingers.  “This is it”, you will say to yourself, “this is how it ends. No friends, no toast, not even a spoon.”

-scott

Stretch

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