Institute for Information Literacy, Burlington, Vermont

I was lucky to spend a week at an intensive information literacy retreat in Burlington, Vermont in July. The location was beautiful and I learned a lot -- some of it I'll put to use immediately at work and much of it will be useful to me as the information literacy program at my library matures. It was an awesome experience. One attendee described it as, "a vision quest minus the peyote." I met some amazing instruction librarians who are working on issues similar to mine, and much of what I brought home came from conversations with my cohort. Here are just a few photos:

The Institute was held at Champlain College. This is a view from the 3rd floor of the library. You can see Lake Champlain in the distance. Burlington is such a beautiful place!

Church Street, Burlington's downtown area
Of course I went to Ben & Jerry's. It comes from Vermont!
Some of my new friends from Immersion celebrating democracy (which is, in part, what librarianship is all about).
Most of our time was spent working . . . .
But on the last day we had a special performance by the faculty. Ha! Respected and esteemed librarians singing and dancing -- love it.
Speaking of singing and dancing, we had an outing to the Von Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, Vermont.
Where we had an Austrian dinner (yum)
And a singalong. (You can see the harp accompanist in the distance.)
I was very excited about the singing, and even jumped up for a solo rendition of "Edelweiss" (a la Georg Von Trapp at the Salzburg Music Festival)
What can I say? I'm a giant fan of The Sound of Music.

Alaskan Adventure 2010, Part 2

Here are a couple more pictures of Denali:

Our day in the park was so beautiful!

After spending a day and a night in Denali National Park we traveled to Anchorage, and from Anchorage to Whittier, where we embarked on an afternoon cruise in Prince William Sound to see some glaciers:

This is Surprise Glacier, which we saw calve! (Calving means it loses a chunk of ice into the water.)

While in Anchorage, we also hiked up to Thunderbird Falls. So pretty!

We had a great time on the trip, spending time with family and seeing new sights. Thanks to Sheri for hosting all of us and planning the trip!

Bob and Emily (Mike's brother and sister-in-law) traveled with us to Alaska, and they've just posted an 8-part series on the trip on their blog. Bob took some amazing pictures that you can see on their blog: http://bibbidibobilyboo.blogspot.com/

Alaskan Adventure 2010, Part 1

The parts of Alaska that we saw last week were so beautiful. There was rainforest, taiga, tundra, and boreal forest. There were moose, sea otters, seals, and all kinds of birds. We had a fantastic time with half of Mike's family (Sheri, Nick, Bob & Emily) and we missed the other half (Garth, Rachel & Jacob). It was light for 21 hours of the day! We arrived at 1:30 a.m. on Saturday, July 3rd and were totally disoriented by the weird twilight (it looked like maybe 4 or 5 in the afternoon).

Here are some favorite pictures, from our various stops along the way:

Mike loving his kettle corn at the Fairbanks farmer's market
At the Alaska Pipeline near Fairbanks
Downtown Fairbanks (check out those hanging baskets!)
Some of the Terrys at Pioneer Park in Fairbanks (hanging baskets again)
Mike with Santa at North Pole, AK
Mike riding a salmon at the Salmon Bake (yum!)
University of Alaska Fairbanks, Library
Sheri's dogs, Zeus & Ziggy, rode around with us a little in the Yukon
We took a Riverboat Discovery Tour on the Chena River. Beautiful!
We saw this racing dog team while on the river. They're Iditarod champions!
Our riverboat tour stopped in a (replica of an) Athabascan Village. Here's one of the cabins. The sod on top works great as insulation.
This old Polaris replaced a dog sled team. But, some of the dog sledders told us that dogs are much better because they don't break down or run out of fuel.
After spending a few days in Fairbanks, we went to Denali National Park. Mt. McKinley, aka Denali, aka "the mountain" was visible, but I didn't get a great picture of it (see above). At 20,320 feet it's the highest peak in North America!
Fireweed in Denali.

More on Denali, Anchorage, and glaciers in the next post! Coming soon . . .

For even more photos, see our Alaska 2010 set on Flickr.

American Library Association Conference in Washington, D.C.

(No, that's not really Obama. It's Faux-Bama!)

I just spent 4 days in our nation's capital with 20,000+ librarians. ALA is the biggest conference of the year, with all kinds of librarians attending: public, school, academic, etc. I attended my committee meetings, went to some interesting discussion groups and programs, heard Toni Morrison give the keynote address, and talked to vendors about their products. I also met up with friends from graduate school, ate good food, and saw some of the sights! I'd never been to D.C. before, so I was particularly excited to do some museums and monuments. See all the photos I took here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/14784472@N07/sets/72157624387631896/

Brother #2's Wedding

This post is overdue -- one of my brothers got married early in June and Mike and I went to Idaho for the wedding. It was lovely. Justin is a very lucky kid to have married Annie. She's smart, funny, and beautiful. Here are a few of my favorite photos from the festivities:The happy couple

My brothers, Annie & me after the wedding
All the family together!
The Bowles family, minus Annie the bride, at the reception the evening before the wedding.

Carl Kasell's voice on our home answering machine!

So, we don't actually have a home answering machine, but we do have Carl Kasell's voice! Listen below, or call us between 9am and 5pm and hear the prize that I won on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me, from National Public Radio.

Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me!

Most readers of this blog (family members and Facebook friends) already know that last weekend I was a listener-contestant on the NPR news quiz (from Chicago Public Radio) Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! But, since this blog functions not just as a news-spreading tool but also a scrapbook/journal, I thought I'd record the experience here.

It was really fun to play on one of my favorite radio programs! Mike and I went to a live taping of the show in Chicago in August 2008, which was one of our favorite Chicago adventures, so I had an idea of how the taping would go. A few months ago I called the radio program to see if I could be a contestant. Then one of the producers called me just a few weeks ago to let me know that I'd been chosen. (I don't know why. Because I live in Laramie, WY? Because I'm a librarian? Because my voice sounded good on their voicemail? I have no idea how they choose contestants.) So the producer called me at the beginning of the show and I waited for the host, Peter Sagal, to ask me some questions. I'd been following the news extra closely that week and got all three questions right. My prize? Carl Kasell's voice on my home answering machine!
Now we just have to figure out what we want Carl to say and email the script to producer Emily Ecton. Then Carl will record the message in studio and we'll get a CD in the mail. Call me in a few weeks to see what he says!