LSA News

No. 84, September 2007

If you have anything you want in the next newsletter, send it to lsaweb@lists.uoregon.edu .

Gonzolicious
by Mandi Garcia
photos by Laura Damiani

El Invisible wows the crowd

The 2007 Gonzo Revue was an event fraught with tragedy, chaos and laughter. It began with an informational presentation by Tiffany Thornton of Documents, who offered a look into the intricacies of the Gonzo planning process with her first-rate PowerPoint presentation. The schematic overview expressed how the combination of time, energy, uncertainty, chaos and super-heated thinking culminate into pure love, as the event morphs into what we know and appreciate.

Aimee Yogi and Erica O'Grady continue the tradition of Hukilau at Gonzo

Next, Dave Baker, current Chair of the Program Committee, welcomed and thanked the audience for coming to witness the spectacle. Baker then introduced this year's Master of Ceremonies, Mr. John Russell. (Some people may wonder, does this guy really work here? But indeed he does.) A virgin to Gonzo, but a man willing to step into the darkness and bask in the unknown, Russell gave an impressive start by asking Barbara Butler for an adjective to describe cheese...she said "yellow.'" He continued by asking Andrew Bonamici for the name of someone who works in the library...he said "Deborah Carver."

The performances began with a duet by Ben Farrell on the clarinet and Cara Okano, a student employee from the Law Library, on the piano. They performed a gentle flurry of musical steps from Gerald Finzi's "Five Bagatelles" that began this year's journey.

MC Russell asked Eliz Breakstone where one might find laundry, and she said on the "floor."

Jen Lindsey followed with the worst poem in the English language. Fittingly called "A Tragedy," this poem by Theophilus Marzials was published in 1874 in his book of poems entitled The Gallery of Pigeons. Lindsey delivered it with a measured cadence that gave skillful justice to its melodic sound. "Plop." Her hilarious rendition received a shattering applause that gave way to the next electrifying performance.

(story continued)

The View from Hidden Spring
by Pam DeLaittre

Our farm runs in cycles related to seasons and time spans. For instance, it takes 21 days to hatch eggs. We incubated three different small batches of eggs from our Barnevelder Bantums this year and have five chicks in total from this endeavor. Even when you keep a rooster in with your hens, he doesn't fertilize all the eggs the hens lay. We have also discovered that in the first 24 hours of a chick's life there is a high mortality rate. In the last batch we incubated 10 eggs. We had five chicks hatch, but only three made it to 24 hours, and that is in a completely controlled environment. This is the reason that the chicks you buy at the feed store, or Coastal, or a hatchery are at least a day old.

Mr. T photo by Kirk Clute

Along with the cycle of egg laying, there is the cycle of the sheep. We will put the rams out with the girls this weekend. We put them out on Labor Day each year; it's easy for us to remember the date, and that way we have our lambs in February so that in March when they begin to mature and become ruminants, the grass will be starting to come on and there will be lots to eat. This summer I sold a starter flock to a new family friend. The Sorters purchased four of my older ewes and their lambs for their 25 acres in Pleasant Hill. Then they came back weeks later to buy all the ewe lambs from this spring with the exception of two that I am adding to my flock. They now have a nice small flock of about a dozen, and I will loan them a ram in October as they want their lambs born in March. My flock is a bit smaller as a result. I retained eight ewes including my old sweet girl Mariah, who is my oldest sheep with the exception of ol' Lightning, my champion ram who is 12 years old and still manages to get Mariah pregnant each year. I also have two yearling ewes that are daughters of two of the ewes I sold and will carry on their bloodlines, and two ewe lambs from this year—one of which is finally a daughter of old Mariah and Lightning, a cross I have been trying to get for seven years since I sold her first daughter. She has presented me with twin ram lambs for five years!

So as of this weekend I will be "exposing" ten ewes to rams. The lambs from this year will be sequestered to grow for a year and mature. On some farms, they do put the ewe lambs out with rams, thinking that if they have a lamb it's that much more money in the bank. I'm not that mercenary I guess—it just seems to me that 7-month-old lambs are still little girls and need to grow up themselves without the demands of pregnancy.

Then there is the cycle of the Dexter cows. We have a herd of five Dexters now. On July 3rd we reduced it to four, as Wellington, having reached the age and attitude of no return, left our farm to return in a different form several weeks later and fill our freezer. Five days later, Hazel gave birth to his son Mr. T, who is beautiful. He will grow and live at our farm for 18 to 22 months until he too reaches the age and attitude of no return.

Life is cycles, and nowhere is that clearer or more defined than on a farm such as ours. May your cycles bring you joy, growth and long life.

Ni Hao...y'all
by Paul Harvey

“The Mission of Special Olympics Oregon is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities.”

The Oregon delegation to the 2007 Special Olympics World Games

Every four years, Special Olympians from around the world compete in World Games, just like "real" Olympians. In 2003 the games were held in Dublin, Ireland, marking the first time they took place outside of the United States. I was extremely fortunate to have been selected as a coach for Team USA. It was a few days after I was selected that I found out what I would be coaching: bowling. Yes, bowling. So began my bowling coaching career.

I have been coaching this Special Olympics sport for just over five years now, and was the head bowling coach for Oregon at the inaugural U.S. National Games held last year in Iowa. This year, in Eugene-Springfield there are 85 registered bowlers, ranging in age from 9 to 58.

2007 is an Olympic year. The 12th Special Olympics World Summer Games will be held October 2-11 in Shanghai, China. The United States delegation is much smaller this time, and competition for coaching positions was more intense, but I was again selected to be a bowling coach. I was assigned four athletes who it would be my responsibility to coach, and to look out for when we are further away from home than any of us have ever been. I was given a section of the S's. Smith, Smith, Snively and Swan. Not some ambulance-chasing law firm, but "my guys."

(story continued)

Sunken Garden
Butchart Gardens, Victoria, British Columbia
photo by Terry McQuilkin

"Will-ful" Law Librarian wins Fact File

In our August Fact File contest, we sent you a "bill" — 10 of them in fact. We asked you to identify from our clues 10 famous individuals named William or some variant of the name. Three staff members correctly named all ten; by random drawing, Stephanie Midkiff, of the Law Library, was picked as the winner of a gift certificate worth $10.00 toward purchases at the UO Bookstore. Kudos also to John Russell, Reference and Research Services and Victoria Mitchell, Science Library, who also scored perfectly in our contest!

The answers:

1. William Tell
2. William Shatner
3. William McKinley
4. Willie Mays
5. William Harvey
6. Billy the Kid
7. Billy Joel
8. Will Shortz
9. Billy Bob Thornton
10. William of Ockham

Events of Interest

As well as featuring upcoming LSA events, we'd like to get the word out about events staff are involved in that might be of interest to co-workers. If you'd like the world, or at least your co-workers, to know about something cool coming up, please email Harriett Smith or lsaweb.

LSA EVENTS

Thursday, November 29, 2007: The Library Staff Association Sale will be held from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room. The Sale features such things as knitted items, jewelry, jams and preserves, cookies, rummage sale treasures, cards, icons, cutting boards, and even bulletin boards! The only thing we don't offer for sale at the Sale is books—unless of course they are hand-constructed blank books, or hand-press printed books from our own bookbuilders and printers. So all you with craft or cooking skills, or closets to clean—this is your advance notice. The rest of us will save our pennies and do our holiday shopping at the Sale. Rumor has it that LSA will not be cashing any customer's checks til after payday—and in this case, rumor is true!

Tuesday, December 11, 2007: Mark your calendars now for the LSA Holiday Potluck in the Knight Library Browsing Room from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. We'll join friends and co-workers from throughout the Libraries for the usual festive socialization and culinary bliss. Watch this space for more details in November!

NON-LSA EVENTS

Through October 30, 2007: Slug Queen Exhibit at the Eugene Public Library. David Landazuri writes "As some of you may know, the Society for the Legitimization of the Ubiquitous Gastropod (S.L.U.G.) this year crowned their 25th queen, and to commemorate their quarter century of slimy royalty, the Eugene Public Library has mounted an exhibit documenting their unique, only-in-Eugene history. The exhibit can be viewed in 6 cases on the 2nd and 3rd floors of the main branch, through October 30th, 2007. In addition, viewers can take a quiz (all the answers of which may be discovered in a careful reading of the materials in the cases) which may entitle them to win an item of queenly memorabilia: books by Leigh Anne Jasheway-Bryant (2007 Queen Glo), CDs by Shandi Sinnamon (2005 Queen Frank) or Girl Circus (2001 Queen Darcy), reading glasses from Queen Inspira, a Queen Slugretha reading light, etc. In a future edition of the LSA News, I hope to share my almost-insider impressions of this local institution of tacky glamour in an account tentatively entitled: 'I walked with a S.L.U.G. Queen : fear and longing on the slime trail'. Sincerely, El Invisible. P.S. There are lots of S.L.U.G. queen photos out there; Tara Kemp put up a web page with a few hundred images from the 2007 pageant."

photo by Queen Inspira

Thursday, September 13 and September 27, 2007: The Eugene Sacred Harp Singers welcome singers of all voice types and abilities to join them every 2nd and 4th Thursday. The informal sings are held from 7:30 to 9 p.m. at the Housing Co-op Community Room, which is on the alley between Adams Street and Blair Blvd., and West 4th and West 5th, in Eugene. You have to park on Adams or Blair, and walk through the alley, but it's well-lit and the potholes are (temporarily) dry. We sing from the Sacred Harp hymnal but are not a religious group. We usually have extra books to loan for the evening. Contact Jean Murphy or Harriett Smith for further details.

Announcements:

People in the Library

edited by Jen Lindsey

Welcome:

15 seconds of fame: Staff poems in print

Congratulations:

Goodbye:

Staff announcements and photos by Jen Lindsey unless otherwise indicated

Last updated: 24 October, 2007
lsaweb@lists.uoregon.edu