Link It Up!

Here are a few links I've come across in the past few days and thought you might find interesting:

• Read a detailed analysis of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s finances!

• The first words to be transmitted across the prehistoric version of the internet were...LO? (It was supposed to be “LOGIN” but the system crashed.)

• I’ve been fascinated lately with Shorpy.com, a collection of old photographs on varying subjects. Warning: if you have any real work to do, do not click this link! Shorpy will suck you in!

Meebo's Un-Drought

We're supposed to get a lot of rain today, with one estimate forecasting up to four inches in some places. It feels like it has been an exceptionally soggy fall here in Mississippi. One of our Meebo patrons must have been thinking along the same line because they asked this question last night: What is the opposite of a drought? (The patron specified that they did not want to use the word flood.)

I turned to our print thesauri first, but wasn't able to find anything. Then, I found an online thesaurus that listed some antonyms for words similar to drought (absence, famine, thirst, etc...) These were some of my favorite suggestions: abundance, surplus, plenty, monsoon, feast. I liked all of these as general antonyms for drought, but I was searching for something a bit more "meteorological" in nature. (I assumed our Meebo friend was, too.)

I checked out a few of our print weather encyclopedias, but again, without an actual word to look up, I was stuck. Turning back to the internet, I "did the Google," as my dad likes to say, and stumbled on this website. After bandying about the words monsoon, deluge, and flood, pluvial seemed to stick out as the most apt opposite for drought. Here's what the OED had to say:

A. adj. 1. a. Of or relating to rain; characterized by much rain, rainy.

B. n. 2 Geol. A pluvial period.

This quotation that was used to illustrate the word was the cincher:

1970 W. BRAY & D. TRUMP Dict. Archaeol. 184/1 Prolonged periods of high rainfall are called pluvials, and are marked by changes in lake levels and in flora and fauna.

Oh, dear. It's started raining again.

"pluvial." OED Online. Dec. 2008. Oxford University Press. 30 October 2009 http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/50182124.

A Nugget Goldmine!

The tagline under the title of our blog is, “We post the interesting and kooky things we find while looking for the answers to reference questions.” Last week, I got a couple of questions that were pretty straightforward, but on the way to finding their answers, I learned a lot of other excellent (and definitely kooky) nuggets of information.

The original request was “When did Johnny Horton die?” The answer was November 5, 1960. However, get this: Johnny Horton was a country singer whose wife, Billie Jean, was the widow of Hank Williams. So Hank and Billie Jean got married October 18, 1952, and on January 1, 1953, Williams died. According to the super-reliable Wikipedia, Billie Jean posthumously divorced Williams, which is weird but very interesting. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of anyone getting posthumously divorced, although there was some question about the validity of their marriage, which was only settled in 1975! Williams’ first ex-wife, Audrey Sheppard, wanted to be known as The Official Widow of Hank Williams [and thus have the right to half his estate] and allegedly paid Billie Jean $30,000 to retain this title. So anyway, back to Johnny Horton: he apparently had premonitions that he would be killed by a drunk driver, and on November 5, 1960, this came true. In semi-related news, I also learned that Hank Williams had spina bifida, that he nicknamed Hank Williams, Jr. “Bocephus” after a ventriloquist dummy (!), and that Billie Jean Jones Eshlimar Williams Horton never remarried.

Someone wanted to know “How popular was the name Sawyer last year?” According to the Social Security Administration, Sawyer was ranked #225 in popularity in 2008. Their website lets you see the top 10, 20, 50, 100, 500, or 1000 names--this is fascinating! I might’ve gotten a little carried away, as I felt compelled to create this chart, which shows the first and 1000th most popular names for boys and girls, every ten years from 1880-2000, plus 2008.



Some other names you also need to know about: in 1880, Katherine ranked as the 994th most popular name...for a boy. In 1900, Gertrude ranked as the 997th most popular name...for a boy (Dorothy was #985). Elizabeth ranked #999 and #998 in 1960 and 1970, respectively...for a boy. Were these parents just trying to honor female family members by naming their sons these traditionally girly names, or were they just mean?

And finally, there was no request involved, but the awesome book Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World did teach me about this primitive Balinese funeral tradition:

“After death, a kind of Chinese water torture is performed on the body; it is laid on a table, and stream of water slowly drips onto the body. Just below this setup, the family places a cradle filled with unhusked rice so that as the water runs off the body it drips directly onto the rice, along with any liquid leaching out of the body”(6). Oh, then the rice is cooked as usual, formed into the shape of a human, and eaten. Yum!

Rogak, Lisa. Death Warmed Over: Funeral Food, Rituals, and Customs from Around the World. Ten Speed Press, 2004.

Fashion Question

Earlier today a meebo visitor asked "what type of tie should I wear with a red, white, and blue striped shirt." To answer this question I consulted Francois Chaille's masterwork The Book of Ties. Mr. Chaille explains that patterned shirts are difficult to coordinate but, "with such shirts it is often preferable to let a tie play the role of echoing colors and opposing patterns." So, obviously, the pattern should NOT be striped but rather a checked pattern, or in my opinion, a solid color (or something with subtle lines). While on the topic of colors; Mr. Chaille advises to follow "the tried and true method of emphasizing one of the colors in your jacket or shirt by repeating it in your tie." Good luck with the outfit and keep those fashion questions coming.


Chaille, Francois. The Book of Ties. New York: Flammarion, 1994. p. 147

I Am NOT A Luddite

Late last week, we received a new book entitled The Librarian's Book of Quotes. As I was flipping through it, this particular passage caught my eye:

I mourn the loss of the old card catalogs, not because I'm a luddite, but because the oaken trays of yesteryear offered the researcher an element of random utility and felicitous surprise through encounters with adjacent cards, information by chance that is different in kind from the computer's ramified but rigid order.

Annie Proulx, "On the Road to Prose" (93).

I remember the card catalogs, and libraries, of my youth with great fondness. I found it soothing to read such thoughtful words; however, I think that libraries have come a long way. Are there any things that you miss regarding the way libraries were while you were growing up? Or do you think that we're experiencing some great paces forward in the library world?

Eckstrand, Tatyana. The Librarian's Book of Quotes. Chicago : American Library Association, 2009.

Above Your Eyes Your Hair Hangs

One of our meebo patrons left a question for us this morning regarding the etymology of the hairstyling word bangs. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary states that the term is probably derived from the word bangtail, a word that was first noted in 1878 when used in reference to a certain style of horse's tail.

Not only does this popular hairstyle appear to be named after a large farm animal, the style itself has a somewhat steamy past. According the The Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History, 15th century clergy ruled that women who cut and curled their hair into bangs represented "a slide into mortal sin" (47). These poor men of the cloth thought that women who spent time fixing their bangs were consorting with the devil. Primpers!

By the way, do you remember this song from They Might Be Giants? It sure makes me feel a lot happier about bangs than horse tails and those fire-breathing monks!


Sherrow, Victoria. "Bangs." Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2006.
"Bangs." Merriam Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. 10th ed. 1998.

Great Books for Young Readers!

Last week I was lucky enough to represent the Mississippi Library Commission at the State Fair. Every year MLC has a booth at the Trade Mart to tell visitors about our services and to pass out goodies. Telling people about Learn-A-Test was fun, no doubt, but the highlight of my experience had to be meeting so many young people who love their libraries and love to read. I had several young ladies tell me about the trials and tribulations facing Kirsten, Chrissa, and the other American Girls. It was so refreshing to see how animated these young readers became when talking about their favorite characters and I could not help but think about my first experiences with the joys of reading. I decided to describe a couple of my favorite books and invited Tracy and Brandie to share their favorite first books.

Here’s what Brandie had to say:
"The Fear Street series by R.L. Stine.
I’m not sure if the books in this series would classify as children’s books, but I read them as a child, and I loved them. Each novel tells a horror story that involves young adults or teens. I was addicted to the series because all the stories were so vivid and downright scary. It’s a great series for older kids, but some of the themes and descriptions within them may be a little too intense for younger children. This is from the same author responsible for the popular
Goosebumps series, which is aimed at a younger age group than the Fear Street audience.

Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar.
I ran across this book a few months ago while cleaning out my closet, and the stories inside still had me laughing aloud. This particular title is actually the first of a three-book series. It’s also the funniest of the three. The book is a collection of short stories about a school where weird, funny, and creepy occurrences are the norm. It’s a great book for kids of all ages."

Tracy, as you can imagine, loved books as a young lady. Here’s how she explains her favorite books as a young reader:

"I have to admit I read a LOT of Sweet Valley High books when I was a preteen, but I read a lot of other things, too. The ones that stick out in my memory are the following:

The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin. This 1979 Newbery Medal winner is about 16 strangers who are named as potential heirs in a man’s will. They’re told that one of them took the man’s life, and the person who figures it all out will win the estate. Lots of good characters, nothing naughty enough to arouse the suspicions of nosy parents, and a genuinely entertaining read. True confession time: I re-read this a few months ago and it was just as good!

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg. What child doesn’t dream of running away from home, but gets stuck on the details of such things like food and shelter? In this novel, Claudia Kincaid and her little brother James run away with a plan: they head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, where they bathe in the fountain (and raid the bottom for coins people have thrown in) and sleep in the furniture exhibits. Not only is that an awesome runaway solution, but they become interested in a statue of an angel thought to be created by Michelangelo, which leads them to further adventures. I have a baby at home, but if he doesn’t like this book when he gets older, I am sending him away.

Even though I grew up in the 70s and 80s, for some reason I was fairly obsessed with the 50s. My entire perception of high school and dating came from reruns of "Father Knows Best" (Princess had a date with a different boy every day of the week!) and from the teenybopper novels of Beverly Cleary. My two favorites were Fifteen (Jane meets Stan, who eventually gives her his ID bracelet; swoon!)and Jean and Johnny (Jean is a nerd and Johnny is popular; this is a bad combo, but it turns out ok in the end). It goes unsaid that my actual dating experiences in high school were a bit different."

As for me, my favorite book growing up was Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert O’Brien. I read this book going home every day on the school bus. I remember being asked by one of the older students why I was reading outside of class. Talking owls, secret rosebushes, genetically mutated rats that swordfight? Are you kidding? I was completely hooked after this book.

Another one of my favorite books growing up was Sounder by William Armstrong. Sounder is a great book about a boy, his dog, and a stolen ham. It may not sound that exciting, but I think Sounder is a great book that shows the value of education and empathy. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

So that’s a short list of some of our most beloved books. We would love to hear from some of our readers’ favorite titles.
Happy reading!