What a difference a skull makes

RL Stine's old "Goosebumps" series of light, punny, horror fiction is having a major resurgence in our school library at the moment.

I was remembering back to my own primary schooling in the 60s. I had a great rapport with my inspirational teacher-librarian, Janette McKenny (later Janette Mercer when she married my equally-inspirational Year 4 teacher, years after they left the school). One day, Mrs McKenny decided that we needed to revamp the "Ghost Stories" section of the library, and several of us were elected to create a papier-mache skull, that would act as a scary bookend for the section of old wooden shelves (which had been lined with black crepe paper and a sign made out of spooky letters). We spent several hours tearing up newspaper and soaking it in a garbage can of water, but none of us could remember what held wet papier-mache together as it started to dry.

Mrs McKenny remember that papier-mache needed starch, and bought a box of the stuff on her way to school. We scampered off to the storeroom and sprinkled in the powder. Again, the papier-mache refused to clump together. Imagine our horror when Mrs McKenny asked, "Are you ready for me to boil up the starch?"

Luckily, we found another box of starch in the art store room and a quantity was boiled up, the papier-mache was drained and we began to create our skull. The paper was so sodden, it was essentially impossible to get it to hold its shape, even with the addition of thick, warm, boiled starch. After school, Mrs McKenny drove me home with it, and one of the boys who'd been part of the team at school came over to help me have another go at moulding it. I forfeited a "Noddy" beachball from the toy box and we constructed the skull around it. My mother then dutifully took the board holding the model in and out of the sun every day - for about two weeks? - until the papier-mache had hardened. It never needed painting, the newspaper pulp having taken on a suitable, consistent, grey colour from its many hours soaking in the water.

The skull sat in pride of place in the library at Arncliffe Public School for many years after I departed for high school. Gosh - maybe it's still there?

I was pondering this old anecdote the other day as I passed a local fancy dress shop and, when I saw the skull (pictured above), I realised how perfectly it would dress up our sometimes-popular "Goosebumps" shelf. $13 for a lightweight, lifelike, plastic skull seemed like a great investment - just so long as I didn't have to endure the weeks of waiting for overly-sodden, overly-starched, papier-mache to harden!

And the effect? "Goosebumps" books are once again flavour of the month with our students, and have been flying off the shelf all month. Several of the students borrowing them are saying, "This is my first time borrowing this year!" and "My first ever chapter book!". Maybe I should soon try moving them on to a few other spooky authors and titles now that they're hooked by the reading bug? But at the moment, apparently, "'Goosebumps' rulez!"

A fishy story

Sometimes I think it would be great to have a fish tank in the school library where I work. Fish tanks are so... calming. Well, that's the theory. Usually, I manage to talk myself out of such a whimsy.

I had a large aquarium in my old library. The principal bought it, on a whim, from a casual relief janitor - and it functioned quite adequately for about a year. The students loved searching for the little "Where's Wally?" toy (in his swimming ring, snorkle and goggles) which decorated the bottom of the tank. (That's "Where's Waldo?" for my US readers.)

We eventually lost the last of our first batch of goldfish, so I cleaned out the tank one Friday and had the new water circulating all weekend, ready to buy more fish.

Of course, when we came in on the Monday morning the tank was bone dry: the water had leaked through a faulty seam (weakened during my strenuous cleaning?), and saturated the carpet! We had a special event (visiting children's author, Libby Gleeson) occurring in the library later in the week and we had to hire special air blowers to dry out the carpet in time. What a mess!

One six-week holiday, I put in a four-week food block to keep the fish happy for the time we'd be away from school. Someone said, "But what happens when the fish get hungry in the fifth week?"

I joked that "Of course, Survival of the Fittest" would be played out - and boy, did I feel bad when one poor goggle-eyed black moor got skeletonised.

A capital idea

There's something rather ironic about me calling this blog "Have Phaser, Will Travel" and the only time it goes dormant is when I'm travelling.

One reason is that I don't have a laptop (yet) and, when on vacation, the last thing I really want to do is race off to an Internet cafe, and do hilarious and/or witty blog entries on-the-spot, live from the scene. While the concept is exciting, I guess, I'm not so sure it's a good idea to announce to the world, "Hey, I'm on vacation, so's the housemate, the abode is unattended - and I even have the watchdog on holiday with me, not guarding the house, while I blog to you daily from this poky cafe!"


We are taking the
blankie, aren't we?"

A complete break from the Internet is not a bad idea, either. If I had a laptop, I just know I'd never get anything else - but a little blogging - done. I almost cherish time away from emails and web surfing so I can get some Star Trek novels read!

We departed on Saturday morning and were at our Downer (ACT), dog-friendly bed 'n' breakfast by the afternoon, having spent a brief time in beautiful Berrima on the way. We bought some pumpkin bread there, that will taste scrummy, and some sweets from the good ol' Lolly Swagman to keep us munching along the way.

On Friday night, before we left, I'd paid a few bills via the Internet. Then I realised during the car trip south - to my horror - that I'd forgotten to organise payment for some vintage Star Trek metal miniatures I'd won from a US seller on eBay earlier in the week. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet and public libraries, I effortlessly booked 30 mins Internet time at Dickson Public Library yesterday afternoon, just before closing. I even managed to check my emails online, change my PayPal password and send $$$$$ to my toy seller. Whew!

And no, despite the date and time on this entry, I didn't write it (or the next five entries) in the library, although i was tempted. I did it the old fashioned way - handwritten notes on a scrap of paper. Yay post-vacation "Post Options" hyperlinks!

Sunday's magic number: 91.0. Yeah, the French food and red wine did it, I think.

Making mentoring meaningful

Well, that was funny! Tonight was episode #1 of "The Librarians", a new Australian TV series on the ABC, in the timeslot recently held by the hilarious and pithy "Summer Heights High".

I happened to say to a few friends that I expected the series to be successful and funny, and probably rather close to the bone re my experiences in school libraries, studying with teacher-librarians at university, working at SCIS/Scan for the Department of Education & Training's State Office, and my connections with ALIA (the Australian Library & Information Association).

Yesterday and today, I was relieved at school (by another teacher-librarian) so I could act as mentor for a fellow teacher-librarian undergoing her training. Well, as if I'd read the script ahead of time, the plot of the first episode of "The Librarians" saw the main female character, frustrated Frances (Robyn Butler) dealing with Book Week, and being a mentor for the main hunky male character (played by Josh Lawson). When she should have had eyes for how he was coping with his librarian duties, she couldn't keep her eyes off his butt.

I'm rather glad the episode didn't air a day or two earlier - and probably the female colleague I was mentoring thinks so, too!

And hey! Not one "Trick or treater" knocked at my door this Halloween night. Drat. Now I have to eat all this candy all by myself.

This cold makes me feel funny

My clerical assistant in the library asked me today if I'd seen our stock of invisible mending tape, and did we need to order more? I told her that if the tape wasn't invisible then I could give her an answer!

Later she expressed concern about my cold. Having her revenge on my previous teasing, she said she hoped it wasn't equine flu (the current debacle threatening Australia's horse racing industry). I said, "Yeah, maybe it is equine flu, 'cos I'm feeling a little hoarse".

Har har!

Maybe you just had to be there.

PURLs before swine

After starting up my blog last year, I was excited to discover that numerous friends - from various stages of my life - had blogs of their own. But sometimes I found that their online presence had been abandoned after only a few weeks or months of blogging; my messages of greeting and hopeful reunion perhaps never to be found. Sigh...

I sometimes find myself pondering what would happen to my various websites should I suddenly not be around any more.

Luckily for one of them, way back in 1999, my Number 96 Home Page was catalogued and "captured" for inclusion in the online PANDORA Archive. It was quite a thrill: my home page was selected for the first exclusive group of (three) Internet sites about Australian television programs to appear in the National Library of Australia's online public access catalogue, alongside the official websites for The Panel and the long-forgotten Good Guys, Bad Guys! In 1999, The Panel and Good Guys, Bad Guys were both current shows; my site honours an Aussie soap opera from the 1970s, and the site has been running since "the Year of '96" (wink).


NUMBER 96 HOME PAGE

PANDORA has since catalogued many other Australian TV show websites. They simply web whack* the site as it existed at time of cataloguing (ie. mine on 26 Nov, 1999), but once only, and give it a PURL (persistent URL). They also provide a hot link to the current updated site (if it continues to exist, which - so far - mine does). The Panel's URL now only links to Working Dog's production house site, and the original Good Guys, Bad Guys website has vanished completely! ("Why wasn't I told?" Dorrie would ask.)

Even if, somehow, Ian McLean, web composer, vanishes, the Number 96 Home Page shall continue forever!

* "Web whacking" is when someone downloads a copy of an entire website to their hard drive. Of course, doing that means they never get to see any future changes that are made by the web composer. But it does preserve for posterity an early version that even the website owners might not keep in their files.