I remember getting my first library card at the age of 10 at the Bucks County Libray System Fallsington, Pa Branch. It was right up the street and easy to get to. Age 10 was about the time that I really started reading other things then comic books and stuff for school. The library had the complete collection of the Hardy Boys novels. I read all of them one summer, usually 2 a day.

So do you have a library card? If not why? With the way the economy is these days the library is the place to go. I spend a few hours a weekend at book stores just browsing and taking it easy. I rarely buy many books though…I write down the names of books that look interesting and then go to the library and just check out the book. If they don’t have it I try for an inter libray loan.

Tired of paying for movie rentals…guess what go to your local library and see what they have. They probably won’t have the most recent releases but they may have a few you haven’t seen yet from last year or a few months ago.

That library card also can get you on the internet, most libraries have free internet terminals for there library card holders. This service is also available to non residents for a slight fee. I always tell people who are traveling in the USA that if you are in a bind and have to get on the internet to always check out the local library.

Remember that the library is a great place to do research on things as well as a quiet place to do work. When I need to get out and work on projects with very little distractions I go to the library. Some libraries are starting to add coffee shops so if you have one of those what more can you ask for. The coffee at libraries is usually cheaper then at the local coffee shop so another savings.

Also check out the events or meetings being held at your library you may find out there is a group meeting about your favorite hobbie or computer operating system.

So lets run down why you should visit you local library and why you should have a library card:

1. Free books to read
2. A place to rent movies at no cost
3. Free Internet if you are a resident of the area (small fee if you aren’t)
4. Great place to do research and work

I have only listed a few of the benefits of the local library and each library is different. So go visit your local library and see what is available. Hey your taxes are funding it so it’s yours to use.

Carolyn has been hitting the pavement the last few months looking for a job. With the economy the way it is not many people are hiring. Yesterday the local school district called to schedule and interview.

So today at 10:30 she has an interview for a position in the after school program in one of the elementary schools so please keep your fingers crossed that she does well and they hirer her.

More later

What happened to the big family dinners that I remember from my childhood? Maybe I have watched the Godfather movies too many times or too many Sopranos episodes where the families would get together for dinner on Saturday or Sunday and I am projecting that onto our family, but I seem to remember getting together a lot at 90 Eggerts Crossing for meals when I was a kid.

I don’t mean holiday meals those we still do, just at different locations in Mercer County. I’m talking about the Sunday morning breakfasts and the meals in the yard during the summer with Rose and Louis, Fran and Angelica, Clora and Dean, Henry and Tim, Bea and Ray, John and Bea and Terry and Willie and me and sometimes other family members and friends. Those are the meals I am talking about, and the birthday celebrations with a huge carrot cake and funny hats.

It seems when Rose and Lou died, things began to change. Family gatherings were fewer and something seemed to be missing when we did get together. It’s understandable that things change. A few of us moved away and we all have families and lives of our own. Sure, today we visit once in a while or meet at wakes or weddings and on holidays. It just seems we are always in a hurry to get through dinner and get back to our lives.

In the old days the adults used to sit around the table and talk back and forth while the kids would go outside or into the other room to play. Now when we get together we are in a hurry to eat and get going. We meet at diners and restaurants too much these days where we are always having to go, so we can’t sit and talk and the food is not as good as if we cooked it ourselves. With the amount of money we spend for our meals we could have better and more food if we were to cook it ourselves.
I get a glimmer of these family dinners I am discussing at La Vigna meetings, when Fran and Corine’s families and Aunt Bea and Aunt Lorriane descend on the beaches of the Jersey Coast or on the days leading up to and after the picnic in the yard at 90 Eggerts Crossing. These glimmers always just make the loss of these dinners felt much more in my mind.

It was these family dinners that gave me the sense of what the family is and taught me to respect and cherish the family as a whole as a child. I feel that my child and my cousins’ children have been cheated out of a wonderful piece of heritage and learning of family.

So I was checking out my restaurants on Chefmoz.org and decided to do a search on the open directory project for old radio station I use to work at and found a picture of myself on the Corning Community Collage site on there time line of great moments in CCC history. I was pictured in front of the new control board that we purchased for the student run radio station for the year 1987.

That was a good year for me in radio. I was working at a commercial radio station in Corning and running WCEB with a great group of other students. I think that the years of 1986 through 1987 were probably the best years of WCEB.

When I walked into WCEB it was very unorganized and weren’t getting any support from the record companies. After working for the station as there engineer for a while I was able to get the record companies to start sending us release albums as well as starting to report to the College Music Journal . I then got Brian Burquwist to run as general manager with me as the Program Director and of course we won. When we took over we had a control board that was limping along and a schedule that was all Heavy Metal music. We moved most of the heavy metal DJ’s to the afternoon and Brian and I took over mornings and put more non metal Dj’s on from 9 till 1. We also got a Tim Vogal a local voice over/radio announcer at the time to do a new set of legal and liner IDs. The new tag line was “WCEB-FM the new 92″. In 1987 we got the college to let us spend our whole yearly budget on a new control board. After I got the new system up and running I left CCC to pursue a new job back at WVIN-FM. The format and scheduling we set up lasted another semester before the rest of the crew we hand picked to run the station with us left or graduated from CCC. The last I heard WCEB it was running the same IDs and were all over the map with music but very heavy on the heavy rock and the announcers were very unprofessional sounding and you could tell no one was helping them become better announcer and radio personalities.

If I could run a radio station again I would love to run WCEB again. I could make it a driving force in the Corning/Elmira area with the backing of CCC as a public supported station. I would fashion the programming around the freeform radio format. So if you are a member of the board or the dean of Corning Community College I am open to an offer and willing to move back to the Corning area and get you on the map of the college radio with a good sounding and well run radio station and to help mold your communication students into better radio personnel.

I was surfing around today and found a great add-on for Firefox if you use Gmail. It’s called Better Gmail. It adds some nice features to Gmail. It works for both Gmail and Google Apps for Domains Gmail as well. The one thing I like that it does is make your labels collapsible when you have labels that have sub labels. It has some other nice features that I haven’t had time to play with yet. The original article I came across about this was on Lifehacker.com.