Pope Joan

In the late summer of 1998 just prior to beginning my final semester of library school, I read/heard a novel, Pope Joan, RC 43715, that I found rather startling. (I needed to read novels during library school--got through about 190 of them--in order to destress and keep my sanity, but that's another story.)

Pope Joan is the story of a girl born during the time of Charlamagne who is in love with learning and how she becomes a monk and later pope. The story tantalizes, but I thought little more about it until tonight when I happened to tune in the second hour of Prime Time. They were doing a special hour on this same Pope Joan.

Was she more than a symbol on a Tarot card? Did over 500 historical accounts by Medieval writers mention her? What was the strange purple marble coronation chair now housed in the Vatican Museum with a seat containing an opening rather like a toilet really used for? Did Bernini sculpt images of a female Pope? Could Bocaccio really have believed the account he gives in a book about famous women of a female pope disguised as a man who gives birth during a procession and is stoned to death?

We may never know unless we take a page out of Crichton's book and can one day send chrononauts back to the 9th century.

Click the link to hear an interesting snippet. Read the novel. You'll be intrigued or perhaps, repelled! Imagine that! Truth may indeed be stranger than fiction.

Norway: A look at a library in Europe.

Click here to read a story about how not to adapt a library for use by blind and visually impaired patrons.

Katrina

Devistation persists and may continue. if not on the land then on the mental and emotional terrain of many survivors, and may have made us look at ourselves and caused us to not like everything we see. Politicians may spend time playing an Argument Culture blame game and any new projects needing state moneys may be put on hold for a not-inconsiderable length of time, but it seems to me that even this situation can be made to yield positive results. We have an opportunity to rebuild New Orleans, improve the horrible Orleans Parish public school system, expand the role of street cars, and clean up the city. Environmentally, people may think a little more about what price we pay for our oil and consider ways to diversify our economy in areas beyond the service sector.

Celebrity radar: How do we get their attention?

Have you ever decided to contact a talk show, a journalist, or someone in the public eye? Have you then wondered if he or she had received your missive, be it through the telephone or e-mail or snail? I have done this. Some have received and sent token responses. Others, nothing.

I got to thinking about this when I read last weekend Climbing Higher, RC 57988, by talk-show host, Montel Williams. I found it interesting that he had not majored in journalism and done the reporter bit as have some of the others like Walters and Oprah. He is a graduate of The Naval Academy and went on speaking tours to at-risk minority youth and his show grew out of this activity. One never knows where something will lead. My blog might lead to something wonderful, grin.

The audio segments on today's blog are not very good. I can hear my critics fuming that I should get a microphone and record directly to computer. Well, my new system comes tomorrow and so maybe I can learn this.

Anyway, the first audio clip is from today's Montel Show and deals with college and how some young people wil do anything to be popular, and the second clip is from the Climbing Higher book and showcases two questions, the first about evening primrose oil and the next question about the removal of mercury fillings from teeth.

The Soul of a Chef: The Journey toward Perfection: Book review

The Soul of a Chef: The Journey toward Perfection
RC 58620
by Michael Ruhlman

In this sequel to The Making of a Chef (RC 47657), Ruhlman, an award-winning journalist, explores the world of cooking at its most intense and bootcamp-like level. He attends the 10-day certified master chef examination at the Culinary Institute of America, and he also explores the food of three outstanding chefs.