John Hildebrand is an award wining writer who earned his M.F.A at the University of Alaska. Specializing in nonfiction, American Literature and short stories, Hildebrand has made moves in creating a profile dedicated to writing, nature and the histories of rural America — a background that suits him perfectly for this re-discovery of his native state, Wisconsin.
In his recent book, Long Way Round: Through the Heartland by River, Hildebrand takes us with him on his journey through Wisconsin by water and by history. His journey goes through rivers and sacred lands, through the importance of food and through connecting with people while gaining a deeper appreciation for water. Here are a few samples:
“I have taken myself on the Round River with the same
purpose behind those meandering drives, to remember where I live. Almost
everyday supplied a good reason or two—people, the towns, the land itself—but
it was a river that tied those reasons together like a bow.”
“They were different rivers, eight in all, but after a
while they blurred into one continuous stream… a great river that flows
forwards and backwards… and carried me… as it steadily brought me home.”
To learn more about John Hildebrand, check out his bio page from where he works in the English department at our sister UW institution, UW-Eau Claire.
This review is written by LaDae’meona McDowell, reference student worker at Andersen Library.
Long Way Round: Through the Heartland by River by John Hildebrand New Arrivals Island, 2nd Floor F586.2 H55 2019
Since the semester is winding down — and everyone is remote anyway, this week’s selection is an ebook. All the books in ProQuest Ebook Central have unlimited simultaneous users, so there are no waits or holds and you can read the book right away.
The fifty “things” highlighted in this work range from everyday objects (a coin, an oil lamp) to ships and cities, books and religious artifacts. Covering the Fourth to Tenth Centuries A.D., the cultural icons function as windows into their eras and geographies (Europe, north Africa, and western Asia). Since we’re a little constrained in the travel department right now, this is a good way to travel both through time and across borders to learn more about life just before and during the Middle Ages.
Every chapter and accompanying color plates offers a glimpse into the rich past of its object. What do we learn for instance, from the Circus Races Mosaic from the Villa del Casale in Sicily (c. 300-350 AD)? For starters, professional sports look a bit tame compared to the flamboyant nature of chariot races that originated in Rome. The single-person chariots were pulled by four horses around hairpin turns on oval tracks inside a circus (stadium). The stadiums were jammed with more than 100,000 spectators and the race owners were akin to today’s WWE promoters, taking their shows on the road, stirring up the rabid fans, and raking in the profits. Fans were viciously loyal, staging battles in the streets after races. Charioteers were the celebs of their day. And even the wealthy must have found entertainment in the races, judging by the huge and intricate mosaic commissioned by the owners of Villa del Casale. Perhaps they had sky boxes away from the great unwashed in the bleachers?
Enjoy a little armchair travel and soak up some long-forgotten culture by exploring the fifty “things.”
Fifty Early Medieval Things: Materials of Culture in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages By Deborah Deliyannis, Hendrik Dey, and Paolo Squatriti 2019 Ebook Central Ebooks
(Blog post co-authored by Library Student Staff Member, LaDae’ McDowell.)
Kids at home? Going quarantine stir crazy? Can’t seem to get the nieces and nephews to understand why physical distancing is important? Do you miss your students and wish to connect with them? Well, fret no further. Andersen Library is here to help.
Lately, we understand that this world pandemic has been challenging for most of us. We humans thrive on interaction, touch and social gathering. Parents thrive on the joy of snuggling up with their little ones and a good story. In the education setting, teachers and librarians thrive on reading to their students and connecting them to good books which is now a challenge due to COVID-19. Nonetheless, since things have gone online, there are still resources to help us all engage with good reads and stay connected with our loved ones and students.
The PreK-12 E-Books and Related Resources for Virtual Learning (Spring/Summer 2020) LibGuide provides a collection of Andersen Library databases, temporary sources for free e-books, and sites that have always provided children’s e-books for free. Here you will find links to TumbleBook Library, Wisconsin Virtual Library, free e-books on Coronavirus and other additional resources. Many of the resources on this LibGuide are available to you even if you aren’t a UW-W student or faculty member.
TumbleBook Library provides an alphabetical index to the books students can either read along to or listen to. Along with that, TumbleBook LIbrary has tabs that lead to different genres of books such as nonfiction books and graphic novels. There are also videos, language learning books, puzzles and games. Suppose you or your student clicked on the “Story Book” tab, there you will find new books, award winning books, best-sellers, and more! The options are endless and more than capable of keeping you and your learners invested and interested.
Sloth at the Zoom could be allegorical for these times, but is simply a delightful story for all. Find out what happens when a sloth is accidentally delivered to the Zoom! due to a type-o on a delivery order!
If you want more child-accessible books and information on Coronavirus/COVID, check this link out the New York Public Schools Library System Free eBooks collection. Here, you will find e-books on COVID as well as LGBTQ e-Books. If you scroll, you will see a plethora of books that will be sure to keep the interest of your learners, and the books are pdf printable. In your scrolling journey, you may come across books such as “Be a Coronavirus Fighter” by Songju Ma Daemicke & Helen H. Wu where your students learn how the virus began, how it treats those who are infected, transmission and more. If you click on the books, you will come to a page where you can not only read the book, but read comments of those who read the book and had something to muse about. Your young readers can participate and comment, as well!
Posted ineducation, whatcha reading?|Taggede-books, ebooks|Comments Off on When Children Can’t Go to the Library: E-books for Children, Their Teachers, and Their Caregivers
If you need to return library materials, the preferred method for anything except equipment is the book drop on the outside of the Andersen building. It’s on the Wyman Mall side. Mailing materials is an alternative for those who cannot come to campus, explained online at https://libguides.uww.edu/remoteresources (at the bottom, look under the photo of the book drop).
Skateboarding LA
by Gregory J. Snyder GV 859.8 .S595 2017 New Arrivals Island, 2nd floor
Welcome to the world of skateboarding where a flight of stairs is not something you walk up and down, but a creative spot to practice your creative craft on four wheels. Snyder’s work serves as a sociological exploration and personal ethnography of the Los Angeles skate scene.This book featuring numerous interviews with both veterans and new comers to skateboarding. Read as they discuss the wide range of how skateboarding intersects with various aspects of culture. At certain parts this book can be read as a clash between property owners and the skateboarders. Installation of “skate stoppers” to prevent the skaters from skating or trespassing according to the property owners. This is a great book to learn more about the dynamics of this tight knit creative community that is skateboarding and how to see the world of architecture and design as “skatespots.”
Education has always been a lifelong pursuit for me. I always knew that education was an access
opportunity and with it came positional and economic attainment. To be educated was also more than just
utilitarian – to possess knowledge, wisdom, and to consume experiential and
formal learning was my deepest passion. And I was a victim of my passions. I always said, “I do not invest in material
things, but experiences.” I had my lofty
notions of education until I read the real, raw, and relevant biography of Tara
Westover. How appropriate is the title, Educated – how stark is the content.
Tara Westover recalls living on a rural farm in Idaho, hunting with her brothers, working in the family junk yard, believing in her Mormon faith, taking in her surroundings at a young age, breathing in the crisp air and running through the valleys and hills. She learned a lot from her experiences on the farm, not knowing her date of birth, being born without a birth certificate, being born at home by a midwife. This was no pioneering experience, this was in the mid-1980s. This was not a traditional education as Tara grew up with a paranoid father who was consistently preparing for the end of the world and believed the government brainwashed its citizens. Her mother was an herbalist and did not believe in modern medicine. Tara was schooled by life, not really homeschooled. Completely self-sufficient, Tara and her family isolated themselves from reality, which led to their own twisted view of the world. She struggled to work against a family that believed education and the government were corrupt.
This book was selected as a retreat read for the
Cabinet. We chose this book because it
gave an alternative account of what it meant to be educated. Through this book, we realized that Tara
became educated not through the traditional means, but through knowledge
discovery and how that knowledge shaped her being. The book revealed to us that we all were
educated in different ways and had our own ways of being. We learned how our educational paths
influenced our choices and although we had different paths and choices, we all
were able to value and learn from our education. Unlike Tara, we did not have to fight for our
education or be tormented due to the fact that we were pursuing an education.
During our discussions, we deliberated and discussed such
questions as: What is the nature of wisdom?
Can something wicked and deceitful teach you more than something that is
pure and wholesome? Do you learn more
from the good times or the bad times?
Whatever doesn’t kill you, does it make you stronger or wiser? These answers were juxtaposed to Tara’s
tug-of-war life in which she had to experience near death in order to learn how
to survive and thrive.
This book was ideal for us as higher education personnel because we recognize that students come to us from all walks of life seeking some form of education from the university. They have been shaped by their paths and now they enter the university to be misshapen or transformed. This reinvention begins as soon as students experience cognitive dissonance when they confront something new that does not align with what they already know. These intellectual epiphanies conjure what it means to be educated.
I found this book very difficult to read because every page was another assault on what I believed and how I was taught. I was terrified for Tara and the harshness of her environment. And the adage of whatever doesn’t kill you will make you stronger was always in my mind, but often I was thinking that whatever doesn’t make you stronger can make you dead. So instead of reading this as a memoir, I read it as a homicide mystery in which each impending adventure of Tara’s childhood could have been the end of her life. I had to remind myself at times that I wasn’t reading a cult fiction novel and that Tara and her family were real. The physical and emotional abuse made me want to put it down and forget about it. The manipulation that Tara went through at the hands of her brother left me speechless. While not unique, family issues are still so taboo. Brainwashing your own self into thinking it’s your fault, that it wasn’t as bad as you had imagined it, will hit way too close for comfort for a lot of people. Tara Westover’s writing was haunting and her courage to get an education and stand up to her family was inspiring. I recommend it, if you can suppress your fears.
You may remember Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. In this book, the second of a new trilogy, he has written a thrilling continuation of the story many years in the future.
In Pullman’s The Secret Commonwealth, we meet up with Lyra Silvertongue and Pantalaimon ten years after the end of the His Dark Materials trilogy.
“The second volume of Philip Pullman’s The Book of Dust sees Lyra, now twenty years old, and her daemon Pantalaimon, forced to navigate their relationship in a way they could never have imagined, and drawn into the complex and dangerous factions of a world that they had no idea existed. Pulled along on his own journey too is Malcolm; once a boy with a boat and a mission to save a baby from the flood, now a man with a strong sense of duty and a desire to do what is right.” – Penguin UK article
I’ve read the His Dark Materials trilogy, and if this adventure has any of the gripping plot lines and exciting writing like those did, it will be worth the read.
Should you care to dive into the series, here are the pertinent books and movie. More Copies will be available through the UW System when UW Request restarts after the COVID-19 crisis.
Did you see my Part I post about Money Smart Week, last week?
Here’s Part II. I wanted to share some additional recommended resources that we can all take advantage of while we’re home-bound (and, perhaps, needing extra projects to fill our time and be productive? Why not take control of your budget as a project!)
CashCourse.org — This is a great financial education resource geared toward college students. Create a personalized budget with their BudgetWizard tool, watch a few short and informative videos, or use their financial calculators to figure out your loan repayment terms after graduation.
Look Forward to Your Future WI — Still in school for a few years? You can still apply for more scholarships! (that’s FREE money!) This tool from the state’s Department of Financial Institutions lists some places to look.
Mint.com — An automated, personalized budget tracker, but on steroids. Download the app, connect it securely to your bank or credit card accounts, and it’ll track where your money is going each month. With the Bill Payment Tracker, Budget Alerts, and Free Credit Score, it’s hard to believe this is all available free!
Finally, if you would rather get some guidance from a real live person, feel free to reach out to our financial literacy educator on campus, Katie Patterson. She’s a very smart, kind, and resourceful person whose entire job on campus is to coach you to better manage your money! She can meet with you virtually or over the phone to help you make a plan — all 100% free to you.
Tuesday, April 21, 1868, marked the opening day for the Whitewater State Normal School (now UW-Whitewater). Charles Brockway, one of the school’s first students, recalled about the experience: “It was a bright, beautiful, April day…when the formal opening of the school took place. The sound of the hammer was still echoing through the halls and the workmen rested from their labors, while the citizens of the village and the students who on the morrow would meet to begin the active work of the school, gathered in the Assembly Room [of Old Main] to listen to the inaugural address of President Arey” (Salisbury, p.40) Oliver Arey’s speech reflected on the importance of education, the progress of institutions of learning in the country, and the history and value of normal schools. The glee class sang a dedicatory song written by Mrs. H.E.G. Arey, teacher of English literature, French, and drawing. President Allen from the Platteville Normal School and President Chadbourne from the University of Wisconsin were also on hand to congratulate the new school.
Started as a school to educate teachers, the school offered two areas of study, the normal department and the model or training school. The model school gave teachers-in-training the opportunity to educate the children of Whitewater. President Salisbury said the school provided “academic facilities to the local community, which felt itself entitled to such privileges by reason of the bonus it had given to secure the location of the school”(Salisbury, p. 14). Students in the normal department followed a three year program of study. Like many normal schools, classes in the normal department were free if students pledged to teach in the state after graduation. Below is an image of the register student signed stating that they would teach in the state after graduation. The top names on the left and right column are two of the six students who were in the first graduating class in 1870.
Many things have changed over the last one-hundred fifty-two years, but Charles Brockman’s words about education at UW-Whitewater still ring true: “Day by day, here a little, and there a little, the mind opens, the faculties expand, the powers increase, the ability grows, and the world and life are better” (Salisbury, p. 41).
Salisbury, Albert. Historical Sketches of the First Quarter-century of the State Normal School at Whitewater, Wisconsin : With a Catalogue of Its Graduates and a Record of Their Work, 1868-1893. Madison, Wis.: Tracy, Gibbs, 1893.
Do you know what your credit score is? Or how to improve it? What do you need to know about a 401(k) or a Roth IRA?
,
And yes, I’m talking to YOU, students! While financial topics might seem like amorphous topics that you can figure out years from now when you’re settled into a good job, the truth is that the financial decisions you make right now can have an oversize impact on your life for years to come!
Andersen Library can help you make sure those financial decisions are smart ones. While nobody here (including me) is a financial advisor, we can provide you with resources to educate yourself and make smart decisions. Here are a few resources:
Last week during Money Smart Week 2020, I co-hosted a webinar called Ask a Financial Expert. You can view the recording here. Three local campus experts shared their expertise, somewhat geared toward staff but I think students can benefit greatly too:
Emily Calhoun, from UW Credit Union, talked about the credit score’s importance and how to improve it. If you want to know more about your own credit score, contact Emily to do a free, private, one-on-one, no-obligation credit score review with her!
Mark Gmach, a finance lecturer on campus, shared information about investing and savings for long term goals. Did you know, students, that if you start saving an average of $100 a week at age 25 or so, you could become a millionaire by age 65? Yes, really! Get more information on managing your own finances through reading some great books from the library by financial advice gurus like Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, or Robert Kiyosaki. Each of them have plenty of free advice on their websites, too. Or check out one of the books linked from the images in this post.
Paul Nylen, an accountant and tax lawyer, shared information about wills, trusts, and estate planning. While that may seem far off to some students, you can still learn something about the basics now.
