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Showing posts from May, 2017

She didn't like working with me

While I was growing up my parents expected me to work. I had chores and as I got older I had jobs outside of the home where I earned money. I had often worked with my Dad and he taught me to work hard and to do things right. If I didn't do a good job with him I had to do it over. It wasn't honest to do a poor job. We had a nice lady working at the library who was very popular with the  patrons. They liked how friendly she was. She got to know them and was willing to visit with them for however long they wanted. However, it was annoying to the employees because she didn't do her work. She spent so much time visiting that there was no time for sorting or shelving books or other tasks. One day this lady and I were at the circulation desk and I was checking in books. She was waiting to check out books for patrons. She told me she didn't like working with me. When I asked her why, she said it was because I was always working. I was so shocked I said, "Well, that...

Look Alike

I've heard it said that everyone has a twin somewhere. The first time I became aware that someone at BYU looked like me was the day one of my roommates asked why I wouldn't say Hi to her that day on campus. I didn't know what she was talking about. My roommate told me where and when she had seen me, but I hadn't been there. This happened several times and we realized she even had a coat like mine. One day I was sitting in the library and a guy sat down next to me and began talking to me. All of a sudden he said, "Oh, you're not.." and jumped up and ran off before I could ask him about the other girl. I never saw her. It would have been nice if we could have met each other.

Bigfoot

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For years I have been interested in Bigfoot (Sasquatch, Yeti). I really believe something is out there. I've read a bunch of the literature, both pro and con. I knew a girl from the local reservation who said she had seen a Bigfoot, but she may have been lying. Anyway, Heather knew a man in her ward that was interested in Bigfoot and she gave me his name to see if he would come to the library and speak. It turned out to be Jeff Meldrum. Don Jeffrey "Jeff" Meldrum is a Full Professor of Anatomy and Anthropology and a Professor of the Department of Anthropology at Idaho State University. Meldrum is also Adjunct Professor of Occupational and Physical Therapy.   Wikipedia He had just written a book and was very surprised to hear that we wanted him to speak, he didn't think many people would be interested. I convinced him to come and he was able to have a book signing afterwards. It was the largest turnout we had ever had! It was also the first time we had had a large ...

Dinosaurs

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As a child my son Christopher loved dinosaurs. Every time he received his allowance he immediately wanted to go to the store to buy toy dinosaurs. We owned puppets and stuffed animals. We read books about dinosaurs. We owned all the Land Before Time videos about dinosaurs. He just couldn't seem to get enough. Every spring all the first grade classes in the local school district would visit the library and they would always be shown where the dinosaur books were located (among other things). For several years, I brought in some of Christopher's dinosaur things and set up a display during this time so the kids could enjoy his collection. It was always a big hit! I also made a handout for them to take home.

No witness

For a couple of years I worked as an aide in a nursing home in Salt Lake City. It was a lower class kind of place, but the people were not treated badly. It just didn't have anything fancy. The majority of them were ambulatory but knew they would never be leaving to go home. We had one exception and I never could understand why he was there with all those old people. He was a young man who had just been released from prison and we were sort of his halfway house. I don't know what his crime was and we were not given any special training concerning him. In those days you could smoke indoors. Even the nurses smoked. Residents could only have cigarettes at certain times and they had to come to the nurses station to get them, they were not allowed to keep them with their personal items. Well, this guy wanted his cigarettes early one day and I reminded him he would have to wait. He argued with me, but I was firm. All of a sudden, he hit me with his fist in my left eye, HARD. There ...

Hit with a purse

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We had all kinds of patrons at the library and got to know quite a few of them. One of them, Heidi, was frequently demanding and grumpy. I ran across the incident report I wrote on the day she hit me with her purse so I'll let that tell the story. Apparently, I had her name spelled wrong. I was very grateful she only hit me with her purse! 7/29/2006 Follow up: Police: Woman hit day-care van with a tire iron By Casey Santee   Journal Writer   POCATELLO — A tire-iron wielding woman bashed the windows of a van filled with day-care children following   a fender bender Thursday morning, police said.      Heidi Vegors, 46, 59 Drake Ave., allegedly tried to enter the van at one point during the incident, but failed to open the door. Police said they were unsure if the vehicle was locked.      The 13 children,   ranging in age from 10 months to 12 years old, were not injured during the incident. The van sustained minor ...

Intruder

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For about a year, my brother Eric lived with our sister Julene in Sandy, Utah. One day during that time they were watching TV and heard someone come in the back door. When they went to investigate they were attacked by an intruder. They were able to get him to leave through the front door and neighbors chased him and caught him on the next street. The guy was a career criminal and it didn't take long before they found out he had committed a murder earlier in the day. I happened to be at Julene's the day the police were there to get DNA from her and Eric. I think the suspect had blood on his shirt and they needed to figure out whose blood it was. I know they searched Julene's yard for a gun. Julene, especially, has really suffered long term effects from this event. Eric had to testify at the trial. I went to one day of the trial. It was interesting to hear how afraid some of the people who testified were of this guy. I remember one witness was planning to move after testifyi...

Organizing

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I really enjoy organizing things. I think that's one of the things that made library work so appealing. I got to put books in order and create book lists to help people find the things they needed, etc. I've had some very delightful times helping Gaila to organize things at her house. She loves to collect all kinds of things and saved many of them with the idea of making items to sell after retirement. Her husband, Don, also collects things. He hates to throw anything away. Between the two, there is plenty to organize, because they both just pile things up, luckily for me . Gaila and I have wanted to work on their garage for some time and finally this spring Don said we could. We had great success. Gaila has a sister who owns a second-hand store and quite a bit of the stuff went there. I've helped other people with projects, organizing desks, closets and rooms, but Gaila is my favorite one to help.

Rats

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In a psychology class in high school we had a  student teacher who did some fun things with us. He taught us about handwriting analysis. I still remember and use some of those things just for fun. The other thing he did was purchase some rats and have us teach them to run a maze. It became quite the big deal. My rat died before the final event. I really don't like rats, it tested my nerves to have to work with one, but I managed.

Homecraft

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Right after my third year at BYU and receiving my Associate Degree in in Family Relations and Child Development I began working at Deseret Industries in Provo. I had never heard of the Homecraft program before, but came to really enjoy working with it. I stayed there until we moved to Pocatello. I was the Assistant Director for most of the time. For a short time I was promoted to Director. I learned many skills while there.

Homecraft with BYU

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Working at Deseret Industries in the Homecraft Department I was surprised to find out how much fabric was available to us. I was once taken to a warehouse in Salt Lake where there stored an amazing amount of bolts of fabric. There was a big variety, but a huge amount. Someone or some company donated thousands of yards of very high quality denim to the church. Wow! (After the fire in the building we had to cut it ten yard pieces and wash it all. It was a gigantic project!) The program at BYU was able to use this in the mass production class to create items for us that would be very popular. They would actually design the clothing, cut it out, sew up some of the items and send the reminder back to us to package and send out to people in their homes to finish. All finished items would either be sold in the store or go out on Bishop's orders. Large donations of fabric weren't always as fashionable as denim so the finished items, although very serviceable, weren't always as p...

Bookworm

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Somehow people think that librarians read for work. They say things like, "I wish I had a job where I could just read." I would answer, "So do I." Of course, it was expected that as employees we would readers and be ready to refer people to titles.

Beginning Reference Librarian

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When I first became a librarian there was no Internet. Really! We actually had to rely on books, or place phone calls. When someone wanted to know something, they would call the Reference Librarian. They thought we knew everything. Which of course we didn't. But we were supposed to know where to look to find every answer. Some of the questions I remember that aren't in the attached article: Who was the first woman to walk on Mars? (The woman who asked this wouldn't believe no one had walked on Mars, yet.) What are some phone numbers for call girls in Las Vegas? I haven't seen my child for years, how can I find him/her? How many miles is it from one city to another in the US? (We had a whole book dedicated to this.) Who used to live in my house and do you know if there is a ghost? Someone I know just died and I need the words to a certain song by tomorrow, can you find them? (I eventually indexed all our song books because so many people asked this. I got carpal...

Pottery

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When Dennis and I were first married and still at BYU we enjoyed doing things at the campus craft shop. The main thing we did was to purchase pre-formed pottery, clean it, have it fired, paint it, etc. We generally used the finished items as gifts. Dennis was strong enough to handle mugs, so he made those. I remember he made an entire set for my family and they used them for years. I generally did larger items. We really had fun. The pitcher and basin were Grandma Deans for years and then Heather had them a while. They came home to me today. I never could part with the clown.

Macrame

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There was a time when macrame was very popular and a lady in our ward approached me to see if I knew how to do this craft. I did, so she wondered if I would be interested in working for her. She had several people making items for her in their homes which she would then sell to various places. She would bring the patterns and supplies and pay by the piece when you finished. It sounded like a fun way to make some extra money and so I worked for her for awhile. I don't where all of my things ended up, but I did see some of them in a couple of local places, one of them was a restaurant named Rax's which is no longer here. I hadn't been working for her for very long when she moved and didn't give me any more work, but I really enjoyed it while it lasted.

Jeffrey Wayne Whipple

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During my first semester at BYU in Provo, I met Jeff. He was from Henderson, Nevada which is very near Las Vegas. We dated for most of the semester. When the semester was over he left on a mission. Although he didn't ask me to 'wait' for him, he said if I didn't he would at least come to visit me so he could find out why. I wrote to him during his mission, but part of the way through he stopped answering and I don't really know why. I did see him once or twice when he came home. He had a really good friend, Larry Peplowski, in Henderson who had come to BYU for one year even though he wasn't a member. At one point while Jeff was gone I went to Nevada for a weekend and spent a night with Larry and a night with Jeff's parents. I also wrote to Jeff's mom, Shirley, on occasion.

Heather's first bedroom on Willow Lane

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I thought it would fun if Heather's room was unique, so I set about doing some fun things with it. We had made a really cute rug in what used to be Homemaking Meeting in Relief Society, which was held during the week. Many mothers did not work and would attend this meeting which would have a short lesson and then included crafts. It was a nice social event. Anyway, I attached that rug to the wall. The previous owners of the house had left a light switch plate that had designs on it that inspired the paintings on the wall. The tree on the door was a palm tree. I had a good time with this project. I later made a fun toy box and a cupboard for her.

Yuck

I was watching a show where they found a bug in a man's ear in the ER and it reminded me of this story. One night I was sitting on the front porch reading and waiting for Roger to come home from somewhere. I didn't have a car, so Heather must have had the other one. This was before Christopher was born. All of a sudden, something flew into my ear with great force. Whatever it was (we found out later it was a really big moth) it was too big to get itself out. I don't recall it hurting, but my ear was stuffed full and the noise of the bug struggling to get out was sickening. The idea that there was something in there crawling around was almost unbearable. I wanted to start digging it out, but didn't want to make things worse. So I just sat there telling myself to stay calm and waited for Roger. As I remember it was about 20 minutes until he came and took me to the emergency room at the hospital. They put some pain killer in my ear and after that took effect, they filled...

Jesse James aka William Cole

Today the following email went out to librarians all over Idaho and of course, it brought to mind a bit of a story.                                                                                     Posted  26th March 2014  by  Kristine Castro Hello all, Our local author, Randy Willie, who wrote “Heavy Metal” is willing to do author nights up through the Boise and Idaho Falls areas and any place in between.  Randy has interwoven our local legend of the “Iron Door” and Jesse James into his book. If you would like to have him at your library the contact info is as follows:   loiswillie@atcnet.net , phone 208-766-2451.  We are hosting a night with him on Aril 10 th  at 7:00 pm.  If any of the surrounding libraries close ...

Why??????

You may wonder why I would start a blog. Every day at work I find myself telling people, "Oh, I have a story about that." Some of them like my stories and two of them have suggested I start recording them. Hence, this blog. This way I can add a little at time and if people express an interest they can have access whenever they want. It will be a work in progress.                                                                                     Posted  14th March 2014  by  Kristine Castro

Driverless car

One day I was driving to work with Heather in the car. It was probably 1988. We were on   Jefferson, approaching Elm, when I noticed a car approaching from my right. It as going really slow. I got the feeling it was not going to stop at the stop sign and I couldn't see a driver. My first thought was that the driver must be a really short short old lady, one that could barely see over the steering wheel. You know the kind. You wonder how they can drive at all. But as the car went in front of me I couldn't see a driver at all! So I figured whoever was driving must have had a heart attack or something and I followed the car, which was going fairly straight. However, within a block it ran into a telephone pole and stopped. I got out and took a deep breath to prepare myself before opening the door. Imagine my surprise when I opened the door and found no one inside! The keys were in the ignition so I turned it off and told some people in a nearby driveway my name and asked them to ...

Horse with a sense of humor

Kelvin and I had bought a horse together and over time I may write other things about him, but for today I am thinking about a thing he used to do to me. I have no idea if he would do this to Kelvin. Sunny had a habit of wearing out his front shoes at the toe and so we had special ones with a cleat at the toe and this probably helped to save my foot, plus the fact that Sunny only did this in the pasture, never on a hard surface. Sometimes, he would put his front foot on top of mine and every so gently lean on me while pressing down. He never hurt me, but I was definitely trapped. He would hold me there until I was pushing back with all my strength and then he'd let go. Maybe it was his way of reminding me that he only LET me be in charge?                                                                        ...

She saved my life

Many people know that I have struggled with depression for most of my life. One day I was on my knees praying that I would be able to not hurt/kill myself. I was very afraid that I was about to take that horrible step. My sister phoned (she was probably prompted to call) but I wouldn't talk to her. A few minutes later a lady in the ward, Geneva Johnson, called and it really surprised me that she would call. For some reason I decided to talk with her. She told me was calling to tell me how much she appreciated me as a Relief Society teacher and that every time I taught she went home and used the lesson with her family. She totally surprised me with how appreciative she was of me. She called at a crucial time to help save my life. We never know what may happen when we do follow a prompting from the Holy Ghost.                                                   ...

Everybody Knew Ralph Sharp

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My Dad, Ralph LaVar Sharp, loved people. He would get to know everyone he could. When he met anyone he liked to figure out connections. Maybe they were his neighbor's cousin's son, or the  mayor's brother's daughter-in-law. He would remember these connections and it seemed like he never forgot anyone. We used to talk about it a lot. When he didn't come home for dinner my mom would just say he must have run into someone he knew and we would eat without him (which bothered him, but 6 hungry kids had a hard time waiting and there were no cell phones then). As an example, he and Mom went to New Zealand for a vacation and of course, he knew the man at the car rental desk. So one day, I was telling my sister-in-law about this and she thought I was perhaps exaggerating. I told her if her car ever broke down she should go into the nearest establishment, even if it was a bar, and ask if anyone knew Ralph Sharp from Midvale, Utah. There would be someone who did and that...

Cows

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     Holsteins, herefords, black angus, jerseys, these were some of the first kinds of cows I learned about. Beef and milk cattle. Whenever we saw cows on the side of the road, my dad would point out what kinds they were and I learned their names. As the years passed and I became a librarian I would occasionally browse through books and learn about more kinds. I don't know a lot, but I know enough that I surprised Heather as we drove to Nauvoo. She had no idea I knew anything about bovines.      My step-grandpa Sharp, in Rigby, Idaho was a farmer and he had maybe 20 dairy cows. One of them was a jersey and gave very rich milk. Her tail had frozen and fallen off one winter. She looked so strange. My cousins liked to have Grandpa squirt milk right into their mouths, but I couldn't stand warm milk. He used machines to milk, but would finish or 'strip' by hand. He did not process his milk. It must have gone directly into cans for processing elsewhere. ...

Bathrooms

Before we moved to Samoa in 1961 I don't remember having any issues with bathrooms. After we came home, I have had nightmares to this day and I really don't like having people wait for me while I am in the restroom. I dream I'm on the toilet in the middle of the grocery store or other similar public place and people are walking all around me. It's ghastly! I have these dreams several times a year. When we arrived in Samoa the restrooms had no stalls around the toilets. No big deal, at first. However, the Samoan kids had seldom seen white kids and apparently thought it was funny to watch me 'go'. They would gather round and point and make comments. It got so bad I had permission to always go during class time so I could be alone. On top of that, when we would go other places on the island and have to use outhouses, they were out over the ocean. We had to walk down this long gangplank to the outhouse and people could see everything drop into the ocean. More humili...

Quite a surprise!

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In December of 2013 my former roommate, Irene, published a book.  I had not heard from her for several years, but we found each other on Facebook and she told me she was an author. I found her book on amazon.com and ordered it for the library. She had become a life coach and the book deals with some of her views and thoughts. Imagine my surprise when I found I was the subject of the first paragraph of the book!!!!! I do want to say I believe I was saying that bit each morning as a class assignment. The lady in the photo is Irene. Have you experienced times in your life when you did not know how to move forward? When life gave you lemons and they just refused to turn into lemonade? Here is a book just for you! It is full of examples and experiences from the author's own life, as well as priceless pieces of advice and new insights into how to move forward with wisdom and accountability, risk and joy. A thoroughly enjoyable and easy-to-read book for the modern-day busy professional ...

First roommates at BYU

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The first year I was at Brigham Young University (BYU) in Provo, Utah, I lived on campus in Fugal Hall. My best friend, Lela Mae Turner, shared a bedroom with me. Our other roommates were Julie Vogelmann, Diane Hage, Susan Oberhansly and Marsha Ann Nelson. We all got along just fine. Susan studied a lot in her room and only ate with us on Sundays. The rest of us bought food together and took turns cooking. As I remember, Lela and I were the only freshmen in the apartment. Marsha was a graduate and had actually taught school for a year. Part of the reason she was there was the hope that she would meet someone and get married. Unfortunately, that didn't happen. She was a wonderful person and very patient about helping me learn to expand my cooking skills. Janet Ferguson and Linda Johnson lived in the next-door apartment and we had gone to school together and sometimes had lived in the same ward in Midvale. Linda and I were roommates the next year when Lela moved off campus. Duri...

What happens when you don't listen to the Holy ghost

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We all sometimes have that feeling that what we are about to do might not be the best idea. But for me I knew I shouldn't do it. I clearly had the image of my fat jiggling like jello, but did I let that deter me from such nonsense? Noooooooooooooooo... I was determined that I was going to show that even though I was old (maybe fifty?) and fat, I still had it (whatever it was). I was going to show my nieces and nephews that I could jump on a pogo stick! Roger tried to talk me out of it and like I said, the Holy Ghost tried everything, including visuals. But I was determined and I was WRONG!!!! I fell on the first bounce and shattered my right wrist. I have never known such excruciating pain, nor did I know I could scream such screams. I will never forget the lesson I learned that day. Heavenly Father loves us. He has provided us with the opportunity to have the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost, who will give us direction in every situation. We need to be worthy of that hel...