It ain’t that hard, folks

I have a few pet peeves about English grammar and how native speakers of English can’t seem to manage the simplest things. This posting addresses “I” vs. “me” and the fact that people think they need to use “I” all the time to show how well educated they are.

It’s pretty simple. “I” is used as a subject (performing an action) and “me” is used as an object (something is done to it). Check out this very simple explanation.

People get confused when they are speaking about more than just themselves. I remember the lesson from elementary school: take out the other people from the sentence to determine whether you should use “I” or “me.” If you would say “I” without the other people, then you say “I” with them. If you would say “me” without the other people, then you say “me.”

Here are some examples:

I like to read. (subject)

My nephew and I like to read. (subject)

I and my nephew like to read. (subject)

Reading is fun to me. (object)

Reading is fun to me and my nephew. (object)

Reading is fun to my nephew and me. (object)

My father gave me a book. (object)

My father gave me and my brother a book. (object)

My father gave my brother and me a book. (object)

NEVER say:

My father gave my brother and I a book. (NO!!!)

Reading is fun to my nephew and I. (NO!!!)

Got it?

Joie de vivre

One of the joys of my life is wine and how it has enhanced time with friends, provided me opportunities to experience new places, and just sit quietly and reflect. I didn’t really drink wine until I was almost 40 and I was introduced to it by the man I was seeing at the time. He encouraged me to try wine with dinner and I remember going out to dinner with friends in Bloomington, Indiana and trying out merlot. That was the start of my voyage of wine discovery.

Later, moving to Los Angeles, my ex and I started going every Friday night to a large liquor store that would bring in wine distributors from around the world for tastings. For a few dollars, we would have access to the featured wines for tasting and a buffet supper. That was the start of my real wine education and also where we first hooked up with friends with whom we hung out every week and with whom we took occasional weekend wine-tasting trips in California. There were wine-tasting trips to Santa Barbara, Santa Rosa, Sonoma, and more.

Wine tasting with LA friends at Foxen Winery in Santa Maria, CA around 1997 or 1998

Wine tasting weekend with friends along the Central Coast of California
around 1997 or 1998

Across the street from the Fess Parker Winery around 1998, visiting with friends. I remember this trip and the smell of the vineyards and the countryside as we drove through the Central Coast of California.

Fess Parker Winery in Los Olivos, California. The movie _Sideways_ used the Fess Parker tasting room for the spot where Paul Giamatti lost it and drank from the spit bucket because he couldn’t wait for more wine to be poured so he could drown his sorrows.  Fess Parker Winery and Vineyard, 6200 Foxen Canyon Road, Los Olivos.

Me coming out of the Benziger Winery in Sonoma County, California in 2008 where Wolfgang and I met up with friends from Eugene for the Thanksgiving weekend wine tasting. This was one of my favorites and we stopped there first. I bought two cases and then we had to figure out how to get them back into Canada. When I declared them at the border, and should have had to pay significant import duty on the two cases, the Customs agent just looked at me and said, “Merry Christmas!”

When I moved from Los Angeles to Eugene, Oregon, in the Willamette Valley, I was in wine heaven. The Willamette Valley is home to some great pinot gris and pinot noir wine producers. There were many wonderful wineries within 30 minutes of Eugene and many more within 60 or 90 minutes. We spent many wonderful weekends touring around the various wineries, sometimes with friends and sometimes on our own. I also did a couple of trips with Eugene friends down to Sonoma on Thanksgiving weekend when all the wineries laid on special tastings and lots of hors d’oeuvres.

Me during wine tasting in Sonoma County, California in 2008.

Wine tasting friends at Sundance Wine Cellars in Eugene. We used to meet up there for the weekly Friday evening and Saturday afternoon tastings. Our group then started buying expensive bottles of wines from around the world and having them poured for us by the wonderful people running the shop. We all got to try some amazing wines. We also got together fairly often for dinners and blind tastings at each other’s homes. Those were great times.

Me at King Estate Winery outside Eugene, Oregon. King Estate is one of the larger producers in Oregon and they often win awards for their pinot gris. It is definitely worth a visit because they have a beautiful tasting room and spectacular views from their outside terrace, as well as a restaurant. There are many other great wines in Oregon also worthy of a visit.

Wine tasting at a winery outside of Eugene, Oregon

Views of vines in the Willamette Valley. One of the things I like about wine tasting is the great scenery.

From a wine tasting trip outside of Portland, Oregon in 2017. I had a conference in Portland and Eugene friends drove up and spent two nights so we could go out on a wine tasting tour together. This was at Tresori Vineyards. I love visiting winery tasting rooms. They are usually beautifully appointed spaces filled with artwork, local crafts and food items. They make me smile inside.

One of the Willamette Valley wineries. They often have lovely grounds that overlook the vineyards and provide quiet places to enjoy the wine and take in the scenery. My idea of heaven.

Vineyards at a Willamette Valley winery.

Wine tasting with friends outside Portland, Oregon.

I have also had many wonderful opportunities to visit vineyards or taste great wines in cooperatives or restaurants/cafes in France, Spain, and Italy.

Me checking out the view of the Mediterranean and drinking a regional wine in Antibes, France.

Me at an underground tasting cooperative in Beaune, France. I visited these caves on two separate trips. To enter, you go down underground and walk through the caves and taste wine from open bottles sitting on top of wooden wine barrels. Candles sit on top of the barrels. You pay an entry fee and then proceed at your own pace and drink as much wine as you want. You come up into their shop where you can buy bottles or cases of wine or have it shipped to you. It must be a good sales strategy as you come up pretty well soused.

Nuits-St-Georges tasting room, France. Another of the world’s great wine regions that I visited.

Bordeaux, France. One of the great wine tasting regions in the world that I was lucky enough to visit.

Domaine Charles Joguet in Chinon, France. The winery was closed the day we drove up to it but it was still magical.

Wine tasting in Angers, France with a dear friend.

Tasting room in St. Emilion, France. St. Emilion produces some of the great wine known the world over.

Vineyards outside of St. Emilion, France on one of my visits there.

Cooperative tasting room in San Remo, Italy. I took the train into Italy one day for lunch and found this open tasting room as I was walking back to the train station to go back to Antibes, France. The man running the tasting room was getting ready to close for the day so he kept pouring us wine rather than throw it out. I don’t know how we found our way back to the train station!

Drinking wine overlooking the Mediterranean in Nerja, Spain.

Dinner out with colleagues, which included great Spanish wine, in Toledo, Spain

Wine is best enjoyed in the company of dear friends. Whenever possible, I have combined business trips with pleasure and joined friends to visit wineries or tasting rooms, wherever I happen to be. If I’m alone, I often will try a local wine

Tasting room in Santa Monica, California in the company of good friends.

Me enjoying the view and some wine in Ojai, California.

Wine tasting with a friend when we were taking a break from a conference in Monterey, California.

Self-service wine tasting in Santa Monica, California.

Enjoying a nice wine at a restaurant in Santa Monica, California

Sonoma County, Thanksgiving weekend trip with friends, 2008

Vino vole. In my travels when I was working, I chanced upon a wine tasting chain in several airports. I always tried to get to the airport early enough when I was in one of those cities so I could enjoy a flight of wines with a light lunch or a snack. Such a wonderful indulgence!

I haven’t experienced a lot of Italian wine. This was one that I picked up at a tasting at Total Wine in Boca Raton and drank one weekend on my own during the early days of the pandemic. It was outstanding.

Another excellent Oregon pinot noir.

One of the great Oregon wineries with excellent pinot noir. When I lived in Oregon, I learned that pinot noir goes great with salmon.

Prosecco or another sparking wine was my favorite go-to wine on hot days in Florida. I would have prosecco and Wolfgang would have a beer and we would enjoy sitting and looking at the Gulf of Mexico or the intracoastal waterways.

Clearwater, Florida along the intercoastal waterway, I had just finished a glass of cold, white wine.

Enjoying a glass of wine as our cruise ship was preparing to leave Tampa
on the way to Cozumel.

Sharing wine with other people is one of the joys of my life. I started doing this when I was at UCLA at my home, at staff events at work, and sometimes with a few people on Friday afternoons in my office or at a campus pub or a local restaurant. I did this at every job (except Regina) up through my retirement from Florida Atlantic University. I had some great times with many people, enjoying some fine wines and cheese and other good food to celebrate a holiday, a special event, or just the end of a work week.

In my professional life as a Dean of Libraries, I enjoyed having events that introduced people to the joys of wine tasting. This was an event for new graduate students at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg.

In my time as Dean at St. Petersburg, I threw staff annual holiday parties in December and at other times and always brought in wine for staff to enjoy.

I am grateful that someone introduced me to wine and its pleasures. It has enhanced so many of my life’s moments. Although I have slowed down quite a bit with my wine drinking, I still savor the taste and the entire experience.

Berlin, Germany, 1971

I loved studying foreign languages and studied French from fifth grade through college. In 10th grade, I started studying German. My teacher, Miss Burke, recognized that I was not the ordinary student and she quickly let me study independently and work ahead. I crammed three years of high-school German into one year. I’m sure my teacher had a lot to do with me getting a scholarship from the National Carl Schurz Foundation to go to Germany for a month in the summer of 1971.

I don’t remember much of how this trip came about. I just remember that my mother and I traveled by train from Philadelphia to New York City where all that summer’s exchange students were leaving from. We stayed overnight in the designated hotel and were too afraid to go out to get anything to eat so we ordered food in through room service. What stands out from this stay was the waiter, who could not speak English, refused to leave the room until my mother gave him more money as a tip. That experience certainly colored my impression of New York City for years to come.

We must have had some sort of orientation for all of us who were making the trip, although I don’t remember anything about that or about the flight from New York to Germany. There were about twenty of us who were set up to stay with German families in West Berlin. Other students were sent to other parts of Germany. I have a vague memory of flying into Frankfurt but I again have no memory of being picked up at the airport in Berlin. My first memory of being in West Berlin was being in a small apartment where my “family” consisted of a kindly older couple (Opa and Oma – Grandpop and Grandmom) and their granddaughter, Giselle. Giselle’s mother did not live with them. The apartment consisted of a single bedroom, a bathroom, a living room, and a kitchen. My bed was a divan in the grandparents’ bedroom. And there was a balcony overlooking the street. Talk about culture shock. While I was not from a wealthy family, the idea of sleeping on a couch in a strangers’ bedroom was so foreign and somewhat frightening, too. The Foundation had done a very poor job of providing orientation for us. Looking back, I certainly understand that lifestyles were different but such different living circumstances would have been easier to accept had we had any advance preparation.

The families we stayed with must have received money for housing us, as they provided excellent food. It seemed to be a treat for them. My family really tried to make me feel comfortable. They asked me what I normally had for breakfast and I told them “Eier” or eggs, so we had soft boiled eggs every morning (cold most days as they were left over from cooking on a previous day), as well as the typical German breakfast of cold cuts, butter, and bread. I remember them trying to find corn for me and coming up only with a can of creamed corn. Corn was something that was fed to cattle, not eaten by people as corn-on-the-cob.

There were five meals a day: Frühstück (breakfast), zweite Frühstück (2nd breakfast), Mittagessen (lunch), and afternoon snack which was usually pastry from a local bakery, and Abendessen (supper). I had many new foods while there, including steak tartare, which I loved (after eating it on bread for lunch one day without knowing it was raw steak.) I gained 20 pounds in one month!

Weekdays, I took the bus from the district I lived in (Wedding) to the other side of the city where I joined the other students in language school. Our program coordinator was an American man in his 30s or 40s who spoke fluent German but with an APPALLING accent. It even hurt my ears to listen to him! We spent a few hours in school, had the snack and lunch that our families packed for us, and took the bus back to our temporary homes in the afternoon. The Association organized some field trips. One field trip was organized to visit a brewery. Drinking hard liquor was legal at age 16 and Bier was legal to drink at 12, I think. Kids did not get drunk there the way they do in the States because alcohol was something they drank with meals and it was not some huge no-no.

Another field trip was to take us to the opera. I don’t know whose bright idea that was but they took us to a five-hour production of Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It is the longest opera commonly performed, taking nearly four and a half hours, not counting two breaks. The ONLY phrase I understood in the entire production was when one of the characters said, “Ich kann es nicht verstehen” – I can’t understand it. We also took a bus tour of the city one day and I remember passing by the Brandenburg Gate where we waved at the Russian soldiers who were on guard. One of them risked waving back with the tips of his fingers as he stood rigidly on guard with his hands at his sides. They also took us to see the Kaiser Wilhelm Kirche, which has been left with one tower bombed out by the Allied Forces in World War II, serving as a reminder of the devastation of war.

Kaiser Wilhlem Memorial Church

Germany was still divided at this time between East Germany (controlled by the Russians) and West Germany, divided up between France, England, and the United States. Berlin, the former capital of Germany, was a divided city, with a wall built by the Russians to keep people from fleeing to the West. On August 13, 1961, East German soldiers begin laying down barbed wire and bricks as a barrier between Soviet-controlled East Berlin and the western section of the city. The Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 and did not come down until 1989. German reunification did not happen until 1990.

Berlin Wall being built in 1961

World War II and its aftermath were evident everywhere in Berlin, with reminders that the spoils of war go to the victors.. The defeat of the Nazis and the subsequent division of Germany between the Allied powers was on everyone’s mind, since they lived in a divided country every day. Germany was still in the process of being redeemed in the eyes of the world and the Germans felt a collective responsibility. Germany did a good job of owning up to its past and condemning the Nazis. Other countries, like the United States right now, could learn a lot about not trying to hide the mistakes and bad decisions of past generations so that they are less inclined to repeat them.

I remember one conversation with my host family about the war and its aftermath and what they resented the most was that the Russians had been allowed to control half their country. They couldn’t understand why President Roosevelt had conceded as much as he did to the Russians. With my limited German, and even more limited understanding of world history, I replied that “Er war krank” (he was sick). referring to Roosevelt’s declining health at Yalta.

One time, I was riding on the subway with Giselle and her cousin Pieter (who fancied himself in love with me) and we passed by one of the stops in East Berlin. There were three subway lines that ran for the most part through West Berlin but passed for a short distance through East Berlin territory. These lines continued to be open to West Berliners; however, trains did not stop at most of the stations located within East Berlin. The train slowed down, as it did at all stops, and there on the platform were East German soldiers with submachine guns. I asked Pieter what he thought when he saw that and he said simply “scheiße” or “shit.” Daily reminders that their country was not their own. There are many articles on these “ghost stations.”

When not in class, I hung out with two boys who were in my class: Jake who was from East Stroudsberg, Pennsylvania and Steve who was from Providence, Rhode Island. Sometimes we would be on our own and sometimes we would be accompanied by the kids our age who were part of the families we were staying with. One time, we went to the Kurfürstendamm (known affectionately as the Ku-damm). The broad, long boulevard is very popular and is lined with shops, houses, hotels and restaurants. It was my first time experiencing open-air cafes and the European way of life. I was enchanted. Sitting at outdoor cafes and watching people go by is still one of my favorite things to do anywhere I happen to be.

Cafe Einstein, Unter den Linden, near the Ku-damm

I remember we went to a restaurant one time and ordered pizza because we were a little homesick and wanted something familiar. When the pizza arrived, we started to eat it with our hands, just like we did at home, A young couple who were nearby said to each other, loud enough for us to hear, “amerikanische Schweinhunde” or American bastards. It was offensive to them that we were eating with our hands but, more likely, they were offended by the fact that they lived under the control of foreign governments. There were American, French, and British solders everywhere, and Russian soldiers on guard at the Brandenburg Gate, as well as at the Wall and on a couple stops on one subway line that still ran through East Berlin.

Another time we went to a fair. We got so excited when we saw a popcorn vendor and we all bought bags of hot popcorn. Imagine our surprise– and disgust –when we found that the popcorn had sugar on it and not salt! One day the three of us and our German “siblings” went to a local swimming pool. I had a memorable lesson in German grammar when I said to the teenage boy who was Steve’s counterpart (named Wolfgang), that I was cold. It was humiliating when he explained to me that “Ich bin kalt” actually meant I was sexually frigid and that to say I was cold required me to say “Es ist mir kalt” (literally “it is cold to me”). This is the way you learn a foreign language, study followed by practice with native speakers, followed by more study. And a healthy dose of embarrassing faux-pas can speed up the learning process!

One of the most memorable days of my trip to Berlin was when my friends Steve, Jake and I went into East Berlin. We crossed over on foot at Checkpoint Charlie. We were able to go in because we were Americans. We were warned, however, that it was illegal to take pictures of certain things, including soldiers and public transportation. The public transportation edict seemed odd until we got there and saw that they were still using the buses that had been in use during World War II and they didn’t want that widely known. Right after we entered East Berlin, we had to cross a street. The street was intersected by a portion of the Wall so there was no way any traffic could come down it. There was a street light still operating and we crossed against the light. Well, an old German man who was on the other side started giving us the devil because we had crossed against the light. Another example of different cultural perspectives. It seemed funny to us but that old man was really offended by our behavior. No respect for authority!

By Roger Wollstadt – Flickr: Berlin – Checkpoint Charlie, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14779751

I never took any pictures during this trip. Possibly I didn’t have a camera. I don’t remember why. The next year, though, Jake and Steve came to visit me in Wayne.

Steve and Jake visiting me in Wayne

When I got back from this trip, I was with some of my cousins whose father had been in the military. They were younger than I was and had never even been outside of the state of Pennsylvania. Yet they were arguing with me, telling me what Germany was like! Well, I didn’t know much but I knew that they were full of something and it wasn’t accurate information. This trip was my first foray outside the United States. I had studied the language of the country that I was visiting but I was very far from fluent. It was a turning point for me in how I thought about myself and the world around me. I always wanted to go back to see how the city had changed after the Wall came down, but I never have. I am so glad, though, that I had this life-changing opportunity at age 16.

Antibes, Nice, San Remo June 2005

In June 5-11, 2005, I attended a weeklong workshop, the DELOS Summer School on Digital Preservation, in Sophia Antipolis, France. Sophia Antipolis is a 2,400 hectare technology park in southeast France, and as of 2021 home to 2,500 companies, valued today at more than 5.6 billion euros and employing more than 38,000 people counting more than 80 nationalities. The park is known to be Europe’s first science and technology hub. I was able to attend this workshop because I had been awarded a $5000 research prize, the Corrigan Solari Library Faculty Fellowship Award in 2004 and I chose to use my funds to attend professional development opportunities outside the United States. I also combined this professional trip with my love of travel and visited Nice, Antibes, and Sanremo, Italy.

The workshop was amazing and introduced me to digital collections experts from around the world. I really had to stretch myself professionally to keep up.

DELOS workshop dinner, June 2005

2005 was a great year for me, personally and professionally. I turned 50, I had lost 40 pounds and I was as active professionally as I have ever been, traveling around the United States, the UK, and Europe attending top-level workshops on digital libraries or giving presentations on the work I was involved with (enter 2005 in search box).

Me in Antibes, June 2005

Antibes June 2005

Antibes June 2005 by the Picasso Museum

Antibes June 2005

Antibes June 2005

I no longer remember the exact itinerary I followed but I know that I stayed in Nice for a couple of days before heading to Antibes where I stayed for the conference (June 5-11). Nice was beautiful, in its own way, but I remember being under impressed with the other tourists (lots of loud Russians) and the beaches (rocky). One of the highlights of my visit to Antibes was the Musée Picasso at Juan-les-Pins. I alsp enjoyed getting a fresh croissant from the pâtisserie near the hotel every morning and just sitting at a table watching the people come and go.

Nice, June 2005

Posing with Betty Boop, Nice, June 2005

Nice, June 2005, me drinking a glass of wine as I look out over the Mediterranean

View of the beach in Nice, June 2005

Sanremo, Italy, June 2005

Following the workshop, I took the train into Italy for the day. The train ran along the Mediterranean coast and passed through Menton, a town on the French Riviera. The views from the train were spectacular. I got off the train at the first stop in Italy, which was Sanremo (or San Remo). I stopped and had a late lunch at a sidewalk restaurant and then went into a wine tasting shop that was getting ready to close for the day. The town itself was taking an afternoon break from a busy lunchtime and we had some difficulty finding a place to have lunch.

Sanremo, Italy, June 2005

Wine shop in Sanremo, Italy, June 2005

My knowledge of Italian consisted of one year of study back in the early 1980s when I worked at Bryn Mawr College, The wine shop owner enjoyed the visit from me and my ex and he gave us tons of wine to sample for free, since he was going to throw it out at the end of the day anyway. I remember telling him he was a “diavolo” for getting us so drunk. That is my entire experience in Italy, one drunken afternoon in a town that was very quiet and sleepy.

Impactful work, Part 2

In April of 2021, I shared information in a blog post on Impactful Work about one of the jobs I have had in my life that was important to me and that I felt had an impact beyond me. Today, I would like to share information on what is probably the most impactful project I have been part of: the development of the first digital collection at the University of Oregon Libraries, Picturing the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla Tribes.

This project was impactful for several reasons:

1. It broadened awareness of indigenous issues beyond the indigenous community in Oregon
2. It developed and strengthened a partnership between the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla and the University of Oregon Libraries
3. It highlighted a collection of 9000 glass-plate negatives that had been languishing on metal shelves in the Libraries’ Special Collections and drew more people in to use these important primary source materials
4. It allowed the staff of the Catalog Department and the Preservation Department to redefine themselves, develop new skills and employ existing skills in new ways, and morph into the Department of Metadata and Digital Library Services
5. It put the University of Oregon Libraries on the map in the digital world, a presence now shared with Oregon State University in the Oregon Digital portal
6. It set the pattern for innovative partnerships with cultural heritage institutions that guided me in my next positions in Canada and Florida.

I wrote about the development of this collection in a paper co-authored with Corey Harper and Nathan Georgitis entitled Imagining the Northwest : A Digital Library Partnership in Oregon that was published by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative in 2003. In this paper we discussed the development of a digital collection of selected still images out of the 9000 images created by photographer Lee Moorhouse on the Umatilla Indian Reservation at the turn of the 20th century. The University of Oregon Libraries, working with the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla, developed a Dublin Core compliant metadata structure that accommodated descriptive metadata from different cultural perspectives.

What was most significant for me about the project was the opportunity of working closely with members of the tribes and learning about the significance of the images to the past, present, and future of the tribes. My staff and I were able to describe what we saw in the images, but we had no idea what the images were about.

Sabina Minthorn and babe,
PH036 / A82, No copyright

We did not know when the image had been staged and displayed people wearing tribal regalia inappropriately. The tribal members described what the images were about. They selected a sampling of images from the thousands taken and we worked to capture the stories of the images while some of the people portrayed in them were still alive. The images were stunningly beautiful and often very moving.

Victor William Cayuse Tribe,
PH036 / A82, No copyright

The experience of working closely with tribal members opened my eyes to a world of experiences about which I knew nothing. My growing awareness of my own ignorance was humbling. Trying to develop a controlled vocabulary that would be culturally appropriate was a challenge, as the terminology used by the Library of Congress was notoriously Euro-centric and white-centric. Every day presented new challenges, both technical and cultural, and I have seldom felt that my work was more important. These images and this collection mattered.

Two crying babies swaddled in cradleboards,
PH036_5052, No copyright

This first digital collection began my professional transformation from a cataloger to a library director, as well as the transformation of the department I headed at the University of Oregon. I gave many presentations across the United States and in the UK and Spain over the years about the work of building these digital collections and the impact it had on the people working in the library.

A Native American woman reclines on a blanket,
PH036_6221, No copyright

Working on this collection was a time of professional joy and excitement for me. I got to travel to the reservation in Pendleton, Oregon and became appreciative of a different way of viewing the world. I cherish the conversations I had with tribal members and the partnership we developed.