Missing in action and ghosts

A major reading rut at the moment!  It is a cruel irony that when I am stressed and depressed I just can't read, I endlessly pick up books only to abandon them after a couple of pages, which is what I have been doing for the last week, so this is really just a brief book post.  I spent most of last week in Brisbane visiting libraries as part of a study thing, which was pretty cool, I will possibly post more on that later.

I thought I might just put up a short post on the subject of a very small, local publication; Ghostly Tales of Toowoomba, by Don Talbot, I just picked this up when I was tidying shelves at work and had a flick through.  It's not very long and each entry is only about a page to a couple of pages long, illustrated  with black and white photos and some low grade clip art, just a brief curiosity piece of local history really.  I was mainly interested in the 'haunted railway station' entry: the Toowoomba railway station is a great local piece of Victorian architecture and supposedly sports a resident ghost, Mrs Perkins.  The old tea rooms have been converted into a restaurant, Platform 9, effectively it is a living museum with much of the crockery and cutlery being original Queensland Rail issue.  We have visited a couple of times, mainly to partake of their great weekend breakfast special; cheap, filling and yum, oh and of course I love the historical/Victorian feel of the whole place, so it was with some interest that I read of the problems with the renovation of the building caused by the apparently ghostly presence that haunts it.

Below I have copied in a video of Don Talbot discussing Toowoomba ghosts.  It is a State Library video which I have taken from their youtube channel, the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VodhXip77uQ State library are a great resource, not just some interesting video resources, but they have also made a lot of their photographic collection available online, much is out of copyright, so I have used an early post card image of the building, (the link to the state library online image is below it).

I

http://bishop.slq.qld.gov.au/view/action/singleViewer.do?dvs=1310623159186~505&locale=en_AU&metadata_object_ratio=4&show_metadata=true&VIEWER_URL=/view/action/singleViewer.do?&DELIVERY_RULE_ID=10&search_terms=toowoomba%20railway%20station&frameId=1&usePid1=true&usePid2=true
They are a great resource for historic images.  Next time I'm at Platform 9 I will try and take some pictures of my own, never know maybe I will get to see Mrs Perkins in person.

A literacy link

I thought I would put in this link to a fascinating video from literacy educator Nancie Atwell,  this was a response to a New York Times article on children and reading choices that sparked considerable debate.  From the perspective of the library this is a fascinating and relevant discussion: http://www.heinemann.com/shared/player.aspx?id=AtwellRebuttal&path=rtmp://heinpublishing.flashsvc.vitalstreamcdn.com/heinpublishing_vitalstream_com/_definst_/videos/atwell

To an extent this blog is my reading journal and an occasional place of work related jottings and that is what this link is.
Also I used a quote from Nancie Atwell on a reading promotion poster for school.