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Well, the ALA adventure began badly when our direct flight from Greensboro was CANCELED and Bill and I (along with Sarah) were re-routed through Charlotte (nothing like flying southwest to go northeast) before arriving several hours late. That meant Bill had to scramble to set up the Alibris booth at the convention center and I missed my afternoon program.

Things looked up, however, when I ran into Debbie Nolan at registration. She is busy with her library at Towson and sends her love to everyone. I had a chance to catch her up on all the gossip regarding the dress code, the new reporting relationship, etc. It was good to see her!

My one official function on Friday was to meet my E.J. Josey Spectrum Scholar mentee, Alma Ramos-McDermott, who is a library school student at Simmons College in Boston. She was a school teacher in Brooklyn for 21 years before meeting her husband (they are both runners and met at a race) and moving to Boston, where she enrolled in library school and was named a Spectrum scholar. We were matched in a mentor-mentee relationship and met for the first time at this reception. Alma would like to be an elementary school media specialist but the market for those jobs is tough in Boston (and elsewhere) due to tight funding. I invited her to visit Wake Forest if she wanted to see what it was like in an academic library.

For dinner, Bill and I met my old friend Toni Garvey. You will remember that Toni was the 2004 LJ Librarian of the Year and also the friend who convinced me to walk the 3-Day for breast cancer last November in Phoenix. Toni and I went to high school together and both became librarians so we get to meet up at ALA twice a year.

That’s it for now. Saturday is always the busiest day at ALA so I’ll report back later. (Susan, aren’t you proud of me for the photo and links? So it is possible to teach an old dog new tricks…) Lynn