Things My Mother Told
Me...
Growing up, your parents
tell you all sorts of things, and some of them are true—others you wish
aren't true and never happen to you. Listed below are a number of spooky
things I heard growing up.
PHENOMENON
- Stand in the center of
a crossroads and call for the Devil and he will appear.
- A door opening
on its own means a ghostly visitor; welcome it in.
- Cover mirrors
during a storm.
- Itchy hand?
Expect money.
- Never sleep thirsty;
your soul might go wandering looking for a drink, and not come back.
- Drop a spoon?
Visitors coming soon.
- Bad storm? Grab
a knife or some scissors and go out and cut the clouds.
CHARACTERS
- El Cucuy.
AKA the Boogey Man.
If you want a child to behave, tell them the Cucuy will get
them if they don’t. If you don’t want a child to go to a specific
place, tell him the Cucuy is there.
- Los Duendes.
Little mischievous beings.
If there were noises in the house that no one could explain, it was
the duendes. If something got misplaced the duendes
did it. Leave them something to eat or drink and they would be nice.
SAN ANTONIO STORIES
- El Diablo
Makes an Appearance at El Camaroncito Night Club. A guapo
(good looking man) comes in to dance one night. The girl he’s
dancing with appears spellbound with this great dancer, but when
she looks down she notices that where his feet should be he has
instead a hoof and a chicken foot. As the girl screams he
disappears, leaving the smell of sulfur behind.
- The
Headless Horseman Rides Again. When we were children we
would play Red Light/Green Light in the front yard. One day we
heard hoof beats coming down 36th Street. We weren’t sure what
to make of this, because although San Antonio is in Texas,
horses in the city are just not common; besides which, 36th is a
busy street usually teeming with cars with no patience for a
horse. We looked down the street and saw a man in black, wearing
a cape, riding a black horse and having no head. We looked at
each other and ran inside. Call it mass hysteria, but there was
at least four of us that witnessed it.
- Native
Americans on the Westside. On Fortuna Street there is a
ditch where, on some nights people say they hear horses and the
sounds of Native Americans whooping it up.
CENTRAL LIBRARY STORIES
Stay late or come in early and you too might experience the following:
- In the
basement you might scent a ghostly perfume.
- On the
third floor you might hear the sounds of children
playing and bouncing a ball.
- On the
fourth floor you might see a pair of patent leather
black shoes in a restroom stall ownerless, a man in business
attire typing away at a computer, a girl sitting all alone,
reflected in the window, or feel a lurking presence at your
shoulder as you walk down a hallway.
- Pick a
floor and you might see or hear books fly off the
shelves and across the room.
Not
scared yet? Check out some of these creepy library books!
Creepy
Creatures and Other Cucuys by Xavier Garza
Juvenile Fiction Garza
When
Darkness Falls: Tales of San Antonio Ghosts and Hauntings
by Docia Schultz Williams
398.25097 Williams
The
Haunted Alamo: A History of the Mission and Guide to
Paranormal Activity by Robert Wlodarski
976.7351 Wlodarski
Haunted
Texas Vacations: The Complete Ghostly Guide by Lisa
Farwell
133.10976 Farwell
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Tired of Googling? Do the ChaCha!
So what do you do when Google or Yahoo! presents you with
51,700,000 search results to choose from? Just trust that
the first ten are probably the best? Conduct a narrower
search? Well, now there’s a new option: you can have someone
do the work for you. That’s the concept behind
ChaCha, an experimental
search engine. ChaCha provides human guides who will chat
with you and, at no cost, help separate the useful wheat
from the 51 million pieces of Internet chaff.
To test ChaCha, a search was needed for which there would be
one “gold standard” result. In the case of demographics,
that standard is the U.S. Census. Any guidance which did not
yield the U.S. Census site would be of little use.
Here’s the results of the ChaCha session “How have the
demographics of Bexar County changed over the last ten
years?” I ended the session after one minute or so, but
DebiH was happy to provide more assistance:
DebiH: Hi there.
I will be helping with your search.
You: thanks
DebiH: Looking for information on Texas?
You: on Bexar County in particular
You: just demographics
DebiH: Sure! Let me see what I can pull up!
You: wow that was quick! [about 1 minute later]
DebiH: Good! Would you like any more?
You: that looks like enough to get started. thank you so much
DebiH: You're very welcome! Hope you have a great day!
The three suggested sites included two government sites with
appropriate Bexar County-related information and the
necessary Census site.
Using just such a natural language query (“How have
demographics in Bexar County changed over the last ten
years?”) at any search engine returns few useful results,
but ChaCha’s human guides can interpret that natural
language and conduct a better search. Many people are likely
to start their information search with a natural language
query in mind.
The results of the chat also included a citation for the
“resources used by this guide for this search,” which showed
a link for a meta search engine, www.jux2.com. Jux2 deserves
its own write-up, but suffice it to say that this kind of
search engine for search engines is a necessary tool when
one considers that every search engine indexes some websites
unique to itself and uses its own algorithms to sort
results.
In fact, Jux2 claims that in “top ten” results, the most
common scenario is that there will only be 3-5 shared
results between any two search engines. This was borne out
in the ChaCha experiment. For the Bexar County search, only
Google, or a meta search engine like Jux2, would have
provided the direct link to Bexar County information at the
Census Bureau.
The benefits to the public are real-time interaction with a
guide, targeted and interpreted results and tools/additional
resources for future inquiries. Because these are the
hallmarks of reference librarianship, ChaCha poses an
interesting challenge to defining the role of public
libraries in the 21st century. Now, as Linda Richards would
say, discuss!
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Celebrate Teen Read
Week: October 15-21!
This year’s Teen Read Week theme is Get Active @ Your Library, and the
San Antonio Public Library has lots of fun programs to keep teens
active. Teens are invited to customize a Lucha Libro t-shirt at
participating branches. The Oakwell Branch Library is hosting a Teen
Read Week Dance Dance Revolution Tournament on October 17 at 3:30 p.m.
Stop by the Brook Hollow Branch Library for CSI for Teens on October 18
at 6:00 p.m. You can make your very own dead body outline on the library
floor! The Carver Branch Library is presenting Scrapbooking for Teens on
October 18 at 5:30 p.m. Some Teen Read Week events at the Central
Library are Poetry Reading on October 16 at 6:30 p.m. and Get Active:
Human Rights Campaign on October 18 at 6:30 p.m.
Do you have any teens or are you a teen looking for something good to
read? Try these:
-
Born in Sin
by Evelyn Coleman
14-year-old Keisha has dreams of becoming a doctor and the first black
female Olympic swimmer, despite being labeled an "at risk" teen and
placed in an urban rescue program for teens born in poverty, or, as she
angrily puts it, "born in sin."
-
Ball Don’t Lie
by Matt De la Peña
A teen from a very dysfunctional home sees basketball as his ticket out
— a little different from many other stories on this theme in that this
teen is white and is trying to be accepted in a largely African-American
culture.
-
Being A Girl:
Navigating the Ups and Downs of Teen Life by Kim Cattrall
Award-winning "Sex and the City" actress Kim Cattrall offers heartfelt
advice to today's teens. Cattrall tackles real questions in an honest,
intimate and totally hip way. Info-packed spreads feature
never-before-seen teen photos of the actress.
-
Sports Shorts
by Joseph Bruchac
Young adult authors provide semi-autobiographical tales of their own
sports disasters.
And…check out these websites:
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FEATURED Staff
Recommendation |
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THE SAN ANTONIO PUBLIC LIBRARY STAFF LOVES
TO READ!
Angela Frederick (Librarian,
Central Library - Teen Services) scares up some good reads.
Recently Read
The
Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri,
The
Good Pig by Sy Montgomery,
The
Time-Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Classic Reads in High School That I Actually Enjoyed
The
Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley,
1984
by George Orwell
Favorite Young Adult Novels
Speak by
Laurie Halse Anderson,
Whale Talk
by Chris Crutcher,
The Earth, My Butt
and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler
Favorite Children's Books
Julius, the Baby
of the World by Kevin Henkes,
Madlenka by
Peter Sis, Zen
Shorts by Jon J. Muth |
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FEATURED
Database |
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Thomson Gale LegalForms Database
The Thomson Gale LegalForms database provides access to thousands of
customizable legal forms, many of them specific to the State of Texas.
Forms are available for many areas of law: bankruptcy, divorce, name
change, wills and power of attorney, to name just a few.
Forms are usually available as a PDF file and/or as a Word document.
According to Thomson Gale, the forms provided are "attorney forms" — in
other words, forms used at law firms and drafted by attorneys. In
addition to these forms that you can easily fill out yourself, the
database also contains examples of forms that were actually submitted to
courts.
As with our other legal materials, these forms are provided as legal
information, not legal advice. That can only be obtained from a licensed
attorney. If you need help obtaining legal advice, the State Bar of
Texas operates a free
lawyer referral service. |
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FEATURED
Event |
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"Speaker’s Theater"
Featuring Ms. Fleur W. Tamon, a local humorist and freelance writer.
Ms. Tamon will present two original humorous stories: “Hypochondria
House” and “Is There Life After Saks Fifth Avenue?” Sunday,
October 8, 2:30 p.m. Cody Library.
Ms. Tamon will facilitate another “Speaker’s Theater” in which
attendees will be able to present their own works. Sunday, October
22, 2:30 p.m. Cody Library.
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We urge you to call your library before heading out for a special
program. Although we verify all information, cancellations do
occasionally occur. |
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