Milestones to go before I sleep

Last month (July 2008) was a month of milestones. The largest milestone was that my wife Gina and I celebrated 25 years of marriage. And the way we did it made it even more of a milestone for us. On our first anniversary 24 years ago, we took a trip through Glacier National Park, Banff National Park, Jasper National Park, and on to the coast at Vancouver. As I recounted on my blog, although we were camping we wanted to see the Banff Springs Hotel. Dubbed the "castle in the wilderness", and for good reason, we promised ourselves that in the far distant future, such as our 25th wedding anniversary, when we thought we could probably afford it by then, we would come back and stay there. So we did. And it was amazing.

When we arrived at the Calgary airport the rental car company gave us a complimentary upgrade from the Ford Focus I had reserved (in my usual penny-pinching way) to a Lincoln Town Car. A couple hours later when we arrived at the hotel, we discovered that the hotel was giving us a complimentary upgrade to the Gold Floor, which in a nutshell is the highest level of service in the hotel (I believe this may have happened because I had shared our story with the staff while making dinner reservations). The room was great and the view was nothing short of fantastic (see photo). We hiked, we swam, we saw the sights, we had a great time.

Then we continued on to the Chateau Lake Louise which they claim is the birthplace of Canadian mountaineering. I believe it, the mountains were fantastic, and certainly invited one to hike and climb whenever you were not enjoying a drink in the lounge overlooking the robins-egg-shell-blue lake or were otherwise profitably engaged. We had a fantastic time, and were gratified to be able to make a 24-year-old promise to ourselves come true.

Another milestone involved a shorter-term promise I had made to myself upon the death of my mentor, colleague and friend Anne Lipow. I had vowed to publish a festschrift in her honor, and finally did so last month. I had mentioned this earlier when I was working on it. Called Technology in Libraries: Essays in Honor of Anne Grodzins Lipow, it is somewhat of a departure for me in book publishing. Since Anne was such a trailblazer in publishing, doing such outlandish things as paying her authors royalties monthly (probably unique on the planet), I decided to go my own way as well. I am both offering it as a free download from my web site as well as at a relatively low cost as a print-on-demand hardback from Lulu.com. After all, this book may be about a lot of things but making money isn't one of them. Please download, read, pass it around, and cite it to your heart's content. And ask your local library school to add it to their collection so future students will have a chance to know more about Anne and her work. Access and exposure is what this one is all about.

We all have milestones at various times in our lives, and I think it's good to take the time to acknowledge them. It makes the journey through life more meaningful, and reflective, and good. I've had more than these in the past, and I hope to have a few more to enjoy before that final milestone we all mark.