Lunchtime read: The Yellow-lighted Bookshop

I am not so patiently waiting for Dreamweaver to clean up XHTML and HTML font tags from the "links" page on the resource center web site. This particular page has been trouble for the last year or so; active links disappearing, font size changing, and updates not posting are just some of the issues. The problems may stem from using two different web editors, Namo and Dreamweaver, when updating a page originally created with HTML (I had temporarily lost my mind), the two are not particularly compatible but I continue to try and fix it rather than dump the whole page and begin again as this particular page has over 1,500 education topic links. As soon as I get a better handle on using Dreamweaver the page is undergoing massive redesign and reconstruction, but until that point I am practicing with the software by using it for updates and additions. On Saturday it took a half an hour for the clean up to get rid of 1,672 redundant tags and 5,790 unnecessary font tags! Guess that was the best place to start after all.

Today at lunch I chose The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, by Lewis Buzbee, as my lunchtime companion. I haven't finished yet, but already two things have struck a chord with me. Buzbee talks about linking his fascination with new books (opening the cartons) back to his school days and watching his teacher open Scholastic Weekly Reader book boxes and distributing them to the class. After reading those comments I vividly remembered doing the same and getting my own personal paperback copy of The Witch of Blackbird Pond, one of my first "adult books." I did not know it was a Newbery title until I was in grad school or even that it had been written before I was born, I just loved the story.

"The books of our childhood offer a vivid door to our own pasts, and not necessarily for the stories we read there, but for the memories of where we were and who we were when reading them; to remember a book is to remember the child who read that book." - The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop, p. 36-37

I can not say I honestly remember the first book I read. I do remember going hand in hand with my older sister to our public library on a regular basis (it was a treat to go without supervision) and be allowed to check out books to bring home. We also had books of our own to read over and over and over again. Either way, I don't remember a time when I did not read or have stories read to me.

It is time to go home. Dreamweaver just now finished, fifteen minutes later, and has removed 7,557 font tags! How is that possible? Even with 2,000 links, that would mean a font tag for every line. What a mess. I will finish this post this evening.

Tags: Dreamweaver, Web editors, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop