Thank goodness for libraries

More graphic novels

2008-08-25T16:49:00.000-07:00

Swan by Ariyoshi Kyoko seems to be the first in a planned series about a young Japanese ballet dancer. I started reading, got very confused about the progression of the story, realized that the pages were numbered backwards, tried reading the pages from right to left, and then tried starting at the bottom. Finally I found the guide on the front page - you do read from right to left but you start at the top of each page. The book also has footnotes explaining Japanese terms. The story teaches young girls that beauty in ballet is not really about being a star and wowing everyone with perfection. It is found instead in daily lessons, mental discipline, and the entire company working together. It was a nice story, geared toward younger girls - very different in style from the dark, action-oriented books appealing to boys!

I enjoyed The Barefoot Serpent by Scott Morse very much - probably because it is VERY unlike most of the other graphic novels. It is really a picture book with two different stories. The color section is about the famous Japanese filmaker Akira Kurosawa. Akira was independent enough to follow his own vision from the time he was a young boy, yet even his strength and talent did not shield him from trouble and sadness.
The middle of the book is a black and white story about a little girl on a trip to Hawaii. Her family is trying to get over the death of her brother. She meets a local boy who reluctantly shares his magical mask and enables her and her parents to move beyond their sadness. The two stories were not tied together in plot, but they both showed people who grieved and were comforted by the compassion of others. The drawings were quiet and more subtle than most graphic novels, and I liked the colors he used.

["THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN" with Steve McQueen and Yul Brenner was based on Kurosawa's "THE SEVEN SAMUARI", which I saw long ago in school. Despite subtitles, the terrific actors and beautiful photography drew us into the story. The samurai swordfights were filmed like ballet - precise but very fluid. Kurosawa's "RASHOMON" was filmed as "THE OUTRAGE" with Paul Newman, and "YOJIMBO" (below) became "A FISTFUL OF DOLLARS" with Clint Eastwood.]

The forward to The Barefoot Serpent was written by Stan Sakai, who wrote Usagi Yojimbo, a collection of stories about a samurai rabbit (!!) named after the lead in the above movie "YOJIMBO." The stories originally appeared in color, but the book's black and white drawings are very effective. Sakai does not use the dark, hard, aggressive lines of many graphic novels. Instead, the action in his stories has a lighter, more humorous touch. Usagi is resourceful but wise and has a comic sidekick (a rhino). The first story featured a blast from the past - those teenage mutant ninja turtles! It was an enjoyable read.

YA Graphic novels

2008-07-29T13:59:00.000-07:00

I'm looking over an assortment of graphic novels. They are hard for me to get into, even though I used to read a lot of comic books as a kid. My husband glanced at them and said that the people all looked angry - maybe because of the intensity of the black and white color scheme and the angularity of characters' mouths and speech balloons.

I started with a Japanese book about a little girl - SUBA&! It was really difficult to follow. A frame would have multiple speech balloons and only one character. Sometimes you had to look down to find the next frame instead of reading them in a straight line. And I also had a problem connecting the Japanese names with the right characters. (So I can sympathize with non-English speakers a bit) Since the little girl main character seemed to be very demanding and not interesting to me, I gave up.

ST. DALE

2008-04-01T14:24:00.000-07:00

A novel about the world of auto racing was fun for me because my dad raced in a Formula Vee (a smaller version of an Indy car) for several years when I was a teenager. After my father died, my mother started following the NASCAR races on TV. She has "her team", although she also follows the Indy car races and went to see a "Dancing with the Stars" episode that was taped in Indianapolis with a race driver as one of the dance partners. The strong interest in the sport and level of technical knowledge on the part of the fans seemed very familiar to me. However, their intense emotional connection to Dale Earnhart eludes me. My father certainly would have scoffed at it.

But, as I got nearer to the end of the book, I felt frustrated because there was so much research on display that the characters and what happened to them took a back seat. Maybe that is the framework in The Canterbury Tales also - I've never read it. I guess if I had been more interested in Dale Earnhart to begin with, this wouldn't have bothered me. And I was also annoyed by the scorn heaped on Ryan Newman, for being uppity enough to get a degree from Purdue (my family's alma mater) and on Jeff Gordon, for the terrible sin of being a Californian.

Maybe her next book will develop another aspect of the NASCAR world.

THE TALES OF UNCLE REMUS; THE STORIES OF BRER RABBIT

2008-04-01T14:21:00.000-07:00

My dad read "Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby" to me when I was little. I remember the tiny black and white pictures showing Brer Rabbit getting progressively stuck and the trickyness of his plea, "Please don't throw me in the briar patch!" We also saw the Walt Disney movie based on these stories, "Song of the South."

I enjoyed reading Julius Lester’s foreward, where he explained the changes he made in the dialect, the plantation setting, and the “faithful darky” portrayal of Uncle Remus. He also saluted the original author for his dedication to publishing only authentic African American stories and reproducing the language of the former slaves in his area of the South.

After reading his foreword, I began to hear Denzel Washington’s voice as I read the stories. That enhanced the reading experience! It made me want to be with a group of children as they get involved in the stories and delight in Brer Rabbit’s tricks.

2008-02-26T07:24:00.000-08:00

Thank you for including this funny story as a change of pace. Mattie was a “pistol”, as my father-in-law would have described her. Even though she talked frequently of “slowing down”, she was still a dynamo compared to everyone else in the story. She reminds me of a lot of really energetic people I have known – blissfully unaware than not everyone wants to be as busy as they are. Mattie had a very positive effect on the dogcatcher and on Wesley, but her own children probably found it hard to live comfortably with her. Her son Robert became just a lazy pudge and her daughter Elaine took refuge in feminism and stubbornness. Mattie’s burning desire for grandchildren reminds me of someone in our family who pushed her children to provide grandchildren that she can take care of as soon as she retires from work. I was pretty shocked by Mattie’s statement to Elaine than she intended to marry Wesley. Hopefully, it was only meant to prod Elaine to get married and have children. But I pity poor Wesley if Mattie ever took that notion seriously. He was confused and inexperienced enough that she might have coaxed him into it as a way of staying out of the detention center.

Many stories portray strongly religious people as harmful zealots or shallow hypocrites or emotional crazies. But in this story, religion is a very positive force in Mattie’s life. She responds very strongly to the call to service to others – that call gives her purpose and focus and connection with other people, so that she doesn’t sit around feeling lonely or neglected. It also gives her the justification to do something out of her normal routines, like visiting Wesley in the detention center. Food is her way of reaching out. But she is such a good cook that even the reluctant people end up glad to be sharing her table.

As I was reading, the situations and dialogue seemed like scenes from a movie. The scene at the end, where Mattie coaxes Wesley, the deputy, the sheriff, her son and his new girlfriend, her nosy neighbors, her sister Pearl, the man whose car was stolen, her rebellious daughter, and finally the dogcatcher to eat while calmly clarifying the saga of Wesley’s morning in church, reminded me a of similar scene from an old Cary Grant movie. Sometimes I visualized Mattie looking like Vicki Lawrence’s “Mama” on the “Carol Burnette Show.” But often she called to mind the older women who come into the reference room to ask questions about their family history. They are nice and very chatty about their families, but they are also quite determined to get the information they are looking for. No doubt about it!

2008-02-25T12:28:00.000-08:00

As a reader, it was an adjustment for me to go from being totally inside Ivy Rowe’s mind in Fair and Tender Ladies or really immersed in the atmosphere of Porgy to the more detached 3rd person narrative of The World Made Straight. The story was smooth and easy to read, but the characters didn’t grab me as much as Ivy Rowe and Porgy did.

I think it was good for me to read about the feelings of a troubled teenager. Maybe I can be a little less judgmental about the kids in the Reference Room. It wasn’t hard to sympathize with Travis’ teenage insecurities and his frustration and resentment of his father’s constant harshness. But it was hard for me to sympathize with his theft of the marijuana plants, repeated several times, even though he knew he was on Toomey property. Given their history, that seemed really stupid. I was glad that Travis expanded his horizons through reading and study and that he took responsibility for Dena at the end and went back for Leonard. But I really had a hard time accepting his revenge on the Toomeys after he rescued Dena. It wasted a lot of time and inflamed them enough to put Leonard in jeopardy too. It seemed like a plot contrivance, especially when they ended up in the field where the Civil War massacre occurred.

I didn’t like Leonard much because he had just given up to the point where he lived in a pigsty, made a living from other people’s dependence on drugs and pills, and treated Dena with insulting indifference. His one redeeming effort was getting Travis to study for the GED exam and apply for college. It was very hard for me to accept his preoccupation with the Civil War massacre and his identification with his ancestor, the doctor. Well, even though the doctor was a witness (or maybe participant?) in the massacre, he certainly did a lot more for other people than Leonard did. The story seemed to imply that Leonard’s death was some kind of final chapter to the history of Shelton Laurel, but that was hard for me to buy. Leonard died confronting a greedy bully – the people massacred at Shelton Laurel were in the middle of a confusing and frightening civil war that involved everyone around them.
The doctor’s journal was my favorite part of the story – how he took care of his neighbors, bartered with them for payment, and conveyed compassion and an inquiring mind. The World Made Straight brought out some interesting history – that the North Carolina mountain people weren’t sold on secession like that big plantation owners nearer the coast. I read in a Tennessee travel brochure that the mountain people of eastern Tennessee considered breaking off from the state and remaining in the Union, like West Virginia did. That is something I never read about in my high school or college history courses. It reminds me of the split between South Carolina’s upstate pioneers and Low Country planters during the Revolutionary War.

PORGY and FAIR AND TENDER LADIES

2007-12-13T14:06:00.000-08:00

Thank you for encouraging me to ventures outside my normal genres - British detective stories and nonfiction history. I started this book club very late, but I had time to read both PORGY and FAIR AND TENDER LADIES on a trip to see my family in Indianapolis in November. It took me a chapter or so to get used to the dialect in PORGY and the spelling, syntax, and jumble of ideas in Ivy’s early letters. But both stories drew me in, and I was sorry when the tales ended.

Reading them one after the other made me think of several common elements: the importance of weather and terrain, the characters’ mixed reactions to religion, the prevalence of disease and sudden death, and the main characters’ attachment to their homes – Ivy’s mountain and Porgy’s Catfish Row – while their friends and loved ones often moved around.

PORGY reminded me a bit of a silent movie because the author emphasized the visual aspects of the story – Porgy begging, the fight between Crown and Robbins, the funeral procession and ceremony, the hustle and bustle along the cotton wharves, the hurricane, Maria wielding her butcher knife, and Porgy awaiting Crown’s attack. I really enjoyed the hurricane and its extended consequences. The brevity of the story appealed to me – like my two weekend trips to Charleston, it makes me want to go back again and see how things look at another point in time. It was interesting that most of the blacks in the story casually used “nigger” to refer to each other. I wonder how the black people of that time who read this story felt about that.

I don’t know if I always sympathized with Ivy Rowe, but I was really drawn in by her portrayal of the people and world around her. I very much admired her openness to new experiences, without worrying what people would say. She also responded to people as individuals. She might be angry or frustrated with someone but she didn’t stand in judgment on them or classify them.

What impressed me most was that the people who lived on the mountain were by choice and by situation very independent, though not completely. They fed, clothed, sheltered, and even entertained themselves. They didn’t have access to much outside information, so they thought for themselves too. They didn’t dream of looking in a book or TV or an opinion poll to decide what to do. It makes the attitude type of independence expressed in “I did it my way” seem pretty shallow. However, the flip side of the coin is that they almost starved when the crops dried up, people died from lack of medical attention, and most of the young people left to find education and jobs elsewhere. However, in a modern world dominated by the possibility of total, constant connectivity, the peace and quiet of Ivy’s cabin seem very special.

Finished

2007-02-16T09:00:00.000-08:00

I had a lot of misgivings when I started. Would I figure out the MP3 connection? Would these "Library 2.0" sites turn me off? Well, I'm glad we were encouraged to do this because I learned technical things and found a lot of interesting ideas. My daughter is one of the new generation of library students who have used this stuff before they even got to library school. Now I understand some of her class assignments!

SC public library websites

2007-02-16T07:36:00.000-08:00

I looked at the home pages of the county library systems in South Carolina. Most of them had a white background and contrasting bold text and graphics - the whole effect was too bright. Our color scheme is much easier on the eyes, allowing an old fogey like me to concentrate better. Many of home pages were cluttered with several lists of links, paragraphs of information, and busy icons in competing colors. Maybe the younger generation likes this!

However, I really enjoyed seeing the photos or drawings of their library buildings. In my mind, that gave the libraries personality and kindled my interest in visiting them. The homepages without those pictures seemed more impersonal. I also appreciate a library system putting an address and phone number(even if just for the main branch) on the home page. It looks business-like. Several libraries (Dorchester and Newberry) included a tiny map of SC, highlighting their county. That would be very helpful to web browsers unfamiliar with this area.

I really like our big G icon with the book - simple, pleasing, and effective in conveying what we are. The other one I really like is the icon for the Harvin Clarendon County Library - not only the graphic but the mission statement underneath: "Key to the Past Guide to the Present Window to the Future."

My Yahoo, MovieFlix, and Blinkxx

2007-02-15T07:35:00.000-08:00

Customizing the MY YAHOO page was fun. The Titanium background is easy on the eyes because it hides some of the box outlines. My husband customized our our home Yahoo account, so that we can see the weather where our daughters live, etc. However, I would rather skip the My Yahoo page and go immediately into the email page. I wish we could add the weather and calendar boxes to our email pages, but I was able to change the color settings on the email page.

I looked at the lists of movies and commercials available on MOVIE FLIX and registered with the site. Most of them seemed like old, rather minor movies. But Windows Media Player wouldn't play them, and I didn't want to download a special media player just to try out this site.

BLINXX seems like a smaller, more focused search engine than Yahoo or Google. You select a category, and it lists websites without all the graphics or extra advertising and popups that Yahoo has. But it also doesn't provide any extra information about sites the way Yahoo and Google do.

Podcast sites

2007-02-13T13:50:00.000-08:00

Podcasts sounded rather marginal at first - like a fad for people with a lot of spare time. But organizations like NPR and CNN find them really useful. "NPR has used the podcasting format to test out programming ideas which may not have found a home within the limited schedules of ... public radion stations in the U.S." CNN "sees how podcasts are changing the way we digest news on a daily basis." I guess podcasts are another way to use the information it gets from its 1400 reporters.

After the recent tornado hits in Florida, I tried searching the term "tornadoes" on the Podscope site, but came up with links to general weather programs. Disappointing. Clicking on the "book reviews" led to an interesting New York Public Radio program during which Brian Lehrer interviewed John Updike about his new novel TERRORIST.

To find other podcast search sites, I searched Yahoo under "podcast search." The first listing was for "Yahoo! Podcasts" (it figures). It's a great-looking site that includes: "what the heck is a podcast?", "what we like this week" - new and noteworthy and staff picks, "what other people like", and "explore on your own" - main categories and popular tags.

Then I went to podcast.com. The "rooty podcasts (audio)" list has a SciFi category that included "MuggleCast - Muggle Net's harry Potter podcast". You can link to 74 episodes and get transcripts also. Podcast.com doesn't have many video podcasts but says that their popularity is rising due to video cellphones and digital video cameras.

I went to PodcastAlley.com and found a link to a program called "Amateur Traveler"; one episode featured a book collection of travel stories by young backpacker travelers. On the Podzinger.com site, I linked to a Handbell podcast. (I play them in a church choir.) I can't remember where I linked to the Iditarod podcast site, but it was really interesting - a way to broadcast the entire race and to promote interest in the race beforehand.

Wikipedia

2007-02-06T13:47:00.000-08:00

I'm glad that Wikipedia was included in this assignment. I've seen lots of patrons using this site on the Reference computers - probably because it comes up near the top of the list in many Yahoo and Google searches. As reference librarians, we advise them that it is not an authoritative, verified source like a regular encyclopedia. However, this open and collaborative site seems really useful because users can add lots of interesting extra information and links that regular encyclopedias don't include.

I read several formatting instructions on the editing page. They seemed pretty complicated, so I went to the "Sandbox", where you can practice editing for fun and that worked.

I was very curious about the Wikipedia "Reference Desk." I wonder if some professional reference people helped Wikipedia write its guidelines:
Be as specific as possible.
Do not submit an entire homework question.
Do not ask for medical or legal advice.
Be patient because the responders are volunteers.

I went into the Science section and found topic #6 on February 1st: "the top 10 engineering projects with the most fatalities." Five people responded. Sometimes their answers included links to Wikipedia articles, so I clicked on the link to Magnetogorsk (a huge steel factory built in the 1930s in the USSR). That article had a bibliography and external links, including a research paper by a student at my college. That was fun!

Firefox and Bookmarklets

2007-02-03T13:43:00.000-08:00

I downloaded Firefox and played around with its feature which lets you place Bookmarks on the opening screen toolbar. It's one less click to get to your favorite sites. I can't really tell if Firefox works any faster than Internet Explorer. But my daughter in library school loves Firefox. She figured out how to change its icon to a horse which starts running as you open a site. I think someone may have done that on the Children's Desk computer also.

Bookmarklets are an interesting concept. It's neat that you can just highlight a phrase anywhere on a web site and click on a Bookmarklet to search for more information. But I agree with other GCL bloggers that I might not use them much. I did download the "More Info About" bookmarklet in my Firefox Bookmarks section. The long list of other Bookmarklets gave me ideas of other places to search for information when we get challenging questions at the Reference Desk.

Library Elf and Library Thing

2007-01-30T13:37:00.000-08:00

Library Elf seems like a useful service for people who check their email regularly and who have a lot of books or Holds to keep track of. I read some of the testimonials. One person said she received Hold notices on Elf before the library notified her - maybe due to missed phone messages. But I wonder if patrons who give libraries their email addresses for Holds wouldn't receive the notices just as fast directly from the library, if an automatic notification program were in place. I guess what is really nice is consolidating notices from several library cards and also being advised that books are coming due.

Library Thing just looks like a lot of fun! The list of discussion groups was amazing. I looked up some books I read recently (THE FIVE BELLS AND BLADEBONE by Martha Grimes and DEATH'S JEST-BOOK by Reginald Hill). They were listed among people's holdings but no one had commented about them. I think I would like to go back to this site and check out some of the discussion groups.

Flickr

2007-01-30T11:56:00.000-08:00

I finally visited the Flickr website, after hearing about it so long ago. It looks like an easy place to share photos with family or friends instead of attaching them to individual email messages that that time to open. It also looks a great spot for a local history photo project, where people could add commentary about places or people they recognize.

I tried searching for something really specific - my high school in Indianapolis. About 7 photos were came up - of a couple going to a prom. Then I searched for the Monon Trail, a 25-mile pathway for hikers and bikers that goes near my sister's house. There were about 30 really good-looking photos from several users. I clicked on two of the profiles. One person didn't share anything but his age, whereas another shared his favorite music, etc. I compared those photos with a Google Images search (about 30 totally different photos) and Yahoo Images search (many pages of different photos, but some of them distantly related to the subject). I was trying to see if Flickr would bring up good photos for reference use, and it looks like an alternative.
The photos do seem to come up faster than in Google or Yahoo.

Maybe I will suggest this to my sisters, brother and daughters as a way to share our photos.

Visiting iTunes, LimeWire, Kazaa & eDonkey

2007-01-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

I'm glad that this was part of the Learning Experience. I was really impressed by how many different types of media iTunes offers and how clearly the information is laid out on the website, with tutorials even! I didn't install iTunes, so I wasn't able to look at the iTunes inventory. But it makes me wonder if video stores and video mail delivery services will have a hard time competing with a service that lets customers download at reasonable prices and then store, organize, compress, and transfer files. I guess iTunes has purchased distribution rights to a ton of songs, movies, and audiobooks. Right now, Net Library's audiobooks inventory seems much smaller. But our subscription does allow patrons to listen to books for free, so maybe that's the way NetLibrary will compete.

The peer-to-peer concept behind Kazaa and LimeWire is new to me. Maybe it appeals to people who want more than they can get from Yahoo and Google or MySpace- the ability to search files which others are willing to share, without an intermediary that injects advertising and spyware. Kazaa offers downloads you pay for (commercial products, I guess) and free downloads from private users who are willing to share their stuff. I read the Parents Guide - it clearly explained how the site operates and how filters and virus blockers work.

LimeWire sounds visionary, but I'm not sure I get all the concept of an "open-protocol, prejudice-free development" to promote "competition among entities choosing to respond to the same queries". But I guess the big difference between LimeWire and Google/Yahoo is that LimeWire (and Kazaa) users are connected to several computers at once and information can be received from many sources. Chat rooms and MySpace also allow users to connect to multiple other users. Doesn't MySpace allow users to post files or links to their files, which others can then copy?

The eDonkey is closed but has a stern warning about the illegalilty of downloading copyrighted material. Was eDonkey permitting or encouraging illegal downloading?

Downloading a book to the MP3 player

2007-01-05T08:52:00.000-08:00

Last Friday afternoon (12/29/06), John Robert helped me figure out how to listen to a downloaded book on one of the library’s MP3 players, which we borrowed from Marf. He was able to do it on his computer in the morning and then showed me how to search for a children’s book in NetLibrary (HORRIBLE HARRY GOES TO THE MOON by Suzy Kline). He pointed out the note that we need to download a book in CD quality in order for it to play on the MP3 player. The first time I did it, I saved the file directly to the MP3 player. The book title displayed but it wouldn’t play. I got a message about needing to “sync” the file. We found the little CD (for installing Windows Media Player) that goes with the MP3 player. So we did the installation. (~Maybe Alan had already installed it on my computer??~) But the book still wouldn’t play. Then we tried downloading a different book to see if I had missed a crucial step. Then we went back through the installation procedure – and there we saw a tab called “SYNC”. However, we couldn’t figure out how to put my book in the sync list. Finally, John Robert advised me to save the book in My Documents. We could open the book files and play them there. Then he right-clicked on one of the files – and that’s where we finally saw “Send to sync list”. At last! I sent it to the sync list and let it get synced, which I think copied it to the MP3 player. Anyway, it played! Hallelujah!

Today, I downloaded a book onto one of the older public computers in the Reference Room. At first, I tried to download HORRIBLE HARRY GOES TO THE MOON again, but a message said that it couldn't be licensed to a 2nd computer, just the original computer. But I was able to download and play a new book on the public computer. However, it took much longer to download.

Facebook and MySpace

2006-11-15T07:48:00.000-08:00

I took the Site Tour at Facebook. It looks like a very simple way to set up a blog, maybe easier than blogger.com. The advantage is that it has been user-network focused - you are in the group at your college or high school or company. Therefore, you have some idea of whom you trust to share your info. You also have a reason to share with these people because they are in a physical community where you interact OFF the computer as well as online. It is interesting to read how the users protested when the company recently decided to automatically share people's updates with the rest of the group. The users were very concerned about privacy and got the company to amend the changes. I wonder if the intense reaction is because Facebook has more college and work groups than high school groups and they care more about protecting their privacy. Maybe all the younger kids on MySpace just love the idea of being out there in front of the whole world.

Thanks for help creating blog links

2006-11-15T06:48:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to Shannon, Tracey, and Lorelei for showing me how to add links in the Templates tab! I would never have figured it out on my own. I was really proud to share this information with others (after a few mistrials).

2006-10-27T07:42:00.000-07:00

Visit to the gardens of the Biltmore Estate in October

2006-10-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

A carrot, an egg, and a cup of coffee...

A young woman went to her mother and told her about her life and how things were so hard for her. She did not know how she was going to make it and wanted to give up. She was tired of fighting and struggling. It seemed as one problem was solved, a new one arose. Her mother took her to the kitchen. She filled three pots with water and placed each on a high fire. Soon the pots came to boil. In the first she placed carrots, in the second she placed eggs, and in the last she placed ground coffee beans. She let them sit and boil, without saying a word. In about twenty minutes she turned off the burners. She fished the carrots out and placed them I n a bowl. She pulled the eggs out and placed them in a bowl. Then she ladled the coffee out and placed it in a bowl. Turning to her daughter, she asked, "Tell me what you see.""Carrots, eggs, and coffee," she replied. Her mother brought her closer and asked her to feel the carrots. She did and noted that they were soft. The mother then asked the daughter to take an egg and break it. After pulling off the shell, she observed the hard boiled egg. Finally, the mother asked the daughter to sip the coffee. The daughter smiled as she tasted its rich aroma. The daughter then asked, "What does it mean, mother?" Her mother explained that each of these objects had faced the same adversity: boiling water. Each reacted differently. The carrot went in strong, hard, and unrelenting. However, after being subjected to the boiling water, it softened and became weak. The egg had been fragile. Its thin outer shell had protected its liquid interior, but after sitting through the boiling water, its inside became hardened. The ground coffee beans were unique, however. After they were in the boiling water, they had changed the water."Which are you?" she asked her daughter. "When adversity knocks on your door, how do you respond? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?

Think of this: Which am I? Am I the carrot that seems strong, but with pain and adversity do I wilt and become soft and lose my strength?
Am I the egg that starts with a malleable heart, but changes with the heat? Did I have a fluid spirit, but after a death, a breakup, a financial hardship or some other trial, have I become hardened and stiff? Does my shell look the same, but on the inside am I bitter and tough with a stiff spirit and hardened heart? Or am I like the coffee bean?
The bean actually changes the hot water, the very circumstance that brings the pain. When the water gets hot, it releases the fragrance and flavor.
If you are like the bean, when things are at their worst, you get better and change the situation around you. When the hour is the darkest and trials are their greatest, do you elevate yourself to another level? How do you handle adversity ? Are you a carrot, an egg or a coffee bean?