LISNews: Librarian News

Just found this paragraph buried in the LJ Conference Picks & Pans:

'Among the celebrities expected is Madonna to flog her new book, now fully clothed in her postwar dignity. But we couldn't get a final date for her appearance, so you can settle for Ralph Nader, Clyde Edgerton, or any of many others.'

It sounds pretty iffy to me, but you can't beat a sentence that's got both 'Madonna' and 'flog.' Pretty funny, those folks over at LJ. Would it be her new children's book, or is there something else she's got coming out?

In 1995, millions of American women lost a fairly reliable, easy-to-use, and affordable (depending on how active you are) form of birth control when Robbins Healthcare stopped selling the Today Sponge. The demise of the sponge was even memorialized in a Seinfeld episode in which Elaine stockpiles boxes and boxes of the contraceptive.
A collective hurrah went up when Allendale Pharmaceuticals started up production of the sponge again in early 2003. While the U.S. awaits FDA reapproval, the sponge is available, over-the-counter, to our Canadian sisters. It is also available online to non-Canadian consumers, but with vendors cancelling and cutting back, you'll have to fill your carry-on with something for the colleagues besides bubble pens and notepads. This year, tell the colleagues to expect drug-store themed goodies, featuring SARS masks, disposable thermometers, and the sponge.

The Toronto Sun says Toronto will remain under the World Health Organization's microscope but will not be hit with another SARS travel advisory for now, the agency decided yesterday. "It was determined the Toronto situation wasn't a threat to international health," WHO spokesman Maria Cheng said.

Toronto escaped an advisory despite surpassing the number of active SARS cases that could trigger the warning, she said.

Someone writes "It's Time For The Hay Festival The Festival was started in 1988 by a small group of local people led by Norman and Peter Florence. Their theatre company had toured the world for the British Council and played lots of Festivals, and they thought - Festivals are wonderful, let's have one at home. The idea of focussing on literature and ideas evolved out of the desire to make the Festival as much about participation as possible. Lots of good stuff This Year.
"