As Promised

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I suppose it wasn't that big a deal, but I am easily entertained, so my weekend away was fancy stuff in my book! My mom and I took my kids down to the Bay Area for UC Berkeley's open campus event, Cal Day. I was a third-generation Cal student, so there were lots of family stories to tell the girls as we walked around. There were way too many cool activities--it's not possible to see them all, but we tried.

I mostly dragged the kids around to all the science we could cram into the day, which was only a little bit of everything available.


One of the best bits, though, was visiting the Doe Library (the main library)--we went into one of my very favorite places ever, the Morrison Library. It's a reading room expressly for leisure rather than study:


And, the amazing thing was that the main stacks were open!! I hadn't been down there since I graduated, and since they were brand new at that point, my mom had never been there. So down we went, and my daughters' reactions were all that I could wish. The new stacks are pretty cool, but I sure miss the old stacks, which were marvelously creepy and very cool. We also looked my mom's book up in the catalog, but since it is housed in the Bancroft Library and the Bancroft (which houses valuable historical materials, as well as the California history collection) was closed to visitors, we couldn't go look at it.


We also got to meet a few admired authors at the children's literature celebration! We had lots of fun, and I plan to make Cal Day an annual event for us. In fact next year I want to make all my friends come too--it's too good to miss, especially if you have a kid to take along. College is such a fuzzy, unreal concept to kids, and it's nice to get a chance to make it both real and fun. If you live anywhere within driving distance of the Bay Area, plan to go next spring!

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