Author: Ellen Frentzen

After many years of exceptional service as Co-Chair of LLNE’s Government Relations Committee, Anne McDonald will be stepping down at the end of her term on June 30, 2021.

LLNE President-Elect Mike VanderHeijden and the Executive Board are requesting nominations, including self-nominations, for the position of Co-Chair of LLNE’s Government Relations Committee (GRC).

GRC Co-Chairs work with GRC members from each New England state to monitor legislative and policy initiatives which are of interest to concerned law librarians and to report these developments to LLNE members and the AALL GRC. More information concerning the LLNE GRC, its charge, members, etc. can be found on the LLNE website at: https://llne.org/committees/government/ 

Please send nominations and self-nominations to President-Elect Mike VanderHeijden  (michael.vanderheijden@yale.edu) on or before May 15, 2021.

Ellen: We’re here today speaking with Hazel, Burnley, and Snuggleball for an exclusive interview about life with one of LLNE’s co-webmasters, Artie Berns.

Sara: We want to get to know the real Artie better, and we thought we’d start by asking you to introduce yourselves and then we have a few questions about life with Artie.

Hazel: Hi Sara and Ellen, my name is Hazel, or sometimes Hazelbug, or just Bug for short. I live with my mom and dad and two cats that don’t seem to want to hang out with me despite my always paying a lot of attention to them. I’ve lived with my people since I was a puppy. I am five years old.

Burnley: I can speak for myself dog. My name is Fanciful J. Catworth. My humans call me Burnley for some reason. I’ve been living among these humans for all my life. Life was great until about five years ago when they brought the dog home.

Snuggleball: Hi I’m Snuggleball. I’m sorry, I just am not sure why you’re talking to me. Perhaps you could just leave me alone, or better yet distract that dog so I can take a nap. My name was something else before my humans rescued me from the animal shelter.

Ellen: What does Artie do for fun?

Burnley: I’m quite certain his favorite thing to do is to hang out with me in the basement where the dog isn’t.

Hazel: Sometimes dad chases me around the backyard or takes me for a walk around the neigborhood. I’m sure if you asked him he would agree that those are the funnest things he could possibly do.

Snuggleball: Why do you keep bothering me? Is there any food in my dish?

Sara: What is your favorite thing about Artie?

Snuggleball: He brings me the foods.

Hazel and Burnley: Yeah food.

Hazel: I also like him because he always gives me part of his dinner.

Ellen: What is your least favorite thing about Artie?

Hazel: sometimes he withholds yummy looking foods. He says they’re not good for dogs, but I’m willing to risk it man!

Snuggleball: He sometimes distracts me when I am trying to take a nap. Speaking of which…

Burnley: He seems to like the dog. I am against such things.

Sara: What is Artie’s favorite guilty pleasure?

Hazel: I’m not sure what that means.

Burnley: It’s a thing that is probably bad or in bad taste that he enjoys. Again, I think the answer for this is the dog.

Snuggleball: Yeah, the dog….

Ellen: This brings us to our final question: If Artie won the lottery what would he do with the money?

Burnley: He doesn’t really confide in me about finances. But, I believe he would invest heavily in Friskies Party Mix cat treats. This is clearly a sound investment considering how delicious they are.

Snuggleball: No, that’s not right. A smart human would invest heavily in stock tips gleaned from Reddit.

Hazel: Buy more foods to share with me.

Hi, LLNE members! Our names are Allegra (“Ally”), Andante (“Dante”) and Parker Frentzen and we are the trio responsible for coming up with crazy stories to share with LLNE. Our mom is Ellen, one of the Communications Committee Co-Chairs of LLNE and the Assistant Dean for Administration at the Boston University School of Law. We were supposed to have been interviewed by the pup-arazzi in November, but we were too busy causing holiday mayhem, and so had to wait until we were ready for a little R&R (that’s “recuperation and recovery” for those of you who have never had to be on bedrest after splitting a toenail chasing a squirrel out of the backyard). Those holiday decorations don’t destroy themselves, you know!  But we are delighted to take a moment to tell you more about Ellen. Here is a transcript of our conversation with Sara and Nicole:

Nicole: Hi, Ally, Dante, and Parker. Thanks for sitting down with us today.

Sara: Thank you for granting us this exclusive interview.

Nicole: We want to get to know the real Ellen better and we thought we could start by asking you a few questions.

Sara: What does Ellen do for fun?

Ally: She really likes to do projects. She’s always coming up with something to do, and moving our bed so she can paint the wall, or rearrange the furniture, or digging up the yard to plant a garden or taking us to the beach to look for seaglass or letting the tiny humans make a giant mess or something.

Parker: all the moving is terribly exhausting. I wish she’d just stick to her fun hobbies, like knitting. All that yarn makes a nice snuggly bed.

Nicole: What is your favorite thing about Ellen?

Ally & Dante: She is always up for trying something new. Almost every weekend we go explore a new place or try a new activity. And she adopted us from Texas together, because we are a bonded pair and cannot be separated, so that was nice. And she came up with our names, which are a perfect reflection of our personalities.

Parker: She really likes to read, which is a nice quiet activity with a lot of sitting and relaxing.

Sara: What is your least favorite thing about Ellen?

Parker: She can’t leave well enough alone. She’s always pushing people to do more and achieve more. All I want to do is sleep, preferably on someone’s lap, and she keeps buying new toys to try and get me to play. Also, she says I am a nosy Parker, which I think is terribly unfair. Someone has to keep track of the goings on around here, or it would be total chaos.

Ally and Dante: She massively overreacts when we achieve new heights. The other day, we figured out how to open the oven door and took out the short ribs she left hidden in there for us, and then washed those down with a pan of marshmallows off the counter and smashed the pan on the floor. Did she praise our ingenuity? She did not. She said it made a huge mess, and kicked us out of the house so she could cleanup. She said the same thing when we removed the dishrack from the dishwasher to more efficiently prewash the dinner plates. We didn’t even get a cookie!!! Also, whenever we’ve dug under the fence and gone running through the swamp up the street, she makes us take a bath before being allowed back into the house.

Nicole: What is Ellen’s favorite guilty pleasure?

Parker: Very few people know this, but she’s weirdly obsessed with waste management and what people consider trash, because she studied environmental science and archaeology. She likes to read books on supply chains and waste management, and she would love to have Catherine Coleman Flowers give a talk at LLNE or her law school.

Ally & Dante: Sometimes, she sneaks out of the house really early in the morning to go for a walk all by herself. She doesn’t even always take us!

Sara: We are down to our final question, if Ellen won the lottery, what would she do with the funds?

Ally & Dante: She firmly believes that everyone should have enough to eat, so she’d send a lot to food panties and food rescue organizations. She’d also like to expand her garden and start a #littlefreefarmstand to share extra pumpkins and tomatoes with her neighbors! We would like a big field to run around in, preferably with a pond to swim in, though.

Parker: She also feels everyone should have a home, which I agree with. I don’t even like to go outside, so I don’t think anyone should have to sleep on the street, and I would support her in donating to Habitat for Humanity, as long as there was enough to make sure I never run out of Fancy Feast.

Ally and Dante: In closing, we would just like to welcome Major as the historical first rescue dog to serve as First Dog and wish him a happy “Indoguration” and a enthusiastic first 100 days of digging in the Rose Garden.