Monday, February 1, 2010
Thursday, January 28, 2010
J. D. Salinger, Enigmatic Author, Dies at 91
From the NY Times
J. D. Salinger, the obsessively private author who captured the hearts of several generations with his pitch-perfect knowledge of adolescence and his ear for the vernacular, died on Jan. 28. "The Catcher in the Rye" is his best-known work.
Mr. Salinger, who was born on Jan. 1, 1919 in Manhattan, has lived in seclusion in the small town of Cornish. N.H. for more than half a century. He has not been photographed in decades.
Mr. Salinger's "The Catcher in the Rye" caused a sensation when it was published. With its very first sentence, the book, which came out in 1951, introduced a brand-new voice in American writing, and it quickly became a cult book, a rite of passage for the brainy and disaffected. "Nine Stories," published in 1953, made Mr. Salinger a darling of the critics as well, for the way it dismantled the traditional architecture of the short story and replaced it with one in which a story could turn on a tiny shift of mood or tone.
In the 1960s, though, when he was at the peak of his fame, Mr. Salinger went silent. "Franny and Zooey," a collection of two long stories about the fictional Glass family, came out in 1961; two more long stories about the Glasses, "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters" and "Seymour: An Introduction," appeared together in book form in 1963. The last work of Mr. Salinger's to appear in print was "Hapworth 16, 1924," a short story that took up most of the June 19, 1965, issue of The New Yorker. The story, which came out in book form in 1997, continued, and perhaps even
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Thursday, January 21, 2010
Ed Beach, Host of ‘Just Jazz’ Radio Show, Dies at 86
An Early alum of Lewis & Clark College, had a big impact on Jazz. This is his obituary from the NY Times
Ed Beach, the host of a popular jazz radio show in the 1960s and ’70s, who attracted listeners in New York and elsewhere with his sonorous voice, eclectic taste, vast erudition and pleasurably irascible temperament, died on Dec. 25 in Eugene, Ore. He was 86 and lived in Eugene.
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Ashlanders: Vincent and Patricia Wixon | DailyTidings.com
Two of the finest people one could know... They are a major reason why the Stafford Archives are here at Lewis & Clark College.
Ashlanders: Vincent and Patricia Wixon | DailyTidings.com
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Ashlanders: Vincent and Patricia Wixon | DailyTidings.com
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Saturday, January 16, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
Long overdue: Scottdale library book returned after 73 years
By Linda Harkcom, FOR THE DAILY COURIER
Monday, January 4, 2010
Last updated: 5:11 am
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'The Birth of Rome' returned
Linda Harkcom/For the Daily Courier
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In 1936, a young Scottdale boy checked out a library book from school that sparked something deep inside of him. The boy loved the book so much he decided he could not bear to part with it so he kept it. Some 73 years later that same boy, now a man of 85, felt it was time to part with that special book and return it to its rightful owner, the Southmoreland School District.
Thomas McArdle was 12 years old in 1936. He was a sixth-grade student at the Chestnut Street Elementary School.
"I had to write a paper in class and I took out a brand-new book, a novel, written for that age about the story of Rome and how Rome developed from when it was founded by Romulus and Remus. I just fell in love with the book and then I did a nasty thing, I kept the book. I read it about three or four times after that," said McArdle.
The book, "The Birth of Rome," was written by Laura Orvieto and published in 1935. McArdle said that after reading that book, "I just literally fell in love with history at that point. I majored in history in college. That book, that class, and that teacher made a big difference in my life. I still read about Roman and European history."
After McArdle graduated from Scottdale High School, he went to the service and to college and lived in various places in the United States including Boston, Mass., White River, Ariz., Richmond, Va., and finally ended up in Greenbelt, Md., where he resides today with his wife Jean. Everywhere McArdle moved, he took the book along with him.
"I can't believe he still had that book after all the moving around he did," said McArdle's cousin, Joe Fagan.
McArdle said he would never have parted with the book except to return it to its rightful owner. "I have quite a book collection now and one day we were dusting the book shelves and I saw the book and thought it was time to return it," McArdle said.
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Monday, January 4, 2010
Friday, December 11, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Thursday, November 26, 2009
The real Alice in Wonderland's book up for auction
Mon Nov 23, 11:34 pm ET
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – A copy of the book "Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There" that belonged to the British girl who inspired author Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" will be sold at an auction next month, the company behind the sale said on Monday.
At its December 16 auction, Profiles in History also will sell a copy of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" that belonged to its author, Beatrix Potter. The items come from the collection of former U.S. professional football player Pat McInally, the auctioneer said.
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Wednesday, November 25, 2009
The Design for the New Bush Presidential Library
Architecture Review
A presidential library with modest virtues
Low profile distinguishes Robert A.M. Stern's design for Bush Center in Dallas
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Love him or hate him, George W. Bush presided over one of the noisiest presidencies in history. There were debates over wars of necessity and wars of choice, alarm and rancor over ballooning budgets and new social entitlements, a bold mix of political and religious rhetoric, and the projection of American power into places where it was largely unwanted. The Bush years, on a decibel meter, are up there with a NASCAR rally.
Which makes the cool, quiet and dignified design of his presidential library -- unveiled in Dallas on Wednesday -- a rather odd architectural postscript to eight dramatic years of governance. Architect Robert A.M. Stern's plans for the George W. Bush Presidential Center call for a low-slung building of brick and limestone, following traditional lines and hugging the Texas landscape with a calm reserve. It's almost as if Bush has chosen to retreat into the patrician reticence of his blue-blooded, Connecticut forebears.Read On
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Faced with Too Little Bandwidth, Some Libraries Limit Streaming Media, Porn
Aim is to ensure access to ILS, databases
Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 11/24/2009
Most libraries have inadequate connection speeds
Sites like MySpace can hog network
Need for more capacity planning
Nearly 60 percent of public libraries report inadequate Internet connection speeds to meet patron demand, according to the American Library Association's (ALA) Public Library Funding & Technology Access Study, and a few, at least, are cutting back on the amount of bandwidth for streaming media to assure that the integrated library system (ILS) and other functions remain robust.
Slowing pornography
The Greensboro Public Library, NC, has been relegating streaming media identified as pornography to less than dial-up speeds—1KB a second—as part of a way to ensure that the bandwidth is not occupied by material that would violate the library's Internet policy, which states that users won't access anything "inappropriate for public viewing."
The tactic, director Sandy Neerman told LJ, is a way to avoid the problematic use of filters, while discouraging those seeking to access pornography, which has been the source of 89 complaints in a half-year—a relatively small number compared to loitering complaints, but way too many for some concerned parents, as the News-Record reported. (The newspaper editorialized in favor of the policy.)
Slowing MySpace
While Greensboro has chosen not to slow the bandwidth of sites like MySpace and YouTube, some other libraries are doing so, using the same product, made by Cymphonix. The Weber County Library, Ogden, UT, found that its four T-1 lines were becoming overburdened on school day afternoons because students were spending so much time on sites like MySpace.
"You could go through a session, hit a couple of dozen pages, and you've generated several thousand DNS (domain name system) requests, so the traffic was horrendous," Scott Jones, IT director and ....
Continue the article at the Library Journal.
Monday, November 23, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Friday, November 20, 2009
A Win for the Stacks
by Jennifer Epstein
The Syracuse University Library system is facing the classic book-lover’s dilemma: too many volumes, not enough shelves. The stacks in the flagship Ernest S. Bird Library are at 98 percent capacity, the on-campus archives are totally full and dozens -- if not hundreds -- of new volumes flood in each day.
Suzanne E. Thorin, dean of libraries, thought she had a solution. Her plan was to ship rarely used or redundant texts 250 miles southeast of campus, to a storage facility in Patterson, N.Y. Readers and researchers would’ve been able to request books before 2 p.m. one business day and receive them the next. Space in Bird would be freed up for new acquisitions, study halls and classrooms.
But that plan went awry Wednesday night when more than 200 faculty and students flocked to first public airing of the issue, a University Senate meeting. Some held signs protesting the proposal (one read "FREE BIRD"). Some spoke against the move on the grounds that library space had been misallocated while others questioned the need to ship the books so far away from campus. Faculty members delivered a petition against the plan signed by more than 100 humanities scholars, whose fields would be hurt more than others by the book relocation.
Now, Thorin and the library staff are reconsidering the options for the university’s 1.1 million books, as well as other library materials. “We have reached our capacity and need to figure out some way to get the space we need,” she said in an interview Thursday. “We haven't signed a contract yet and we're open to more discussion before we make a final decision.”
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Thursday, November 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Dodgers put a low price on decades of experience -- latimes.com
I know this is not about books, but it is about my beloved Dodgers who I am wishing could handle their affairs with a little more class.
Dodgers put a low price on decades of experience -- latimes.com
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Dodgers put a low price on decades of experience -- latimes.com
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Monday, November 16, 2009
A jones for Lewis and Clark
By Jeff Baker, The Oregonian
November 12, 2009, 5:02AM
Wendlick
Roger Wendlick will do anything for Lewis and Clark.
"Do you want me to dress up?" Wendlick said after making an appointment to discuss his new book, "Shotgun on My Chest: Memoirs of a Lewis and Clark Book Collector."
Among his many activities related to the Corps of Discovery, Wendlick is a re-enactor. He portrays George Drouillard, considered the third-most important member of the expedition, a skilled hunter and "a man of much merit," according to Meriwether Lewis. Wendlick plays Drouillard with enthusiasm, and jokes that as a kid playing cowboys and Indians, he never imagined being 64 and dressing in buckskins.
There's much about Wendlick's life that he never imagined. He grew up in North Portland and spent most of his life working as a construction foreman, digging sewer lines, and assembled what was considered the world's finest private collection of Lewis and Clark materials. He did it through determination, luck and a willingness to take risks, going more than $140,000 in debt and re-financing his home three times to buy more rare books.
"Passion. Compulsion. Addiction. It was as close to any chemical addiction I've ever heard of," Wendlick said. "I don't know why I did it. I'm not even a book guy."
The story has a happy ending. Wendlick's books ended up at Lewis & Clark College in 1998 through a sale/donation agreement. They are the centerpiece of an outstanding collection of materials related to the expedition at the college's Watzek Library. Wendlick has spent much of the past decade studying the books he bought and becoming an in-demand speaker and authority on all things Lewis and Clark.
"Free at last," Wendlick said, laughing with relief about no longer living with the pressure of building a collection he couldn't really afford. Writing the story of his passion/addiction/compulsion was a different kind of pressure, one that took years to overcome.
"I started in 2002, and I figured it would take me about eight months," Wendlick said. "Was I wrong. I'm a workingman, not a writer. I really struggled through it."
Wendlick didn't keep a journal or any written record of his collecting spree, which began in 1980 with memorabilia related to the 1905 Lewis and Clark Exposition in Portland and kicked into high gear in 1986 when he began to seriously acquire books. He did keep 90 percent of the receipts from everything he bought, and that paper trail allowed him to retrace his steps through antique shows and antiquarian bookstores and rare book auctions across the U.S. Along the way, he made friends who were surprised to see a man who worked with his hands in the rarified air of serious collecting.
"The Internet has changed the antiquarian book trade, and not necessarily for the better," Wendlick said. "You can't go to stores and talk to people and see what might be tucked away on a shelf. Now everything's on the computer. I think I'm one of the last to do it the old-fashioned way."
"Shotgun on My Chest" is published by 12-Gauge Press ($28 paperback, 299 pages) and is available at Powell's. Wendlick reads from "Shotgun on My Chest" at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18, at the Press Club, 2621 S.E. Clinton St., as part of the Mountain Writers Series.
Oregonian Article
-- Jeff Baker, The Oregonian
Monday, November 2, 2009
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