Library of Congress's Blog, page 143

The Art of Acquisition

(The following is a feature story in the July/August 2015 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. The story was written by Jennifer Gavin, a senior public affairs specialist in the Office of Communications. Joseph Puccio, the Library’s collection development officer, contributed to this story. You can read the issue in its entirety here.)

The Library of Congress works daily to build a universal collection.

Blame Thomas Jefferson.

He’s the founding father (and ravenous reader) who convinced the U.S. Congress it needed not just his books on law and history to replace its 740-volume library–torched with the U.S. Capitol by the Redcoats in 1814–but all 6,487 of his volumes, in many languages and on many topics.

“There is, in fact, no subject to which a member of Congress may not have occasion to refer,” Jefferson argued–and the retired president won the day. His universalist, multi-lingual approach to book-collecting became the Library of Congress approach, and is a major reason the Library–with items in more than 470 languages–is a resource for the entire world.

From the acquisition of Jefferson’s personal library 200 years ago–which the Library celebrates this year–the Library has grown to 160.7 million items. This includes more than 38 million books and other print material, and nearly 123 million other items in other formats, including audio, manuscripts, maps, movies, sheet music and photographs.

How does the Library acquire all that knowledge, decide what to keep, and distribute the rest?

How Do Collections Come to the Library?

The Library gets its materials, which flow in at a rate averaging more than 15,000 items per working day, from four primary pipelines:

• Through gifts;

• Through the U.S. Copyright Office, which is part of the Library of Congress;

• Through purchases;

• Through exchanges with other libraries and other non- purchase arrangements.

The Library’s curators approach holders of prospective collections to let them, or their heirs, know of the Library’s interest in acquiring such collections.

Some of the Library’s most awe-inspiring treasures come in as part of larger, donated collections. For example, books of poems by William Blake and many other rare books came through donation by rare book collector Lessing Rosenwald.

The Library’s collection of the works, working papers and even the piano and typewriter used by George and Ira Gershwin were donated by their family. The heirs of Abraham Lincoln and of some of his cabinet members made gifts to the Library of papers and artifacts, including handwritten copies of his most famous speeches.

Since 1870–when Congress put the Copyright Office inside the Library–a deposit copy of each work copyrighted is made available to the Library for its collections. This gives the Library what Librarian of Congress James H. Billington likes to call the “mint record of American creativity.” Many of the most interesting items in the Library’s collections–from baseball cards to poetry, to Martin Luther King Jr.’s

“I Have a Dream” speech–came into the Library through copyright.

Purchases fill in another part of the picture. The majority of the Library’s budget is appropriated funding from Congress and a segment of that funding goes toward purchases of research materials. The Library also gets a boost from external supporters–such as the membership of the James Madison Council, the Library’s private-sector advisory group. Its members have been very generous in donating funding for Library acqusitions.

A mix of public and private money helped the Library buy, for $10 million, one of its top treasures, the Waldseemüller Map of 1507–the first document to include the name “America.” Private funding has helped the Library buy rare books, maps and many other collections.

Some items come to the Library through auctions. The Library has a process through which curators work closely with recommending officers to determine whether to bid on items.

Jennifer Baum-Sevec, who is involved in auctions as part of her work in the Library’s U.S./Anglo Division, said the Library typically works through agents, in part so it is not obvious it is a government agency doing the bidding (which might adversely affect the price). The Library, which under federal financial regulations cannot produce payment on the spot for such purchased items, also benefits by working with agents who are willing to wait for their own payment until the steps mandated by law have been undertaken.

Sometimes the Library decides to pass on an auction if it just gets too costly. “Determine your walk-away point–you have to go into it with that mindset,” Baum-Sevec said.

The Library also maintains collecting offices in parts of the world where getting materials is a bit more challenging. These are in Nairobi, Kenya; Cairo, Egypt; Islamabad, Pakistan; New Delhi, India; Jakarta, Indonesia; and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

From Intake to Shelf

Policy on what to collect has been established and is reviewed, as needed, by the Library’s Collections Development Office and its Collections Policy Committee, composed of key staff members throughout the Library.

The Library’s 200 recommending officers proactively identify items for acquisition and also select from other materials that have been received.

Designated staff in the Copyright Office, Acquisitions and Bibliographic Access Directorate and the Law Library of Congress also analyze the incoming materials and make selections. On average, about 12,000 items are selected daily from the 15,000 received.

Selected material must be cataloged, shelved–on about 838 miles of shelving in three buildings on Capitol Hill and several offsite storage facilities–and made available to researchers.

What about the Leftovers?

The Library of Congress does not collect everything it is offered, some of which is unsolicited.

Duplicates of books already in the collections and other books not meeting the Library’s collection criteria are placed in the Library’s Surplus Books unit for a time. These recent-issue books are available for donation to libraries or other nonprofit groups willing to cover the cost of moving them to new homes.

The World’s Largest Library

What this means is that the Library of Congress, with 21 reading rooms open to anyone 16 or older with a Library reader card, and online to anyone with internet access, is a veritable intellectual feast.

Thomas Jefferson probably didn’t anticipate that when he began amassing his personal library. But it’s not hard to imagine that he would be as proud of that as he was of penning the Declaration of Independence or helping found the University of Virginia.

He knew that knowledge is power.

Two Worlds Collide – Erich Leinsdorf Meets Janis Joplin

The following post has been written by Kevin McBrien, one of 36 college students participating in the Library of Congress 2015 Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program. McBrien graduated in May from California State University at Long Beach with a bachelor’s degree in music history and literature. He begins graduate school in the fall and hopes to become a teacher at the college level. Interning in the Library’s Music Division, he’s enjoyed valuable archival experience, particularly working with the music scores and photographs of musicians, orchestras and others.

Erich Leinsdorf and Janis Joplin at Tanglewood. Photo by Whitestone Photo, 1969. Music Division.

This summer, during my time working at the Library of Congress as part of the Junior Fellows Program, I have had the privilege of sorting and filing hundreds of photographs that are a part of the Music Iconography Collection. Housed in the Library’s Music Division, this collection contains publicity and press photographs of conductors, composers, opera singers, bands, orchestras, rock stars, concert halls and everything in between. Irving Lowens, who was employed as a music critic for the now-defunct Washington Star newspaper, donated many of these photos to the Library. Incidentally, he also worked in the Library’s Music Division from 1960 until 1978, serving as assistant head of what is now known as Reader Services.

Perhaps one of the more curious photos that I have encountered reveals a meeting in 1969 between two unlikely individuals: the blues rock singer Janis Joplin and the music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Erich Leinsdorf. Upon first glance I wondered, “Why would these two cultural icons, from seemingly opposite ends of the American art scene, have met together?” Curious, I conducted some research, and the results revealed a fascinating bridge between the worlds of classical and popular music.

In 1968, the late American composer Gunther Schuller suggested the idea for a “Contemporary Trends” concert series to be presented at Tanglewood, the summer music venue located in Lenox, Massachusetts. As head of Contemporary Music Activities at the time, he believed that it was “significant and necessary” to acknowledge the new developments that were occurring in popular music. Erich Leinsdorf, who was music director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra from 1962 to 1969, supported the idea with enthusiasm. Both Schuller and Leinsdorf had already established a Festival of Contemporary Music at Tanglewood, which programmed revolutionary works by George Crumb, Elliott Carter, Paul Fromm and other modern composers. However, the first series of popular music concerts in 1968 were rather conservative, featuring artists such as Judy Collins, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ravi Shankar and The Association.

The next year, in the summer of 1969, the Contemporary Trends series better reflected the radically changing nature of American popular music. The lineup that summer included Iron Butterfly, Joni Mitchell, Ornette Coleman, Jefferson Airplane and The Who. Janis Joplin was chosen to headline the opening of the series, only weeks before her appearance at the legendary Woodstock Music Festival in August 1969.

On the evening of July 8, more than 7,000 people showed up to Tanglewood’s music shed to witness Joplin sing with her Kozmic Blues Band. (She sang on the first part of the program, and the second half featured the American rock band Orpheus). The concert series as a whole was controversial, with the locals complaining of the music’s ear-shattering volume and the rowdy juveniles that the artists attracted. One review from the Holyoke Transcript Telegram reported on the evening’s chaos: “Out of the darkness into a thunderous applause came the former Big Brother and the Holding Company’s lead singer, Miss Janis Joplin. After only ten minutes on stage, Miss Joplin left to complain about the state police and Shed officials who were trying to clear the aisles.” Regardless, Joplin’s performance was well received, and the singer even performed two encores for the adoring crowd.

Unfortunately, there is almost no information on the actual encounter between Janis Joplin and Erich Leinsdorf that is shown in the photo. However, Joplin’s “hippie” apparel, which was a trademark of her stage appearances, suggests that the two must have met backstage sometime during the singer’s performance on July 8, 1969. In any case, this photograph is truly intriguing, capturing a little-known meeting between two musical legends of the 20th century. If for only a moment, this brief encounter managed to bridge the gap between the classical and popular genres, uniting the two artists through a common passion – music. All in all, this photograph is just one of the many fascinating pictorial treasures that can be found in the Music Iconography Collection at the Library of Congress.

 

History You Could Really Sink Your Teeth Into

E.L. Doctorow, a giant of American letters who uplifted the genre of the historical novel, died yesterday at the age of 84. The author of “Ragtime,” “World’s Fair,” “Billy Bathgate,” “The March,” “Welcome to Hard Times” and “Andrew’s Brain,” among many other works of fiction, will be much missed.

Doctorow was the recipient of the 2014 Library of Congress Prize for

E.L. Doctorow

American Fiction, which recognizes lifetime achievement in American letters. Librarian of Congress James Billington dubbed him “our very own Charles Dickens, summoning a distinctly American place and time, channeling our myriad voices.”

Edgar Lawrence Doctorow, whose career spanned half a century, said as a child in the Bronx he “read everything I could get my hands on.” Early on, he started wondering what made the machinery of fiction tick – how to write it, in addition to enjoying it as a reader. “And so, I became a writer myself.”

Before he started work on what became a dozen novels, however, he studied philosophy and was involved in theater at college. He served in the Army in 1954 and 1955 then returned to the U.S. to work as a reader for the movie industry and later as an editor for the paperback publisher New American Library, where among other authors, he edited Ian Fleming and Ayn Rand.

Later, he was editor-in-chief at The Dial Press, where he published works by authors including James Baldwin and Norman Mailer. But in 1969, he left all that behind and became a fulltime writer.

The world was grateful for his career change: his work brought him the National Book Award for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction and the PEN/Faulkner Award. In addition to awards for his individual works, his body of work has been honored with the National Humanities Medal (1998), the New York Writers Hall of Fame (2012), the PEN/Saul Bellow Award for Achievement in American Fiction (2012) and the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters of the National Book Foundation (2013).

Doctorow received his Library of Congress award at last year’s Library of Congress National Book Festival. Here he is, at the festival, being interviewed about his work, and also speaking at the festival’s “Great Books to Great Movies” session, talking about what it’s like as an author to have your work adapted for the silver screen.

 

Curators’ Picks: The Art of Theatrical Design

The following is a feature from the May/June 2015 issue of the Library of Congress Magazine, LCM. Co-curators Daniel Boomhower and Walter Zvonchenko of the Music Division highlight items from the Library’s exhibition, “Grand Illusion: The Art of Theatrical Design.” This week is your last chance to stop by the Library to see what’s on display — the exhibition closes Saturday, July 25. You can also check out the exhibition online. 

1. An Imperial Production

Performed before the imperial court of Leopold I in Vienna in 1668, “Il Pomo d’Oro” (The Golden Apple) featured an elaborate set designed by Ludovico Burnacini. “Baroque-era court shows were not just theater, they were manifestations of power,” said Zvonchenko. “The proscenium stage concealed elaborate contraptions, which allowed for fire and brimstone in the sky. It was not unusual for theaters that featured such special effects to burn down.” Music Division

2. Ziegfeld Follies

“John Harkrider designed most of Florenz Ziegfeld’s shows, which were popular on Broadway during the first few first decades of the 20th century,” said Boomhower. “This sheet music cover–demure by Ziegfeld’s standards–presents Irving Berlin’s “Tell Me, Little Gypsy” from the Ziegfeld Follies of 1920.” Music Division

3. Designing Women

Set designers Elizabeth Montgomery and Peggy Clark, who collaborated under the name “Motley,” were “trailblazers as women became more involved in show production and management, as well as other theater occupations,” said Zvonchenko. Pictured here is their watercolor design for the Agnes DeMille Dance Theatre’s 1953 tour. Peggy Clark Collection, Music Division

4. Oliver Smith’s “My Fair Lady”

This watercolor and pen-and-ink set design depicts the scene in which Professor Henry Higgins discovers Eliza Doolittle selling flowers outside London’s Covent Garden opera house. “Smith was the first person hired for Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 production of ‘My Fair Lady,'” said Boomhower. “Before the director, before the cast–they knew who they wanted to design it.” Oliver Smith Collection, Music Division; Works of Oliver Smith © Rosaria Sinisi

5. Tony Walton’s “Grand Hotel”

“This is the 3-D model of Tony Walton’s stage set for the 1989 production of ‘Grand Hotel,’ which was designed without an orchestra pit out front for Broadway’s Martin Beck Theatre,” said Boomhower. “We wanted to exemplify the idea of spectacle. The scenic designer is a co-director. Design tells you how the show moves.” Tony Walton Collection, Music Division; reproduced by permission of Tony Walton

Inquiring Minds: An Interview With Author James McGrath Morris

James McGrath Morris is an author, columnist and radio show host. He writes primarily biographies and works of narrative nonfiction. He discusses his newest book, “Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press,” tomorrow, July 21, at the Library. Read more about it here.

Tell us about your new book “Eye on the Struggle: Ethel Payne, the First Lady of the Black Press.” What inspired you to write about Payne?

I had previously written several books about journalism and journalists. So when casting about for a project a few years ago I compiled a list of significant 20th century journalists using the Internet. Payne’s name showed up on the list. I don’t think I knew anything about her when I first spotted her name but within a few minutes of cruising the web I realized she was an important, but overlooked, figure in journalism history. It was such a good story that I presumed that someone was working on a biography. Twice before in my writing life I had embarked on projects only to learn that another writer was ahead of me. But when I discovered that her papers in two of the three institutions housing them had not yet been processed, I knew the story was mine to tell.

The state of her papers alone tells a story. The Library of Congress holds one third to one half of her papers. They are organized and accompanied by a finding aid. The papers elsewhere were, as I said, unprocessed at the time I started my work. They are well cared for in the hands of two major African American archives: The Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University and The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, a research unit of the New York City Public Library system. But the fact that her papers were unprocessed is a sharp reminder that these institutions, like many such places working to preserve African-American history, are short of funds and staff. Unless we find a way to better support these institutions, an enormously important portion of American history may not be accessible or, worse, preserved.

You call her the “first lady of the black press.” What made her so, in your mind? How did she compare to her contemporaries, and what made her such a pioneer?

Actually, I didn’t give her that moniker. While she was still alive, Payne was frequently hailed as the “first lady of the black press.” In the book, readers can see a photograph of her in front of an exhibition titled “The First Lady of the Black Press.”

The reason she earned the title was because of her prominence in the black press and the significant historic role she played. While she was the third African American to join the White House press corps in 1953, she contributed the most of the three in bringing issues of civil rights to national attention. She did this by asking questions of President Dwight D. Eisenhower about race issues of interest to her readers of the Chicago Defender, the premier nationally circulated black newspaper of the era. In doing so, she both educated the president and the press corps about issues they knew little about and caused the mainstream white media to pay attention. In short, by merely asking questions of the president, she triggered coverage of the issue – say racial discrimination in transportation or housing – by the national media.

Second, Payne did not confine her reporting to Washington. In fact, more often than not, she could be spotted on the front line of the civil rights movement in Montgomery, Alabama, or Little Rock, Arkansas, to mention two key sites of the struggle. Her reporting from these places, which carried considerable risk for a black female reporter, came prior to that of the white press and served to inform and activate her readers around the country.

Third, Payne presciently connected her coverage of the civil rights movement with the larger worldwide struggle for black freedom. So as early as 1955 Payne began traveling the world reporting from Asia and Africa on decolonization, apartheid and new black leadership rising in Africa.

Her work is credited with persuading many African Americans to take up the fight for civil rights. How so?

One of the great powers of journalism is its ability to put before large audiences information that might not otherwise reach them and to do so in a trustworthy fashion. When Payne covered the progress – or, often, the lack of progress – of civil rights legislation she was providing timely and important news to a national black readership that, in turn, could apply pressure to legislators. When she reported from the civil rights struggle in the South, she was helping garner national support for those leading the non-violent protest movement. Payne, in a sense, was an important part of the connective tissue that linked black readers with the civil rights struggle.

How was she also, perhaps, an inspiration to not only women of color but women in general in the industry?

Payne rose in a period in which women faced more than a glass ceiling, more like a closed door. Most professional careers were closed to women, even more so to black women. As a result Payne’s success was not only an inspiration to younger women, but she made an effort to smooth their paths. For instance, I met women who recalled Payne’s help in getting a job. But then, they told me, she would come by to visit and say, “Remember, you be quality” as a reminder that their success would open the door for other women in future years.

Tell me about the research you did at the Library in preparation for the book. What collections did you work with that you found most illuminating/interesting? Did you make any new connections or discoveries about the civil rights movement, women in journalism?

When it comes to working on a story connected to the civil rights movement, the Library is an indispensible partner. The collection of NAACP papers alone would make the manuscript room a mandatory visit.

I used Payne’s papers, as one would expect, but I also depended greatly on the remarkable staff of the Manuscript Division who always has advice to offer. I’m continually amazed at scholars who work anonymously in the manuscript room. They are only one question away from being told about a collection of papers that might play a key role in their research. In short, I always share the topic of my work with the staff, and over the past decades the members of this crew have never failed to reward me with an important lead.

Have you used the Library’s collections for your other works?

I have been using the Library’s collections for my writing since 1974. In fact, my relationship with the Library is old enough for me to be among those who once carried a stack pass. Now that I live many miles away in the foothills of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains near Santa Fe, New Mexico, the library remains a regular part of my life. Its online catalog and the wealth of material now also online are a treasure trove. I use the Chronicling America digital collection of newspapers almost as often as my kids check sports scores on their phones.

While I eventually do have to get on a plane to use most of the library’s collection it remains a research partner from afar.

Why do you think it’s valuable for the Library to preserve our history and culture and what do you think the public should know about using its collections and doing research here?

When I come to work at the Library of Congress I see hundreds, if not thousands, of tourists visiting the place as if it were a static memorial to the past. Despite the efforts of docents, I’m not sure that these visitors – or the public for that matter – understand how alive the place is. It does not merely preserve the past but shares it with everyone in a most remarkably democratic and inspiring fashion.

I have conducted research in libraries and archives all across the United States and overseas. The gatekeepers of these places, particularly in other countries, often make is clear that one’s use of their facilities is a privilege. Not so at the Library of Congress. For its staff, the public’s access is a right, not a privilege. No matter who you are, the Library issues an open invitation to come in and learn. From books to documents, from music to movies, America’s story is here.

In closing, any final thoughts on your book, Ethel Payne and her work during the civil rights era?

As a historian I worry greatly that younger people no longer know the story of the civil rights movement or, if they do, they know mostly stories of its central leaders. Yet the movement’s success was dependent on lesser-known individual such as Ethel Payne. As a result I think the version we provide students implies that change depends on great leaders, and they fail to grasp the important story that the power to change the world lies in each of us. If there is an injustice, one does need to await the next Martin Luther King. The truth and beauty of the movement is that its moral power lay in the fact that it was a grassroots revolution led by everyday people who rose to the challenge. Payne was among their ranks and hopefully her story will inspire others.

When she attended an almost all-white high school in South Side Chicago, she was permitted to contribute an article or two to the school paper but there was no question of permitting a black pupil to join the staff. This year the journalism room in the school has been renamed the Ethel Payne Journalism Center. I love the fact that now as students come into the room, some of them will take out their cell phones and Google her name. And, perhaps one of them will be inspired to follow in her path. For Ethel Lois Payne, a closed door was an invitation to struggle not to give in. We need more like her.

For further stories of the civil rights movement, check out the Library’s exhibition “The Civil Rights Act of 1964: A Long Struggle for Freedom,” currently on view through Jan. 2, 2016.

Look What I Discovered: Life as a Mary Wolfskill Trust Fund Intern

 

Today’s post has been wriiten by Logan Tapscott, one of 36 college students participating in the Library of Congress 2015 Junior Fellows Summer Intern Program. Tapscott is completing a modified dual degree through the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education: a master of arts degree in public history from Shippensburg University and a masters in library and information science from Clarion University of Pennsylvania. Interning in the Library’s Manuscript Division, Tapscott is interested in important archival and library skills such as processing, describing and referencing, as well as the Library’s African-American history collections with emphasis on the Civil War era and the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

In the Manuscript Division Reading Room, every day is an adventure. Through the Junior Fellows Program and the generosity of the Mary Wolfskill Trust Fund Internship, I have an opportunity to work in the Manuscript Division this summer.

Established in 1897, the Manuscript Division holds approximately 60 million items in 11,500 separate collections that relate to American political, military and cultural history; yet, you never truly comprehend the value of the contents of each collection. Yes, finding aids assist both researchers and reference archivists to locate items, but examining the actual items in the folders or on the microfilm reels is an amazing feeling that never goes way. Each time that I receive a call slip or an online reference inquiry, I discover new collections and learn about interesting people or organizations. When answering reference inquiries, researchers ask a variety of questions, even about well-known historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln and Ralph Ellison.

Frederick Douglass, ca. 1850-1860. Prints and Photographs Division.

One example is when a patron asked whether Frederick Douglass delivered any speeches in Newark, N.J. The tireless Douglass delivered speeches throughout the New England and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States about the evils of slavery, but I was unaware of any speeches he may have given in New Jersey.

The first method I used to answer this question was to discover the division’s collection of Douglass’ papers, which contains correspondence, speeches and articles. After reviewing the finding aid, I was unable to find any speeches listed as given in Newark. Then, after realizing that his papers were digitized, I searched the digital Speech, Article and Book File series. Like the finding aid, the digital collection did not include any speeches from New Jersey.

Finally, I reviewed the published copies of the “Frederick Douglass Papers, Series One: Speeches, Debates and Interviews,” volumes 1-5. This compilation of Douglass’ writings was edited by John W. Blassingame – an esteemed and influential African-American historian – and published by Yale University Press in 1979. (Blassingame was the former chairman of the African American Studies Program at Yale University).

In these volumes, Blassingame chronicled Douglass’ speaking itinerary from 1847 until his death in 1895. In Volume 2, I discovered Douglass spoke in Newark, N.J. on back-to-back days on April 17 and 18 in 1849. By looking into this question, I discovered something different about the famous orator, abolitionist and vice presidential candidate.

Each day, I learn something new while working in the reading room, such as finding the location of a particular collection or how to assist readers accessing collections. So far, I don’t have a favorite collection, but I enjoy finding collections through the simple but large online catalog entries, published shelf lists and walking through the individual doors of the stacks. This is my adventure!

Sources: Nick Ravo, “John Blassingame, 59, Historian; Led Yale Black Studies,” New York Times, February 29, 2000, accessed June 30, 2015

Letters About Literature: Dear Mary Oliver

In this final installment of our Letters About Literature spotlight, we feature the Level 3 National Prize-winning letter of Aidan Kingwell of Illinois, who wrote to Mary Oliver about her poem “When Death Comes.” Kingwell’s poem also recently made the news.

Letters About Literature, a national reading and writing program that asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives, announced its 2015 winners in June. More than 50,000 young readers from across the country participated in this year’s initiative funded by a grant from the Library’s James Madison Council with additional support from the Library’s Center for the Book. Since 1997, more than a million students have participated. 

National and honor winners were chosen from three competition levels: Level 1 (grades 4-6), Level 2 (grades 7-8) and Level 3 (grades 9-12). You can read all the winning letters here, including the winning letters from previous years.

Dear Mary,

I know it’s an unconventional subject for a letter; death. A fact of life that most of us endeavour to avoid, or at least ignore. But I, Mary – I have walked side-by-side with death all of my life.

I was thirteen the first time I read your poem, and at that time in my life there was a good chance that I would not see my fourteenth birthday. I had been depressed since age ten, but I had never received any treatment. My mind was very dark; I dove deeper and deeper into my own twisted thoughts with each passing moment. I was someone who was simultaneously terrified of dying, and yet obsessed with the very idea. I was also suicidal, which is a state of being that I cannot well describe, because there are not words that can describe such utter loss of hope, such bitterness and pain and unrelenting sorrow. I wanted to end my own life so badly that most days I could not find one single reason for living. It was not a cry for attention; it was a feeling of utter self-hatred. There is also no accurate way to describe the feeling of hating yourself and your life so much that you long to end it all. It is a feeling of being trapped, of being insane, of being hopeless. When you are suicidal, you are like a wild animal just barely being contained by a think human shell. Your soul is empty and your heart is blackened and dead. You have no straws left to grasp, no ladder to climb out of the abyss, and the only rope offered to help you scramble out is in the shape of a noose, and after weeks or months or years that noose begins to look very, very appealing.

So there I stood, face-to-face with death on a daily basis, wondering if each new day was the day that it would finally consume me. I was afraid of my own mind. I found no comfort in wooden crosses or the taste of bitter crackers, nor in the deluded words of psychiatrists. That eventual uncertainty – the uncertainty of the terror of my own death – haunted my footsteps as I walked from day to day, wearing it like a heavy, bitter cloak. The very idea of my own death was killing me.

The, one day, in my seventh-grade English class, I was presented with your poem. My teacher referred to it as “a dark poem with note of hope underlying,” but within it, I found so much more. Within it, I found new life. My mind opened up as I read your words; I was a frail but inspired butterfly clawing my way from a dark, putrid cocoon. The way you spoke, Mary; the way you talked about death, and how it sought to take all the bright coins from your purse, how it was an iceberg between your shoulder blades leeching the warm life out of your form. I could tell: you knew. You knew what it felt like to be owned by death’s shadow, in the same way that I was then. You had felt the same terror, the same all-consuming dread. But you were also strong. You faced death and said that it did not own you; you had looked into death’s dark eyes and said, “No, you cannot have me, I am not yet done here.” When you spoke of not wanting to have simply visited this world, my own world turned upside down. I began to think about how horrible it would be to have only been a visitor, in the way that you said; to not have made my mark on the world, to have only passed through with no real substance. I thought of a life lived entirely in absence of beauty and amazement, a life barren of love or excitement or laughter. I began to realize that that was what suicide would do to me. I saw that life was fast becoming my own. I saw killing myself would take me away before I even had the chance to make something of my life. Suicide would eliminate my pain, yes, but it also closed any doors of possibility that I might have still open to me; doors that may lead to happiness in my future.

I never would have imagined, Mary, that not killing myself would be one of the hardest decisions that I would ever have to make. But in the end, I made the choice, and I am still alive today. My life has not been full of joy; in fact, it has been dark, and hard, and at times I have even slipped back into death’s unrelenting grasp. But at those times, I have reminded myself of what I thought then – that I want to make something of my life, and that ending it would mean turning my back on all future possibilities, as well as the few pieces of happiness that I have managed to find in the present. At those dark times, Mary, I often also read your poem to myself – the poem that catalyzed my grand suicidal epiphany. I still struggle with this menace of the mental method, but now I have one thing that I did not have before, I have hope.

When Death Comes, Mary – and it will – I want to face it as an equal, and shake its hand as a friend, and accept it as an eventuality. You taught me that that is the only proper way to die. With your words you taught me that life cannot be lived in the shadow of death – that life must be a thing separate from death. And you taught me that when death comes, I should embrace it, but also that I should not welcome it before its time. You taught me, Mary, that there was nothing to be feared in death so long as my life was one well-lived.

“I do not want to end up having simply visited this world” . . .

And When Death Comes, Mary, I will tell it that you were my friend. Because you were. I will tell it that I am armed with your words, and it will bow its dark face in respect, and then, it will offer me its hand and lead me into whatever may or may not lay behind it. I will feel no fear, Mary – I no longer fear death and all its ways. I will know that I have beaten death down with your words and the inspiration that they gave me. I will know that I did not let it take me in any way but the one I wanted. And I will know that my life, no matter how twisted, corrupt, and fearful, was worth living.

So thank you, Mary. Thank you for wrenching death’s grip from my wrist. Thank you for showing me that the burden of my soul was not so dark. That there was still hope left in me.

Aidan Kingwell

Willie Nelson to Receive Gershwin Prize

Willie Nelson in performance in Austin, Texas, last year. Photo by Carol Highsmith. Prints and Photographs Division.

(The following is an article featured in the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette, written by editor Mark Hartsell.)

So great is his impact on music, even folks who never bought a country album instantly recognize Willie Nelson: the headband, grizzled beard and long braids; the quavering, nasal voice and off-beat phrasing; the sound of Trigger, his nylon-stringed Martin guitar; the laid-back character out for a good time.

“Bring along your Cadillac, leave my old wreck behind,” Nelson sang. “If you’ve got the money, honey I’ve got the time.”

In a career that spans six decades, Nelson wrote country classics, helped remake the genre through the “outlaw” movement, scored more than 60 top-40 country or pop hits and brought new audiences to country music.

He also became a big star and an unlikely American icon – the long-haired Texan urging mamas not to let their babies grow up to be cowboys, the graying singer recalling all the girls he loved before, the celebrity famous enough to portray himself on “The Simpsons” and “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.”

On Thursday, the Library of Congress honored Nelson for his enduring impact on music, naming him the recipient of its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Nelson will receive the prize in Washington, D.C., in November. Details about the event – a luncheon and a musical performance are planned – will be announced later.

“Willie Nelson is a musical explorer, redrawing the boundaries of country music throughout his career,” Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said. “A master communicator, the sincerity and universally appealing message of his lyrics place him in a category of his own while still remaining grounded in his country-music roots. His achievements as a songwriter and performer are legendary.

“Like America itself, he has absorbed and assimilated diverse stylistic influences into his stories and songs. He has helped make country music one of the most universally beloved forms of American artistic expression.”

Pushing Musical Boundaries

Nelson continually expanded his musical language – and that of his audience and of country music – by incorporating a wide range of styles and influences: Western swing, jazz, traditional pop, blues, folk, rock and Latin.

He wrote country classics (“Crazy,” “Funny How Time Slips Away”), turned pop standards into big country hits (“Blue Skies,” “Mona Lisa”), made country hits with crossover appeal (“Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “On the Road Again”) and scored big with pure pop tunes (“Always on My Mind,” “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before”).

Nelson’s appealing persona, commercial success and critical appreciation also gave him a place in popular culture that transcended country – he was a big star, even outside the music industry.

Beginning in the late ’70s, he appeared as an actor in more than 40 films and TV shows – from lead roles in “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Red Headed Stranger” to appearances in “Miami Vice” and “Surfer, Dude.”

His music appeared in many more – even “Monday Night Football.”

“Turn out the lights, the party’s over,” commentator Don Meredith, lifting a line from a minor Nelson hit, would croon after a team made a victory-clinching play.

Nelson follows Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney, Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Carole King and Billy Joel as recipients of the prize – an honor bestowed on living artists whose lifetime achievements in popular song exemplify the standard of excellence associated with George and Ira Gershwin by promoting song as a vehicle of cultural understanding; entertaining and informing audiences; and inspiring new generations.

The librarian of Congress makes the selection in consultation with leading members of the music and entertainment industries and curators from the Music Division, American Folklife Center and Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

“It is an honor to be the next recipient of the Gershwin Prize,” Nelson said. “I appreciate it greatly.”

Voice from the Heartland

Nelson was born in 1933 to Ira and Myrle Nelson of Abbott, Texas. His parents had married very young – he was 16, she was 15 – and the union didn’t last long: Myrle left only months after Willie was born, and Ira later remarried and left, too.

So Willie and older sister Bobbie were raised by his blacksmith grandfather Will and grandmother Nancy, who picked cotton and gave music lessons.

Willie played guitar and wrote songs – as early as age 7 – and performed at church revivals and in local dance halls and honky-tonks.

After high school, Nelson joined the Air Force, spent two years at Baylor University and dropped out to pursue music. He lived here and there – San Antonio, Fort Worth, Vancouver, Houston – and sold encyclopedias and vacuum cleaners, worked as a disc jockey, taught Sunday school – all the while writing music and performing.

In 1960, he moved to Nashville, where he eventually found some success. Faron Young recorded his “Hello Walls” in 1961 and scored a No. 1 hit on the country charts. Soon after, Nelson played a demo for the husband of another performer. The singer was Patsy Cline and the song, “Crazy,” became a smash and a country-music standard.

Nelson began recording his own albums – his first contained three classics: “Crazy,” Hello Walls” and “Funny How Time Slips Away” – with only modest commercial success.

Country-Music Outlaw

In the early 1970s, he returned to Texas and became a key figure of the “outlaw” movement – performers who rebelled against the Nashville establishment that dictated which songs artists would sing and who would produce their albums.

The outlaws grew their hair long, wrote their own music and made their own records – a rootsy response to the formulaic, slick Nashville sound.

The albums Nelson released in that period – “Shotgun Willie,” “Red Headed Stranger,” “Stardust” “Wanted! The Outlaws,” “Waylon & Willie” – made him one of the most important figures in country music. “Red Headed Stranger” was inducted into the National Recording Registry at the Library in 2009.

He also established himself as a hitmaker with crossover appeal. Nelson scored more than 60 top-40 country hits across five decades and, beginning in the 1970s, a string of successes on pop charts, too: “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” “On the Road Again,” “Always on My Mind” and “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before.”

He won seven Grammy Awards for his recordings and, in 1990, the Grammy Living Legend Award. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1993 and the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2001.

Inquiring Minds: Anna Coleman Ladd and WWI Veterans

(The following is a story written by Megan Harris of the Veterans History Project and featured in the Library of Congress staff newsletter, The Gazette.  ) 

Benjamin King portrays a soldier wearing a mask to cover a disfigurement. Photo by Shawn Miller.

Last month, eighth-graders Benjamin King, Maria Ellsworth and Cristina Escajadillo – all students at the Singapore American School – performed an original 10-minute play at the Library of Congress inspired by the institution’s collections and connections. Contemplating a distinctly somber topic — the mental and physical wounds wrought by World War I — the students highlighted the life and accomplishments of Anna Coleman Ladd, an artist and sculptor who created facial masks to help wounded soldiers cope with their injuries and reintegrate into civilian life after World War I.

Following their Library debut, the students performed as part of the Kenneth E. Behring National History Day Contest, held June 14-18 at the University of Maryland.

King, Ellsworth and Escajadillo first learned about Ladd’s mask-making through their social studies teacher, National History Day ambassador Matthew D. Elms.

Though they knew very little about World War I, Ladd’s story appealed to them as a nontraditional example of “leadership and legacy,” this year’s National History Day theme. The students engaged with Kluge fellow Tara Tappert after viewing her Jan. 22 lecture, sponsored by the Veterans History Project and the John W. Kluge Center and taped by C-SPAN, which featured Veterans History Project collections from World War I.

To contextualize Ladd’s activities, Tappert introduced the students to Melissa Walker, an art therapist with the National Intrepid Center of Excellence who incorporates mask-making into her work with recent veterans who have experienced traumatic brain injury. Walker aided the students in connecting Ladd’s work to present-day art therapy applications.

Featuring an original script based on archival letters and photographs, creative lighting and set design, and hand-painted papier-mache masks, the students’ performance conveyed not only the historical significance of Ladd’s work but also the individual cost of war.

Anna Coleman Ladd touches up a mask she made for a wounded soldier in 1918. Prints and Photographs Division.

Born in Philadelphia in 1878, Anna Coleman Ladd was a classically trained sculptress who in 1917 founded the American Red Cross Studio for Portrait Masks in Paris.

Modeled on the work done in the “Tin Noses Shop” established by British sculptor Francis Derwent Wood, Ladd created over 100 masks for veterans who had sustained serious facial disfigurements during the war.

As the performance made clear, Ladd’s gentle and humane treatment of her patients, known as “mutiles,” and the masks she made for them, eased the psychological pain caused by physical wounds.

For these veterans, Ladd’s masks affected not only their self-perception but also society’s reaction to them. As the students proclaimed in their play, “While some artists made art to change how people saw the world, [Ladd] made art that changed how the world saw people.”

A selection of photos featuring Ladd and her work with World War I veterans is available in the Library of Congress online catalog at www.loc.gov/photos/?q=anna+coleman+ladd .

Letters About Literature: Dear Walter Isaacson

We continue our spotlight of letters from the Letters About Literature initiative, a national reading and writing program that asks young people in grades 4 through 12 to write to an author (living or deceased) about how his or her book affected their lives. Winners were announced last week.

In this next installment, we highlight the Level 2 (grades 7-8) National Prize-winning letter from Gabriel Ferris of Maine, who wrote to Walter Isaacson, author of “Steve Jobs.”

Dear Walter Isaacson,

For the last few years I have been obsessively interested in computers, especially Macs. I picked up a copy of your book about Steve Jobs, excited by the thought that I might find a few technical nuggets that could broaden my horizons. I learned nothing about technology by reading your book but rather an unintended lesson on the delicate tight rope that often divides extreme business success and extreme failure in personal relationships.

Like so many highly successful people, Steve Jobs was driven by something that not many people have. This special something is called singular focus. As a result, Jobs had the ability to focus on only one thing and to tune out everything that didn’t align with his end goal. Throughout this book I found myself questioning if Steve’s high level of business success was worth the price he paid on a personal level.

Many a teenager in the twenty-first century would like nothing more than to be Steve Jobs, the founder of one of the largest, coolest businesses in the world! This was true about me until the day I flipped open the cover of your book. Reading about his rags to riches story that started in his garage was inspirational and entertaining. However, overshadowing all this was the mess he made of his personal life — and even some relationships in his business life. At times I felt bad for those around him. It was uncomfortable to look into his world and see the pain caused by his behavior.

Despite these feelings, I couldn’t put the book down. You brought me into his world in a way that no other book has. It inspired me. The reason your book inspired me was because it taught me that failing from taking risks in business (Project Computer Lisa) is not bad. Your writings actually taught me that risk taking as well as failing can be good to the extent that you learn from your mistakes. This concept that failing can be ultimately productive played out many times in your story of Steve’s life.

Additionally, I was also inspired by examples of what I don’t want to be. It showed me that true singular focus can be very expensive in human relationships. Steve Jobs was so focused on his “singular goal” that he would ignore some of the most important things in his life — family and friends. Steve went so far as not seeing his girlfriend who he had a daughter with. When reading this part of your book I had to go back and reread this section because it seemed so surreal to me that a person could actually say no to seeing his own daughter or being part of her life. When putting myself in Steve’s position I could never imagine doing something as extreme as this. I found myself asking if this behavior was normal for Silicon Valley executives? Is the value of family life typically lost in the pursuit of the Silicon Valley Dream?

This same singular focus that interfered with family life also contributed to failed relationships at work. Steve Jobs had a single vision, and he wasn’t generally open to deviations. As I read his story, I realized that he wasn’t anyone I’d want to work for! His coworkers complained that he was too determined and in fact acted like an unpredictable small child when he didn’t get what he wanted. A perfect example of this was when Steve worked at Atari. His inability to work with others had him restricted to work hours when no one else was around. When I first read the chapter about his days at Atari, I didn’t really understand how someone could be too determined, too driven and too rigid. It was not until many chapters later that I started to realize that the same factors that played into his extreme success were the very factors that contributed to his personal human failure in almost all relationships. I remember a point where I stopped reading to try to pull my thoughts together as my vision of what I thought was a model life story was falling apart.

It’s only been a month or so since I finished your book on Steve Jobs. I still think about it a few times a week. You changed my life in a way I didn’t anticipate. I’m conflicted about the price of success. At 13 years old, I haven’t read a lot of biographies that detail the personal lives of super successful people. I understand that an underlying theme for the super successful is being fully dedicated to the goal at hand. Steve Job’s behavior reminds me of the old saying that “nothing succeeds like excess.” Is excess a requirement for extreme success? Your story leaves me wondering if this is the case — and struggling with the balance between still wanting to do something great while still being someone great. Consequently, your story created more questions in my life than it answered.

Gabriel Ferris

More than 50,000 young readers from across the country participated in this year’s initiative funded by a grant from the Library’s James Madison Council with additional support from the Library’s Center for the Book. Since 1997, more than a million students have participated. You can read all the winning letters here, including the winning letters from previous years.