Library of Congress's Blog, page 24

Q & A: Michael Stratmoen

Michael Stratmoen is a program specialist for the John W. Kluge Center.

Tell us about your background.

I am a Washington, D.C., area local. I was born in Columbia Hospital for Women (since converted into a condo complex), near Dupont and Washington circles in D.C. My parents met when they worked for the Department of Agriculture in the 1970s, and they raised me in Herndon, Virginia. My mother still lives in the house I grew up in.

I went to Bishop O’Connell High School in Arlington, Virginia. From there, I went to James Madison University, then George Mason University for graduate school. I have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in public, or applied, history — history degrees with an emphasis on fields such as museum studies, archival studies, archaeology and historic preservation.

While studying, I worked at university libraries to support myself. I had jobs in special collections at James Madison University’s Carrier Library and as a graduate assistant in George Mason University’s library system. Then, I worked in the Access Services Division at Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library.

Initially, I hoped to use my degree in a museum setting. But I found myself building a pretty strong library resume with my employment record.

What brought you to the Library, and what do you do?

My first job at the Library was in the Copyright Office. I began in 2010, shortly after my 25th birthday, and worked for seven years as a materials expediter with a couple stints in the office’s registration and recordation programs.

In 2018, I joined the Kluge Center’s staff. My work in libraries and my degrees in public history have really come together in my current position as a program specialist.

I help run the Kluge Center’s fellowship and internship programs and events for members of Congress, congressional staff and the public. Each year, the center brings about 100 scholars from around the world to research in the Library’s collections and offers many excellent associated events.

I feel as if the work I do helps scholars perform cutting-edge humanities research and helps the Library call attention to their work. It is very fulfilling. No two days are alike, and I am constantly learning and getting to know an array of interesting scholars.

I’ve also been able to develop relationships with staff members from all over the Library. That has given me a much bigger understanding of the scope of activity that happens here at the world’s largest Library.

What are some of your standout projects?

When the Kluge Center needed a new application portal for our in-house fellowship programs, I was put in charge of the process. It took some time, but we now have a great system that we are using for the third year.

I also took a leading role in working with scholars who were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. That involved rescheduling scholars who could not come during the pandemic or who had to leave and return because of it — not to mention scheduling scholars who received placements for 2022. Most of the affected scholars have now been accommodated, and I am thrilled to have made it work for them.

I’ve also been heavily involved in several event series for members of Congress and senior staff. It feels like a great accomplishment to see members and congressional staff enjoy themselves; we try our best to nurture bipartisanship and collegiality, and I believe we are doing good work in this regard.

What do you enjoy doing outside work?

I love to travel with my husband. Last year, we went to Montreal, Rome, Split (in Croatia) and Istanbul. This year, we plan to go to Portugal and Costa Rica.

We also spend a great deal of time with our friends in Bethesda, Maryland, where we live. We frequently allow our 3-year-old nephew to ransack our apartment.

What is something your co-workers may not know about you?

I am big into cycling. Friends and I have been training to do the entirety of the C&O canal towpath from Cumberland, Maryland, to Georgetown. This October, we may finally make it happen!

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Baseball Opening Day, and the Library Adds MLB History Online

The following guest post was written by Peter Armenti and Darren Jones, research specialists in the Library’s Researcher and Reference Services Division.

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack — it’s Major League Baseball’s Opening Day!

To celebrate the start of the 2023 season, the Library is pleased to announce a new digital collection: Early Baseball Publications. The collection, which will grow over time, provides full-text digitized access to more than 120 early baseball publications.

The initial release includes a large selection of 19th- and early 20th-century annual baseball guides, including many volumes of Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guide, one of the premier baseball publications of its day. Also included are rule books, record books, scorekeeping guides and books on how to hit and play different positions.

Early Baseball Publications updates and expands the Library’s long-standing Spalding Baseball Guides digital collection, which will be retired in several months once its content has fully migrated to the new collection. The new collection will include the 15 Spalding’s Official Base Ball Guides published between 1889 and 1939 in the legacy collection as well as the 20 Official Indoor Base Ball Guides also found there (“indoor baseball” developed into what we know today as softball).

Many of the more than 120 publications in the new collection were published by Albert Spalding’s American Sports Publishing Company. Among these are not only the annual Spalding guides, but also a number of rule books and instruction manuals. The 1911 manual How to Pitch, for instance, provides detailed illustrations showing how to grip the ball to throw different pitches, such as the “straight, swift ball” (fastball) thrown by New York Giants ace and future Hall of Famer Christy Mathewson:

“The Straight, Swift Ball.” Illustration from “How to Pitch.” American Sports Publishing Company, 1911.

.The collection also includes a number of unexpected finds, such as The Orr-Edwards Code for Reporting Base Ball, an 1890 instruction manual for sports journalists covering the game. It focused on shorthand to use on the telegraph.

While the collection is focused on works of nonfiction, one poetic surprise we discovered was “Chick Gandil’s Great Hit” from 1914. Written by Gilbert Marquardt Eiseman, the poem adapts “Casey at the Bat” by imagining a tense game between the Washington Senators and Boston Red Sox. The hero is Washington first baseman Gandil, whose talent would be overshadowed several years later by his involvement as the ringleader of the 1919 Chicago “Black Sox” game-fixing scandal, for which he and eight other players were permanently banned from baseball.

First page of “Chick Gandil’s Great Hit.” Judd & Detweiler, Inc. c1914.

Early Baseball Publications represents only a fraction of the baseball materials at the Library. You can learn more about our extensive baseball holdings — among the largest in the world — and many other baseball materials by exploring our online Baseball Resources at the Library of Congress.

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Mark Dimunation, Master of Rare Books and Excellent Anecdotes, Retires

It’s difficult to say if Mark Dimunation is better at curating rare books or telling stories about them. Probably not possible to make the call, actually.

He’s displayed both abilities in person, in print, onstage and on television since he was appointed chief of the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library — the largest collection of rare books in North America — a quarter of a century ago, in 1998.

And both were on display for a final time last week during an open house displaying some of the sparkling finds the division has acquired under his tenure. Dimunation, 70, who is retiring this week, was seated at the front of the Rare Book reading room, greeting a stream of well-wishers from across the Library and the antiquarian community.

“Starting at the LOC and buying books was a little bit daunting, because there’s a million books here,” he said, referring to the section’s holdings. “We cover everything from cuneiform tablets and medieval manuscripts all the way up to the 21st century. So, what do you buy in your first week is a very good question.”

One of the answers: “The Word Returned,” a 1996 artist book by Ken Campbell, the famed British printer who passed away last year. Campbell became regarded as one of the most influential book artists of the century, and the Library is one of the few institutions in the world with a complete run of his works.

Spread across the reading room — classical architecture, high ceilings, a chandelier, study tables set with small lamps, the room filled with murmurs and conversations — were more than 100 other books and printed material gathered in Dimunation’s tenure, showcasing the Library’s sweep of culture and history.

On this table, a first edition of Galileo’s “Starry Messenger,” published in 1610, the key work by the world-changing Italian astronomer, acquired by the Library in 2008. Here’s a flavor of Dimunation’s narrative style, explaining the book’s significance at a forum with the Librarian of Congress, Carla Hayden: “At dusk on November 30, 1609, Galileo shifted his telescope in the direction of the moon …”

There, that’s it, the Dimunation Anecdote: A startlingly specific scene, a famed personality at the moment of discovery … and, voila, centuries later, the very book, in the creator’s hand, right in front of you.

Another delightful acquisition lies on a nearby table: A first edition of Edward Gorey’s charmingly sinister “The Gashlycrumb Tinies,” a 1963 series of dark pen-and-ink sketches that walked readers through the alphabet by means of soon-to-be deceased children. The book is open to one of its most famous pages: “N is for Neville who died of Ennui.” The book’s page, part of a Gorey collection acquired in 2014, showed hapless little Neville, only his black-dot eyes and top of his head visible above the windowsill, gazing at a world of gray. It’s sad and funny and strange and surreal all at once.

In between, and spread across the hall to the Rosenwald reading room, were a constellation of books and papers from across the centuries, including 19th-century children’s books that doubled as pop-up theaters, the 20th-century Harlem Renaissance and art books made of almost everything, including leather and steel. Joan Miró’s 32-foot-long scroll, “Makemono” was there, but only partially unrolled.

Dimunation, a Minnesota native, grew up in a Ukrainian household, imbued with the culture of his immigrant grandparents. He was fascinated with maps, history and the larger world.

After getting his master’s degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley, his professional niche became 18th- and 19th-century English and American printing. He came to the Library from Cornell University.

Since then, he’s often been one of the more public faces of the Library. He’s taught seminars at the Rare Book School, appeared on several of the episodes of the History Channel’s “Hidden Treasures at the Library of Congress,” delivered dozens of lectures at museums and book events and written for publication often, including this blog.

He has also hosted dozens, if not hundreds, of show-and-tell events for Library guests. When actor, magician and author Neil Patrick Harris appeared at a 2019 National Book Festival Presents event, Dimunation wowed him by presenting a copy of some of the Library’s Houdini collection.

Other prominent guests visited in more low-key settings. At the open house, he regaled a small crowd with the story of the time Irish actor Pierce Brosnan came through the division. Dimunation, knowing his audience, set out a rare copy of “Ulysses,” by fellow Irishman James Joyce, at a side table. Brosnan instantly recognized the copy in its rare blue cover and, transfixed, asked to see it.

The one-time James Bond star paged through it for a moment and, without looking up, “suddenly starts reading in this Irish brogue,” Dimunation recounted. “We’re sitting there for a good 10 minutes, while he read Joyce, and you’re just transfixed.”

It’s those kind of moments, Dimunation said, that makes the Library an endlessly fascinating place. You never know who, or what, you’ll find.

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My Job: Carol Lynn Ward Bamford and the Flute Vault

Carol Lynn Ward Bamford curates collections of musical instruments.

Describe your work at the Library.

I take care of the musical instruments collections in the Music Division. The Library has over 2,000 instruments — mostly woodwinds and bowed stringed instruments — that are available for study, performance and exhibition.

My days are spent managing their care; their use in public performances, displays and exhibitions; and visitor requests to see, examine or copy them. The Dayton C. Miller flute collection comprises not just the flutes themselves but also an entire reference collection of related books, music scores, patents, iconography, statues, photographs and more. So, I often work with different divisions at the Library and many types of visitors!

How did you prepare for your background?

I went through graduate school in music and performance on the flute. I taught flute, freelanced, played with an orchestra and worked in a flute manufactory. One day, literally, I just felt I had accomplished all I wanted to do on the flute. After considering further studies in musicology, I decided instead to be a librarian.

Off I went to library school at Simmons University. Next door was the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. I started work there in the musical instruments department, and that was that! I knew I was in the right place. At the same time, I took a publishing class at Simmons. For my final project, I created a catalog of the Miller flute collection and was told to show it to the Library’s Music Division. So, I did!

I applied for a temporary job here at the Library and got hired for 120 days. That was good enough for me. I eventually got a permanent job here and turned that final school project into the Library’s Dayton C. Miller website.

I feel that working here with researchers, visitors, the public and our staff and fielding all their questions that I am at work on a Ph.D. in “how to answer”!

What have been your most memorable experiences at the Library?

Before the visit of singer-songwriter Lizzo to the Library’s flute collection: getting my first thank you note. It was from a young girl, filled with her words and drawings of flutes. I have it in my office, where I see it every day. I was so grateful she sent it because that made me realize we can have an impact, no matter what the age of the visitor.

Also before Lizzo: the power of collaborating with other divisions and institutions. I worked as part of a team with the Library’s Preservation Research and Testing Division, Catholic University and George Washington University studying our glass flutes via a three-year major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Then there was the visit to the Library by Lizzo and the concert at Capital One Arena the next day at which she played our Madison flute onstage. While that event was one of the hardest days of my Library life, it also was one of the best. It had great impact on the Library and the flute in general.

And everyday memories: the power of donors and their generosity.

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Fabulous Flutes

Call it the flute heard ’round the world.

Standing in the Great Hall last fall, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter Lizzo gave an impromptu performance on one of the Library’s most-prized musical instruments: a rare crystal flute that once belonged to President James Madison.

The next night, she and the flute reprised the performance at her Capital One Arena concert before thousands of adoring fans, holding their phones aloft to record the scene for posterity and TikTok.

“I want everybody to make some noise for James Madison’s crystal flute, y’all,” said Lizzo, who then advised the crowd about the difficulties of playing such an unusual instrument: “It’s crystal — it’s like playing out of a wine glass!”

The combination of Lizzo and Madison set social media afire: A behind-the-scenes video of her Library visit drew record (for the institution) views — nearly 7 million on the Library’s main Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts. The concert performance likewise drew millions of views elsewhere in the social media universe and coverage from dozens of media outlets.

The instrument that helped set off the bedlam is the most prominent piece in a collection donated to the Library in 1941 by physicist, astronomer and major flute aficionado Dayton C. Miller. The collection is not just the world’s largest of flute-related material, it is perhaps the largest collection on a single music subject ever assembled — and it’s what drew Lizzo to the Library in the first place.

The Miller collection contains nearly 1,700 woodwind instruments spanning five centuries; over 10,000 pieces of sheet music and 3,000 books; some 700 prints, etchings and lithographs; more than 2,500 photographs; scores of bronze statues and porcelain and ivory figurines; plus patents, trade catalogs, news clips, correspondence and autographs.

Plexiglass flute in C with chromium plated fittings, produced by Markneukirchen in 1937, Dayton C. Miller Collection/Music Division. Photo: Shawn Miller.

The flutes cover an enormous range of cultures, materials, shapes and sizes. Collectively, they tell the story of the history of the flute. Many of the individual instruments have their own stories.

The crystal flute played by Lizzo was created in 1813 years ago by French maker Claude Laurent and presented to President Madison on the occasion of his second inauguration —a silver joint on the instrument is engraved, in French, with Madison’s name and title. It’s believed that Madison’s wife, Dolley, rescued the flute from the White House when the British burned the capital during the War of 1812.

Another flute, stored in a plush porcelain casket, once belonged to 18th-century Prussian monarch Frederick the Great, one of history’s most famous amateur musicians. Frederick maintained an excellent court orchestra and composed music for it himself; the Miller collection includes not only the king’s flute but original music manuscripts of his compositions.

There are instruments made of gold, silver, glass, jade, tortoiseshell, boxwood, bamboo, ivory, bone and cocus, a West Indian tree that furnishes a fine green ebony. Some take most-unlikely forms: a gavel, walking sticks, birds, a four-legged mammal and what appears to be a horned toad climbing a tree.

They span continents and cultures: xaios from China and flageolets from England, Egyptian zummāras, Bulgarian kavals, Japanese shinobues, Chippewa moose calls, northern Italian panpipes and a Cheyenne courting flute decorated with a stag’s head and the sun and moon.

The flute that inspired Miller’s interest — listed as item No. 1 in his ledger — is a fragment of a humble rosewood fife his father played in the Union Army during the Civil War.

The collection reflects the man who created it more than a century ago — Miller possessed a deep and practical mind and an inquisitive nature. Even given his passion for music and an artistic bent, he remained a scientist first.

“A comprehensive appreciation of the art of the flute requires, besides a knowledge of music in general, also a knowledge of the physical principles of the flute as a sound producing instrument, of the mechanical devices by which these principles are used …” he wrote in his treatise, “The Flute.”

Dayton Miller at 17 with a bicycle, about 1883. Photo: Unknown. Music Division.

Miller grew up in a small Ohio town, obsessed with science and music — at his graduation from Baldwin College, he delivered a lecture about the sun and, as part of the ceremony, played a Beethoven piano concerto on the flute.

He earned a Ph.D. in astronomy from Princeton and taught physics at the Case School of Applied Science in Cleveland for a half-century. He debated Albert Einstein about ether drift theory and hosted him at his home — Einstein signed the Miller guest book.

Miller pioneered the use of X-rays in medicine. In 1896, he learned of the discovery of X-rays by a German scientist, promptly built his own apparatus and began experiments. He made a composite, full-length X-ray of his own body. He photographed a boy’s broken arm and produced what perhaps was the first X-ray used for surgery in America. He delivered more than 70 lectures around the U.S., promoting the use of the X-ray.

He became an expert on acoustics and invented the phonodeik, a device that converted sound waves into visual images — among other uses, he employed the machine to compare waves produced by flutes made from different materials. During World War I, Miller studied the pressure waves caused by the firing of large guns, providing material for medical investigations of shell shock.

Armed with a passion for music and a knowledge of the physics of sound, Miller also became one of the world’s foremost experts on the flute. He developed into an excellent amateur player. By the 1890s, he was a serious collector of all things flute: instruments, books, scores, images, statues, you name it.

He also came along at the right time: Few other serious collectors were around to compete for prize pieces, making the market affordable.

The Miller collection contains, for example, 18 crystal flutes from the early 19th-century Paris workshop of Laurent. In 1923, Miller paid $200 (about $3,500 in today’s dollars) for the Madison flute — an incredible bargain for an instrument that is both of a rare type and, by its association with the president, an irreplaceable, one-of-a-kind historical object. In 1940, he bought an 1815 Laurent glass flute from the British firm Rudall Carte for 10 pounds (about $40 at the time, according his ledger, and around $850 today).

Interior view of a 1937 Gebrüder Mönnig plexiglass flute in C with chromium plated fittings, produced by Markneukirchen. Photo: Shawn Miller. Music Division.

Given his nature, Miller wouldn’t be content to merely collect.

He composed music for the flute: Two pieces, “A Lover’s Prayer” and “The Audacious Jewel,” were dedicated to his wife, Edith Easton. He built several of his own instruments — he had learned to make things in the tin shop at the rear of his dad’s hardware store in Berea, Ohio.

In 1901, he built a flute of silver at a cost of $44 in material and special tools. He once played a gold flute in London and thought it the finest instrument he’d ever played. So, he built his own. Miller kept an elaborate log of each procedure and the time required to complete it — the entire process took over 3-1/2 years. The finished flute featured a tube of 22-karat gold and a mechanism of 18-karat gold and included fingering and tuning features not incorporated together on any other instrument.

He was such an expert that flutemakers from around the globe traveled to him to consult on manufacturing their instruments, to gain insight from his personal knowledge and from the collection he had amassed.

Today, 82 years after Miller’s death, folks still do, in a way.

Researchers and musicians, like Lizzo, from around the world still come to the Library, to see and to study the greatest flute collection ever assembled.

—Mark Hartsell is editor of  the  Library of Congress Magazine. This article appears in  the  March/April 2023 issue.

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Joni Mitchell’s Conversation in the Library

The Library wrapped up its tribute to Joni Mitchell on a high note last week with a conversation between the 2023 Gershwin Prize winner and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. In an exchange punctuated by laughter and ending in song, Mitchell detailed her unexpected evolution as a musical pathbreaker.

The March 2 event followed a joyous all-star concert in Constitution Hall the previous evening, which Mitchell likened to one of her “Joni Jams,” gatherings she hosts bringing together musicians across generations.

“The musical excitement of last night was very intense,” Mitchell said. “You have my beautiful band, which is my generation, and then all these young’uns, too. They’re playing with musicians that were their heroes. … It was beautiful.”

Now considered one of the most influential songwriters of our time, Mitchell didn’t dream of becoming a musician growing up. “I always wanted to be a painter,” she said. “I didn’t do air guitar in front of the mirror or any of that.”

When she was in sixth grade, a teacher noticed she liked painting. She remembered him telling her, “Well, if you can paint with a brush, you can paint with words.” In that act, she said, “he gave me permission to do both.”

Georgia O’Keeffe at one point tried to persuade her otherwise — Mitchell stayed with the famous modernist “for a while” — telling Mitchell that you can’t, in fact, do both.

Not true, Mitchell quipped, “You just have to give up TV.”

Joni Mitchell sits at George Gershwin’s piano at the Library. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Trained as a commercial artist, Mitchell designed her own album covers, many featuring her own paintings, mostly self-portraits. She carried disposable cameras with her (after expensive models were stolen) and painted based on the photos. Her catalog now extends back decades.

When she started as a musician, she sang folk songs, “because they were easy. They didn’t take a lot of skill,” she said.

She was already a Miles Davis fan, however, and she became known for crossing and combining genres, drawing on jazz, classical and rock.

“My songs … they’re not folk music, they’re not jazz, they’re art songs. They embody classical things and jazzy things and folky things, long line poetry,” Mitchell said.

Despite receiving many, many accolades over her career, early on, she “got nothing but bad reviews.”

“It didn’t discourage you … all those reviews?” Hayden asked.

“[I’m] hard to discourage and hard to kill,” Mitchell responded to applause. In 2015, she suffered a devastating brain aneurysm and has since regained her voice.

As a special gift from the Library, Susan Vita, the Music Division’s chief, presented Mitchell with a facsimile of the original title page to George Gershwin’s “Porgy and Bess” and the score to the start of its iconic “Summertime” — the night before, Mitchell brought the audience to its feet with her rendition of the song, her favorite Gershwin composition.

“I love the melody of it. I like the simplicity of it,” Mitchell said. “I really get a kick out of singing it.”

Vita also presented Mitchell with a gold lapel pin modeled on the Gershwin Prize medal, which she attached to Mitchell’s signature beret — a beautiful deep purple on March 2.

Earlier in the day, Mitchell viewed treasures from the Library — folklife interviews and maps from Saskatchewan, Canada (Mitchell grew up in the province); a film clip of Ray Charles performing at the Montreux Jazz Festival (Mitchell attended her first concert when Charles played her hometown); an artist’s book inspired by the Charles Mingus’ composition “Pithecanthropus erectus” (Mitchell collaborated with the great jazz bassist); and original copyright applications for Mitchell’s works (she was presented with an official certified copy for “Big Yellow Tax.”)

Mitchell also viewed the first edition of the “Star-Spangled Banner”; the manuscript of Mozart’s violin sonata, K. 379; and Gershwin’s autograph manuscript sketchbook, 1937, open to the page with his original sketch for “Love Is Here to Stay,” from which Mitchell sang a verse with music specialist Ray White.

In the Jefferson Building’s Gershwin gallery, Mitchell played on Gershwin’s piano and viewed self-portraits by George and Ira Gershwin — self-portraiture is another art Mitchell has in common with the brothers, Vita said.

One item presented to Mitchell on March 2 had special meaning: the unpublished manuscript copyright deposit for “Hammer Head” by Wayne Shorter. A dear friend and collaborator of Mitchell’s, he died earlier in the day.

“Wayne Shorter to me was the best saxophonist ever,” Mitchell said.

She has ideas for new songs, she said, but is kind of “stumped” on how to move forward.

“The world seems to have lost its way,” Mitchell said. “So, to write songs along those lines is a big responsibility.”

She a lot of ideas, however, about what to paint, first and foremost her new cat — she has painted all of her cats.

“My house is full of memories as I go around,” Mitchell said.

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Crime Classics: “A Gentle Murderer” Joins the List!

This is a guest post by Zach Klitzman, editorial assistant in the Library’s  Publishing Office .

A priest, a detective and an impoverished poet might sound like the setup to a joke—but Father Duffy, Sergeant Ben Goldsmith and Tim Brandon are no laughing matter in the gripping new addition to the Library of Congress Crime Classics series, “A Gentle Murderer.”

Dorothy Salisbury Davis’ landmark novel, first published in 1951, combines suspense and innovative psychological insight as Duffy, a Catholic priest, and Goldsmith, an NYPD detective, attempt to track down Brandon, who had confessed — anonymously — to murdering a call girl.

Critic Anthony Boucher described the novel as “one of the greatest detective stories of modern times” and in the introduction to the Library’s edition, Crime Classics series editor Leslie S. Klinger describes it as “a masterpiece” for blending two subgenres of crime fiction: clerical detectives and criminal profiling.

Although there are some biblical antecedents, clergy investigating crimes in detective fiction dates to the early 20th century. G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown appeared in more than 50 stories, starting with 1911’s “The Innocence of Father Brown.” Several radio, television and film adaptations followed, including a 1934 film starring Walter Connolly as the Catholic priest.

“Father Brown, Detective,” a 1934 Paramount film. Prints and Photographs Division.

Other famous clerical detectives post-date Davis’ protagonist and include Rabbi David Small, who first appeared in Harry Kemelman’s “Friday the Rabbi Slept Late” in 1964. There’s also Cadfael, the 12-century Benedictine monk who appeared in 21 novels written by Ellis Peters (a pseudonym for Edith Pargeter), starting in the late 1970s; and, of course, William of Baskerville, the Franciscan friar of Umberto Eco’s 1980 seminal work, “The Name of the Rose.”

In “A Gentle Murderer,” Father Duffy investigates Brandon’s past and present, through the tenements of New York City to rural Pennsylvania and to Cleveland. Goldsmith, meanwhile, utilizes traditional police methods including interviewing witnesses, canvassing the neighborhood where the crime was committed, and using what we would call criminal profiling to try to understand what kind of person would commit the murder.

Criminal profiling first came into vogue in the late 19th century with the Jack the Ripper killings in London, which transfixed the public on both sides of the Atlantic. Several theories emerged about the identity of the killer of at least five women. Surgeon Thomas Bond created an 11-point profile of the killer for the Metropolitan Police, concluding that the killer was likely “a man subject to periodical attacks of Homicidal and erotic mania” who also “would probably be solitary and eccentric in his habits.” Although the offender was never caught, Bond’s theories ushered in a new era of crime detection.

“Jack the Ripper’s Mark,” April 25, 1891. “The Sun” (New York, NY). Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.

One of the next big cases of criminal profiling occurred in the 1950s with the Mad Bomber of New York City. From 1940 to 1956, the perpetrator planted 32 bombs, 22 of which exploded, injuring 15 people. The police were stymied until psychiatrist James A. Brussel created a profile of a man who was roughly 40 to 50 years old; likely lived alone, possibly in Connecticut; was a disgruntled former Con Edison employee (the first bomb had been sent to that power company); and likely would wear a double-breasted suit when he was arrested.

The profile was publicly released in newspapers December 25, 1956, and it led to hundreds of false leads, bomb threats and confessions. But within a month George Metesky — a 53-year-old Waterbury, Connecticut, resident who had been injured while working for Con Edison in 1931 — was arrested. He wore a double-breasted suit when the police removed him from his house.

George Metesky, known as the Mad Bomber, under arrest. Photo: Ed Ford, 1957. Prints and Photographs Division.

The FBI established a Behavior Science Unit in 1972. The trope of using psychology to figure out criminal identities in popular entertainment became commonplace, as seen in films such as “Silence of the Lambs,” television shows such as “Criminal Minds” and nonfiction books with titles like “Manhunters: Criminal Profilers & Their Search For The World’s Most Wanted Serial Killers.”

Dorothy Salisbury Davis’ use of criminal profiling made her a trendsetter, a distinction that holds true for much of her 20 novels and many short stories. Before her crime fiction took off, she worked as a magician’s assistant, a technical writer for a meatpacking company and a research librarian and editor at a magazine.

She received several Edgar Award nominations and was named a Grand Master by the Mystery Writers of American in 1985. Though women mystery writers such as Anna Katharine Green and Agatha Christie had achieved success, Davis was part of the first generation of women to write domestic suspense novels. She was a founding member of Sisters in Crime, an organization of women mystery writers. Davis died at the age of 98 in 2014.

Library of Congress Crime Classics are published by Poisoned Pen Press, an imprint of Sourcebooks, in association with the Library of Congress. Each volume includes the original text, an introduction, author biography, notes, recommendations for further reading and suggested discussion questions from mystery expert Leslie S. Klinger. “A Gentle Murderer,” published on March 7, is available in softcover ($14.99) from booksellers worldwide, including the Library of Congress shop.

 

My Job: Jan Grenci

Jan Grenci helps bring poster collections to light. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Describe your work at the Library.

As the reference specialist for posters in the Prints and Photographs Division, my workdays are full of varied tasks. I spend part of most days working on our reference desk, helping patrons with their research on a wide range of topics — every specialist also should be a generalist. We can and do answer questions about all parts of the visual material collections for any topic a researcher may be interested in.

I also am the go-to person for every reference question related to posters. In addition to in-person service, I answer hundreds of questions a year through our Ask a Librarian online reference service.

When not helping our nation’s readers, I get to spend time working on poster-related projects — for example, surveying the contents of our large collections of posters, preparing the circus poster collection for its recent digitization and working with a volunteer who is translating and cataloging 20th-century Japanese posters in our collection.

I also give tours to groups, especially those with interest in graphic design and posters, as well as preparing displays for visitors to the Library. When not doing all of the above, I also write for the Picture This blog and create thematic albums for the Library’s Flickr photostream.

How did you prepare for your position?

Though I didn’t know it at the time, my educational background prepared me well for my work here. I have an undergraduate degree in history and a master’s in art history. Posters reflect the times and art styles of when and where they were made.

When I started working in Prints and Photographs as a reference technician, I asked as many questions as I could and paid attention to my colleagues with years of experience. I was very fortunate to work closely with Elena Millie, then the curator of posters, who taught me all about the collection. Hands-on work with our one-of-a-kind poster collection has been the best preparation for my job.

“He Merely Struts!” a 1929 poster by Willard Frederic Elmes. Prints and Photographs Division.

What are your favorite collection items?

Picking a favorite collection item is like asking a mother to pick her favorite child. I have many favorite posters. One is a 1929 work-incentive poster by Willard Elmes titled “He Merely Struts!” The poster features a beautifully rendered peacock, with a message that always has rung true to me: “Ability Needs No Fine Feathers.” To me, this means that doing your work well is more important than tooting your own horn.

What have been your most memorable experiences at the Library?

Discussing Josef Albers’ color theory with a group of weavers. Because of a very excited audience and an overly enthusiastic presenter, some say this was the loudest tour ever given in Prints and Photographs.

I often take on searches for patrons for pictures of their family members in our collections, most notably in the LOOK Magazine Photo Collection, the Farm Security Administration Collection and, recently, in the Milton Rogovin Collection. It’s extremely satisfying to connect people to a part of their past that they had only imagined, and those moments have been some of my most memorable.

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Joni Mitchell’s Gershwin Prize Concert Showcases Her Music and Influence

“You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Joni Mitchell famously once wrote. On Wednesday night at Constitution Hall, Mitchell showed that she’s definitely still got it.

The 79-year-old Mitchell, who has performed sparingly since suffering a brain aneurysm in 2015, closed a concert staged in her honor in dramatic fashion, leaning against the piano and flawlessly delivering a slow and sultry rendition of the Gershwin standard “Summertime” — the highlight of an evening filled with them.

The Library of Congress on Wednesday bestowed its Gershwin Prize for Popular Song on Mitchell, the singer-songwriter best known for such 1970s classics as “Both Sides Now,” “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Help Me.” Her lyrics were deeply personal, her music was technically accomplished and her sound incorporated elements of folk, pop, rock and jazz.

“Oh, my God, it’s overwhelming. It’s just a beautiful event,” Mitchell said, noting that the evening brought together artists from the entire range of her career. “New friends, old friends — it’s thrilling.”

The cast of admiring musicians on hand to celebrate the Mitchell legacy indeed spanned generations and genres.

An all-star ensemble cast performs at Joni Mitchell’s Gershwin Prize concert. The artworks are enlargements of Mitchell’s paintings. Photo: Shawn Miller.

There were contemporaries like classic soft rockers Graham Nash and James Taylor. There was Herbie Hancock, one of the great pianists in jazz history and an inspiration for Mitchell’s own forays into the genre. And there were performers who followed in Mitchell’s footsteps, drawing inspiration from her work: ’80s pop divas Cyndi Lauper and Annie Lennox, acclaimed jazz pianist and singer Diana Krall, world music star Angélique Kidjo, R&B singer Ledisi, indie pop band Lucius and modern folkies Brandi Carlile and Marcus Mumford.

Mumford kicked things off, walking onto a stage framed by massive reproductions of Mitchell’s paintings — she also is an accomplished visual artist — to perform “Carey.” That song, written by Mitchell while she was living among a cave-dwelling hippie community on the Greek island of Crete, was one of five drawn on Wednesday from her 1971 album “Blue,” regarded by critics as one of the rock era’s great records.

Mitchell broke with Gershwin Prize tradition, eschewing a box seat for a spot in front of the stage — a move that paved the way for performers to get up close and personal with their audience.

Carlile, Kidjo, Ledisi, Lennox, Lauper and Lucius combined their talents on “Big Yellow Taxi,” starting the song on center stage, then dancing their way down the steps and through the crowd, finally singing directly to the woman of the hour sitting in the first row. Kidjo, supported by Lucius, did likewise on her performance of Mitchell’s biggest hit, “Help Me.”

Carlile, a nine-time Grammy winner and ardent Mitchell fan, did a solo turn on “Shine” and brought down the house. Hancock and Ledisi delivered a cool, jazzy version of “River.” Lennox, half of the Grammy-winning 1980s pop duo Eurythmics, delivered a dramatic version of “Both Sides Now,” Mitchell’s best-known song.

Angélique Kidjo came onto the concert floor to sing directly to Mitchell, delighting the audience. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Some performances carried a special resonance.

Nash and Mitchell were romantically involved in the late 1960s, and one of his best-known songs, “Our House,” was inspired by the domestic bliss of the home they shared in Laurel Canyon: “I’ll light the fire. You place the flowers in the vase that you bought today.” (Nash said in an interview earlier in the day those lines were a diary-like entry of exactly what the couple had done the day he wrote the song. He composed it in about ninety minutes, he said, while Mitchell was in their garden picking flowers for the new vase.)

More than a half century later, Nash took to the stage to perform “A Case of You” — a song Mitchell wrote after their romantic relationship ended.

“Love is touching souls, surely you touched mine,” Nash sang, a portrait she’d painted of him spotlighted on the stage backdrop. “Cause part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time.”

Lauper recalled the impact of Mitchell’s artistry on her own life and a lesson she learned from it: If Joni can do it, I can too.

“When I was growing up, the landscape of music was mostly men,” Lauper said. “There were a few women — far and few, for me. Joni Mitchell was the first artist who really spoke about what it was like to be a woman navigating in a male world. You taught me so much, Joni.”

Toward the end of the program, Mitchell and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden took the stage, along with members of Congress and Madison Council Chairman David M. Rubenstein.

“Joni Mitchell’s music hits you straight to your heart, down to your soul,” Hayden said in awarding the Gershwin Prize. “Millions grew up listening to Joni’s music — a distinct musical language — and it has touched and moved them uniquely at different periods of all of our lives. You could say she truly helped all of us look at both sides now.”

With the award came a request from Hayden: Would you honor us with a song?

Mitchell would — in fact, she’d make it a double: “Summertime” and a show-closing singalong of “The Circle Game” by the whole cast.

Joni Mitchell performs at the Gershwin Concert. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Mitchell chose “Summertime,” she said, as a tribute to the great songwriting team that gave its name to the prize she’d just received. She and Hancock had recorded the song, written by the Gershwin brothers and DuBose Heyward, some 25 years ago for his Grammy-winning album “Gershwin’s World.”

Against a bluesy musical backdrop, her voice husky and the tempo slow, she sang: “One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singing. You’ll spread your pretty wings, and you’ll take to the sky.”

“Joni Mitchell: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song” will be broadcast on PBS stations at 9 p.m. EST on March 31.

Purim Holiday: The Library’s Esther Scrolls

The handwritten Esther scroll, inked onto parchment and protected by a cylindrical case of silver filigree, is a delicate work of beauty and religious faith, more than a century old. It tells the biblical story of Queen Esther of Persia and how she helped save the nation’s Jews from annihilation by a wicked ruler.

The story of Esther, thought to have originated about 2,450 years ago, explains the foundation of Purim, the annual Jewish holiday being celebrated next week March 6-7. The scroll and its case, crafted in Jerusalem at the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts (today the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design) in the early 20th century, is one of the centerpieces of the Library’s collection of 30 Esther scrolls, and an important moment in Jewish culture.

The scroll “simply breathes ‘Bezalel’ with all its milestones for modern Jewish culture, and all the aspirations and dreams it implies,” wrote Ann Brener, the Library’s former Hebraic specialist, who led the acquisition of the piece in 2021.

The Library’s Esther scroll, made at the Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem in the early 20th century. Photo: Shawn Miller.

The Scroll, or Megillah, of Esther is one of five sacred books read from scrolls in synagogues on Jewish holidays. Such scrolls, whether plain or ornate, have been an important part of worship over the centuries, though only Esther scrolls are illustrated. The earliest known examples date to Renaissance Italy.

The Library’s collection of Esther scrolls spans seven centuries. The oldest entry, from Germany in the 14th century, is also the largest, at 32 inches tall, with writing in beautiful calligraphy. The most recent is from the late 20th century.

The Bezalel scroll is itself plain – black ink on faded parchment – but the silver filigree case is strikingly ornate. It is illustrated with characters from the story of Esther, lettering in Hebrew and exquisite floral work.

Equally important is who made it: master silversmiths at the Bezalel workshop, the ambitious academy founded by Boris Schatz, himself the former court sculptor to Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria.

Schatz, as Brener noted in a 2021 post, wanted to create a new kind of Jewish art, blending the western influences of art nouveau with ancient motifs from the Near East. To this end, he founded the Bezalel school in 1906, envisioning it as a kind of artistic society set within the Jewish homeland. The school initially focused on painting, sculpture, carpet making and metal working.

The school started with two silversmiths, but the department soon grew to 80, mostly Jewish immigrants from Yemen, as their work was extremely popular. It’s not known who created the Library’s Esther scroll, or the year it was made, but it remains as a beautiful example of the form.

Every part of the scroll, including the handle, shows off its delicate silver filigree. Photo: Shawn Miller.

The school closed in 1929 due to financial difficulty. Schatz died in 1932. The school was reopened in 1935 and, after the state of Israel was founded in 1948, the school flourished. It gained status as an academic institution in 1975. Today, with more than 2,300 students, it describes itself as “the essence of Israeli art and design.”

The scroll from its early days, depicting the foundation of one of the faith’s major holidays, is now preserved at the Library for future generations.

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