Library of Congress's Blog, page 57

Jason Reynolds: Could You Tell Your Pet What Love Is?

National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jason Reynolds has a couple more writing exercises to stretch your brain during these difficult weeks. He’s been doing this since the COVID-19 outbreak as a means of helping budding young writers focus their creativity. You can find all of his exercises on our Engage and Families pages.

The first one asks a deceptively simple question: Let’s say your family pet — dog, cat, fish — could suddenly hear, speak and converse with you…but only a little bit. Their vocabulary would be very limited. So how would you tell them what “love” is? You’d have to use simple words and phrases, right? Or maybe an example would work better? A hug? It’s a way to make yourself think about an essential part of our lives that we all know but struggle to define — which is, of course, pretty much what novelists strive to do.

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Next, an exercise in world-building: Create your own video game. Again, this is what storytellers do. They create an immersive universe with its own peculiar sets of rules and relationships and we take the journey with them. They’ve built in all sorts of traps and surprises. For your video game, what would you call it? What would be the goal? How would players get to the end?

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Pride at 50: From Stonewall to Today

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A short 1970 documentary by Lilli Vincenz about the Christopher Street Liberation Day Parade.

This is a guest post by Megan Metcalf, Women’s, Gender and LGBTQ+ Studies librarian and chair of LC-GLOBE, the official Library organization for LGBTQ+ employees and allies.

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“Gay is Angry,” protest poster, 1971. Artist: Juan Carlos y Nestor. Prints and Photographs.

This month marks the 50th anniversary of annual LGBTQ+ Pride traditions in the United States. The first Pride march was in New York on June 28, 1970, on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, the protests that occurred after a late-night police raid on the landmark gay bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village.

The Library collections demonstrate how this first Pride march – originally billed as Christopher Street Liberation Day — was planned and the reasons why activists felt so strongly that it should exist. Looking through the Library’s collections of pioneering gay rights activists Lilli Vincenz and Frank Kameny, researchers can find planning documents, correspondence, fliers and more. The march was meant to give the community a chance to “…commemorate the Christopher Street Uprisings of last summer in which thousands of homosexuals went to the streets to demonstrate against centuries of abuse…from government hostility to employment and housing discrimination, Mafia control of Gay bars, and anti-Homosexual laws,” according to promotional fliers.

So who came up with the actual idea to hold this first Pride march?

The concept came from the Eastern Regional Conference of Homophile Organizations (ERCHO), which had been holding an annual July 4th demonstration known as the “Reminder Day Pickets,” at Independence Hall in Philadelphia from 1965 to 1969.

But after the Stonewall Uprising, ERCHO member organizations voted to organize a national annual demonstration.  In the Homophile Action League Newsletter of January-February 1970, they adopted the following resolution:

“That the Annual Reminder, in order to be more relevant, reach a greater number of people, and encompass the ideas and ideals of the larger struggle in which we are engaged — that of our fundamental human rights — be moved both in time and location.

“We propose that a demonstration be held annually on the last Saturday in June in New York City to commemorate the 1969 spontaneous demonstrations on Christopher Street and this demonstration be called CHRISTOPHER STREET LIBERATION DAY. No dress or age regulations shall be made for this demonstration.

“We also propose that we contact Homophile organizations throughout the country and suggest that they hold parallel demonstrations on that day. We propose a nationwide show of support.”

As prominent members of the Mattachine Society of Washington, one of the earliest gay rights organizations, Vincenz and Kameny helped plan and promote this first Pride march along with activists in New York and other ERCHO groups.

When the march kicked off on Christopher Street around 2 p.m. on June 28, there were more than 5,000 marchers and an equal number of bystanders cheering them on. They filled the street, marching more than 50 blocks to Central Park. Dozens of organizations took part, including the Queens Liberation Front. This was a group that formed partially in response to attempts by some organizers to make drag queens march at the end of the parade.

This was a thorny issue. Since it was illegal to “crossdress” in New York in 1970, Pride organizers worried that police might target trans- and gender non-conforming marchers. Their fears turned out to be unfounded as not a single arrest was made. Many of the drag queens successfully “marched the entire three-mile parade route in heels,” Drag Magazine wrote in 1971. Smaller inaugural Pride events were held in Los Angeles and Chicago.

Due to the dedication of a countless number of activists and organizers, Pride is now celebrated nationwide and around the world. Last year, on the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising, more than 150,000 people marched in WorldPride in New York, with hundreds of thousands more lining the route. (NYC Pride is cancelled this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)

But for half a century now, LGBTQ+ people have continued to gather in June to march with Pride and demonstrate for equal rights. We invite you to learn more about LGBTQ+ history and culture by exploring the diverse collections at the Library.

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Jason Reynolds: GRAB THE MIC June Newsletter

 

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Here’s  the latest newsletter from Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

I think I was 4. Maybe 5. My older brother, Allen, and I were playing in the living room, which, by the way, wasn’t usually allowed in my house. I mean, playing was fine, but in the living room? Never. I don’t remember for sure, but my mother must have been asleep, because if she weren’t, this moment I’m about to describe wouldn’t have ever happened.

Allen was the kind of kid who didn’t like much. Playing sports wasn’t really his thing, nor was school. As a matter of fact, when we were growing up, I only recall him actually being passionate about two things—superheroes and animals. And not just any superheroes, but superheroes who could fly. And not just any animals. Birds. But not just any birds, extinct birds with legendary wingspans. Sky-darkening creatures, both marvelous and nightmarish. Which means flying was always on Allen’s mind.

“J, if you stand on the arm of the sofa, close your eyes real tight and jump; I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to fly.” That’s all he had to say. No spells cast. No backstory about a boy he’d heard about who took flight from a living room sofa. Nothing. Just, “J, close your eyes and jump.” That’s it.

I should mention, Allen was my hero. I looked up to him because he always seemed to know things, or at least he always acted like he did. So when he told me I could fly, I believed him and jumped at the chance. I climbed up on the arm of the sofa, feet together, toes on the edge like a gymnast on a balance beam preparing for the big dismount. I turned myself into a “T,” held my arms out, closed my eyes. Then took a deep breath, and dove.

When you’re 4 (or maybe 5) and believe the air will carry you, you don’t think about things like the coffee table positioned in front of the sofa, the cherry wood my mother thought complemented the navy fabric perfectly. You don’t think about becoming a plummeting rocket, slamming into the corner of that table and exploding into a million tears. You don’t think about anything but flying. And after gravity reintroduces you to the floor, all you think about, then, is why your brother would ever tell you such a thing in the first place.

When my mother found me, my face was bleeding. She rushed me to the hospital and after a few hours my chin had been stitched closed. A week later, I was left with a diagonal scar that slashed across the bottom of my face, which had become a patchwork of bruised skin. Every morning I looked at it as a jagged symbol of failure. A reminder that my arms weren’t wings, and that I, in fact, had no superpowers.

The bad news (besides the obvious) is that my brother wouldn’t even apologize. Because he’s a big brother. “I didn’t make him do it” became his favorite song.

The good news is the scar seemed to get smaller as my face got bigger. As I grew up, this dash of skin became more like a hyphen. The remainder of the reminder, harder and harder to see.

Five years later, my father decided to drive Allen and me out to a small airfield 20 minutes from our neighborhood to finally make our dreams of flying come true. The plan was to take us up in a small propeller plane and fly us around for a few minutes, then bring us down. But when we arrived at the hangars, Allen started to mouse.

“I can’t go up,” he said.

“What you mean, man? We gon’ fly,” my father said.

“Yeah, we gon’ fly!” I followed up. But Allen refused. All he ever talked about was flying and now he was purposely avoiding it. Sweating and sinking into his seat, refusing it. So I went up without him. Looked from the window, watching my father’s old Volkswagen become a dot. Watched my brother, a spectator, become a speck. Watched the world become a possibility. And when the wheels returned to the ground and the plane skidded to a stop, I knew my life would never be the same. Nor would the meaning of this bit of scar tissue on my chin. Because my brother, my hero, wanted to know all about my time in the sky.

“Could you see me?” he asked.

“What did the clouds look like?” he asked.

“Could you feel the wind?” he asked, his voice full of the same fire burning in my adrenaline-filled body.

And in that moment (he kept asking questions the whole ride home) I realized that maybe my brother told me to jump off the couch and fly not because he knew I couldn’t, but because he didn’t think he could. And maybe he knew that I’d at least try, simply because he told me to. Simply because he was my hero. And maybe he even knew—because of all his comic book knowledge—that sometimes heroes can’t save themselves, and the best thing to do is to try to create new ones from their sidekicks to help. And maybe that was his superpower. Maybe. Either way, I’ve never looked at scars the same. And sofas are for sitting, for some. But for me … well … it depends on if my mother’s asleep.

Oh, and, Allen, if you’re reading this, I accept your apology. And also, you were right. You didn’t make me, but … you kinda did. And I’m grateful for the wings.

For more information about Jason Reynolds or to check out his video series, “Write. Right. Rite.”, visit our Engage page.

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Dav Pilkey: How to Paint Molly and Melvin

 

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Got your palette and paint brush?

Our buddy Dav Pilkey is back with another of his weekly how-to-draw sessions, this time with pastels. It’s a quick lesson in how to paint two minor characters from Dav’s Dog Man series, Molly and Melvin. The siblings were tadpoles in their first appearance in “Fetch-22” but Melvin is now a baby frog in the newest book in the series, “Grime and Punishment.” It’s the rare children’s book author who riffs on classics by Joseph Heller and Fyodor Dostoevsky, but Dav is just that resourceful.

It’s not easy being green, as Kermit liked to say, but at least Molly and Melvin are pretty easy to paint.

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The 1793 Yellow Fever Epidemic: The Washingtons, Hamilton and Jefferson

This is a guest post by Julie Miller, a historian in the Manuscript Division. 

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Martha Washington, in an unfinished portrait by Gilbert Stuart. Theodor Horydczak Collection. Prints and Photographs Division.

In December 1793, Martha Washington bought a new book by Mathew Carey called A Short Account of the Malignant Fever Lately Prevalent in Philadelphia. The following February she bought a similar title, A Short Account of the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia, for the Reflecting Christian, by Henry Helmuth.

Her interest was personal. In the summer of 1793 when a devastating yellow fever epidemic hit Philadelphia she was in the city, then the U.S. capital, as the wife of the president. Carey, a publisher and bookseller, was also there. He joined a committee that helped the poor and sick who stayed behind when the wealthy fled. The Rev. Helmuth stayed to care for his congregants. The Washingtons remained in Philadelphia through the summer, but on Sept. 10 they left, as did nearly every member of city, state, and national government.

Yellow fever is a frightening disease. Benjamin Rush, a prominent Philadelphia doctor and author of another book about yellow fever, noted his patients’ chills and fever, yellowed skin, stomach pains, nausea, headache, sore eyes and delirium.

Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote: “It is called a yellow fever, but is like nothing known or read of by the Physicians. The week before last the deaths were about 40. the last week about 80. and this week I think they will be 200. and it goes on spreading.”

Carey described how “acquaintances and friends avoided each other in the streets, and only signified their regard by a cold nod. The old custom of shaking hands fell into such disuse, that many were affronted at even the offer of the hand.” Carey estimated that out of a population of 50,000, about 17,000 left the city and 4,000 died. Later estimates put the death total as high as 5,000.

Between 1793 and 1805, waves of yellow fever attacked northern ports in the U.S. Then the disease retreated south, where it persisted through the end of the 19th century. At the turn of the 20th century, a time of great advances in bacteriology, scientists discovered that yellow fever was transmitted by the bite of an infected mosquito. This eventually led to a vaccine, although the disease is still endemic in parts of Africa and South America.

The yellow fever epidemics that struck American cities soon after the birth of the nation left a powerful mark in the historical record. That mark is visible in books, newspapers, maps and more at the Library, but especially in the papers of members of George Washington’s administration. Leaving Philadelphia in 1793, Secretary of War Henry Knox wrote Washington that “the alarm of the people in all the Towns and villages on the road, and at New York, on account of the prevailing fever is really inexpressible.”

The president, at home at Mount Vernon, described Philadelphia as “now almost depopulated by removals & deaths.” Thomas Jefferson commented snidely about treasury secretary Alexander Hamilton, who was sick with the fever: “A man as timid as he is on the water, as timid on horseback, as timid in sickness, would be a phaenomenon if the courage of which he has the reputation in military occasions were genuine.”

Politics filtered into debates about yellow fever.

“Contagionists” were likely to be Federalists who advocated restored trade with Britain and feared revolutionary France. They believed that yellow fever arrived on ships with refugees from France and its West Indian possessions. Pro-French Republicans, meanwhile, believed yellow fever was not contagious and that its causes were local.

Public officials, uncertain what to do, ordered quarantine and sanitation. Philadelphia’s free black citizens, including church leaders Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, were forced to fight back prejudice during the epidemic.

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Benjamin Rush, 1802. Portrait: Charles Balthazar Saint-Mémin. Prints and Photographs Division.

Doctors were divided about treatment. Rush favored purging and bloodletting, while David Hosack and Edward Stevens, physician friends of Alexander Hamilton, believed in a milder treatment of quinine, wine and cold baths. Rush, whose methods were controversial, sighed, “I shall sooner or later be believed and forgiven.”

Some of the most anxious testimony is in letters from Philip Schuyler to his daughter, Elizabeth Hamilton, and her husband, Alexander. As yellow fever threatened Manhattan in 1803, Schuyler, a Revolutionary War general and New York politician, wrote Elizabeth that he was “under great anxiety for the safety of my dear Hamilton.” He warned his son-in-law to stay out of “the vortex of the pestilential effluvia.”  “I cannot, my dear sir,” he pleaded, choosing his words carefully to best express his emotion, “describe how much I dread apprehend from your exposing yourself to pestilence.”

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Letter, Philip Schuyler to Alexander Hamilton, Aug. 15, 1803. Alexander Hamilton Papers, Manuscript Division.

By December 1793, the disease had retreated from Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson wrote his daughter, “This place being entirely clear of all infection, the members of Congress are coming into it without fear.” George Washington was back, Jefferson reported, but his wife was not. Because so few of Martha Washington’s letters survive, we have to rely on fragments of information, such as this “small news,” as Jefferson called it, or the record of her book purchases, to learn how she reacted to the yellow fever epidemic.

Now that we are living through something similar, it is not hard for us to imagine her alarm – or her relief when it was over.

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Chet Baker

Pam Murrell, a processing technician in the Music Division, posted this the other day on In the Muse. Because we’re Chet fans, we’re posting a slightly adapted version here. 

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Photograph of Chet Baker in spring of 1970. Photo: Unknown. Chet Baker materials, Music Division.

Legendary jazz trumpeter and vocalist Chesney Henry Baker — better known as Chet — died 32 years ago this month in Amsterdam. We pause here just for the length of a solo to remember his passing.

The Library acquired the Chet Baker Materials from the Papers of Diane Vavra in 2015, an intimate cache of 108 items. The majority are photographs featuring Baker, but it also includes deeply personal correspondence with Vavra. They are not yet online, but they will be available when the Library reopens after the COVID-19 closure.

Heralded as the “most gifted trumpeter” by late saxophonist Gerry Mulligan, Baker was a melodic improviser with both his horn and his voice.

The native Oklahoman’s big break came in 1952 after he won the highly coveted spot as Charlie Parker’s trumpeter after an audition. He was just 22. Soon thereafter, he met Mulligan. Along with the other members of their quartet, they pioneered a style of music which critics called West Coast Jazz. The genre’s light rhythms contrasted the hard and heavy drives of its eastern counterpart, making it a musical innovation.

The period of 1953-1960 was the pinnacle of Baker’s popularity. He performed throughout Europe and was invited to tour with jazz luminaries such as Count Basie and Sarah Vaughan. He also was offered roles in domestic and international films, as producers favored his model good looks and irrefutable magnetism which they believed translated well on the big screen. Baker starred in two films (“Hell’s Horizon” in 1955 and “Howlers of the Dock” in 1960) and performed the music for a third (“Fiasco in Milan,”1959).

The frenetic period of the ’60s resulted in a conspicuous vocational lag in Baker’s momentum. National civil unrest manifested in every facet of life, including the realm of music which saw rock gradually push jazz from the main stage. As the decade progressed into the next, the musical landscape continued to shift and become heavily saturated with British pop while simultaneously witnessing the emergence of disco. Consequently, Baker’s professional inertia compelled him to uproot himself from American soil. He headed overseas where jazz was still in vogue and spent the majority of his final decade touring Asia and the European Union. A royalty statement for six months in 1987 documents that he worked in nine countries during that span alone.

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Suicidal note from the Chet Baker materials. Music Division.

It was during this transitional stage in Baker’s career that he met Diane Vavra. While still looking for work in America, he joined Monday-night jam sessions at a California pizza parlor. One such evening, he spotted Vavra at the drums, barefoot and absorbed in the music. Their attraction was instantaneously mutual. Baker’s love for Vavra endured until the end of his life. Fourteen letters in the musician’s hand are infused with expressions of passion, requests for her presence and numerous apologies. Unfortunately, their tumultuous relationship is also tied to the most macabre object in the collection: a suicidal message on yellow legal paper. In the undated note, Baker confesses that he has attempted to kill himself and cites her rejection as the catalyst. Without her, he concluded, music was all he had left to “hang on to.” Mercifully, Baker relented from his baneful decision.

While abroad in 1979, Baker made 11 records and in the following year he recorded 10. These were some of the most prolific years of Baker’s life since the ’50s. When he did make the rare stateside appearance, it was usually to visit friends and relatives or to perform an irresistible gig, as he did in 1983 when Elvis Costello compensated him generously for a solo in his song “Shipbuilding.” Another enticing opportunity was appearing in a documentary about his life. “Let’s Get Lost” was directed by renowned fashion photographer Bruce Weber and chronicled Baker’s life from his time as a ’50s heartthrob to his nomadic existence in the ’80s. Tragically, he died in Amsterdam at age 59 after a fall from a hotel balcony, four months before the film’s release. A calendar brochure from the nonprofit theater Film Forum advertising Weber’s cinematic tribute to Baker as well as postcards featuring stills from the documentary can be found within the Library’s holdings.

The remaining materials include manuscript correspondence, a contract from Weber and a bilingual poster promoting an exhibit featuring images of Baker at the famed Parisian nightclub New Morning. Additional resources pertaining to Baker are in the Mulligan collection.

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Jason Reynolds May 26

Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, is back this week with two writing challenges. One is playful, the other is more thoughtful.

The silly one is to write one of the songs you may (or may not) sing to yourself when in the shower. It doesn’t have to rhyme or have a hook, he points out. It’s just an exercise to get your hand to write out some of silly things that float through your head when you think (hope?) no one is listening. It’s a good way to get the creative juices flowing.

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The second, more thoughtful one, is to imagine if your television remote control could manipulate the world around you. It sounds like a film plot — “Click,” a 2006 Adam Sandler movie, played with the idea — but it can be more serious that just fast-forwarding through your chores and homework.

It allows you to create a new world from the reality around you. What if you could mute racism, for example, or change the channel on violence? It doesn’t have to make everything perfect. You could replay unpleasant events so that you could try to get them right this time. (That’s “Groundhog Day.”) It could turn up the noise in your head or turn it down. You could make sunsets linger and make storms more powerful. You could make the cat bark and dog meow.

In short, it would let you create a world that looked like this one but isn’t. That’s the art of fiction: creating a new world from the one we live in.

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As always, you can find all of Jason’s writing challenges on our Engage or Families pages.

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New Dav Pilkey

Author and illustrator Dav Pilkey had a rough time as a kid. His attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia made it difficult for him to sit still in class. He got sent into the hall so often, he tells us, he had his own desk out there!

Here, he explains how he used his own personality to create “Dog Man,” his most popular character:

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And, as a bonus, he introduces us to a new character — Dog Man’s alter ego, Cat Man!

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North Korean Periodicals Now Online

The following is a guest post by Sonya Lee, a reference specialist in the Korean collection of the Asian Division. 

How much do you know about North Korea?

With details on everyday life in the isolated country difficult to come by, how can you learn more about the kind of books children read? Fashion, families and film? Home environments? Social ethics? Now, with the launch of the Library’s North Korean Serials digital collection, some of the most sought-after materials in our North Korean collection are online. It’s a slice of the Asian Division’s holdings in what is one of the world’s largest repositories of North Korean publications.

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“About this Collection” page for the North Korean Serials digital collection.

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Cover of Ch’ŏllima (the title refers to a mythical winged horse that is an important national symbol in North Korea) May 1, 1962. Asian Division.

The first release covers 8 titles and 340 issues published between the years 1948 — when the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was established — and 1964, the latest date for which public domain status is clear. Available titles include: Ch’ŏllima, Kyŏngje yŏn’gu, Kodŭng kyoyuk, Chosŏn misul, Chosŏn susan, Tang kanbu dŭl ege chunŭn ch’amgo charyo, Inmin kyoyuk, and Sŏnjŏnwŏndŭl ege chunuŭn tamhwa charyo. Over the next two years, the scope of the digital collection will expand to encompass 146 titles comprising some 4,038 issues published through 1964.

Our print holdings in the nation’s periodicals include 300 serial titles that span the entire period from the DPRK’s founding to the present day. In addition to providing a historical glimpse at the everyday lives of North Koreans, the wide-ranging content covers such topics as economics, law, politics, military affairs, history, agriculture and education. The collection’s particularly strong coverage of the DPRK’s early decades is both rare and especially valuable for providing historical context to contemporary North Korean studies. The launch of the digital collection makes these materials  accessible to readers and researchers around the world.

 

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Cover of Chosŏn misul (Korean art) October 1, 1959. Asian Division.

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Cover of Tang kanbu dŭl ege chunŭn ch’amgo charyo (Reference for party officials) June 1, 1959. Asian Division.

In addition, librarians have developed a unique online research tool, the North Korean Serials Indexing Database (NKSIP). It’s the first indexing resource available in any country to guide researchers in locating articles in North Korean periodicals. The indexed data  allows users to search for articles by author, article title, publisher and so on. The NKSIP has indexed 34,000 articles in 21 of the most frequently requested North Korean serial titles, including seven of the eight titles that have been recently digitized. To learn more about this database, whose coverage will expand as it receives updates, take a look at this blog post detailing its launch in 2018.

We also hold numerous monographs from North Korea. We’re closed for now due to COVID-19 but when we reopen, these and all other print resources will be available for use by registered readers in the Asian Reading Room. To learn more, please use the Asian Division’s Ask-a-Librarian.

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Jason Reynolds: Two Writing Exercises for Young Writers

We’ve got a double shot of writing exercises today for young writers from Jason Reynolds, the National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. He’s doing a series of these — short, witty, thoughtful — and you can find them on our Engage or Families pages.

The first one is about framing things that are special to you. It’s a way of preserving something you find important as well as making a statement to others that this is part of who you are. Jason tells us he has all sorts of things framed, including  the contents of his grandmother’s wallet. This tells us that his grandmother, and the live she lived, is important to him today. This, in turn, tells us something about him.

“All sorts of things that I love, I have them framed,” he says.

For writers, stories are something special that you frame inside the covers of a book. There’s also a standard narrative technique called a “framing device” to tell stories. This is when, say, an older character begins telling a story about their youth. The narrative then switches to the old days. When that tale is finished, the narrative comes back to the older character, who then reflects on what it all meant and how it shaped them. The end.

Here’s Jason:

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The second exercise is about cooking up a special recipe. It’s another terrific way of thinking about the ingredients we choose to put in stories. Here, he’s talking about a recipe to make young writers both creative and courageous — which are, he says, often the same thing.

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