Library of Congress's Blog, page 9

Burt Bacharach: This Guy’s in the Library of Congress

In 1970, Burt Bacharach, whose papers have just been donated to the Library, could sit down at a piano and seem like the coolest cat in the room. Any room.

The once-upon-a-time quiet, skinny Jewish kid from Queens, New York — the one who graduated dear old Forest Hills High School ranked 360th out of 372 kids in his senior class, the one who hated taking piano lessons, the kid his parents called “Happy” — seemed like an L.A. natural by then.

The 42-year-old songwriter and composer was rich and famous, lived in Beverly Hills, owned a stable of racehorses and was married to Angie Dickinson, one of the most glamorous actresses on the planet. His music lived at the top of charts. He scored hit movies. He composed a smash Broadway musical. His television specials did great business. He was admired across the musical spectrum, from the Beatles’ Paul McCartney to Broadway legend Richard Rodgers. His concerts were sellouts, drawing everyone from kids to grandparents.

“Burt Bacharach is the prince of popular music,” Newsweek wrote in the summer of 1970, putting him on the cover.

The young Burt Bacharach didn’t like to practice piano. Later, he became obsessive about his craft, going over a song hundreds of times before releasing it. Music Division.

More than half a century after that glitzy zenith, Bacharach and his music seem fixed in the nation’s musical canon, for his musical writing, compositions and arrangements amounted to a Rolex watch of musical construction and complexity. They didn’t sound like anything else on the radio. He wrote catchy melodies marked by technically challenging arrangements, shifting time signatures and atypical chords. The songs walked and then ran, paused, swooped and bounced along with odd accentuations, retreated to a single instrument before pounding back in with a full orchestra.

The list of his hits (many written with lyricist partner Hal David) that have endured is stunning. “Walk on By,” “Alfie,” “(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me,” “Don’t Go Breakin’ My Heart,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” “I Say a Little Prayer,” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose,” “This Guy’s in Love With You” and on and on.

He won three Academy Awards for his work in films; six Grammys for his pop music; two Tonys (for cast members) for that Broadway hit, “Promises, Promises”; a primetime Emmy for a television special; and a Drama Desk Award.

Bacharach sketched an early version of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” on this blank record sleeve along with airplane reservations, a hotel phone number and other notes. Music Division.

Bacharach was awarded the Library’s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song (along with David) in 2012 and considered it the pinnacle of his career. “… it was incredible news,” he wrote in his memoir, “Anyone Who Had a Heart.” “This award was for all of my work, and so for me, it was the best of all awards possible.”

He died in 2023, at 94. By then, he was considered one of the greatest writers, composers and arrangers of popular music in the nation’s history.

“Burt Bacharach’s timeless songs are legendary and are championed by artists across genres and generations,” said Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. “The Library is proud to be entrusted with ensuring his music and legacy will remain accessible for future generations.”

Newsweek, it has to be said, had him pegged way back in 1970. The magazine didn’t compare Bacharach to his contemporaries — the Beatles, Bob Dylan, Smokey Robinson — but to the composers of the American songbook. “He’s the latest in a distinguished line of American popular composers which includes Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter, a line that goes back to Stephen Foster and beyond,” they wrote.

Bacharach’s papers were donated by his wife, Jane Hansen Bacharach, earlier this year. The collection, still being processed, includes 28 boxes full of musical compositions, sketches and scores; nearly 200 photographs; correspondence and other personal papers.

“Burt poured his heart and soul into his music, and we are so proud that the Library will give others the opportunity to visit and enjoy his legacy,” the Bacharach family said in a statement.

Bacharach’s handwritten score for “The Look of Love” contains detailed notes. Photo: Shawn Miller. Music Division.

One of the many finds in the collection is Bacharach’s handwritten score for one of his most popular hits, “The Look of Love.” Composed for “Casino Royale,” a spoof James Bond film in 1967 and first recorded by Dusty Springfield, it since has become a seductive jazz standard. That vibe was intentional; one of Bacharach’s notes in the score was for the musicians to play a passage as “languid and sexy.”

His was an inspiring story about innate talent, hard work and perseverance rather than a tale of a born musical prodigy. His mother had great taste in the arts and played piano by ear; his father was in the men’s clothing business before becoming a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist.

Bacharach started piano lessons at 8 but didn’t really come alive musically until hearing jazz great Dizzy Gillespie as a teenager. He trained at the music conservatory at McGill University in Montreal, studied under Darius Milhaud and avant-garde composer Henry Cowell.

His real-life musical education? Touring with the legendary Marlene Dietrich as her accompanist while beginning his songwriting career in the Brill Building in Manhattan.

Then, after spotting eventual muse Dionne Warwick as a backup singer at a recording session and settling in with David as his songwriting partner, he went on a hit-making run for decades.

Bacharach’s personal copy of Newsweek with him on the cover, June 22, 1970.

He wrote or co-wrote six No. 1 Billboard pop hits and had dozens in the Top 40. He was enshrined in every relevant hall of fame, made delightful cameos in the three “Austin Powers” movies and saw more than 1,000 artists around the world record his songs. His work was so universal that country star Ronnie Milsap had one of the biggest hits with “Any Day Now,” while rhythm and blues crooner Luther Vandross made “A House is Not a Home” one of his signature pieces.

Linda Moran, president and CEO of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, likes to point out that Bacharach was given their Johnny Mercer Award — a further honor for hall of fame inductees who set “the gold standard.”

“Nothing better describes the magic Bacharach created with every song he wrote,” she said.

Several of his songs have been hits in multiple decades.

Consider “Walk on By,” an early collaboration with David.

Warwick had the first hit with it in 1964. Soul icon Isaac Hayes put it back on the charts in 1969. Several others had minor hits with it in the U.S., the U.K. or Europe over the decades, including the Average White Band, the Stranglers, Melissa Manchester, Sybil and Gabrielle. Then, in 2023, rapper Doja Cat took it to No. 1 in 19 countries by sampling it heavily in “Paint the Town Red,” which has been streamed more than 730 million times on Spotify and another 286 million on YouTube.

Burt Bacharach? It’s almost like he’s still the coolest cat in the room.

Bacharach at the Gershwin Awards in 2012.

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Veterans Day: Remembering World War I

This is a guest post by Cheryl Fox, an archives and history specialist in the Manuscript Division.

In September, the National Park Service unveiled the final element of a new national World War I memorial in Washington, D.C.’s Pershing Park. Titled “A Soldier’s Journey,” the bronze sculpture by Sabin Howard depicts the experience of a single soldier, from enlistment to homecoming, through 38 human figures.

Carved on its opposite side is an excerpt from a poem by former Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak,” which concludes with these famous lines, set in all capital letters:

“WHETHER OUR LIVES AND OUR DEATHS WERE FOR PEACE AND A NEW HOPE

OR FOR NOTHING WE CANNOT SAY; IT IS YOU WHO MUST SAY THIS.

THEY SAY: WE LEAVE YOU OUR DEATHS. GIVE THEM THEIR MEANING.

WE WERE YOUNG, THEY SAY. WE HAVE DIED. REMEMBER US.”

MacLeish wrote the poem in 1943 during his tenure as Librarian. Its universal message, calling on citizens to remember and honor fallen soldiers, resonates with MacLeish’s experiences during World Wars I and II.

He interrupted his undergraduate studies at Yale University in 1917 to join the Yale Unit, or Mobile Hospital No. 39, as an ambulance driver. He later joined the U.S. military and commanded an artillery battery at the second Battle of the Marne in France.

By the late 1930s, MacLeish was a well-known cultural figure and multiple prize-winning author closely allied with New Deal initiatives. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed him Librarian in 1939.

Throughout his five-year tenure, MacLeish worked with the Roosevelt administration as a speech writer and spokesman. When asked to contribute to the 1943 War Bond campaign, MacLeish wrote “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak.”

It was published in newspapers on Sept. 16, 1943, and appeared in the October 1943 issue of the Library of Congress Information Bulletin. An accompanying note reported that MacLeish read it at a general meeting of Library employees on Sept. 10.

After the second World War, Librarian of Congress Luther Evans, who succeeded MacLeish in 1945, asked Congress to provide funds to commemorate Library staff members who died during the war. A white marble plaque with the names of those lost etched in gold resulted. It was dedicated on Dec. 7, 1948, and sits just outside the Librarian’s ceremonial office in the Jefferson Building. A commemorative booklet produced for the dedication included photos and details about fallen staff members — and “The Young Dead Soldiers Do Not Speak.”

Archibald MacLeish in the late 1930s. Photo: Harris & Ewing. Prints and Photographs Division.

MacLeish was one of the nation’s most honored and respected poets and intellectuals in the first half of the 20th century. He was awarded three Pulitzer Prizes and an Academy Award, among other high profile honors.

The Library preserves his papers. Many of the public statements, publications and speeches he made during his time as the Librarian appear in the online presentation Freedom’s Fortress: Library of Congress, 1939–1953. The collection includes documents, photographs and printed material from the LC Archives collection and the papers of MacLeish, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter and Manuscript Division chief David C. Mearns.

You can listen to MacLeish reading some of his poems at the Library’s Coolidge Auditorium in 1963 and in 1976 (though “Soldiers” is not included.)

MacLeish is credited with greatly reorganizing the Library and helping turn it into the national institution it is today. In 1942, during World War II, he described its role in sweeping terms: “World events have made the Library of Congress more important now than it has ever been. Today it is, physiologically speaking, the nerve center of our national life.”

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Ned Blackhawk’s “The Rediscovering of America”

Author and academic Ned Blackhawk has been studying Native American history for a long time, and he thinks there are reasons to be optimistic about the future. He says that groundwork laid over the past several decades, particularly in the 1970s protest movements, has established a growing recognition of Native American influence on the foundations of U.S. culture and society.

“We’re kind of living through this literary and cultural — and one might even say media — renaissance,” he said in a presentation called “American History Is Native History” at the Library’s 2024 National Book Festival. “It’s paralleling or connected to the larger political and economic and social revolution that has been occurring across Indian Country for the past two generations.”

Blackhawk, a member of the Western Shoshone nation, is the Howard R. Lamar professor of history at Yale University and a well-known scholar in the field. His latest book, “The Rediscovery of America,” won the National Book Award for nonfiction this year. At the NBF, he was in conversation with fellow historian Kathleen DuVal, whose “Native Nations: A Millennium in North was published in April. The conversation was moderated by Shelly C. Lowe (Navajo), chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

That growth in representation has been taking place across American society, from politics to scholarship to grassroots government on tribal reservations.

In politics, Deb Haaland (Laguna Pueblo) became the first Native American to serve as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior in 2021, after rising to political prominence in her native New Mexico. In academics, the Native American Indigenous Studies Association has become one of the “growth fields” in academia over the past two decades, Blackhawk said, and is connecting with other indigenous studies associations across the globe.

Culturally, there are several examples. Joy Harjo of the Muscogee (Creek) nation became the first Native American to serve as the U.S. poet laureate when Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden named her to the position in 2019; she served for three years. Tommy Orange (Cheyenne/Arapaho) was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2019 for his novel “There There.” Filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (Seminole, Oklahoma) took “Reservation Dogs,” a comedy set on an Oklahoma reservation, for a three-year run on FX, concluding last year. He is a 2024 MacArthur fellow (commonly called the “genius” grant). Actress Lily Gladstone, raised on the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, has gained critical acclaim in several roles, including earning a 2024 Oscar nomination for best actress for “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Meanwhile, tribal governments have gained more autonomy over the past decades, perhaps most notably in the gaming industry. These and other gains are a hard-won act of survival and determination, Blackhawk said, despite centuries of attempts by white settlers to erase them from the map.

“Native nations have had decades — in some cases, centuries — of powerful people and institutions trying to make them not exist,” he said. But, he notes, “There are still tribes all across the United States, often within a 50-mile radius of most large urban centers, who maintain governments, who have citizens, who have delegated budgets and economies, who run hospitals or health care initiatives for their families.”

But the progress isn’t easy or neat. For more than two centuries, Blackhawk and DuVal both said, American history has been taught from only the settlers’ point of view, often dismissing Native viewpoints entirely, leaving behind a misleading account of how the nation was cobbled together.

The result, they said, is that their students are often ignorant of the most basic history of Native American societies that shaped America’s formation. Contact, negotiations and wars went on for more than 200 years between white settlers and Native nations, from the East Coast to the West, in disputes involving hundreds of tribes and across geography ranging from the wooded Northeast to the desert-dry Southwest.

For example, Blackhawk writes, history tends to cast the Colonial struggle with Britain over taxes, exemplified by the Boston Tea Party. But much of the conflict settlers had with the British government was on the western frontier, where settlers wanted to push forward into French and Native territories. Further, in the early days of the nation, most of the first international law the young nation had to deal with was with Native nations in treaties, setting precedents that applied for decades.

“For so long, and really on purpose, the story of American history was told from one perspective,” DuVal said. “And now I think in our classrooms and our books, we’re trying to tell it from multiple perspectives.”

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The Multinational Traditions of Halloween and Día de los Muertos

The loss of a loved one brings grief, tears and heartache that often takes years to heal. Yet as the first of November rolls around each year, the air in many a Hispanic household fills with the sweet scent of pan de muerto, a soft, round bread infused with anise and orange zest. Home altars are filled with marigolds — their petals a fiery orange — candles and brightly painted sugar skulls.

These symbols of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) in Hispanic culture are far from mournful or somber. Instead, they’re a joyful tribute to departed loved ones, blending pre-Columbian traditions with modern expressions of love and remembrance.

Día de los Muertos, celebrated throughout Latin America and by Hispanic communities in the U.S., is a vibrant tapestry that weaves together past and present, allowing us to connect with our ancestors while grounding us in our own lives.

A romantic 2003 Día de los Muertos silkscreen print. Artist: Juan R. Fuentes. Prints and Photographs Division.

The holiday traces its roots to the rituals of Indigenous peoples of Mexico, where skulls were crafted in spectacular ways to honor deceased relatives. When Spanish conquistadors arrived in the 16th century, these traditions merged with Catholic observances, shifting to align with All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. In Catholic traditions that go back for centuries, these have been celebrated on Nov. 1 and Nov. 2, respectively. All Saints’ Day also has been long known as All Hallows’ Day — which, in Western Europe, long ago piggybacked onto the  Celtic holiday of Samhain. This was a festival in which people would, in the darkening of the year, light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts. Over time, the two holidays combined. The night before All Hallows’ Day became known as All Hallows’ Eve. Or, as we now call it, Halloween.

In the Americas, this blending of beliefs gave way to communal celebrations that view death as part of the life cycle.

So although the Día de los Muertos relates to Halloween, the two have distinct beliefs and practices that should not be confused.

“Just as Halloween’s pre-Christian roots are Celtic, the Día de los Muertos has roots in Indigenous Mexican and Central American cultures,” said Stephen Winick, a folklife specialist at the Library’s American Folklife Center. “It’s generally a more solemn and reflective holiday, with a greater focus on remembrance of ancestors and deceased loved ones.”

He continues: “In the modern context, Día de los Muertos is also an occasion for social gatherings, music and culture festivals, parades and costume contests.”

The Library holds a wealth of resources in multiple formats — books, films, photos, graphics, recorded performances and recipe books — that delve into this rich history.

The AFC released late last year a series of never-before-seen photos of a Día de los Muertos festival in Oakland, California, in 1999. The annual one-day street festival began in 1996 as part of a revitalization effort of the Fruitvale commercial area in a primarily low-income Latino community.

A dancer representing Aztec traditions at the Fruitvale Dia de los Muertos celebration in YEAR. Photographer unkown. American Folklife Center.

The Library’s Hispanic Reading Room displays an elaborate altar every year that evokes those found in Mexico and among Mexican American communities throughout the U.S. These altars typically include freshly cut marigolds or cempasúchil flowers whose vibrant colors and strong fragrances are said to guide the souls on their journey home. There are also candles, photographs of departed loved ones, some of their favorite albums, foods, drinks, spirits and sentimental trinkets.

The Hispanic Reading Room’s entryway features a Día de los Muertos altar. 

Mexican communities also organize parades and gatherings, complete with skeleton costumes, dancing and music. Playlists for the holiday would be lacking without a rendition of “La Llorona,” the weeping woman of Mexican and Latin American ghost lore.

It’s the tragic story of a woman who mourns her three children whom she killed in despair after her wealthy lover — and father of the children — abandoned her to marry another woman. Her anguished wails echo through lonely places as she seeks revenge on men for her heartbreak. There are multiple versions of this legendary character, surfacing as a ghost in some and as an immortal wanderer in others, but always weeping loudly at nightfall.

Other people in Latin America celebrate the holiday in a more subdued fashion, attending mass and visiting cemeteries to decorate burial sites with colorful wreaths. Fizzy drinks and savory meals are on the menu to dine with the dead, along with prayers and music. In Mexico and parts of Central America, tamales boiling on the stove and freshly baked pan de muerto are special treats for the occasion.

Papel picado (perforated paper), sugar skulls and other depictions of calaveras or skeleton figures, are also used to illustrate the symbolism of the legendary celebration. The Prints and Photographs Division houses one of the most extensive collections of works done by Mexican printmaker and lithographer José Guadalupe Posada in the U.S., including a treasure trove of prints, some featuring miniature Catrina calaveras — elegant female skull figures symbolizing death’s equality.

Spanish is rich with humorous phrases and sayings that celebrate life in the face of death. Some are used to mark someone’s passing, to mock death or for setting the tone for the holiday’s love-laughter-remembrance theme. People gather to share memories and stories and honor the legacy of loved ones because “to live in the hearts we leave behind is not to die.”

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Vivian Li, the Library’s New Innovator in Residence

The Library has appointed Seattle-based artist and developer Vivian Li as its 2025 innovator in residence.

For her project, “​​​​​​Anywhere Adventures,” Li will work with Library staff to highlight unique, amusing and awe-inspiring collection items that enable young researchers to discover the Library’s online resources about their own communities.

Through her popular social media series about the Seattle Fremont Bridge in 2023, Li found others who shared her enthusiasm for entertaining and informative stories about local history.

​​​“With the Library of Congress so far away, I thought it surely wouldn’t have anything for me — but when I started exploring the digital collections, I found so many stories about my town,” Li said.

She recounted searching for Macomb, Illinois, the town she grew up in, and finding a snippet from an Ohio newspaper about bootleggers on the run.

“This led to a string of research about what it was like during Prohibition,” she said.

She ended up learning about a 1921 scandal where a bootlegger in the nearby town of Colchester, Illinois, hired disgraced Chicago “Black Sox” players to play as ringers in a baseball game against Macomb.

“I didn’t even know Macomb used to have a baseball team!” Li said.

As innovator in residence, Li will delve into collections to and share stories on social media “so people might become curious to do some exploration on their own.”

“Anywhere Adventures” will spotlight histories from three U.S. cities to be selected in early 2025. The finished website will provide self-guided tours and activities for each location, all culminating in a personalized “zine” that participants can share with others.

Li is an illustrator, comics artist and web developer. Since graduating from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a degree in computer science, she has been creating projects that combine her visual artistry with her coding skills.

She previously served as an artist in residence creating digital data visualizations for ​Seattle’s historical Fremont Bridge​ in a partnership between the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Department of Transportation.

Li published the first volume of her comic cookbook on homemade Chinese cuisine, “ABC Cooking,” in 2023. She has contributed comics to Papeachu Review, Fogland Press and Portland Zine Symposium.

​​​The Innovator in Residence program is an initiative of the Library’s Digital Innovation Division, LC Labs. The program invites arts and technology practitioners to conduct research with Library staff members and demonstrate new ways to engage with archives in the cultural heritage sector.

NASA and the Library Send Poetry into Space

In the moments before NASA’s Europa Clipper was set to launch Oct. 14 from the legendary Kennedy Space Center, everything got quiet.

All eyes were fixed on a towering SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket that would carry NASA’s largest spacecraft ever designed for a planetary mission on a 1.8-billion-mile journey.

The mission to explore Jupiter’s moon, Europa, was in the making for decades and imagined for far longer. Galileo first discovered Europa through a homemade telescope in 1610. Now, scientists believe Europa is another water world covered with an icy crust and may hold the ingredients for life.

The launch had been delayed four days due to Hurricane Milton whose eye passed directly over the Kennedy Space Center near Cape Canaveral, Florida — a reminder that we, too, are on a planet. Many wondered: Would something go wrong at the last moment? Were all systems still go for launch?

As the countdown clock kept ticking, a crowd of scientists, mission planners, family, friends — and the poet laureate of the United States — gathered outside under clear blue skies to watch.

Then, they started counting down together. 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Liftoff.

Fire and billowing smoke were visible first. A few seconds passed before the rocket’s roar could be heard. As it lifted higher in the sky and turned out over the ocean, vibrations from the boosters rushed back toward land, rumbling through one’s entire body, drawing tears and then cheers.

Poet Laureate Ada Limón, who wrote an original poem for the mission, wiped a tear from her eye and kept watching as she saw it disappear into the sky.

“I kept thinking, is all of this ok?” she said. “I don’t know. Then everyone started clapping.”

Ada Limón at Cape Canaveral for the launch of the Europa Clipper. Photo: Shawn Miller.

It was the beginning of a nearly six-year journey to reach Jupiter and Europa in 2030.

Exactly two years ago, on Oct. 14, 2022, an invitation arrived from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for Limón to write a poem to serve as a message from Earth and to help convey the mission’s quest for knowledge. Limón agreed almost immediately and then got to the hard work of composing a poem within three short months.

On early drafts, Limón said she felt as if she was failing. She was trying to write about Europa and to educate people about the mission details she’d received from NASA. But it wasn’t working.

“You need to stop writing a NASA poem and start writing a poem you would actually write,” Limón’s husband, Lucas Marquardt, told her.

So, Limón started drafting a poem about Earth, our most beloved planet and one of her best inspirations for poetry. “That’s when my poem took off.”

She wrote of the mysteries of Earth, “the whale song, the songbird singing” — and how it is “the offering of water” that unites us.

“O second moon, we, too, are made of water, of vast and beckoning seas,” Limón wrote.

By early 2023, Limón was submitting the poem in her own handwriting to be engraved on the spacecraft’s metal vault plate.

“In Praise of Mystery: A Poem for Europa,” was revealed publicly in June 2023 during a special reading at the Library.

NASA collaborated with Limón and the Library on a Webby Award-winning public engagement and media campaign that invited people worldwide to sign on to the poem and send their names to space with it on a microchip. More than 2.6 million people from around the world signed on.

“I write from a very intimate, personal I, and I had to take the I out. This poem is a we poem. This is all about the we. And ‘we’ wasn’t just human beings but all creatures, and it’s the first poem, I think, I’ve dissolved myself out of. It no longer belongs to me. It belongs to all of us,” Limón said of the poem, which was just published by Norton Young Readers as a picture book in October with illustrations by Peter Sís.

On the eve before the poem was launched into space, Limón told mission scientists, engineers and family members who gathered for a “star party” that even though the poem is set to travel billions of miles on Europa Clipper, “every word is written in praise of this planet” — because every NASA scientist knows Earth is “the best planet,” she said.

“It has been the honor of my life to work on this project,” Limón told the mission team. “I propose that if this is the beginning of the journey for the Clipper that it might also be the beginning of a journey for us. And might we think about where we will be in the next five to six years? Who we will be? Who we have helped? …  The small kindnesses, the large kindnesses. Any of those things.  The possibilities of humankind.”

Robert Pappalardo, the mission’s lead scientist, and Jordan Evans, the project manager, presented Limón and the Library with an exact replica of the vault plate from the spacecraft, engraved with Limón’s poem for Europa and the names of 2.6 million people who signed on.

Limón watches the Europa Clipper head into space. Photo: Shawn Miller.

Like the replica of the Voyager space mission’s golden record that carried “The Sounds of Earth” into interstellar space in 1977 (now on view in the Library’s Treasures Gallery), the Europa Clipper vault plate will have a home forever in the national library in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division to match the one exploring our solar system. The vault plate replica is set to be formally transferred to the Library in December.

Pappalardo said the mission will expand our horizon from one ocean world to another.

“Soon our craft, crafted by human hands, emblazoned with poetry, will lift through the sky,” he said, “and pierce the Kárman line, through the Van Allen Belts, beyond the Hill sphere, into the ether, the quintessence, heaven.”

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Halloween Heartthrob: The “Chicken Heart” that Gobbled Up the Globe

The panic? You could feel it coming through the illuminated dial of your radio. Darkness had fallen. Static and interference. Sirens. Screams. The implacable monster. The scientist who knows humanity is the walking dead.

“All mankind, doomed!” he cries.

And this merciless beast of death is … is … a chicken heart.

Yes, friends, it really happened. “Chicken Heart,” a seven-minute episode of the “Lights Out” radio series that aired just before midnight in March 1937 was a cheesily effective landmark of the Golden Age of Radio. Living on for decades through rebroadcasts, remakes, in syndication and on records, it snaked its way into the childhood memories of everyone from horror master Stephen King to comedian Bill Cosby, becoming a campy horror cult favorite.

It was the brainchild of the singular Arch Oboler, a 5-foot, 1-inch titan of radio drama from the 1930s to the 1950s. He was rich, he was famous, he worked with everybody who was anybody — Bette Davis, James Stewart, Claude Rains, Joan Blondell — and influenced everything from radio classics such as “Inner Sanctum” to television’s “The Twilight Zone.” He was shocking people with “Chicken Heart” a year before Orson Welles’ famous “War of the Worlds” radio broadcast in 1938.

“…no discussion of the phenomenon of radio terror, no matter how brief, would be complete without some mention of the genre’s prime auteur — not Orson Welles, but Arch Oboler, the first playwright to have his own national radio series, the chilling Lights Out,” King wrote in “Danse Macabre,” his 1981 book on the horror genre.

NBC Radio title page for “Chicken Heart” script in its first broadcast. National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

The Library preserves Oboler’s papers, recordings, screenplays, short stories and so on. It’s a big collection — 364 boxes, 107 tape reels, 127 cassettes, a total of some 127,000 items — for Oboler lived a big, busy life. Frank Lloyd Wright designed his house (though it was never fully built). After radio began to diminish in pop culture, he wrote and directed one of the first 3D films, “Bwana Devil,” a hit in 1952 and was working until his death in 1987.

Going through folder after folder, box after box — the correspondence and notebooks and contracts and newspaper clippings all seem infused with the man’s restless energy, a writer so wound up he lay in bed at night, smoking cigarettes while dictating dialogue so a secretary could type it up into gold the next day.

In the collection, you’ll find what appears to be the original “Chicken Heart” script, with plenty of penciled edit marks. An NBC-branded title sheet lists the airdate as Wednesday, March 10, 1937, from 11:30 to midnight on Chicago’s WMAQ. (You can come into the Library to hear various recordings of the show, but it’s easier to stream on any number of websites; it’s not hard to find.)

It was the most unforgettable “Lights Out” episode, King wrote, both in spite and because of its ridiculous premise.

“Part of Oboler’s real genius,” King wrote, “was that when ‘Chicken Heart’ ended, you felt like laughing and throwing up at the same time.”

We’ll get to the plot — and that classic ending — in just a second.

Suffice it to say for now that, as the decades passed, new generations of kids heard it rebroadcast and word of mouth spread all over again. Cosby, at the height of his comedy career in the mid-1960s included a stand-up bit about it scaring him so bad as a kid that he set the family’s couch on fire. He included it on “Wonderfulness,” a 1966 comedy album, and told it again on his animated television show “Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids” in the 1970s.

A Chicago native born into a working class, highly cultured Jewish family in 1909, Oboler loved music and stories with big ideas, things that took on the issues of the day. He broke into radio in the late 1920s, writing for variety and drama broadcasts in his hometown.

“Lights Out” and its creepy little heart was created by Wyllis Cooper, an NBC writer in Chicago, in 1934. The 15-minute show, airing at midnight, was replete with the supernatural, gory deaths and wild sound effects. It was a hit, soon expanding to half an hour, and Wyllis moved on to Hollywood.

Oboler took over in and made the show his own. He put the era’s fascination with science and sweeping international politics into bizarre settings. He used stream-of-consciousness narration, ironic settings and radio’s gift for horror — listeners could never see the monster, the thing, the terror.

His first show was about a paralyzed girl who was buried alive. Listeners were outraged, appalled and fascinated. He ran “Lights Out” for two years (and would return off and on over the next decade), but moved on to more substantial fare.

“Bathysphere,” a 1939 radio play, was later inducted into the Library’s National Recording Registry. By then, he had his own show, “Arch Oboler’s Plays.” His story collection, “Fourteen Radio Plays,” was, according to the dust jacket, “the first collection of radio plays by a single dramatist to ever to appear in book form.”

In 1941, Radio magazine called him “the richest writer in the world” (he was getting $3,000 for half-hour episodes of a new series). The magazine good naturedly said he was “a wack job” who had a face like a “gnome” and was “the worst dressed writer in the world.”

It’s unlikely that any of that was literally true — but, hyperbole aside, in the years before another beast called television took over the world, the magazine accurately said he showed “radio’s place as an important drama medium, one with great possibilities.”

Oboler was brilliant, King observed, at radio’s dialogue-as-description, throwing out an idea that triggered the mind’s “innate obedience, its willingness to try to see whatever someone suggests it see, no matter how absurd. … Radio is, of course, the ‘blind’ medium, and only Oboler used it so well or so completely.”

The dreaded chicken heart starts growing, from the original script. National Audio-Visual Conservation Center.

OK, ready? Here’s what happened in “Chicken Heart.” (You’ve been warned!)

Dr. Leon Alberts, a scientist, had kept a tiny chicken heart beating in a test tube for 17 months as part of an experiment. The tube was accidentally knocked over and broken, the chicken heart got mixed in with some chemicals. When the staff comes back to the lab, they find that the little heart has grown into a thick, fleshy thing the size of a chair … and it is both (a) still growing, doubling in size by the hour, and (b) still beating.

Neither process can be stopped. Water, fire, ammo, bombs — nothing. It spreads over the lab, town, state, nation, continent, planet, blub-blub, blub-blub, a fleshy, pulsing blob, still beating, still growing, smothering everything on Earth.

In manic desperation, Alberts finally rushes to a prop plane with a pilot, trying to outrun it. Alberts monologues about mankind’s hubris — and suddenly the plane’s engines splutter!

“The motor! It’s cut out!” the pilot shouts wildly. “We’re in a spin! I can’t get out of it!”

“I told you,” the doctor says grimly. “Doomed!”

“No! NO!” the pilot shouts. “NNNOOO!! We’re falling right into it! Into the heart!”

He screams. The whine grows louder, the wind rushing, the plane in free fall. The chicken heart beats louder. Blub-blub, BLUB-BLUB.

And then a sickening wet splat. The end. A gong sounds. Seven minutes and change, the whole episode, a bit of American pop culture history that just wouldn’t die.

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Genealogy Research: Fact and Fiction

This is a guest post by Candice Buchanan, a reference librarian in the History and Genealogy Section.

Not long after I turned 14, one of my English teachers handed out Emily Brontë’s “Wuthering Heights.” The 1847 British novel, taking its title from the name of a remote, imposing farmhouse, concerned itself with the fates of two families among the landed gentry in Yorkshire. It’s long been a classic of world literature, but teenage me knew nothing about the characters or the plot. I flipped it open and there, on one of the opening pages, were diagrams of the Linton and Earnshaw family trees. I still remember the sensation: My heart leapt.

I had already been struck by the magic of genealogy after a fateful walk through the neighborhood cemetery in my little Pennsylvania hometown, captivated by the intrigue and allure of local and family history. And now, right in front of me, was a diagram of three generations of ancestors and neighbors living out a drama that included complex relationships, old houses, a rural village with a church and cemetery and even a ghost.

So I imagined myself as a modern genealogist tracking down this 18th– and early 19th–century history. Had Heathcliff, his companions at Wuthering Heights and the other characters in dear old Thrushcross Grange really lived, how could I track down their history? They would have all been gone for more than a century. Would their weathered tombstones still be legible? Did their houses still stand? Did the heirs of Hareton and Cathy keep the family papers? The portraits? And the servants; how could I track down their less documented but equally compelling lives? Every type of archival record that might have been created formed a to-do list in my imagination.

When I graduated high school years later, I still hadn’t gotten over it. “Wuthering Heights” was the topic of my senior essay and it left a lasting impression on my work today.

How so, you ask?

Sheree Budge, my former colleague in the History and Genealogy Section (she recently retired), spent a delightful age building a Research Guide for fellow lovers of both fiction and genealogy. I had the privilege to work on the project with her, often in lively and animated conversations, as we debated how the books we read for fun fit with the goals we value in our work.

In the guide, we propose topics, themes and subject headings to encourage both veteran and novice researchers to take a break and enjoy a fictional turn through family histories. Drama, mysteries, ghost stories, science fiction, young adult — we tried to cover the waterfront. The list is by no means the limit to the creativity on the subject; it is just a jumping off point to capture your imagination and curiosity. (There’s also a guide to help you get started on genealogy searches.)

I am partial to the mysteries and ghost stories, many of which were not written with the intention of being classified as genealogy fiction, despite the plots that often involve the investigative techniques used in serious family history sleuthing. In local folklore, ghost stories often have grains of truth. Embellished and exaggerated over generations, they may take many forms, and may lose or gain critical details in the retelling. Genealogists and local historians often detect and flesh out the facts to be found in these stories by documenting a thorough family tree or chronicling the history of a house or property. In many genealogy fiction novels, the protagonists do just the same, even if they don’t always mean to do so. Characters, like real-life researchers, are driven by a need to know that leads them to conduct research and interviews and ultimately seek the best sources to tell the real story.

As “Wuthering Heights” illustrated for me, almost any book may be viewed though genealogy-colored glasses. Family history is human history — it contains every plot and storyline. When the characters in a novel go off the rails, change their identity or ride off into the sunset, I can’t help thinking that those missing ancestors in my family tree may have done exactly the same thing! And because fact can truly be stranger than fiction, discussing novels with fellow researchers often leads to comparisons with in-real-life discoveries. Ask any genealogist to share the story of their most amazing breakthrough and you will probably hear a plot that could rival your favorite bestseller!

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Unbuilt America: A Nation of the Imagination

-This is a guest post by Sahar Kazmi, a writer-editor in the Office of the Chief Information Officer. It also appears in the September-October issue of the Library of Congress Magazine. 

 Imagine this: It’s a crisp fall afternoon in the nation’s capital. You stand beside the colonnades at the base of the Washington Monument and look up at an elaborate statue of the first president among his rearing horses. Next, you take in the vaulted ceilings and intricate arches of the Gothic palace of the Library of Congress. In the evening, you grab a bite along the Washington Channel Bridge, a modern rendering of Florence’s Ponte Vecchio.

Perhaps in another life. This vision lives only in the imagination, a story of architectural designs that went unrealized. A Washington, a world, that might look quite different were it not for economic pressures, political will or pure chance. For as many grand and iconic structures as we now know by heart, there are tenfold more that were never built at all.

The Library as proposed by architect Alexander Etsy. Prints and Photographs Division. 

The Library’s Prints and Photographs Division hold a fascinating array of architectural drawings going back as far as the 1600s. They offer a look into what could have been had the stars aligned.

The well-known obelisk of architect Robert Mills’ Washington Monument was originally envisioned on a raised colonnade, punctuated by great statues. John L. Smithmeyer and Paul J. Pelz’s Italian Renaissance vision of the Library of Congress beat out a dramatic Gothic castle from Alexander Esty in a pair of congressionally authorized design competitions.

Much later, in the 1960s, architect C.W. Smith imagined D.C. in the Florentine style, drawing a contemporary version of the Italian city’s famed Ponte Vecchio bridge. Her idea, designed as an open-air pedestrian hangout complete with cafe tables and striped awnings, was never commissioned by the city.

Paul Rudolph, whose modernist, geometric designs can be found across America today, had a few misses too. A sprawling attempt at combining residential features with traffic flow in a growing New York City, Rudolph’s Lower Manhattan Expressway, or LOMEX, drew political debate for years before it was eventually scrapped.

His concept for the 1964 New York World’s Fair also was ambitious. Dubbed the spacey-sounding “Galaxon,” Rudolph’s architectural drawing is about 19 feet long, featuring a dramatic concrete walkway leading to an enormous, tilted flying saucer-shaped viewing structure. It was rejected in favor of Gilmore D. Clarke’s more earthly “Unisphere” steel globe.

Space age urban utopianism was a common theme in midcentury design aesthetics. Architect and industrial designer Wilbur Henry Adams, who became better known for his work on the Oliver tractor, once was an inventive student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While there, he mocked up the “Study Playroof,” an ultramodern urban playground in the middle of Manhattan. Here, children ride on seesaws and bicycles beside the wing of an expansive helicopter landing deck. Just another day in New York City!

One of Frank Lloyd Wright’s final proposals, The Key Project, was never built. Taliesin Associated Architects. Prints and Photographs Division.

Perhaps the most perfect example of this style is a creation from none other than Frank Lloyd Wright. In the last project he worked on before his death, Wright collaborated with architect William Wesley Peters on a futuristic wonderland for Ellis Island. Called the “Key Project,” their colorful rendering seems a far cry from Wright’s quintessential prairie style. In it, a series of huge domes surround a circular housing podium intersected by triangular sundecks and winding towers. It’s Trek-y, a little Seussian, and positively sci-fi.

Architecture is often a catalog of the unmade. Lucky, then, that even our imagined futures are saved alongside our histories at the Library.

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“LatinoLand” and Hispanic Heritage Month

From the vibrant rhythms of cumbia, salsa and mariachi at quinceañera parties to the countless taco trucks across the country, Latinos — both immigrants and U.S.-born — have been grappling for generations with the challenge of preserving their identity while navigating American culture.

Despite their long-standing presence, political clout and rising purchasing power, Latinos remain mostly outside the mainstream, writes author and journalist Marie Arana in her new book, “LatinoLand: A Portrait of America’s Largest and Least Understood Minority.”

Featured at this year’s National Book Festival, “LatinoLand” offers a deep dive into Latino history in what is now the United States since the 16th century. As the Library joins in celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month, Arana’s work serves as a powerful reminder: Latino history is American history.

“We have been here since before the United States was formed and we helped it to form; whole areas were built by Latino hands,” Arana said in an interview. “I want the myth that we are newcomers to go away because we have a long and proud history. Latinos helped build this country and will continue to shape its future. … These facts need to be taught in schools.”

Arana is a Peruvian American author of fiction and nonfiction with a long career in literature and journalism. She has worked as editor-in-chief of The Washington Post’s Book World, studied as a distinguished visiting scholar at the Library’s John W. Kluge Center and later served as the Library’s literary director. In 2020, the American Academy of Arts and Letters recognized her lifetime’s work with their Arts and Letters Award. Her other books include “Bolivar: American Liberator” and “Silver, Sword and Stone: Three Crucibles in the Latin American Story.” Her 2001 memoir, “American Chica: Two Worlds, One Childhood,” was a finalist for the National Book Award.

In this book, Arana takes stock of the current situation of some 65 million Hispanics (which includes Latinos), who make up nearly 20% of the national population. They account for 15% of all eligible voters and wield a purchasing power of $3.4 trillion — “a whole country unto itself,” as Arana notes in an interview. By 2050, there will be some 100 million Americans of Hispanic heritage, nearly 30% of the population, according to census projections. It’s no wonder that historians, cultural institutions, political candidates and advertisers are increasingly focusing on the nation’s second-largest demographic.

To make it clear: Latinos fit into the U.S. Census’ Hispanic category. According to the agency, the term “Hispanic” is an ethnicity and it refers to people who trace their ancestry to Spain, Mexico, Central America, South America and the Spanish-speaking nations of the Caribbean. While people often use Hispanic and Latino interchangeably, the terms are not the same: The first one refers to those of Spanish-speaking nations while the latter includes those from English- and Portuguese-speaking countries and cultures. The recent terms “Latinx” and “Latine” were born of a movement pushing for gender-neutral language and inclusion.

This question of Latino identity has long sparked books, films, TED Talks and heated social media debates about who truly “belongs” here.

In seeking to debunk persistent myths about Latinos and highlight “lives not often seen,” Arana enriches her narrative with stories from 237 interviews with Latinos from diverse backgrounds. These include housekeepers, grape pickers, artists, ambassadors and C-suite executives. She also examines subgroups, like Afro Latinos and “Lasians” (Latinos and Asians). This results, Arana writes, in a “mind-reeling multitude” that is difficult to categorize.

In attempting to explain the core Latino mindset, Arana argues that much like earlier immigrants, full assimilation into the mainstream “is no easy enterprise.” They want to fit in, have their children thrive as full-fledged Americans, work and be counted as citizens. But they also want to retain their customs, language, “motherland senses of identity” and “be valued and respected for it.”

“Here in LatinoLand, in this wildly diverse population, in our yearning for unity, in our sheer perseverance, lives a vibrant force. A veritable engine of the American future,” she writes.

Nicholas Brown-Cáceres, assistant chief of the Library’s Music Division, reflects on the experience of millions of Latinos straddling two worlds, bound by language and history. As a Honduran American, he takes pride in having learned Spanish from his mother and growing up in a bicultural home. He feels equally at home eating baleadas (flour tortillas filled with mashed refried beans, cream and crumbled hard cheese) and burgers, having spent summers and Christmas in Honduras celebrating with his cousins and abuela.

He agrees with Arana’s premise that the bond uniting Latinos “is buried deep” in their history and alive in their culture: “Just go to a fiesta. It is there.”

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