On the latest episode of 99% Invisible, a story from San Francisco, and the controversial purging of books from library shelves—or weeding as it’s called in the biz—after the 1989 earthquake. This episode also includes our story The Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky from The Keepers series. Two library stories in one. Listen up.
On the latest episode of The Kitchen Sisters Present… we celebrate National Barbecue Month with stories of C.B. “Stubb” Stubblefield: legendary BBQ man, sauce master, keeper of community, keeper of the flame, archangel of BBQ.”>The Kitchen Sisters Present… we celebrate National Barbecue Month with stories about CB “Stubb” Stubblefield: legendary BBQ man, sauce master, keeper of community, keeper of the flame, archangel of BBQ.
“When we had nowhere to live, we would spend hours at the library, using what I thought to be the key to the world: library computers.”
—Astrid Liden, a high school senior from Eden Prairie, MN, from her college application essay, recently published in the New York Times.
We urge you to read the entire essay. The power of libraries…
This month we celebrate 100 years of Pete Seeger. In commemoration of this “singer, rebel, and voice of the people,” Smithsonian Folkways has just released the “definitive anthology” of his music. The collection also includes a 200-page book about Seeger written by Smithsonian Folkways curator and archivist Jeff Place.
Listen to an interview Place did with NPR’s Audie Cornish for All Things Considered.
#KeeperoftheDay – Amazing Grace
A staggering film brought to life from the archives. Aretha Franklin’s live recording of her gospel album, Amazing Grace, in 1972.
The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University is the largest labor archives in North America and is home to the collections of numerous unions and labor-related organizations, with over 75,000 linear feet of archival holdings, including the archives of Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees division of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Graphic Communication Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), The National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), The Newspaper Guild, Service Employees International Union(SEIU), United Auto Workers (UAW), and the United Farm Workers (UFW).
Pictured above: Portrait of Cesar Chavez and his “Huelga” car taken during the Delano Grape Strike, J.D. Marlin Ranch, Tulare County, California. From the United Farm Workers (UFW) collection.
“For years, Joseph Makkos salvaged letterpresses and boxes of rare type from local print shops. He was trawling through Craigslist one day in 2013 when he came upon an ad for a “historic newspaper collection.” Hours later, he had become the proud owner of a Times-Picayune archive from 1885 up to 1930, a collection carefully preserved in some 30,000 airtight tubes.”
Read more about NOLA DNA and Makkos’ follow-up project, Intelligent Archives.
RIP John Singleton, director, screenwriter, keeper of the culture.
From the Washington Post:
Mr. Singleton was the first African American and the youngest-ever Academy Award nominee for best director. He wrote the “Boyz N the Hood” screenplay, which was also an Oscar contender, as a student at the University of Southern California. In college, he had won scriptwriting prizes, which led to a three-picture deal with Columbia Pictures and $6.5 million to make “Boyz N the Hood.”
He was 22, had never made a movie before and insisted on directing the film. He proved persuasive in negotiations with studio executives….
Mr. Singleton never recaptured the early acclaim of “Boyz N the Hood” — which the Library of Congress’s National Film Registry placed on its list of culturally, historically or aesthetically significant films — but he said his filmmaking dreams had been fulfilled.
“Brazilians wept when their 200-year-old National Museum – repository of the nation’s memory – went up in flames in 2018. But staff have vowed it will rise from the ashes.”
Listen to Restoring Brazil’s National Treasure on the Documentary Podcast from the BBC World Service.
