Paradise will be a kind of library #KeeperoftheDay
“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” -Jorge Luis Borges
The Center for Discovery #KeeperoftheDay
#KeeperoftheDay – The Center for Discovery
On the Splendid Table, Ruth Reichl talks about how an article she was writing about prosciutto led her to The Center for Discovery, “a facility where people suffering from severe disabilities find not only nourishment from the organic feed they help raise, but a sense of purpose.” Listen to the interview.
And discover The Center for Discovery yourself: thecenterfordiscovery.org
Georgia Gilmore & the Club from Nowhere #KeeperoftheDay
#KeeperoftheDay – Georgia Gilmore & the Club from Nowhere
In honor of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr, we reprise the story of Georgia Gilmore and her secret civil rights kitchen.
In the 1950s, a group of Montgomery, Alabama women baked goods to help fund the Montgomery bus boycott. Known as the Club from Nowhere the group was led by Georgia Gilmore, one of the unsung heroes of the civil rights era.
The MOOseum #KeeperoftheDay
We interviewed writer Eliza McGraw for The Keepers podcast episode, The Pack Horse Librarians of Eastern Kentucky. She told us about other keepers in her life, including her Uncle Bill who “compulsively does dairy histories.” He and Eliza’s mother-in-law opened a dairy museum in Maryland which they call the MOOseum. Take a listen.
Brazil’s Ministry of Culture #KeeperoftheDay
“In the ten days since he was sworn into office, Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro has already enacted a rash of measures that have sparked concerns across the globe.
“Among his first orders of business, reports Gabriella Angeleti of the Art Newspaper, was dissolving the country’s ministry of culture, along with the ministries of sports and social development.”
Read more on smithsonian.com
The Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch Collection #KeeperoftheDay
The Pirkle Jones and Ruth-Marion Baruch Collection at UC Santa Cruz “documents the people, landscape, and politics of California in the mid-20th century.” More than 6300 photos from this remarkable collection are available online. Please take a minute to browse through this digital collection.
Several photos from the collection will be exhibited at the San Francisco Art Institute in partnership with UCSC. The show, Vanguard Revisited: Poetic Politics & Black Futures, will focus on the Black Panthers Series, featuring photos taken by Baruch and Jones in 1968. On view from January 21-April 7, 2019.
Read more about the collection in the New York Times’ California Today newsletter.
Backing up Brazil’s Internet #KeeperoftheDay
#KeeperoftheDay – The Internet Archive – “Backing up Brazil’s internet so Bolsonaro can’t censor it.”
“The site and its efforts are becoming more and more important, as links rot and totalitarian governments and dictators around the world crack down on free speech.” Read more in Columbia Journalism Review.
William R. Ferris Collection #KeeperoftheDay
William Ferris grew up on a farm in Warren County, Mississippi in the 1940s and 50s. The Ferris family, the only white family on the farm, worked side by side with African Americans in the fields. As a teenager he began documenting his neighbors’ lives, the Sunday gospel singers at Rose Hill Church, the blues musicians living near the home — including the soon-to-be well-known Mississippi Fred McDowell.
His thousands of photographs, films, and sound-recordings of interviews and music performances are now online: the William R. Ferris Collection, 1910s-2016, part of the Southern Folklife Collection at the University of North Carolina. And Bill went on to become a prolific author, folklorist, filmmaker, and chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. But the inspiration for his many accomplishments remains his rural farm community.
Read more and listen to the podcast: Episode #107: William Ferris: Keeper of Southern Folklife.
Zora Neale Hurston #KeeperoftheDay
Zora Neale Hurston
January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960
Keeper of Culture, Zora Neale Hurston, was an anthropologist and the author four novels, including Their Eyes were Watching God (1937) and more than 50 published short stories, plays and essays. In 1939 during the depths of the Depression, she the went to work for the Florida Writers Project and worked with folklorist Stetson Kennedy and others to chronicle and preserve the songs and culturally rich traditions of Southern Florida.
In this clip Zora Neale Hurston sings and describes an African American railroad track-line chant she learned at a railroad camp in North Florida in 1935, Library of Congress Collection.
“Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose.” Zora Neale Hurston
World Central Kitchen #KeeperoftheDay
#KeeperoftheDay World Central Kitchen
Chef Jose Andres’ World Central Kitchen served over 3 million meals in 2018, in Puerto Rico, California, Hawaii, Guatemala, Indonesia, North Carolina, Florida, and Mexico. “Where there’s a fight so that hungry people may eat, we will be there.” #KeepersoftheKitchen #KeepersofCommunity