Writing about Grief

Grief possesses an incredible ability to sharpen and obfuscate thought. One moment the world is seen with perfect clarity while the following moment the griever can feel untethered and rapidly losing any mooring in this world. Writing about grief becomes paradoxically easy and difficult. The ease stems from the manner in which words effortlessly fill the page. The difficulty arises with the realization that no amount of words will ever draw close enough to an adequate description. I am grateful for writers who have attempted to make sense of their unique grief. Grief is individually unique, yet one person’s experiences can reveal so much about us.

A good grief memoir tells us: This path has been walked before. Yes, you have yet to walk it and your footprints might not fit the prints already present, but a path does not become a path until many many people have trudged the same swatch of land.

These five memoirs capture the confusion, heartache, fear, and nascent hope of grief.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (loss of her husband)

Philip Roth's Patrimony (loss of his father)

Meghan O'Rourke's The Long Goodbye (loss of her mother)

Joyce Carol Oates' A Widow's Story (loss of her husband)

C.S Lewis' A Grief Observed (loss of his wife)

Jon Ronson

Jon Ronson was on The Daily Show last week plugging his new book The Psychopath Test. He's the guy who wrote the book from which they made the movie The Men Who Stare at Goats. (Not a great movie, but you can't go far wrong gazing at George Clooney for 90 minutes over an Alamo Drafthouse pizza.) He and Jon Stewart were very funny together, so I checked out Them: Adventures with Extremists, in which Ronson describes hanging out with Klansmen, zealots, and conspiracy theorists, including Austin's own public-access celeb Alex Jones. Here's one of the funniest bits:

Thom hunched his shoulders as he told his self-deprecating jokes. He is a friendly and cheerful man, with an amiable demeanor. Had he not been the Grand Wizard of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, I'd have described him as having the humourous demeanor of a Manhattan nebbish. The door was open for me, many times, to say to him, "Oh, Thom! You're such a nebbish!" But that would have been a mistake. Still, it was surprising to find myself in a situation where I was toning down my Jewish character traits so as not to alienate a Ku Klux Klan leader who reminded me of Woody Allen.

We own the book The Men Who Stare at Goats (DVD link is above), but it's checked out, and you'll have to get behind me on the holds list. You can get Them, though; it's so funny and reads so fast that I finished it overnight and brought it right back. The Psychopath Test is on the way.

Jon Ronson (author's web site)

names of authors:

Maybe We Can Work It Out

As I eat this delicious, gooey brownie made by one of my fellow librarians, I am writing to you today about workout videos. A year or so ago I made a commitment to myself to get in better physical shape. My upper body strength was a joke and my ability to keep up on my bike was pitiful, so I knew it was time to start some strength training and build up my endurance. I've never been an athletic person and, generally speaking, sports don't really interest me. I also hate gyms. I feel like my workouts always start to get too repetitive and dull (running on the treadmill five days a week is a bore, in my opinion) and I resent having to pay someone for exercise. Lucky for me then that the library has a bunch of workout DVDs. What I usually do is check one out and test it at home; if I like it, I buy it and add it to my collection. My favorites are the Jillian Michaels workouts - they are really challenging, the exercises can be modified for different fitness levels, and a number of them can be done in 30 minutes (which I would normally think too short, but it's an intense 30 minutes).

There's really no beating being able to workout at home. I never have to leave my house to get a good workout and buying DVDs (and a few pieces of equipment: hand weights, exercise mat, resistance band, kettlebell) is quite a bit cheaper than paying for a gym membership. The convenience of it can't be beat and I haven't had more energy or looked this good since high school! I'm actually looking forward to wearing a swimsuit this summer and, I mean, how often do you get to say that?

6 Week Six-Pack
This is my current favorite. While it does focus on abs, really this is a whole body cardio workout.

30 Day Shred
This DVD turned me into a devoted Jillian Michaels fan. I don't really use it as much anymore because the workouts are so short (each one is a little over 20 minutes), but that does not mean they are not super intense. There are 3 workouts on 3 different levels and I definitely had to progress through it to finally build up to level 3. Great for when you're in a time crunch.

Denise Austin's 3 Week Boot Camp
Denise Austin is a bit too chipper for me most of the time. It also can be a challenge to follow her as her instructions are not always clear and the segway to the next move is often abrupt and not well prompted. With that said, though, this is the best Austin workout video I've ever done. Since Michaels arrived on the scene, Austin's workouts have gained in quality and challenge.

Personal Training with Jackie: Power Circuit Training
I don't know a thing about the show this lady is or was on, but this is a great workout. This is the most comparable to Michaels in terms of intensity.

Yoga Meltdown
This is Jillian's yoga workout and I really like it because she adds a carido element that makes it a bit more challenging (read: heart pounding) than your typical yoga workout.

*** There are tons more of these DVDs available for check out. A good way to pull up all of the DVDs we have is to go to FindIt, the online catalog, click on Advanced Search (2nd link from left), type "workout$" in the first box, and select "Videorecording on DVD" in the material format box. (Using the $ symbol is an example of truncation. It gets the catalog to search for both the word "workout" and "workouts"; this is a particularly effective strategy when searching for info on nursing, for example - type in "nurs$" and you'll receive results with the words "nurse", "nurses", and "nursing".)

National Bike Month

Friday is national Bike to Work Day which gives you about two days to free your bicycle from your garage and get ready to ride! As a little extra enticement, various locations around town will be offering free food and drink to people riding their bikes to work! I don’t know about you, but being bribed (with tacos no less!) to do something good for me seems pretty awesome. You can read more about the event at Austin360 where you’ll also find the list of participating locations and a map.

If you and your bike aren’t feeling quite up to the challenge, or could use a little more inspiration, you might want to check out some of the following.

The Practical:

• Urban Bikers' Tricks & Tips : Low-Tech & No-Tech Ways to Find, Ride, & Keep a Bicycle by Glowacz, Dave.
• Bicycle Repair Manual by Chris Sidwells
• Bicycling magazine's guide to bike touring : everything you need to know to travel anywhere on a bike by Doug Donaldson

The Inspirational:

• Tour Fever: the Armchair Cyclist’s Guide to Le Tour de France by J.P. Partland
• It's All About the Bike : The Pursuit of Happiness on Two Wheels by Rob Penn
• Bicycle Diaries by David Byrne
• Velo : Bicycle Culture and Design by Shonquis, Moreno.
• The Best Bike Rides in Texas by Andy White

Happy Riding!

And now for something completely different!!!

Who doesn’t remember the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Dead Parrot and the Argument Clinic? If those titles don’t ring a bell, how about the Life of Brian, the Meaning of Life and the Holy Grail  (with of course the amazing scenes of the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog and the Black Knight)?

Well, if you don’t know by now what I am talking about it means that right after reading this blog you have lots of homework to do.   We are talking about Monty Python (of course!) a   group of English comedians that started a new trend in how comedy on television was done during the last part of the 60s and beginning of the 70s.  Because of the innovation in the way comedy was delivered to their audience and also the topics of their work, they are considered some of the most influential humorists not only in the UK but also in the United States and maybe the world.

They are also known for their "significant contributions" to the English language.  One example of that is the inclusion of the term “Pythonesque” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Other famous words used in sketches or movies are:  nee, ping, gumbys, semprini, and burma.  If you are a Monty Python fan, you can think of many more!!

But, stop the talking!! I am going to leave you with a small sample of Monty Python’s humor (I picked this one because it is short but there are better ones  :) ):

Hitler: My dog's got no nose!

Soldier: How does he smell?

Hitler: Awful!

If you want to watch some videos (or re-watch them) here are some ideas:

• Monty  Python. Almost the truth  
• Life of Brian 
• The Personal best of Monty Python's Flying Circus 
• Monty Python's Flying Circus. Eric Idle's Personal Best 
• Monty Python's the Meaning of Life 
• Monty Python and the Holy Grail  

And for some reading (in case you haven’t memorized the scripts by now):

• Monty Python Live!  
• Monty Python's Tunisian Holiday : My Life With Brian 
• Diaries 1969-1979: the Python Years 
• Monty Python Encyclopedia 
• The Complete Monty Python's Flying Circus: All the Words 

Feel Good Music - Gorillaz

Gorillaz, the "virtual band" of cartoon characters that was founded anonymously in 1998 by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, was both avant garde in its intentions and highly marketable. In a world of relentless self-serving publicity, it was refreshing to have musicians not be so concerned with celebrity. The band's music is a collaboration between various musicians; Albarn being the only permanent musical contributor. Their style is broadly alternative rock, but with a large number of other influences.

In 2004, the hip hop band De La Soul collaborated with Gorillaz on the single, Feel Good Inc. (De la Soul's album 3 Feet High and Rising, is being added to the Library of Congress' 2010 National Recording Registry.) They repeated the collaboration on the 2010 Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, which has a song called Some Kind of Nature featuring Lou Reed that reminds you of Feel Good.

Gorillaz are now charging for their most recent album The Fall, which they released as a free download last Christmas . The Fall was made during Gorillaz's 2010 US tour, with Damon Albarn claiming it was recorded on an iPad. The group's fictional frontman, 2D, offered his thoughts on the The Fall. "It's mostly just me," he said, "something more gentle and just ... well ... it's just me and an iPad really mucking about ... trying out some stuff. Just looking at America and then tapping on the screen". Most of the song titles include an American city - it's like taking a musical road trip.

Blog note - This blog reminds me of another one I wrote titled Dangermouse - I don't know if the attraction is to groups that bring together various types of musicians or have cartoon personae.

To find more music to listen to for free, and some music to download for free, see the Library's new Information Guide - Listening to and Downloading Music.

Creature of Habit

The world pigeonholed creatures of habit with a negative connotation. Creatures of habit do not experience the full spectrum of life. Creatures of habit sit alone with the familiar, the mundane. Creatures of habit don't explore. Not true.

I am a creature of habit. I discovered Oxford University Press' wonderful series Very Short Introductions and will be reading many of them. I'd like to read that stack.

The Austin Public Library owns over a hundred of these little jewels. Each one focuses on a particular topic and includes a brief yet incredibly rich introduction.

Case in point: With a nascent interest in Kierkegaard I wanted to know more about him and his theories, but had only limited interest in his oeuvre. So, I read Kierkegaard: a Very Short Introduction. I did the same with The Quakers: a Very Short Introduction. These little books provide a wonderful overview of a topic and often whet an appetite. Bolstered with a finer understanding, Kierkegaard's oeuvre looks less daunting.

The brilliance of these little gems resides in the time commitment. The following titles are all available in the series and are all topics that interest me but that I probably would not tackle if not for the availability in this series.

I look forward to reading the following:

Nothing
Superconductivity
Philosophy of Law
Medical Ethics
The Celts
Locke
Hobbes
The Russian Revolution
Continental Philisophy
The French Revolution
Galileo
Paul
The European Union
Hinduism

We are all creatures of habit. Happy reading!

Early Texas Art

In April, I was fortunate enough to travel to Dallas to attend the Center for the Advancement and Study of Early Texas Art’s (CASETA) 9th Annual Symposium on Early Texas Art. The presentation topics ranged from the art of early landscape painters to the modernist movement of the 1940s through the 1960s. And yes, there was surprisingly a strong modernist art movement in Texas!

So what is early Texas art? According to CASETA, it is art created by artists who were born in and/or lived and worked in Texas through 40 years prior to the present date. There are so many people that do not realize Texas art has had such a varied and interesting history. When you think of Texas art you may think of cowboy and bluebonnet paintings, but don’t stop there - there was more! There were the regionalist depictions of industrial and rural life by a group of artists called the Dallas Nine. In Fort Worth, there was a group of modernists that would be later tagged with the name the Fort Worth Circle. And perhaps one of the most interesting groups was the artists that came to Austin to form and develop the Art Department at the University of Texas Austin in the 1940s like Everett Spruce, Seymour Fogel and William Lester. In my opinion, the power of Texas’ early art is its focus on the region’s unique and diverse landscape, people and culture. If you are interested in finding out about early Texas art, Austin Public Library provides many books about the art and artists. The following are just a few of the titles in the Library's collection:

Texas modern: the rediscovery of early Texas abstraction (1935-1965)

Texas: 150 works from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Intimate modernism: Fort Worth Circle artists in the 1940s

Black art in Houston: the Texas Southern University experience : presenting the art of Biggers, Simms and their students

Lone star regionalism: the Dallas Nine and their Circle, 1928-1945

Painting Texas history to 1900

Art for history's sake: the Texas collection of the Witte Museum

In Memory of Beverly Eckert

I listen to NPR's Morning Edition most days of the week and yesterday was no exception. Typically on Fridays, the program airs a story from its StoryCorps project, a massive oral history project in which the goal is to record the stories of American lives. StoryCorps just breaks me up most of the time; I fully expect to be brought to tears after hearing the featured story on Fridays and I'm usually prepared for it, but yesterday they caught me off guard because 1. it was Thursday not Friday, and 2. it was a particularly heart wrenching story from Beverly Eckert who lost her husband in one of the towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11/2001. Here I am getting ready for work practically bawling my eyes out as Eckert recounts the last phone conversation with her husband as he attempted to find a way out of the towers and eventually resigned himself to his fate. It was truly moving and sad and horrifying and beautiful all at once. It was also a reminder of the terror of that day and how it changed so many people's lives.

After the story was played, it was revealed that Eckert herself was killed in a plane crash, Colgan Air Flight 3407, in February of 2009. Turns out she had been a particularly vocal advocate for 9/11 victims and the search for truth and understanding of the tragedy. Rather than apply for compensation through the 9/11 fund, she sued government agencies and airlines for what she believed to be a significant security breach that was neither prevented or realized soon enough. She helped to found Voices of September 11th, an organization devoted to providing information and support to 9/11 families, influencing policy on 9/11 and terrorism generally, and commemorating 9/11 victims and family members by documenting their stories, and the 9/11 Family Steering Committee, a now defunct organization that called for an independent investigation of the 9/11 attacks.

In this time after Osama bin Laden's death, many are remembering 9/11 and the effect it had on our nation. While tragedies like Eckert's are abundant, it is also important to remember the time of national unity we experienced after the attacks. Much like Eckert wanted her former husband's death to have not been in vain, let's not allow bin Laden's death be in vain either by taking this opportunity to unite.

NEWS & ARTICLES

Beverly Eckert Biography and Related News Articles
From the New York Times, which did you know you could read for free via our Factiva database? Access it from home with your library card. Need help? Ask a Librarian!

Beverly Eckert's StoryCorps Audio Recording
Unless you are made of stone, you should have a box of tissues handy.

PACER
I really wanted to find out if Eckert's lawsuit is now defunct or what. I had a very difficult time locating this info and I think I would need access to one of LexisNexis' databases to figure it out. I attempted to search PACER, Public Access to Court Electronic Records, but you must wait for a user name and password to arrive via postal mail to even be able to use it!

Woman Rejects Sept. 11 Fund, Sues for Accountability
An NPR interview with Eckert about the lawsuit and her decision to reject the 9/11 fund.

DATABASES (i.e. stuff you can't find via Google)

Authoritative info on Eckert can be difficult to come by - check out our databases for ample news stories not available on the free internet. Factiva and MasterFILE Premier would be two great places to start for newspaper articles from tons of national and international newspapers (Factiva) and magazine articles (MasterFILE). All you need is your library card!

BOOKS

The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation by Sid Jacobson
The report is much more palatable in comic format (but isn't everything?).

American Widow by Alissa Torres
A graphic novel about Torres's husband's death in the WTC attacks and the year after it in which their child was born.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
The story of a precocious young boy that lost his father on 9/11 exploring New York City looking for the lock to a key his dad left behind.

Lighting Out for the Territory

Spring, despite being my favorite season, has it kind of tough. For one, we expect the weather to be perfect all the time. But more difficult than high weather expectations, spring has a reputation for being a time of new beginnings and big changes. Sometimes spring just can’t handle the pressure and we’re forced to hit the road in search of our own opportunity and adventure.

If you’re not quite ready for a trip of your own, you might let someone else take the journey for you . . . by reading a book! Sure, a trip to Galveston can be fun but by reading Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles you can experience the trials and tribulations of exploring new planets! The protagonist in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando travels not only from country to country but also through time while experiencing life as both a man and a woman! Here are a few more travel stories to help you begin your journey!

• Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huck Finn
• Cormac McCarthy’s The Road
• J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy
• Susan Sontag’s In America
• Jack Kerouac’s On the Road
• David Lipsky’s Although of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself: A Road Trip with David Foster Wallace
• Oscar Casares' Amigoland
• Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles
• Virginia Woolf’s Orlando

The Dress

The Duchess of Cambridge's wedding dress was elegant, regal, and--although I liked it--safe. I'm not suggesting that the neckline should have plunged into a push-up bra; I'm glad The Dress was modest. I hope that brides planning to sport inflated cantilevered cleavage learn from Kate's example that less is more and revisit their dressmakers. It is not always appropriate to look like a Kardashian.

No, the quiet refinement of The Dress was its best asset, no question. I think, though, that the design could have been amped up without sacrificing taste. As proof I offer Audrey Hepburn's Givenchy gown from the movie Funny Face.

Best. Wedding. Dress. Ever. And Kate Middleton has the figure for it, too. It would have to be altered to observe the conventions: lengthen sleeves and skirt, add train, replace bow with tiara, but after a few adjustments, Her Highness would have been dressed to suit tradition, but a bit less predictably and with a little more panache.

The fact that I write this as I wear a stretched-out 20-year-old tank top with paint spatters down the front does not diminish my point.

oversized coffee-table books with beautiful pictures of beautiful clothes:

• Valentina: American Couture and the Cult of Celebrity
  
• American Beauty
  
• The Golden Age of Couture
  
• Valentino
  
• Avedon Fashion
  
• The World in Vogue

author's name:

The Lotus Eaters - War Photographers

The Lotus Eaters by Tatjana Soli is on the Best Fiction of 2010 list on our APL Recommends. The title refers to the lotus eaters who, in the Odyssey, give Odysseus's men the narcotic fruit that makes them lose all desire to return home. In this Viet Nam war novel, the addiction is taking photographs, regardless of the risk, to expose the human toll inflicted by war. A few days after I finished reading the book, two award-winning war photographers, Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros died after being hit by a rocket-propelled grenade in Libya. The journalists had been near the front lines covering rebels who were trying to oust snipers in Misrata.

One of the Soli’s models for the photojournalists in the novel is the real-live photojournalist Dickey Chapelle, the first American female war correspondent to die in action. Dickey Chapelle was also the first journalist to report that American troops were actually in combat in Vietnam, not just advising. Chapelle in her 1962 book, What's a Woman Doing Here?, writes of her work as a correspondent: “They were stories, yes. Telling them fed me, yes. But their substance was not innocent. I had become an interpreter of violence.” She was killed in action by a landmine on November 4, 1965 at Chu Lai. In the rescue helicopter on the way to the base hospital, Dickey Chapelle looked into the face of a marine, "I guess it was bound to happen," she said.

Like Chapelle, Helen Adams, the female photojournalist in The Lotus Eaters, is ambivalent about her moral position as a war journalist. She wonders whether those who represent war — through reporting or photography — are doing anything but replicating the violence they depict. Does war journalism change public opinion, or does it lead, as one photojournalist in the novel asks, to “a steady loss of impact until violence becomes meaningless”? I have read about several photojouralists who have left the profession becasue of the danger, and gotten involved in humanitarian work in the same countries where they had taken photographs.

The Lotus Eaters is also a love story and a well researched exploration of Vietnam between 1963 and 1975.

Audubon, birds, and one expensive book

Yesterday was the birthday of John James Audubon. The French-American naturalist's name has become synonymous with conservation and birds. Audubon grew increasingly fascinated with birds throughout his youth in the Caribbean and France. This fascination blossomed upon his immigration to the United States. Settling in Kentucky, Audubon set about cataloging American birds. A skilled shot (how else could he get his subjects to hold still?) and an accomplished painter, Audubon's work has become the benchmark for ornithological painting. Cameras enable precise images of birds, but the richness of Audubon's paintings were groundbreaking then and beautiful still.

So beautiful (and rare) that Audubon's Birds of America sold at auction earlier this year for over $11 million, which firmly perches it as the most expensive printed book ever sold. The Austin Public Library does not own a copy of this edition. However! We do own an edition the Audubon Society published and cutely titled the Baby Elephant Folio. This folio includes all of Audubon's watercolors and essays and measures only slightly smaller than the $11 million version.The baby elephant folio does not checkout, but is worth a trip downtown.

Other writings and paintings by John James Audubon:

The Audubon Reader

Writings and Drawings

Another great resource is the National Audubon Society's online offering. This digital Birds of America provides a nice browsable counterpoint to APL's physical holdings.

Deadly Spin

Curious Orange and I are reading the same books. He was wandering around here with The Big Squeeze the other day, which I had just read, and then he blogged about it. On his post he lists There is Power in a Union, and I'd just returned that one, too, and Studs Terkel, whose book, Working, changed my life when I read it decades ago.

So if he doesn't already know about it, I bet Mr. Orange would be interested in another one I read recently, Deadly Spin, a book that talks about the public relations industry, its history, its mores (yes, the industry does have standards), and how the movers and shakers have used PR to misdirect our attention so that we waste our energy on trivialities instead of protecting ourselves from being robbed.

Remember the suffragettes? Neither do I, but I've seen the old photos. Remember hearing about how they (gasp!) smoked in public to announce that gender would no longer dictate their behavior? Well, the effort for the vote was real of course, but the smoking thing was a PR campaign cooked up by Edward Bernays, the inventor of 20th-century public relations, who had been hired by the American Tobacco Company to promote Lucky Strikes. Bernays called the project "Torches of Freedom". It was extremely successful, and we've been dealing with the fallout (lung cancer, pernicous public relations practices) since.

Even if you're a savvy consumer, I think you'd be gobsmacked by the story of public relations, although we should have seen it coming: Bernays' 1928 book, the one that describes his newly minted business model, is titled Propaganda.

• The Father of Spin: Edward Bernays & the Birth of Public Relations
  
• Life Inc.
  
• Mixed Media: Moral Distinctions in Advertising, Public Relations, and Journalism
  
• Putting the Public Back in Public Relations
  
• Thinker, Faker, Spinner, Spy
  
• Evaluating Public Relations

Names of authors (click to enlarge):

Learning to Sleep

I'm usually a pretty good sleeper. Most of the time I can fall asleep quickly and sleep soundly for 8-9 hours straight. I'm also someone who seems to require a lot of sleep - my ideal is 9 hours a night and when I don't get it I walk around zombie-like making silly mistakes and running into things. But lately, I have been having trouble sleeping and I finally fully understand how frustrating this can be. My former good sleeping days are clearly an anomaly as the CDC recently announced that insufficient sleep is a public health epidemic in the U.S. In fact, the National Sleep Foundation found in a recent poll that 43% of Americans aged 13-64 say they rarely or never get a good night's sleep on weeknights. So, I'm much like most of you out there now, I suppose, groggily slogging through my day and contemplating curling up under my desk to nap.

My problem is not being able to fall asleep. I just lay there with my mind running a mile a minute. I've been reading up on sleep and how to overcome this bit of insomnia that has struck and it's led me to a few books here at Austin Public Library. I've read about relaxation techniques, acupuncture, exercise, and no caffeine or alcohol before bed, but I'm still trying to find the solution that works for me. Are there any sleep solutions out there that work for you? If not, maybe these resources below will be helpful:

How Sleep Works: National Sleep Foundation
This page links to a number of articles on sleeping including info on how much sleep people typically need (short answer: it can vary widely from individual to individual) and creating a good sleep environment.

Medline Plus: Sleep Disorders
This is a brief article with tons of links at the bottom directing to reputable sources on sleep disorders and strategies for getting a good night's rest.

Your Guide to Healthy Sleep
A nice little guide from the National Heart, Lung & Blood Institute

BOOKS

The Cleveland Clinic Guide to Sleep Disorders

Harvard Medical School Guide to a Good Night's Sleep

I Can Make You Sleep: Overcome Insomnia Forever and Get the Best Rest of Your Life

The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night Well and Wake Up Happy
Parents usually have a hard time getting their babies to sleep. This is a very popular guide, but the method presented here is a bit different than the Ferber method outlined in one of the books below.

The Power of Rest: Why Sleep Alone is Not Enough: A 30-day Plan to Reset Your Body

Sleepmanual: Training Your Mind and Body to Achieve the Perfect Night's Sleep

Solve Your Child's Sleep Problems
This is the book by Richard Ferber outlining the Ferber method referred to above.

Sweet dreams!!

April is National Poetry Month!

National Poetry Month!

As someone who has been forced to read poems in archaic English and the dreaded (to me) concrete poem, I understand that reading poetry can be difficult. However, a friend of mine recently described poetry as "word magic" and I happen to think he's got a point. In fact, in writing this post I spend a chunk of the afternoon reading poetry and have been absolutely swooning over life. Poetry can do it all! Fit any mood! Express any feeling! Take you to any location! Check this out.

Would you like a brief, fun distraction from a long day? Try out Ogden Nash’s “The Ant”
The ant has made himself illustrious Through constant industry industrious. So what? Would you be calm and placid If you were full or formic acid?

Interested in word and phrase origins? By reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Rhime of the Ancient Mariner” you find the source of the phrase, “Water, water, every where,/ Nor any drop to drink”
Poetry! Ta-da!

Perhaps you want to read a “classic” without being put to sleep. Why not try Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”? It’s about slaying a monster!

Do these options seem too cheerful for you? Perhaps you’d prefer something a big morose? Sylvia Plath is there for you.
“Soon, soon the flesh / the grave cave ate will be / At home on me”


Here are some other favorites of mine, my fellow librarians, and other “word magic” enthusiasts. (In roughly chronological order from newest to oldest).

• Dean Young (Currently the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at UT-Austin).
• Rita Dove
• Galway Kinnell
• Theodore Roethke
• e.e. cummings
• T.S. Eliot (Check out “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”)
• William Carlos Williams
• Gertrude Stein “Tender Buttons”
• William Blake “Songs of Innocence”

For even more great poetry options, check out the National Poetry Month display on the third floor of Faulk Central Library!

The Big Squeeze

I read the below passage from a book entitled, The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. The Leonard Cohen song, "Everybody Knows", just keeps playing in my head... "Since 1979, hourly earnings for 80 percent of American workers (those in private-sector, nonsupervisory jobs) have risen by just 1 percent, after inflation. The average hourly wage was $17.71 at the end of 2007. For male workers, the average wage has actually slid by 5 percent since 1979. Worker productivity, meanwhile, has climbed to 60 percent. If wages had kept pace with productivity, the average full-time worker would be earning $58,000 a year; $36,000 was the average in 2007. The nation's economic pie is growing, but corporations by and large have not given their worker's a bigger piece."

Books:

• There is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America


• From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend


• Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do

Web:

• Interviews conducted by Studs Terkel with everyday working people.


• Under appreciated gains hard won by the labor movement.

Frederick Wiseman

Since the time Frederick Wiseman produced the Cool World, his first work in 1967, the world of documentaries has not been the same. His style of documenting a story is what makes his movies unique works of art.

His documentaries do not have a narrator, nor interviews, nor voice-overs, nor fancy graphics guiding the viewer through the story. His goal has been to make films that portray the reality of what he sees in a very naturalistic way, being always fair to the story he is witnessing. His movies will give you the feeling that you are there, looking at what’s happening through a hole in the wall, or that you are observing all these events from a chair in the corner of a room.

Because of the absence of narration, his documentaries require more attention from viewers, but believe me, it is all worth it.

What about the subjects?? Well, his documentaries talk about health, legislation, arts, and anything in between. Austin Public Library has all of his works available for you to check out and enjoy. Go to our catalog, type his name and you will find his DVDs, or simply Ask a Librarian!!

Cold War Competition

The phrase—Cold War competition—brings to mind the arms race and nuclear proliferation, but the United States and the Soviet Union competed in many distinct fields. The Olympics provided opportunities to best each other in athletic competition and each country strove to bring home more medals than its sworn enemy. The cultural and scientific worlds provided other grand realms in which American and Soviet participants excelled. This week marks the anniversaries of two seminal moments in Cold War competition.

April 14, 1958
Van Cliburn, piano virtuoso and Texan, traveled to Moscow and won the inaugural Tchaikovsky Competition, defeating an international field including noted Soviet pianists. Van Cliburn received an eight minute standing ovation and when judges struggled with awarding the young American the prize, Nikita Khrushchev asked “Is he the best?...Then give him the prize.” Van Cliburn returned home to a hero’s welcome complete with a Manhattan ticker-tape parade. He subsequently has performed for every American president, including a performance for Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Fort Worth’s Van Cliburn International Piano Competition now serves as one of the world’s great musical competitions.

Van Cliburn

The Ivory Trade: Music and the Business of Music at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition

Van Cliburn in Moscow


April 12, 1961
Yuri Gagarin, Soviet cosmonaut, became the first human in space. His spacecraft rocketed out of Earth’s gravitational pull and completed one orbit of our planet before returning to Soviet soil. The twenty-seven year-old became an international celebrity and was named a Hero of the Soviet Union, which was the highest honor in the Soviet Union. In celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of Gagarin’s accomplishment, First Orbit, a film depicting what he would have seen throughout his orbit has been released. The beautiful images belie what must have been an exhilarating and terrifying mission.

Countdown: a History of Space Flight

The Superpower Space Race

As Time Goes By

One of my favorite movies when I was a kid was The Time Machine with Rod Taylor. The Morlocks were goofy, but I enjoyed the conundrum of traveling through time, you know, like in Star Trek episode #28, City on the Edge of Forever, when Kirk has to let Joan Collins get run over by a truck so that the nazis don't win the Second World War which would cause the Enterprise to disappear from overhead stranding the crew in front of the Giant Time Donut? (No, I do not live in my mother's basement.)

Rod Taylor's time machine was more charming than the Giant Donut, but that wasn't what I liked best about the movie. What I liked was the wall of clocks over the mantel in Rod's living room. I loved the noise of their collective ticking. I couldn't imagine why anyone would want to leave those wonderful ticking clocks and go anywhere else, particularly not back to those goofy Morlocks and our dim-bulb descendants, the Eloi.

So when I got old enough to spend my money foolishly, I bought a bunch of antique clocks. I have a Kienzle from Germany circa 1880; I have a cuckoo clock brought back from the Black Forest as a souvenir for my grandmother; I have a Western Union Naval Observatory clock--the first electric clock to wind itself; and I have an Atmos clock that runs on the temperature gradient. (I've had three or four more that I got rid of. Turns out old clocks are temperamental and expensive.) I could never afford to buy nor to take care of a wall full of clocks like Rod Taylor's, but I keep a few. And I keep them running because they tick so beautifully.

Books about clocks and time:

Decoding the Heavens
Clock Repairing as a Hobby
The Standard Antique Clock Value Guide
Timepieces
History of the Hour

Author's name:

Green Smoothies

Every morning for the past two years I have greens for breakfast. Kale, chard, spinach, you name it. It's the most energizing way to start a day. A bit of exercise, a little morning news, and a large helping of arugula with pear and banana put into a blender and pureed to perfection. Purchasing books for the home economics section here at Faulk Central Library means I am constantly checking out and looking at the largest part of the section, cookbooks, which is how I stumbled across Green Smoothie Revolution by Victoria Boutenko. Boutenko, her husband, and three children had been diagnosed with a variety of potentially life-threatening illnesses and, frustrated by the limited options presented to them by doctors, turned to a raw food diet in an effort to heal. The entire family's health improved dramatically with this change including her son, Sergei, who completely overcame juvenile diabetes. As they learned to eat satisfying, tasty meals as raw foodists, Boutenko realized they were still missing significant nutrients, like those found in greens, and began adding them to smoothies, thus beginning her Green Smoothie Revolution.

The Boutenko's story certainly inspired me, but it also morphed my habit of just tossing a small handful of whatever greens I had lying around into my fruit smoothies into efforts to put as much as a full bunch of greens into them. I also learned some great new recipes and found that with a more powerful blender, I could put together some pretty amazing concoctions that were packed with nutrients and tasted wonderful. While Boutenako and others maintain that you retain more nutrients by blending rather than juicing, I've also developed an affection for green juices and have found a few books with some delightful recipes.

Start your day off right, drink your greens!

Raw Family
The website about Victoria Boutenko and two of her children Sergei and Valya Boutenko. Includes recipes!

BOOKS

Crazy Sexy Diet: Eat Your Veggies, Ignite Your Spark, and Live Like You Mean It by Kris Carr
This book is about much, much more than green smoothies and juices. It's an entire lifestyle change to a more alkaline and raw foods diet. Carr was diagnosed with terminal cancer at 31 and radically changed her diet and lifestyle to help get the cancer under control. We have her first books as well Crazy Sexy Cancer Tips and Crazy Sexy Cancer Survivor.

Green For Life by Victoria Boutenko
This is Boutenko's first book about the nutritional power of greens including recipes for green smoothies.

Green Smoothies Diet: The Natural Program For Extraordinary Health by Robyn Openshaw

The Juicing Bible by Pat Crocker

Microgreens: A Guide to Growing Nutrient-Packed Greens by Eric Franks and Jasmine Richardson
An easy way to eat greens is to grow microgreens - they're surprisingly easy to grow and just as full of nutrients.

Raw Family Signature Dishes by Victoria Boutenko

Super-Charged Smoothies by Sara Corpening Whiteford and Mary Corpening Barber

Grilling! Thrilling!

When I look at a calendar, the Midwesterner in me knows that we’re still months away from summer. But then I think about the temperature and the over-sized sunglasses I just bought and I realize that I’m, ahem, “not in Kansas anymore.” Happily, we’re still in that sweet spot before the brutality of summer’s heat and mosquitoes becomes too much to handle. This can mean many things. But one thing's for certain: It’s time to grill.

Here are a few promising cookbooks from our collection to help you on your grilling adventures!

Grillin’ with Gas: 150 Mouthwatering Recipes for Great Grilled Food

The Cook’s Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecue

The Tex-Mex Grill and Backyard Barbacoa Cookbook

If you’re trying to enjoy grilling weather while simultaneously preparing for swimsuit season, you might be interested in

The 300 Calorie Cookbook: 300 Tasty Meals for Eating Healthy Every Day

And if you’re more interested in road trips than grilling you might consider checking out

Follow the smoke : 14,783 miles of great Texas barbecue

There are many, many grilling cookbooks in our collection which you can find my searching the subject field for “barbecuing”. You’ll be well on your way to an enjoyable activity followed by a delicious outcome.

For other summertime suggestions you can revisit liblairian’s post Summer is Here.

Getting Connected with the Small Business Development Program

As the business reference librarian I try to do my best to make people who are interested in starting their own small business aware that they have places and people to turn to for advice and guidance. I buy resources, put together information guides, and partner with area organizations in an attempt at nuturing locally owned and operated businesses. One such organization is Austin's own Small Business Development Program. On staff are counselors armed with resources and expertise who are eager to personally help newly minted entrepreneurs achieve success. They are having their big annual networking event, Getting Connected, this coming Thursday at the Palmer Events Center. It's set to start at 3 p.m. and is completely free and open to the public.

Text the Austin Public Library

The Austin Public Library can now assist you via text. Our number is 522-8208. We do not charge a fee and will be happy to assist you with just about anything. Text number : (512) 337-4893 Hours: Monday-Thursday 11:00-8:00, Friday-Saturday 10:00-6:00 and Sunday Noon-6:00