Shh!

2012!

2012-01-27T17:06:00.000-05:00

2012 has officially started here at the Library Society, as this week saw our big January kick off the (264th) Annual Meeting. As the Library becomes increasingly modern (we've got an iPad now, it must be true), it is more and more interesting to think about the world this institution was created in.

In 1748, Charleston would have been less than eighty years old, with a population well under 10,000. Altogether elsewhere... Adam Smith was delivering his first lectures in Edinburgh, which would attract the attention of David Hume and kick off the Scottish Enlightenment. The War of Austrian Succession ended with Prussia the rising star on the European stage. Leonhard Euler wrote the most important math textbook of the modern era; Montesquieu published The Spirit of the Laws and invented political sociology; and in a lonely English prison cell, John Cleland penned Fanny Hill, the English language's first er... "adult" novel.

It was, in many ways, a very modern world, and at the far edge of the English-speaking part of it, nineteen young men created a very modern institution. Pooling their resources to increase their access to knowledge and learning, and to promote that learning among future generations, the mission of the Library is as important now as it's ever been. It's a mission we're fully embracing in 2012, and your loyal blogger can't wait to share the manifold ways we're pursuing it in this new year.

It's going to be a great 2012!

La vieille garde dans les Carolines

2011-12-07T16:02:00.002-05:00

December 7th: the anniversary of the death of Marshal Ney. Ney was Napoleon's saviour at Eylau, the heroic commander of the French rear guard during the retreat from Russia, and a man who had five horses shot out from under him during Waterloo.

Unless, of course, it isn't the anniversary of the death of Marshal Ney. One of your loyal blogger's favourite Southern legends contends that Ney was not executed by firing squad in Paris on December 7, 1815, but instead faked his death, and, with the help of his Freemason brothers, successfully fled France for America.

In this version of the story, the supposedly "dead" Ney arrived in Charleston late in December of 1815, and lived here clandestinely until 1819. After being spotted by French agents in Charleston, the Masons again were forced smuggle him away. He moved around the Carolinas -Georgetown, Columbia, Brownsville- before eventually settling near Salisbury, North Carolina (today about an hour's drive north of Charlotte).

So Marshal of France Michel Ney, the man who took Madgeburg and trapped the Austrians at Elchingen, lived a quiet life in small-town central North Carolina as Peter Stuart Ney, schoolteacher. Neighbors and pupils left accounts of a man who matched the Marshall's description, down to matching scars; spoke perfect French; and was all too happy to draw richly detailed maps or share vivid stories from Napoleon's campaigns. Peter Ney died quietly, far from Paris, late in 1846. Those who were around him attested he claimed to be the Marshall with his final words.

True or not, it's a fantastic piece of regional folklore. And what's absolutely true is that while the Library's events calendar is almost dead and gone for 2011, it will have another life in the coming year! The last Wide Angle Lunch and the final concert of the year take will take place tomorrow. Our last Backgammon Night of the year is next Tuesday... but we're working on the Annual Meeting cards right now... it's been a great 2011, but we can't wait for all that's in store in 2012!

Desperately seeking stuffing...

2011-11-22T16:58:00.003-05:00

Well, dear readers, it's that time again. The ginkgo trees are starting their annual transformation from deep verdant green to a resplendent gold. Our "Welcome, Fall" flag (featuring Snoopy the beagle!) is waving in front of the library. Your loyal blogger is on half-rations to better prepare himself for Thursday's turkey-and-stuffing induced food coma...

It's a wonderful time of the year, and the Library Society wishes a happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. We will be closed as of tomorrow, Wednesday the 23rd, and will remain closed through the weekend. Normal hours resume Monday the 28th.

[We'll hit the ground running when we get back, too... Wide Angle Lunch with Tara FitzGerald will be on December the 1st, and our Parade Party and Unedited: Bluegrass Christmas will be the 4th! Get your tickets now...]

Also, as a service to you: your loyal blogger does not want to leave you without something to read for the four days the Library will be closed. So, if you've never seen it before, take some time to visit Book-a-Minute Classics.

If you're unfamiliar with the site, Book-a-Minute classics extracts the Western canon to their quintessence, usually in hilarious fashion. I'll leave you with just a few examples:

The Sun Also Rises-

Stock Hemmingway Narrator:
It was in Europe after the war. We were depressed. We drank a lot. We were still depressed.
The end.

The Crucible-

Reverend Parris:
Abigail Williams, you and your friends are in trouble, unless you can shift the blame to someone else.
Abigail Williams:She did it! He did it! They did it! Everybody but us did it!
Judge Danforth:Ah, now we are getting somewhere.
(Everybody gets hanged, which just goes to show how evil McCarthyism is.)
The end.

And to finish, your loyal blogger's favourite novel:

The Great Gatsby-

Gatsby:
Daisy, I made all this money for you, because I love you.
Daisy:
I cannot reciprocate, because I represent the American Dream.
Gatsby:
Now I must die, because I also represent the American Dream.(Gatsby DIES.)
Nick:
I hate New Yorkers.
The end.

Enjoy the site, and enjoy your break! We'll see you at the Library next week.
The end.

The rush before the rush...

2011-11-14T16:48:00.000-05:00

Strolling up King Street today, dear readers, your loyal blogger heard it. He knew it was coming, but today was the day. Through the crisp air came the rhythmic ringing of the Salvation Army bell, from the ringer and the little red kettle in front of Charleston Place hotel: the first sound that's always sure to signal the holiday season in my mind.

Of course, the big-box stores have been hanging tinsel and blaring Adult Contemporary Christmas music for a few weeks now, but I've been more-or-less successful at tuning that out. But the Salvation Army bell tells me that it really is time for people other than Sam Walton and Charles J. Kmart to be thinking about Christmas presents. (Good thing for your loyal blogger that I got most of my Christmas shopping done in the late summer.)

Still, we are not letting thoughts of sugarplum fairies invade our thoughts here at the Library (though we've got all sorts of great CLS gifts you might like to consder!), or at least not yet. Look at the list of events we've got before Thanksgiving rolls around: Amanda Foreman is lecturing tonight, there's a Bourbon Tasting on Wednesday, Wes Jackson's lecturing on sustainable agriculture on Thursday evening, Edward Ball is speaking at Friday's Wide Angle Lunch, and then on Saturday and Sunday we host our annual Fall Book Sale. (As always check out our upcoming events here.)

So give yourself (and your mind!) an early present - come to a library event this week!

Gotta get down on Friday (with Turgenev and Beethoven).

2011-10-28T17:01:00.000-04:00

Friday, October 28th... it's St. Jude's Day, the anniversary of the Revolutionary War's Battle of White Plains (we lost), and the birthdays of English actor Matt Smith (the eleventh Doctor Who) and of 19th century Russian Realist author Ivan Turgenev.

Turgenev, most famous for his novel Fathers and Sons, stood apart from the rest of the 19th century Russian literary community because of his liberal beliefs. Turgenev rejected the religious fixations of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, though he maintained an oft-strained friendship with Tolstoy. He became a major influence on Henry James and Joseph Conrad, and remains one of the most revered figures in the impressive pantheon of Russian literature.

And if Russian literature is your thing, you're in luck... 'cause we're a library and we have a ton of it. And if Russian literature is not your thing... well we've got hundreds of thousands of other books, and magazines, and movies, and more.

More, like great events! So if you feel like spending a little personal time with another great light of European culture, get your tickets now for Beethoven: His Women and His Music with music by Chamber Music Charleston and starring Clarence Felder (Actors Theatre of South Carolina) as the great German pianist. The performance is Thursday, November 3rd, at 7PM. Get your tickets now by calling 1.888.718.4253, or by clicking here.

Notes from the middle of Fall events season

2011-10-26T11:26:00.000-04:00

I suppose almost two months of hiatus should tell you a little something about how busy things have been here at the Charleston Library Society. So there's no time like the present (doubly so because this particular present is Pat Conroy's birthday!) to offer my apologies, sit down at the keyboard, and crank out another post.

Since September, the Library's events calendar has been in full swing. Unedited's second and Wide Angle's third series have started off as smashing successes. Beatles Bach & Beer was even more fun this year, with special thanks to Westbrook Brewing for providing two excellent kegs, and to the Bachstars and Ward Williams for providing some excellent tunes. The first two Wide Angle lectures, featuring historian Mark Smith and poet Susan Kinsolving were equally stellar. Other than that things have been fairly quiet... just some small events like hosting country music icon Marshall Chapman, New York Times bestseller Dorothea Benton Frank, kicking off our great new Discussion Group, and little things like that. Like I said, fairly quiet.

All that activity is not slowing down anytime soon, either. Tonight will bring us Mary Boykin Chesnut's Long Lost Civil War Photo Album, which is teetering right on the happy edge of being totally sold-out. Next week we will host actor Clarence Felder and Chamber Music Charleston for the concert/musical theater event Beethoven: His Women and His Music, the show's first appearance back in the States since touring internationally. Then our Speakers Series lights up: Simon Winchester will be here November 8th, and Amanda Foreman on November 14th. Both are bestselling authors and really, consider getting your tickets now... these are going to be big events.

Also in November, we'll have everybody's favourite event: it's Book Sale time again! Join us Saturday the 19th and Sunday the 20th for great bargains on books of all types. It's a great way to get a head start on holiday gift buying, or to just find something stimulating for yourself.

[Please note, though, that while we love when you donate your used books to us, we can no longer take paperbacks due to space and processing constraints. Many thanks.]

So that's a quick look back and a quick heads up... don't forget that more information on all upcoming events can be found at our website, and tickets for most events can be purchased by phone at 1.888.718.4253.

Electric light orchestra... and speaker series, and classes...

2011-09-01T16:17:00.000-04:00

After last week's blog post recapping all the hurricanes the Library Society has weathered in our 263 years here on the Carolina coast, your loyal blogger got to thinking about (and reading about!) storms. Hurricanes like Irene or Hugo or Gracie, come to mind of course. But what about other types storms? Storms that don't even originate on Earth?

September the 1st is a red-letter day in the history of solar storms - giant shockwaves of charged particles ejected from the Sun. These storms interact with Earth's magnetosphere, confusing navigation systems, damaging satellites, sending whales and dolphins off course, and inducing current in electrical wires that can overwhelm power grids. And the worst-ever solar storm in recorded history took place on September 1st 1859.

The Solar Storm of 1859, also called the Carrington Event, traveled from the Sun to the Earth in about 18 hours (normally a trip of four days), and when it hit, it hit big. Aurora borealis were visible as far south as the Caribbean islands. In the middle latitudes, midnight looked as bright as dawn. And the planet's only major electrical grid - the telegraph system - went haywire. Machines shocked their operators, telegraph wires sparked, the paper in the machines caught fire, unplugged telegraphs started spontaneously working... for about three days, the primary communication method of the Victorian era was rendered inoperable.

But you're ready for something just as electrifying that doesn't shut down the global communication network, get ready for fall events at the CLS!

Looking for great speakers? Novelist Dorothea Benton Frank, historians Simon Winchester and Amanda Foreman, and a great schedule of Wide Angle Lunch lecturers will give you plenty of enlightening entertainment. Music will be back better than ever, with the return of Unedited (starting with the Gala on September 16th) and an all new Chamber Music Series. Great programming for the wee 'uns is also on tap: Will Cleveland will have an event featuring his Yo, Millard Fillmore on the 11th of this month, and children's French classes will start soon with the "Petite Ecole". And of course, there are classes and seminars and parties and book signings and all those other events we put on (probably 'cause we librarians hate to be alone in the evenings...)

Check them all out on the website here... and take note of the ticketed events... they're are going quick!

This is the story of a hurricane...

2011-08-26T11:41:00.000-04:00

As I begin to write this sentence, the rain has just begun to fall... slightly sideways. The Library Society will be closed at noon today, but like the sign on the door says: we've been through Gaston, Charley, Floyd, Hugo, Bob, David, Gracie, Cindy, Hazel, Able, and the hurricanes of 1911, 1893, 1885, 1874, 1854, and 1825... we're only closing 'cause we feel like it!

We return to a regular schedule tomorrow, so come down to the Library and read up a storm!

Staying cool (and hopefully dry)...

2011-08-22T16:00:00.000-04:00

In this age of lolcats, First World Problems, and rickrolling, many people have at least a passing familiarity of the concept of memes. Memes are concepts or behaviours that spread throughout a culture through contact between individuals. Whether or not memes are the key transmitters of societal values and social concepts in the way frequently described by their defenders remains controversial: what is not controversial is the fact that the internet has been a petri dish for the blasted things.

But memes have existed long before the interwebs, and they spread not just in space but in time. Here I'm thinking of a very local meme - the "cool week in August". This phrase describes the idea, held by many in and around Charleston, that we get a customary reprieve from the heat for a couple of days before the summer is over. With the 90 degree range out of sight all last week, and highs in the mid-80s this week, the idea of the "cool week" has been a topic of conversation here at the Library.

One patron recalled it being a favourite theme of Ashley Cooper's newspaper columns come summertime, and as much as your loyal blogger enjoys poking through old Doing the Charlestons, it didn't take much work to find a much older point of reference. The Department of Health Report in the 1914 Charleston City Year Book laments that "the proverbial 'Cool week in August' failed to materialize."

So here's proof that a century ago, the idea of August's "cool week" was already a fixed concept here in the Lowcountry, and already an old concept at that. It remains to be determined if last week was our cool week - it was certainly more pleasant outside than it's been for most of the summer. It does certainly look like this will be our wet week. [And of course, we're keeping an eye on Irene.]

Other things to keep your eye on: our Fall events season is almost here. We'll be closed Friday-Monday Labor Day weekend, but then we jump into events with both feet. Thursday the 8th we'll host a book signing with the Coastal Conservation League; the 9th marks the return of the Poetry Society; Will Cleveland will be here signing Yo, Millard Fillmore on the 11th; Lifelong Learning with Nan Morrison starts back the 13th; Dorothea Benton Frank is here on the 14th; Unedited concerts return on the 16th; and to round things off, Marshall Chapman will be here on the 29th.

As always, get full details on all our programs on the Upcoming Events page... and get ready for an events season that won't cool down!

Shameless Plug Alert

2011-08-01T17:12:00.000-04:00

In case you missed it this weekend: the Library Society was featured on on nationally-distributed basic cable not once but twice. C-SPAN's BookTV aired Robert Rosen's discussion of Confederate Charleston, hosted here back in June, and a Treasures from the Vaults segment that discusses the Society and looks at a few items from our collections. A big thanks to all the folks at CSPAN, who were awesome throughout the whole filming process A double share of thanks to the warmhearted film editor who ran the Library's web address at the bottom of the screen when your loyal blogger mentioned how we happily accept donations for the restoration of old manuscripts.

Anyhow, if you missed it on TV, here it is on the interwebs- enjoy!

Let's go guys! National TV! Everybody's mama's watching!

2011-07-28T16:08:00.002-04:00

"If you gaze into the abyss, the abyss also gazes into you", or at least that's what I learned reading the Nietzsche Family Circus; here at the Library Society we are all staring into the abyss that is the fall events calendar. Of course it's a fun, educational, enjoyable abyss, but here in the quiet of summer it looks daunting indeed.

Of course, most of the dauntingness is just the chair-moving... thirty-or-so events, averaging around 90-120 attendees... and pretty soon you're moving over 3,500 chairs. Which wouldn't be so bad, but your loyal blogger almost died moving one credenza yesterday. On a related note, the Library Society now has a lovely credenza sitting right inside the back door. Riiight inside the back door.

Anyhow, back to fall events. Nan Morrison will be back teaching Shakespeare (The Roman plays this time, yay!); Unedited returns, and will be joined by an all new Chamber Music Series; Wide Angle Lunches III; special events with Marshall Chapman, the CCL, the Poetry Society, a new non-fiction book club... it's going to be another great events season, and we'll keep you posted on each and every upcoming programme.

One final (kind of last minute) update: look for the Robert Rosen's Library Society lecture on Confederate Charleston to air on CSPAN's BookTV at 5:30PM this Saturday and 11:15AM this Sunday. Also, some of our treasures from the vaults on C-SPAN's BookTV channel this Sunday at 12PM.

Spellcheck recognizes "Servian", but not "McDonalds". That's kind of nice, actually.

2011-07-18T11:24:00.001-04:00

It's July 18th! Today is the 2,401st anniversary of the Battle of Allia, between Republican Rome and the Gaulish Senones. The Senones accused some Roman diplomats of a serious violation of international law, and demanded they be turned over to face justice. Long story short, the Romans refused and the Senones' army took to the field. A few miles north of the city they met the Roman army - a militia composed of Greek-style phalanxes with the weakest auxiliaries on both flanks - and promptly obliterated it. Rome was sacked, and the Senones stuck around until the plague struck (likely a consequence of too many unburied Roman bodies lying around).

The battle is notable because it was the last time Rome would be sacked for 800 years. The Romans built the Servian Wall (you can see a bit of it if you're ever in the McDonalds in Termini Station); they changed the relationship between social class and military status (no more putting all the nobles on the front line to get slaughtered first); and they abandoned the rigid phalanx for the famous testudo formation (the flexibility of which was a key to eventual Roman military dominance in the Mediterranean world). In many ways, the defeat at Allia built the foundations of Roman success for centuries to come.

In much the same way as those ancient Romans, the Library Society has regrouped and reevaluated our strategy after the evening events of the past few weeks. The conclusion we've reached: if y'all are going to keep coming out in droves, we're gonna have to start charging for summer lectures!

Though we knew the speakers would be good, we figured the hot weather, scant advertising, and traditional lack of summer programming would keep event attendance down. How wrong we've been. Last week's great Bastille Day event with Alan Hoffman brought in about 120 people. Your loyal blogger very much enjoyed his conversations with the dear folks at the Alliance Francaise who were responsible for the wine and snacks... "I know we had 19 RSVP's yesterday... we're up to 60 today"... "'I'm pretty sure we're going to break 100.', 'Yes ma'am, we're at 115'"... you get the picture.

Our thanks to everyone who has come out and made our summer events so successful. Unless we're lucky enough to have a guest speaker fall in our laps, we should be done with lectures for a little while. Pub Quiz night is this Thursday... bring $5 and some friends for beer, snacks, and a lot of nerdy fun!

Summertime hours = the living is now 8.75% easier.

2011-07-05T15:58:00.002-04:00

Over 130 people in attendance for two events, one quite hastily announced, in one week, in the middle of summer. Last week's event schedule was a pleasant revelation of just how many folks are willing to come out for lectures and events in the face of torrid temperatures and hellish humidity. Many thanks to everyone who came out to the great events with Robert Rosen and Charlie Geer.

Though, to be fair, those events were air conditioned. Attendance for last week's Carolina Day parade was not so... robust. Your loyal blogger says if our noble forefathers could fight off the Redcoats in 93 degree weather, we can put on striped suits and walk down Meeting Street.

And if you disagree, General Moultrie would be disappointed in you.

Oh well. As long as we're discussing Library events and our Revolutionary-era predecessors, it's a good time to mention our Bastille Day Lecture next week. Alan Hoffman, president of the Massachusetts Lafayette Society, will discuss the work he's recently translated, Lafayette in America in 1824 and 1825. This work was the diary of Auguste Levasseur, Lafayette's secretary, and recounts the major general's trip around the young American republic (including his time here in Charleston). Things start here in the Main Reading Room at 7PM, Thursday July 14th. There's no charge for the event, though we do ask you RSVP by emailing us or giving us a call (843.723.9912). A light reception will follow the lecture.

Also, new summertime hours start this week! Monday-Thursday remains the same (9:30-5:30), while Friday gets trimmed down to "Saturday Size", (9:30-2:00), enabling our staff to get home in time for dinner for once.

Finally, we're having a dry-run, get-the-kinks-out, first go at a trivia night this Thursday at 7PM. Cover is $5, beer & snacks are provided, and there'll be a little prize for the winning team. Get some folks together- groups of 2-5 might be best - and join us for a little beer and brainteasing! If you'd like more info, fire us an email.

And, of course, Henry's is still there.

2011-06-15T17:21:00.000-04:00

Summertime is ostensibly the slow season here at the Library Society. A time to rest (a little) and plan (a lot) for a full fall schedule of events. Your loyal blogger was engaged in just such a planning meeting yesterday afternoon when I came upon Robert Molloy's 1947 book, Charleston: A Gracious Heritage. Disguised as a history text, but essentially a travel essay, Molloy's work is an interesting glimpse at Charleston in the immediate postwar years. Like most Charleston travelogues, there is frequently complaining about how much the city has changed, and how she stands to be ruined forever by the horrors of modernity.
Because complaining about changes in Charleston is one of the (many) things that never changes in Charleston. And while there are plenty of little things in A Gracious Heritage that might merit comment, I'll share just one - change we can all be happy about. Because after last week's post praising the city's wonderful restaurant scene, this passage popped out:

"Nowadays Charleston is not so well prepared for restaurant diners... The cooking in... the Francis Marion was good but not outstanding... There are two good seafood restaurants, the one called Henri's [sic], alongside the Market hall, and the Oyster Bay, on King Street just about Calhoun. The Villa Margherita, once famous for its cookery and the steepness of its prices, is now in the care of the United Seaman's Service, and the luncheon I had there was not notable... Though more natives than formerly now go out occasionally to dinner, the citizens don't make a practice of dining out."

Thank heavens some things have changed, right?

UPCOMING EVENTS: I might have said summer was the slow season, but only in comparison to spring and fall! Carolina Day is, of course, on the 28th. Join us in the parade, or be square. Also, Thursday, June 30th, we'll have author Charlie Geer here at the Library talking about his three years living in Andalusia, Spain. Charlie's wife, Concha Munoz, will perform a little flamenco dancing as a festive cap to the event. 7PM, totally free. Also, a Bastille Day lecture and a few other summer surprises are in the events pipeline, so be on the lookout for some heat-beating activities here at the CLS!

On the other hand, Husk is a forty second walk from our back door...

2011-06-06T17:22:00.000-04:00

It's funny how quickly one can discard a longstanding routine and become comfortable in a new one. Most of you are likely familiar with how pleasant the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival is - three straight days of interesting speakers here at the Library Society, culminating with a big literary soiree Saturday afternoon. What you might not know is how expeditiously the Library staff transitions to the two hour long lunch break we get on LitFest days. Extra time to go out and have a long lunch here in one of the best cities in the nation for dining out? Yes, please.

Of course, your loyal blogger will live without the supersized lunch break. In fact, I'll probably live a little longer... so it goes.

This year's Festival was the most successful to date, with hundreds of attendees enjoying fine presentations by Bunny Hoest, Jay Parini, Ed Wilson, Alfred Malabre, Joshua Kendall, and Pat Conroy. Each of the speakers was wonderful in their own way: Bunny Hoest explaining all the hidden reference jokes in The Lockhorns, Jay Parini's explication/apology concerning the omission of The Great Gatsby in his 113 most important American books; Pat Conroy signing books for two straight hours.

And with that, it's summertime at the Library! Event season is officially over 'till fall. [Of course that doesn't mean we're getting too calm around here... Carolina Day is coming up soon, we're hosting a special Bastille Day event next month. Plus there's planning for all sorts of cool new fall events. And maybe a few summer surprises too.]

So stop by, check out the Literary Festival display (we've got some great rare books out... GWTW, To Kill A Mockingbird, the Porgo manuscript), and feel free to drop off a snack for your loyal blogger. He's hard pressed to make it all the way to Hominy Grill and back in a mere sixty minutes.

It's Literary Festival Eve Eve!

2011-05-31T14:47:00.001-04:00

Once again, it's Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival time here at the Library Society! While we're used to hosting some pretty impressive speakers for this thing - Anne Rivers Siddons, Bret Lott, Sue Monk Kidd, Jack Hitt, and John McCardell, to name a very few - the 2011 Festival might be the first time we'll have an author here at the CLS in the same week as they've been reviewed in The New York Times Book Review.

Joshua C. Kendall, freelance journalist and author of The Man Who Made Lists, will be discussing his brand-new The Forgotten Founding Father: Noah Webster's Obsession and the Creation of an American Culture. Your loyal blogger couldn't be more excited for this lecture, for Mr. Kendall's new book goes someplace Webster's biographies have rarely dared: he calls out Webster for being a jerk.

Pugnacious and penurious, Webster had little trouble offending friends or making enemies. He was a follower of Rousseau, and used his Dictionary and the "Blue Backed Speller" - really, he used every outlet he could- to promote a jingoistic American nationalism for the new republic. He despised Southerners. He rewrote the Bible to take out the naughty bits.

He badmouthed Shakespeare on grammar issues.

But for all the bad things... Noah Webster was brilliant at the things he's famous for. The "Blue Backed Speller" taught generations of young Americans to read. His cutting-edge Dictionary did (eventually) succeed moulding "American english" to its strictures. He started the first daily newspaper in New York. He even founded Amherst College (alma mater of president Calvin Coolidge, librarian Melvil Dewey, frozen-food inventor Clarence Birdseye, and that guy who writes Get Fuzzy).

Pictured: Amherst College, second from right

In short, Noah Webster was a very interesting, very colourful guy, and this Saturday's LitFest lecture with Joshua Kendall should be equally entertaining. If you haven't got your tickets for it yet, get 'em here, or call 866.811.4111. And don't forget the rest of the schedule - Lockhorns cartoonist Bunny Hoest, author Jay Parini, WSJ theatre critic Ed Wilson, WSJ economics editor Alfred Malabre, and author/raconteur Pat Conroy.

Hey, who turned out the lights?

2011-05-25T13:40:00.000-04:00

Silence in the library. Some days it feels like a rarity- especially when we've hosted, by my count, just over twenty five events here in the past two months. But today, we've had silence in abundance. We've been joined by three patrons, four tourists, and the soft hum of forced air flowing through the ducts.

Utter, crushing, silence.

But not for long. One week from tomorrow is the start of the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival. We'll welcome six great speakers here for some terrific daytime discussions of their work. Thursday the 2nd, we'll have cartoonist Bunny Hoest and author Jay Parini; Friday the 3rd, theatre critic Ed Wilson and economic writer Alfred Malabre; and wrapping things up on Saturday the 4th, journalist and author Joshua Kendall and author and raconteur Pat Conroy. Tickets for each speaker are $16 with the exception of Pat, which is $51 (though that one's a reception and fundraiser, so no mumbling about the price increase). Tickets are going quickly, so get yours today at piccolospoleto.com.

'Cause there's nothing worse than Silence in the library...

"Let us now praise fellow institutions, and their father that begat them"

2011-05-18T16:55:00.000-04:00

If you'll forgive your loyal blogger, I'd like to plug for a sister institution for a few paragraphs. Earlier this year, I purchased The Charleston Museum's for the first time in years, and I've become reacquainted with just how much I love the place. And one of my favourite parts is that, while there are great travelling exhibits, and the Kidstory children's exhibit is pretty new, the vast majority of things haven't changed one bit since I was a wee lad.

[A caveat: your loyal blogger is too young to remember the "Old Museum". I am, however, plenty old enough to have heard how much better the Cannon Street facility was, from dozens and dozens and dozens of people. No worries - this being Charleston, I hold dogmatically to the principle anything that is no longer with us was infinitely superior to whatever we currently have, amen.]

Foremost amongst things I love that haven't changed since I was a wee lad: the hundreds of taxidermied creatures that make up the Natural History collection. Therein are owls and eagles and sandpipers, shot and stuffed back in the colonial era by pioneering naturalists like Audubon and Catesby and Michaux. To walk through the collection is to see a snapshot of natural history at an extremely important time, it's 18th and 19th century transformation from an amateur hobby to a professional science. It really couldn't be more interesting.

And - back to endorsing the terrific institution that gives me a paycheck - the Museum's Natural History collection dovetails beautifully with lots of written material in the collection of the Library Society, like Catesby's Natural History of Carolina, Florida, and the Bahama Islands, or personal gifts from Andre Michaux to the society, like our Persian Manuscript. All together, they paint a great picture of colonial Charleston on the edge of Western civilization, an outpost for science in the Age of Enlightenment. Very, very cool.

Catesby, from our collection.

This ivory billed woodpecker is extinct,.

but if you wanna see him, the Museum's got a stuffed one...

[And with that rewritten ending replacing the maudlin and mopey "we-killed-the-Carolina-Parakeet" ending I originally typed... I killed the good transition to the things I'm about to stump for... oh well, here goes anyway.]

Two great Library series are nearing extinction (for a few months, at least), and you should be here to see them off!

First, UNEDITED's final concert of the season, Unchambered Melody, A Warmup for Spoleto, is tomorrow night at 7PM. Tickets are $15, and are still available (though going quick). Call us at 723-9912 if you're interested in an awesome night of chamber music... with a twist!

Secondly, WIDE ANGLE LUNCHES will have its final talk of its second series this Friday at 12:15PM. We will welcome Alexandra Mack, editor of Vogue.com and former managing editor of Interview, to discuss her experiences in the world of high fashion. (Also, Black Bean, Co. will be providing lunches, so you can stuff your face while discussing fashion modeling... so it goes.) Get tickets at wideanglelunches.com or by calling 1 888 71 TICKETS. And while this is the end, it's not forever - both series will be back and bigger than ever this Fall!

If the title's too obscure, you're not reading enough James Agee. Or possibly Ben Sira...

Allons enfants de la Patrie, vous pouvez acheter vos billets...

2011-05-10T12:17:00.000-04:00

It's May 10th, the 284th birthday of Anne Robert Jacques Turgot! If you don't know Turgot, he very briefly the French Minister of Finance in the 1770s. He tried to repair the French treasury, destroy restrictions on trade, abolish illiberal privileges of the upper class, end discrimination against French protestants, and argued against French intervention in the American Revolution not just on financial grounds, but in opposition to America's slave holding. As you might imagine, he had a lot of enemies, and was soon fired with most of his proposals dismissed by the French aristocracy.

Though as we all know, that aristocracy was dismissed by the people barely decade later...

Just as French (but much more popular), Le Creuset has donated a cast-iron pot to be raffled at this Friday's Wide Angle Lunch! The lunch (sponsored by terrific new local bookstore Heirloom Book Company) will feature Matt and Ted Lee, two Charleston chefs now living up North and spreading the gospel of Southern foodways in publications like Food & Wine, GQ, and the New York Times. Tickets for the event are going very quickly, so if you'd like to be a part of this most appetizing Wide Angle (and have a shot at the pot), get yours now.

Coming up soon: the final Unedited concert of the season is next week, and promises "chamber music with a twist". Tickets are $15... get yours now. Also, the last Wide Angle Lunch of the series is next Friday, with Alexandra Mack sharing stories from her time with Vogue magazine. Finally, the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival is right around the corner... tickets are available at piccolospoleto.com, the Visitors Center, and the Gaillard Box Office.

After April

2011-04-29T11:16:00.001-04:00

A month without the blog! Porca miseria. If you haven't been around the society since the last post, you've missed out. We averaged an event every 2.3 days here this April... I think we've put more mileage on the tables in the research room in the past few weeks than I've put on my car.

Of course, we've had a lot of fun doing it. Poetry society, book sale, two film screenings, an amazing Unedited concert, a St. George's Day soiree, and a little event series called the Wide Angle Lunches, which manage to pack the house - in the middle of the day - week after week. Oh, and we even managed to make it onto the cover of the Mercury this month (check it out here if you missed it). So we're kind of a big deal.

Since I've brought up the Wide Angle Lunches (there are still three left... get your tickets now), I'd like to mention one thing about them that is easily overlooked: they come with terrific displays. Our incomparable archivist, Trish Kometer, has managed to find things in our vaults to tie in with every talk, and fill our display cases with them. Some weeks it's been quite the feat (like when the lunch topic was the Sudan), but she has come through unfailingly with the most unique and interesting items. This week involved rice, so local works from the 18th through the 21st century are on exhibit. This includes the Library's original manuscript of John Drayton's 1803 A View of South Carolina, with his original illustrations. Very cool.

Take advantage of the displays, quickly, though: they're only around until the the next Wide Angle Lunch. Like some manuscript mandala, they are gone almost as soon as they are constructed. Consider it another advantage to visiting the Library Society frequently!

So long, salle de bain...

2011-03-22T11:39:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time Frank Gilbreth, writing as Lord Ashley Cooper, joked about how many Charlestonians it takes to change a lightbulb: "five: one to unscrew the bulb, two to mix drinks, and two to weep bitter tears because the beautiful old bulb is being replaced by something new."

So if the following news prompts any lamentations, let your loyal blogger know- I'm willing to make the G&T's...

Tomorrow is the first day of renovations to the Main Building's lavatories. After a near-century of use, the "cloakroom where nothing has changed save towels" (yes, someone once wrote a poem about our loo) will be updated and upgraded. Side-float commodes that use twenty gallons per flush, Coolidge-era faucets that either scald or freeze, and those tiny seats that are little more than a pair of thigh pads are all on their way out. New flooring, new cabinets, and new fixtures will soon be here.

Charleston might "guard her buildings, customs, and laws", but I doubt many will protest our small concession to modernity. And if they do, let them be stuck with the thigh-pad toilet seats for the next century.

UPCOMING EVENTS: Wide Angle Lunches start next Thursday with Julie Flavell's When London Was Capital of America. Lunches from the Black Bean Co. are served at 12:15, the talk starts at 12:30, and is over by 1:30. Schedule yourself an intellectual break in the middle of your workday! Get your tickets now at www.wideanglelunches.com or by calling 1-888-71-TICKETS.

ALSO: The Unedited concert series continues with Unedited: Prologue and Politics - The Civil War Volume I. 7PM, Wednesday, April 6th. Get your tickets here.

LATER NEXT MONTH: More Wide Angle Lunches- like Jack McCray, Ron Atkinson, and Jonathan Green... Jazz! African politics! Gullah art! Lunches from Black Bean Co.! Also, Poetry Society on the 8th, Rod Heller talking Civil War history on the 14th, Independent Lens Film Series, LiNK film screening, and Spring Book Sale are all next month... it's going to get busy, so make sure to check our Upcoming Events page frequently.

AND ONE FINAL THING: Happy birthday to poet Billy Collins (who you might have seen here at the Library this winter for the PSSC's 90th Anniversary gala). Collins, our national Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003, is a very spry 70 today. I'll leave you with links to two of his poems- "On Turning Ten", where he reflects on a slightly earlier birthday, and "Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes", which is beautifully, brilliantly, about deciphering (and disrobing) the belle of Amherst.

The Darling Buds of March

2011-03-08T09:15:00.000-05:00

Your loyal blogger will soon be shipping up to Boston for a little vacation, and according to the NOAA, the temperature will dip into the 20s, with lots of rain. Arg. I love that dirty water, but I'd prefer it in the Charles River instead of falling from the sky.

But for now, yours truly is here in beautiful downtown Charleston, where the Ashley and the Cooper Rivers meet to form a cliche. Temperatures are in the mid 60's - last week it stayed in the 70's- and it's as sunny as can be. Camellias are in bloom, the Bradford pears are visually stunning (though repellent to the nose), and our ginkgo trees have just the slightest hint of green at the branch tips. It's been a very pleasant very early spring.

I'm still holding out for the azaleas, though.

If you're ready for more floral festivity, join us this Thursday night at 6PM for The Constant Garden: Two Thousand Years of Botanical Art, presented by artist and lecturer Jennie Summerall. This event, co-sponsored by the Coastal Conservation League, will examine the connections between humans and the natural world as expressed in art. Examples from Roman frescoes, to medieval tapestry, to contemporary works, will be shown in slideshow accompanying the talk. Light refreshments will be served, and there is a five-dollar suggested donation for this event.

ALSO THIS WEEK: Poetry Society of South Carolina Meeting, Friday at 7PM. Guest poet Donald Platt will speak.

AND DON'T FORGET: Wide Angle Lunches are back! The series kicks off March 31, but tickets are available now through wideanglelunches.com. Get 'em today, they're going quick!

"76, 77, 78, hello darling, 80, 81..."

2011-03-01T18:52:00.000-05:00

Happy St. David's Day, loyal readers! The Welsh National Day, the first of March is a time for the wearing of leeks; the cooking of cawl (a traditional soup); and the kickoff of the eisteddfod season- festivals where Welsh speakers get together to swap poetry containing too many ll's and y's.

A reminder about a cultural celebration of a different sort: Unedited: South of Broad(way) is this Thursday night at 7PM. Details and tickets here. It's going to be Sondheimtacular: the guest artists are all actual Broadway performers, and there are a lot of them... prepare for some stack-shaking vocals. $15, and parking is free next door at the SCE&G lot.

Welsh soldiers on St. David's Day, WWII.

Little did the wehrmacht know they would be fighting

boys capable of eating three-foot-long raw leeks...

Notes complied while celebrating Canadian Flag Day/Susan B. Anthony's birthday:

2011-02-15T13:19:00.006-05:00

1. This Thursday, Rod Heller will be at the CLS discussing his new book, Democracy's Lawyer: Felix Grundy of the Old Southwest. Grundy was a Senator, a US Attorney General, a land speculator, a mentor to James K. Polk, and an archetype of the rugged 19th Century American frontier politician. The event is co-sponsored by the Charleston School of Law, it's free. SCE&G has kindly offered us free parking in their adjoining lot, so you have no reason not to be here.

2. Ticket sales are progressing nicely for March 3rd's Unedited concert. Get 'em here. It's going to be Broadway, and it's gonna be good. Actually, since they're not letting your loyal blogger sing "I Feel Pretty" (no matter how much I beg), it should be very good indeed. Free parking at SCE&G for that one, too.

3. James K. Polk was the only Speaker of the House to be elected President. He tried to buy Cuba from Spain for 2.5 billion dollars (in modern currency). And once upon a time, he had kidney stones removed while awake, with nothing to dull the pain but a little brandy. That's awesome.

4. Wide Angle Lunches return at the end of next month. That's awesome too.

5. We've had to put out the "Parking Lot Full" sign many multiple times today... remember, Tuesday at the Library includes Toddler Tuesday in the mornings, French classes in the afternoon, Lifelong Learning Classes in the evening, and the weekly cleaning crew visit wedged in there somewhere. Yogi Berra famously said "nobody goes there anymore 'cause it's too crowded". The CLS isn't that bad on Tuesdays, but our parking lot is. Just a friendly heads up.

6. We're getting dimmer switches for the chandeliers in the Main Reading Room. In related news, we're starting a donation fund to purchase Barry White albums.

7. One last James K. Polk fact: he's buried on the grounds of the Tennessee Capitol Building. And If you ever find yourself stuck in Nashville, wandering down Charlotte Avenue at 1AM, sick and miserable: climb up the Victory Park hill, pass Polk's tomb, climb up the Capitol steps, and look out across the city at night. The whole world seems to stretch forever in a vast knotwork of lights trailing down to the Cumberland River. Everything is at once beautiful and silent and magical, and pretty much everything that New Year's night down on Printers Alley isn't.

Trust your loyal blogger on that one... he knows.

A little bit taller, y'all

2011-01-26T17:40:00.002-05:00

The Library Society hosts a lot of programs. In the Fall of 2010, for example, we offered over fifty extracurriculars. So far in 2011, the story is the same. Let's take a two-week period from last Friday (January 21) to next Friday (February 4): the Poetry Society brought in Billy Collins; the 263rd Annual Meeting of the Society was held; the Charleston Symphony Orchestra is playing a concert tonite; and a week from tomorrow we'll have our first Unedited concert of the new year. That's well over 500 plus folks in the Library Society after hours amongst those four events alone, more than enough hustle and bustle to make up for the quiet library-like moments around here.

But we know there's going to be a big crowd for these events. When you're hosting literary rock stars like Billy Collins, you put out all the chairs. [Every last one you can find- thanks Gibbes Museum!] When something is a 260 year old tradition, you expect strong attendance (free wine and passed hors d'oeuvres help). We can rest easy knowing programs like these are going to be well-attended.

It's the smaller events, the events without a "built-in audience", that we worries about (and email about, and advertise, and talk about, etc.). So it's always nice when such a program takes off successfully, and our new "Grecian Architecture in Charleston" has been just like that. This Lifelong Learning Series class, hosted by Peg Eastman and Christopher Liberatos (who made the cover of the latest Charleston Mercury), starts next Tuesday and runs for three weeks. This time last week it had approximately zero people enrolled. Today, we registered half a dozen new students. Spots are still open: $150 for members, $200 for non. Call us at 723.9912 to sign up, or for more information.

Also, one week from Thursday: Unedited: Chanteuse, Chocolate and Champagne. Sopranos Margaret Kelly Cook and Laura Ball will be cranking out the chansons françaises. $15. It's a great early Valentine's present, and ticket sales are clipping along. Get yours online here, or call us at 843.723.9912.

Or you could buy her some Valentine's basketball shoes.

Make sure to have a divorce lawyer, too.

It was also the Army's name for certain nuclear bombs... don't know if that's insulting or not.

2011-01-21T17:11:00.000-05:00

Friday, January 21st. Your loyal blogger almost wrote in celebration of the 198th birthday of pathfinder of the West, Republican presidential candidate, and fellow College of Charleston alumnus John C. Fremont (who, for the record, led a thoroughly amazing life). Instead, I'll briefly celebrate an inanimate object: the bassoon.

Subject to all forms of jokes and insults, there are some admitted quirks to the instrument. For one, the bassoon is big. A performer has to strap it to the chair or the floor or to their person just to hold it. A cheap one costs as much as a good used car, and a nice new one as much as a small BMW. Fingering is incredibly complicated, there is a huge variety of playing styles and methods, reeds need to be custom-cut, and there are two significantly different systems of construction. And once upon a time in the 1960s, the father of erectile dysfunction medicine- a Knight Grand Cross of the British Empire, famous for once demonstrating the positive effects of his chemical treatments by dropping his drawers in the middle of a urological conference- tried to turn the instrument electric. It didn't take.

It's a frequently mocked, maligned, and altogether under-appreciated instrument. Which is quite sad, really; think of all the great places where the sound of a bassoon just works. The creepy opening solo in Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. The bassoons (and contrabassoons!) in Beethoven's 9th. The stiff-but-smooth, so-very-Edwardian baritone running throughout the works of Elgar. Nothing but bassoons. Blast it, imagine some other instrument as grandfather in Peter and the Wolf (I'm lookin' at you, cello- knock it off). The bassoon is a wonderful instrument.

Happily for your loyal blogger, we're gonna have a bassoon here at the Library Society next week. Yuriy Bekker, concertmaster, alongside seven other CSO principal musicians, will perform Schubert's Octet in F Major next Wednesday, January 26th, at 7PM. Tickets for the event, Time Machine: Schubert in Vienna will be available at the door starting at 6PM. $15 ($10 for students). Check out CharlestonSymphony.com for more details.

And to get you in the mood: some bassoonists playing Lady Gaga!

MMXI

2011-01-11T08:37:00.000-05:00

A new year; a new web look, and an exciting new slew of upcoming programmes and events to share! For the 263rd consecutive year, January's most exciting news is, of course, the Annual Meeting of the Charleston Library Society. 5PM, Tuesday the 25th. Gordon Rhea will be our guest speaker, and will guest speak on "Marketing Disunion: How the Fire Eaters Persuaded the South to Secede". As always, ham biscuits, teeny-tiny cream puff pastries, and general merriment will follow the meeting and lecture.

Activities between now and the Annual Meeting: next Tuesday, 01/11/11, we've got a pair of events with local author Brian Hicks. Mr. Hicks' newest book, Toward the Setting Sun: John Ross, The Cherokees, and the Trail of Tears, has been well reviewed by Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, and called both "important" and "a pleasure to read" by historian Nathaniel Philbrick. Not too shabby. He'll be discussing and signing it, twice, here in the Library.

First, at 12:30, Brian will be here for a bring-your-own-brown-bag-lunch book signing. It is free and open to all. Later that evening he'll return for a Lecture and Reception (Starts at 6PM, tickets $5). Copies of Toward the Setting Sun will be for sale at both events ($26).

Other news: an exhibition of original silhouettes from Clay Rice's The Lonely Shadow is on display in the Main Reading Room through the end of the month. January is the time to sign up for Lifelong Learning Series classes, which start February 1. Nan's back, teaching the Histories of Shakespeare; and Peg Eastman and Christopher Liberatos will do a three-session course on Grecian Architecture in Charleston. Also, the Poetry Society will be holding their 90th anniversary meeting here on the 21st with special guest Billy Collins (the PSSC reports tickets for the event as quite sold out, as well they should be, and a big "congratulations" to them on this happy anniversary.) Finally, we're gonna be closed on the 17th.

A man who crossed a bridge but refused to use one... if you were this awesome, they'd give you a federal holiday too.

Blog of Hope and Glory

2010-12-15T17:32:00.001-05:00

In 1987, the college-radio/alternative rock/children's music duo They Might Be Giants achieved critical praise (if not commercial success) with their eponymous first album. That album burrowed one line of one song deep into your loyal blogger's brain, ready to return every time I sit down to type a blog post. Buried between tracks "Don't Lets Start" (perhaps the band's single most beloved song) and "Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head" (the supreme example of how to play the Casiotone MT-100 keyboard) is the song "Number Three". And as Number Three's writer laments of his own songwriting: "I don't know where I got the inspiration, or how I wrote the words... I've got just two songs in me, and I just wrote the third."

Preach on, Giants, preach on.

Going in, I have no clue how to string together enough nonsense to pass for a blog post. And because I'm always grasping at material to write these posts (like the entire first paragraph), I frequently fear I'll cover the same topic twice. I'm especially afraid of covering the same topic twice and being worse the second time around. And so, while poking about through past posts today, I realized I have written about hoodoo magic, Jacques Derrida, Billy Beer, and Fournier gangrene, yet still totally missed Country Life magazine.

Country Life, for those who don't know, is the journal of the British countryside. So utterly thorough in its Britishness, in fact, that I can't describe it. So I'll share a small sample of recent cover blurbs:

Marmalade: a perfect antidote to winter

The bluffer's guide to Chopin

Knot in the club? What your tie says about you

The Archers: why we're still addicted after 60 years

The Archbishop of Canterbury's favourite painting

1,600 years on: what have the Romans done for us?

Roman Britain 1600 years later: if nothing else, it makes a pretty great Dr. Who finale.

All that plus forty pages of property listings in the front; classified advertisements for thatchers, oil painters, bespoke gunsmiths, etc. in the back; and in the middle, all the depth and erudition you'd expect from something like Foreign Policy or The Week. Except it's about handcrafted West Country cheeses and the eternal glory of the red postbox.

In short, it's people of wealth (or at least wealth's appearance) hunting, sailing, traipsing from the city to the farm, propping up giant ancestral homes, maintaining early 1990's Range Rovers and Jags, and fighting to maintain a unique regional identity against an increasingly homogenized culture.

Basically... it's a mashup of Charleston Magazine with The Village Green Preservation Society.

Subscription costs around $400 a year, and it's worth every penny. It is by far our highest-circulating periodical, and dozens of members line up for a crack at back issues come discard day. Heaven alone knows how many patrons would drop their memberships in disgust were we ever to discontinue it. The Library Society was founded by folks to pool their money in order to procure the latest books and periodicals from London: perhaps Country Life's contemporary popularity can best be seen as a statement on the endurance and strength of that vision.

Either that, or Charlestonians really love their handcrafted West Country cheeses.

EVENT UPDATE: Join us next Wednesday, December 22nd, 7PM-8:30PM for the Charleston Symphony Orchestra's Holiday Strings Quintet and Holiday Brass Quintet. Enjoy your favourite holiday songs in the beauty of the Library Society, with CSO concertmaster Yuriy Bekker leading the performance.

Her hardest hue to hold...

2010-12-08T11:45:00.000-05:00

It only took a month. While the ginkgo leaves started falling steadily as early as last week, today was the first day for a fully golden front lawn. This is what the front of the library looked like this morning:

Bingo. Drop day.

Ginkgo-tacular. Even the tree we keep indoors isn't too bad:

Pretty sweet, eh? Though if you haven't seen it in person, you should. And no better time for it than this Thursday night at 7PM, when fiction writer, member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and part-time Charleston resident Bernard Cornwell will be with us. A few tickets for the event are still left, so give us a call (843.723.9912). C'mon, it'll make some historical fiction fan in your life very happy...

A couple of librarians wouldn't mind, either.

Dear readers: help us trim our tree!

2010-11-16T18:44:00.000-05:00

The final grains of sand are falling through the hourglass that is 2010. One and one half months to go. One month, one day until your loyal blogger's birthday. [If you don't know what to get, Barbancourt rum is always nice. C'mon, consider it a donation to needy Haitians.]

And with just a week of Library services left until Thanksgiving break (next Wednesday through Saturday), we have to start thinking of the holiday season. Holly, tinsel, razzleberry dressing, all that jazz. And while there are plenty of Christmas season blog post topics out there (like how you should buy our advent calendar... or how you need to get tickets now for the Unedited Christmas concert), I'm going to present one directly related to decking our halls...

Dear readers, what shall we put on the Christmas tree?

Last year, as you may recall, our book ornaments included tiny tomes from Josephine Pinckney, DuBose Heyward, Beatrice Witte Ravenel, and, of course, the December fundraiser guest of honor's latest book, South of Broad by Pat Conroy.

This year, they're all going back, along with miniature copies of The Fort, Bernard Cornwell's newest novel. [Take that as a reminder to reserve your tickets for Bernard now. Now!] But it's a big, big, Christmas tree a'comin, and we're gonna need more little, little books.

So how about it folks? Ideas, suggestions? What do we add to the Library's pantheon of Lowcountry literary greats this year? If you've got an idea, leave it in the comment section, email us, call, write, carrier pigeon, whatever it takes, get it to us. The CLS staff will pick the best submissions, and on December 1st, we'll put it to an online vote. Whomever wins will be immortalized in the boughs of the Library's tree for generations to come. Quite the honor!

Slouching toward Bethlehem... (or at least trying to figure out where to put a Christmas tree in here...)

2010-11-12T20:45:00.000-05:00

The tide is loosed, and everywhere the Society's events season's hours come round at last...

Monday was the Verdura jewelry lecture and exhibition, when your loyal blogger played with Cole Porter's "Night and Day" cufflinks (and now regrets not wearing French cuffs so that he might try them on). Thursday was the end of Bret Lott's writing salon, and the start of the second session of Nan Morrison's Shakespeare course. Wednesday, the end of the "Cocktail Party of Ideas". Thursday, the end of the first series of Wide Angle Lunches (look for them again come March), and a fully packed-to-the-gills, turning-people-away-at-the-doors Unedited concert. And tonight, mere minutes from now, the Poetry Society of South Carolina will have their monthly meeting with Michael McFee.

[Which reminds me, in case you haven't heard, Billy Collins will be the special guest for the PSSC's January Meeting / 90th Anniversary Spectacular. Which isn't exactly what the Poetry Society is calling it, but we're talking national Poet Laureate... that's pretty spectacular.

Also spectacular: tickets for Mr. Collins are totally free. All you have to do is be a member of the Poetry Society, and make a request for tickets. Which you can do here. $25 for an individual. Not too shabby.]

And next week? 9 AM tomorrow the Fall Book Sale starts, and runs 'till 5PM, then again from 1PM-5PM Sunday. Independent Lens Film Series is 4:30 this Sunday. Jack Weatherford, author of Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World (and recipient of the Order of the Polar Star) rounds out our Authors Series next Thursday at 7PM. Our long fall events schedule continues to turn and turn in the widening gyre, moving its slow thighs towards the two ultimate happenings of the Society's season: our next Unedited concert (link goes to tickets. Get them now.), and A Special Evening with Bernard Cornwell, our second annual December fundraiser.

A blog post inspired by a terrible demotivational poster. A new low for your loyal blogger.

Drop Day: it's not just for Comm majors!

2010-11-04T13:30:00.000-05:00

It's been six months since your loyal blogger wrote about the two (award winning) ginkgo trees in front of the Charleston Library Society's Main Building... and quite frankly, if I didn't stop myself, I could fall into the trap of writing about them every week. Without devolving to mushy Joyce Kilmer poetry: they're really wonderful things.

There were eight golden yellow leaves amongst the sea of green when I counted at lunch today: depending on the vagaries of wind, biology, and tourists with sticky fingers, I'll assume they're still there. Hopefully - and with the past few weeks being mostly dry and warm, it'll take a lot of hope - the other few thousand leaves will lose their chlorophyll in an equally glorious manner in the next few days.

And then: Drop Day. Usually the Library Society's pair take a day or two to lose all their leaves, but it's not rare for ginkgos to go from golden to utterly bare in a few hours. One majestic, aurulent shower of perfectly proportioned little fans. As Joyce Kilmer might have said: It's pretty cool.

Also the day the South Carolina General Assembly gets off its duff and allows nonprofits to legally hold raffles and competitions of luck, we're opening book on Drop Day... so, go write your assemblyman!

I don't know what the heck Ginkgo Pearl Oral Liquid is, but it's the funniest SFW thing Google Image Search had for "ginkgo".

More important than the following blather: happy birthday Pat Conroy!

2010-10-26T17:30:00.000-04:00

It's always interesting to browse the minutes of old CLS board meetings. 262 years of mostly boredom interspersed with virulent fighting. Perhaps my favourite: a particularly heated record of one late 1950's meeting at which a trustee suggested smoking be allowed in the Main Reading Room.

As every television/film Eisenhower/Kennedy period piece has taught me, in the late 1950's, EVERYBODY smoked. Grandmothers, titans of industry, Blue Collar Joe, Presidents of the United States, newborn babies... from the offices of Sterling Price, to NASA's Mission Control, to the office of your very own doctor, everybody smoked.

But not at the Charleston Library Society. Thanks to the valiance (and vehemence) of trustee Mrs. I'on Rhett, it was not to be. The motion went from near passage by acclimation, to a long, (one-sided) bargaining for "half the room" to "part of the room" to "one smoking chair", to the cold hell of being infinitely tabled. The anger and the yelling of the whole affair really does come right through all the stuffy, formal language of board meeting minutes...

So that's why, sixty years later, the Main Reading Room doesn't reek of cigarette smoke. Kudos, Mrs. Rhett.

Remember, smoking is not attractive. Except on Mad Men... then it's cool.

Another interesting thing from the minutes is the hours of operation the Library has held. While I've never seen a record of us being open on Sunday, the other 144 hours of the week have been fair game. Open at five, open at six, open at eleven in the morning; closed at three, closed at six, closed at nine at night... as customs evolved (and indoor lighting, and air conditioning, and the standard 9-5 business day came into existence), we've changed our hours of operation.

And as of tomorrow, we're doing it again. Every Wednesday through the end of cotillion season, the Library Society will remain open after 5:30 until 8:30. Circulation will remain open, through research services- i.e., trips to the vaults - will not be available. We hope you'll stop by and grab a book, have a cup of coffee, and enjoy the peace and quiet of the South's oldest cultural institution during our new "after work, during cotillion" hours.

Also, Norwich F.C. has soccer's oldest fight song. Pretty cool.

2010-10-19T17:01:00.000-04:00

Patrick McMillan's here Thursday night with a Speakers Series lecture entitled Nature On the Move: Reclaiming Our Place In the World. Patrick is host of the ETV series Expeditions with Patrick McMillan, a terrific naturalist, and the director of the Campbell Museum at Clemson University. We hope you'll be able to make it to this event, co-sponsored by the Coastal Conservation League. Thursday October 21st, 7PM. Free.

Mid-day Thursday we'll have the fourth installment of our Wide Angle Lunches as Geoffrey Van Orden, MBE MEP, joins us for a lunchtime lecture. Van Orden is a member of European Parliament, a member of the EU-Turkey Joint Parliamentary Committee, a former British Army Brigadier-General, and likely the first Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Painter-Stainers to lecture before the Library Society. The View From Europe: Turkey and Its Relationship With the West is this Thursday, 12:15-1:30 PM (lecture starts at 12:30), $10 for members, $14 for non.

And from the hills of Clemson, to the East of England and the Middle East, we move on to one more exotic* locale: Palermo, Sicily. Home to Italy's largest opera house, di Lampeduesa's magnificent The Leopard, and the city from which your loyal blogger's patrilineal predecessors set forth for America.

On November 8th, we'll host a lecture concerning one of Palermo's most notable sons, the Duke Fulco di Verdura. Born in Palermo in 1898, Verdura moved to America as a young man. When he wasn't hanging out with buddies like Cole Porter, he was making exotic jewelry for the likes of Coco Chanel, Greta Garbo, Wallace Simpson. Ward Landrigan of Verdura jewelers will be visiting the Library Society to give a presentation about the Duke and his company that will include rare pieces and original designs from the collection. Verdura and Women of Style is November 8th at 7PM. Admission is free, but please RSVP (843.723.9912 or rsvp@charlestonlibrarysociety.org)

*Okay, the "hills of Clemson" aren't all that exotic. And neither, for that matter, is the East of England. Though the Magic Roundabout is there. And Stephen Fry spent some time in Norfolk growing up. So they've got that going for them.

And once upon a time, this chick was in charge... awesome. [Though I prefer more blue paint and red hair.]

Stoop, angels, hither from the skies! It's blood book time.

2010-10-12T18:09:00.000-04:00

Today your loyal blogger realized (with some help from the handy search field in the top left of the blog) that he has never never shared the Henry Timrod Death Manuscript story on the pages of Shh!. And since today marks the Henry Timrod Death Manuscript's first day on display this season... here goes. [Fair warning: it's the long version, so stick with me.]

William Ashmead Courtenay would be on anyone's shortlist of Great Charleston Mayors, should anyone be so inclined to write such a list. [I think Johann A. Wagner is my vote for the Worst Charleston Mayor, which would would probably be more interesting list, but I digress.] Courtenay came to power in a city hemorrhaging money and overly focused on its antebellum glory. He fixed one of those problems. [Then he paved the major streets, and developed Colonial Lake and Marion Square, and saw the city through a major hurricane and the Earthquake of 1886 and their recovery efforts... heck of a guy.]

Though a modernizer and an ardent proponent of the idea of the "New South", Courtenay was nevertheless a great fan of pre-war Southern arts and letters. As a result, he purchased every book of poems, every scribbled couplet, every jot and tittle of work produced by 19th century Southern writers that he could get his hands on. And when those hands were stilled by death in 1908... he left his library of Southern letters to the Charleston Library Society.

So some original stuff by Simms, and P.H. Hayne and James Ryder Randall, amongst others, are all in our collection thanks to dear Mayor Courtenay. But perhaps the crown jewel of his collection is the Henry Timrod Death Manuscript.

Henry Timrod, the walrus-mustache wearin', Bob Dylan inspirin', Poet Laureate of the Confederacy was a very, very sickly man throughout his stay upon this mortal coil. So sickly the Confederacy sent him home. The same Confederacy that was desperately conscripting old men and young boys basically said "Henry, we'd rather lose the war than carry you around while you cough on everybody. Go home and write!"

And write Henry did, penning "Ode to the Confederate Dead", "Ethnogenesis", and our state song, "Carolina". But Henry continued to cough. Big, bloody, tuberculosis-filled expectorations. Then, late one night in 1867, with one final sanguinary convulsion, he hacked up his last.

Gesundheit!

And, according to the story, that's it. Right there on the page. Hank T.'s last sputtering of life. Tasteful chaps that we are, it traditionally goes on display here at the Library Society every October.

(And don't forget, if you want to see something equally historical, but a little less morbid, the Mouzon Map Unveiling is this Saturday at 7:30. $15 conservation contribution, please. Hors d'oeuvres by Rue de Jean. 843.723.9912 for more info)

Komm, gib mir deine geld

2010-10-06T11:42:00.001-04:00

As you most likely already know, tomorrow night is the second concert in the Unedited series, Unedited: Beatles, Bach &; Beer. [7PM, Main Reading Room of the CLS, $15, get em online here.]

Dear reader, your loyal blogger is resisting the temptation to turn this blog post into one long string of Beatles puns... and opening up iTunes and seeing that I've got 604 tracks tagged "Beatles" is not helping. I mean, "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite", "Come and Get It", "Please, Please Me"... these things are begging to be punned upon!

But I won't. Instead, how about a preview of tomorrow night's terrific setlist: "Something", "Hey Jude", Bach's chorale no. 6, "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", and a whole lot more. Music, beer, audience participation (you'd better be prepared to bark and howl during "Hey Bulldog"), and even a little door prize (somebody's getting a Charleston County Parks Gold Pass, good to get you into any county park for a year fo' free). Be there.

[And if you can't be there, you can still support the series. Go here to make a donation to Unedited via PayPal. 'Cause quality arts programming is not cheap. And what says quality like "Why Don't We Do It In the Road" performed on a cello?]

We all work in a Yellow Library...

Other music news: the Charleston Symphony Orchestra Leagueis having a black-tie fundraiser this weekend - details here - and Charleston Library Society members who wish to purchase a table at the event can get $250 off the price. If you're interested in this night of dinner, music, mingling, and a $200,000 silent auction, call Tara Scott, 843 723-7528, extension 102.

Chapter Two in an emerging tradition...

2010-09-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

Fry up your stubble-goose and bake up some bannockbread: it's Michaelmas! Term starts at Oxbridge and the Inns of Court, accounts are settled, reeves are elected for the shire, and (just like last year) the Library Society announces it's big Christmas season event! If you were at last year's Cocktail Party with Pat Conroy, you know what a wonderful night we had. So for chapter two, we announce,

A Special Evening with Bernard Cornwell, OBE.

Bernard's now a part-time Charleston resident; you might have had the privilege of hearing him at this year's Annual Meeting of the Library Society. If you did, then I'm sure you're skipping this part to get straight to the date/time/ticket info. If you missed him, then you missed a lecture at once erudite and compelling, but also witty and lively and just exceptionally, utterly enjoyable. And he's got a new book out, too, just his second on the American Revolution. Bernard+lecture+cocktails+Library Society at Christmas... It's going to be a great evening.

The Details: It's going to be 7PM on December 9th. Tickets will go on sale in late October. Prices and exact date of sale TBA. Look for it here first.

GIS for "Michaelmas". Seriously, England? Snape Kills Dumbledore,
Harry marries the hot chick, Universal builds a theme park... it's over.

And think of how cool trance music would sound with mandolins!

2010-09-23T14:20:00.001-04:00

As the ever-brilliant webcomic xkcd recently pointed out, "there's no reason to think that people throughout history didn't have just as many inside jokes and catchphrases as any modern group of high-schoolers." Tonight at the Library Society, we'll see another riff on the same theme. Dr. Nic Butler will present "Concert Night in Colonial Charleston; Or, How to Snare a Mate With Music". Nic wrote the excellent Votaries of Apollo: The St. Cecilia Society and the Patronage of Concert Music in Charleston, South Carolina, 1766-1822 (USC Press, 2007), and probably knows more about Charleston nightlife circa 1770 than anyone else around.

So if you're ready to find out about the colonial equivalent to our modern club scene, you need to get down here. Personally, I'm enjoying the mental image of a illuminated underfloor dancing surface, a la Club Light over on East Bay Street, existing in the 1700's. Fire, metal grating, etc.... it might actually be an improvement over the real Club Light.

7PM tonight, in the Main Reading Room. Free. There will be audio and visuals accompanying the talk, which Nic promises "will be light, fun, and just a little scandalous."

As an added bonus, we won't yell at you like those guys at Moe's Southwest Grill. So there.

2010-09-14T19:01:00.001-04:00

Wide Angle Lunches. Starting a week from today (September 21st), the Library Society will host the first of its new lunchtime lecture series. Targeted at young professionals looking to get out of the office and kick their brain into a different gear during their midday break, this fall's Wide Angle Lunches will feature six great speakers on six diverse topics - Nigel Redden talking about Spoleto, a Brit MEP discussing Turkey and the EU, the president of the SCHS on Reconstruction in Charleston... all sorts of interesting people taking on any topic.

It's fresh, it's challenging, it's engaging, and it comes with a sandwich and a soda.

It all starts Thursday September 21st. All lunches run from 12:30 to 1:30, and are $10 for members, $14 for non-members. Drop ins are okay, but please try to let us know in advance if you're coming... we want enough lunches to go around! 843.723.9912 or rsvp@charlestonlibrarysociety.org to reserve a seat, or for more information.

Unedited (and very brief).

2010-09-10T15:09:00.001-04:00

If you missed it, you messed up. Last night's concert, Unedited: Favorite Arias and Duets was by far the best fifty minutes of your loyal blogger's week (and it's been a pretty good week). If you missed Thursday, then we expect to see you for Unedited:Beatles Bach and Beer. It's October 2nd. Tickets are already available at the Library, and will be available online by the start of next week.

Okay, I'm off to set up those ticket sales. And get ready for the next big event announcement... look for it next week.

Occasions and causes why and wherefore in all things...

2010-08-31T10:33:00.003-04:00

Tuesday the 31st: August is now at a close, and all Fall stands before us. It's also the 588th anniversary of the death of Henry V, and with over fifty events taking place at the Library between now and year's end, we can repeat the chorus's question from Shakespeare's eponymous play: Can this cockpit hold the vasty fields of France? Or may we cram within this wooden "O" the very casques that did affright the air at Agincourt?

Well, we're not presenting live theatre (yet), but our "wooden O" will host half-a-dozen concerts, Toddler Tuesdays, a new film series, three exciting Lifelong Learning Series classes (including the Bard's tragedies, led by Nan Morrison), and a whole lot more.

Tomorrow night: a pair of films on architecture in Venice and Northern Italy. Drayton Hall is leading a tour group to the Veneto in September, and, in preparation, has some short films to show about the sights to be visited. Screenings will be here at the Library Society, and members of both organizations are invited to attend. 6-7:30 PM, Wednesday the 1st and Wednesday the 8th. Free for members. Please RSVP, 843.723.9912 or shoot us an email.

On sale now: tickets for Unedited: A Concert Series with Laura Ball and Friends. Tickets for Favorite Arias and Duets, the September 9th concert, and the whole series are currently available. Get them at the Library, over the phone (843 723 9912), or via the interweb by clicking here. $15 for one, $85 for all seven. Cheap. Get 'em quick.

Not on sale for much longer: Lifelong Learning Series classes start next week. More info here. Both are almost sold out, so if you want in, call us ASAP.

Final random fact for the day: it's Dubose Heyward's 125th birthday. Perhaps you should celebrate by visiting the CLS's "Rabbit Hole", dedicated to his children's classic, The Country Bunny.

Lisztomania (not Lizstomania, stupid), like a riot, like a riot, ohh...

2010-08-23T16:45:00.000-04:00

And so it begins, the first Monday of the rest of our lives (or at least the rest of our Fall events season).

Only two events this week: Thursday morning we're hosting a Darkness to Light Stewards of Children training session. This is a free training session addressing the issue of child sexual abuse. No registration is needed, and everyone is welcomed and encouraged to attend.

Thursday evening we're hosting Morsza, a voice and piano recital concert. Pianist Oszkar Morzsa and soprano Eva Morzsa, along with local violinist Nicholas Bentz will perform a program of Mozart, Chopin, Verdi-Liszt, Puccini, and Lehar in the Main Reading Room of the Charleston Library Society. Twenty bucks, cash only, at the door.

As for Lisztomania (and my apologies to the Morszas, Franz Liszt, and everyone else with the "sz" construction... bocsánat, bocsánat, bocsánat. Heaven knows how many times I have transposed those letters in the past few weeks.)... we hope you'll make it to the concert; we hope you're wildly excited about how great the concert is: but, we will have to ask that no one bottle the performers' coffee backwash...

Good morning, Tweetnam!

2010-08-10T10:07:00.000-04:00

So there are just under fifty days marked, for some reason or another, on the Library's events calendar between now and the end of the year as having some sort of Official Library Function. Plus, there's new construction aplenty around here- the revamped Research and Writing Center is largely complete (new doors just passed by my desk a few minutes ago).

Notice the chop saw in the new Librarian's Office... this is going to come in handy.

And as if that wasn't enough... well there's wine and goat cheese in the staff break room right now. 'Cause we're the library that dials the cool up to 11. Except for in the vaults, of course, they're permanently set at 22.2 degrees C. Anyhow, we're busy, and we're happening, and all the cool kids these days are doing it, and I wanted to use the atrocious stolen pun in this post's title... you can now follow the Library Society on Twitter, at #librarysociety.

Me and you, your momma, and your cousin too...

2010-08-06T14:41:00.001-04:00

It's hot, it's rainy, and now the elevators are dead. The minsis horribilis continues. SCE&G has swapped a transformer on our block, and until we get compatible motors, our elevators are just a pair of storage closets with electrically actuated doors. Oh well: the good folks at SCE&G are on top of it, so the elevators should be back posthaste.

But the bitter always comes with the better. Butter. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. How many boards could the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored. Irish wristwatch. Arg!

Okay, no more of that rubbish. The better = Unedited: A Concert Series with Laura Ball and Friends, which premiers about a month from now on September the 9th. A series of seven unique concerts, Unedited will present a wide spectrum of artists and styles, captained by inimitable soprano Laura Ball. September 9th is Favorite Arias and Duets, featuring a selection of film soundtrack favorites. Single event tickets are $15, and series tickets are $85 (about a twenty percent discount from single event price). Get 'em via paypal through our website, linked above, or call us, 843.723.9912.

But the real problem is the 7.2 inches of average monthly rainfall.

2010-08-02T12:15:00.000-04:00

August is a deplorable month. Perhaps its the heat, or the grinding boredom of the tail end of summer; whatever it is, August is the sweating, stinking cesspool of human history. Just pick a random August date - let's use today's, 2nd - and you'll find nothing but trouble. August 2nd, 216 BC: Roman defeat at Cannae. August 2nd, 1934: Hitler becomes führer. August 2nd, 1939: the Einstein–Szilárd letter kicks off the atomic bomb project. August 2nd 1964: Gulf of Tonkin incident. August 2nd, 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait. It's the death date of Caruso, Raymond Carver, Steven Vincent, and (the mournfully underrated) President Warren G. Harding.

In short, August is rubbish.

Except: the Library Society is kicking off its fall event season here in just a few weeks, and it's all going to start in August. So mark your calendar: August 26th, at 7 PM, we're hosting Morza, a voice and piano recital concert. Pianist Oszkar Morzsa and soprano Eva Morzsa, along with local violinist Nicholas Bentz will perform a program of Mozart, Chopin, Verdi-Lizst, Puccini, and Lehar in the Main Reading Room of the Charleston Library Society. Twenty bucks, cash only, at the door.

It doesn't make up for August and its heat, its rain, and its apparent propensity for terrible historical events, but it's going to be a heck of a concert. More info on our upcoming events page, as always.

WGH sez: be there.

Things I've said today

2010-07-26T10:04:00.000-04:00

It's July 26th, the birthday of novelist Aldous Huxley, and the death date of King Offa of Mercia, the guy who established the border between England and Wales (likely in an attempt to keep England safe from excess l's and y's, rarebits, and rogue Methodist men's choirs). It's also the 46th birthday of A Hard Day's Night, possibly your loyal blogger's favourite Beatles album.

It's also the one-week birthday of the Research and Writing Center's new construction project: a new office and a smaller, quieter, dedicated research room. Construction is moving along very quickly, and we'll be moving into the space before you know it.

They've been workin' like a dog...

"A thousand twangling instruments / Will hum about mine ears..."

2010-07-21T11:58:00.001-04:00

At least that's how Caliban put it in The Tempest. And it's not just true on Shakespeare's windswept isle, but true as well in the Library's Research and Writing Center. The Center is being thoroughly renovated, with new offices and reading bays in their own private, quiet space. The project is on schedule, and should be completed and ready for use by next week.

Until then, the twangling of power tools and hanging drywall and painting will hum about your ears, if you're in the other half of the Research and Writing Center. The rest of the Library, including the Main Reading Room, is as calm as ever.

In "The Spirit of Music", Geddy Lee reminded us the "machinery making modern music / can still be open-hearted, / not so coldly charted; / It's really just a question of your honesty." And- honestly- that little snippet of Canadian prog-rock might describe the renovation even better than the Bard. And, it's what the construction workers were listening to yesterday, so it's stuck in my head...

Rush: Canada's Shakespeare

Still waiting for our first Bar Mitzvah...

2010-07-07T16:56:00.000-04:00

Hotter than hades outside, fewer patrons inside, and no events on the calendar 'till September: summertime means project time around the Library. Latest result:

That's the front room of the Barnwell Annex, once home to audio books and lots and lots of beige. Now? It's a snazzy conference room; home to the Library's collection of French books; our 1825 Jean Alexandre Bouchon map of South Carolina; and this fall, home to our restored Mouzon map of South Carolina. It's a great space finally getting put to great use.

Speaking of using space around here, there is now a dedicated page on our website covering the basics of renting our rooms for your events. The info is also available in the downloadable .pdf on said page, if you'd prefer it that way. We've hosted parties, investment groups, genealogical conferences, a couple of weddings, and all sorts of other stuff here before: if you've got a get together, we'd love to host it.

It's not like our event calendar isn't free at the moment.

E pur si muove...

2010-06-22T15:39:00.000-04:00

It's June 22nd, the 377th anniversary of Galileo's forced abjuration of heliocentrism. Obviously neither Galileo nor the inquisitors were correct: the Earth and the Sun are consubstantial! Proof? Here in Charleston, it's 95+ degrees all week, with 70%+ humidity. Earth=Sun, Q.E.D.

Still, we're used to it, right? And warm weather will be no excuse come next Monday, as we march in the Carolina Day parade. 3 PM, Washington Park... be there!

ALSO HOT: our Fall events schedule! Programs with Nic Butler, Jack Weatherford, Patrick McMillan, and more! The return of our Lifelong Learning series, with Nan Morrison and Bret Lott! Concerts galore! Dates, times, and more info as it becomes available...

Also, I'm fairly sure the universe revolves

around Scottish actress Karen Gilian.

Prove me wrong, "science"!

Love letters from Mountain View

2010-06-15T16:29:00.002-04:00

You like us, you really like us!

Okay, sorry for (mis)quoting Sally Field and her Places In the Heart Oscar speech. [Besides, everyone knows her career peaked with Smokey and the Bandit.] No, your loyal blogger is gushing because we're now a Favorite Place on Google. During recent testing period, the CLS was one of the most popular local businesses on the ubiquitous search engine/knowledge repository/future artificially intelligent Emperor of Earth (all hail Google!). And we've now received our official "You're a Favorite Place" kit from the Googleplex. Now you can come in with your smartphone, scan our "Favorite Place on Google" sticker, and read reviews about us or access special coupons.

Of course, we don't have any special coupons, and and it doesn't look like anyone's written a review of us (hint, hint). But it's still nice to be liked, and even better when people codify exactly how much they like you, whether it's being voted President of the US, or becoming Miss Boiling Springs, SC, to merely being top 1% of businesses searched in the US (that's us!).

ALSO NICE: We're less than two weeks away from Carolina Day! Join us June 28th, at Washington Park, at 3PM for the march on to White Point Gardens. And don't forget the seersucker!

It worked for Joakim Noah!

Heat index: 103. Inside the library: 74. Where should you be right now?

2010-06-11T12:05:00.000-04:00

The Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival was a terrific success. A big thanks to our sponsors, Duvall Catering and Wachovia/Wells Fargo; to our Programs Committee, especially the indefatigable Dr. Jane Tyler; and, of course, to the six speakers -John McCardell, Louis Rubin, James Kibler, Farrell O'Gorman, Dacre Stoker, and Bob Anderson- who were the stars of the event. And, of course, one last huge "thank you" to all of y'all who came and paid your fifteen-dollars-for-the-event-plus-one-dollar-processing-fee and enjoyed the Festival. We can't wait for next year's series.

Are you in the photo above? If so, thanks!

But, with our part of Piccolo Spoleto over, it is officially summer around here. We've no events; no speakers; Toddler Tuesday is on hiatus... other than marching in the Carolina Day parade(seventeen days to go!), there's not much doing around here.

So stop by and grab a DVD or some light summer reading! We're all still here, and happy to help (except on the mornings of June 18th and 23rd, when the USA has World Cup games... then you can check out your own bloody books.) And don't forget, we're hard at work planning a great fall schedule, and we'll be announcing Autumn's events as we finalize them... Exciting speakers? Extended hours? Washed-up D-list celebrity guest librarians? A small green alien only Fred, Barney and Pebbles can see? Tune in next time to find out!!!

Only a few more months 'till we get Bernard back...

2010-05-26T14:39:00.002-04:00

For those of you who missed his excellent speech at this year's Annual Meeting of the Library Society, here's part-time Charleston resident, full time friend of the Library Society, and all-around awesome guy Bernard Cornwell, delivering the commencement speech for Emerson College. Not many commencement speakers manage to keep their audience awake... Bernard got them on their feet, earning a standing ovation by the end of his address. If you've got ten minutes, spend it watching this:

Off, to the land of cheesesteaks and Tastycakes!

2010-05-25T16:01:00.001-04:00

Well, your loyal blogger is about to take his first vacation day of the year. The US men's national soccer team has their last home match before the World Cup in Philly this weekend, and that's where I shall be. I couldn't be more excited about my first visit to a city that's been so well depicted in art and culture- Philadelphia, thirtysomething, Boy Meets World, Dawn of the Dead, 12 Monkeys, the opening credits to The Fresh Prince of Bel Air, One Life to Live, Always Sunny... okay, most screen depictions of Philadelphia have been kinda terrifying, or at least kinda depressing. Still, great art museum, great music and sculpture, and I get to watch us whip Turkey's keister... pretty great.

But what I'm missing is going to be pretty great, too: the CSO Spirituals Ensemble is performing here at the Library Society this Saturday (May 29th) at 7:00 PM. Tickets are $21, and are available through Piccolo Spoleto. The concert, Circa 1748: Bridging Oral and Literary Traditions, is a joint project of the Ensemble and the Library Society, and will explore traditional historical connections between vocal and written arts. Mostly, it's going to be the CSO Spirituals Ensemble doing what they do best, which is being awesome. I might be missing Saturday's performance, but I was able to make it to their rehearsal last night: they're going to rock the roof off. Also great, Literary Festival next week. See you there!

Ed il vostro uccello può cantare

2010-05-19T12:06:00.000-04:00

Monday night's Dixie, Denim, and Drinks was a smashing success, and if you missed it, you really missed out. We would like to give a big thanks to all of the performers- Laura Ball, Peter Kiral, Courtney Sharp, Edoardo Carpenedo, and Erica Carpenedo- and hope that they'll be back to perform for us again. While we're big fans of "quiet in the library", this concert certainly showcased the joy of a little occasional noise around here!

So we are now officially "warmed up" for Spoleto; on to Piccolo proper. First up is another great concert called Circa 1748. This is a joint project of the CLS and the CSO Spiritual Ensemble, incorporating our historical written materials with the vocal talents of the Spiritual Ensemble. May 29th, 7PM, here at the CLS.

June 3-5 is the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival, kindly sponsored by Wachovia and Duvall Catering. Starting at 10 AM on the 3rd, John McCardell will discuss The Civil War and Historical Memory; at 3 PM Louis Rubin will talk about his new book, Uptown/Downtown in Old Charleston. June 4th at 10 AM we'll have James Kibler present Getting Reacquainted with William Gillmore Simms, Poet; at 3 PM Farrell O'Gorman will give Writing Faith and Doubt in the Contemporary South: Walker Percy's Legacy. At 10 AM on the 5th, former 60 Minutes producer Robert G. Anderson will tell us What NOT to Say to Mike Wallace; and at 3PM Dacre Stoker will discuss Unlocking Some of the Mysteries of Dracula, from the Stoker Family Perspective.

Event tickets for Circa 1748 and the Festival are available wherever Piccolo Spoleto tickets are sold. The concert is $21, and the literary lectures $16.

Immediately following the will be our annual Literary Soiree, at 7 PM on the 5th. Join some of our speakers and your fellow festival goers, and have a nosh courtesy of Duvall Catering. Tickets are $15, and are available directly though the Library Society, 843.723.9912.

They're so old, we're thinking about naming them "Strom" and "Thurmond"...

2010-05-13T17:12:00.000-04:00

The Library Society is now about 260 years old. That makes us the oldest cultural institution in the South; it impresses the heck out of visitors from out West who seem to think anything predating the Carter administration is ancient; and it secures us a spot near the front of the Carolina Day Parade line. Being 260 years old is kinda cool.

But our collections include a few manuscripts from as far back as the 15th century, and some Indic statuary from as far back as the 10th. Absorbing that level of historicity is always amazing- to pick up a document and think, "This book was written the year Lorenzo de' Medici died", or "That little statue was around before the Normans conquered England". Everyday, you're gobsmacked by the elastic nature of time on a grand scale: how can I call George Washington's letters as "old" when something created eight centuries prior sits a few yards away?

But then, then!, there are the twinned doyen of our collections: the ginkgos that flank our Main Entrance. While ours were planted Garden Club in 1922 - practically yesterday, right? - the ginkgo is a survivor from the Permian Era - 270 million years ago. Our Society might predate the United States; but ginkgos were around before flowering plants. Before birds. Before mammals.

That is old. That is awesome.

And now, best of all? That awesomeness has been formally recognized! Our ginkgos are not just living fossils, they are the Charleston Horticultural Society's 2010 Outstanding Trees Award in the "Nonprofit" category. We've even got a nifty trophy to boot. There are a lot of great trees in the Lowcountry, and we're in really good company with our sister organizations that have won this award before: we really couldn't be prouder that the great organic members of our collections have been recognized in this manner.

Other reasons to stop by soon: "Dixie", Denim, and Drinks is this Monday night, it's going to be terrific, and tickets are going fast. Call us and buy yours today. Circa 1748 is just over a fortnight away (May 29). The Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival is the weekend after that (June 3-5). Tickets for 1748 and the Festival are all available through Piccolo Spoleto. Also, Toddler Tuesday is going on summer break, as of June 1. It'll be back this fall, having failed to do its summer reading but sporting a wicked tan.

Next year I'll talk about something pleasant... like Bohemia or Dos Equis...

2010-05-05T16:19:00.000-04:00

Having written about Cinco de Mayo last year, your loyal blogger thought he might preface this post with some alternative May the fifth trivia. Originally, this paragraph was to be about the death of Galerius (May 5th, 311 AD), the Roman emperor who was a major architect of the Diocletianic Persecution. Then I realized the only interesting thing about Galerius was his death:as St. Luke said of Herod Agrippa, he was eaten by worms. Thanks to Google, I learned that "worms" probably indicates Fournier gangrene. And thanks to Google Image Search, I've learned exactly what Fournier gangrene is... and I shan't be able to eat for days. Not cool.

What is cool is the Lifelong Learning Series classes slated for this fall. Following on the tremendous success of the winter salon, Bret Lott will be back to guide a ten week course on fiction writing. Across the hall, the Shakespeare scholar, former department chair, and CofC legend Nan Morrison will be teaching a six-week course on the tragedies of Shakespeare. Also cool (for us) is how fast these classes are filling up: they don't start until September 7th, we've barely advertised them, and they're already three quarters full. If you want in on either of these great programs, contact the Library Society ASAP.

Also, next Thursday, May the 13th the CLS will host Jennie Stephens of the Center for Heirs' Property Preservation to discuss the Center's work in providing free legal, educational, and other services to people attempting to clear title to Heirs' Property. The free event runs from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

Don't forget for more info on any CLS event (like "Dixie", Denim and Drinks; Circa 1748; and the whole bleeding Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival), check our website, give us a call at 723.9912, or send us an email. 'Cause missing our great events would be terrible... terrible like Fournier gangrene!

Monday night's alright for singing...

2010-04-27T14:50:00.000-04:00

"Spoleto's winged chariot is hurrying near, and yonder all before us lie artistic and cultural events."

Andrew Marvell never said it, but it's still true: May is next week, and that means it's Piccolo Spoleto time. Of course, the Library Society will once again host the Piccolo Spoleto Literary Festival: full details here.

But that's not all!

But that's not all!

We've also got Circa 1748: Bridging Oral and Literary Traditions. This Piccolo event will be a unique and engaging evening illustrating connections between written and oral art traditions. We'll be using the written materials of the Library Society, and the vocal talents of the CSO's Spiritual Ensemble. Circa 1748 will be Saturday, 29th at 7:00 PM, at the Library Society. Tickets are $20, available wherever Piccolo Spoleto tickets are sold.

And finally (because I'm announcing events in the reverse order they will occur), on Monday, May 17th, we're having a "warm-up for Spoleto", entitled "Dixie", Denim, and Drinks. DDD is going to be a fun, light (about 50 minute) program, featuring musical glimpses of the American folk tradition from Dvorak, Jake Heggie, Libby Larsen, and Carlisle Floyd. Laura Ball, Peter Kiral, Courtney Sharp, Edoardo Carpenedo, and Erica Carpenedo will be performing. Tickets are $15, available through the Library Society, 843 723.9912. As the title suggests, the dress code is informal, and there will be drinks. Sounds like a good way to spend a Monday to me.

"He turned to me as if to say, Hurry boy, It's waiting there for you."

2010-04-20T11:57:00.002-04:00

Since there are no more events left at the Library Society this month (other than standing events like Toddler Tuesdays), your loyal blogger is going to make a book endorsement, preceeded by a brief story. Because today, April 20th, is the 182nd anniversary of René Caillié's entrance into Timbuktu.

In the late 1700s, European soldiers left unemployed by the end of the Seven Years War, lined up in the search for the fabled lands of the African interior. Legend held it to be the home of the great river Niger, which flowed into the Nile, and drained a valley filled with rich kingdoms and cities. The greatest of these -and the rumour that kept European explorers awake at night- was a city of solid gold, known as Timbuktu.

A Scot named Mungo Park became the first white man to reach the Niger River (1795), but was forced by bandits and ill health to return home before reaching Timbuktu. Soon after, another Scot, Alexander Gordon Laing, crossed the Sahara and became the first European to visit Timbuktu: he received twenty four wounds fighting with desert raiders on the way there, and lost his life shortly after leaving, leaving the "golden city" as distant and mysterious to Europeans as it ever was.

It took René Caillié to get there and get back. Caillié was a sickly orphan, born in the west of France in 1799. A voracious reader, the young Caillié's favourite book was Robinson Crusoe, and at age sixteen he set off for adventures that would impress even Defoe's fictional hero. He worked in West Africa- even helping to resupply a failed British mission to Timbuktu- and became familiar with the string of elaborate expeditions that, one after another, could not manage the trip to Timbuktu. Caillié decided that he, individually, could succeed where great collective effort had failed.

To do this Caillié went native. He moved to Mauritania, living with Senegalese Moors, absorbing their language and culture. Having done this, he moved down the coast to a British indigo plantation, where he worked to save up money for his trip. One day he put on his best Moorish garb and declared he was an Arab from Egypt, abducted by the French on the way to Mecca, and joined a native caravan headed east.

Caillié blended in well enough. His ostentatious show of Muslim prayer probably aroused more suspicion than it allayed, but was certainly received better than the bombastic shows of Christian religiosity performed by prior British travellers. Largely he was ignored because he was too poor to steal from. Arriving safely at Timbuktu, he spent a few weeks wandering the ancient city, noting that it was made not of gold, but "...a mass of ill-looking houses, built of earth." While it was once an important city during the Mali and Songhai empires, its glory days were long gone. He caught a caravan headed north, trekked across the Sahara, and arrived safely back in France. He became a national hero: he was awarded many francs, the Légion d'honneur, and the state even underwrote the publishing of his book Travels through Central Africa to Timbuctoo; and across the Great Desert, to Morocco.

The other half of this story- and my endorsement- is what France later did in pursuit of Caillié's legacy: thirty years of failed expedition after failed expedition in an attempt to tame the Sahara and open a north-south route from Algiers to the Niger. This (perhaps surprisingly) interesting story is covered in Douglas Porch's The Conquest of the Sahara. It's at the Library Society... upstairs, to the right, fourth isle down, number F78 P82. And don't forget, reading 300 pages describing the Sahara makes good preparation for the upcoming Charleston summer...

Celebrating Thomas Jefferson's birthday with a little paper chasin'...

2010-04-13T15:22:00.001-04:00

Event news: Gordon Rhea will be here Thursday evening at 6:00 PM for a lecture on Charles Whilden, an unsung hero of the War Between the States, and about whom Rhea chronicled in Carrying the Flag. The lecture is free; copies of the book will be available for $17.

Non-"events" event news: the Library Society has recently received an anonymous pledge to match up to $25,000 worth of giving!

The aim of the gift is to both increase membership, and to increase the giving of existing membership levels. Any giving above the normal $75 Friend of the Library membership level counts towards the matching pledge. So, if you're currently a Friend of the Library, consider throwing in an extra $25 bucks and upgrading to the Beatrice Witte Ravenel Circle.

To better recognize and facilitate this giving, we've split the Beatrice Witte Ravenel Circle of giving (formerly $100-$499) and created the John Bennett Circle for gifts of $250-$499. Not only does this honor a great Charleston novelist and poet, it's a great way to help the Library meet this challenge grant. Call with a credit card, stop by or mail in a check, or you can always donate via Paypal here. We hope you will consider helping the Library take full advantage of this $25,000 opportunity!

Jazz at the Library (and the Girl in the Curls!)

2010-04-08T11:24:00.000-04:00

April 8th! The anniversary of Roman Emperor and notorious bath-designer Caracalla's assassination (the jerk!); President of the United States and notorious balcony-designer Harry Truman's steel seizure (the jerk!); and Canadian starlet and notorious Douglas Fairbanks-designer Mary Pickford's 118th birthday (not a jerk, I suppose).

Rambling, pointless story time: Mary Pickford starred in Kiki with Reginald Denny, who (in addition to designing America's first UAV) starred in the 1966 film Batman, which of course starred Adam West and Burt Ward, who teamed up for the terrible early-2000s TV movie Return to the Batcave, which also starred a young Amy Acker, who played Whiskey/Dr. Saunders on the sadly-short-lived TV show Dollhouse. Dollhouse starred Albanian-American megababe Eliza Dushku, whom your loyal blogger once sat behind at a Red Sox game (which thoroughly made my Summer of 2007). So that, kids, is my Mary Pickford story...

And on the topic of the world of entertainments, a LIBRARY EVENT: we've got a brass quintet playing the Library Society this Friday night at 7 PM. This event was originally scheduled through the CSO; and while the CSO has suspended operations, we are still hosting the same great musicians (including world-renowned jazz drummer Quentin Baxter), and ticket sales ($15) go directly to the musicians. Tickets are available at the door, or call us at 843.723.9912. To recap, IT'S NOT CANCELLED. See you there!

"If it's Truth you're looking for, Dr. Tyree's philosophy class is right down the hall."

2010-03-31T11:47:00.001-04:00

Today is the 414th birthday of Rene Descartes! Perhaps best known as the cogito ergo sum guy, the works of Descartes were rooted in methodic doubt: grinding one's own beliefs and sensory input up against rigourous skepticism. Only by pounding away the falsehoods of irrational thought could one attempt to discover Truth.

More importantly (sorry, philosophy majors), the guy kinda invented analytic geometry, laid the foundation for modern calculus, discovered the law of reflection (and first published the law of refraction), and devised exponential notation. For a guy who spent most of his time thinking his basic senses were lying to him, he was kind of a genius.

That's why the early Library Society picked up a 1664 copy of his Principia Philosophiae. Before Descartes' Principia Philosophiae, European colleges were teaching physics with the works of Aristotle. Think about that the next time you see a middle school complaining about thirty-year old civics books (not that I can remember a teacher ever getting past WWII, anyway).

How to get young males interested in physics:

put Wisdom in a tight breastplate and have her show some midriff.

FACTS: The CSO has suspended operations, but the concerts scheduled for the Library Society this spring are still going to happen. The first one is Friday, April 9th. Tickets are $15, available though the CLS. Also, Gordon Rhea is giving a lecture here on April 15th. There's no cover, and if you like War-Between-the-States history, you should be there. Call 843.723.9912, or email us at info@charlestonlibrarysociety.org.

This Post, by Clifford Jacobs (with Maxine Paetro)

2010-03-22T10:50:00.001-04:00

It's March 22nd! Happy 63rd birthday James Patterson, and a happy day to the dozens of other babies born on other dates but celebrating "collaboratively" under his name.

Last week was the last week of Bret Lott's Writing Salon here at the Library Society. It was, by all accounts, a runaway success: if there was a problem, it was only the disappointment of the people who discovered its existence too late to sign up. To make sure that problem doesn't repeat itself, we are announcing the next two groups for this "Lifelong Learning" series months ahead of time. This fall, Bret Lott will return for another Writing Salon; and Nan Morrison, former chair of English at The College of Charleston, will host a six-week course on the tragedies of Shakespeare. We couldn't be more excited about both programs...

Keanu Reeves as Don Juan: actual Shakespearean tragedy, dude.

When the seersuckers come back to St. Phillip's...

2010-03-19T12:49:00.000-04:00

"When the swallows come back to Capistrano,
That's the day I pray that you'll come back to me"
-"When the Swallows Come Back to Capistrano", Leon René

It's St. Joseph's Day, the day the cliff swallows (in theory) return to San Juan Capistrano. Charleston might not have petrochelidon pyrrhonota punctually popping in, but we do have our own sure signs of the season... Mr. Michaux's camellias start to bloom; tourists clot every crosswalk; CofC coeds ~~treat Marion Square like a beach~~ teach Wendell Gilliard about the first amendment...

Leon René might never have written a song about the onset of spring here in the Holy City, but it is very nice nonetheless. Also nice? Upcoming Library Society Events!

NEXT WEEKEND: Book Sale!

NEXT MONTH: CSO Brass Ensemble, evening of the 9th. Later, on April 15th, we're hosting a talk by attorney, author, and guy-who-knows-more-about-Grant-and-Lee's-Overland Campaign-than-anyone-else-on-the-planet, Gordon Rhea. Mr. Rhea will be sharing the story of Charles Whildon. An unsung hero during the American Civil War, Whilden grew up on Magazine Street, and his father was editor of the Carolina Gazette, begun in about 1820. Whilden fought in Virginia and his story was movingly told in Rhea's book, Carrying the Flag. More info soon.

Bestriding the narrow world...

2010-03-15T17:16:00.001-04:00

Happy Ides of March! It's been 2054 years since Julius Caesar took a trip to the theatre, and 24 hours since your loyal blogger took a (pre-)St. Pat's trip to Savannah... Happily (for me, if not for Republican Rome), I made it through my trip in better shape than Caesar did his. Sorry, Julius, the fault wasn't in your stars, but in yourself.

Last Thursday's lecture and book signing for Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America was a massive success. A big thanks both to John Avlon for lecturing, and to all of our members who attended for attending. And not to preach, but last Thursday should also be a reminder of the increasing importance of RSVPing early: I think the days of having empty chairs at lectures are now long gone!

This week: the NEGHS event is this Thursday: more info here.

Next week: Steve White, director of the Karpeles Manuscript Museum and founder of the Charleston Historical Society, amongst other things, will be giving a talk on March 25th at 7:00 PM up at the Karpeles (68 Spring Street) on Irish president Eamon DeValera's 1920 visit to Charleston. Steve's been doing a good bit of the research for this stuff down here at the Library Society, and has kindly treated your loyal blogger to some early insights from his work... lemme say now, this is going to be a great lecture.

Week after that: Spring Book Sale... see you at the Barnwell Annex, Saturday the 27th!

Next thirty days: Charleston Symphony Orchestra's Brass Quintet will be here, the Charleston Bible Society will have a big anniversary bash, and a lecture from noted American Civil War historian Gordon Rhea.

From the collections: Happy 264th, Andre! edition

2010-03-08T14:59:00.004-05:00

While I should plunge right into reminders of this month's full event's schedule, I'll put that off for tomorrow. More importantly, it's the 264th birthday of French botanist Andre Michaux. While Michaux had some formal education early in life, his great botanical skills were developed working on his father's farm near Versailles. This proximity to the royal palace, coupled with Michaux's ability to grow almost anything, brought him to the attention of the French court. He was sent to learn under the best botanists in the country, and soon sent to work as a botanist in the field.

It's this field work that brought Michaux into contact with the Library Society. After a three-year trip through the Middle East, he was named the Royal Botanist, and sent to North America. He spent some time in Philadelphia: hanging out with Ben Franklin, establishing a research garden. After about a year, he sailed south for Charleston. He grew his experimental plants- crepe myrtles, mimosas, camellias- at Middleton Place; and he met with the foremost scientific minds in Charleston - the intellectual heirs to Alexander Garden and John Lining- here at the Library Society.

Though further travel led him all across North America, he kept a home base here in Charleston until his return to France in 1796. From the time of his arrival here, until his death in 1802, Michaux would send books and manuscripts back to Charleston. One of these, the Ikhtiyarat-i Badi'i, is pictured here:

The leg-bone's connected to the thigh bone...

The Ikhtiyarat-i Badi'i, written in 1492, is one of the oldest manuscripts the Society possesses. It is a medical textbook from Isfahan, Persia, written at what, in the 15th century, was the world's most advanced hospital. Today it's available for viewing here at the Society (and available for reading if you can read middle Farsi...), so come by soon and ask for the Ikhtiyarat-i Badi'i by Haji Zayn al-Attar, Zayn al-Din 'Ali ibn al-Husayn al-Ansari (but be sure to pronounce it right so we know what you're talking about).

"Thanks to Heinz Baked Beans, every day is a super day!"

2010-03-01T11:07:00.001-05:00

John Avlon has sold out.

Not "sold out" like the Stones during the Windows 95 launch, or Dennis Hopper with those blasted Ameriprise commercials, or Led Zeppelin selling Cadillacs, mind you. There are just no longer tickets available for his event here at the CLS on the 11th. Sorry, Charlie, should have RSVP'ed sooner.

"Sorry, Charlie" copyright StarKist Co.

Mmm... StarKist Tuna, the official tuna of the Charleston Library Society. Buy some, today!

"Pass before my eyes with curiosity..."

2010-02-24T13:42:00.001-05:00

Last week, you were warned our Dubose Heyward display was on its way out. This week, FYI, George Washington is in! So, as the tourist season slowly begins to warm up, and Betty and Jim from East Nowhere, Kansas wander in, looking resplendent in their KU sweatpants (and a little winded from their trip up the steps), your loyal blogger (happily) has this conversation dozens of times:

"Yes, this is a real library."
"Yes, 'normal' people are allowed in here."
"Yes, that is a card catalog."
"Yes, we have movies, and John Grisham novels, and computers and all that."

At this point, Betty and Jim become visibly more comfortable, realizing that this is just like the Nowhere County Library back home, just a little bigger and older, and with marble floors instead of commercial-grade carpet... and then:

"Oh, and over there are our George Washington letters."

Suffice it to say, Betty and Jim are impressed. This is slightly cooler than, say Carrie Nation's hatchet or George Custer's boots (they're at the Kansas Museum of History, check them out next time you're in Topeka!), if for no other reason than Nation and Custer were jerks, and ol' George was awesome.

Yep. George Washington was AWESOME.

Anyhow, the good President G.W.'s stuff is now on display here at the Society. Don't forget, John Avlon, a guy who has a thing or two to say about presidents and politicians himself, is here March 11th. Tickets are 10 bucks for members, 15 for non-members: RSVP today, 843.723.9912.

P.S. Sorry, Jayhawkers. And yes, I know you're the state of Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Clyde Tombaugh, Hattie McDaniel, William S. Burroughs, Dust in the Wind, Dennis the Menace, John Outland, Dean Smith, the Koch brothers, Superman, Buster Keaton, Bill Kurtis, Miss America 1997, and the (almost-as-good-as-a-Krystal) White Castle burger... so, thanks, Kansans, no harm, no foul!

From the collections: clandestine plug edition.

2010-02-17T12:09:00.000-05:00

After spending half of last fall, and the whole of January on display, we're returning DuBose Heyward's original handwritten manuscript for "Porgy" to the vault this week. If you haven't seen it, look at the image directly above... not as satisfying as coming in to see the real thing, is it? Well, it's still out today, so hurry by.

Other things to come and see: John Avlon (more of a person than a thing, really) will be here to discuss his new book on political wingnuts (more things than persons, really), memorably entitled Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe is Hijacking America. 7 PM, March 11th: tickets are selling briskly, so RSVP now. A week later on March 18th, we'll be hosting the New England Genealogical and Historical Society for a day of conferences. Registration is $30 (if postmarked before March 1, 2010); $40 (if postmarked after March 1, 2010). Contact NEHGS's Joshua Taylor, Director of Education and Programs by phone, 617-227-1226, or e-mail, jtaylor@nehgs.org, for more info.

Spring Book Sale: Announced.

2010-02-10T14:55:00.000-05:00

The date for the Library Society's Spring Book Sale has now been set: the weekend of March 27th. You may now make your springtime plans around it.

Between now and then- donate your old books and CD's. What we can't use for the collection goes to the sale, so you're helping out the Library no matter what. Also between now and then: Phi Beta Kappa reception (March 5), John Avlon lecture (March 11th), St. Patrick's Day (March 17th), and the New England Historical and Genealogical Society Meeting (March 18th).

Not that we're doing anything for St. Pat's, but your loyal blogger will most likely be on the front steps watching the parade instead of sitting inside working, so... that's kinda an event, right?

Deo Vindice...

2010-02-04T16:23:00.002-05:00

Your loyal blogger has acquired a new work computer after about three years of begging, so please pardon any delays in blog posting or updating the website. It's taking some time to transfer years of photos, fonts, bookmarks, address lists, applications, etc. from The Underpowered Compaq From Hell to my shiny new Mac, hallowed be its name.

And since there's Young Professionals tonight, and a new brochure that needs to be mocked up, and event photos to tag, and in a few minutes, it'll be Children's Storytime downstairs, I'll just share a quick anecdote about work at a 262 year old institution:

This morning, your loyal blogger was called upon to help satisfy the need of a certain federal agency to prove that the Charleston Library Society is, truly, an ancient and venerable eleemosynary library, and not a sinister terrorist front. And to be fair to the diligent fellows of the DHS, the Society has held a copy of the Qur'an for longer than we've been "Americans"... our Qur'an dates from 1762, twelve years before the founding of this country.

So we get a call this morning that we need something- anything really- that shows our organization's legal incorporation, and proves we're real, live, nephews of our Uncle Sam, born on the Fourth of July. Which would be easy enough, if we weren't chartered by the monarch of another country, Mr. George the II, King of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Hannover, Prince-Elector of the Holy Roman Empire.

This little issue required going back and finding out if His Highness's Royal Charter is still good enough to prove we're not terrorists. Apparently it is (I suppose it does indicate we're not IRA members, at least). So now that it's approved, your loyal blogger must make a copy of the document to send in. One doesn't just stick a Royal Charter in the Xerox machine, especially since the chances of getting a new one from ol' Liz Windsor are slim-to-none. So I also got permission to use "the first reprint of the charter that is in good enough shape to photocopy".

So the (fully approved) document now on file, the one that shows we're no threat to the "homeland", is the Library Society's Act of Incorporation... printed by A.J. Burke, 40 Broad Street, Charleston, C.S.A, 1861... NHS, osculare pultem meam.

That's it. Young Professionals tonight, library's closed on the 15th, and check us out in the latest issue of Charleston Magazine!

Notes for a busy St. Brigid's Day...

2010-02-01T11:28:00.000-05:00

Today is St. Brigid's Day, number three on the list of "Patron Saints of Ireland", behind Saints Patrick and Columba. Also the birthday of Children's Library favourite Meg Cabot, author of The Princess Diaries; and the happy 145th anniversary of the signing of the Thirteenth Amendment (Immediato v. Rye Neck and the draft notwithstanding). Around the Library Society, it's a day of painting (lots of blue!), replacing (lots of videos!), and preparing (lots of invitations for Spring events!).

First Event: Thursday, February 4th, our monthly Young Professionals' series resumes after a brief winter hiatus. We'll have artist Whitney Kreb as our featured guest, and some of her work will be on display. Those of you who have visited our Children's Library recently have already seen some of Whitney's work. Those of you who haven't are in for a treat.

Also coming up, the New England Historical and Genealogical Society will be at the CLS for an afternoon of genealogical education on Thursday, March 18th This event will include a session on techniques for finding a wife's maiden name, using DNA in your genealogical research, and a reception. For more information, contact D. Joshua Taylor, Director of Education and Programs by phone at 617.227.1226, or e-mail. Registration for the event is $30 (if postmarked before March 1, 2010), or $40 (if postmarked after March 1, 2010).

Toddler Tuesday, the activity/storytime for kids 18mo. to 5 years, held here at the Library every Tuesday at 10:15, now has an afternoon counterpart! Every Thursday at 3:30 PM, CLS and Gibbes members can bring the little ones in their life for a fun story and free play in our Children's Library "the Rabbit Hole".

Also on deck this season: the Charleston Bible Society, the CSO's Brass Ensemble, John Avlon, and a whole lot more. So, come in, check out the latest round of remodelling, check out some Meg Cabot, and have get ready for a some great Spring events.

Sharpe's Lunch

2010-01-27T15:01:00.001-05:00

As the 177 of you who where there last night know, the Annual Meeting was a huge success. The speaker was entertaining, the food was good, and the business end of things was wonderfully brief. Bernard Cornwell was gracious and charming in his address to the meeting, while signing books, and when mingling with the very excited attendees: in short, he's the opposite of Obadiah Hakeswill in every way.

Now, pardon my brevity, but your loyal blogger is headed to the staff room to attend to the business of "putting away the leftovers"...

"O! thou hast damnable iteration, and art indeed able to corrupt a saint."

2010-01-25T12:09:00.000-05:00

Your loyal blogger was up last night reading Marjorie Garber's Shakespeare and Modern Culture, an occasionally excellent set of essays on our evolving contemporary perceptions of the Bard's plays. I must admit a bias towards Garber's work, stemming from her defence of the 1996 movie Romeo + Juliet as just-as-good-if-not-better than the 1968 film adaptation. As anyone else who was in school when Baz Luhrmann's utterly charming, painfully witty, and visually epic R+J was released remembers, it was wrongfully yet universally despised by English teachers nationwide as mere pop pablum.

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but apparently a Southern California setting, and an MTV-approved soundtrack disqualify the Bard's work from the status of "great art".

Perhaps more interesting in Shakespeare and Modern Culture is Garber's ambitious look at Henry V as an example of Jacques Derrida's concept of iterability. Remember: he is not just his in own eponymous play, but he's Henry IV's disappointing lowlife son, Prince Hal. In Henry V, he is the same character written by the same playwright in the same series of histories, but a new iteration of himself: once the young gadabout is now the mature hero of Agincourt.

And now for another illustration of iterability: our 262nd Annual Meeting is tomorrow night, at 5PM. While it won't be as lavish as the 20th iteration (1768, for which our records show a price tag of just under a million dollars in today's money), it will have wine (unlike, say, the 259th iteration), and it will have Bernard Cornwell -a man who knows a little something about Agincourt- as guest speaker, making it the first iteration to be addressed by an Officer of the Order of British Empire (at least, the first time since we stopped being a member of the British Empire). It's also the first time parking will be available at the SCE&G lot adjacent to the Library.

Derrida wrote:

iterability makes possible idealization- and thus, a certain identity in repetition that is independent of the multiplicity of factual events- while at the same time limiting the idealization it makes possible: broaching and breaching it at once.

Which, I think means, that while we won't have a spiral sliced ham or those little pastel mints, there will be tasty little egg rolls, and Bernard Cornwell, which is pretty close to ideal. So, as Derrida himself, and all the dead knights of Agincourt might say, vous devez être là!

Good news, everyone!!!

2010-01-22T16:08:00.000-05:00

The SCE&G Parking lot- the huge lot directly above our own will be availabe for CLS members next Tuesday afternoon for the Annual Meeting. This should solve lots and lots of the parking hassles that always come with (otherwise wonderful) CLS events.

Good news everyone! Your memberships are all cancelled.

Strap on your tiny gold shoes...

2010-01-20T16:32:00.000-05:00

January 20th! St. Sebastian's Day, the 227th anniversary of the end of the American Revolutionary War, and the ACLU's 90th birthday. Sure they don't care about the 2nd, 9th, or 10th amendments; and haven't done so great in protecting the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, or 8th... but I can still burn a flag, and I've never had a soldier attempt to quarter in my house during peacetime, so... thanks, ACLU!

Jokes aside: don't forget the Children's Library Open House is tomorrow. There will be cookies and candies and drinks from 3:30 PM 'till 5:00. We hope you and your associated little ones will drop by and see "The Rabbit Hole", have some snacks, and learn more about the exciting new children's programs and events we've set up around here.

From the Collections: Finding Midshipman Easy Edition

2010-01-15T16:45:00.001-05:00

Announcement of the 1890 Annual Meeting, Guest Speaker, the Hon. Senator Strom Thurmond.

I know it's a day late, but at least its a little more interesting than the standard FtC fare. Today's "From the Collections" is Manuscript #29, the c.1840-c.1890 Library Society Scrapbook. Though its content is mostly from post-war time period (most of the 1840's documents are the "pay your fines (or we break your thumbs)" sort of letters), it covers what might be called a "Silver Age" of CLS history. The 1874 merger with the Apprentices' Library; the subsequent search for a new library building; and a very aggressive series of growth and development programs. These include a half-dozen pieces in the News and Courier aimed at increasing donations or membership, info and tickets from a series of lectures and concerts, and even a early membership brochure.

Expect some of this stuff to make it into the CLS history display in the Main Reading Room soon. Until then: this stuff, like everything else in the historic collection, is available for all patrons to view and study- just ask!

Hearing C.C. Pinckney talk about Scotland in 1890 cost 25 cents more

than hearing Bernard Cornwell two weeks from now. Think about it..

Please support the new Children's Library, (circa 1885.)

Rabbit, Run

2010-01-14T16:39:00.000-05:00

As your loyal blogger is just returning from some time off, we're preempting "From the Collections" for following news bulletin:

Toddler Tuesdays are here(!): every Tuesday from 10:15 to 11:00 AM in the new Children's Library here at 164 King. Our very first was this week, and, was by all accounts both storytimetacular and fingerpainttastic. It's also free for all 3-5 year old kids with the accompaniment of CLS or Gibbes Muesum members.

If you have yet to see the "Rabbit Hole", as we're affectionately calling it, we've got a Children's Library Open House on Thursday, January 21st from 3:30 'till 5:00 PM. We hope you'll drop by to see the exciting new digs (especially the ever-evolving Country Bunny mural Whitney Kreb is painting).

Don't forget, the 262nd Annual Meeting is Tuesday, January 26th, at 5:00 PM. Bernard Cornwell, OBE, is the guest speaker.

It's like they double in numbers every time you turn around!

FtC will be back tomorrow, with something good, I promise; you should be here too.

From the Collections: "Taking the Root Off" Edition

2010-01-07T16:24:00.002-05:00

A former City of Charleston lawman (and longtime CLS member) stopped by the Library for a very pleasant visit this week, which got me to thinking about a good candidate for "From the Collections". It's one of my favourites: the 1970 autobiography of longtime Beaufort County Sheriff J.E. McTeer, High Sheriff of the Lowcountry. With a local printing and only two small publication runs, the book is fairly rare (we still have it in circulation, though!), but when it comes to nonfiction about the South Carolina coast, it's nothing short of classic.

McTeer was appointed sheriff of Beaufort County at the age of twenty-two, and remained on the job until he was almost sixty. High Sheriff includes forty years worth of his best stories: using gullah to trick armed bootleggers in a dark swamp; losing (and recapturing) a prisoner in the middle of New York City; and his many encounters -and occasional battles- with witch doctors (like Dr. Eagle excerpted above). Combating hoodoo and the root was a real job for McTeer, and, if nothing else, gives his rural policing stories a dark and spooky edge Andy Griffith never had.

If you liked Ben Moïse's recent Ramblings of a Lowcountry Game Warden, you'll find much of the same stuff to love here. At 101 pages, it's a quick read for a cold weekend, so consider picking it up (catalogue number IC M25) next time you're in. Which should be soon!

"...some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them..."

2010-01-06T17:21:00.000-05:00

It's Epiphany, better known Twelfth Night. Which, as one of Shakespeare's best loved comedies, Twelfth Night recounts the tale of young Viola, who in mourning her brother, becomes a cross-dresser; Duke Orsino, who, though an Albanian tyrant, spends his days moping about the castle, pining for some girl who doesn't love him; the never-subtle Sir Belch (He's fat and has gastric issues, get it?); the old lets-trick-a-guy-into-acting-crazy-and-then-throw-him-in-a-dungeon thing; and, of course, twinned couples getting married to the wrong twin and not caring about it.

Your loyal blogger is certainly not badmouthing Shakespeare, but obviously, the what passes for comedy has changed in 400 years.

Actually, as someone who watches a lot of BBC, I suppose it hasn't. This pretty much sounds like any given episode of Little Britain. In fact, it is the exact storyline of the 2006 Amanda Bynes film She's the Man. Still, this is why I prefer the Bard's histories and tragedies to his comedies.

Though The Taming of the Shrew was pretty good when it was Ten Things I Hate About You. But to be fair to Shakespeare, Ten Things... had Larisa Oleynik and Letters to Cleo in it. It couldn't be anything other than great.

Speaking of things that are great, let us thrust this upon you: Thursday, January 21st, from 3:30 to 5:00 PM, we are having an Open House to rechristen the Children's Library. In case you haven't been down here in a little while, the Children's collection is back in the Main Library Building, with a new room of its own (decorated with murals by the terrific Whitney Kreb). We're going to have cookies, cocoa, and and creative story time, so we hope you'll drop by with your wee uns!

MMX

2010-01-04T09:40:00.004-05:00

It's 2010, and we're back! We hope you've all had a wonderful holiday season, and are as excited about the new year as we are. First, a look back at one of our favourite 2009 memories, thanks to Heirloom Creative Photography: photos from December's Pat Conroy event.

We're already ready for a new year even better than the last (and, as you could see from those pictures, the last one was pretty good around here). This week, we've got a book signing with Quentin Whitwell this Thursday at 7, and we're hosting an event of the Poetry Society of South Carolina (PSSC members only, please) Friday at 7.

Next week is the start of two new programs: the CLS Writing Salon with Bret Lott, and Toddler Tuesdays with the Gibbes Museum. The salon is a ten week course led by NYT bestselling, Oprah Book Club picked, former editor of the Southern Review, Bret Lott. Mr. Lott will be guiding a small group to improve their own writing through discussion and critique of participant's individual work. For more info on the salon, contact Anne Cleveland here at the CLS, 843.723.9912. Toddler Tuesdays is a new storytime and activity program for 3-5 year olds every Tuesday here at the Library. It will run from 10:15-11:00 AM, and starts on the 12th. The program is free for CLS and Gibbes members, and children must be accompanied by an adult. For more info, contact Rebecca Williams at 843.722.2706 extension 41.

Tuesday the 26th of this month is the 262nd (I think) Annual Meeting of the Library Society. All members are invited to attend. This year's guest speaker is Bernard Cornwell. Yes, that Bernard Cornwell. Sharpe's, the Saxon Stories, Agincourt, about ten billion novels sold, et cetera, et cetera. Very exciting.

If you're not planning to attend the Annual Meeting, we will send Richard Sharpe to get you.

"Tell Shakespeare to attend some leisure hour/For now I've business with this drop of dew"

2009-12-18T15:34:00.000-05:00

It is cold, wet, and miserable. I can count the number of patrons in the Library today on one hand. I'm pretty sure my little Fiero isn't able to ford the shallowest of puddles, so I'm stuck at the Library. Mommas, don't let your babies buy sports cars.

It's been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, and I was firmly resolved to move to Australia.

And then: then I found out who the Library Society has got as guest speaker for next month's Annual Meeting. Bernard Cornwell. The Sharpe's guy. OBE. The living heir to C.S. Forester. Over 12,000,000 books sold. Possibly the greatest living writer of historical fiction. Bernard Cornwell.

More details to come, but, for now, for your loyal blogger: this news more than makes up for slow days and bad weather and small cars. Have a good weekend, and don't forget, we've only got three more business days until the holiday break.

From the Collections: Red Dawn Edition

2009-12-17T16:33:00.003-05:00

As some of you may know, the Junior Collection is moving from the Ripley-Ravenel building back into the Main Library Building. This will give us much more exhibition and event space in the new building. As for the wee ones, they're moving into the former staff lounge. It's getting a full renovation over the holiday break: the Boss was just at Mescons to look at the carpet they're providing, gratis, for the room (thanks!). With the amount of kindness, both corporate and individual, we've been receiving lately, I'm sure we'll owe a lot of folks thank yous by the end of this project!

Moving the junior collection has given us a chance to get reacquainted with a wonderful collection that most of us staffers don't work with very frequently. Thanks to the rarity of weeding and deaccession, we've got hundreds of books that are now more interesting as portraits of their times than for their ostensible subjects. One such book, from your loyal blogger's own childhood: 1986's A Family in the U.S.S.R.!

The Partridgeovich Family Band.

Depressing as a Lemony Snicket novel- I suppose a little worse, being (mostly) nonfiction- it follows the Fomin family around Tetris-era Leningrad. We get to see Nikita's art studio (he's not allowed to sell his paintings, but he's "happy and secure" on the state-minimum 200 rouble monthly salary); family fun-time ("Nikita and Irina have no special interests apart from their work"); dinner (ham and green beans = once-a-year extravagance).

Chess, babushkas, rye bread, and vodka all make predictable appearances. There's even a picture hip-young girlchik buried balalaika-deep in a pair of poorly-cut Eastern-bloc blue jeans: lumpenproletariat indeed!

Like hundreds of our other children's books, this one has a happy ending, even if it just took a few years after the books' publication to be written. Now that the Junior reading is even closer to the rest of the collection, we hope you'll check some out soon!

Extend the freedom of assembly to a loved one today: buy them a CLS gift membership!

2009-12-15T15:51:00.001-05:00

December 15th: Bill of Rights Day! The day set aside your loyal blogger's favourite faction of Founders, the anti-federalists', greatest achievement. That's saying something considering what some of these guys achieved: Patrick Henry (helped establish Hampden-Sydney), George Mason (a handful of my favourite blogs come from GMU), Samuel Adams (some day I will drink you, Sam Adams Utopia), and Thomas Jefferson (author of the Declaration of Independence, the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia).

The sentiments of these men towards any sort of strong government power can be illustrated through the famous words of Patrick Henry in defence of the Virginia Stamp Act of 1765: "Caesar had his Brutus; Charles the First his Cromwell; and George the Third may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it!". Though modern historians agree Henry likely didn't say the bit about treason- in fact, he might have made a preemptive apology to the House for the statement- it's still a pretty radical sentiment, especially as early as 1765.

And after the history lesson, the shill: if you're looking for a radically great Christmas present, the Library Society now offers gift membership in stocking-stuffer size! You can grab a gift certificate for membership at the front desk. There are no forms to fill out, and no names or addresses required, so you can just pay and go (and give).

I have a little dreidel, I made it out of clay, and when it's dry and ready, with dreidel I shall play...

2009-12-14T16:18:00.000-05:00

If you weren't at the Library Society this past Saturday evening, you missed our first ever holiday concert. Yuriy Bekker, Norbert Lewandowski, Jill King, and Lauren Paul from the CSO played a wonderful selection of holiday favourites in the warm, candlelit Main Reading Room of the Society. We even tried to sing a few old carols together as an audience. Happily Yuriy and Co. were every bit as good as we were... well, at least we made a "joyful noise", as the psalmist exhorted. Though I still can't believe your loyal blogger was the only person singing along with The Dreidel Song...

If you're still trying to think of a Christmas present, especially for an aspiring writer in your life, the Library Society has a great one: a new CLS Writing Salon, starting in January. A ten-week course led by bestselling novelist Bret Lott, participants will grow through critiques of original work they generate. Matters such as dialog, pace, plot, setting, and, most importantly, the development of one’s own artistic vision will be discussed, as well as discussions of revision, strategies for securing an agent, and matters involving the publication of one’s work. Course cost: $1125 for members of the Charleston Library Society; $1200 for nonmembers: membership is included in the cost of the course, as is Lott's Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life.

Bret is a phenomenal writer: his works have been featured in The Yale Review, The New York Times, and The Georgia Review; his novel Jewel was an Oprah book club pick; and he has edited The Southern Review. In addition, Bret teaches at the College of ~~Knowledge~~ Charleston (Go Cougars!), is a wonderful speaker (he's given a pair of excellent lectures at the CLS), and a great friend to this institution. We hope you or someone you know can be a part of this wonderful new Salon.

For enrollment, or more information, please contact Anne Cleveland here at the CLS, 843.723.9912 or acleveland@charlestonlibrarysociety.org.

Yuriy & Co., rocking the house.

and away he flew, "like the down of a thistle"...

2009-12-11T16:18:00.000-05:00

Six. The CSO concert at the Library Society will be at six tomorrow, not at four as was reported in this morning's P&C. Six. Tickets will go on sale, at the door, one hour prior to showtime; $15 general admission, $5 students and children. We hope you'll join us for some festive holiday favourites from a terrific string quartet. The quartet includes concertmaster Yuriy Bekker; principal cellist, Norbert Lewandowski; violist, Jill King; and violinist, Lauren Paul. Fantastic musicians (they're in here practicing while I'm typing this), in a great setting, playing beloved music for a special time of year: we couldn't be happier to host this concert.

We're also happy because it's our last event of the season. In the space of one month, the Library will have had the Fall Book Sale, the Reyburn/Griffith Lowcountry Artist Award, the Annual Christmas Parade Party, and the ~~Patoberfest~~ ~~The Pat Conroy Electric Koolaid Traveling Roadshow~~ The Pat Conroy South of Broad reception and it's associated events, and the Holiday Strings Concert. Everyone here at the Society is overjoyed at the success of these events: but, lately, we're even more overjoyed every night when we go home and get some sleep. The CLS will be closed from December 23-January 3rd to give the staff some time to recover... a full events schedule starts back January 7th...

See y'all tomorrow. At six.

It's Pat Conroy Day Eve!

2009-12-09T17:17:00.001-05:00

Little known fact: the front facade of our Main Building served as the Town Hall for the city of Laurelton on the ABC soap opera General Hospital. It was 1986, and Terri and Kevin had returned home to get married, but Terri had a terrible secret to hide from Kevin and her friends back in Port Charles, and... well, suffice it to say, it was very complicated. Long story short, we got some air time, got to see some daytime-tv celebrities (including a young Demi Moore!), and gained an interesting anecdote that's perfect for the blog.

Also interesting: while desperately trying to find some pictures or videos of the GH at the CLS, I did find the results of a late 1990's fan poll declaring the "Laurelton" storyline the worst in the show's history. I guess having a snazzy town hall couldn't carry a weak script.

But as nice as it was being in General Hospital, we've got more Library-steps excitement to share with you. Yesterday, Niall Ferguson (head of history at Harvard, and one of your loyal blogger's favourite public intellectuals) was in, filming his latest documentary. Look for it sometime mid-2011. Tomorrow, Mayor Riley will be here at 4:30 to declare it "Pat Conroy Day" in the City of Charleston, live from ~~Laurelton Town Hall~~
the Library Society steps. We hope you can join us for this fun event... the last time someone proclaimed anything official from our steps, it was Kevin, proclaiming his undying love for Terri, but then Frisco and Lucy came to bust things up, and then, well... if you care, it's all on YouTube...

Natales grate numeras?

2009-12-08T15:31:00.000-05:00

Today marks the 1,944th birthday of an author near to the Library Society's heart, the Roman poet Horace. Horace's writing praised hard work; a life lived simply, and in the moment, and virtuousness for its own sake. He penned epigrams that have outlived him by two millennia (as he said he would, Exegi monumentum aere perennius: I have made a monument more lasting than bronze): Carpe diem, aurea mediocritis, nil disperandum, dulce et decorum est pro patria mori, all Horace.

Horace's impact on our time goes well beyond a few fine Latin phrases: translations of Horace were made across the late medieval/early Renaissance world, and these Renaissance authors would spawn the Enlightenment, and through it our modern age. 15th and 16th century translators in Florence, Castille, Paris, Heidelburg, and London all poured over Horace, and their intellectual descendants followed suit. The poets and scholars of the Renaissance made Horace one of their own, and his influence can be clearly seen in Opitz, Voltaire, Rousseau, Spenser, Johnson, Dryden, and Shakespeare. Closer to our own times, Nietzsche, Pound, R.L. Stephenson, and G.M. Hopkins are all remarkable for the obvious influence of Horace on their works.

This is why the Library Society's copy of the Works of Horace is such a treasure. A handwritten Latin copy from the 1400's, our Horace manuscript has come back from a summer of loving restoration work just this Fall. Penned in Ferrara, Italy, circa 1450, and at one point in the library of the queen's attorney in Milan, the manuscript was given to the Library Society by Plowden Weston in 1864. The first medieval manuscript in South Carolina, Weston's antebellum acquisition of the document would have been a sign of cosmopolitan taste amongst his contemporaries. Even today, when it sits in a collection full of treasures, the many fine qualities of the Horace award it a place of honor in the collection.

Don't forget: seize the day this coming Saturday at 6pm by joining us for a holiday concert with a string quartet from the CSO. Tickets available at the door, $15.

Three days...

2009-12-07T16:41:00.003-05:00

Thanks to everyone who came out to the Parade party this past weekend. The weather was perfect, the cocoa was warm, the basset hounds were low to the ground: it was everything you could want for the Charleston Christmas parade. As a native Johns Islander, I was especially proud to see the St. Johns JROTC double-timing it, while strictly maintaining dress, cover, interval, and distance. I'm certain their vigilance will keep al-Qa'ida far away from Angel Oak, or JB's, or the tomato packing sheds...

This Saturday, December 12th, we host our first ever holiday concert! A string quartet from the CSO will play a host of Christmas favourites. The music starts at six in the evening, in the Main Reading Room. Tickets will be available at the door, fifteen dollars. For more information, call 843.723.9912, or email us at info@charlestonlibrarysociety.org.

Don't forget, the Library will be closed from December 23rd through the end of the year. Normal library hours will resume on January 4th.

Also, on a literary note, happy 136th birthday to Willa Cather. Cather was a favourite of Mencken and Sinclair Lewis (not to mention your loyal blogger), a Pulitzer Prize winner, and the first person to ever receive an honorary degree from Princeton. Her "Prairie Trilogy" is recognized as three of the greatest novels in the American canon, teaching generations of Americans that: the 1800's were full of terrible ways to die (O, Pioneers!); your friends hold you back from reaching your full potential (The Song of the Lark), and older women will yank out your heart, and stomp that sucker flat (My Antonia). She also wrote the excellent Death Comes for the Archbishop, but it's much less cheery than any of the Prairie Trilogy...

Seventy six trombones in the big parade! With 110 basset hounds close at hand...

2009-12-04T12:06:00.000-05:00

Tonight, Friday the 4th, the Coastal Community Foundation and Donna Rayburn and Mike Griffith will have a reception for the 2009 recipient of the Lowcountry Artist Award, Bernadette Cali. The reception will run from 5:30pm to 8:00pm in the Ripley-Ravenel building. Free food, drop-in format, everyone's welcome... it's going to be a fun evening with some good art. The artist will have prints and notecards available for sale, too (your loyal blogger already purchased one).

Next: our Annual Christmas Parade Party is this Sunday afternoon. As many of you know, it's always good to have a warm building to retreat into during the Parade. We're filling the Library with holiday snacks and carols; we hope y'all come and fill the steps with your persons. The parade runs from 2pm to 4pm, and please come early- don't forget the fuzz will be shutting the street down for the parade.

"An' bleak December's winds ensuin/ Baith snell an' keen!"

2009-11-30T16:01:00.002-05:00

Happy St. Andrew's Day! The brother of Peter; missionary to Asia Minor, Scythia, and the Ukraine; crucified on the crux decussata, the X-shaped cross; St. Andrew is now most famous in the West as the patron saint of Scotland, a nation he never visited. (Not that it matters: dying in 1253 hasn't stopped Claire of Assisi from becoming patroness of television.) So, fly your Saltire, eat your haggis, and get ready for a full slate of Library Society events between now and Hogmanay.

(Speaking of eating, don't forget, if you place holiday orders with the SweetSmith Bakery [843.573.2322: 1124 Sam Rittenberg Blvd.,West Ashley], and let them know you want your order to help the Charleston Library Society, we get a cut of the profit [and you get a great holiday treat!])

As for events: first, on Friday the 4th, the Coastal Community Foundation and Donna Rayburn and Mike Griffith will have a reception for the 2009 recipient of the Lowcountry Artist Award, Bernadette Cali. The reception will run from 5:30pm to 8:00pm in the Ripley-Ravenel building. Ms. Cali's artwork will be on display at the Library Society through the end of the month.

Then, this Sunday, December 6th, the Library Society will have its annual Christmas Parade Party. We hope you'll join us for a fun, festive, informal afternoon as we watch the Charleston Christmas parade from the best seats in town, the front steps of the Library. Inside, we'll have holiday music and treats, not to mention sheltering warmth. Top tip: anyone planning on sitting down on our marble steps might consider bringing stadium seats/blankets/some form of insulation to prevent frostbite of the posterior. Hot cider can only warm one up so much...

Pat Conroy will be here on the 10th. All tickets have been sold out for months, and we're no longer taking book orders, so this reminder is more a reminder to jump on tickets as soon as they're available, and less a reminder about Pat. Still, it's Pat! We're kinda excited. For those without Conroy tickets, there is a pretty good consolation prize: local historian Mike Coker will be having a book signing for his new work, The Battle of Port Royal over at the SC Historical Society that same night. It's from five to seven in the evening, Thursday the tenth; light appetizers and drinks will be served. If you're not going to be here, you should be there.

Après Pat, we've got a holiday strings concert from the CSO that will be here at the Society- pencil that one in for the 12th; we'll send out more details as soon as we get them... Don't forget, for more information, or to RSVP for any event, call us at 843.723.9912, or email us at rsvp@charlestonlibrarysociety.org.

Goodnight, sweet (canine) prince, and may flights of angels sing thee to thy rest...

2009-11-20T11:12:00.001-05:00

Between France cheating Ireland out of a spot in the World Cup, and the untimely death of Uga VII last night, it has been a sad week for your loyal blogger. Still, there is nothing to be down about concerning the Library Society, so I'll jump right into some news:

Thanks to Lynn Smith and the SweetSmith Bakery, we've got a great way for you to support the Library this holiday season. Call or stop by the SweetSmith Bakery (843.573.2322, 1124 Sam Rittenberg Blvd., West Ashley), and let them know you want your order to help the Charleston Library Society. You get a delicious pastry, and the Library Society gets a cut of the profit. Brilliant.

Coming up on Friday, December the 4th, from 5:30 'till 8:00, the Library Society will host the Coastal Community Foundation, and Mike Griffith and Donna Reyburn as they present the 2009 Lowcountry Artist's Award. The $5,000 award is given annually to a Charleston County artist whose work reflects the "look and feel of the Lowcountry" to produce a work of art in the same manner. This year's recipient is Bernadette Cali.

Link to the event's Facebook page.

Other stuff: The Library will be closed November 25-29. Regular hours will resume Monday, November 30. There are only thirty four days until Christmas: remember, Library Society membership makes a great gift. Speaking of Christmas, the Library will be closed from December 23rd 'till the end of the year. Finally, happy 85th birthday, Benoit Mandelbrot.

"Take a point called Z in the complex plane, let Z1 be Z squared plus C, and Z2 is Z1 squared plus C , and Z3 is Z2 squared plus C and so on; if the series of Z's should always stay, close to Z and never trend away, that point is in the Mandelbrot Set" -JoCo

"We're rich! Richer than astronauts!"

2009-11-16T16:05:00.001-05:00

Well, near perfect weather, lots of cheerful volunteers, and a few months worth of our harping all came together for our most successful book sale yet! By the time we locked the door of the Barnwell Annex on Sunday evening, we had brought in a couple of hundred dollars over our pre-sale projections, and beaten our own sales records to boot. Thank you, to all of our donors, our customers, and especially to our volunteers for creating this success.

Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention last week's marvelous concert from the Charleston Academy of Music. Besides being one of the best-attended events your loyal blogger has ever seen the Library host, it was certainly one of the most enjoyable. With individual performances by Nicholas Bentz and Shannon Fitzhenry on strings, and Micah McLaurin on the piano, and a orchestral showcase by Kidzymphony, the evening was nothing short of fantastic. We here at the Society can't wait until the next time we can host the CAM.

As for that other noise around here (the bad kind): the scraping is, mostly, over! Restoration work continues at a remarkable pace. Painting has begun in earnest, and also on the window trim. Hopefully this idyllic weather will hold and we'll have a productive week of work around the place. We can do without more rain mid-November hurricanes...

Don't forget: The Library Society will be closed from Wednesday the 25th until Saturday the 28th. Regular Library hours resume on Monday the 30th.
Also: Twenty-five days until Pat Conroy's here!

I wish there was "A Thanksgiving Carol". Or at least a "Ghost of Thanksgivings Past"...

2009-11-12T14:47:00.002-05:00

Forty two days left until Christmas, and the Library Society just received its first Christmas card. Like the first robin of spring, or the first mosquito bites of summer, receiving the first Christmas card of the season is always a touching moment. It would have been even more touching had it not been addressed to "Occupant", and if a note begging for money hadn't fallen out of it. I suppose we are entering into that "time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices."

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?

(Please do not mistake your loyal blogger's badmouthing of specific charities [who send Christmas cards weeks too early] as a denigration of giving to nonprofits more generally. And liberally. And frequently. 'Cause we're bringing back the New York Times, and man is it expensive! Also, do remember, you can't fit a whole library society into a Victorian workhouse, and even if you could, I doubt we'd be much good running their treadmills or crushing up boulders. Too many elderly members. And I'm sure old Ebeneezer was a generous donor to the London Library without the prompting of any ghostly apparitions. )

(Pictured left to right) Generous Library Donor; Rotund, Otherworldly Fundraising Volunteer

Anyhow, with the dawn of the Christmas Card season, your loyal blogger now feels free to a) plug the book sale this weekend as a great place to buy gifts, and, b) present the first events of 2010. Starting on January 12th, the Library Society and the Gibbes Muesum of Art are having Toddler Tuesdays. Free for all CLS and Gibbes members, this will be a fun story time for children ages three to five (with an adult). Toddler Tuesdays should run from 10:15 to 11:00 in the morning, every Tuesday, with no reservations required. We've also got a book signing on Thursday, January 7th with Quentin Whitwell, author of If By Whiskey. We promise no overlap between Mr. Whitwell's story a sorority girl at Ole Miss, and our toddler story hour selections.

Though we do have the 1940's Curious George books where George smokes a pipe, and discovers ether...

The Art of Noise

2009-11-09T10:36:00.001-05:00

The Library Society, typically a haven of rest, currently sounds like Milton's Pandemonium,

"where peace/ And rest can never dwell, hope never comes/ That comes to all; but torture without end..."

-Paradise Lost, Book I

as right now dozens of workers simultaneously scrape ninety year old paint off our windows. They scratch and beat and scour and rasp and generally fill the Main Reading Room with an obstreperousness that is about to drive your loyal blogger up the ding-dong wall.

That said, this is major renovation work that the Library has needed for a long time. Furthermore, while it may be as loud as Hell in here, it is comfortably cool; it smells more of old books than sulfur; and our friendly and dedicated renovation workers are far, far from Milton's Belials, Baalims, and Beezlebubs. Those of you in need of the Library's customary calm still have the Ripley-Ravenel building, which remains quiet as a tomb.

This Thursday evening the noise of the Society will switch from the cacophonous to the symphonic as we host the Charleston Academy of Music's Hand In Hand benefit concert. Proceeds from the concert will go towards funding CAM’s Honors Program scholarships. The concert will feature current CAM Honors Program students Nicholas Bentz (violin), Shannon Fitzhenry (violin), and Micah McLaurin (piano) as well as CAM’s newest after school orchestra program for children called “Kidzymphony.” Nicholas, Shannon, and Micah study under CSO concertmaster Yuriy Bekker, renowned pianist Enrique Graf, and violinist Tomas Jakubek. The program will feature two violin solo works, Symphonie espagnole by Lalo and Saint Sanes Violin Concerto #3, and Rachmaninoff 2nd Piano Sonata. The three performers will also present a Haydn piano trio. Due to limited seating please RSVP your reservations through the CAM by calling 843-805-7794 or emailing cam746@yahoo.com.

Also, this weekend is the Fall Book Sale! The bottom of the Barnwell Annex is jam packed with discards from the collection, used books, new books, magazines, vintage vinyl, trashy dime novels, Cliffs Notes, et cetera. The event will run Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm, Sunday 1 pm to 5 pm. If you're interested in volunteering, we would love to have you around: call us at 843.723.9912 or email us at info@charlestonlibrarysociety.org for more information.

See you soon, and bring earplugs...

Notes following two weeks of craziness. Painful, Tom-Cruise-on-Oprah level craziness...

2009-11-02T11:31:00.000-05:00

It's been two crazy weeks since your loyal blogger last posted. Despite 261 years of existence, I'm not sure if the Library Society has ever hosted back-to-back weekends of major events before... with good reason.

First was the Membership Libraries Group conference: every year the Library Society meets with the other American membership libraries to discuss library management, fundraising, governance, programs, and a range of other issues where we share common ground. The meetings were not just enlightening, but very, very enjoyable, thanks to the wonderful librarians and directors in attendance. Besides, it's always nice to hang out with the small handful of people who know the pain of explaining what a "non-governmental public library" is to slackjawed visitors, over and over again...

Second was yesterday's lecture by Doctor Lisa Sanders, internist at Yale and technical advisor for the show "House". Doctor Sanders' event was extremely well attended, which is always exciting. Increasing the excitement was the large difference between the RSVP list and the number of attendees. While RSVPs certainly were not an absolute necessity, the lack of them did make the event standing-room only. Like I said earlier- it's been a hectic few weeks.

November should be much less hectic. Coming up on the calendar, our monthly Young Professionals Group meeting is this Thursday, November 5th- Guy Fawkes Night!- so we hope you'll be able to swing by the Library, have a drink, and meet up with other local professionals from their mid-twenties to mid-forties. Our first concert is coming up soon, too: the Charleston Academy of Music is having a benefit concert, hosted here, at 5:00 PM on Thursday, November 12th. Fall Book Sale is the 14th and 15th. Relative to October, this month looks almost devoid of activity.

Remember, you can call 843.723.9912 or email us at rsvp@charlestonlibrarysociety.org for more information or to make event reservations. Please, please do.

Also, now that Halloween is over, I feel free plugging our merchandise as GREAT CHRISTMAS GIFTS. We've just got a new run of notecards featuring the original architectural drawing of our front elevation: they're available for purchase at the front desk now, and should be in the online store shortly. In the pipeline, our handwritten manuscript of John Locke's Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina is being prepared for limited run of hardbound reproductions... we're still not sure when they will be ready, but they will certainly be a unique piece of both Caroliniana and Society history.

"The angels may love her / But surely they do not visit her."

2009-10-20T16:41:00.002-04:00

By now, Library Society members should have received their 2009 Annual Appeal letters. If you've got yours, then you have noticed that the Society now has a tiered membership structure. There is a basic Friend of the Library membership at $75 (the same as the old Adult Annual membership), a new Senior membership at $20, and a range of giving circles to recognize gifts from $100 right on to gifts of over $5000. These circles have been named for figures either important in the history of the Society or whose work is an outstanding part of our collection.

All of this is prelude for something I've been wanting to do for weeks, ever since it was decided to name our $100-$499 giving Circle after her: talk about Beatrice Witte Ravenel.

Here goes: stop reading this blog, come down to the Society, and check out the poetry of Beatrice Witte Ravenel. It's a quick read, and it's ridiculously great. A wildly talented poet- during her time at Radcliffe she was an editor of the Harvard Monthly Magazine, and was published in Harpers and The Atlantic- Ravenel abandoned her poetry when she married. During her lifetime she produced just one bound volume, The Arrow of Lightning: one more volume, The Yemassee Lands was compiled after her death. Her three dozen or so poems stand as the greatest poems of the Charleston Renaissance; they easily equal any contemporary work on the national scene. Today Ravenel is a largely forgotten part of the Charleston Renaissance, but her work is unforgettable to any readers who experience it. An excerpt, describing Nicholas Trott's judgment of the Pirates from the view of the condemned, and then a full poem:

"And first he lifts from your shoulder the cover of common humanity,
Men? You are not men. You are hostes humani generis,
Enemies of all mankind. Neither faith, nay, nor oath need be kept with you. You were formerly ousted of clergy.
Now the law grants you this comfort; and, with a smooth lovingkindness
Equal to that of the law, he trusts you will profit.
But- he may allow you no council.

"He is telling you further
That the God of the land made the ocean,
(He swivels the Scriptures about like a gun, texts spitting for grapeshot):
That he parceled it out and place it under the thumbs of Kings and of lawyers.
(O ye fowls of the air, ye wild winds, ye waterspouts,
Praise ye the Lord!)
And against all these three, God, King, and Lawyers, have you offended."

-excerpted from "The Pirates"

"Salvage "

Three things in my house are my own.
Not the dark pictures whose blood runs in my veins,
Nor the vines that I trained round the windows,
Nor even the books.
But the curve of a shabby armchair that molded itself on your body,
And the echoes of songs that you sang,
And the square of sun
That comes as it came, first in the morning,
When you had opened the window.

There: there's a little poetry for a slow Thursday afternoon. Stop by, pick up a copy of The Yemassee Lands, take it home, read the whole thing in forty minutes. Connect with your cultural inheritance as Charlestonians; experience some of the best literary imagery of the Lowcountry ever penned; feel a little more civilized for checking out a book of poetry.

One last excerpt, from "Tidewater":

"Is Marathon richlier echoed
With voices of youthful heroes
Than the swamps of Santee?
When the bloom runs over the moss
In a lost gray glory of tarnished sliver,
of shadowy pearl,
Riders furrow the night-
Marion, Marion's men,
Pass in a voiceless tumult,
Pass like the smoke from a torch,
With dark, unextinguished eyes."

It's not lupus. It's NEVER lupus.

2009-10-16T10:37:00.003-04:00

Confirmed News: Lisa Sanders, faculty of Yale School of Medicine, NY Times Magazine columnist, inspiration for and technical advisor to the television show House, and author of Every Patient Tells a Story : Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis, will be talking at the Library Society on November 1st. This lecture should be informative and entertaining in equal measure, and the CLS is quite privileged to host it. ~~More information-will be available soon.~~ The event starts at 5:00 PM and there is no admission charge.

Unconfirmed news: Hugh Laurie will also be along, singing novelty songs from A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and doing readings from Blackadder.

Okay, I just made the Hugh Laurie bit up. He's not coming. Though we would love to have him: I'm sure the man who claimed "[P.G.] Wodehouse Saved My Life" would be right at home here at a library where Jeeves and Wooster novels still fly off the shelf, sixty years after their publication.

ALSO: In much the same way that Generalissimo Francisco Franco remains dead, The Pat Conroy event is still sold out. Call or email, and we'll be happy to put you on the waiting list should tickets become available...

Dies iræ! Dies illa!

2009-10-13T11:13:00.000-04:00

Day of wrath! O day of mourning! Pat is sold out, booked, packed to the gills, jammed full. All seats have been accounted for by pre-sales to members. There are no more tickets; there is still much more demand...

This coming Thursday is the first day of sales to non-members, and we've already been informed, many times, "My whole book club is ready to come get tickets, first thing on the 15th" or "Everyone I know is chomping at the bit to get tickets" or "All my friends are calling at 9:30 on the 15th!", et cetera, et cetera.

Your loyal blogger -the Library staffer who sits closest to the telephone- feels he is about to become a very unpopular person. The general public might have no shot at tickets: hopefully they won't have a shot at me, instead.

Lacrimosa dies illa,
qua resurget ex favilla
judicandus homo reus.
Huic ergo parce, Deus.
-Requiem, Tridentine Mass

Okay, enough lamentation, let's be positive: y'all sold out an event in a week's time. About two thirds of tickets were gone in the first 48 hours. With pre-sale available for members only, membership has jumped. Best of all, I had enough to handle last week concerning this event that I had to put off all the old work stacked on my desk. We knew that Pat Conroy is a draw second to none, but still, this is impressive.

If you haven't got your tickets yet, don't lament (but don't delay, either). Call us now, and we'll put you on our waiting list if tickets become available. It's a long time until December 10th...

"We're just a library, standing in front of a patron... asking you to love us."

2009-10-08T13:31:00.000-04:00

For most of the year, Library Society fundraising is like a gawky and awkward Hugh Grant in a Richard Curtis movie... We quietly fumble about in the sidelights, all the while silently hoping you'll notice us for just long enough to see that we're madly in love with you. We're really quite charming, you see, and not at all anti-social; just rather shy, and awkward amongst pretty strangers.

Then comes the Annual Appeal Campaign (starting today)! Now we become climax/falling action Hugh Grant: it's almost the end of the movie, and we're racing across London in a friend's car, frantically trying to find you before you take off back to America, no longer moved by infatuation but earnestly longing for a deep, lasting relationship.

And what better way to define "deep, lasting relationship" than in monetary terms? Your gifts sustain our programmes, allow new accessions, provide for repairs and improvements. The year-round services the Library provides are possible because of this period Annual Appeal giving. In the past we have never failed to be both very impressed and deeply humbled by giving of our patrons, and we hope that generosity is expressed in the Appeal once again this year.

Also, if anyone has a Chagall they would like to donate, we would be more than happy to have it...

Because happiness isn't happiness without a violin-playing goat.

Suddenly, Monday appears again.

2009-10-05T16:24:00.000-04:00

As promised last week, official details on the Pat Conroy event:

The night A South of Broad Evening with Pat Conroy (December 10th) will be divided into two complimentary events, one hosted by the CLS, and the other by the Gibbes. From 5:00 to 6:30 there will be cocktails and hors d'oeuvres with Pat here at the Library. Cocktails and hors d'oeuvers will be catered by the ever-wonderful Slightly North of Broad. In the interest of facilitating the best personal experience for all, and allowing every attendee time to talk with Pat, tickets will be very limited for this event. Tickets are $125 for members and $150 for nonmembers.

Tickets for members are available now. Tickets for non-members will not be available until the 15th of October.

Call us, right now, at 843.723.9912 and buy your tickets. Alternatively, email us at rsvp@charlestonlibrarysociety.org. Please give us more information than "My name is Mike and I would like tickets". Name, number of tickets, purchasing information and contact number should all be in there. Tickets are first come, first serve, and will go quickly.