In which we learn St. George's Day has nothing to do with grits...

Your loyal blogger wishes you a very, very happy St. George's Day! Amongst your rose-wearing, Jerusalem-singing, and dragon-slaying today, why not consider some ticket-buying? Today marks the 448th birthday of William Shakespeare, and to celebrate, the Library Society is hosting a big birthday party for the bard on this Thursday. The Charleston Renaissance Ensemble - Piccolo Spoleto favourites and the premiere Early Music group in the area - will be singing tunes from Shakespeare's time. And as a very, very special guest, bestselling author, sometimes actor, and perpetual raconteur Bernard Cornwell will be joining in, favouring us with dramatic readings from Shakespeare.

Tickets are $15, and children are allowed in for free.

Get them online here, by calling 1.888.718.4253, or at the front desk of the Library Society.

Y, oh y...

March 22 - the birthday of Holy Roman Emperor Maxilimilian I, the Pentium processor, and the poet Billy Collins. Things are as busy as can be around the library today in preparation for Volodymyr Vynnytsky's piano concert here tonight (a few tickets still available!)... tables to be moved, seats to be placed, wine to be chilled, all that sort of stuff. As always, a big thanks to our Music Committee for their help, and a double thanks to Cowan Holdings, Ltd., for sponsoring the event. Volodymyr is such an impressive pianist... your loyal blogger can't wait!


Also upcoming... tomorrow is the first evening for our Sunshine Readers programme! The CofC Tri-Delts will host a fun children's story hour starting at 6:30 PM tomorrow here at the Library Society. Parents, grandparents, and babysitters are encouraged to bring their wee ones, three and up, to this exciting adventure in reading. Kids are encouraged to bring a pillow or stuffed bear, and come dressed in their jammies for this pre-bedtime event.


Parents... wearing your jammies is allowed, too. Just... use your best judgement.

La vieille garde dans les Carolines

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...

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...

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).

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

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...

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!

Staying cool (and hopefully dry)...

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!

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

"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.

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.

  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.

  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!

Hey, who turned out the lights?

  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...

After April

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!

The Darling Buds of March

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!

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

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

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.

  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!

Blog of Hope and Glory

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.