Sharpe's Lunch

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."

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!!!

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...

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

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

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

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..."

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

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"

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

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!

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...

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"...

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!

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?

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...

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...

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!"

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...

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