It's Literary Festival Eve Eve!

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?

  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"

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...

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

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...

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

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..."

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:

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!

MMXI

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

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...

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!

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...)

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!

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!

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.

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.

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)