A Voice for Women Veterans is the Department of Labor blog post authored by Latifa Lyles, Director of the Department's Women's Bureau. In her blog, Latifa states that based on the Bureau's listening sessions with the homeless women veterans, as well as working with organizations that serve them, the Bureau developed Trauma-Informed Care for Women Veterans Experiencing Homelessness: A Guide for Service Providers. The guide is designed to equip service providers with a deeper understanding of women veterans' unique experiences and needs.
Earlier this month, I was honored to attend the swearing-in ceremony for Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a congresswoman from Illinois. As a helicopter pilot who served in Iraq, she lost both her legs and the partial use of one arm in a rocket-propelled grenade attack.
A record 98 women − 101 counting nonvoting members − now serve in the House and Senate. In addition to Rep. Duckworth, this year’s freshman class also includes Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a congresswoman from Hawaii who served a tour in Iraq with the Army National Guard.
Female service members representing different branches of the military participate in the unveiling of the Women's Bureau's trauma-informed care guide.
Reps. Duckworth and Gabbard are not only a testament to the growing number of women now serving in Congress, but to the record number of women returning home from service to their country.
In keeping with our vision to empower all working women to achieve economic security, the department’s Women’s Bureau has focused on helping women veterans who are homeless find a path to good jobs and financial security.
We joined forces with the Department of Veterans Affairs to sponsor a number of women-to-women “Stand Downs.” These events provided a safe environment for women veterans to access critical services for free, including medical care, job training and housing assistance.
To ensure that service providers know how to use the guide, and other available resources to help homeless women veterans, the Women’s Bureau has been hosting round tables around the country. Participants have included representatives from homeless shelters, medical centers, community-based organizations, and state and federal organizations.
And through a recent webinar hosted by the Women’s Bureau, community and private health care providers learned how to tailor their programs and policies to better serve women veterans, such as treating them in settings that make them feel safe.
Leaders like Reps. Duckworth and Gabbard are amazing role models, and we hope they − along with the rest of Congress − will work to help our returning heroes reintegrate into civilian life. As President Obama said in his 2012 Veterans Day proclamation , it is our responsibility to ensure that returning veterans “can share in the opportunities they have given so much to defend.”
To learn more about the Women’s Bureau, visit www.dol.gov/wb.
Latifa Lyles is acting director of the department’s Women’s Bureau.
Hey there! If you've followed or researched 1970s baseball at all at any point in your life, those phrases listed above should be very recognizable. It was a decade which featured not only colorful uniforms, but colorful characters as well. There was a stark difference from the clean-cut ballplayers of prior decades to this one. Zany haircuts, facial hair, and afros ran rampant during 1970s baseball, as did iconic moments and historic changes to the game that still stand today. The 1970s saw the conception of the designated hitter rule in the American League, with New York Yankee Ron Blomberg becoming the first in 1973. In addition, free agency started up in this decade too. Catfish Hunter became Free Agent #1 following the 1974 season, after Athletics owner "Charlie O." failed to make insurance annuity payments as stated in his contract. By and large, the 1970s decade in baseball is a fascinating one to read about, and is entertaining without question. For this blog post, I would like to call attention to certain names of that era who have not been as celebrated or remembered as well as their peers. With that segue, I give you '5 Potentially Forgotten Figures From 1970s Baseball'.
1. JR Richard - I promise you readers, this guy was good. Sure he only won 107 games over his abbreviated career. Sure he led the league in walks and wild pitches more than once. But he did lead the league in a lot of positive categories on many an occasion too. He led in hits per 9 innings in 1976, 1978, and 1979. Strikeouts in '78 and '79. K/BB ratio in 1979 with a 3.194 marker. 1979 was JR's final full big league season, which saw him finish 3rd in the Cy Young Award voting and lead the NL with a league-low 2.71 ERA. The rise he was on at the end of his career was simply dazzling. And in 1980 (yes we're going to stray just outside the 70s for a moment here, afraid it's necessary) he was even better. He pitched to the tune of a 1.90 ERA over 17 starts, and got the nod to start the 1980 All-Star Game where he whiffed 3 batters in 2 scoreless frames. Unfortunately, those 17 starts would be the final ones of his career. Prior to a game, Richard suffered a stroke on the field during warmups, and had to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency blood clot removal. Though he attempted comebacks over the next handful of years, they all ended up failing, and thus the career of JR Richard ended both prematurely and unfairly.
2. Lyman Bostock - Bostock, like Richard, was another figure from the '70s whose career ended in both a premature and unfair manner. A 26th round draft pick of the Minnesota Twins in 1972, Bostock quickly rose through their minor league system (posting a lifetime .326/.414./.422 slash line down on the farm) and contributed immediately upon arrival to the big leagues. Bostock hit .311 over the first three seasons of his career, all with Minnesota, before signing a free agent deal with the California Angels. There he got off to a woeful April, and even donated his first month's salary to charity as a result, feeling as if he simply did not deserve it. But from May onwards, Bostock returned to his usual self, hitting .318 up until his final career game on September 23, 1978. On that night, he paid a visit to his uncle who lived close by. In addition, he also paid a visit to a woman named Joan Hawkins whom Bostock had tutored in his youth and had not seen in years. Unbeknownst to the group, Hawkins's estranged husband, Leonard Smith, was outside her home when Bostock and his uncle came to pick her up. Jumping to the conclusion that the two were having an affair, Smith pulled up alongside the vehicle Bostock was in while stopped at a red light and shot him right in his right temple. He would die 2 hours later in a hospital.
3. David Clyde - Texas's own wunderkind! Back in 1973, the Texas Rangers used the first overall pick in the draft to select hometown pitcher David Clyde. The southpaw was cited by scouts as 'the next Sandy Koufax', and the hype surrounding Clyde was quite considerable. With attendance at Arlington Stadium scuffling, Rangers owner Bob Short included a clause in Clyde's contract that stated his first two professional starts had to be at the Major League level for Texas. So, less than 3 weeks after his final game in high school, Clyde tossed two quality starts for the Rangers at home, which resulted in huge crowds for both games. Subsequently, Clyde did not go to the minors as originally planned, but remained on the roster at age 18. Clyde would soon develop woes with his shoulder due to the workload, and all in all appeared in just 84 career games. It has now become clear that Short and the Rangers had bungled their prize pitcher and spoiled what could have been a fantastic career.
4. Wilbur Wood - Wilbur Wood? Now he was a late-blooming knuckleballer. Spending 1961-1965 with both Boston and Pittsburgh, it wasn't until he was dealt to the White Sox in 1966 did his career truly take off. On Chicago's roster that season was legendary knuckleballer and future Hall of Famer Hoyt Wilhelm, who was the one to encourage Wood to start throwing a knuckler with regularity. (By the way, Wilhelm achieved a very notable achievement in the 1970s, becoming the first pitcher ever to appear in 1,000 games. Credit the durability to that knuckleball!) From there on it was a new leaf for Wood. 163 of his 164 career wins came during his 12 seasons with the Chisox. He wound up winning 20 plus games from 1971-1974, and was a regular league-leader in both the games appeared and games started categories over the course of his career. In 1973, Wood also made headlines by joining the list of pitchers to start both games of a doubleheader.
5. Darold Knowles - Don't know Darold Knowles? You should! He made some significant history against the New York Mets in the 1973 World Series. Spending 757 of his 765 career games coming out of the bullpen, Knowles carved out a long and respectable 16 year career with 7 different teams. He amassed a 3.12 career ERA with a 1.36 WHIP, to go along with 143 saves. Knowles also won three World Series rings from 1972-1974 as a member of the dynasty Oakland Athletics. It was in the 1973 World Series where Knowles may have shined the brightest. He became the first, and to this date only, pitcher to appear in all 7 games of a World Series. And perform he did. Knowles tossed 6.1 scoreless innings over the life of the Series. In the top of the 9th during Game 7 with the tying run at the dish for the Mets, Oakland manager Dick Williams pulled his closer Rollie Fingers in favor of Knowles. He then promptly retired Wayne Garrett on a pop up to short, locking up the title for the Green and Gold.
According to U.S. Census and earnings data from New York and California, 3 to 6 percent of all workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act experience minimum wage violations. Secretary of Labor, Tom Perez, in his blog post, Enforcement Matters, Wage Violations, Workers and the Economy, asserts that enforcement matters. It is essential to creating shared prosperity and building a strong economy that works for everyone. It is also essential to advancing economic justice, addressing income inequality and ensuring that hard work is rewarded with a fair wage.
If you work hard and play by the rules, then you should be able to earn enough to take care of yourself and your family – that’s a core American value. But for too many people, their hard work isn’t reflected in their paychecks. In many cases, workers aren’t being fully and properly paid for all the hours they put in on the job. The Labor Department recently commissioned a research study on minimum wage violations in two states that demonstrates exactly that. But we are committed to using our enforcement tools to ensure workers get the wages that are rightfully theirs.
Using U.S. Census and earnings data from New York and California, this new study shows that many workers are earning a de facto minimum wage below the legal floor. Unscrupulous employers push their workers into poverty when they fail to pay what the law requires.
In those states, roughly 3 to 6 percent of all workers covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act experience minimum wage violations – translating into a total of between $20 and $29 million in lost weekly income. That represents 40 percent or more of their total pay. Imagine if 40 cents out of every dollar you earned didn’t show up in your paycheck but in your employer’s pocket. For every hour of tough, on-your-feet work looking after children, cleaning homes, making hotel beds, preparing food in a restaurant or picking crops in a field, it’s possible you could be working 24 minutes for free. That’s just wrong.
It’s difficult to extrapolate what these figures mean on a broader scale around the country. But using conservative estimates, let’s say the national violation rate is half what it is in New York and California – that would mean 2 million workers a month are getting ripped off.
The implications are manifold. The worker and her family, of course, take it on the chin when she brings home a smaller paycheck. But less money in workers’ pockets also means less consumer spending, which stifles economic growth. Law-abiding businesses are unfairly undercut by competitors who flout the law. Lower incomes mean smaller payroll tax contributions to programs like Social Security and Medicare. And taxpayers feel the squeeze as more people are forced to rely on public services like food stamps and Medicaid.
The take away here is that enforcement matters. It’s critical that we use the full strength of the Labor Department’s enforcement authority to investigate violations and recoup back wages for workers.
Under President Obama’s leadership, we are strategically deploying our resources and putting more cops on the beat to protect working families. Since 2009, we’ve recovered more than a billion dollars for more than 1.2 million workers. That’s not chump change. That’s real money, which means working families can now afford school supplies, weekly groceries or basic holiday gifts.
President Obama knows that we must keep at it. In his budget request to Congress, he has asked for more Wage and Hour Division investigators. But we aren’t stopping there. We’re investigating strategically with the resources we already have by leveraging our understanding of industries and business models to increase compliance, and assessing liquidated damages and civil money penalties when we find violations so that employers know we mean business. And through outreach, we’re seeking to empower workers by educating them about their rights in a dramatically changed 21st century workplace.
Enforcement matters. It is essential to creating shared prosperity and building a strong economy that works for everyone. It is a high priority for us at the Labor Department — because it is essential to advancing economic justice, addressing income inequality and ensuring that hard work is rewarded with a fair wage.
A guest post by Philip Lambert, author of To Broadway! To Life! The Musical Theater of Bock and Harnick
When composer Jerry Bock (1928–2010) and lyricist Sheldon Harnick (b. 1924) began writing songs for their third Broadway musical, Tenderloin, in the spring of 1960, their work schedule was happily disrupted by a torrent of accolades for the show they had just finished. Their previous project, Fiorello!, based on the early career of New York’s beloved mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia, had opened just a few months earlier to widespread acclaim, and during that same spring was awarded the Tony for Best Musical (shared with The Sound of Music) and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. So the Tenderloin project was conceived to carry the Fiorello! Karma as far as it would go, keeping together the same creative team, including librettist Jerome Weidman, director George Abbott, and producers Harold Prince and Bobby Griffith. And history reveals that Fiorello! certainly did portend Broadway success for Bock and Harnick, in their next show after Tenderloin, the charming operetta-ish love story She Loves Me of 1963, and in their career-defining, multi-award-winning, record-setting masterpiece of the following year, Fiddler on the Roof.
But Tenderloin failed to capture the Fiorello! magic, and it stands today as one of the partnership’s biggest disappointments. The show opened at the 46th Street (now the Richard Rodgers) Theater in October 1960 to mixed reviews and closed the following spring after only 271 performances. It has received respectful attention in performances off-Broadway and in City Center’s Encores! series, but has never been revived on Broadway. What exactly went wrong?
These libretto drafts from the library’s archives help tell the story. Co-librettists Weidman and Abbott began work in the fall of 1959, adapting the plot from the current novel of the same name by Samuel Hopkins Adams. The story centers on the so-called “Tenderloin” district of Manhattan—roughly 24th to 42nd Streets between Fifth and Seventh Avenues—and its reputation for corruption and debauchery during the 1890s. (The name came from a corrupt police captain who was being moved into this precinct from a neighborhood with modest payoffs and told a reporter for the Sun, “I’ve had nothing but chuck steak for a long time, and now I’m going to get a little of the tenderloin.”) Thus did the creative team retain their focus on New York City history, while swinging the pendulum far in the other direction from the political idealism of Fiorello! In the world of Broadway, its portrait of the city recalled a musical from ten years earlier, Frank Loesser’s Guys and Dolls (1950), and a subsequent series of shows with New York themes, including two Brooklyn musicals with music by Arthur Schwartz and Dorothy Fields—A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1951) and By the Beautiful Sea (1953)—and two of Leonard Bernstein’s greatest works—Wonderful Town (1953) and West Side Story (1957).
Adams’s novel, based on actual events, is centered around Tommy Howatt, a young, ambitious newspaper reporter who is simultaneously pursuing insider information about police activities and the affections of Laurie Crosby, a beautiful socialite. To appear worthy of Laurie’s attention, Tommy joins a church choir and becomes a confidant of its pastor, Reverend Brockholst Farr. Reverend Farr gains fame as an outspoken advocate against sin and vice, and for a while Tommy plays the double agent, feeding information back and forth between the forces of morality, represented by Reverend Farr, and the soiled underbelly, embodied in the corrupt policemen and the houses of prostitution.
In the libretto drafts, however, we can see the writers shifting the story’s focus away from the young lovers (now named Tommy and Laura) and onto the crusading Reverend (renamed Brock). By December 1959, they had obtained a commitment from the acclaimed Shakespearean actor Maurice Evans to play the role. Although Evans had a solid reputation in the classical repertoire, he had only played in one previous musical, Ball at the Savoy, in London in 1933. In Weidman and Abbott’s libretto, the first act is dominated by the Reverend’s initial efforts to shut down the brothels, and the second act by his appearance at an official inquiry into sin and corruption. The young reporter and his sweetheart remain main characters, but their relationship is secondary, and in the end, they go their separate ways.
Therein lay the show’s difficulties. Bock and Harnick wrote some fetching numbers for the lesser characters and denizens of the Tenderloin establishments, such as “Little Old New York,” a tribute to the city’s permissiveness led by two of the working girls, and infectious, character-defining songs for the young lovers, including “Tommy, Tommy” and “My Miss Mary.” But the musical profile of the reformers was staid and solemn, in tunes such as “Bless This Land” and “The Army of the Just.” The story asks the audience to side with the crusading Reverend and his flock, but our sympathies uncontrollably gravitate to the characters onstage who seem to be having all the fun.
Critics recognized the problem immediately. Reviewing opening night, Whitney Bolton of the Morning Telegraph wrote, “When it concerns itself with dedicated, happy baggages and trulls, [Tenderloin] is a walloping and vivid and excitingly funny show, but when it turns to admire the sleek impregnables of virtue, it is duller than dishwater.” In the words of Walter Kerr in the Herald Tribune, “Maurice Evans has an extremely unsympathetic part. . . . He plays a crusading minister who wants to eliminate the production numbers.”
With the benefit of hindsight, the show’s creators have agreed. Harnick remembers trying to equalize the musical appeal of the characters, but “As much as we tried to make the minister human and a fun-loving man, it never quite worked.” Hal Prince feels that the Reverend “turned out to be not such an ideal character for a musical.” Prince imagines a reconceptualization centered on Tommy as a “parable of contemporary morality, the young leading man utterly amoral, triumphing, a forerunner of J. Pierpont Finch in How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.” In other words, more like the novel.
Bock and Harnick learned their lesson. Up through this experience, they had simply followed the leads of the book writer(s) for decisions on story structure and song placement. But after the disappointment of Tenderloin, they resolved to take a more active role in the development of the libretto, to become more integral to the entire creative process. And now is a good time to celebrate the spectacular results of that new approach, as Fiddler on the Roof celebrates its fiftieth birthday with its fifth Broadway revival, scheduled to open in the fall of 2015.
A note on the texts:
All of the archival images below are made available through the kind permission of the rights holders [Sheldon Harnick and the estates of Jerry Bock, Jerome Weidman, George Abbott, and Samuel Hopkins Adams] for research use only. You may not repost or otherwise publish the images below without permission from the rights holders. If you are interested in staging a production of Tenderloin, please contact Music Theatre International.
Part of FDR's New Deal, the Works Progress/Projects Administration (WPA) was created in 1935 to provide paying jobs for the unemployed at every skill level. Workers built bridges, dams, roads, libraries, courthouses, schools, parks and gardens—and they created art.
Some of that art took the form of murals, like the ones on view at the Harlem Hospital Center. Other smaller-scale works are in the collections of the Schomburg Center, right across the street.
The collection contains lithographs, etchings, and pastels showing allegorical scenes, cityscapes, portraits, etc., by Charles Alston, Nan Lurie, Riva Helfond, and others, many of which were produced at the Harlem Community Arts Center.
On a beautiful Wednesday morning in 1904, six year old Edna Doering left her apartment in the East Village with her mother, and two elder siblings. Her mother carried a shiny tin lunch box for the picnic the family was going to have at Locust Grove, Long Island, the intended destination of a church-sponsored pleasure cruise aboard the General Slocum steamboat. Soon after the boat set off, it caught fire and ran aground on North Brother Island. Most of the 1,400 passengers women and children died onboard or drowned in the East River. It remained the worst mass fatality in New York City history until September 11th, 2001.
In 1987, journalist Jeff Kisseloff interviewed Doering, then 87 years old, and one of the few remaining survivors of the General Slocum disaster. In her interview, Doering recalls her anticipation for the trip and her childlike disappointment that her panicked mother threw the lunch box overboard during the fire. Doering was the only member of her family to survive that day. She was saved when a stranger aboard the boat threw her overboard. Doering landed, she graphically relayed to Kisseloff, on what she could only assume were floating bodies and was rescued by a passing rowboat that was searching for survivors.
Doering is one of over 150 interviews Kisseloff conducted for his book, You Must Remember This: An Oral History of Manhattan from the 1890s to World War II. Between 1986 to 1988, he traversed the city with a cassette recorder to interview former longshoreman, bootleggers, pickle makers, butchers, community activists, housewives, and writers in an attempt to capture stories of old Manhattan. Most of the people he interviewed were elderly at the time and have since died. Thus, Kisseloff’s recordings provide the only extant story of their lives in and around Manhattan before 1945. These original, unedited interviews have recently been digitized and are now open to the public through the Jeff Kisseloff oral history interviews collection held in the Manuscripts and Archives Division.
The interviews touch on the key topics of late 19th and early 20th century life. During this time period horse drawn carts were almost entirely replaced by motorized vehicles; refrigerators replaced ice boxes; unions were increasingly organized across industrial and public service sectors; alcoholic beverages were outlawed during Prohibition and eventually re-legalized ; and the Great Depression flipped countless lives upside down. New York City’s population growth soared from 1890 to 1920, as immigrants from Europe and Russia made their homes in the swollen tenements throughout the city. As the population grew, residential Manhattan surged northward assisted by the creation of the subway system. Farmland in northern Manhattan was settled by new Irish and German citizens while southern African Americans migrated north to Harlem during what is now called the “Great Migration.”
Harlem residents in front of shop listening to the radio, 1930s.Image ID: 1800852
Kisseloff framed his book according to the city’s neighborhoods; contained in the collection are interviews from a wide range of New York’s urban population. The interviews he conducted in each neighborhood reflect the variety of social, economic, and cultural forces that shaped them. These neighborhoods often contained diametrically opposed economic classes as well as multiple ethnic and religious groups, all coexisting only a few blocks from one another. For example, on the Upper West Side he interviewed the influential newspaper editor William Randolph Hearst who lived in a private building his family owned on 86th Street; Olga Marx, an upper class German Jewish woman who grew up in her family’s brownstone on 77th Street; Rosanna Weston, a lifelong resident in the predominately African American San Juan Hill area (most of which was razed to build Lincoln Center); and Bullets Bressan, the son of an Italian tile setter, who lived in a four room apartment on 69th Street and the Hudson River with his parents and five siblings. While these four individuals lived within walking distance, their respective experiences were worlds apart.
Despite ethnic and class differences, common threads carry across interviews from the same neighborhood, or region of Manhattan. The East Side interviews discuss the massive gashouses that lined the East River, and the Chelsea interviews consistently mention union bosses Joe Ryan and John Lovejoy Elliott, who founded the Hudson Guild. The East Harlem interviews tend to focus on boxing, cigar making, and the neighborhood’s pride in Congressman and native son Vito Marcantonio.The Harlem interviews vivify the Harlem Renaissance and outstanding neighborhood figures such as Marcus Garvey and Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. Interviewees from the Lower East Side recall their fear of the mafia and Chinatown gangs; the unionization of the garment industries, particularly the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America; and their involvement with community groups and landsmanshafts, immigrant benevolent organizations with ties to a particular region. Discussed in many of the interviewees who lived along the west side of Manhattan are the effect of the Hudson River Railroad lines and the river itself on the neighborhoods, and memories of the 10th Avenue cowboys, mounted men who road in front of the trains wielding flags to warn pedestrians of the approaching locomotive.
Street Peddler On The Lower East Side, New York City.Image ID: 806176
Present in all interviews are personal details of apartments and houses , and the minutiae of everyday life. Food and eating habits are often discussed. Kisseloff interviewed Stanley Auster of the famous Auster family who owned candy stores in the Lower East Side and the East Village. While Auster does not give away his families secret egg cream recipe, he explains how the candy shops and drinking egg creams provided a neighborhood gathering spot and activity during Prohibition. Sol Kaplan discusses making pickles on Allen Street and Joe Hinzman recalls working at Ruppert’s Brewery in Yorkville. There are also memories of home cooked meals, ranging from humble lunches of herrings and potatoes to the multicourse formal dinners of Fifth Avenue resident Frederick Vanderbilt Field. Also discussed is sexuality and human relationships. Interviewees recollect when they courted and married their husbands or wives. There are sweet stories, like a couple who met across a fire escape, as well as more salty tales of going “two button,” slang that references the two buttons that held a girl’s knickers together. Many interviewees who grew up in tenements remembered spending Saturday afternoons at the movies, for their own entertainment and to give their parents rare moments of privacy.
Researchers are encouraged to read You Must Remember This, peruse the finding aid, and make an appointment to come in and spend some time with these remarkable and engaging interviews. Any researcher whose project touches on late 19th or early 20th century life in New York City, or indeed the United States, will find at least one interview that will enrich their research.
Last week we introduced Iain M. Banks's first sci-fi novel Consider Phlebas. It is the first novel in his Culture series and features the anti-hero Bora Horza Gobuchul as its protagonist. This week I'd like to delve into the character of Horza, why he is nearly fanatical in his pursuit of the missing Mind and what you think makes him tick.
A Ripping Good Winter Yarn
Horza is, to say the least, somewhat self-interested. Like all good protagonists, he is multi-faceted and grows with the story. As a Changer, he can alter his appearance, given enough time, to mimic any humanoid. This is what he's done when we're introduced to him in a prison cell where he's been exposed by a Culture agent as a spy.
His antagonism for the Culture does not stem from this incident, however. It's a long-running part of his makeup. The question is, why? What we know of the Culture from reading is that they've given over the administration of their society to the ubiquitous Minds, preferring to pursue hedonistic lifestyles enabled by plentiful energy and resources shared among all. The humanoids of the Culture are also genetically engineered (termed "gengineering" in the novel) to the point of gender fluidity, centuries-long lifespans and birth control at will.
Is Horza jealous? What does he mean when he claims to be on the side of life? Especially since he works for the Idirans that launched a war of conquest. Do Horza's actions on Vavatch after theOlmedreca fit this view of himself? Is a life lived by the Empire's rational religion better than a life run by machines? Wouldn't the Culture be considered more amenable to life, especially since they evacuate Vavatch before destroying the place?
We turn again to the epigraph: "Gentile or Jew/O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,/Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you." Is Horza filling the role of Phlebas? His shape-changing nature would certainly lend itself to once being handsome and tall. However, it could also metaphorically mean he would always be able to look windward. What do you think?
Look also at the first part of the epigraph: "Idolatry is worse than carnage." The Koran, 2: 190. Does this apply to Horza's "worship" of life above all? Is this a form of idolatry on his part? Could it not equally apply to the Culture who seem to worship their prized freedom and principles? Chime in below and we'll see you next week in the third and final piece of this month's Reader's Den.
Illustrator and writer Maira Kalman's My Favorite Things is an arresting portrait of the significance of objects in our lives, from Toscanini's pants to Abraham Lincoln's pocket watch. At a recent Books at Noon event, she spoke with us about her favorite things, including, Kantian walks, Pippi Longstocking, and Monet.
The artist described the women in her family as smart and irreverent, particularly her mother. In fact, it was at her mother's urging that Kalman became a library patron:
"She never wrote, though there was a lot of letter writing, which was another way of them expressing themselves... What she did encourage me to do was to read, and that was critical in my family. So when we came to America, we went to the library. We didn't buy books. We went to the library and we worked our way around. And when I got to L, when we got to Pippi Longstocking, I said, 'This is the job for me. I'm going to be a writer.' There was no question about it."
Since then, Kalman has become one of the greatest and most beloved creative minds in America. Her secret? Just putting one foot in front of the other:
"Kant: I know nothing else about him except he took a walk, and that's about the extent of my knowledge. But he took a walk at three-thirty everyday... So when I was teaching a course for design students at SVA, one of the years we took this Kantian theme where you take a walk by yourself without your phone and your things and no music and no conversation, and you're really able to experience what people do experience which is just the freedom of not thinking about something and the ability for a human being to experience the pleasure of everything that's around them, so you get to this kind of giddy state... and all of a sudden problems are solved and ideas flood in and you don't know where they came from."
Another major source of inspiration to Kalman are her fellow artists. She explained that she learns from observing, and the lessons provided by looking are not merely brushstroke techniques:
"I consider myself an illustrator, but I spend a lot of time in museums. And really, the more I paint, the more I'm inspecting how other people are painting. And if you look at a Monet waterlily, you could probably look at that for the rest of all time and learn a tremendous amount, both about the nature of being alive and about the nature of what kind of truth you want to express in your life and how do you use that white and how do you do that thing."
You can subscribe to the New York Public Library Podcast to hear more conversations with wonderful artists, writers, and intellectuals. Join the conversation today!
“You don't get to choose if you get hurt in this world...but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices.” —The Fault in Our StarsBy John Green
“I just want you to know that you’re very special… and the only reason I’m telling you is that I don’t know if anyone else ever has.” —The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky
“Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.” ―The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
“Becoming fearless isn't the point. That's impossible. It's learning how to control your fear, and how to be free from it.” ―Divergent by Veronica Roth
Born in 1987 in Seattle and raised in Bainbridge Island, WA by an environmental engineer and a glass blower, I was privileged to grow up in an environment where both art and the spirit of invention were of the upmost importance. One of my first memories is watching my mother blowing glass at the Pilchuck School in Mt. Vernon, WA. I was filled with fear and awe as she effortlessly maneuvered a glowing bubble of glass in the oppressive heat of the studio. A little more than a decade later I began working with glass myself. Since then I have strived to master the material and to push its physical and conceptual boundaries, in order to be able to truly lose myself in my work. I have made New York my home since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. I continue to refine my work as a goblet maker, while using the city’s space limitations as an opportunity to explore lamp working as well. Handmaps is a series of sculptures that I started as a means of documenting the intricate details of peoples’ hands, from the whirls of their fingerprints to the scars and abrasions that have left their permanent mark on skin. Our hands contain our life story, as written in the ridges and lines that are a combination of our DNA and the experiences that we’ve endured. I started this project with the desire to magnify these individual details while remaining true to the basic anatomy of the hand. In essence, what is left is an abstraction that portrays what makes each of us different and strange. Through this project I am attempting to create portraits of a person’s experiences, while exploring what it means to be human.
Whose hands are they?
These hands are my own and are the beginning of a series of pieces that I’m doing based on the condition of people’s hands and how they show age and ware. I’m most interested in exploring the line-work that our skin develops and the gradual wear that is the result of living and aging. I think hands are a fascinating subject because they reveal so much about what we do with ourselves and how we spend our lives. Hands evolve and change as we age and making sculptures out of them is a way to create still frames of people’s lives. The fact that they are transparent glass comes from my own desire to only depict the surface and contours of a hand, resulting in what could be seen as a shell.
How did you get into glassblowing?
Due to the prevalence of glassblowing in the northwest, I was exposed to the craft at a young age and was able to apprentice and work for a few great glass artists. I’ve lived on the east coast for the last 8 years and the only major part of my art that’s changed is its scale. I’ve noticed that New York often makes people shrink their work to be able to cope with the lack of space in their lives and I definitely fit into that category.
Almost every thing I make is very easily breakable and I love how fleeting a piece can become while I’m working it. There’s not only building but a great amount of destruction that occurs during the time that I take to finish a piece. I find that I’m only happy with a finished piece if it is refined to the point where it approaches destruction, and so extreme fragility is something I constantly confront in my work. I believe that a library is an appropriate place for delicate art because it is a quite and subdued environment. Quiet places work well for displaying fragile things.
What are you reading right now?
I’m reading Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood at the moment.
Join us for an opening for Evan Chamberlain on Saturday December 13, 2014 from 2-4:30 pm.
Have a flair for foreign languages? Then this year, learn how to say "Merry Christmas" in eight different languages: French, Polish, Hungarian, Swedish, German, Spanish, Czech, and Norwegian. These shareable Christmas cards from the NYPL Digital Collection will add some international panache to your seasons greetings.
Sunnyside Citywide Home Care will present a recruitment for Home Health Aide Trainees (50 openings), on Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 10 am - 1 pm, at Flushing Workforce 1 Career Center, 138-60 Barclay Avenue, 2nd Floor, Flushing, NY 11355.
Block Institute will present a recruitment for Teacher Aide (20 openings), Teacher Assistant (10 openings), Direct Support Professional (20 openings), Assistant Manager - Residential (3 openings), Residence Manager (3 openings), on Tuesday, December 16, 2014, 1-4 pm, at Brooklyn Workforce 1 Career Center, 250 Sschermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
Americare Inc. will present a recruitment for Home Health Aides (10 openings Certified and Non-Certified) on Wednesday, December 17, 2014, 10 am - 2 pm at Flushing Workforce 1 Career Center, 138-60 Barclay Avenue,2nd Floor, Flushing , NY 11355.
H&R Block will present a recruitment for Client Service Professional (20 openings) on Wednesday, December 17, 2014, 1-4 pm, at Brooklyn Workforce 1 Career Center, 250 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201.
Americare, Inc. will present a recruitment for Home Health Aides (15 openings) on Thursday, December 18, 2014, 10 am - 2 pm. at Staten Island Workforce 1 Career Center , 120 Stuyvesant Place, Staten Island, NY 10301.
COHME will present a recruitment for Home Health Aides (F/T & P/T) (10 openings) on Friday, December 19, 2014, 10 am - 2 pm, at the Bronx Workforce 1 Career Center, 400 E. Fordham Road, 7th Floor, Bronx, NY 10458.
H&R Block will present a recruitment for Client Service Professional (Seasonal) (20 openings) on Friday, December 19, 2014, 10 am - 1 pm, at NYC Workforce 1 Career Center, 215 West 125th Street, 6th Floor, New York, NY 10027.
St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development provides Free Job Training and Educational Programs in Environmental Response and Remediation Tech (ERRT), Commercial Driver's License , Pest Control Technician Training (PCT), Employment Search and Prep Training and Job Placement, Earn Benefits and Career Path Center. For information and assistance, please visit St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development, 790 Broadway, 2nd Fl., Brooklyn, NY 11206. 718-302-2057 ext. 202.
Brooklyn Workforce Innovations helps jobless and working poor New Yorkers establish careers in sectors that offer good wages and opportunities for advancement. Currently BWI offers free job training programs in four industries: commercial driving, telecommunications cable installation, TV and film production, and skilled woodworking. BWI is at 621 Degraw Street, Brooklyn, NY 11217. 718-237-5366.
CMP (formerly Chinatown Manpower Project) in lower Manhattan is now recruiting for a free training in Quickbooks, Basic Accounting, and Excel. This training is open to anyone who is receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Class runs for 8 weeks, followed by one-on-one meetings with a job developer. CMP also provides Free Home Health Aide Training for bilingual English/Cantonese speakers who are receiving food stamps but no cash assistance. Training runs Mondays through Fridays for 6 weeks, and includes test prep then taking the HHA certification exam. Students learn about direct care techniques such as taking vital signs and assisting with personal hygiene and nutrition. For more information for the above two training programs, please Email:info@cmpny.org , call 212-571-1690 or visit 70 Mulberry Street, 3rd Floor, NY, NY 10013. CMP also provides tuition-based healthcare and business trainings for free to students who are entitled to ACCESS funding. Please call CMP for information.
Nontraditional Employment for Women (NEW) trains women and places them in careers in the skilled construction, utility, and maintenance trades. It helps women achieve economic independence and a secure future. For information call 212-627-6252 or register online.
Grace Institute provides tuition-free, practical job training in a supportive learning community for underserved New York area women of all ages and from many different background. For information call 212-832-7605.
Please note this blog post will be revised when more recruitment events for the week of December 14 are available.
Redeployment by Phil Klay won the National Book Award this year. Klay’s writing has appeared in several publications including Granta, The New York Times, and Newsweek among others, but Deployment is his first novel. Home run, first time at bat! Here are a few debut novels published this year (2014) that are also worth a look.
An Untamed State by Roxane Gay
The story of a woman kidnapped and held for ransom. “[A] commanding début . . . Mireille’s struggle to maintain a sense of self while being denied her freedom produces the novel’s most powerful chapters.”—New Yorker
Bird Box by Josh Malerman
An apocalyptic near-future setting and something that must remain unseen, even a glimpse will drive the seer to horrific violence. “[A] chilling debut… Malerman...keeps us tinglingly on edge with his cool, merciless storytelling [and] douses his tale in poetic gloom….An unsettling thriller, this earns comparisons to Hitchcock’s The Birds, as well as the finer efforts of Stephen King and cult sci-fi fantasist Jonathan Carroll.” —Kirkus Reviews
Panic in a Suitcase by Yelena Akhtiorskaya
The story of a newly immigrated Russian family in Brooklyn. “[A] spirited first novel…Akhtiorskaya approaches the fundamental experience of exile with tenderness and satiric wit” —The San Francisco Chronicle
California by Edan Lepucki
Set in an environmentally devastated near-future. A couple leaves Los Angeles to live in the wilderness. "In her arresting debut novel, Edan Lepucki conjures a lush, intricate, deeply disturbing vision of the future, then masterfully exploits its dramatic possibilities." —Jennifer Egan, author of A Visit from the Goon Squad
Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
1977 small town Ohio, a death in the family unveils secrets and a subsequent unraveling. "[A]n accomplished debut... It's also heart-wrenching. Ng deftly pulls together the strands of this complex, multigenerational novel. Everything I Never Told You is an engaging work that casts a powerful light on the secrets that have kept an American family together — and that finally end up tearing it apart. —The Los Angeles Times
The Land of Steady Habits by Ted Thompson
Anders Hill suffers suburban malaise and deals with the consequences when he decides to leave his Connecticut hamlet and family behind. “Filled with heartache and humor, this assured, compassionate first novel channels the suburban angst of Updike and Cheever, updating the narrative of midlife dissatisfaction with a scathing dissection of America’s imploding economy.” —Booklist
I Am Having So Much Fun Without You by Courtney Maum
Set in Paris and London, an unfaithful husband attempts to win back his wife. “Maum is funny: the kind of funny that is mean and dirty, with some good bad words thrown in. And she has a satiric eye for artsy pretension. . . . Enticing.” —New York Times Book Review
Wolf in a White Van by John Darnielle
Isolated game developer creates a text-based role playing game through the mail. “An incredible feat.” —The AV Club
The Quick by Lauren Owen
You think this is going to be a story of a Victorian poet and then it turns into something completely different. “A sly and glittering addition to the literature of the macabre.”—Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall
Ever finished a book and immediately wanted to read another one just like it? It’s not always easy to find another novel to enjoy when you’re only looking for something with the same topic or genre.
Take a moment to determine what it was about the author's work you liked. Maybe you loved the quirky personalities, the non-stop action, descriptions of costumes and setting, or perhaps the sentences were more like verse. The four appeal factors for readers (plot, character, setting, and language) are widely talked about in reader circles. You can learn more about these appeal factors, or as our beloved Nancy Pearl calls them doorways, from her TedTalk or her Publishers Weeklyarticle on the same topic.
With Nancy Pearl’s guidance, several of us Romance readers (and writers) came up with the lists below, the Doorways to Romance.
Story Driven:
This is the hardest appeal factor to think of when looking at the Romance genre from a traditional fiction view. Generally if a book is plot driven, it's categorized as the alternative subject to market to a broader audience. For instance books described as 'A Thriller with romantic elements' very often fall right into the conventions of a Romance Novel, but calling it a Thriller means you'll also reach the John Grisham crowd. These rules often narrow what is formally considered Romance. With that in mind, here are some story driven titles from the Romance genre.
As a Romance reader, when I think back to a book I enjoyed and don't remember much about the plot (it's there but vague), I'll usually remember the characters like they're old friends. Romance novels are generally built on the emotional conflict between characters (usually the hero and heroine) making the genre heavily character-driven. This is not a weakness. Romance novelists create wonderful fully developed characters you'll cheer on and remember for years.
Romance audiences love detail: why a character is wearing a certain shade at her debutante ball, the way a hero sits on his horse, how a creature creates a bead to wish upon, or if a particularly well fitting dress boosts a heroine's confidence. We want to know. Romance authors are ace world-builders and if their quirky characters don't pull you in, their descriptions of ancient customs, historic clothing, back story, and all the other external influences impacting your characters will have you hooked.
Language Driven Romances are easy to find. They're everywhere. Romance is a huge umbrella genre that can mix with any other literary genre. Authors use language, sentence structure, or word choice to dance into many different genres. The lists above and the titles below include Romance titles from the popular sub-genres: Historic, Contemporary, Military, Western, YA, Mystery, Women's Fiction, Erotic Romance, Paranormal, Multicultural, Christian, Gay, and Humor.
Still from Jessen’s animated credit sequence for Theme and Variations. The filmmaker's name descends with wisps of cotton clouds.
Like the ever branching dendritic pattern water takes in its descent, human obsessions take random alternate paths. One branch comes to an impasse (like a stone or a twig in water's path) and leads to a room full of newspapers, another leads to a room where artisan dilettantes assemble and catalog their collections, and the naive product of this love is cherished. There are enthusiast fans who have pirated and hoarded bows and pas de deux in 8mm and 16mm home movies, and then there are balletomanes who have filmed entire works in snippets of seconds recorded over multiple performances painstakingly spliced together to compress months and even years of time into a few minutes.
Still from Jessen’s animated credit sequence for Theme and Variations. Cottonball clouds continue to descend with more text.
Victor Jessen, (1901-1995), who supported himself as a bored, dispirited and often absent draftsman, was an artist by disposition who failed to find a satisfying medium of expression before devoting himself to filming ballet. At home in Denmark he was a child impresario with a table top theater, paper marionettes and a phonograph for his orchestra. His enthusiastic recollection of the little theater suggests that what followed this high point was a series of disappointments. He took a stab at being an inventor with mediocre modifications of items like cigarette lighters and automobile turn signals. Unhappy as a musician he sold his grand piano and built a massive record collection that expanded to a rented garage. He recorded radio concerts with two transcription disc cutters, so there would be no loss from changing discs. He bought a Leica and decided to be a still photographer of dance, but the camera obscured the performance for him and he wandered on stage out of the wings. It was not until he discovered filmmaking that he achieved the omnipotent viewpoint he had had as a child with his tabletop theater...I have included frame grabs of the animated credit sequence from his 1954 filming of Theme and Variations which reveal an innocent delight that must come from his childhood pastime.
Still from Jessen’s animated credit sequence for Theme and Variations
In his 1968 interview with Marian Horosko, Jessen describes a state between terror and compulsion. Dressed in black with his homemade blackened blimp, his pockets are stuffed with exposed and unexposed film; he is in constant fear of discovery. He sounds more like a scarred veteran of Cold War espionage than a concealed filmmaker. Finally, they come for him, it's over, he is resigned to his fate… they remove the woman seated in front of him; she had been taking pictures with a still camera.
Still from Jessen’s animated credit sequence for Theme and Variations . An obvious letter shortage has put us on a last name basis here.
His autobiography, Without Permission, is dedicated to three individuals and a film lab. Choreographer Leonide Massine, who reprimanded him for not using a blimp on his camera; the indulgent usher, who looked the other way; Miss Genevieve Oswald, first curator of NYPL’s Dance Collection, who purchased his films as the Victor Jessen Collection; and Kinolux (1932-1991), his obviously patient film lab. The book is out of print and only appears to be in a few research libraries. There is no eBook, there is no Wikipedia page for Victor Jessen; his name shows up in an entry for the Massine ballet Gaîté Parisienne. It is in plain text, there is no link to tell us more. If you scroll down to the bottom, there is a link to the VAI (Video Artists International) page for Gaîté Parisienne. There you will find information on Jessen and the 10 year project.
Still from Jessen’s animated credit sequence for Theme and Variations. The end of the sequence, a credit for ABT.
When I think of Victor Jessen (or any of the secret filmmakers) inconspicuously filming dance fragments, "from various angles," with his Bell and Howell camera, coat pockets stuffed with up to 15 preloaded 16mm film magazines, I immediately think of Woody Allen's character Virgil Starkwell in the film Take the Money and Run. Virgil, gathering intelligence on a bank lobby in preparation for a robbery, conceals a movie camera in a loaf of bread, but then conspicuously holds the loaf of bread to his eye as he pans about the lobby. There are more earnest splicers who have saved these ephemeral moments: Ann Barzel, Francis Fitzgerald, Lucia Wayne and various stage hands. I hope to cover some of them in future posts.
I love a happy ending. I’m a sucker for a swoony romance and a cute boy with a crooked grin (preferably with a British accent). I may look like a hard shelled, cynical New Yorker but at my core I’m really just a pile of candy colored goo. Some of my favorite books with romance plots and subplots made the Best Books for Teens 2014 list, including I’ll Give You the Sun,The Here and Now,Oblivion and The Winners Curse. However sadly, not everything could make the list and my gooey romantic heart was forced to leave off some romantic favorites.
Here are some fun, swoony 2014 YA romances of many varieties (fantasy, history, supernatural, suspense and holiday) to warm you up this winter.
(listed in alphabetical order)
Black Iceby Becca Fitzpatrick
Britt goes hiking in the Grand Tetons of Wyoming to prove to her ex-boyfriend Calvin that she's not some wimpy girl. She gets her chance to prove herself when she is caught in a blizzard, gets taken hostage by fugitives and must learn to trust her instincts and training. Equal amounts suspense, grit and swoon. This needs to be turned into a movie for Lifetime ASAP!
Breath of Frost by Alyxandra Harvey
In 1814 London, while at a society ball, Emma accidentally breaks a binding spell that unleashes the magical powers of her and her cousins and opens up portals to the Underworld. She finds help in the form of Cormac, a handsome and annoying young lord who thinks he knows everything. A fun mix of regency romance and supernatural fantasy. The second book in the series, Whisper the Dead, just came out.
Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge
In a devil's bargain, Nyx has been betrothed to the handsome demon Ignifex that rules over her country and now it's time for the marriage to take place. However, she won't just become his wife she's been trained to be his assassin as well. A compelling and intricate redo of the "Beauty and the Beast" story.
Famous in Loveby Rebecca Serle
Paige is plucked from obscurity and chosen to star in a big blockbuster film where she finds herself cast opposite two of Hollywood's sexiest young actors. Suddenly the romance and drama in her offscreen life is starting to resemble the drama happening onscreen. Ooh so much drama! Put this one in your romantic fantasy bucket list.
The Geography of You and Me by Jennifer E. Smith
Lucy meets Owen in the elevator of her Manhattan apartment during a citywide blackout. What follows is one perfect night and a year of trying to make a long distance relationship work. Smith is a master of the "meet cute"—her books never disappoint!
Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephanie Perkins
Isla has had a massive crush on Josh ever since she started as a freshman at the School of America in Paris. A midnight encouter at a cafe in Manhattan, the summer before their senior year, finally gives her the chance she's been waiting for. While this book stands alone, it is the third book in Perkins's fantastic, loosely linked trilogy that started with Anna and the French Kiss, which is a must read for all YA romance readers.
Just One Night by Gayle Forman
In Just One Day, American college student Allyson and Dutch actor Willem have one perfect day in Paris. InJust One Year, Willem travels the world trying to rediscover the man he was with Allyson. In Just One Night, Allyson and Willem finally get to find out if they are meant to be. While only a novella, I've never swooned so hard in my life! Make sure to read the other installments before reading this one. E-book only.
Kiss of Deceptionby Mary Pearson
Princess Lia flees an unwanted arranged marriage and settles into life in a rural fishing village. There she meets two handsome and mysterious strangers, one who is the jilted prince and the other an assassin sent to kill her. The first book in a new and exciting fantasy series. This is an epic love story in the making.
The Last Forever by Deb Caletti
Tessa is reeling from the death of her mother and having her father dump her with a grandmother she barely knows is not helping. Then she meets Henry at the local library and has an instant connection with him. I can't recommend this book enough. It's beautiful, funny, poignant and meaningful. It teaches us that love is never just one thing. Have many tissues handy for this one!
A Mad Wicked Follyby Sharon Biggs Waller
In 1909 London, aspiring artist Vicky Darling causes a scandal by posing nude in front of an art class. As her parents force her into a life of high society and propriety, Vicky rebels by applying for art school, getting involved with the women's rights movement and falling for Will, a young police constable. This is a fast moving romance with a strong female protagonist and great historical details. I'm kinda obsessed with Edwardian England and the British suffragette movement so this was the perfect book for me.
The Mirk and the Midnight Hour by Jane Nickerson
In the Civil War South, Violet struggles to keep her family together and the family's farm running with the help of her slaves, who were raised along side her. As troubles mount, she starts a secret romance with an injured Yankee soldier who is being held prisoner by voodoo practitioners. A beautiful and atmospheric retelling of the "Tam Lin" folktale.
Mortal HeartBy Robin LaFevers
In Medieval France, rebellious Annith has fled the convent of St. Mortain, where she's been trained to be a handmaiden of Death. She comes under the protection of the mysterious Balthazar and his Hellequin, damned souls charged with bringing in the recently dead . This is the third book in the fantastic His Fair Assassins trilogy. While it can be read alone it's much better read after the first two books (both amazing!): Grave Mercyand Dark Triumph.
My Life with the Walter Boys by Ali Novak
Rich Manhattanite Jackie Howard's life is turned upside down when her whole family is tragically killed in a car accident. She is taken in by an old friend of her mother's who lives on a cattle ranch in Colorado with her husband, eleven (gorgeous) sons and one tomboy daughter. A quick, fun contemprary romance written by the author when she was just 15 years old. E-book only.
My True Love Gave to Me: Twelve Holiday Stories ed. by Stephanie Perkins
Rainbow Rowell has two friends reconnecting on New Years Eve. Kelly Link gives us a handsome mysterious Christmas visitor. David Levithan has a Jewish boy dressing up as Santa Claus to please his boyfriend. Matt de la Pena finds romance in a snowed-in Brooklyn brownstone. And that's just for starters! Other authors include, Jenny Han, Stephanie Perkins, Laini Taylor and more. Grab a cup of cocoa and cozy up with this perfect holiday romance anthology.
Now and Forever by Susane Colasanti
Sterling is crazy in love with her boyfriend Ethan and he's just become the world's biggest rock star. Suddenly she's thrust into the limelight and the world of celebrity. She's about to discover that the glam life and being the girlfriend of a rock star is not all it's cracked up to be. Being half in love with a pop star myself, I can only imagine how complicated it could be in real life but Colasanti captures it perfectly.
Prisoner of Night and Fogby Anne Blankman
In 1930s Berlin, Gretchen is the beloved niece of Adolf Hitler and her dangerous brother is one of his notorious Brownshirts. She begins to question everything she was raised to believe when a handsome Jewish reporter begins to question whether the death of her war hero father was actually heroic or in fact, murder. A fascinating look at one of the more controversial figures in history with the added draw of a forbidden romance.
To All the Boys I Loved Before by Jenny Han
Lara Jean falls for boys (from afar), writes them love letters that she puts in addressed envelopes but never sends instead she keeps them in a hatbox in her closet. Imagine her surprise (and horror) when those letters actually get mailed out. A hilarious romantic comedy filled with wit, charm and the best younger sister ever.
Troubleby Non Pratt
Set in England, Hannah needs someone to say he is the father of her baby and Aaron, in need of a little redemption, signs on to be the pretend baby daddy. Their friendship will help them find their way through all the secrets and lies. A smart and affecting debut novel. Bonus: this has British boys!
Uninvitedby Sophie Jordan
Set in a world where criminals can be detected through their genes, beautiful, musical prodigy Davy is surprised to discover that she has "killer DNA". Now with her life irrevocably changed, she's attending school with potential killers and forced to make new friends including with the handsome, brooding felon sitting at the desk next to her. A fun, swoony sci-fi novel that will have you wishing for your own bad boy.
Unmadeby Sarah Rees Brennan
As evil sorcerers continue their assault on the inhabitants of a quaint English village, Kami has her own battles as she's torn between two brothers: Ash who she's bound to magically and Jared, who she loves beyond reason. Yes, this is the third book in the fun Lynburn Legacy trilogy —Unspoken and Untold—but there is a scene here that is oh so very memorable and for that reason alone it deserves inclusion.
5 Ways to Build Trust in a Business is the U.S. Small Business Administration blog post authored by Marco Carbajo. Marco is a business credit expert, author, speaker, and founder of the Business Credit Insiders Circle. He is a business credit blogger for Dun and Bradstreet Credibility Corp, the SBA.gov Community, About.com and All Business.com. His articles and blog; Business Credit Blogger.com, have been featured in 'Fox Small Business','American Express Small Business', 'Business Week', 'The Washington Post', 'The New York Times', 'The San Francisco Tribune',‘Alltop’, and ‘Entrepreneur Connect’.
The most valuable business commodity is trust. Richard Branson, author and founder of Virgin Group says, “Building trust in your brand isn't easy to achieve and it may take time, but it doesn't have to come at a high cost. With honesty, ambition, hard work and attention to detail you can instill a level of trust that will enable you to move forward.”
The fact is that integrity impacts all aspects of business and is among, if not the most important character trait for a company to have. It is the barometer by which your customers, lenders, potential business partners and employees evaluate you and your business. Trust in a business speaks volumes on how a company services and communicates with its customers.
A trustworthy business can be defined many different ways depending upon the person, business, or organization reviewing it. Here are five ways you can build trust in your business:
1. Deliver on your promises – Doing what you say you are going to do when you say you’re going to do it is crucial to building trust. Famous entrepreneur and motivational speaker Jim Rohn said, “One customer well taken care of could be more valuable than $10,000 worth of advertising.”
2. Have a solid reputation – Potential customers and business partners will search for information about you and your business online. According to a survey conducted by Dimensional Research, 90 percent of respondents who recalled reading online reviews claimed that positive online reviews influenced buying decisions, while 86 percent said buying decisions were influenced by negative online reviews. It’s crucial to manage your online reputation and establish an active social media presence, website and blog.
3. Communicate effectively – Effective communication is the cornerstone of any successful company. In today’s fast paced business world, having a range of communication channels available such as phone, e-mail, instant messaging, fax, etc. is key to maximizing your ability to communicate effectively with customers.
4. Stay incompliance - Staying up to date and compliant with all federal state, and local rules required to keep your business in good standing where it conducts business is essential. Failure to meet the necessary requirements can cost you loss of good standing, not to mention fines, penalties, reinstatement costs and even business closure.
5. Creditworthiness - Lenders, potential business partners and investors will check your company’s credit reports. With positive business credit reports and ratings with a credit agency such as Dun and Bradstreet, a creditor can assess how your company handles its financial obligations. “All of this can be done by taking the initiative. Increased credit affords businesses better relationships with partners, vendors, trade sources and the community at large” says Jeff Stibel, CEO of Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp.
Let this be a guide for you in building and maintaining trust in your business. Integrity and credibility are invaluable business commodities. Take the time to study the habits and behaviors of those businesses who have gained trust in the business world. Adopt or adapt those that you can authentically incorporate into your own behavior. With time and consistency, you can build up trust and credibility for your business in the marketplace.
Of the many librarian associations in New York City, I have found ACRL/NY to be one of the best. I am very interested in research, and I was dead set on becoming an academic librarian when I was in library school. However, academic librarianship requires much publication, teaching, and vying for tenure. Also, public libraries have such a variety of queries from customers. ACRL/NY gives me a chance to network with academic librarians, and participate in the mentoring program and the symposium committee.
Annual Symposium
ACRL/NY puts on an annual symposium, the next of which is scheduled for December 4, 2015. I love conferences and librarian training events, so I am looking forward to attending next year. The conference also gives me a sense of what is going on in the academic librarian world, since I go to colleges to hand out public library cards. Anyone who is an ACRL/NY member can attend symposium committee meetings and executive board meetings. I have attended a couple of those meetings, and I look forward to more regular attendance in 2015. I find it fascinating to learn all of the logistics that are behind planning a grand training event.
Mentoring Program
The mentoring program run by ACRL/NY is fabulous. I have participated as a mentor since 2012. The program runs for an academic year. It is designed to pair more experienced librarians with novice professionals who are eager to learn more about the field. I generally mentor job seekers since I am not an academic librarian. I enjoy helping my mentees with their resumes, cover letters, interviewing, salary negotiation and general job-searching skills. The applications for mentees and mentors are on the ACRL/NY web site.
I am really glad that ACRL/NY has so many training opportunities for librarians, and the active members are inspiring and they have a variety of skill sets.
Fun Fact: Did you know that New York Public Library has a free online resource called Freegal Music? In Freegal Music you can stream and download free songs (Limit to 5 free downloads per week).
Now that Christmas is approaching get in the holiday spirit with one of these wonderful Christmas albums from the circulating collection:
8 Steps to Becoming a Consultant at 50 Plus is the U.S. Small Business Administration blog post authored by Caron Beesley. Caron is a small business owner, a writer, and marketing communications consultant. She works with the SBA.gov team to promote essential government resources that help entrepreneurs and small business owners start-up, grow and succeed.
When we think of entrepreneurs, we often picture young, tech-savvy millennials. But the face of American entrepreneurship is actually quite different. A recent survey conducted by Monster.com found that baby boomers take more risks and start more businesses than twentysomethings. With assets such as more wealth (and less debt), wisdom, education and experience, it’s no surprise that the average age of entrepreneurs is rising.
Consulting or contracting is a particularly attractive form of business ownership to older people – you can work anywhere and start-up costs are low. According to MBO Partners, nearly 5 million baby boomers are working as independent professionals – and 83 percent of them held traditional jobs before starting their own businesses.
If you’re interested in consulting or contracting as your second career act, here are eight essential steps to getting started.
The business planning stage
Most consultants and contractors start their businesses with very little financial investment, but that doesn’t mean you can ignore the planning process. In fact, a business plan can help you focus on your goals and the route you need to take to achieve those goals while doubling your chances for success!
If you need help with your plan take a look at SBA’s online, interactive Build a Business Plantool.
Choose your business structure
Many consultants and independent contractors assume that they need to form a limited liability company (LLC) to operate successfully and with minimum risk. While being an LLC can protect you from personal liability for business decisions or actions of the LLC – the liability protection is limited. In fact, over 70 percent of small businesses operate as sole proprietorships – the simplest way to start a business.
A sole proprietor owns and runs the business – there is no legal distinction between the business and you, the owner. This may be a disadvantage because you can be held personally liable for the debts and obligations of the business.
Managing this and other forms of risk is an important consideration and often requires a layered approach that includes selecting the right business insurance (clients often require that consultants have a form of insurance before entering into an agreement) and consulting an expert about the best structure for your business. Read more about your business structure options.
Financing your consulting business
How much money you need depends on the cost of doing business for the first few months (before you start generating sustainable income) such as the cost of getting business insurance, utilities, incorporation fees, setting up a home office, etc.
If your cash flow predictions indicate you may not be able to cover your expenses during this period, consider your options. Many contractors get around this problem by maintaining their existing full-time job while running their consulting business on the side. If you do need to borrow money, AARP strongly advises against dipping into your retirement funds. Instead, considerother ways to finance your business.
Tax and legal obligations
Starting a business can seem overwhelming and not just because of the legal and tax obligations that you’ll encounter. During the start-up phase, it’s important to get these right.
This includes obtaining the right licenses and permits. If you intend to use a trade name or name your business something other than your own name, then you’ll need to register that name with your local government.
From a tax perspective, consultants need to take care of quarterly estimated tax payments to both the IRS and yours state revenue office.
Consultants and contractors often undervalue their worth for a number of reasons. It can be awkward to talk about money or we underestimate how long things take us, or, worst of all, we want the gig so bad that we underprice it. To help you set your pricing, and negotiate your worth, read How to Calculate and Negotiate Your Hourly and Project-Based Pricing.
Go after your existing contacts
Your current pool of business and personal relationships will almost certainly be the source of your first clients as you start up. When I started my consulting business, my first client was my last employer. It’s been a fruitful relationship on both sides that spans over 10 years. They understand my value, trust me to deliver results and I understand their work practices inside out.
From there, network out and tap into relationships with former colleagues and industry peers. As your client base grows, hopefully these folks will also become your cheerleaders. Referrals are a huge source of business for consultants.
Marketing
While networking is important, it’s a good idea to have a marketing plan. Elements to consider include establishing a website (to build credibility, showcase work, promote testimonials and ensure you can be found on search engines). You should also work on refining your marketing message – what you do, for whom, and why you’re different from the competition. Other tactics that can help build your online profile are blogs, social media accounts, etc.
Don’t go it alone
There are a number of SBA-sponsored in-person and online resources that can help 50+ entrepreneurs get started and grow their consulting business. Check out SBA’s 50+ Entrepreneur guide as well.
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