Per Scholas Information Session provides information about a free 15-week computer training program through Per Scholas and learn about their eligibility and screening process. This session will be held on Thursday, March 12, 2015, 2-4 pm at the Lower Manhattan Workforce 1 Career Center, 75 Varick Street, 7th Floor, New York, NY 10013.
Time Warner Cable will present a recruitment for Field Technician (10 openings) on Friday, March 13, 2015, 10 am - 2 pm at Lower Manhattan Workforce 1 Career Center, 75 Varick Street, New York, NY 10013. By appointment only: For an appointment, please contact Ms. Barbara Listefski, 212-775-3749. Must bring I.D. and resume.
St. Nicks Alliance Workforce Development provides Free Job, Training and Educational Programs in Environmental Response and Remediation Tec (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 March 8 are available.
"The Evidence of Things Un*Seen underscores Arturo Schomburgʼs mission for his collection. As Schomburg wrote in his 1925 essay “The Negro Digs Up His Past,” he collected “vindicating evidences” of black history and achievement to articulate an overlooked truth. Although the Schomburg Center did not start collecting moving image and recorded sound materials until the 1970s, the items in this exhibition fit squarely into Schomburgʼs original mission by literally giving movement and voice to black history and culture.
Guided by these principles, and as a new curator still getting to know the 5,000-cubic-square foot collection, I focused my curatorial lens on items that revealed or reminded me of black agency, ingenuity, and voice. For example, there the award-winning but little seen documentary that is centered in heart of the Civil Rights struggle titled King: A Filmed Record...Montgomery to Memphis (1970). To mark the 50th anniversary of the march from Selma to Montgomery, those vivid scenes are projected large scale on a wall in our Latimer/Edison Gallery. Also featured is audio recorded by artist and Selma participant Ken Dewey, who offers an exploration into the raw landscape. I have also included long play (LP) record covers and an iPad that allows visitors to take a closer look at the record cover graphics and listen to the songs, speeches, stories, and poems that articulate black voices.
My hope is that these selections inspire teachers, researchers, and the public to consider moving image and audio materials as a portal into the sights and sounds of a culturally rich and nuanced black past—the evidence of things forgotten or unseen."
Our reader asked us for "recommendations for gay fiction that is NOT erotica and also not just coming out stories?" Here are a few suggestions from our staff.
I read My Real Childrenby Jo Walton last year, which would certainly qualify. Jo Walton really is a great author, I am really enjoying the stuff she puts out these last few years. My Real Children shows a sort of a Sliding Doors concept, or perhaps a long study of the butterfly effect here, pivoting a life at the acceptance or denial of a marriage proposal. I would also recommend that someone interested in gay fiction check out the ALA's Stonewall Book Awards, which feature librarian's top choices in LGBT lit. —Carmen Nigro, Milstein Division
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon features a titular character who is gay. Sam Clay's experiences as a gay man in pre and post-World War II America are not erotic in any way. Give it a whirl. I would also recommend the Last Herald-Magetrilogy by Mercedes Lackey. The main character, Vanyel Ashkevron, is a shay'a'chern, slang for gay in his milieu. Tayledren is anything but a gay-friendly world and this complicates Vanyel's rise to the pinnacle of magic in the kingdom of Valdemar. —Joshua Soule, Spuyten Duyvil
Jamie O'Neill's At Swim, Two Boysis a wonderful, language-obsessed novel that is set during the 1916 Easter Uprising in Ireland. O'Neill deftly mixes politics and the love that develops between two boys as they are slowly drawn into the conflict. John Rechy's City of Nightis sort of a gay version of Kerouac's On The Road—a stream-of-conscious narrative about a male hustler's adventures as he travels across the country and encounters various men. The novel influenced Gus Van Sant in the writing of his screenplay for My Own Private Idaho. —Wayne Roylance, Selection Team
Ariel Schrag's best known for her graphic memoirs, but her witty, tender and frolicsome novel Adam is definitely worth checking out. It tells the story of a teenage California transplant eager to meet the love of his life in hard-partying New York City. —Miriam Tuliao, Selection Team
I recommend Everything Leads to You, a YA novel, by Nina LaCour. A story about a teen girl who falls in love with a teen girl and the focus is not their sexuality. Follow Emi as she finds the answer to an old letter left behind from a old-Hollywood actor. Sunny LA, Hollywood, love, and destiny intertwine in this mystery. —Anna Taylor, Children’s Programming
I am currently reading Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin, which is kind of like a gay The Sun Also Rises—expats in Paris, heavy drinking, romantic love. Written in 1956 and very progressive for its time, it's about a young American man who falls in love with an Italian bartender. —Kyle Butler, Strategy
Truman Capote's Other Voices Other Rooms comes to mind. A girlish adolescent boy surrounded by a cast of grotesque characters in the south befriends a tomboy and a drag queen, seeks a relationship with his mysterious father, and comes to terms with his sexuality. A thoughtful tome on the weirdness of families and the winding path toward individuality. —Nancy Aravecz, Mid-Manhattan
I still tell people about Andre Aciman's novel Call Me By Your Name. Brief and literary, it's an exquisite remembrance of a summer romance in an Italian beach town—the summer of the character's first love. What I like about the book is not just the pace and the mood, but that Aciman conveys the sounds, smells, and tastes of summer in a way that makes me as a reader long to be there, and nostalgic for that same period in my life when I was discovering what love is. It was also the only book in my book group that had every received universal thumbs up from the members. —Christopher Platt, Sites and Services
No Se Lo Digas a Nadie (Do Not Tell Anyone) es una autobiografía ficticia del autor peruano Jaime Bayly, cuenta la historia de Joaquín, un joven que lucha para hacer frente a sus tradiciones familiares, su adicción y su problema de identidad sexual durante su niñez. A fictionalized autobiography of the Peruvian author Jaime Bayly that tells the story of Joaquin, a young man who struggles to cope with his family traditions, his addiction and his sexual identity as a child. —Alexandra Gomez, Selection Team
Sing You Homeby Jodi Picoult! Such a beautiful novel (written by one of my favorite authors) accompanied by a lovely musical soundtrack, many interweaving stories told in each character's very different POVs and enough drama to keep you interested the whole book through. —Jessica Divisconte, CLO Office
Though she's equal parts memoirist and fiction writer, Michelle Tea writes great stories about being young, working class and surrounded by mall culture and consumerism, and navigating relationships with both men and women. —Jenny Baum, Jefferson Market
I would recommend the author Jeanette Winterson--her novel The Passion is one of my favorites that includes elements of historical fiction, magical realism, and romance. - Susie Tucker Heimbach, Mulberry Street
Confessions of a Mask by Japanese writer Yukio Mishima could reductively be called a "coming out story". Yet this 1949 novel presents a much more complex picture of a young man confronting his emerging sexuality and sadomasochistic fantasies against the backdrop of World War II. - Thomas Knowlton, MyLibraryNYC
The works of Vera Brittain should also be interesting for the reader. She is an activist, but saw other priorities (pacifism mostly) as being more universally important. Start with Testament of Youth. Also, try FunHomeby Alison Bechdel - Barbara Cohen-Stratyner, Library for the Performing Arts
New episodes of the great Starz series Outlander finally return to TV on April 4, but for those of us who’ve been waiting since the fall it still feels like an eternity. You’d think I’d be used to waiting for Outlander by now. Way way back, in 1990, I wandered into a Portland, Oregon bookstore and found a romance novel, set in Scotland, involving time travel and I was hooked! Since then, it’s been a 25 year odyssey of reading (including eight novels, three companion novels, eight novellas/ short stories and one graphic novel) and waiting. Waiting for the next to book come along and waiting for it to be turned into a film or TV series. For fans, like me, it’s been excruciating. I’ve had to find ways to cope: hunt down readalikes and other things to read or watch to fill in the gaps as I waited patiently (ahem). Now for those fans currently waiting and anticipating, I will pass on what I’ve discovered, over the years, to you. #Droughtlander
First, for the uninitiated, Outlander (by Diana Gabaldon) is an epic tale of adventure and romance set in 18th century Scotland. It opens in the Scottish Highlands of 1946 where Englishwoman and nurse, Claire Randall and her husband Frank are on their second honeymoon. While visiting a circle of standing stones alone, Claire falls through time to 1743. There she meets the British officer ancestor of her husband and becomes involved in local politics which causes her to be forcibly wed to a young highlander named Jamie Fraser. As she tries to figure out a way home, she begins to fall in love with her new husband and tries to stop the uprising that will lead to the tragic Scottish losses at the Battle of Culloden in 1746.
To dismiss it as straight historical romance, is to do it a disservice. Yes, the romance is full of steamy swoon but the characters are more than well matched. The story is epic and full of wonderful, historical details of 18th century Scotland and with Claire, it has one of the best female characters I’ve ever come across. I love the fact that the time travel just happens but I know that it bothers some people. My advice? Just go with it and don’t question it. It eventually gets explained. This is fun, escapist literature at its most educational.
Now lets get started. I've broken down all the reasons why I love the series (and included the series itself) and put together lists of readalikes based on those reasons. It's all very scientific. The symbol (*) indicates titles not owned by NYPL and non-circulating titles at NYPL. Hopefully we can remedy this soon!
Outlander series
If you haven’t yet read the Outlander books, start now. Most of them top out at about 800 pages (more or less). They are a treasure trove of epic proportions and take you from Scotland to France to a very new America and span time and history. I also suggest the novellas that flesh out secondary and tertiary characters and related action. I particularly love the Lord John mysteries/ adventures but they do include homosexual love scenes which may not be for everyone. If you start on these books you should be occupied for oh, a few years at the very least! But even this list is incomplete. For more short stories and a timeline of the all the stories check the author's official website.
Short story "Virgins" in Dangerous Women anthology ed. George R.R. Martin
Susanna Kearsley
I’ve only recently discovered this Canadian author. Her books involve history, romance, mystery and while not strictly time travel, there is a past lives element in many of the stories. Her female characters are usually writers or archeologists and are smart, strong protagonists and the men in them are equally smart and very swoonworthy. Most of them take place in Scotland or England. I adore them. They are the perfect antidote for a cold, winter’s day especially when accompanied by a cup of tea. Here are a few favorites:
I do love a guy with a Scottish accent, maybe wearing a kilt, maybe not... My first kiss at 7 years old was given to me by a 10 year old Scottish boy while touring around a loch on a ferry boat. Looking back, it explains a lot. If I was to list all my favorite Scotland-set romances this post would be ridiculously long. I'll start with a few personal favorite books, series' and authors to get you started.
Legend in Green Velvet by Elizabeth Peters (e-book)(A little known gem by the author of the Amanda Peabody series!)
Highlands' Lairds series and Lairds' Fiancees series by Julie Garwood
Mammoth Book of Scottish Romance ed. Trisha Telep*
Historical Fiction
Historical fiction is probably my favorite genre but I am very specific about what I like in terms of time periods, settings, romance quotient, action, etc...My father tells me that I have very girly tastes in historical fiction..but I’m a girl so..whatever Dad! The books listed here are mainly by female authors and are epic in scope and are full of action, romance, betrayal and political intrigue. For me, they have the feel and pacing of the Outlander novels.
Diana Norman's Makepeace Headley series - start w/ A Catch of Consequences*
Time Travel
You’d think the success of the Outlander series would inspire more time travel readalikes. For awhile, in the late 90’s/ early 00’s, they did but there’s been a serious dry spell for about 10 years. Time travel can be either magically or scientifically caused but I do want some real history and romance to come with it. Again, I’m pretty picky with this sub-genre but these are some my favorites.
Oh, the Scots and their rebellions. Outlander deals mainly with the second rebellion of Bonnie Prince Charlie, Culloden and the destruction of the Scottish clan system but I never quite understood all the politics of the why and the how. I’ve tried to find books that fill out the history of Scotland: who the Jacobites were, how it lost it’s independence and how the Stuarts lost the English crown... without it being too dry or boring. Talk about poilitical intrigue, betrayal and dysfunctional families! If you’re interested in filling out your knowledge of Scotland these books and DVDs should do the trick.
Part of the fun of Outlander, is how it delves into Druidic Scotland, magic, standing stones, Celtic lore and witchcraft. I’ve read a fair amount over the years and these are some of the ones that have stuck with me.
In my lifetime, I’ve watched a lot of Scotland-set TV shows and movies. "Hi, my name is Anne and I'm an addict." If it’s set in Scotland, I’ve probably seen it if only to look at the scenery and listen to the accents. Here are some favorites owned by NYPL. P.S. The first 8 episodes of the Outlander TV series are currently available on Starz on Demand, through iTunes and a newly released DVD: Outlander season 1, volume 1.
Eugène Atget (French , 1857–1927). Fort-Monjol, fille publique faisant le quart, 19e. Avril 1921 [Fort-Monjol, prostitute looking for clients, April 19th, 1921]. Albumen silver print. NYPL, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs.
Eugène Atget took relatively few pictures of people. There is a series dating from about 1898 to 1900 of people in the small trades (petits métiers): the ragpicker, the organ grinder, ambulatory vendors of herbs, lampshades, plaster statues, baskets. And then there is a small series on prostitutes, from 1921. Some have claimed that Atget was commissioned to document prostitution by the painter and illustrator André Dignimont, whose generally raffish subject matter included a great many brothel scenes. As John Szarkowski points out in his book on Atget, though, he seems to have pursued the task with "an uncharacteristic lack of energy." He only took about a dozen pictures all told, and all of them were taken on a single street.
That street, which no longer exists, was rue Asselin. It was the center of a small neighborhood called Fort-Monjol, which lay in Belleville, beneath the southern tip of the Buttes-Chaumont. The city began razing the neighborhood in the 1870s and finished the job in the early 1930s. It had a troubled history. Until 1629 it had been the site of the municipal gibbet of Montfaucon, a multi-story scaffold on which fifty people could be hanged at once. Even before that, and until the middle of the nineteenth century, it lay within a vast garbage dump, serving the entire city. Until the First World War it was noted as a hangout of hoodlums, where bloody knife fights occurred daily, and also as a place where, in the words of a chronicler of the time, "every skin disease of humanity seemed to have met up: mealy psoriasis, purulent acne, flabby boils, inveterate staphylococcus and streptococcus, tumors, scabies--all flourished in the saltpeter of those stinking walls alive with vermin." By the time Atget took his photographs it had achieved a certain peace, as a rather specialized prostitution district.
Its distinction lay in the fact that its women were, at least by the standards of the time, old. Reportedly, the deadliest taunt among whores was "You'll end up at Monjol!" Nevertheless, to judge by Atget's pictures, the environment was significantly less stressful than most, in a city that then contained dozens of major venues of street prostitution. Here there were no pimps. The women, who had survived decades of hard use, sat on chairs outside their doors; at least one of them worked out of a gypsy wagon. A writer in 1927, warning his readers away, could muster as argument only the fact that the clientele was largely—he employed a racist slur—North African.
In 1921, Atget himself was 64; he would live only six more years. Could it be that he felt some kinship with the women? Certainly the pictures include some of the very rare instances of direct eye-contact in Atget's work (another is his ragpicker, who gives the photographer a look of cold contempt). One of the pictures in the series, of three women in a doorway, shows them all smiling. The woman here, younger than most (she looks no more than 50), projects toughness with her hooded stare and her vigilant cigarette. She is canted back, knees wide open, at her ease, available at a price. She shows off her elegant boot, although the distortion caused by Atget's lens makes it look as if she is keeping her chair from tipping over on the sloping cobblestones. Like the pavement, the houses behind her look somehow topographic, as if they have been hewn from stone. The afternoon will soon have lasted a century.
Every year in March we reflect on trailblazing women in history: adventurers, artists, athletes, businesswomen, educators and scholars, literary figures, media figures, reformers and activists, scientists and world leaders. Yet in spite of all their contributions women still earn significantly less than their male counterparts, and many women worldwide suffer on a spectrum from oppression to human rights violations. Here are some titles to help us all consider both how far we have come and how far we have to go.
Devotion and Defianceby Humaira Awais Shahid
An inspiring personal story by the most prominent Muslim woman activist and legislator for women’s rights in Pakistan.
Feminism Unfinished: A Short, Surprising History of American Women's Movementsby Dorothy Sue Cobble
This work divides the Women’s movement into three periods to examine the multiple strains of American feminism. The contributors show that the movement has always had leaders who recognized the importance of race and class in relation to women's issues.
Richard Rodgers, Nicol Williamson, Penny Fuller, and Sheldon Harnick work on Rex
A guest post by Sherman Yellen.
After “The Rothschilds” I left the theater and worked as a screenwriter where I practiced the difficult art of feeding and educating my own family of young sons, and it was a few years before Sheldon and Richard Rodgers called me to provide the libretto for “Rex”—their proposed musical about Henry VIII. I had won some Emmy Awards for writing the pilot and first three episodes of “The Adams Chronicles” for PBS, and I suppose that polished my credentials as a man who could put a human face on history. Anyone who is versed in theater history knows of “Rex” as a notable flop. But Sheldon and I are made of sterner stuff than the New York Times critics whom we have outlasted and we have spent some time and energy on recreating that show for a new audience. For some, like Sheldon and myself, our musicals like our lives are works in progress.
Why “Rex” now? I know this will sound immodest coming from its librettist, one of its creators, but it is, I believe, the last great Richard Rodgers musical; a forgotten and demeaned treasure that has had little opportunity to be performed since its demise after a short run on Broadway. In a just world it should take its proper place as part of the Rodgers canon, and I hold out hopes that with the work that Sheldon and I have done on revising it, “Rex” will have a new life for future generations of musical lovers.
Starting with the basics, the score of “Rex” is filled with musical treasures; “Away From You” (which Andrew Lloyd Webber called one of the greatest of Rodgers ballads), “No Song More Pleasing,” and “As Once I Loved You,” to name but a few. These are gorgeous Rodgers melodies, married to the witty, always incisive lyrics by Sheldon Harnick, songs that tell a great story of a man driven by love, rage, and a need for an heir that could keep his England from falling apart into civil wars after his death.
The story of our musical is that of Henry VIII’s desperate search for a male heir, and his relationship with his various wives and children. I chose to cover only the wives who bore him his three children. It is a story often told in film and TV but one worth retelling as a musical, indeed, Henry was something of a composer-musician himself. Sadly, during the preparation of “Rex” an ailing Richard Rodgers suffered one of the many serious illnesses that had plagued his later life. When we first met he was a far different man than the one who began writing the score and who later came to every rehearsal and performance. He was vigorous, witty, and enthusiastic at the start. Now, restricted to esophageal speech as a result of recent throat cancer surgery, Rodgers spoke through a hole in his throat with some difficulty. This formerly handsome, athletic man walked hesitantly and was attended by a nurse throughout the rehearsals. He had also suffered from a stroke which created problems with certain aspects of composing—problems he soon overcame. Sheldon, concerned about pleasing the legendary Rodgers discovered that Rodgers, for all his past glory, was equally nervous about his music being accepted by Sheldon. But soon their collaboration clicked, and it was a joy to hear the results of their work together. But for all his physical troubles Rodgers never lost his dignity or his humor.
The leading role of Henry VIII was cast with the notable British actor Nicol Williamson. Difficulties with Mr. Williamson in rehearsal and on the road made work on the show with the famously temperamental actor quite challenging for its creators. I will never forget the day when Rodgers, seated beside me during a rehearsal looked in disgust as Williamson threw his expensive gold plated crown across the stage, smashing it in yet another tantrum, and Rodgers growled into my ear, “He’s every quarter inch a king.”
I still recall that night before the New York opening when I sat alone at the bar at Sardis and a reporter from the Daily News came over to me and asked “Sherman, what’s a nice Jewish boy like you doing here drinking a martini on the eve of Yom Kippur?” In my exhausted, smart-assed manner I replied that after a month on the road with Nicol Williamson one no longer believed in God. This injudicious remark was printed in the following morning’s paper—the morning before our opening night. Nicolson read it and refused to perform at the opening without my apology before the full cast, and taking Richard Rodgers advice I managed to squeeze by with a mea culpa for my indiscretion, but not for my statement.
When “Rex” opened on Broadway after much torment on the road, there were splendid moments, many of them provided by a superb performance by Penny Fuller who played both Anne and the young Elizabeth, and a gloomy but appropriate musical debut as Princess Mary by the talented young Glen Close who had been rejected for the leading role of Anne and Elizabeth because Rodgers who admired her acting, found her singing voice wanting. A wonderful Tom Aldrich played the fool Will Somers. Only one reviewer saw through the show’s problems to its virtues; the notable theatre critic George Oppenheimer who described it as “magnificent” in a world that had just discovered the more seductive modern pleasures of “A Chorus Line.” We were beaten with cudgels by the Times, and it took years to heal from those wounds. I recovered before “Rex” did—and, as I noted, it went down in theater history as a failure. But that was not the end of “Rex” for Sheldon Harnick or for me.
When Jim Morgan, the artistic director of the York Theatre asked us—the sole survivors of the show—to look at “Rex” again for their Musicals in Mufti series, (their modestly staged book-in-hand staged readings of past musicals) we took it on as a challenge, a labor of love, claiming that we would not do “Rex” as it was but “Rex” as we had always intended it to be, a story of real people not mummers in a pageant. Jay Binder was the skillful director of a cast that was headed by Melissa Errico in the dual role of Ann/Elizabeth and Patrick Page as Henry. It was our chance to cut through the heavy burdensome production with its crimson velvet drapery that dwarfed its characters rather than provided them with an environment to express what was most human or inhuman in them. We wanted to take the Madam Tussaud’s waxworks characters of the original production and bring them back to a new life. Now we could focus our efforts on restoring what had been lost on its catastrophic trip to Broadway, its human drama and its glorious Rodgers/Harnick songs.
A judicious rearrangement of the score, the elimination of some clunky pseudo Elizabethan choreography, tossing aside a production number for the young Prince Edward that seemed to amuse the characters onstage more than the audience, and a careful reshaping of the book would eventually create a piece that was tighter, more coherent, a story of love gone wrong between a youthful, lovesick and charming Henry and an ambitious, cunning but sympathetic Anne. All this culminating in the Second Act struggle between an aging Henry and his young daughter Elizabeth, the child of Anne’s—so like her father—whom he had declared his bastard after executing her allegedly adulterous mother after she had failed to provide him with a son and heir. We see a Henry, unable to remove the dynastic blinders that would show him an Elizabeth who was the natural heir to his throne, the very king he longed for: the one who could bring in a golden age for the England he loved. Thus Henry struggles until the end to avoid what is obvious to others, and yet deep within himself he knows the truth. Ours was truly a feminist musical, if one could look past Henry’s misogyny, or perhaps look deep inside it.
In revising the musical for the York I saw where I had failed to bind the disparate parts of Acts I and 2 together, and I found the remedy for that in a series of Elizabethan style poems that were performed by Will Somers, Henry’s fool played at the York by the marvelous B.D. Wong, providing critical moments of transition in the musical. The fool’s part was expanded and deepened, allowing Henry to express his inner thoughts to one he trusted above all, the one who dared to tell him the truth. And the bare stage of the York released these splendid actors to be the play, its characters, its scenery, its time in human history. Suddenly, it all came together, and in a future production it received great reviews in the Toronto press. It now awaits the Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization to place it in the Rodgers canon where it rightfully belongs. And when they do so they will provide the world with a new Richard Rodgers musical, one that honors the 20th century’s iconic musical composer.
Best of all our work on “Rex” would allow us to restore one of the greatest of Rodgers late life songs, “The Pears of Anjou.” This song was particularly important to us. It revealed Henry VIII’s passion for life, even as he confronts death. While dying, Henry expresses his desire to live for yet another season to see and taste the exquisite pears of Anjou. In this song Henry questions his own life and its values, as death forces Henry to confront all his present pain, his past sins and his great pleasures, prodded by his faithful fool to face the reality of his life. It was a very personal statement from Richard Rodgers who was himself looking death in the eye and bravely trying to out-stare it. For Dick, writing the score to a new musical was the reason to stay alive, and the chance to express his remarkable melodic talents, the one gift that had not been taken from him by age and illness. “Rex,” was his “Pears of Anjou.” Amazingly, he wrote two other musicals after ours, but “Rex” was his final great statement as an artist.
You may have surmised that Dick was my friend, and despite the theater lore that views him as a cold, musical machine, I found him to be a great and good man, a proud man at the end of his life, beset by existential doubts, as Henry was, as we all are. At that time of Sheldon and I were still young men, and we could not fully understand what he was enduring. With Sheldon and I now older than Richard Rodgers was at the time of “Rex,” we understand all too well the need for work as a key to living well beyond your shelf-life. Alas, that penultimate song about “The Pears of Anjou” had been cut from the musical before it ever opened on Broadway—exiled by its performer and director, robbing the show of its greatest dramatic and musical moment in order to quicken the pace towards the end. That splendid song is now restored, correcting a tragic error, and it was included in the York performance and for the Toronto stage.
Years later while preparing the revitalized “Rex” for the York reading I added fresh material for Henry’s fool, material that gingerly guides the audience into the world of the Tudors and carries them through those palace corridors with humor and style. Sheldon rearranged the score, pruning and adding where necessary, giving the score a dramatic shape that it lacked when it opened. Without the pressures of that ill-starred original production it was a joy to work together on the piece, to restore it and to revise it, and make it accessible for a new audience. At the end of our labors, Sheldon sent me a note that spoke of his delight in finally vindicating this musical for us and mainly for Richard Rodgers.
The very absence of a set in the York staged reading proved to be a great virtue. Suddenly, “Rex” looked like a play set in the Globe Theatre of Shakespeare, and that inspired us with the idea of how it could best be done in any future production—with an austere simplicity, depending solely on the power of its actors and its material—eschewing the tendency to recreate the world of Henry with a gilded splendor that only buried the characters in royal party costumes. The later performances of actors who played their roles with humor and humanity; actors who were not doing star turns but giving the text and the songs the best possible reading enhanced the musical further.
After forty odd years I still cherish my memories of working with Rodgers, and the grace with which he faced a “failure” as much as the joy with which he celebrated his success after completing a song. A day after the Times critic blasted us Rodgers called me and asked if we could always be friends. This is a rarity in theater where people walk away from friendships formed during the show—particularly a failed show that brings with it public humiliation. It was an honor for me and for my wife to consider Richard and Dorothy Rodgers our friends for life. I have gone on to write several musicals some as librettist, others as a lyricist, but for all the joys that came with those shows, and there were many, “Rex” remains the one that is indelibly printed on my psyche. “Rex” is no failure for me. It remains for all its travails and disappointments one of my life’s exhilarating experiences in theater. And,for me, a splendid success.
Sherman Yellen is the author of the recently published memoir, Cousin Bella: The Whore of Minsk, and the soon to be published “Spotless”—his memoir of his New York boyhood in the 1930s and 1940s. He is also the author of “December Fools and Other Plays”—a collection of plays with an introduction by Sheldon Harnick.
As the millennial generation is charged with shifting the country’s policing practices and devaluation of Black humanity, artist Titus Kaphar and The Jerome Project makes those impacted by our criminal justice system visible and human rather than statistics of mass incarceration and criminalization. This is a high time to interrogate the (re)memory of our American experience and collective relationship to its criminal justice system.
We are still asking the same questions of this country and ourselves as we did 50 years ago during the Civil Rights Movement. The same questions that reflect those asked 150 years ago when the 36th Congress issued the 13th Amendment, laying the foundation for the modern American prison system.
It is these parallel legacies of America’s past and contemporary constructions of Black humanity which framed my interview with Titus Kaphar around The Jerome Project and his recent show at Jack Shainman Gallery in Chelsea.
The Jerome Project, installation image at the Studio Museum in Harlem. Photo credit, Terrence Jennings
Knowing how influential Michelle Alexander’s scholarship and more specifically, The New Jim Crow, was for the Jerome Project, what else was on your reading list? May you share some of your findings or discoveries that emerged during your research on the criminal justice system and mass incarceration?
The most recent book on this subject that has been truly pivotal in my thinking on this subject is Vesla Weaver and Amy Lerman’s book Arresting Citizenship. When it comes to the issue of jails and prisons, there are a lot of folks who haven’t had to deal with this system directly who believe that if you find yourself wrapped up in it, you probably deserve it, so what happens to you while you are incarcerated doesn’t concern them. Vesla and Amy’s book does a fantastic job of showing us how, not simply inhumane, but how flawed that reasoning is. They show us how “custodial citizens” those folks who have found themselves in the criminal justice system through jail, parole or probation, and those citizens who find themselves in communities that are heavily policed, are learning about democracy through a system that doesn’t in fact represent the values of the nation as a whole. Their book leaves me with a question. What is the impact of our criminal justice system on our conception of democracy itself? What does it imply about us that we so easily strip the freedoms of our citizens of the values that we hold most sacred as a nation?
January 31 marks the 150th anniversary of the 13th amendment. It was passed by congress on January 31, 1865 then signed by Abraham Lincoln on February 1, 1865. Georgia was the last state to ratify the amendment on December 6, 1865, making slavery "unconstitutional" through the U.S. What kind of feelings and thoughts this landmark anniversary might evoke in you as it relates to the question of Black humanity?
As significant and remarkable of an event that was, I think we often forget that in our correctional institutions in this country, slavery is not fully dead. Many of the abuses that occurred during slavery were refashioned. Douglas Blackmon delineates the specifics of what he calls “slavery by another name” that continued on for decades after the signing of the 13th amendment, Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow shows us how that system transitioned into the contemporary prison industrial complex that we are left with today.
Titus Kaphar, Behind the Myth of Benevolence, 2014, oil on canvas, 72 x 60 inches. Jack Shainman Gallery
Your work draws on iconic historical artworks in its examination of past and contemporary histories. Arturo Schomburg begins his seminal 1925 essay, “The Negro Digs Up His Past” by stating, “The American Negro must remake his past in order to make his future.” What do you believe to be the role or legacy of Black archival collections in relationship to a more radical future for Black folks across the African Diaspora?
That’s a difficult question to answer for me. I think it would be hard for me to say what the roles of Black archival collections are in general. My personal use for them is as a catalyst for inspiration and a source for research in my varied projects. It’s these kinds of archives that often stand as my defense when I’m told that the kind of imagery or narrative that I am drawing from doesn’t exist.
Do you believe there needs to be a connection between contemporary resistance movements and the art and cultural production of Black artists? What space do Black cultural art institutions occupy within the landscape of contemporary art production?
I don’t think that that should be a dictate. I think that the problems of this world will be a natural outgrowth of some artists’ practice and the celestial and ineffable will be the focus of others. Attempting to create mandates for the production of art in and of itself can be the death nail to creativity. I think the role of these institutions function best as inspiration for production, space making for production (i.e. artist residencies) and as an advocate for the art that is finally produced.
Titus Kaphar, Yet Another Fight for Rememberance, 2014, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 inches. Jack Shainman Gallery
As you utilize interventions of erasure, historical fact and fiction, and “whitewashing” in your paintings and drawings, do you see yourself as a contributor to constructions of a collective rememory of Black American history?
I don’t know that I’ve ever thought about it in those terms. I find myself trying to present a more nuanced version of what I know exists but what I don’t often see in many museums or popular media. This draws me to discussions of absence, invisibility or erasure. In many of my projects, I rely on the research of folks who came before me and in their work I see an emphasis on re-memory that leave its residue on my work. I think it’s important for this issue of rememory to be engaged beyond communities of color. Many of the works in this last exhibition address not exclusively, but fundamentally American challenges. It seems to me that there won’t be significant progress until the entire nation takes on this issue of rememory. Otherwise, what happens is that certain groups in the country continue to write fictional histories and call them textbooks that gloss over the tragedies of American history.
Although it's true that women are underrepresented in STEM fields, female scientists have been making breakthroughs for centuries. Marrying innovation with tenacity, female scientists have discovered comets, created cutting edge computer codes, and inspired generations of curious young people to push the boundaries of human knowledge. And they've done this all while challenging gender stereotypes. Here are some facts you may not have known about incredible female scientists—and the books about them that you must read.
Rosalind Franklin
When you think DNA, you probably think of Watson and Crick. Yet, the discovery was in large part also that of Rosalind Franklin, a biophysicist and X-Ray crystallographer. Her premature death at the age of 37 made her ineligible to win the Nobel Prize alongside her compatriots, but her work revolutionized the field of genetics.
What to Read: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox
Sally Ride
Sally Ride was the first American woman to go to space. At a time when only 3% of PhD candidates in physics were women, she began attending Stanford and was ecentually recruited to NASA. Two flights later, her pioneering role has inspired young scientists across the country.
What to Read: Sally Ride: America's First Woman in Spaceby Lynn Sherr
Irène Joliot-Curie
You know Marie Curie, but her daughter Irène also won a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1935. With her husband Frédéric, she discovered artificial radioactivity, making she and Marie Curie the first mother-daughter pair to separately win Nobel Prizes.
What to Read: Marie Curie and Her Daughters: The Private Lives of Science's First Family by Shelley Emling
Ada Lovelace
Ada Lovelace called herself a "poetical scientist." The daughter of Lord Byron, she created algorithims for Charles Babbage's early computer, the Analytical Machine. She's considered by some to be the world's first computer programmer.
What to Read: The Bride of Science by Benjamin Woolley
Elizabeth Blackwell
The first woman ever to earn a medical degree in the United States, Elizabeth Blackwell pushed for reforms in education, medicine, and women's rights. Later, her sister Emily would become the third American woman to graduate from medical school.
What to Read: Elizabeth Blackwell: America's First Female Doctor by Barbara A. Somervill
Mae Jemison
Mae Jemison became the first African-American woman to make a space mission in 1992. A graduate of Cornell Medical School, she also worked as Peace Corps doctor in Sierra Leone and Liberia.
What to Read: Find Where the Wind Goes: Moments from My Life by Mae Jemison
Caroline Herschel
Caroline Herschel was one half of perhaps the greatest brother-sister science duo of all time. While William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, Caroline Hershel became the first woman to discover a comet. She would discover seven more during her lifetime.
What to Read: Discoverers of the Universe: William and Caroline Herschel by Michael A. Hoskin
Mary Pipher, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, noticed that girls in the 1990s were more self-conscious about their appearance and exhibited more sex-stereotyped feminine behavior than they did when she grew up. She was puzzled and saddened by what seemed to be a shrinking or loss of self that many girls experience as teenagers. Pipher previously studied cultural anthropology, as well.
Girls can experience a variety of problems such as depression, eating disorders, substance abuse, and problems with sex and violence due to societal expectations, but also personal problems such as divorce, loss of a loved one, abuse, etc. Girls can fall victim to cultural ideals of thinness and feminine behavior. However, family support helps buoy the girls.
Dr. Pipher let the girls choose whether to continue therapy after one appointment. She was impressed by the resiliency of some girls. She examines the girls' problems with them by listening, suggests solutions and is thrilled to watch them heal. Some girls do not recover or choose not to continue therapy, but at least the therapist can help some of them.
I was fascinated to read this book because a family member was a big fan of the book in the 1990s when I was a teenager. I liked getting a psychotherapist's clinical view of societal problems that girls experience. Some of the information in the book is a bit dated, but it remains an interesting read.
Penthesilea, Queen of the Amazons. Image ID: 1623706
Prior to reading The Secret History of Wonder Woman, my familiarity with the character was mostly limited to The Justice League of America and Super Friends appearances and the television series starring the incomparable Lynda Carter. I was always perplexed by her costume on the television series and especially how the underwater costume was less revealing than her everyday wear. In the documentary DVD Superheroes: a Never-Ending Battle hosted by Liev Schreiber, Lynda Carter explains that she never played Wonder Woman as "sexy," which may be why she was able to pull off such an inexplicable outfit so effortlessly.
In The Secret History of Wonder Woman, Lepore writes about how Marston never wavered on the bondage depictions in the comics and once summarily dismissed a list of suggested alternative "menaces" to the frequently used chains. In the aforementioned DVD series, comic book historian Trina Robbins discusses the bondage scenes that, although interspersed throughout the comics, never register with kids who only see her as a strong superheroine.
Wonder Woman's costume has gone through an evolution throughout the years and probably a whole book could be devoted to just that. Nor was Lynda Carter the first onscreen Wonder Woman: a 1974 pilot starring Cathy Lee Crosby from That's Incredible was never picked up. Other characters, like Wonder Woman's college friend, Etta Candy, did not fare so well from the transition to television.
Early on, Wonder Woman's outfit evolved from Harry G. Peter's design after Marston's suggestion that she look more like a Varga girl, and after Marston nixed impractical and unrealistic and potentially dated sandal and halter top aspects.
Later on, censorship and the comics code influenced by Fredric Wertham and his book Seduction of the Innocent frowned upon most everything having to do with Wonder Woman, or Batman, for that matter. It also influenced the use, or rather disuse, of guns in comics. For example, Batman’s origin story with the robbery that destroyed his family was created to explain his dislike of guns. Traditional versions of Wonder Woman eschewed the use of guns. "Bullets never solved a human problem yet!" Marston's character exclaims (p. 200).
Wonder Woman's main accessory is her golden lasso of truth compulsion. In some later versions of the comics, she occasionally wields a sword, helmet, or other armor. In modern versions of Wonder Woman, she occasionally uses a gun or bow and arrow. She wields guns in a 2-fisted action pose à la Chow Yun Fat in Hardboiled, in Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang's "Guts," but they are golden and metaphorical, the guns of Eros. There was a brief period in the '70s, often referred to as the Diana Prince era, where Wonder Woman donned a pantsuit and boutique fashions and her character was essentially a female James Bond, without the sexual exploits. Wonder Woman lost her powers in addition to her costume during these secret agent issues. Samuel R. Delany penned a few of these issues before DC interjected, citing Gloria Steinem as the reason for the change. However, Gloria Steinem was a supporter of Wonder Woman, writing
"Wonder Woman's family of Amazons on Paradise Island, her band of college girls in America, and her efforts to save individual women are all welcome examples of women working together and caring about each other's welfare. The idea of such cooperation may not seem particularly revolutionary to the male reader. Men are routinely depicted as working well together, but women know how rare and therefore exhilarating the idea of sisterhood really is.
Wonder Woman's mother, Queen Hippolyte, offers yet another welcome example to young girls in search of a strong identity. Queen Hippolyte founds nations, wages war to protect Paradise Island, and sends her daughter off to fight the forces of evil in the world...
Wonder Woman symbolizes many of the values of the women's culture that feminists are now trying to introduce into the mainstream: strength and self-reliance for women; sisterhood and mutual support among women; peacefulness and esteem for human life; a diminishment both of "masculine" aggression and of the belief that violence is the only way of solving conflicts." —Gloria Steinem, in her introduction to Wonder Woman (1972), available online with your library card through Project Muse in The Superhero Reader (excerpt also available through Google Books.)
Before I read "The Secret History of Wonder Woman," I never really thought about the role of earlier comic characters in championing gender equality. I even found a few articles about Little Lulu and the impact that her comic strips had (see Comic Collector magazine, Winter 1984 issue "Sexual Equality: Little Lulu: The Real Heroine.")
St Patrick's Day in the morning. Image ID: 1588252
Saint Patrick’s Day has traditionally represented an important occasion for celebration amongst many, including my maternal relatives (my father’s maternal grandfather hailed from ye old sod, but since my search for my paternal relations is at a most unfortunate standstill, I still suffer from a dearth of information regarding my paternal relations to properly know the extent, if any, to which they celebrate Saint Patrick’s Day).
Although my mother’s ethnic heritage consisted of at least five diverse nations, our Irish heritage is the predominant ethnicity discussed and celebrated. (In fact, one year when I inquired as to further specifics regarding my maternal Scandinavian heritage, my mother’s family shared a look of utter astonishment and disbelief, quickly followed up by scathing scowls, all focused in my direction, accompanied by the usual murmurs consisting of “mix up at the hospital” and “likely takes after her father’s side…” And, I was coerced to fend off a maternal cousin who tried, yet again, to brush the inside of my cheek with a cotton swab. Additionally, my mother’s relations have yet to forgive me for searching Ancestry.com Library Edition with my nephew, Charles, a few years ago, as Charles discovered that one of my great-great-great grandmothers hailed from Scotland, not Ireland as family legend had indicated for so long.
So, I was not surprised when I received a telephone call from my male sibling, stating he was in the process of planning a vacation to Ireland this summer. My lack of surprise quickly morphed into utter disbelief and suspicion when my brother added, “Maybe you’d like to go with us.” I asked my brother to hold on, quickly depressing the play button on the tape recorder that I keep ever ready for his calls, and the apt lyrics of Sarah Bareilles’ King of Anything drifted over the phone wires. I rummaged around for my high blood pressure medicine, gulped down a capsule, and resumed my conversation with my male sibling. “You know, Muriel, you’re the only person that I know who has arranged for ‘hold’ music to play on her telephone. And, even odder still, neither of my children have ever recalled hearing it when they call you.”
“Well, you know just how fickle technology can be! Er, um, anyway, what is this about your visiting Ireland?” My brother responded, “Yes, well, as you know, we are of Irish descent…” (A memory came, unbidden, of my being hastily shoved into a bathroom in my brother’s abode when I commented to one of his visitors that my brother and I are also of, amongst several others, Swedish heritage.) “…and I figured a sojourn to the Emerald Isle would be ideal for my kids. You know, both are redheads…” “Just like Daddy,” I interrupted, with more than a smattering of Schadenfreud, as my brother, for reasons that would very likely have stymied Sigmund Freud, detests any (valid) comparison of his children to their paternal grandfather. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. Anyway, if you’d like to join us…” “Wait a minute,” I interjected, “what is the flight pattern of the relevant airplane? Venturing anywhere near the Bermuda Triangle, is it?” (Professional courtesy would prevent any ogre from devouring my brother, so he would experience no trepidation in flying over that notorious air space.)
The day that makes March famous,... Image ID: 1588194
A trifle too expeditiously for my comfort, my brother chuckled and responded that insofar as he was aware, the airplane to Ireland would not fly over the Bermuda Triangle. “You know I am a fairly adept swimmer,” I stated, as visions of my floating face down in the Irish Sea danced in my head. “Yes, yes, I know” he replied, again, a tad too hastily. My brother interrupted my silent ruminations regarding the various methods of which he was probably plotting my demise on Irish soil when he interrupted my train of thought by stating, “Hold on. I have to run to the bathroom.” The mental imagery of my brother calling out,“Ooops! How do you say, 'That’s why they call me ‘Ol Butterfingers' in the Irish form of Gaelic?” as I plummeted several stories to my death from the famous site of osculation, the Blarney Stone, was interrupted by the voice of my niece. “Hi, auntie!”
“Er, hi, Amanda. I didn’t realize you were home.” “Oh, Daddy wasn’t expecting me home tonight, as I was sleeping over Emma’s house, but she suffered an asthma attack, so I figured I’d just head on home.” Without pausing for oxygen, my niece blurted out, “Hey, did Daddy inform you about that virulent former Sinn Fein member who bears an uncanny resemblance to you? She is currently an internationally ‘Most Wanted’ fugitive. We stumbled across her photograph on the Internet while we were planning our family vacation to Ireland this summer. After my brother stated that he could certainly understand if Scotland Yard, in a case of mistaken identity, arrested you and tossed away the key, my father developed this strange gleam in his eye.” “Oh he did, did he?” Squelching my fury and, as usual compartmentalizing it for the sake of my relationship with my nephew and niece, I temporarily allowed the matter of my brother’s latest attempt to decimate my life lie fallow. After chatting with my niece concerning her schoolwork, my brother began speaking to me again on the phone. “So, think you want to journey with us to Ireland?”
Taking a deep breath so as to insure I retained sufficient oxygen to complete my next sentence without interruption, I said, “Do you know, dearest brother of mine, that I heard that all red hair originated from the Vikings? And do you know that there was an article on the Internet that stated that DNA technology revealed that one of the earliest inhabitants of Ireland was not Celtic in origin but from the Basque region of Spain?” I heard an anguished wail from the other end of the line followed up by my brother hurriedly stating, “Er, um, I have to go.” When I reminded him he just visited the bathroom, he said rather unconvincingly, “Um, er, I am thirsty! I need a glass of water.” I shouted out, "Slainte" ("good health" in Irish Gaelic!) before disconnecting the line. Certain family maternal family members notwithstanding, the Irish on the other side (of the Atlantic Ocean) as well as those scattered across other regions of the globe enjoy a lovely, lyrical, riveting history. The NYPL contains many items in its circulating collection that pay homage and educate readers on the wonderful culture of Ireland.
With the passing of Leonard Nimoy, this winter of our discontent is complete. One of my favorite cultural icons has died, and February 2015 was very cold and miserable indeed. The cold and the recent passing of Leonard Nimoy got me to thinking and imagining, just what does it mean to die, to disintegrate, or simply beam-out? Well the best place to find the answers to existential, scientific, and any and all questions is… you got it, the Library. I logged into Credo Reference, available remotely with a valid library card.
One of the big ideas surrounding teleportation is that of quantum mechanics. I make no claim to understand all of the complexities and nuances of this area of physics. Though quantum mechanics is very theoretical, some very concrete examples of this branch of science include superconductors, lasers,MRI scanners and semiconductors. The term quantum refers to sub-atomic system changes that occur in certain discrete states where it denotes a sudden change from one energy state to another within an atom. The behavior of subatomic particles, do not move smoothly from one state to another, when subjected to small increases in energy can move violently and abruptly. Literally the “leap” to a new state. We often hear the phrase to denote monumental change, in reality quantum leaps are subatomic, yet monumental all the same.
Is it possible to consider death a one-way quantum leap? And if so, can a system or device be constructed that could reassemble the particles that constitute you and me? Well, while there is little doubt that quantum mechanics will change and shape the future of computing, encryption and the Internet itself, we’re not yet ready to make a human printer of the past. Arthur C. Clarke once said, the Information Age offers much to mankind, and I would like to think that we will rise to the challenges it presents. But it is vital to remember that information—in the sense of raw data—is not knowledge, that knowledge is not wisdom, and that wisdom is not foresight. But information is the first essential step to all of these.
If you don't like the future you see, build one in its place, and if you don't see a title in our catalog, please suggest it. Live Long, And Prosper.
Gunslinger in the Church. Lobby card. Image ID: G98F842_002.
In the old movies about the Old West, when grizzled, chawing, cussing, murdering highwaymen ride into town and disturb the peace, from behind the batwing doors of the lawman’s office steps the badge-wearing, fast-shooting, strong-silent-type. The banditti are savage and lawless. The lawman is good.
The lawman might be a U.S. marshal, appointed by the Attorney General, under whose loose, vague authority the marshal operated until the Department of Justice was organized in 1870; or he might be a local sheriff, elected to office by the townspeople. Out West, where systems of order were as scarce as systems of plumbing, the marshal and the sheriff assumed the persona of the law. The distinction often makes no difference in old Western movies, but is an optimum detail in the pursuit of genealogy and local history research in the Milstein Division, where reference librarians must wrangle between the local, county, state, and federal levels in order to rope in relevant resources for patron requests.
In Silver Lode (1954), sneer-and-swagger character actor Dan Duryea plays Ned McCarty, who rides into town on the 4th of July brandishing a marshal’s “tin star” and a warrant for the arrest of local rancher Dan Ballard. Turns out McCarty is an impostor, and hellbent to avenge the murder of his brother, whom Ballard shot in self defense; but by the time Ballard is exonerated, McCarty has riled up the whole town against him, and stars-and-stripes morality devolves into mob justice. Silver Lode proves that the badmen weren’t always bad, and the lawman wasn’t always lawful.
The old High German roots of the word marshal, “master of the horse,” befit both the iconography and transit of the frontier lawman. Marshals and sheriffs had the right to deputize civilians and assemble the posse comitatus, which etymology invokes research methods in local history librarianship, the “power of the county.” For example, marriage certificates are issued at the local level in New York City, the county level in Arizona, and the state level in Virginia. Death certificates are sealed for seventy-five years in Oklahoma, but in Connecticut they are public record before 1997. In New Mexico, birth and death certificates are obtained from the state, but marriages from the county clerk. Like military pension files, census schedules and bankruptcy petitions, naturalization records are filed at the federal level, but before 1906 citizenship may also have been applied for at county courts. Deeds and land conveyances are filed at the county level, and likewise probate records, housed in the records room of the Surrogate's Court, which court is a "surrogate” of the governor’s office, dating back to colonial times when travel to the capital was distant, grueling, and slow.
Cowboy Punching Cattle on a Jackrabbit. Postcard Collection, Milstein Division.
Access to court records, whether historic or last week, will also vary by state. For example, after the grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri decided against the indictment of Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, the St. Louis County prosecutor’s office immediately made public the court documents in the case. However, at the State Supreme Court in Richmond County, New York, where the grand jury proceedings against Officer Pantaleo in the chokehold death of Eric Garner also ended without indictment, court documents related to the case have remained sealed. The release of the documents, in accordance with state laws, was argued before a state judge in Richmond County this past February. In the future, researchers seeking court records related to the case will be directed by local history librarians to the Richmond County Clerk, despite that grand jury proceedings since the 17th century have been kept secret. In addition, any research into the investigation of civil rights violations committed by the Ferguson Police Department would seek documents issued by the Department of Justice, which federal organization also employs the U.S. marshal.
The Milstein Division holds a handful of guidebooks in tracking legal records:
Two men standing in front of a horse and buggy. 1882-1883. Image ID: 1801431.
“When General Stephen Watts Kearny inaugurated the American system of justice in the Southwest in 1846, he introduced a judiciary long common to Anglo-American civilization.” Under the entry for “law and order,” The New Encyclopedia of the American West says that “pioneers did not create new forms of law and order; rather they continued to use two ancient English institutions: the justice court, headed by the justice of the peace; and a county, or high, sheriff, with powers to collect taxes, deputize citizens, and form a posse.” The English roots of this system are reflected in the word "sheriff," where a “shire” is the one-thousand year old ancestor of “the modern county in the United States,” and “the principal officer of the shire court was the shire reeve.” Ironically, like the U.S. marshal in Silver Lode, the Sheriff of Nottingham is portrayed as the archvillain in the folklore of the radical and righteous bandit Robin Hood. Director Allan Dwan, who helmed Silver Lode, adapted the Robin Hood tale thirty years earlier, starring Douglas Fairbanks.
Gary Cooper. Image ID: TH-04687.
In High Noon (1952) Gary Cooper plays the town marshal, basically the sheriff, though sometimes the nomenclature was scotched, and, like many early genealogical records, the verbiage more pragmatic than official. Bad Ben Miller seeks revenge on the marshal, but the townspeople, who elected the law-bringer by popular vote and attended his wedding, refuse to support him against the brigands.
When Wyatt Earp, his two brothers, and tubercular ex-dentist rifleman Doc Holliday killed Billy Clanton and the McLaury brothers at the O.K. Corral, in Tombstone, Cochise County, Arizona, Earp had been deputized a U.S. marshal. Surely no heroic showdown between the good and the bad, prolific oater-epicist Larry McMurtry described the ugly gunfight as little more than a "botched arrest." Earp was later indicted in Pima County, AZ, for the vendetta killing of Frank Stilwell, whom had back-shot brother Morgan Earp in 1882. With regards to how folks like to remember the old West, it may be a sign that the NYPL catalog shows 28 entries under the subject heading Cochise County (Ariz.) – Fiction, but only 5 for Cochise County (Ariz.) -- History.
Map of Cochise County. The Oasis.
Wichita (1955) is a cinematic Wyatt Earp origin story, where the burgeoning Kansas cattle town has plenty of saloons but no medical doctor, and the current marshal is a yellowbelly, which is an advantage when the ruffian cattle drivers swoop into town, drain the supply of whiskey, and start shooting up the place. After a stray bullet kills a young boy, Wyatt Earp takes up the marshal’s badge and gun, jails the sozzled cowpokes, and bans firearms within city limits. These were the powers of the marshal, whether local or federal; and he often did not just run the jail, but sometimes also resided in the building with his family.
The Wichita City Eagle. 1873.
From the 1789 Judiciary Act, when the office of U.S. Marshal was established, to roughly the 1850s, when the territory of New Mexico was created, the marshal carried out the modern duties of the post office, FBI, and Secret Service. In the antebellum years the marshal enforced the Fugitive Slave Act and postbellum the Civil Rights Act. He was an agent of the courts, a server of subpoenas and warrants of eviction, an overseer of prisoners, supervisor of elections, collector of taxes, and, for some time, most relevant to the historian of family history, the marshal took the census. The inaugural 1790 census was compiled by 650 federal marshals, who spent 18 months trekking the 13 states and enumerated 3.9 million residents.
Presently, city marshals in the five boroughs are appointed by the Mayor and regulated by the corruption-busting Department of Investigation, but are described as neither employees of the city nor the Civil Court. Like U.S. marshals before 1896, they earn funds by a system of fees. Marshals both east and west collected fees based on court duties and service of process, in what was part of the “entrepreneurial” system of law enforcement, versus the bureaucratic and municipal system codified by the onset of the early 20th century. In addition, central authority west of the Mississippi was dwarfed by the zealous and domineering control of private industry, which also paid for security with greater dispatch than Uncle Sam. As Southern California chronicler Carey McWilliams writes in “Myths of the West,” his debunking 1931 essay, “the cattle companies captured Nevada after 1861; Montana was merely the alter ego of the Anaconda Copper Company until recent years; the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company ruled Colorado during its formative period; while in Idaho and Wyoming the Union Pacific played the villain.”
An Arizona Cowboy. Image ID: 1610053.
In the opening courtroom sequences of True Grit, the 2010 adaptation of the 1968 novel, U.S. marshal Rooster Cogburn is accused by an Ozarks counselor of exploiting his federal authority in several questionably justified shootings. Marshal Cogburn is gruff and unapologetic. The local sheriff describes him as mean, pitiless, and “double tough.” But such was the beleaguered bathos of a late 19th century U.S. marshal, that Cogburn lives in the cramped backroom of a Chinese grocery and haggles reward money with a 14 year-old girl out to avenge the murder of her father.
In the old western district of Arkansas, families of slain deputies received no compensation from the government, and marshals received no fees if they failed to capture their fugitive, no matter the travel and time expended, nor were they paid if the fugitive was killed during the act of apprehension. Pulp writers and eyepatch-clad Hollywood directors would stretch the legacy of the entrepreneurial system into the pop mythos of cheroot-smoking bounty hunters, leather-jawed freebooters, and ivory-handled guns-for-hire.
Sunset magazine. Image ID: 1258913.
New York City continues to run a Sheriff’s Office, which Alfred E. Smith once occupied as a patronage gift from Tammany Hall at $50,000. a year, in the years prior to Sheriff Smith’s garnering the NY Governorship.
Sheriff Alfred E. Smith at his desk on his first day in office. Image ID: 3997994.
In Manhattan one still finds Sheriff Street, between Houston and Stanton and bisected by the Samuel Gompers Houses to continue one block under the Williamsburg Bridge. The city named Sheriff Street in honor of Marinus Willett, a swashbuckling New York City Tory-fighter who led the Sons of Liberty radicals in sacking the British arsenal in occupied Manhattan, invaded Canada, fought under General Washington at Monmouth, and held the esteemed office of Sheriff of the City and County of New York in 1784-1788 and again in 1792-1796. In between these terms, President Washington sent Willett south to Georgia to treaty with the Creek Nation. The street runs through the old 13th Ward, in the Southeast frontier of the island where Sheriff Willett lived after the war.
Residence of the late Col. Marinus Willett, Mayor of New York in 1807-8. Image ID: 424296.
Ball, Larry D. “Frontier Sheriffs at Work.” The Journal of Arizona History. Vol. 27, No. 3, Autumn 1986.
Ball, Larry D. “Pioneer Lawman: Crawley P. Dake and Law Enforcement on the Southwestern Frontier.” The Journal of Arizona History. Vol. 14, No. 3, Autumn 1973.
Cooley, Rita W. “The Office of United States Marshal.” The Western Political Quarterly. Vol. 12, No. 1, Mar. 1959.
Dressler, Joshua (ed.) Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice. Vol. 2. 2nd ed. NY: Macmillan Reference USA, 2002.
Eichholz, Alice (ed.) Red Book: American state, county, and town sources. Provo, Utah: Ancestry, 2004.
Jordan, P.D. “The Town Marshal Local Arm of the Law.” Arizona and the West. Vol. 16, No. 4, Winter 1974.
Lamar, Howard R. (ed.) The New Encyclopedia of the American West. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Sankey, Michael (ed.) BRB's guide to county court records: a national resource to criminal, civil, and probate records found at the nation's county, parish, and municipal courts. BRB Publications, Inc. 2011.
The Declaration of Independence was penned in 1776. This is Philadelphia in 1778, in the midst of the Rebels and the Loyalists. 14-year-old Becca Syng is sent to work and live as a maid with the spoiled Peggy Shippen, future wife of Benedict Arnold.
The Shippen household is adorned with unadulterated luxury and bickering maids, so unlike the home in which Becca grew up. In it, the girl learns to speak French, play the harpsichord, paint with watercolors, and dance like the wind.
The atrocities of war rob people's souls and make money scarce. However, that does not curb Peggy and her sisters' taste for the finer things in life. Ballrooms and fancy ball gowns flit about in their dreams.
Becca loves her dog Merlin, her favorite cow Opal, and her mother. The Shippen household is meant to be a sort of "finishing school" for Becca, a place where she can find her "missing pieces."
The Mulberry Street Library is proud to host the art exhibition "Love, Masks, and Flowers" by Greenwich Village based artist Rossella BLUE Mocerino. A veteran exhibitor of NYPL Libraries, BLUE brings extraodinary color and verve to her work, on display through April 28, 2015. I spoke with the artist about her work.
Tell us how you became interested in the masked figure as an artistic subject?
I have always been interested in the human figure. I find people very intriguing. I drew from live models for decades but I did not quite know how to turn this interest into a personal style. One day I saw a picture of a masked figure from the Venice Carnival. I mentioned to my partner that there was something about it that caught my fancy and since my partner has always been very supportive, she said to me: "Just go."
That was in 1993. It was the first Venice Carnival I attended and I knew I had found my subject—masked figures. I haven't missed a Venice Carnival since then. A critic once wrote: "For this artist, everyday is Carnival." Another critic wrote that: "One gets the impression that Mocerino's figures are never out of costume; that they live in a perpetual white-face persona."
What sort of emotions does you work evoke, or do you try and elicit from the viewer?
What a viewer sees in my work is a very personal experience. They might not see what I see in it but they might find other ideas that they can relate to. And that's okay too. What I put into a painting is mystery, magic, passion, love, intensity of feeling, individualism, a quest to connect, a desire to soar above everyday's realities. Although my work is often labeled realism, I believe artists never do realism. As I see it, art should elevate us and teach us to search beyond the ordinary.
Your name BLUE indicates a love of color, which is very evident in your work and style. Can you describe your relationship to color? What attracts you to color? Why BLUE?
I can't imagine a world without color. It would be a very dull place indeed. I find that each color comes with its own characteristics. When I work with red, I feel the intensity and passion inherent in it. On the other hand, when I work with gold, I feel the heaviness of it and so on. I like strong, bold colors. I have a strong dislike of pastel colors. They will never find their way into my paintings.
In recent years, earthy tones have been added to my palette. Although I paint with different colors, blue is the only color I wear. In the art world, you will find that the color artists wear at openings is black so I started to wear blue as sort of a rebellion against that rule. Soon enough though I found I lived very well in blue and that it started to shape who I am. I am very well at home in my blue life. Recently, I have adopted BLUE as my professional name.
What are some of your biggest artistic influences (could be art, writing, music, etc.)?
Italy has been my biggest artistic influence. As a matter of fact, Italy is at the core of my being an artist. I was twelve when my family and I emigrated to New York from Tuscany. At eighteen, I went back to Italy for a visit. I was on a train looking out at the countryside when this thought popped up from nowhere: "I want to be an artist." And that was that. I have never looked back. My favorite author is E.M. Forster. I have always needed a room with a view to survive. I have a great affinity to the operatic works of Giuseppe Verdi—perhaps it's due to the fact that we share the same birthday.
How does travel inspire you?
Travel, like a good book, opens unexpected and unimaginable vistas. I can't help but think about what Grace Coddington of Vogue magazine said in the documentary, The September Issue: "I worked with Norman Parkinson, who was a really big photographer. He taught me to always keep your eyes open; never go to sleep in the car; keep watching; whatever you see out the window or wherever, it can inspire you." Each city has its own unique palette—the color of the stones, the architecture of the buildings, the light as it hits the landscape through the day and at different seasons, the reflections in the water. I know that when I visit my favorite inspirational city, Venice, I often wonder if I will go blind from seeing so much beauty.
How do you see NYC neighborhoods changing?
I have always loved to walk through the city. New York is a very dynamic city and neighborhoods change constantly. As artists find one neighborhood pricey, they move to another and there starts the beginning of the new Lower East Side, Williamsburg, Chelsea. And those artists who have made it big move to other areas like the West Village and the Meatpacking District. Then follow the restaurants, the bars, the boutiques and what we get is the Movida. The Spaniards use this word to describe neighborhoods with a lot of movement and a strong night life. I love it all!
You have shown work in many libraries at NYPL—why are you drawn to showing your work in Libraries?
I jokingly refer to this year as My Library Tour. I had a show in January at the Tompkins Square Library, I am currently exhibiting at Mulberry Street Library until April 28th and I will complete this "tour" with a show at the Hudson Park Library in September. I wanted to take a break from the rigidity of a gallery setting and these libraries opened their doors to me. Three libraries, three different spaces, three different shows. What a fabulous opportunity to plan each show from beginning to end and to have the rare opportunity to hang one's own work. What a great chance to be part of what's happening in New York City by displaying my work in local libraries and making it accessible to all. Libraries are the dynamic center of a neighborhood; it's a perfect fit to have art and literature together with other local events. A heartfelt thanks to the staff of the libraries who have made The Library Tour possible.
Salem wenches, bitch witches... those are some of the names that the local townspeople call the "afflicted girls," who provide more and more names to the local magistrate for attention and relief from boredom. Perhaps accusing the people of witchcraft will rid Salem of fear and mistrust.
The witch trials are a circus. The afflicted girls, as well as many local residents, attend the trials. The accused witches are not appointed counsel, and their words of defense fall on impatient ears. Witches who confess accept responsibility for naming others. Those who refuse to admit to their wrong doings are condemned to die. Then, they are hanged in public, sometimes with children watching. Jails in both Salem and Boston are overflowing with convicted witches.
Susanna English is a teen growing up in Salem among adults and children alike who live in fear of being named as demons in consort with the Devil. Her family members fall victim to the afflicted girls' insatiable appetite for drama. Susanna learns of the magistrate's latest strategies from her boyfriend Jonathan. When her family flees for the more liberal and accepting Boston, the young woman stays behind to speak the truth... if doing so will not lead to her own demise.
Puritanism in the 1690s in Salem, Massachusetts made for long, hard winters. Entertaining, drinking, and dancing were frowned upon in that culture during those times. Epidemics of small pox and other devastating diseases made life even harder in the northeastern United States in the late 17th century. Some Salem citizens keep their horses saddled at all times in order to expedite their immediate departures should they be accused of holding hands with Evil.
This is a superb military study of the Great War. if you are looking for some new perspectives on the Bloody Fields of Flanders and elsewhere then this seminal work by Peter Hart is a good place to start. Many, many books have been written on WWI and with the 100th anniversary upon us this continues to be so.
This work places the military aspects squarely in the forefront and provides the reader a superb look at how and why the war was fought the way it was. The author also makes frequent use of first hand material to let the soldiers who took part tell their story.
Americans in old French trenches near Verdun. Image ID: 437769
Some detractors might observe that the chapters dealing with the Eastern Front and elsewhere are slender and that few quotes from participants are used. Doubtless the language problem was a factor here. If you are looking for a comprehensive look at the conflict on this front and others then you might be disappointed. The author is definitely concerned mostly with the Allied effort on the Western Front. It is here that he believed the war would ultimately be either won or lost.
The author tries to dispel the many notions that the allied generals were incompetent and simply threw their armies away on wasteful frontal attacks. Instead Haig, Foch and Joffre are seen in more positive light. Under the circumstances it is doubtful that the battles could have been conducted much differently. The tactical concepts combined with the massive size of the armies and the firepower that they could produce were all factors that would have resulted in a bloodbath regardless of who commanded.
The author sees the conflict as a pendulum that swung back and forth as first the Germans and then the Allies each tried to introduce new weapons and tactics into the Trench War matrix. Positive results were often achieved but the cost was always high. In WWI military victory on the battlefield would never come cheaply to one side or the other. The size of the armies and the new firepower that they possessed simply precluded any decisive result until one side could be gradually worn down.
Troops resting in a trench. Image ID: 437776
The author also provides a sobering look at the effects of US intervention in 1918 as the German Michael Offensives burned out. One quote from a German officer puts it simply: "Yes, it was easy for the inexperienced Americans to stage heroic feats against the German Army of 1918. It was totally exhausted and could no longer effectively resist the Allied attacks. These Dough Boys would have had a different story had they met the German army of 1914-16!" True, the US Army under its Bulldog General Pershing just plowed forward with the crudeness of a Donkey often suffering horrific losses in the process. Still, they managed to tip the scales in favor of the Allies at the critical late stage of the war.
This is a superb work, smoothly written and with many new insights to provide a fresh look at a well worn conflict.
View of Manhattan from Fulton Street circa 1935. Image ID: 482681
New York is a city of nicknames. The City That Never Sleeps, Empire City, The City So Nice They Named It Twice… and of course Gotham, which we’ve covered before. Today let’s just look at the Big Apple.
Before it became a moniker for the city, “big apple” had other meanings. Throughout the nineteenth century, the term meant “something regarded as the most significant of its kind; an object of desire and ambition.” To “bet a big apple” was “to state with supreme assurance; to be absolutely confident of” [Oxford English Dictionary]. The term was popular enough that you see several nods to the colloquialism in the reporting of literally large apples. For example, the Portland Advertiser reports in 1840:
Here the Commercial Advertiser places the term in quotes, possibly to highlight it in light of its common use (1848).
There are also plenty of examples of wagering or betting a big apple as a sure thing in newspapers in the 1800s. This one is from the Salem Register:
Another example from the Boston Daily Globe is an 1891 advertisement which read, “We will wager a big red apple that the prices attached to our thousand and one styles are as low or lower than the same quality of goods can be bought elsewhere.” Dozens of references to big apples and betting big apples can be found by searching digitized newspapers in Proquest Historical Newspapers, Chronicling America, and America’s Historical Newspapers.
The Oxford English Dictionary also reports its first known inference of New York in this context in 1909. Used only to imply a big and important place, “the big apple city” in context just happens to be New York. From Edward Martin’s introduction in the Wayfarer in New York: “It [sc. the Mid-West] inclines to think that the big apple [sc. New York] gets a disproportionate share of the national sap.” The editors of the OED actually address the early usage, “which, though referring to New York, is part of an extended metaphor and appears to be an isolated use.” A look at Martin’s text offers greater context. He discussed the perception of New York City from other parts of the United States with an extended metaphor as though it were the fruit of a tree of which other “lesser fruits” are jealous and embittered.
So why are apples so special in the 1800s? In Origin of New York City's nickname "The Big Apple", author Gerald Leonard Cohen explains that “nowadays apples seem to be regarded as just another fruit, neither more nor less special than pears, grapefruits, etc. However, in the 19th and presumably the early 20th century a big red apple was apparently something of special desirability,” such as the gift of an apple for a teacher as a sign of flattery. Indeed, this is true. Brooklyn Botanic Garden explains how the 19th century was the golden age of the apple: “an era known to fruit historians as the golden age of American pomology, a period running from the presidency of Thomas Jefferson to the Wright brothers' liftoff at Kitty Hawk. It was a time of unparalleled public interest in new fruit varieties, when apples, pears, and peaches were critically reviewed and rated with the enthusiasm now reserved for Hollywood movies and popular music.” Americans were seeing more apples than ever at the market and bigger, tastier specimens at that.
Variety of Apples, 1812. Image ID: 1107620
The “Big Apple” as a nickname for New York City really takes hold in the 1920s jazz era. The term, already in popular meaning as betting on a sure thing, makes its way to racetracks in the early 1920s. John J. Fitz Gerald, a reporter who wrote a regular racing column in the New York Morning Telegraph, referred to the New York racing circuit as the Big Apple—a proper noun. He is credited for popularizing the term, and in 1924 he wrote, “The Big Apple, the dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There’s only one Big Apple. That’s New York.” Fitz Gerald’s racing term complies with the original slang definition in his usage, since he is certainly expressing that he thinks the races are to be regarded as the most significant of their kind. Fitz Gerald titled the column “Around the Big Apple.”
Within the same decade, usage of the term shows up in other papers, often meaning the city of New York and not just its racing circuits. Chicago Defender, 1922: “I trust your trip to the ‘big apple’ was a huge success…” and the New York Times uses it for the first time in an article about the slang that motion picture industry men use called “Slang of Film Men,” published March 11, 1928.
The term was popular amongst jazz musicians, and in Origin of New York City's nickname "The Big Apple", Cohen explains that when Charles Gillett, president of the non-profit New York Convention and Visitors Bureau, took interest in the phrase in the 1970s, he was inspired by its jazz connotations. Gillett ran a tourism campaign to invite tourists to New York in an era when the city’s reputation was dominated by crime, bankruptcy, and middle class flight to the suburbs. The New York Times explains in his obituary:
Skyline from World Trade Center looking north with closer view of Empire State Building, circa 1980. Image ID: ps_lhg_151
“But perhaps his greatest success came with turning the term "Big Apple" into a tourist draw. A jazz fan, he remembered that musicians in the 1920s and '30s had an expression for playing the big time after gigs in one-horse towns: "There are many apples on the tree, but when you pick New York City, you pick the Big Apple."
Gillett enlisted local celebrities to promote NYC, made Big Apple stickers and pins, and successfully recruited large organizations to bring their conventions to the city. When he retired, he received a New York State Governor's Award, with Gov. Mario M. Cuomo citing Gillett's "long and distinguished service in promoting New York as the premier travel destination in the world," and for moving the bureau into the front ranks of local travel promotion agencies. By the time he passed away in the 1990s, Gillett was celebrated for his role in changing public opinion about visiting and living in NYC. The Big Apple campaign was successfully counter partnered with other 1970s publicity such as William Doyle and Milton Glaser’s “I Love New York” campaign. A Google Ngram of the term “Big Apple” shows the growth of the term’s usage, as well as its resurgence in the 1970s and continual rise since Gillett’s campaign.
Street vendors selling hot potatoes and baked apples. Image ID: 732390F
New York Public Library locations will partake in the festivities and it will be the second year that the 67th Street Library is hosting films and events as a venue. We had amazing films and conversations to follow each event last year. It is with great pleasure that we partake in this event again. It is good to note that any events held at NYPL locations are FREE!
The New York Cares Youth Service Club at Legacy High School, a special needs school on Roosevelt Island, wanted to help the library welcome and celebrate the festival. The group decided to paint a mural symbolizing how people with special needs can contribute to and enrich society.
Tenita SambulaThe group lovingly nick-named the mural Pablo
Tenita Sambula, a junior at Legacy High School, came up with a beautiful concept to illustrate this point.
“I wanted to show how people with special needs are just like everyone else in one way,” said Tenita, “but on the other hand, have something special to offer.”
Her concept became the piece “Creativity from Within,” which her fellow Service Club members painted and donated to the library. Using bright colors and universal symbols, “Creativity from Within” explores what all of us have in common, and celebrates that which makes us unique.
Join us as we explore and discuss a variety of ReelAbilities!
Mary Pipher, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist, noticed that girls in the 1990s were more self-conscious about their appearance and exhibited more sex-stereotyped feminine behavior than they did when she grew up. She was puzzled and saddened by what seemed to be a shrinking or loss of self that many girls experience as teenagers. Pipher previously studied cultural anthropology, as well.
Early on, Wonder Woman's outfit evolved from Harry G. Peter's design after Marston's suggestion that she look more like a Varga girl, and after Marston nixed impractical and unrealistic and potentially dated sandal and halter top aspects.
The Declaration of Independence was penned in 1776. This is Philadelphia in 1778, in the midst of the Rebels and the Loyalists. 14-year-old Becca Syng is sent to work and live as a maid with the spoiled Peggy Shippen, future wife of Benedict Arnold.
Salem wenches, bitch witches... those are some of the names that the local townspeople call the "afflicted girls," who provide more and more names to the local magistrate for attention and relief from boredom. Perhaps accusing the people of witchcraft will rid Salem of fear and mistrust.
