James Lenfestey on an Icon
of the Native American Literary Renaissance In 1970, I founded one of the
first college courses in Native American Literature. I knew nothing about it, trained in the
mainstream white male literary canon of the day, but I heard the drums: The drums of the Native activist takeover of
Alcatraz Island in 1969, and back near my hometown of Green Bay, Wisconsin, the
DRUMS (an acronym for “Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee
Stockholders”) of stirring resistance to the effects of federal termination of
the Menominee reservation. Plus the
growing beats of the early Native civil rights protests by the nascent American
Indian Movement emanating from its hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, which
would rise to a national crescendo with the occupation of Wounded Knee in
1973. In literature, the thunderbolt was
the 1969 Pulitzer Prize awarded to House Made of Dawn, a
brilliantly lyrical novel by Kiowa poet and painter N. Scott Momaday. That spark burst into flame soon enough in
the works of James Welch, Leslie Marmon Silko, Gerry Vizenor, Duane Niatum,
Linda Hogan, Simon Ortiz, and an efflorescence of poets including current U.S.
Poet laureate Joy Harjo, clustered into what is now termed the Native American
Renaissance of the 1970s and 80s. A full
flowering of that Renaissance occurred in 1984 with the publication of Love
Medicine by Louise Erdrich, an author of Ojibwe and German
ancestry. The book won the National Book
Critics Circle Award. The linked stories
in Love Medicine housed the author’s now trademark memorable
characters and omnipresent sly humor that simultaneously lances the heart, all
couched in prose so deft it could have been poetry. In fact, Erdrich had already won two
prestigious poetry awards, and her first collection, Jacklight, was
published that same year. Had her poems
not been eclipsed by her storytelling ambition, she would today stand in the
front rank of American poets. James P. Lenfesty https://lithub.com/on-louise-erdich-and-salvaging-wisdom-from-absurdity-and-injustice/
The cottonwood—also known
as the poplar—is a tall tree with a spreading crown, named for its cotton-like
seeds. The diverse poplar family
includes the quaking aspen, which boasts the widest range of any North American
tree, and the Plains cottonwood, which was the only tree many early settlers
met as they forged westward through America's prairies. Few sights were more welcome to America’s
early pioneers than the cottonwood. As
they pushed westward with their wagons, these men and women found food for
their livestock in the tree's leaves, as well as shade for themselves and timber
for their dwellings. Trunks provided
dugout canoes, and the tree’s bark was used to produce both forage for horses
and a bitter medicinal tea. And in
regions with few trees, the very noticeable cottonwoods often served as
gathering places and trail markers, and as sacred objects for several Plains
tribes. Today, cottonwood is most
commonly used in making plywood, matches, crates, boxes, and paper pulp.
https://www.arborday.org/programs/nationaltree/cottonwood.cfm See cottonwood place names at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottonwood (California, Oklahoma, Texas and Utah use
cottonwood more than once as place names.)
Charles
Dickens wrote the novel A Tale of Two
Cities as a serial to help launch his new weekly journal All The Year Round in the spring of
1859. It was a critical time in both his
personal and professional life. He had,
against a background of much gossip, separated from his wife Catherine after
twenty-three years of marriage and the birth of ten children. He had quarrelled with his publishers, also
after twenty-three years, and had terminated the weekly journal Household Words that he had been
publishing with them since 1850. Added
to that, he was considering starting a new career as a public reader of his own
work. https://dickensmuseum.com/blogs/charles-dickens-museum/what-inspired-a-tale-of-two-cities-by-professor-michael-slater "It was the best of times, it was the
worst of times," Charles
Dickens writes in the opening lines of A Tale of Two
Cities as he paints a picture of life in England and France. The year is late 1775. The revolution erupts with full force in July
1789 with the storming of the Bastille. https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/t/a-tale-of-two-cities/book-summary
The Scarlet Pimpernel is the first novel in a series of historical fiction by Baroness Orczy, published in 1905. It was written after her stage play of the
same title enjoyed a long run in London, having opened in Nottingham in
1903. The novel is set during the Reign of Terror following the start of
the French Revolution. The title is the nom de guerre of its hero and
protagonist, a chivalrous Englishman who rescues aristocrats before they are
sent to the guillotine. Sir Percy
Blakeney leads a double life:
apparently nothing more than a wealthy fop,
but in reality a formidable swordsman and a quick-thinking escape artist. The band of gentlemen who assist him are the
only ones who know of his secret identity.
He is known by his symbol, a simple flower, the scarlet pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis).
Marguerite Blakeney, his French wife,
does not share his secret. She is approached by the new French envoy to
England, Chauvelin, with a threat to her brother's life if she does not aid in
the search for the Pimpernel. She aids him, and then discovers that the
Pimpernel is also very dear to her. She sails to France to stop the envoy. Opening at the New Theatre in
London's West End on
January 5, 1905, the play became a favourite of British audiences, eventually
playing more than 2,000 performances and becoming one of the most popular shows
staged in Britain. Orczy's premise of a
daring hero who cultivates a secret identity disguised by a meek or
ineffectual manner proved enduring. Zorro, the Shadow, the Spider, the Phantom, Superman and Batman followed within a few decades,
and the trope remains
a popular one in serial fiction today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scarlet_Pimpernel
"Brilliant numbers,
as defined by Peter Wallrodt, are numbers with two prime factors of the same
length (in decimal notation). These
numbers are generally used for cryptographic purposes, and for testing the
performance of prime factoring programs.
The challenge is to continue the table shown on the website. This table contains the least brilliant
number with an even number of digits and the greatest brilliant number with an
odd number of digits." http://www.alpertron.com.ar/BRILLIANT.HTM#2br This website shows a huge table of
2-brilliant, 3-brilliant, and 4-brilliant numbers.
The 12 greatest,
strangest, most transfixing dance scenes in the history of crime movies—because
people may cheat, steal, and kill, but their hips don't lie by Dwyer Murphy https://crimereads.com/the-12-greatest-strangest-most-transfixing-dance-scenes-in-the-history-of-crime-movies/
June 30, 2020 When Cincinnati’s Melanie Moore retired in
2017 after 25 years as a teacher, she wanted to pursue her dream of opening a
brick and mortar bookstore. She did her
research and even landed a lease on a space in 2018, but the night before she
was to sign it, she had second thoughts about the high cost and overhead. She put her search on hold, and after reading
the 1915 book Parnassus on
Wheels by Christopher Morley, about a traveling, mobile
bookstore, she decided to start her own with The Book Bus, in 2019, using her husband’s
1962 Volkswagon Transporter. Since she
didn’t have to purchase a vehicle, and used her own personal library for her
initial inventory, her start-up costs were low.
Moore spent around $5,000 updating the truck with brakes and a new
clutch, buying merchandise like t-shirts and mugs and business needs, including
Square and a vendor’s license. She began
doing bookselling pop-ups at local coffee shop, festivals, city fleas and
markets, that she could reach within 40 minutes, and spreading the word about
her offerings via Instagram.
The most popular books that I offer are
special editions of classics and books that are not available locally that I
have brought in from the UK. As far as I
know, I am the only US bookstore that carries Persephone Books of London,” said
Moore. While the COVID-19 pandemic has
meant that Moore can’t sell books at public events for the time being, she’s
pivoted her business, selling books online via Bookshop and audiobooks via Libro.fm, hosting a book club
on Zoom she began in January, and renting out the bus for photo shoots and
birthday parties. When she does bring
books to sell at parties, she practices social distancing and uses contactless
methods of payment, though 95% of her sales are happening online. Rachel Kramer Bussel https://www.forbes.com/sites/rachelkramerbussel/2020/06/30/why-a-retired-cincinnati-teacher-started-the-book-bus-a-mobile-bookstore-on-wheels/#e19a4d24e8d9
Author Joanna Cole, whose
“Magic School Bus” books transported millions of young people on extraordinary
and educational adventures, died July 13, 2020 at age 75. The idea
for “The Magic School Bus” came in the mid-1980s. Scholastic senior editorial director Craig
Walker was receiving frequent requests from teachers for books about science
and thought a combination of storytelling and science would catch on. He
brought in Cole, whose humorous work such as the children’s book “Cockroaches”
he had admired, and illustrator Bruce Degen. With the ever maddening but inspired Ms.
Frizzle leading her students on journeys that explored everything from the
solar system to underwater, “Magic School Bus” books have sold tens of millions
of copies and were the basis for a popular animated TV series and a Netflix
series. Plans for a live-action movie,
with Elizabeth Banks as Ms. Frizzle, were announced last month. Ms. Frizzle was based in part on a fifth-grade
teacher of Cole’s. https://apnews.com/d4900f11e6bb8c38c620284487ac50c4
July 17
is the Day of International Criminal Justice, which was instituted by the states parties to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to recognize the importance of international criminal justice. Wikipedia
http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com Issue 2300
July 17, 2020
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