Oscar Devereaux Micheaux (1884–1951) was an African American author, film director and independent producer of more than 44 films.  Although the short-lived Micheaux Book & Film Company produced some films, he is regarded as the first major African-American feature filmmaker, the most successful African-American filmmaker of the first half of the 20th century and the most prominent producer of race films.  He produced both silent films and sound films when the industry changed to incorporate speaking actors.  When Micheaux was 17 years old, he moved to Chicago, Illinois to live with his older brother, then working as a waiter.  Micheaux became dissatisfied with what he viewed as his brother’s way of living “the good life.”  He rented his own place and found a job in the stockyards, which he found difficult.  He worked many different jobs, moving from the stockyards to the steel mills.  After being “swindled out of two dollars” by an employment agency, Micheaux decided to become his own boss.  His first business was a shoeshine stand, which he set up at a white suburban barbershop, away from Chicago competition.  He learned the basic strategies of business and started to save money.  He became a Pullman porter on the major railroads, at that time considered prestigious employment for African Americans because it was relatively stable, well-paid, and secure, and it enabled travel and interaction with new people.  This job was an informal education for Micheaux.  He profited financially, and also gained contacts and knowledge about the world through traveling as well as a greater understanding for business.  Micheaux moved to Dallas, South Dakota, where he bought land and worked as a homesteader.  This experience inspired his first novels and films.  While farming, Micheaux wrote articles and submitted them to the press.  The Chicago Defender published one of his earliest articles.   Micheaux decided to concentrate on writing and, eventually, filmmaking, a new industry.  Micheaux’s first novel The Conquest was adapted to film and re-titled, The Homesteader.  Micheaux’s second silent film was Within Our Gates, produced in 1920.   Although sometimes considered his response to the film Birth of a Nation, Micheaux said that he created it independently as a response to the widespread social instability following World War I.  Micheaux adapted two works by Charles W. Chesnutt, which he released under their original titles:   The Conjure Woman (1926) and The House Behind the Cedars (1927).  The latter, which dealt with issues of mixed race and passing, created so much controversy when reviewed by the Film Board of Virginia that he was forced to make cuts to have it shown.  He remade this story as a sound film in 1932, releasing it with the title Veiled Aristocrats.  The silent version of the film is believed to have been lost.  Read more and see pictures at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Micheaux

NAME CHANGES  Michael Caine (Maurice Joseph Micklewhite born 1933) Nina Foch (Nina Consuelo Maud Fock born 1924)  Pete Fountain  (Pierre Dewey LaFontaine Jr. born 1930)  Gene Wilder (Jerome Silberman born 1933)  Buddy Holly (Charles Hardin Holley born 1936)

September 19, 2016  Duke University Libraries Receives Virtual Reality Grant to “Flip Prisons”  The Duke University Libraries have received a $52,647 grant from the State Farm Youth Advisory Board to help transform an abandoned prison into a sustainable farm and education center through the magic of virtual reality.  The prison in question is an actual former correctional facility in rural Wagram, in one of the poorest counties in North Carolina with one of the state’s highest unemployment rates.  The idea to “flip” the abandoned site into a sustainable farm is the mission of GrowingChange, a North Carolina nonprofit led by a team of formerly incarcerated youth.  GrowingChange gives young people in the criminal justice system job training and life skills through farming and service learning.  Their goal is to create as a national model for reusing closed prisons.  Eight high school students in the Game Art & Design concentration at the Durham School of the Arts, working under veteran teacher Robert Bourgeois, will work with youth participants in GrowingChange to design a virtual reality version of the flipped prison, in order to help people visualize the site’s untapped potential.  Jail cells will be transformed into aquaponics tanks, guard towers into climbing walls, the galley into a certified community kitchen, and the old “hot box” will become a recording studio.  In recent years, virtual reality technology has been rapidly transforming industries from journalism to documentary filmmaking by providing audiences 360-degree sensory experiences that are hard to forget.  The grant will support the development and design of the virtual reality program, which GrowingChange can use to better communicate its vision.  The grant is one of 63 service-learning, youth-led projects across the United States to receive funding this year by the State Farm Youth Advisory Board.  Since its inception in 2006, the State Farm Youth Advisory Board has granted over $40 million, impacting over 21.5 million students.  Read more and see pictures at http://blogs.library.duke.edu/blog/2016/09/19/duke-university-libraries-receives-virtual-reality-grant-flip-prisons/

In its simplest definition, “fin de siècle” refers to the end of a century.  At the end of the 19th century in Britain, the term did not just refer to a set of dates, but rather a whole set of artistic, moral, and social concerns.  To describe something as a fin de siècle phenomenon invokes a sense of the old order ending and new, radical departures.  The adoption of the French term, rather than the use of the English “end of the century,” helps to trace this particular critical content: it was, and continues to be, associated with those writers and artists whose work displayed a debt to French decadent, symbolist, or naturalist writers and artists.  It was also particularly strongly encoded in visual culture, with the black-and-white illustrations popularized by Aubrey Beardsley in the Yellow Book and elsewhere coming to serve as shorthand indicating textual material that challenged the mores and formal conventions of high Victorian ideals for literature and art.  Ruth Livesey  http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199799558/obo-9780199799558-0030.xml

Authors!  Authors! - Tucker Carlson & James Carville presented by the Toledo Lucas County Public Library at Stranahan Theater & Great Hall 4645 Heatherdowns Boulevard
Toledo, OH  Wednesday, October 26, 2016 from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM (EDT)  Ticket information:  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/authors-authors-tucker-carlson-james-carville-tickets-26909725714

To prescribe is to recommend and to proscribe is to forbid.  One little letter makes a big difference.  If you're tempted to get them mixed up, think of the "e" in "prescribe for me," and the "o" in "Oh no, don't for proscribe."  https://www.vocabulary.com/articles/chooseyourwords/prescribe-proscribe/

October 14, 2016  Cave art as much as 14,500 years old has been pronounced "the most spectacular and impressive" ever discovered on the Iberian peninsula.  About 50 etchings were found in the Basque town of Lekeitio.  They include horses, bison, goats and--in a radical departure from previously discovered Palaeolithic art in the Biscay province--two lions.  Some depictions are also much bigger than those found previously--with one horse about 150cm (4ft 11in) long.  See pictures at http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37654544

Pierre Étaix, French clown, comedian and maker of slapstick films, died October 14, 2006 at the age of 87.  Some of his films were not seen for decades due to legal wrangling.  https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/oct/14/pierre-etaix-obituary  

Mystery and crime fiction writer Edward Gorman died October 14, 2016 at the age of 74.  His novels, many set in small Midwestern towns, included the Sam McCain, Jack Dwyer and Dev Conrad series.  His novel The Poker Club was adapted into a 2008 film with the same title.  http://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/2016/10/16/mystery-writer-edward-gorman-dies-74/92221790/

http://librariansmuse.blogspot.com  Issue 1538  October 17, 2016  On this date in 1909, Cozy Cole, American drummer, was born.  On this date in 1918, Rita Hayworth, American actress, singer and dancer, was born.