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"A wholly original work told in the vein of all the best gothic classics." Booklist

"Former academic Setterfield pays tribute in her debut to Brontë and du Maurier heroines: a plain girl gets wrapped up in a dark, haunted ruin of a house, which guards family secrets that are not hers and that she must discover at her peril." Publishers Weekly

Margaret Lea has been requested to write the biography of the mysterious and prolific fiction writer, Vida Winter. Margaret is at first hesitant to take on the job, but dark secrets and mysteries are unveiled as the dying Vida Winter reveals her life's story. Told in a gothic tone, The Thirteenth Tale will remind you of classic stories like Rebecca and The Turn of the Screw. An enjoyable read that's hard to put down. Visit LEO to read the book jacket.

They are all topics of programs or workshops for adults coming up at various New York Public Library locations over the next few months!

Leg warmers will be knitted at the Chatham Square Library in Chinatown. Wakefield Library in the north Bronx will host a useful series of free food preparation workshops by Cornell University Cooperative Extension Program. St. George Library Center on Staten Island will be the place to meet 6 wrestling champions, and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem will present a live screening of the 2009 Inauguration Ceremony.

And there are over 400 other free programs and classes for adults listed. Flamenco, English Sword Dancing, and Figure Drawing—it’s all there. Take a look: at the New York Public Library website, click on Calendar, then All, then limit to Adults.

And a special event I’d like to invite you to: on Wednesday, January 14, 2009, representatives of The New York Public Library will speak at the Riverdale YM-YWHA (5625 Arlington Avenue, Bronx, New York) to hear about a wide range of services that The Library offers targeting older adults, specifically—but not only—those living in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. This presentation is co-sponsored by the Libraries & Cultural Affairs Committee and the Aging Committee of Bronx Community Board 8.

If you need more information, leave me a comment and respond on the blog.

“Fashion as we know it in the West, is not and never was a universal condition of dress. It is a European product and is not nearly as old as European Civilization.”
----Quentin Bell (1910-1996)

The Bible says that when Adam and Eve sinned, they were forced to cover their nakedness. The clothed body certainly became an essential part of the human condition. What people did with their clothing, however, was derived from diverse motivations. Geography, climate, and a growing list of social impulses triggered basic decisions about garments. The ancient Egyptians learned that fine unbleached linen wore well in their desert environment while the indigenous people of the upper North American continent relied on animal skins for necessary protection against the elements. Class distinctions sprang up in all early societies, regardless of their geographical location, further dictating who would wear what.

Since our educational system in the twentieth and twenty-first century remains largely based on Western civilization, I feel compelled to look there first. This doesn’t mean that non-Western cultures haven’t contributed greatly to clothing and adornment. With my theme of fashion as a social force in mind, I’m going to first review dress across the centuries (with an emphasis on Western dress, and some selective diversions) and what was important about the way people wore their clothes. After this review, a new path for investigation will emerge…

It’s useful to know what I always discuss with my Costume and Fashion History classes: the correct subject headings for searching Library holdings are Costume and Clothing and Dress. Fashion is a workable heading, but Fashion Design will garner fewer results than you might expect.

A few days ago, I remembered that I liked Design Observer—a collective blog that occasionally includes posts from the great Steven Heller. Anyway, there was a post or a link or some other worm hole a few months ago that led to a Flickr page of book covers designed by Alvin Lustig for New Directions in the late 1940’s. Clean, with one or two colors, interesting use of typography or hand lettering, and abstracted shapes, Lustig’s designs are a revelation and respite from the lazy use of the photographic image and rote text layout (a problem then as now).

However, since NYPL, like most libraries, does not extensively collect book jackets, my forays into the stacks were for naught. That is until I ran across Alfred Young Fisher’s The Ghost in the Underblows. A 304 page arch-modernist poem that I won’t or can’t summarize, The Ghost in the Underblows was designed by Lustig and printed at the Ward Ritchie Press in Los Angeles in 1940. Lustig’s design for the title page and the section breaks are quite beautiful given the two-color palette (red and black) he utilized and vastly different from his later work. Each is a small symphony, composed of metal slugs and other odds and ends from the print shop where the positioning and edges of the components become visible on close inspection. Yet moving back the designs resemble a Frank Lloyd Wright window constructed by Malevich.

All of the images from Ghost as well as other information on Lustig are available here, but a close examination with the object provides a real delight.

Ah, the new year! What lies ahead for us? 2008 produced many surprises on the economic front, a youthful, energized President-elect, and a world-weary sense that we need to learn from our mistakes. The past half-dozen years have been one long shopping frenzy, but now the coins have left our collective pockets, along with our 401[k]s. While the flames smolder and smoke from our bank statements and credit cards, it’s time to review how we got to this point. As always, fashion as a social force can be blamed in part. We were led to believe that everything was ours for the asking—or so our society seemed to promise.

Why does fashion, that ever powerful force, play so great a role in our lives? The answer isn’t as straightforward as we’d like. While there’s still much to learn from the adage everything old is new again, the stories of when, how, and why we made changes in our mode of dressing are also part of the history of humanity. Even colors play a role. In the Middle Ages, prostitutes wore red gowns and pious men swathed themselves in black. Nowadays, red is the color of allure and power, while black has acquired a multiplicity of meanings. When we look back at the reasons for these developments, they take on an even richer context when fashion as a social force is factored in.

This means that I’ll be leaving the 1920s and 1930s and taking us anywhere and everywhere for a while, with meaningful stories from the history of clothing—and fashion—as a theme for my post musings. At some points, I may seem like Don Quixote tilting at the windmills. But never fear! Like so many storytellers, I’m taking us somewhere in the end. As one American Indian author recently said when writing about Native life today, “our stories are all we have.” Well, I think that statement goes for the human condition as well…

Today is the day I should have bought a lottery ticket. I walked down into the subway station, no rush, simply a calm entry. On the platform I readied myself with my reading material and my music. As I finished, the train was pulling into the station. The day was beginning magically. At the point when the doors of the subway car opened, I turned on my iPod, stepped into the car and Steve Reich’s Music for Large Ensemble began to play. This was a good beginning, if there could ever be such a thing in the morning, during rush hour, on a packed train, heading into work. With Reich playing in my ears at a dangerously high decibel, I was fortified.

I discovered Steve Reich in the 80’s. It was a confluence of events: seeing Laura Dean’s dance troupe perform in Detroit (she and Reich worked together at this point), then meeting Glen Velez who was a performer with Steve Reich early on. I didn’t know then but minimalism was in its heyday in the early 80’s. My listening to Steve Reich was first on albums, then on cassettes, next on CDs and now digitally. I am still listening to Reich with the same fervor and intensity as I did then. I listen to it often, discovering new things in the music each time, even after so many years. I like it so well that I can listen to it time and time again and never tire of it. Actually that is how I like to listen to most of my music, again and again, before I decide to change to something different.

Music for Large Ensemble is roughly a 15 minute piece, written for orchestra. It starts with a foundation of sounds that stay throughout the piece. Strings, percussion, brass and wind instruments, as well as piano, initially present simply and then as the piece progresses there is layering of sounds. It flows and unfolds. There is a back and forth quality created by the string section that is present through the entire piece. Music for Large Ensemble pushes and pulls, driving forward with sounds that grow into and out of the notes, like a propelling body of water. Sections peel off or fall away, in the most natural of ways. Everything makes sense. Horns start quietly on a note and then seconds later develop into a satisfying crescendo, on that same note. It is a big wide open sound. It resonates through out my body, filling every crevice. There is an overall sweetness and tenderness to Music for Large Ensemble, despite the driving nature of the composition. To me it is exciting, exhilarating, inspirational, forthcoming, purposeful, complex and fulfilling. It will always give me joy when I hear it.

New York Public Library has a good selection of his music, as well as information about Steve Reich and his music in both the circulating and non-circulating catalogs. Performances of Reich compositions can also be viewed at the Performing Arts Library.

Below are a collections of websites related to Steve Reich:
http://www.stevereich.com/
http://www.myspace.com/stevereichmusic
note the selection of excerpted video performance on this site

On today's map you wouldn't have a clue as to where the Crystal Palace at Reservoir Square was located. Looking at a William Perris' fire insurance map from 1853 however reveals that, where now stands our magnificent central library on the corner of 5th Avenue & 42nd Street, once stood the huge Croton distributing reservoir, gravity feeding the thirsty city from near the top of Murray Hill and a spectacular Crystal Palace, seen here as the large purple shape on the top left.

You can see both the reservoir and the Crystal Palace here.

An even closer look reveals a handwritten note reading "50,000". This is a fire insurance map which probably means that the fire insurance policy taken out for the Crystal Palace was $50,000 or about $1.5 million in today's dollars.

That seems like a shockingly low price for such a spectacular building.

Especially considering the fact that in 1858 it burned to the ground.

The story goes that the morning after the fire, in typical New York City fashion, street hawkers were selling still warm pieces of the melted Crystal Palace.

Beginning in late September 2008, The Performing Arts Library (LPA) hosted two Duke Jazz Series concerts with Dafnis Prieto Sextet and Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto. The members of those groups were wonderful individuals with extraordinary talent. Every musician expressed their love for the music; we witnessed that excitement and burst of energy when they performed. My favorite musician was Jeff Busch from Jovino Santos Neto Quinteto who is the percussionist for that group. The piece that he stood out the most was “Feira Livre,” from Jovino Santos Neto’s album Canto do Rio.

We are pleased to start the New Year and our new Jazz season with Donny McCaslin, who is participating in our next Duke Jazz Series concert. Donny McCaslin who plays the tenor saxophone, will be performing on January 7, 2009 with David Binney, Scott Colley, Adam Cruz, Gonzalo Grau, Ben Monder, and featuring the vocals of Kate McGarry. The Donny McCaslin Group will be performing selected songs from McCaslin’s sixth album In Pursuit, described as “The concept of “pursuit,” single-minded devotion to a distant goal, marked by inventive exploration has characterized his music almost from the beginning.”

Some of the musicians who will be performing in upcoming Duke Jazz Series concerts are Jane Ira Bloom, Ben Allison, and Drew Gress, along with few others. All the performances will be held at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Bruno Walter Auditorium, at 111 Amsterdam Avenue @ 65th Street. Doors open at 7:00, show at 7:30 p.m. Admission to this show is free, and is first-come, first-served.

Welcome to The Reader's Den! This month we will be reading and discussing The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. You can reserve your copy of the book on the LEO catalog or visit your local library branch. The Thirteenth Tale is also available in large print and audiobook. Feel free to leave your comments and reviews for The Thirteenth Tale any time during the month of January.

There is no need to sign up for The Reader's Den! Leave your comments and reviews in the comment form of the blog. Don't forget to check back often to see what other readers are saying about the book!

Thank you for visiting The Reader's Den; we look forward to discussing The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield with you!

Looking for a New Year's resolution? Why not join a book discussion group? Don't have time to make it to your local library's book club? Then join The New York Public Library's online book group, The Reader's Den! Starting January, join us to read and discuss titles selected by The New York Public Library's very own librarians.

Each month a title will be posted, as well as reviews, summaries, discussion questions, and much more! As a participant, you will be able to post your reviews and comments at any time during the discussion. The best part about The Reader's Den is that you can join the group at your convenience! If you miss a discussion, you can always read about it in the archives section of the blog.

January's selection is The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. We hope you will join us in The Reader's Den! Happy reading!

Thanks for reading my posts on modernity and fashion,
Letting me exercise my long-running Art Deco passion.
While the exhibition’s been given an extended stay,*
To other topics I really should stray.
What subjects shall I choose to beguile your time?
And is it necessary that they all should rhyme?
For fashion is a most powerful force,
Too important to simply let it take its course.

The truth, dear readers, is a question to you—
What would you most want me to do?
In the year ahead since the Art Deco motif is spent,
On what new journeys should we be sent?
It’s been a pleasure to wander afield
To see what secrets fashion can yield.
Shall I head back into the past for wonders to plumb,
Or is the retrospective view simply too dumb?
Since past and present have a way of intertwining,
I’d better get started, and quit all this whining!

* “Art Deco Design: Rhythm and Verve” has been extended to May 22, 2009. If you haven’t seen it yet, come to the Wachenheim Gallery of the Central Building at 42nd Street, first floor. I’m starting work on an online version, coming soon in the months ahead…

A few weeks ago I attended an institute in Massachusetts and heard Margie E. Lachman, a professor at Brandeis University and Chair of the Department of Psychology & Lifespan Lab there, speak about cognitive and physical changes as we grow older. She was very forthright about the bad news, while being optimistic about the good news.

Let's get the bad news over with, shall we? Yes, aging does bring declines in both physical and cognitive health. But the good news is that you can increase protective factors which will minimize or even compensate for the declines.

The factors which protect against physical declines are: getting a good education; having a high sense of control; reducing stress and anxiety; exercising regularly; receiving social support; not smoking; and maintaining a favorable waist to hip ratio. The factors which protect against cognitive decline are: getting a good education (even if you get it later in life); having a high sense of control; reducing stress and anxiety; exercising regularly; staying socially engaged; and engaging in cognitively stimulating activities. Dr. Lachman pointed out that it is never too early, and never too late, to develop these protective factors.

And there is more good news–psychological health, wisdom and problem-solving ability increase as we get older. Dr. Lachman shared a quote from the Roman statesman and orator Cicero--his advice to Cato on old age, p. 46: “resist old age. . .fight against it as we would fight against disease. . .much greater care is due to the mind and soul; for they too, like lamps, grow dim with time unless we keep them supplied with oil.”

For a thorough list of readings and websites on aging topics including health, purposeful aging, work, volunteering, and civic engagement, check out the amazing list from Libraries for the Future here. And, be sure to check out your local library.

This list is the stuff that New Year's Resolutions are made of. So, which factors on the list should you (and I) start with?

We've digitized more historical maps documenting the changing New York City landscape. Follow the link to a comprehensive listing of close to 2,700 maps showing buildings, old streets, farm lines, streetcar routes historical shorelines and more.

Here's a small section from G.M. Hopkins' 1880 Farm Line Atlas of Brooklyn.

"In the absence of the sacred, nothing is sacred. Everything is for sale."
-Oren Lyons (Onondaga) 1992

If I can complain about Thanksgiving as a holiday, why not Christmas? My beef is with the pervasive present-giving expectations that drive our economic ship of state. While Christmas was originally a religious holiday, a visitor arriving from another planet would be forgiven if he/she/it missed this fact entirely. The current reality is that the Victorian-tradition fir tree, laden with ornaments and lights and attendant wrapped gifts underneath, has overtaken all other symbolic meanings for the day. Have you noticed as I have over the last five years, that most reporting on the Christmas holiday period revolves around how well the stores are doing with seasonal sales? And then there was the horror this year on Black Friday when crazed shoppers pushed their way into a Long Island Wal-Mart, leaving a store clerk dead in their wake…

The Library provides historical context for Christmas Past and Christmas Present, in its Digital Gallery holdings and related texts. The economic imperatives of Christmas unwrapped: consumerism, Christ, and culture are available for perusal, along with more conventional stories about the making of the modern Christmas. CATNYP has more than 353 entries for Christmas and its four related, narrower subject terms: Christmas service; Epiphany season; Jesus Christ Nativity; and Santa Claus. Nowadays, Santa Claus trumps everything else in the big media picture. Bring on those gifts, Santa, and boy they’d better be good value—reflecting all those deep cuts in prices consumers have been promised.

If you want to dust off your nostalgia, try looking at something like Sharing Christmas. Maybe the problem lies in the fact that our society tries too hard to push the concept that everything old can be new again when it comes to holiday celebrations. Haven’t we all seen the myriad newsstand magazines that revive the “make your home festive” articles? C’mon, who really has time for that? But out they come every year. And don’t get me started about the secular “holiday season versus Christmas” name-calling controversy. I think I’ll go put on my coat and walk up to Rockefeller Center to see the tree. After all, that poor 72-foot-tall fir is not to blame for what humans choose to mess up.

p.s. And, yes, I will feel much better after I see it, lights and all. Why, it might make me want to go shopping. Hmm… Saks is right across the street…

If the New Year is to mean anything more than the difference between Wednesday and Thursday, it should contain a bit of reflection on the past, a glance over the shoulder to see where we’ve been and what we’ve done. Since this is a blog about books, reading, and libraries, I thought an examination of my personal reading list during this past year might be interesting. I’m always intrigued by the lists of others--even if, as with the New York Times’s 10 Best Books of 2008, I’ve only read one of the selections. My average with other people’s favorite movie lists is usually even lower.

Since the number of real bookstores in New York has dwindled to a paltry few, one of the few places left to exercise the fine art of book-browsing is the Mid-Manhattan Library. In fact, most of the books I’ve read this year have been courtesy of my library card. I don’t generally gravitate to the new books section, with their glossy covers, pristine pages, and spines that crack a bit when you open them. I often prefer the excitement of unearthing a hidden gem, a book nobody’s ever heard of or long since forgotten, even if it’s been sitting idly on the shelf for a generation so. That’s how I discovered Something in Disguise, a 1969 novel by Elizabeth Jane Howard, and The Dressmaker, from 1973, by Beryl Bainbridge. Both are dark tales of British social mores, the first about a widow with grown children who marries a pompous bore who just might have a shady side to his nature, the second about a repressed young woman living with her aunts in wartime England. Of course, I could probably have found used paperback copies of both these books on the Internet, if I’d been aware of their existence. But since there is no such thing as browsing books on the Internet, where would I have looked? [Since I read Something in Disguise earlier this year, it seems to have been withdrawn from the Mid-Manhattan library but is still available in the General Research Division's collection.]  read more »

“Nobody told me there’d be days like these,
Strange days indeed,
Most peculiar, Mama!”
---- John Lennon Nobody Told Me (1984)

Can we find any lessons about the 1930s, a time of global economic depression that ended in a world war, to inform us about our own painfully reminiscent current situation? First of all, despite the woes of that earlier period, people were just as grounded in thinking about fashion as we are now. Many people point to the escapism of the big Hollywood movies of the 30s and their celebration of unending glamour. Even Coco Chanel led the way in the early years of the 30s by popularizing less expensive cotton as a fashion fabric, and slashing the prices on her own designs. Rayon and nylon came into their own in this decade.

While women seemed to be draped in more fabric than ever, short sleeves and backless dresses became commonplace. The luxury of fur was another popular preference at this time, undoubtedly helped by Hollywood’s movie stars. Subdued colors also became an established feature, something that seems appropriate for a decade described by one art historian as “the age of anxiety.” Secondly, the exaggerations of the 20s were gone now – flat-chested boyishness replaced by real bosoms and padded shoulders. Curves were back in fashion. And the retail clothing industry made great strides in providing consumers with vital accessories—fashionable odds and ends that helped make an outfit look different and last longer (just like this September’s Vogue issue suggested). If you want a good visual survey of this decade’s accomplishments, look no further than Maria Costantino’s picture book, Fashions of a Decade: the 1930s.

I predict that later next year, perhaps by the time of the fall fashion shows, fashion design will do some sort of “acting out” or turn to reactive innovations. Right now, the industry is playing it safe with basics and classics. The influence for a little change may not come from Hollywood films as it did in the 30s—except maybe from indie flicks—but from some other popular culture impetus. You heard it here first!

This Friday, the Milstein Division will be offering a free class on the best online resources to use in researching New York City’s history. I invite all students, history buffs and library lovers to come to the Humanities and Social Sciences Library to find out more about all the databases and websites used to research the people and the events that contributed to our city’s history. For this month’s class, I’ll be focusing on the history of this library’s immediate neighborhood – from the Crystal Palace and the Croton Reservoir to the wealthy inhabitants of swanky Fifth Avenue. We’ll be looking at census records, old photographs and postcards, maps, and newspapers to search for the stories, records and documents the neighborhood and its residents have left behind.

Here are the details:
Class: Digital Gotham
When: Friday, December 19th; 3:15-4:15
Where: South Court classrooms (1st Floor)
Humanities & Social Sciences Library
42nd Street & Fifth Avenue

I'm looking forward to seeing you there.

Weeksville was a community of African Americans founded in 1838 by a freed slave named James Weeks in an area straddling modern day Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights in Brooklyn. By the 1860s, according to Weeksville Society, it had become a cultural nexus and a draft riot safe haven for New York City's growing African American population. While much has been written about its people, both today, as in this NY Times article from 2005 and in the past, as in The Freedman's Torchlight, one of the first African American newspapers, not all that much geographic information remains about this historical landscape. There are traces that surface today, from the Hunterfly Road Houses to Weeksville Park, commemorating a landscape swallowed up by Brooklyn's street grid. One of the remaining pieces of the streetscape is Hunterfly Place.

This one block section of street was once part of the larger Hunterfly Road, the main thoroughfare of Weeksville that ran north to south from what is now Fulton Street to East New York Avenue. The following is a time series of maps of the area published between 1880 and 1908 from the NYPL Digital Gallery that document the physical changes to this community. These maps are part of the larger series of property mapping from the collections of The Lionel Pincus and Princess Firyal Map Division here at the NYPL.

Hopkins, G.M.
Detailed estate and old farm line atlas of the city of Brooklyn
1880

 read more »

Chances are, if you spend any time online you've come across Flickr. Flickr is a wonderful site for storing, sharing and building community around photographs. It's similar to online photo services like Kodak Gallery or Shutterfly except with a greater social focus and tools and features reminiscent of Facebook.

About a year ago Flickr launched the Flickr Commons, a project dedicated to sharing and describing the public photo collections of the world's leading cultural heritage institutions. Starting this past January with The Library of Congress, and continuing with places such as The Smithsonian Institution, The Brooklyn Museum, The National Maritime Museum, The National Library of New Zealand, the Nationaal Archief of the Netherlands and numerous others, the Commons has grown steadily over the past year into a truly remarkable public photography resource.

We are delighted to be the latest institution to join in this endeavor, with an initial contribution of 1,300 images culled from various areas of our diverse photographic collections.

We think of this as a sort of appetizer course, a sampler of collections accessible in greater breadth and depth on the NYPL Digital Gallery, and on-site in our network of libraries. Lush images of modern dance pioneers; haunting early cyanotypes of algae (the first photographic works to be produced by a woman); majestic geographical surveys taken along the Union Pacific Railroad, iconic Depression-era images taken under the Farm Security Administration's famed photography program; Berenice Abbott's epic documentation of 1930s New York for the Federal Art Project; stunning 19th century vistas of the Egypt and Syria; scenes and portraits of Ellis Island Immigrants, the Statue of Liberty under construction... These and more are now available to view, tag and discuss in the Flickr Commons, and are offered as an invitation to explore further on our own site or in our actual libraries. After this initial road test, we expect to post many more images into the Commons pool.  read more »

   
What did the modern woman gain from the development of feminine clothing in the Art Deco era? Two looks surface in particular. If the 1920s were the age of elegance with couture-inspired dress silhouettes, then the1930s brought a new pragmatism to fashion. Social conditions dictated that women exercise their personal power in both private and public spheres. The freedoms granted to women in those decades were still limited, however, despite the machinations of a Wallis Simpson or a Marlene Dietrich.
   

   
 
 The trappings of feminine power are most evident in the two extremes shown in the illustrations in this post. Those of us in future generations should be grateful that these looks evolved as they did. Contemporary fashion magazines and photo shoots most often go for the elegant couture look, but the sensible suit that took form in the 30s enabled women to get ahead in public venues, whether they were workplaces, colleges, or urban streets. The skirt suit would be naturally augmented by the trouser suit, making the widest variety of dress options for women by the 1970s.