Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You

And the Winner Is. . .

The Academy of Motion Picture Art and Sciences recently made a surprise announcement – next year, the field of nominees for the best picture will be increased from five to ten. This may be great news for movie lovers, since it will hopefully make more superlative movies accessible to more people on more movie theater screens in more towns across America.

For many people, the highlight of the Academy Awards broadcast is checking out the stars’ outfits and discussing which ones are fabulous and which are appalling. Fashion writer Bronwyn Cosgrave has written just the book for folks with this interest – Made For Each Other is a carefully researched history of the intersection between high fashion and the annual trip down the Oscar red carpet. Cosgrave chronicles the history of Academy Award fashion from the first ceremony in 1928, discusses the partnerships between stars and designers (Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy; Cher and Bob Mackie; Grace Kelly and Edith Head), and considers how press coverage of Oscars fashion can be an easy route to positive publicity for an actress. Of course, the book is lavishly illustrated, with designers’ drawings as well as historic photographs of some totally fabulous dresses.

And speaking of the glamorous side of the Oscars, don’t miss Oscar Night, Graydon Carter and David Friend’s lavish celebration of tinseltown parties. You’ll learn some fascinating facts, for example: from the 1920s to the late 1950s, the Oscar ceremony was the party, and there were no after-the-ceremony parties. Lots of photos, lots of stars (current, former, and nearly forgotten), and lots of vintage gossip!

If facts, data and history are not your bent (no matter how glamorous they may be!), you might want to check out the film For Your Consideration. Writer/stars Christopher Guest and Eugene Levy present a comic examination of the effect Hollywood buzz has on movie people. The story is this: The independent film "Home for Purim" is still in production when the cast and crew learn that one of their number may be in the running for an Oscar nomination. Then the pressure is on: tensions between cast members rise, the producers worry that the film might be "too Jewish" and press to change the title to "Home for Thanksgiving," one of the actors demands a raise, and another breaks up with her actor boyfriend, saying he’s not supportive of her career. The question that remains is, will any of the actors actually get nominated?

Old Black Water, Keep on Rollin'

Being a native to California, I can remember the water conservation programs growing up and the panic I would feel whenever I'd see water flowing unused.  When I moved to Oregon, I was overwhelmed by the lush, green landscape and the sheer amount of rain falling from the sky.  I felt the panic melt away figuring that with so much rain, we could never run out of water, right?  But clean, potable water is like every other resource on this planet, finite.  So super smart people are working out ways to do more with what we have.  For instance, this recent story from the Daily Journal of Commerce on how PDX is building an office building that will include a "lush, vibrant ecosystem thriving off human waste."  Before you say "ew" and close this window, this is some very important work being done.  Some say we are experiencing a global water emergency considering the fact that a billion people currently live without a safe water supply.*  And as the article states "black water", or sewage, is "one of the last frontiers in sustainability."  And this trailblazing is all happening here in Portland (I'm so proud!).

Want to know more about the complex issues around water?  Julian Caldecott has written a clear, easy-to-understand tome on the different scientific and sociocultural aspects around water resources and the problems we face.  Looking globally, Water: Life in Every Drop does an excellent job of explaining the science and interconnectivity of water - constantly reminding us of its importance.  At times, it is gut-wrenchingly painful as Caldecott describes the way water is being abused.  But as I require with all books that discuss a problem, he brings up ways we can restore balance. 

So now that you know more, what can you do in your own life to help reuse water?  How about becoming a water steward?  David Gershon writes a number of books on empowering yourself to live a greener life.  Water Stewardship focuses on water preservation and conservation, and gives concrete tools to making a meaningful difference. It also gives tips on how to broaden the scope beyond your household and into your community. 

The article talks about black water, which is something you don't want to be messing with, but there is another form of wastewater called "gray water" that can be reused.**  Gray water comes from things like laundry and bathing, and the Guerrilla Graywater Girls want to tell you more about how to work with it in their zine Guide to Water.  This group of pioneering woman took their home in a "noisy crack infested corner of Oakland" and turned it into a "beautiful oasis" using water from their shower.  Their guide includes some history of water infrastructure and easy-to-understand illustrated guides to the drinking water treatment process, waste water treatment centers and water treatment via nature.   There is also a nice section on plumbing basics. 

Personally, I can't wait to view the airport's new adminstrative building, with its "lush, vibrant ecosystem".  I know it's just one more way we are leading the way and making a difference out here in the Pacific Northwest! 

* Per the Natural Resources Defense Council
** The Oregon Revised Statutes regulate gray water in Chapter 454: Sewage Treatment and Disposal Systems, Subchapter 454.610 Regulation of gray water discharge.  And Oregon's Building Codes Division recently put out a Oregon smart guide to Water Conservation systems that discusses the reuse of "gray water" for flushing toilets.

Willamette Hosts the World

Last week our own Willamette River played host to The World, a floating condominium of profanity inducing proportions that just happens to be shaped like an ocean liner. Conceptualized by Norwegian cruise ship magnate Knut U. Kloster Jr., The World set sail from Oslo in 2002 and now roams the oceans of, well... the world with a cargo of presumably rich (2.3 million was the starting price for a studio at the time the ship first hit the water) seafarers. Having left Portland, where it spent three days crammed between the Morrison and Hawthorne bridges, World travelers will next visit Astoria before heading up the coast to Seattle, British Columbia and points further north. So if on a recent trip into downtown you didn't get chance to tap a friend on the shoulder, point and exclaim, "What in The World is that!?" I'm sorry. That ship has sailed.

Reflecting on what it might be like to live in a 290 sq ft studio-condo aboard The World reminded me of Stewart Brand's insightful and highly utilitarian How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They're Built. Brand, best known as creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, discusses the virtues of efficient use of space and embraces the Japanese concept of Wabi Sabi which, architecturally speaking, calls for some space in new buildings to be left unfinished so that the buildings can better "learn" the best way to suit its tenants. Brand calls on numerous examples including his own home (a tugboat in dry-dock!!!) and his work space/studio (an over-sized, retro-fitted shipping container). How Buildings Learn is chock full of theories and case studies that can be applied to the spaces around you and will really inspire you to rethink the way you see and use space.

If one was looking for further practical advice for developing space in a humane fashion it'd be hard to imagine a better resource than A Pattern Language: Towns, Buildings, Construction which is full of maxims such as: "Arrange houses to form very rough, but identifiable clusters of 8 to 12 households around some common land and paths. Arrange the clusters so that anyone can walk through them, without feeling like a trespasser." Author Christopher Alexander, et al, reverse engineer the most livable and enduring structures and complexes from around the world and distill rules and guidelines that could give life to columnist Thomas Friedman's sense that we Americans may need to "Europeanize" our lifestyle to in order to maintain our quality of life.

But I've gotten a little off topic, traveling the oceans of earth in a buoyant borough is one way to see the world but Thor Heyerdahl experienced life on the water at a much more intimate and graphic level while testing his theory of Polynesian diaspora in raft made of, mostly, primitive materials. He documented the 101 day voyage in Kon-Tiki (the library also has a documentary by that same name with footage from the original undertaking). Heyerdahl's incredible courage made a strong impression on me as a 12 year-old when I first read his descriptions of setting sail on a raft of balsa logs lashed together with hemp ropes. The voyage of the Kon-Tiki only seems more impressive today with advances in technology that make me wonder if anyone will ever chose to do something this difficult again. Setting aside Heyerdahl's anthropological theories, Kon-Tiki is a compelling tale of adventure and careful observation that leaves one with a strong respect for the power of the ocean and the creatures that live there. Though Heyerdah's ideas have since been discredited no one can discount the experience that he had traveling the Southern Pacific at sea level. That's something that money simply can not buy.

The Doctor Will See You Now

"Please have your photo ID, co-payment, and insurance card ready."
"Take a seat in the waiting area and they'll call you when the Doctor is ready."
"Hello, Doctor."
"Goodbye, Doctor."

A visit to the doctor can sometimes feel like a trip to the drive-through window. Estimates for the average length of an office visit range from 20 minutes to as little as seven minutes. A movement in primary care aims to change that. Longer visits, monthly fees rather than insurance reimbursements, and fewer visits to costly specialists are some of the features that come from creating patient-centered practices. Advances in technology have allowed some doctors to get off the treadmill of seeing 25 patients a day and reduce their pace to seeing 10 to 12 patients a day.

If you're curious about the snap decisions doctors make in those brief visits Jerome Groopman's How Doctors Think is a must-read. Through compelling case studies and interviews with fellow physicians, Groopman describes how the training and clinical experiences that doctors have had can influence their diagnoses and lead to errors. Delving into the realms of cognition and perception, the book reports on such fascinating studies as one that tracked doctors' eye movements while reviewing chest x-rays. He uses his own experiences seeking treatment for hand and wrist problems to compare and contrast the styles of two physicians. He also includes an epilogue that walks step-by-step through an office visit with the questions you as a patient should be asking.

Just the title of this book lets you know you're in for quite a ride: Hospital: Man, Woman, Birth, Death, Infinity, Plus Red Tape, Bad Behavior, Money, God, and Diversity on Steroids. Whew! Julie Salamon spent a year at Brooklyn's Maimonides Medical Center, a microcosm of the multicultural community that surrounds it and fertile ground for portraying the vibrant daily life within its walls. Salamon has a direct reportage style that will make you feel like you are following along with her as she sits in on consultations, follows patients through the labyrinth of hospital treatment, and listens in on feuding doctors. Giving just enough background information to keep her narrative flowing, Salamon's book is a rich and nuanced look at medicine as practiced in a modern hospital.

Have you ever had surgery? You should call your surgeon and thank him or her for going to medical school. Through the Middle Ages, your surgeon might also have been a barber, and prior to the 1840's your surgery would have been performed without anesthesia. Esteemed historian Roy Porter uses his deep knowledge of history to tell the story of how medicine was practiced before--before anesthesia, before antibiotics, and even before botox. Blood and Guts: a Short History of Medicine does include a short chapter on modern medicine, but the focus is on the past. This title includes a great section of further reading for each chapter.

For more great reads on medicine, check out the excellent booklist Medical Nonfiction that Reads Like Fiction.

Car Crazy

General Motor's bankruptcy filing this Monday is all over the news – one element that's been widely reported locally is the closure of 40% of the company's dealership franchises throughout the U.S., including many in Oregon. I don't know why I never stopped to think about it before, but it was news to me that car dealerships are often franchises, rather than fully independent local businesses. So of course, I turned to the library's amazing collection to see if I could learn more about the history of selling cars in the U.S., and I found a great book that got me started on a trajectory of reading about the automobile industry, the impact of cars on cities, and more. Read on if you'd like to share this journey with me!

I started with the pictorial celebration and history of the American way of selling cars in Robert Genat's The American Car Dealership. Genat starts out with a brief history of the automobile business, explaining the rise and fall of the many small car manufacturers in the early 20th century, the eventual rise of the "Big Three," and the methods all of them used to get their product from the assembly line into the hands of American drivers. He also discusses the architecture of car dealerships, promotional strategies they employed, the art of car salesmanship, the used car business, and the role of dealers' parts and service departments. There are fascinating historic photos to illustrate this narrative on every single page.

Obviously cars themselves have completely changed the American landscape. The next book I turned to was Down the Asphalt Path, Clay McShane's history of the rise of the automobile and the development of 20th century cities and suburbs. In a way, it's more a history of roads than it is a history of cars – McShane sets the stage with a history of urban travel before the arrival of streetcars, then discusses the development of large streetcar networks and their attendant streetcar suburbs, then examines various uses of urban streets in recent history. After providing all this context, he examines how the technology for building smoother roads developed, and explains how Americans began to view streets as arteries for transport rather than open public spaces for socializing and providing fresh air and light in crowded cities. Down the Asphalt Path is a serious intellectual work, but it's also an engaging story tracing the changes in American streets (which, after all, cover a pretty significant portion of the land in our cities!).

My personal experience has been that the different kinds of cars on the road is part of what makes different places special. For example, I lived on the east coast for a few years, and it really made me nostalgic for Oregon, where classic cars are fairly common – because in the east, all you see is late model stuff. Another thing we've got a lot of here on the west coast is art cars. You've probably seen one or two around town, but if you want a real eyeful, take a peek at Harrod Blank's photo book Art Cars. It's a hundred and forty pages of amazing, one-of-a-kind cars. Seriously, these cars are incredible! One is completely covered in beer cans, another in cigarette butts, another in Pez dispensers. World-famous telekinetic Uri Geller is pictured with his car, which is, you guessed it, covered in bent spoons and forks. There's no way I could describe all the fabulous cars in this book, you'll have to check it out yourself!

But perhaps you want to create your own auto-related tangent? More power to you! If you want to leaf through some beautiful pictures of classic cars, learn about how cars have influenced and shaped society, or read about the history of car design or of the the auto industry, the library can totally help you out with that too! Or, of course, you can always ask a friendly librarian to help steer you towards the car book, article, DVD, or website that's just right for you.

Um, How Do You Spell That?

I'm not completely horrid at spelling, but it's never been intuitive for me. In my line of work, it can be a real challenge to be a poor speller! But I manage, and I think working as a reference librarian has actually improved my ability to spell correctly at least some of the time – mostly because when I spell something right, like the name of an author, a book title, or a historical event, I can find information about it!  There's nothing like positive reinforcement.  The young superspellers in last week's Scripps National Spelling Bee are working at a far higher level than I can ever aspire to, but like them, I love words. So here's a small collection of some of my favorite books and films about words, spelling, and the English language.

There are lots of books about the history of English generally, but Righting the Mother Tongue, by David Wolman focuses specifically on the history of spelling the English language. Readers will visit with the inventor of spell checking software, learn about the history of spelling reform, explore the impact the internet has had on spelling, and much more. Wolman lives right here in the Rose City, and the last chapter recounts his experiences competing in a spelling bee for adults in an unnamed Portland bar – a nice local touch!

If you're interested in spelling, and you enjoy stories with a "triumph over adversity" sort of narrative, you need to check out the film Akeelah and the Bee. Eleven year old Akeelah is a smart girl (and a great speller!) from a low-income South LA neighborhood. She's smart, but hasn't been challenged much in school – until her principal gets her to sign up for the school spelling bee to make up for her many absences from class. She wins easily, and the experience gives her the drive to try to make her way to the National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. But there are so many obstacles! Akeelah's mom is worried that the other spellers won't accept Akeelah, and tries to keep her from competing. Dr. Joseph Larrabee, an English professor who confirms that Akeelah has the potential to be a champion speller, doesn't want to coach her at first, because she comes off as rude to him. And after her first few successes, Akeelah starts to feel a lot of pressure to do her neighborhood proud by always winning.

Where would spellers be without dictionaries to back them up? Defining the World explains how Dr. Samuel Johnson created the first comprehensive English dictionary in the mid-1700s. The explosion of the publishing industry and the rise of literacy in 18th century Britain created opportunities for a myriad of arguments about which spellings, word definitions, and grammatical conventions were correct. Many smaller dictionaries of English already existed, of course, but Johnson's task was to create one that would be complete and authoritative. Despite his humorous definitions and inventive etymological techniques (shaky by modern standards), Johnson's dictionary was a great success, and remained the most respected comprehensive dictionary in Britain until the publication of the first volumes of the Oxford English Dictionary more than 100 years later. Henry Hitchings's fascinating account of Dr. Johnson's dictionary project is arranged, charmingly, in a series of alphabetically titled chapters, from "Adventurous" to "Zootomy."

And lastly, but not leastly, word aficionados should make sure to take a peek at The La-La Theory, a series of short zines about language by Katie Haegele. #1 Fun With Words (pictured at right), explores the humorous side of language, discusses the evolution of English, and introduces readers to several fun word games. #2 A Fancy Word for Widow, like you might expect, is all about the word "widow," with synonyms, quotations, etymology, and much more. #5 Blizzards, Blindfolds, Squatters and Cartoonists, and Other Words That Were Born in 1880, is devoted to words that have their origins in the year 1880.  Fabulous!

The Final Frontier

This is not my first post about space, nor will it be my last. I'll let you in on a little secret, if I didn't have such a problem with motion sickness and numbers, I'd be an astronaut floating around in space right now - a space librarian! But because I get nauseous on the merry-go-round and need my fingers to do the most basic math, it looks like I'm stuck here on Earth. So I live out my dreams of space travel in the form of books and movies. And as for movies, I think the new Star Trek is pretty much the most fun I've had watching a movie in a long time. So when I heard that a group of three Trekkie astronauts were going to watch the new movie from the International Space Station, I decided that was pretty much the coolest thing ever!

I am not a Trekkie, but I have a respect for those who live by the laws of the Federation and its Prime Directive. And I also love the costumes and makeup! Star Trek Fans and Costume Art by Heather R. Joseph-Witham is a tiny little book that wants to grow up and be a coffee-table favorite! It starts with some well done and thoughtful essays on Star Trek fandom - and all that entails - and then has more than 50 pictures of Trekkies dressed as Starfleet officers, Klingons, Romulans and more. These people are serious! And just in case you want to make your own costume, we have a book for that too!

But I realize that space, real space, is not all fun and games. It's extremely dangerous, and for us human beings, there is very little protection between life and death. I can still remember exactly where I was sitting when I heard about the Challenger* explosion. And I remember waking up to the news about Columbia*. You may remember that the Columbia disaster lead to NASA's decision to ground the shuttle program indefinitely. What many people don't know is that this decision meant three men who were only planning on a fourteen-week stay on the International Space Station were then, for all intents and purposes, stranded up there. And when they finally figured out a way home, it was a most harrowing return flight. Chris Jones does a really fantastic job of retelling this thrilling true story in his book Too Far From Home (later published as Out of Orbit). You won't be able to put it down!

Living on a space station, in very close quarters, has to be difficult. The complete lack of privacy, combined with the remoteness of being in the vast, dark sea of space, must elicit an odd combination of feelings. One novel, subsequently made into a film (twice), that in my mind speaks to these feelings of cramped loneliness, is Solaris. Originally written by Polish author Stanislaw Lem in the 1960's, Solaris tells the story of a space station orbiting a distant alien planet. The scientists on-board are supposedly studying the planet, but the opposite seems to be the case. It was made into a movie in 1972 by the amazing Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovskii and then again in 2002 here in the U.S. starring George Clooney. Tarkovskii's version is my personal favorite. In any case, the story is deeply poetic and powerful.

But what would space travel really be like? Well, that's simple and I can tell you in three words. Ready? Pigs...in...space! Your library has all of the Best of the Muppet Show available, including Volume 4 which includes the brilliantly funny John Cleese starring in "Pigs in Space". You can not beat that kind of realism! But seriously, the Jim Henson Company - creator of the Muppets - does seem to have the inside scoop on extraterrestrial life, as they clearly showed in their series Farscape that aired on the SciFi Channel from 1999 to 2003.

Space is indeed the final frontier and I suggest using the library as your ticket to the solar system and beyond!

* From outside the library, you will need a valid Multnomah County Library Card to read these articles from the Library's Facts.com database.

No Teacher Left Behind

It may be difficult to muster up a lot of sympathy for laid off Wall Street traders, especially when you start to think about how much money your retirement fund has lost in the last year, and it just keeps sinking, and sinking, and sinking. Or maybe that's just me. While most of these highly-compensated men and women are probably donning suits and hitting the pavement in search of another job in the finance industry, a small number are heading back to the classroom--to teach. Laid off traders are leveraging their years in the numbers racket to become math teachers in New Jersey, an area experiencing teacher shortages.

Before they stand in the front of the classroom, those traders might want to get a glimpse of life from a teacher's vantage point. Tracy Kidder follows Chris Zajac, a dedicated and formidable fifth grade teacher at an impoverished school in Holyoke, Massachusetts. The story of one school year, Among Schoolchildren shares Ms. Zajac's thoughts and captures her unflagging persistence at providing her students with a quality education.

For a more lighthearted story of a first-time teacher, turn to Educating Esme: Diary of a Teacher's First Year. She has since given up the classroom to become a children's author and a certified Readiologist, but Esme Raji Codell's stories from the trenches will stick with you for a long time to come. Despite the intense challenges she faces from angry kids, stuffy bureaucrats, and less-than helpful parents, her stories will make you laugh out loud.

I hope you like documentaries. And subtitles. I know some folks have issues with these, but if you can get past them, one of the most charming and affecting films ever made about life in the classroom awaits you. To Be and To Have turns the lens on the teacher and children in a one-room schoolhouse in rural France. Teacher Georges Lopez has a quiet manner and seemingly inexhaustible patience for his pupils who range in age from 4 to 12. This delightful film gave me a warm feeling for its entire 104 minute run time and managed to do it without being syrupy-sweet enough to make my teeth hurt.

Extra Credit: A classic expose of the deep disparities in the public education system that still rings true today, Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools is a still-relevant read that might make you angry enough to want to throw the book against the wall--or at the unjust system of education that shortchanges so many.

Death of the Daily

Washington governor Chris Gregoire signed a bill Tuesday that makes a 40% cut in state business taxes for newspaper publishing companies. The bill is in response to the local effects of a nation-wide crisis in the newspaper industry (affecting, most notably, the Vancouver Columbian and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer).  In fact, Gregoire and the members of the Washington legislature aren't the only politicians who're taking the crisis seriously – the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held hearings last week on the future of journalism, where journalists, publishers, and media pundits testified on their views about what the real problems are and how to fix them, while senators used the hearing as an opportunity to air their own ideas for solutions.

No doubt as long as newspapers are in crisis, there will be debate about what is dragging them down, but one thing I can say for sure is that it's unlikely that you'll ever find a shortage of things to read about it. Journalists are, after all, mostly writers, which means that they are more inclined than most of us to write about their profession, its history, its development, and its successes and failures. Here are a few of my favorite books about newspapers and journalism:

During the American revolution, newspapers were scarce and news was precious, so folks got together and read the paper out loud, in groups. Early 19th century taverns drew patrons not just with their libations, but with the newspapers they stocked for drinkers to read. Around 1900, newspapers small and large ran contests with fabulous prizes, to increase circulation. You can read up on these and other details of the social history of newspapers in Thomas C. Leonard's News for All. Leonard also ponders the future of journalism, and argues that in order to thrive, newspapers must reaffirm their commitment to community responsibility and their role as vital elements of civic discourse.

In the 20th century, more and more local newspapers came under the control of a small group of large corporations – by 2000, roughly 80% of newspapers in the U.S. were owned by chains. Leaving Readers Behind: The Age of Corporate Newspapering is a collection of essays discussing the history of American newspaper conglomeration, its effects on journalism, on the public's access to information, and on the shape of our culture. A second volume, Breach of Faith, follows up with an exploration of how the corporate focus on making profits has influenced news coverage and crippled newspapers' ability to cover local and state government, international news, and other subjects that require investigative journalism or intensive staffing.

On a slightly different note, I have to recommend Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism, by Bob Edwards. The book follows Murrow's life story, from his boyhood in Skagit County, Washington to his unfortunately early death from lung cancer. But Murrow's journalism career is the real focus, and readers will learn how he became the first person to bring vivid, up-to-the-minute international news home to American radio listeners, and later a huge influence on the development of news and current affairs programming on television. This book is short – less than 200 pages – but it delivers a clear, interesting picture of the experiences that shaped Murrow, and of his considerable impact on the profession of journalism.

Medical Miracle

Last week, the world learned the identity of the person who received the first successful face transplant performed in the U.S. – Connie Culp of Ohio underwent a 22-hour operation last December during which doctors replaced about 80% of her face with tissue from a donor. Amazing, right?

Connie Culp's groundbreaking procedure sounds like science fiction, but other transplant surgeries have proven so sucessful that they don't get much comment from the public. Curious about how we got this far? Check out Transplant: From Myth to Reality. In a straightforward but engaging style, author Nicholas L. Tilney traces the history of organ transplantation from ancient times to the present, with an especial focus on the development of kidney and heart transplants during the middle of the 20th century.  If you're still curious, you can find more current information and facts about organ transplants at the National Library of Medicine's health information website MedlinePlus.

In order for people to receive organ transplants, someone has to donate their organs. Some organs are donated from living donors – often family members or other loved ones. But there are organs, like the heart and corneas, that no one wants to do without. These are gifts from beyond the grave, given by with the consent of the donor or their family (in Oregon and Washington, you can register as an organ donor at Donate Life Northwest). In her book Body Brokers, Annie Cheney explores a related, but much shadier world, in which "body brokers" buy and sell human remains for medical research and training, commercial use by medical gadget companies, and for use in military bomb tests. Horrific! But fascinating.

Lesley A. Sharp discusses some of the same questions in her book Bodies, Commodities, and Biotechnologies, but she takes more of a sociological angle. What is the value we place on a donor's body, and how do we memorialize the people who donate their organs? What does it mean for human body parts to function as commodities, with monetary value placed on their transfer and use? Can we manage the ethcial challenges of transplants between species? These are lofty questions, and Sharp's analysis is probing and intelligent, but eminently accessible.

On a lighter, more ironic note, transplants, transplant surgery, and transplant patients have always been fodder for fiction, of the human drama sort and the more speculative, science fiction sort. And sometimes these stories are, as they say, ripped from the headlines. When convicted killer Gary Gilmore was executed by the state of Utah in 1977, he asked that his organs be donated for transplant. The British punk rock group the Adverts wrote a hit song, "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," in which the singer wakes up more than a little startled to realize that he's been given the gift of a murderer's sight. Here are the Adverts performing the song on Top of the Pops in August, 1977:

(You can also get "Gary Gilmore's Eyes" on CD at the library. It's on Crossing the Red Sea With The Adverts, and on disc two of No Thanks!: The 70s Punk Rebellion.)

Tony, Tony, Tony!

Nominees for this year's Tony Awards were announced today, making this an ideal time to highlight some great books about the theater!

One could easily argue that the entire English-speaking world traces some of its lineage back to the London stage. Of course most theaters now have a myriad of influences, but London's pull is strong, and no place in the western tradition has a longer history of such a wide array of aspects of the dramatic craft: performance, playwriting, dramatic instruction, theater management or, on the other hand, of the drama's influence on society. But if you're curious about London's theater history, it's hard to know what to put at the top of your reading list. Search no longer, friends, I have the book for you! It's London Theatre: From the Globe to the National, in which James Roose-Evans hits the highlights of London stage history: Shakespeare and the Elizabethans, the suppression of the theater during the Commonwealth period, the Old Price Riots of 1809, the patent theaters that had monopolies on performing “serious” plays, and many other fascinating subjects.

The Works Progress Administration's Federal Theatre Project was intended partly to employ actors, playwrights, and other theater professionals during the Great Depression, but it also aimed to bring the diversion and inspiration of the theater to regular people across America. As Susan Quinn explains in her history Furious Improvisation, the FTP brought dozens of new and experimental plays to diverse audiences all over the country, tackled social and political issues of the day, and presented pioneering reinventions of classics like Macbeth with all-Black casts. But this vital project in the development of the American theater ended when the House Un-American Activities Committee shut the Federal Theatre Project down in 1939.

However, the 1930s wasn't the last period of innovation on the American stage. In the late 1950s, the New York City neighborhood of Greenwich Village was host to a new development in theater when Café Cino, a small coffeehouse, opened and began featuring poetry readings and actors performing scenes. This fertile ground for experimental dramatic work eventually led to a movement of edgy new theater that came to be known as Off-Off-Broadway. David A. Crespy's Off-Off-Broadway Explosion explains how this revolution took off, and introduces the visionary young playwrights (Edward Albee, Sam Shepard, Amiri Baraka, and many others) who were the creative force behind the movement. And, in a concluding chapter, Crespy gives advice to aspiring playwrights, actors, and others who want to create their own space for experimental theater work – hopefully facilitating new artistic revolutions in our near future!

Will Shopping Save Us?

In times of economic trouble, there are always innumerable news stories about the rate at which we're buying stuff, surveys asking us how we feel about the strength of the market, and how that's affecting all the mysterious ways and means of The Economy. In the U.S., consumer spending is a pretty big slice of economic activity generally, so pundits argue that shopping may well be the thing that will save us. Reports last week that consumer confidence is up, and personal income and spending are steady are seen by some experts as an indication that the economy may be poised for a recovery. We're shopping and we feel good about shopping.

I find this connection between our personal spending activities and the overall health of the economy interesting, since there is so much written about how consumerism is damaging interpersonal connections and community vitality, encouraging obesity, endangering our personal privacy, and weighing us down with personal debt. Andrew Szasz takes an interesting angle on the subject of how rampant consumerism hurts us: his book Shopping Our Way to Safety examines the growing trend in "green" and "natural" products. Are they effective tools for nurturing natural ecosystems and making our homes safer? Do they shield us from having to address the real environmental problems we are facing? Szasz argues that buying greener products won't do it; to obtain true safety, we have to act together to create substantive environmental reform that addresses the root causes of environmental troubles.

Kate Bingaman-Burt is an artist whose work focuses on personal consumption. Her zine What Did You Buy Today? chronicles her own daily purchases. Each zine represents a month of buying things. For each day in the month, Bingaman-Burt has drawn a portrait of one of her purchases, and explained its purpose and how much it set her back. From headphones to groceries to craft supplies to utility bills, What Did You Buy Today? is filled with beautiful, charming drawings and descriptions that engage readers, and may even encourage some to examine their own personal consumption patterns. (Bingaman-Burt also publishes her daily consumption drawings on her blog, though I'd recommend looking at them in zine format for a truly rich and contemplative experience!)

But what if you're so poor you have very little opportunity to engage in consumerism? Stephen Pimpare's A People's History of Poverty in America looks at different aspects of our lives – sleeping, eating, working, family life, cultural engagement, political activity, and our desire for personal dignity and respect, among other things – from the point of view of people who are living with severely limited economic resources. It's an interesting set of questions to consider at a moment when our entire culture – not just big corporations and big advertisers – is entreating us to shop in order to salvage the world economy.

Cover Your Cough

Ironically, I don't pay much attention to the news-news, if you know what I mean. So when a colleague came to me a few days ago with a look of horror on her face and said, "I'm going to Mexico in a couple weeks!", I didn't get it. And when I congratulated her on it (because that seemed like the right thing to do) and she looked at me like I had lost my mind, it dawned on me that perhaps I was missing something...and that something was swine flu. Which is, again, ironic, because plague-like pandemics are one of my very favorite topics to read about! There are so many riveting and downright scary stories out there, both true and made up, about blights taking out major sections of the population - or the entire population in the case of The History of the Dead - that it's almost too hard to choose...

The first book I want to talk about it is a fascinating recommendation I got from Emily-Jane. It's Sandra Hempel's The Strange Case of the Broad Street Pump and details the true story of John Snow, a doctor in Victorian England, who through determination and scientific investigation (an unknown practice at the time) discovered that cholera was being spread through contaminated drinking water and not just "bad air". This is one of those non-fiction books that read more like a thriller!

Back in college I studied history and one fine day William H. McNeill came to my school and read from his book Plagues and Peoples. In my previous years of studying history I had never heard anyone mention that blankets full of smallpox were just as important to the shaping of mankind's history as the Battle of the Bulge. McNeill and his book intrigued me, and though there have been many books written on similar topics since Plagues and Peoples, in my opinion this is one of the best.

One of my all-time favorite authors is Connie Willis, and one of my favorite books by her is called The Doomsday Book. This award-winning story mixes time-travel, an influenza epidemic in 2054, and the Black Death of 1348. I remember being on the edge of my seat with worry over the characters I had grown so fond of, and Willis does a brilliant job creating a believable future-world while describing with historic accuracy the plague of the Middle Ages.

For more information on swine flu, both the state of Oregon and Multnomah County have set up web pages with up-to-date information. And we here at the library are also keeping folks informed!

Altruism, Basketball and Competition

Jeremy Tyler, a talented basketball prospect from San Diego, CA has decided to forego his senior year of high school in order to play professional basketball in Europe. This is the latest development in a series of youth athlete's decisions that sidestep the NBA draft's age restrictions which call for players to be at least 19 and one year removed from high school at the time they are drafted. Some might see this as the latest assault on the innocence of youth by professional sport. Others might comment that Tyler's choice to play overseas is enabled by the economic power of his rare abilities and that if his dream is to play basketball professionally in the NBA, playing in the Euro-Leagues might be a better apprenticeship than playing college ball. Either way his choice says something about changes in our world as seen through the prism of sports.

Tyler's decision to play in Europe was guided by Sonny Vaccoro, the man who signed Michael Jordon to his first shoe contract with Nike, founded the Adidias ABDC basketball camp and a man who casts a long shadow over the Summer AAU basketball circuit that some blame for hastening the aforementioned loss of innocence in amateur basketball. Vaccoro's career provides the thread that Dan Wetzel and Don Yaeger follow in an effort to identify the major players in the growing corporate presence in amateur basketball in their book Sole Influence: Basketball, Corporate Greed, and the Corruption of America's Youth. Whether or not you agree with the premise of Influence, that the corporate race to find the next Michael Jordan has ruined youth basketball, Wetzel and Yaeger's book does a great job of illustrating the vicious competitive drive that has fueled profound changes in the world of amateur hoops.

Perhaps these ultra-competitive shoe company executives and AAU team coaches could perfect their craft with lessons learned from Richard Conniff's The Ape in the Corner Office: Understanding the Workplace Beast in All of Us. Conniff applies the questionable study of Evolutionary Psychology to the work place, a setting where many are looking for any edge that will help them get ahead. While animal driven metaphors are common place in the business environment (after all, it's better to be head of the pack than to be thrown to the dogs when they thin the herd) Conniff's witty and engaging style might make you reassess what you can do differently and/or better to get ahead or just not fall behind in these troubled economic times. Ape in the Corner is also set apart from other related books in that Conniff acknowledges the value of altruism, that is, the idea that helping others can be a way of helping yourself. This idea can be applied on any level of an organization, from individuals cooperating on a project to entire departments sharing resources. Come to think of it, this sort of cooperative competition might even be used to build better basketball teams!

Robert Wright takes the idea of examining and emphasizing the altruistic aspects of human nature to the extreme in his book Nonzero: the Logic of Human Destiny. The view he presents is that our increasingly interdependent global society is not just a positive expression of the benefits of an altruistic approach but is a more or less predictable result of the competitive advantages that altruism allows for participating parties. Further, Wright imagines that we may be soon arrive at a time when the complexities that intertwine our societies create an unprecedented moral stability. He proposes an unintentional but undeniable system of checks and balances that results in our collective experience of an unprecedented spiritual ballast. Nonzero's title is a reference to the game theory concept that not all exchanges can be characterized as one party losing while the other wins. For example, clearly Jeremy Tyler leaving the US to play professionally in Europe is a loss for college basketball here but if he has an enriching experience in Europe, represents his community well there and returns a better player and happier person then, in a sense, we all win.

Romancing the Undead

The zombie is the monster of our times, according to Adam Cohen in a piece about the new book Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Seth Grahame-Smith. Cohen contrasts the sleek, investment banker-like vampire of the recent past with the more brutish and blunt zombies we now see shambling all over our movie screens and bookstore shelves. Jane Austen sequels, knockoffs, takeoffs, and remakes have flooded the market in the last few years as well. With the over-the-top conjunction of these two trends, I'm afraid they may have reached their apotheosis and that both zombies and Elizabeth Bennet will slowly fade from the front of our collective mind. Enjoy the mayhem and Regency manners while you can!

Memories of devouring Choose Your Own Adventure books when I was a kid flooded back to me on seeing Lost In Austen: Create Your Own Jane Austen Adventure by Emma Campbell Webster. A book that may polarize hardcore Austen fans into purists vs. non-traditionalists, it incorporates favorite characters from Jane Austen's novels and lets you decide on the steps you, as Elizabeth Bennet, will take on the path to matrimonial bliss--or disaster. The world of Pride and Prejudice opens up to Sense and Sensibility and Mansfield Park. Part of the fun of this book will be figuring out who belongs to which book and enjoying how they're put together in novel ways.

If your hobbies tend towards handicrafts, like the Bennet sisters and the ladies of their day, but you need a little edge to your projects, try this: Creepy Cute Crochet: Zombies, Ninjas, Robots, and More!. As a crocheter myself, I've experienced what I feel is a lack of crochet books with funky, fun projects compared to some of the knitting books I've looked at. Creepy Cute Crochet helps fill that gap. Using the popular Japanese Amigurumi style of crochet, Christen Haden provides patterns and instructions for a Corporate Zombie and a Cyber Zombie, as well as a panoply of monsters and their ilk. You can even make a crocheted Cleric to confront the Grim Reaper or to exorcise a crocheted Devil.

When you need to ready yourself for the inevitable rise of the undead, your indespensible companion will be The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From the Living Dead. This comprehensive guide to arming yourself, preparing your home for a long-term seige, and doing battle with the undead will keep you laughing through the apocalypse. Max Brooks' exhaustive guide includes a complete history of zombie uprisings dating from the dawn of human history and the details of the virus Solanum, which causes the infection that kills and then reanimates human beings. Don't read The Zombie Survival Guide if you're sensitive like I am. Its mock-serious tone could make you believe there really are zombies in your garden, hungry for your flesh.