Furthermore: Where the Headlines Take You
The terrifying images from Japan of tsunami waves, the earthquake, and failing nuclear reactors is sobering, saddening, and heartbreaking. How can the country, especially those people in villages that were utterly destroyed, face another day? Just as any country on the Pacific Rim has had its share of earthquakes, volcano eruptions, and tsunami waves, Japan has endured through previous tragedy, both natural and man-made. The opportunity to rebuild after utter destruction can even have unexpected positive effects, suggest some. Japan may see an economic boost that it hasn't experienced in decades because of the investments in rebuilding the country. And Lesley Downer points to the Japanese national character that will allow them to rebuild bigger and better than ever, as they have done after past disasters.
An earthquake in September 1923 destroyed Yokohama and most of Tokyo, killing 100,000 to 140,000 in the earthquake and resulting firestorms. Yokohama Burning: the Deadly 1923 Earthquake and Fire that Helped Forge the Path to World War II suggests that the ensuing chaos, which resulted in attacks on Koreans living in Japan, the establishment of martial law, and high unemployment, created a situation ripe for the Nationalist fervor that was to grip the country and make it an aggressor in World War II. Joshua Hammer largely focuses on the American perspective in his book, and it is more on the popular end than the scholarly history end of the continuum of disaster narratives. If eyewitness accounts of tragedy are in your reading pile, this should fit in.
Is there any way to say this politely? This country dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, killed and injured hundreds of thousands of people, and completely destroyed two cities. The situation at the time may have allowed the US to make that decision, but after seeing the consequences, I don't think any nation of conscience could make the same choice. The suffering of ordinary people in war, especially children, is horrible to witness, but the Japanese comic series Barefoot Gen will make you want to keep reading. Author Keiji Nakazawa was seven and living in Hiroshima with his family in 1945. This series is his semi-autobiographical account of the bombing, his harrowing account of survival in the days after, and the long-term effects the bomb has on his family, his friends, and the country. Despite the many losses Gen suffers, his spirit is resilient, and this series will stay with you long after you finish reading.
On March 20, 1995, five members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult released deadly sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, killing 13 and injuring hundreds of others. The extreme nature of this attack on the crowded Metro at rush hour had profound effects on Japanese society, and the nation was stunned by this group of well-educated people who had turned on the country. While the media was obsessed with the cult, its leader Shoko Asahara, and the trials of the perpetrators, the victims and their continued suffering didn't stay in the headlines. The novelist Haruki Murakami wrote Underground : the Tokyo gas attack and the Japanese psyche to report on the attacks and tell the stories of the ordinary victims of the attack. Most of the stories are shared as pure reportage and read like a transcript. Murakami, already a famous novelist in Japan at the time, was able to craft riveting interviews with his subjects. The first part of the book is dedicated to the attack and includes the voices of many people there that day and affected by the attacks, as well as some of the perpetrators. The second part of the book focuses on Aum, now known as Aleph, which still follows Asahara's teachings but has denounced the attacks.
Posted by Kate
The Drama and Pain of the Theatre
After postponed previews, technical problems, and some creative challenges, speculation is swirling that the multi-million dollar production of the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will be canceled, a claim the producers vehemently deny. More people are predicting the demise of the show after one of the costumed Spider-Man stunt doubles fell into the orchestra pit at the climax of the show. The actor is recuperating, but the next day's shows were canceled to implement greater safety measures.
Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark wouldn't be the first Broadway musical to flop in grand style. Producing a show is a collaboration between hundreds of people and can quickly go wrong. Sometimes, the vision of the writers, producers, and director just doesn't find an audience. And sometimes, conflicts between the money men and the creative people can derail a production before it even has a chance to leave the station. Lucky for us, we have Ken Mandelbaum to tell us the stories of a couple hundred Broadway flops in his book Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops. Take the shows described here as a cautionary tale, or just snicker at the the failures of others. Carrie: the Musical? Really?
Maybe reading Larry Stempel's history of Broadway will help us put Carrie: the Musical into context. Showtime: a history of the Broadway Musical Theater leaves nothing out, beginning with the mid-1800s early musicals (including an adaptation of Uncle Tom's Cabin), follows up with vaudeville, and takes us all the way to the present-day. This comprehensive tome--826 pages!--will satisfy the most hard core fan of musicals but could also inspire those who have a more casual interest to start looking into our collection of musical scores on CD.
I was a theater kid. I got some respectably big roles in my school productions from elementary up through high school and I even joined the cast of a few community theater productions in my hometown. I heard about such things as "going to drama camp" and "working in summer stock", but that was an imaginary universe as far as I was concerned. I am going to read Mickey Rapkin's Theater Geek: the Real Life Drama of a Summer at Stagedoor Manor, the Famous Performing Arts Camp and pretend that I am back in high school and experiencing all the drama of a camp full of teenage divas. Wait--I'm not so sure I want that anymore. I'll just enjoy the joys and heartbreak of these campers on their own terms.
For the ultimate in online Broadway research, check out the Internet Broadway Database at ibdb.com. Modeled after the Internet Movie Database, it collects a growing number of performers, producers, directors, shows, and opening night production credits for shows where available for performances going back to the beginning of Broadway.
Posted by Kate
When I think of amber, I usually think of the first grown-up piece of jewelry I bought with my own money, a crab brooch with a Baltic amber body. I remember knowing it was a frivolous purchase, especially considering how empty my pockets were, but also being thrilled that I owned something so beautiful and prehistoric. My amber crab doesn't have any "inclusions," the insects, plants, and other creatures trapped in wood resin before it fossilizes into amber. The addition of an insect in a piece of amber can dramatically increase its value, but some people are interested in these inclusions for more than their aesthetic value. Scientists in India recently discovered a large cache of 50-million-year-old amber that includes over 700 species of insects similar to those found in Europe and Asia from the same period. "So what?" you say? Well, what they had been expecting were unique species that evolved over the 100 million years that the Indian subcontinent was floating around, unconnected to any other landmass. What they got does not indicate that the subcontinent was as isolated as previously thought. And they also got lots and lots of bugs in their little amber coffins.
One of the reasons I don't have amber with inclusions is I can't really stomach having the dying moments of an insect crystallized in yellow fossilized goo bouncing around on a pendant hanging next to my heart. I don't care for insects much, but let me offer you some choice quotes from Amber: The Natural Time Capsule to make my point about the gruesomeness: "Some flies and harvestmen are able to break off their legs to enable their escape. Isolated legs are often seen in amber, as well as flies with some of their legs nearby," and "Other insects are incomplete and their struggle on the surface of the resin may have brought them to the attention of larger animals looking for a meal [emphasis all mine]." My squeamishness aside, if you want amber with inclusions of insects struggling so hard they created concentric circles in the resin pooling over them in their death throes, I won't stop you. And Andrew Ross's slim book would be a great place to start to get the basic facts about amber and the creatures you can find there. It serves as a field guide to identifying the dead insects you might find in your amber. Just don't go plucking the legs off any houseflies in a dramatic reenactment of a slow insect death.
You might remember amber as the source of dinosaur DNA that is used to recreate the fearsome creatures to predictably disastrous effect in the blockbuster movie Jurassic Park. Well, it's not going to happen that way, kids. But if anyone is going to extract the DNA in amber in pursuit of knowledge, it's George Poinar and his colleagues. Though there is some dispute about the ability of scientists to obtain legitimate DNA samples from ancient specimens trapped in amber, Poinar and his wife, Roberta Poinar are experts in identifying specimens encased in amber. In The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World, they use the specimens from a rich supply of amber from the Dominican Republic to reconstruct the ancient ecosystem that existed there millions of years ago. Don't skip the Prologue--there's a particularly grisly description of the last moments of a small bee: "...death came in seconds as viscous liquid seeped over the breathing pores, wrapping a mantle of gold around its victim." Lots of illustrations, photographs and solid writing make what could be very dry stuff a surprisingly entertaining read.
Nazis, treasure hunters, the mysterious disappearance of an incalculable treasure--aren't these three things enough to sell you on this book before I even describe it? How about Cold War propaganda, Czars and Czarinas, and triumph over bureaucratic gatekeepers? A pair of investigative reporters, Catherine Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy dig deeper in this book than any other previous storytellers to unearth what happened to The Amber Room: The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure. The Amber Room was commissioned by Frederick I of Prussia in 1701. The intricately constructed panels were an unparalleled masterpiece that was sent as a gift to Peter the Great and was later installed in the Catherine Palace. During World War II, an attempt was made to conceal the too-fragile-to-move panels, but the international renown of the spectacular treasure made that impossible. The Nazis looted the palace in 1941, including the Amber Room, and installed the panels in Königsberg as war spoils. They then disappeared in the chaos at the war's end. The authors tell a gripping tale of their quest to discover the truth and the obstacles they encounter on the way. They eventually come to a conclusion that may be the one conclusion the Russian government doesn't want them to draw.
Posted by Kate
When Religion Makes the Headlines
Religion is one giant, red, pulsating hot button of an issue in America, and I certainly don't want to push it. But I just can't resist sharing a story that I've heard multiple times from multiple news sources this week about a quiz given to Americans about religion. There's this organization called the Pew Research Center, see? And they describe themselves as a nonpartisan "fact tank"--I'll let them explain that to you. And they survey and poll Americans and report the results in a very straightforward manner. Usually news outlets have a three or four sentence blurb about, for example, how older adults' use of social media has doubled in the last year, and that's it. This week's report, however, was too juicy for news outlets and pundits to pass over. Under the unassuming report title "U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey" Pew presented the results of their telephone survey of 3,412 adults. One of their findings--that atheists and agnostics scored higher than religious people in general knowledge about religion--has prompted a flurry of news reports, each with their own slant on the survey results. A little internet sleuthing will get you to the complete report and to the detailed analysis that Pew Research has done on the results of the survey. It turns out that the average number of questions answered correctly by atheists and agnostics is only slightly higher than the next highest scorers, Jews and Mormons. Also, it's good to keep in mind that this survey tests general knowledge about religions, not just about the Bible or about Christianity--the most populous religion in the U.S. You can take a shortened version of the test yourself to see how you might measure up. I scored well, but I took a religion course in college, just one of the many factors influencing the survey results. What I find more interesting than my own score or possible issues with the survey design, is the variety of responses and slants the news media is placing on this little telephone survey. The folks at FoxNews.com think this survey says we are "Rejecting Religion In America". Over at the New York Times, there is the troubling idea that this "Basic Religion Test Stumps Many Americans". And finally, in the Christian Science Monitor, their story "In US, atheists know religion better than believers. Is that bad?" suggests that it may be better to have faith than to have facts.
Sometimes just looking at a few U.S. newspapers is not enough--you need the whole world at your fingertips. Get out your library card and PIN and travel to the Articles page in our Research section for the link to Library PressDisplay. Most of these world newspapers aren't freely available on the internet, but this doozy of a collection allows you to search and navigate through full text scans of recent newspapers in English as well as multiple world languages. But what to do after a story is no longer classified as current events? Most newspaper companies choose not to make their archives freely available, even if they have taken on the monumental task of digitizing the content. They reserve that material so they can sell it to individual researchers, businesses, or institutions like libraries, lucky you! However, the world of full-text newspaper access is in a very young, prehistoric-goo stage, and the databases that we have in our collection mostly just cover recent years and may not include every article published in a given paper. Newspaper Source and NewsBank America's Newspapers are both collections of full-text papers from across the country. Most of the titles cover just the 2000's, with a few exceptions that stretch back into the 90s or even the 80s, including The Oregonian.
If you want to prepare before taking the quiz, a nice primer on the major faiths of the world and some minor faiths is John Bowker's World Religions. This title comes from DK Publishing, possibly known to many of you for their Eyewitness books for kids and Eyewitness travel guides and language books for adults. A hallmark of their titles is their photographic illustrations and detailed information presented in short factoids. Bowker's title is no exception and is perfect for dipping in and learning a little bit about all of the many faiths out there. One of my favorite things about this book is the way Bowker highlights and explains the symbolism and imagery in works of art from each religion, from Christianity to Islam and Hinduism to native religions.
Bowker's title is comprehensive, but doesn't investigate any one religion or religious text deeply. To delve further into the Bible, you could join A.J. Jacobs on his quest to truly live by the rules in the Bible, documented in The Year of Living Biblically: One Man's Humble Quest to Follow the Bible as Literally as Possible. Jacobs is making a name for himself in the literary world for intense, almost obsessive personal research into his books' topics. His adventure this time around is a personal one as well as an academic one, and his understanding of the bible and his own faith changes and develops over the course of his year. Though generally light in tone and humorous, Jacobs takes his quest seriously and agonizes over his decisions about what to wear, what to eat and not eat, how to arrange his home, and whether he can still be in the same apartment as his wife when she is--ahem--"unclean." One suspects she is an incredibly patient person.
Posted by Kate
Lunch ladies with hairnets. Green beans in oily juice. Grainy lasagna. The food from my youth may not have been uniformly delicious, but it was almost entirely homemade (save those green beans). During a brief stint working at a local elementary school a few years ago, I saw kids being served packaged PB&Js on white bread with the crusts cut off. And packaged burritos, defrosted chicken nuggets, and daily servings of chocolate milk. This school did have an all-you-can eat salad bar, but many of the kids gave it a miss or slathered everything in mounds of ranch dressing. According to the Oregonian, those kids will be missing their beloved ranch dressing this year, as the District's Nutrition Services department substitutes more expensive, homemade food for the cheaper, faster junk food they have been serving. Not making the cut this year--$60,000 worth of ranch.
I am concerned for Jamie Oliver. Even though he's probably been rolling in money since his breakout Food Network show, The Naked Chef, made him a culinary star, he just can't sit back and count his piles. He has to keep expanding his mission. First, his nonprofit foundation opened a restaurant to train disadvantaged youth in London (and now three other cities) to work in the culinary industry. Second, he pushed for better school lunches across the UK, a crusade that surely improved the health of schoolchildren and their understanding of food and nutrition, but that also brought the ire of fish and chips-loving families across the nation. And now, Mr. Oliver is coming here. Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution was first a book, but now is a crusade, starting in "America's Fattest City"--Huntington, West Virginia and documented on the reality show of the same name. His aim is no less than to transform the way we eat, feed our children, and relate to food and the first battlefield is the school lunchroom. This man really wants us to cook, not poke holes in the plastic film of microwave meals or order extremely out-sized fast food meals that are destined to make the current generation of American children the first to see their life expectancy decline. Even though his show just won an Emmy, I'm afraid he might have to pry the burgers and fries from our cold dead hands. Best of luck to you, though, Jamie!
One pioneer in the area of changing school lunch is Berkeley's Alice Waters. Best known as a restaurant owner, chef, and proponent of the Slow Food movement, in 1996, Waters started a program called the Edible Schoolyard to provide students at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Berkeley with a direct connection to their food. Students plant, tend, harvest and then cook the food they grow in a program that is integrated into the school curriculum. Science, Social Studies, and Humanities are represented when students observe the plants and insects in the garden, make connections between traditional cultures and food, and respond to their experiences in the garden in poems or stories. Edible Schoolyard: a Universal Idea the book is a love letter to the program, richly illustrated with photographs, a main essay by Waters, and a sprinkling of student work.
Should you want to grow your own school garden, Arden Bucklin-Sporer and Rachel Kathleen Pringle have created a comprehensive guide to all aspects of gardening on school grounds. How to Grow a School Garden: a Complete Guide for Parents and Teachers comes from two school garden veterans. They not only make the case for "Why School Gardens?" in the first chapter, but they also share recipes for using your harvest, provide tips for getting the most out of your garden, and compile lesson plans to extend the garden into the classroom. This practical book even has a chapter on fundraising and budgeting. It's so clear and helpful, you'll want to break ground immediately. Just make sure to follow their lead.
Posted by Kate
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Tillamook Mudslide. No question--that is my favorite ice cream flavor. At least that I can buy consistently at the grocery store. I am also a fan of Staccato Gelato's Honey Lavender gelato and any number of flavors available in ice cream and gelato shops across the city. Coconut, Hazelnut, Blueberry sorbet, Amarena Cherry, even Prickly Pear sorbet are flavors that will make me part with my hard-earned cash. Though some of you may balk at the prices paid for scoops of small-batch ice cream or other frozen creamy desserts, I firmly believe that ice cream is an essential part of a balanced diet--I like to have a single serving of divine creamy goodness along with my 3-5 servings of veggies a day. I won't go over $3.00 a pint in the grocery store unless it's truly an ice cream emergency, but in a local shop, I am happy to pay a high price per scoop of a premium, locally made frozen treat. After the first spoonful of chocolate hits my taste buds, the cash register shock melts away.
I recently discovered an electric ice cream maker in the pile of items long-abandoned by previous tenants at my apartment, and this summer marks my first forays into homemade ice cream. I currently have in my freezer the remains of a batch of Salted Caramel ice cream I brought to a party last night, and the tangy, tart and sweet taste of the Lemon-Buttermilk ice milk I made for a potluck a couple of weeks ago is still a happy memory. My next step is to take it up a notch by trying the recipes in David Lebovitz's extensive book on all things frozen dessert, The Perfect Scoop. Lebovitz worked at Chez Panisse for many years and now is a renowned author of dessert cookbooks that will make you start salivating as soon as you pick them up. He also uses his considerable storytelling talents to blog about his life in Paris, the city he now lives and cooks in. As much as I fantasize about life in Paris, I don't think the reality of the expat life in the City of Lights would agree with me very well, especially after reading his slightly tongue-in-cheek list of questions to ask when trying to decide, Should I move to France? What is up with the French obsession with exact change?
One little ice cream company that isn't a local endeavor but still makes crave-worthy ice creams is Vermont's finest, Ben and Jerry's. Though no longer owned by the eponymous founders of the company, the giant global conglomorate that now owns it, Unilever, purports to allow the company to run with its original progressive, sustainable business practices intact. They know an rBGH-free cash cow when they see it. And so, apparently, did Ben and Jerry themselves. But they saw beyond the piles of money and rivers of cream to found a business that supported their principles as well as their pocketbooks. In Ben & Jerry's Double-dip: How to Run a Values-led Business and Make Money, Too Ben Cohen tells the story of their business and makes the case for businesses with humans at the heart. Despite the sale, the company does still create community partnerships and support a worker-run foundation, where they decide what causes to support. One of their Partnershops is based here in downtown Portland and is part of the skill building opportunities that New Avenues for Youth provides for homeless youth. Your conscience will forgive your waistline for any scoops bought here.
Americans ate almost 22 pounds of ice cream and sherbet per person in 2008 according to the USDA, and that is not all handcrafted ice cream. Anne Cooper Funderburg traces the story of ice cream in the United States from its origins as an elite treat for the European aristocracy to the mass production of the product we buy by the half gallon in supermarkets today. Her incredibly detailed history, Chocolate, Strawberry, and Vanilla: a History of American Ice Cream begins with the Founding Fathers and ends with Ben and Jerry's first shop. Along the way, she debunks some ice cream origin myths (Martha Washington did not really leave a bowl of cream outside in the cold and declare the frozen result "ice cream") and shares some soda fountain secrets. This is a well-researched history that will also make you reach for your spoon.
For an extra cherry on top, check out the incredible number of books we have for finding your perfect ice cream recipe. In case all this talk about ice cream hasn't made you hungry enough, you might check out our booklist of Food in Nonfiction for a list of books that range from chef memoirs to industry exposés. Finally, if the history of single subjects, like the story of ice cream, intrigues you, we've gathered a stack of these micro-histories, in a list called Surprising Histories: How Small Things Have Changed the World.
I know I can't really pick just one, so what are some of your favorite ice cream flavors?
Posted by Kate
Comments[1]
Beneath my primly-buttoned cardigan beats the heart of a gadget lover. I fantasize about being an early adopter. It was very difficult for me not to just run out and buy a new iPad on credit. Personal choice and public servant salaries prevent me from rushing out to buy every next new gadget that comes along. I love to track technology trends, however, and I am looking forward to a future that embraces technology even further and incorporates it more deeply into our daily lives. Reading the news on my iPhone the other day (I do have some gadgets), I stumbled across an article about the opening of Singularity University and the burgeoning movement springing up around its leading thinker, Ray Kurzweil and the theories put forth in his book The Singularity is Near. Singularity University is not an accredited institute of higher education, but rather a seminar of sorts that entices business and government leaders to pay for the opportunity to meet with high-level thinkers. No less than Sergey Brin, one of the co-founders of Google, showed up as a speaker for one class as a robot, with his body somewhere else. People who believe in The Singularity believe that with the exponential advancement of computing power, it is inevitable that one day humans will transcend biology. We will merge with machines and with their help become a hyper-intelligent species. Something we can't even comprehend.
One-time virtual reality guru and Internet innovator Jaron Lanier may take issue with the idea that the future of technology is to supercede human intelligence and humanity as we know it. He's entitled his collection of essays You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto. Lanier is not a techno-optimist like Kurzweil. He calls into question the widely-held view from the Web 2.0 world that the wisdom of crowds and crowd-sourced intelligence are the ultimate expressions of humanity. Anonymous comments and the primacy of "content" over valuing an individual's work are targets here, as is the operating system Linux, beloved by computing collectivists. He even criticizes the Singularity, suggesting that if people in the cult of technology believe it is soon, they may stop working to design for humans alive today and prepare for the events it might bring.
Whenever I think about the Singularity and how the future is predicated on processing power increasing exponentially and ever-improving hardware, I am a little skeptical. Of course, I don't work in Silicon Valley with a team of people who are planning, designing, and engineering the future. I work at a library, where people still long for the card catalog, and stuff breaks down, and lots of people don't even have access to the internet at home, let alone want to transcend humanity through microchips. Okay, I guess I'm a lot skeptical. This skeptical worldview is not just informed by my experience in the public library--I read, too. If you've ever read anything by Tracy Kidder, you'll know that he can make riveting reading out of the work of a team of engineers struggling to build a new computer in the late 1970's. What they are striving for is no less than The Soul of a New Machine. And what they encounter along the way are failures, disappointment, errors, and bugs, bugs, bugs. My skepticism about the Singularity is informed by this glimpse into how innovation proceeds: in fits and starts and with all the complexity of human emotion included.
Another scientist who thinks big wasn't afraid to proclaim A New Kind of Science stemming from his work with cellular automata. Stephen Wolfram's book thudded onto the desks of science-minded folks around the world in 2002, tipping the scale at 1192 pages. If you don't want to cart it home, he's also made it available online in its entirety. His central premise is that even extremely complex processes in nature are triggered by very simple "programs." By all accounts a very readable book, I have to admit that I skipped reading about Wolfram's mathematical breakthroughs and am enjoying the results of his outstanding brain by using his "Computational Knowledge Engine," Wolfram|Alpha. Not a search engine as we typically understand them, it asks you to, "Enter what you want to calculate or know about." Using this tool takes a little practice, and I highly recommend using the Examples by Topic page to get a flavor of what is possible. What excites me about Wolfram|Alpha is that it can create new knowledge and new information on the fly, not just scan the text of web pages and line up the links for me. For example, I used an example search "goats in France" and added "/human population" to find the number of goats per capita in France. This can take a little finessing--adjusting search terms and getting tips--but you'll have fun figuring it out.
Posted by Kate
You're Allergic to All of That?
I read with interest a recent article in the New York Times reporting about a recent federal study that suggests food allergies may not be as common as once thought. According to the article, about 30 percent of us think we have food allergies, but the real number may be closer to 8 or even 5 percent. What many sufferers think of as allergies may fall into the category of food intolerances. Perhaps to avoid the image that they were diminishing the real and intense difficulties that food allergy sufferers face, the Times also ran an article that focused on the emotional and financial toll that allergies take on families. I have been known to be sensitive when I eat walnuts or to have a few digestive problems when I gorge on too-much ice cream, but I experience nothing like true allergies, or diseases that prevent me from eating anything. I count myself very lucky.
"No cupcakes." That might be the saddest combination of two words in the english language. For many people who are allergic to wheat, eggs, or dairy, those sad words may be a hard truth. But not every cupcake has to be a potent allergen-bomb. The row of cupcakes on the cover of this book lining up to join the plates of eager allergic eaters are Allergy-free Desserts: Gluten-free, Dairy-free, Egg-free,Soy-free and Nut-free Delights. Elizabeth Gordon has some experience with food allergies, being allergic to eggs and wheat herself. For novices, she provides a short introduction to some of the staples and vocabulary of allergy-free baking that you may or may not have used before, like Xanthan Gum and tapioca flour. As for the recipes, she re-imagines such classic desserts as pineapple upside-down cake, molasses crinkles, and dark chocolate fudge. I'll go get my fork.
No bread. No pasta. No beer. No cupcakes! For people who have celiac disease, even the tiniest amount of gluten can cause a host of immune responses, none of them good. When a friend of mine was diagnosed with the illness, she was having a particularly rough time. I was afraid of cooking anything for her for fear that my utensils would be tainted with gluten and cause a reaction. The tension that comes from trying to avoid foods that harm you while finding and cooking foods that you love helps drive the narrative of Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back...& How You Can Too. Blogging for several years at glutenfreegirl.com, Shauna James Ahearn tells her story of coming to terms with celiac and finding a new joy in cooking and food.
What has always sounded so challenging to me about having a food allergy or intolerance is just figuring out what you can eat. A dizzying amount of products seem to have hidden soy, wheat, or eggs. I can live my life happily oblivious to these hidden ingredients, while they are poison to others. And what to do if you have multiple allergies to commonly-used ingedients? The pantry could feel more like a wasteland than a well-stocked larder. Emily Hendrix, a mom to a daughter with multiple allergies, developed this cookbook for families who need to eat nearly allergen-free. Sophie-Safe Cooking: A Collection of Family Friendly Recipes that are Free of Milk, Eggs, Wheat, Soy, Peanuts, Tree Nuts, Fish and Shellfish is a good starting place with a variety of recipes, from breakfast to dinner and through dessert (including cupcakes). The library also stocks a variety of cookbooks for folks who have various allergies and intolerances, including wheat, dairy, or eggs.
Do you have a favorite allergy-free recipe or tip?
Posted by Kate
I have decided that my very worst air travel story is small potatoes compared to the thousands of travelers stranded throughout the world due to the closure of most European airports after the eruption of an Icelandic volcano. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that a canceled international flight, trying to find a connection during Spring Break, and an undiagnosed intestinal bug do not make for a happy trip. Sorry if I made you sick on that trip! I'd much rather read about someone else's woes than relive mine.
The next time you fly, you might take along Dear American Airlines for the inevitable delays. This short novel, written entirely in the form of a complaint letter, made a bit of a splash when it arrived in 2008. It seemed to crystallize the anguish felt by many travelers when hit with a delay that derails their plans with little explanation from the airline. Jonathan Miles' protagonist Bennie Ford is convinced that his flight delay has derailed the course of his life, preventing him from his redemption at his estranged daughter's wedding. He details his checkered past as a husband and his challenges with sobriety and shares his mother's descent into old age and mental illness. Though Bennie may be hard to root for, there is a glimmer of hope and optimism at the end of the book that will carry you through.
Will we someday look back at this era of consolidation and cutbacks in the airline industry, this time of fees for checked bags and outragously-expensive, soggy in-flight sandwiches as "The Good Old Days?" I am wilting at the thought that air travel will get worse over time, rather than better. But judging by the pictures in Airline: Identity, Design and Culture, things have gone downhill in the industry--at least in the aesthetics department. Keith Lovegrove focuses on the airline industry through the narrow lens of design to create a slim volume that highlights the graphics, fashion, and interior design of the airlines.
In the past when I've submitted to the discomfort and challenges of air travel, I have been soothed by the stunning views of the landscape. Have you seen Mt. Hood from the air? Amazing! Aside from the obvious landmarks, I've often wondered what, exactly, that tiny snow-covered peak or brilliant lake was waaay down there. If you're interested in finding out, America From the Air: A Guide to the Landscape Along Your Route is the travel guide you should stash in your carry-on (is there a charge for that?). Taking major passenger routes in North America as chapters, Daniel Mathews clears up what those little bumps and puddles are down in the distance. Going the extra mile he even wraps them in some geologic, geographic, and social context.
Posted by Kate
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Creating Community at the Library
You may think this is obvious for all library employees, but I have always been a Library Person. It's not necessarily true of everyone who works in a library, but I had a connection to my hometown library as far back as I can remember and I was always pestering my librarians for good reads. I participated in Summer Reading, went to storytimes, and visited the library for any special events. As I got older, I went to study with friends (and was shushed my fair share of times), to learn new skills, and to meet my neighbors. When I started working at the Central Library ten years ago, I was awed by the number and variety of people who streamed through its doors every day. Now, as those numbers continue to climb and I work in all the neighborhood branches, I vividly see the impact that each library has on the community it serves. David Sarasohn recently highlighted the growing numbers of people turning to the library for materials and connection during this recession. A library is certainly an essential part of a vibrant community, but the people who come to the library every day are essential to creating vibrant libraries.
In a nod to the central place that many libraries occupy in their communities, Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love: Treasured Libraries of the United States and Canada, Karen Christensen and David Levinson have created a tribute to beloved libraries across the continent. They compile just the basic information and history of each library and may also include some details about what makes each library special. To create this book, the authors actually winnowed a list of 300 nominations with the help of an advisory board packed with authors, library lovers, and other literary types. You could use this book and browse the beautiful pictures to create your own list of libraries to visit.
I don't know if Don Borchert would have considered himself a Library Person before landing his job in the Los Angeles Public Library system. He had worked in advertising, as a short-order cook, and as a door-to-door salesman, among other things, when he began his career at the library. In Borchert's story, the library is an essential part of the community, but a part that most who breeze in and out to pick up holds could easily miss. His book, written after over ten years on the trenches, is Free for All: Oddballs, Geeks and Gangstas in the Public Library and it certainly doesn't wrap the world of the library in a misty veil of brotherly love and the righteous pursuit of knowledge. Rather, he recounts stories of moms in fistfights, unruly teens, and drug dealers in the bathrooms. Throw in a pinch of the awkwardness of civil service and mix it all up with a genuine appreciation for the wonderful and strange things that happen in the public library and you'll have an idea of the tone of his book. Oh, and nothing like the events he recounts would ever happen here. Never.
I almost feel like I'm revealing an industry secret by sharing the web comic strip series Unshelved by ex-librarian Bill Barnes and his illustrator Gene Ambaum. For every "problem" encountered in the library, Barnes has created an apt three panel zinger to illustrate it. If you want in on the secret of what gets us giggling, try their latest, Frequently Asked Questions: an Unshelved Collection, though I can't guarantee that the humor translates perfectly to anyone not employed in a library. The strip centers on the character of Dewey, a slacker Teen Librarian (he's a librarian for teens, not a necessarily a teen himself), and his colleagues, manager and the regulars at a small library branch in Mallville, USA. This pair will be in town later this week for the biggest annual event for public libraries, taking place this year in Portland, the Public Library Association Conference. Their booth, 916, will be mobbed by librarians eager to buy merch and get comics signed.
Posted by Kate
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I read Sandra Tsing Loh's recent New York Times op-ed piece with a sense of recognition. She tells a fantasy story of the mythic housewife of the 20th century, who had dominion over her home and the time and the will to devote to achieving perfection in the home and to dote on her bacon-bringing husband. Today's reality is markedly different. Loh identifies herself as part of the statistic from a recent PEW Research Study that reports that 22% of women now earn more than their spouses, up from 4% in 1970. The study, Women, Men and the New Economics of Marriage, makes for fascinating reading and illuminates the drastic changes in women's economic lives over the last 40 years. In Loh's family, she acknowledges, when both parties come home exhausted from work and try to share duties, no one is really in charge of the housework. Decision-making about the home has to be negotiated, rather than just left up to a wife who no longer exists.
For men who are committed to taking up the mantle of domestic work but don't know where to start, you might try Nigel Browning and Jane Moseley's book, How to Satisfy Your Woman Everytime: the Straight Guy's Guide to Housework and Good Grooming. This guide will take you from the basics to more advanced housework topics and will even teach you about moisturizing your feet with mashed fruit. Don't let that metrosexual moisturizing tip prevent you from picking up this book. It's a lighthearted tour through the chores that await you as you pick up the broom and learn to banish stains forever.
Now that most families have two working parents and mom is too tired after work to be the only one making dinner and getting the kids ready for bed, it's time to make some changes. It's not going to be easy, though. Two working moms who are working on creating this balance themselves, Sharon Meers and Joanna Strober, have written a book that could help: Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have It All By Sharing It All and Why It's Great for Your Marriage, Your Career, Your Kids, and You. That mouthful of a title may foreshadow the complexities you face at home when challenging roles and shifting responsibilities. Though this book is aimed primarily at women who want to maintain and grow their careers, there's a fair amount here for the men in their lives as well.
For those ready to give up on the institution, or whose marriages have seen both better and worse, the women who tell their own stories in The Honeymoon's Over: True Stories of Love, Marriage and Divorce may have some words of wisdom for you. Editors Andrea Chapin and Sally Wofford-Girand collect the stories of 21 women writers on topics that range from infidelity, the suicide of a partner,and the blossoming of sexuality. The essays include Terry McMillan on the nationally-televised betrayal by her husband, Lee Montgomery on contemplating infidelity, and Joyce Maynard on the sudden end of her slowly-fraying marriage.
Posted by Kate
I prefer my winter holidays with a bit of bite--a little spiked eggnog, if you will. And though I personally don't own a single pair of Christmas socks, a holiday scarf, or even a light-up Rudolph brooch, the sartorial choices of others are not mine to judge. The Oregonian's Grant Butler recently confessed to a conversion to the cult of the Christmas sweater after a holiday party that featured prizes for the ugliest sweater. He came in third, but his devotion to holiday kitsch lives on. Send in your own pictures or just chuckle in delight at the reader participation slide show!
As far as my mom is concerned, It's a Wonderful Life is the best holiday movie of all time. And despite my impatience with sappy Christmas miracles, I can't help but tear up at the story of George Bailey. I blame my mother. Luckily, I have a back-up holiday film tradition that won't make me grab for the hankies, but still serves up a satisfying holiday story. In La Bûche, a funeral brings together a French family of grown sisters and their long-divorced parents who may be even more unhappy at the holiday than you are. An ensemble piece that follows the family members through uncovering old secrets, flirting with new loves, and revealing infidelities (it is French, after all), this film is just bitter enough to help me get through this season of schmaltz.
Opening John Grossman's collection of cards and ephemera in Christmas Curiosities: Odd, Dark, and Forgotten Christmas feels like opening a box of holiday ornaments that has been wired with a time bomb. All your ideas about the beauty and purity of Christmas will explode when you get to the end of this book--no, it won't even take that long. Have you ever heard of Krampus? The incubus-like creature that beats and kidnaps children? How about images of lecherous Santas, or mean-looking Santas, so unlike our jolly version of the kindly red-suited man. Get your fill of naughty children, dead birds, and other Victorian-era nasties in this book that might just crush your holiday spirit.
I certainly wouldn't recommend the short story collection Holidays on Ice to everyone. Though the story "SantaLand Diaries" has become a modern holiday classic, these stories are not for the "Christmas is a magical time" believers. Holiday pragmatists only need apply. It probably reveals a lot about me, then, that one of my most cherished holiday memories involves one of these David Sedaris stories. One year, I was lonely and away from home until well after Thanksgiving when a friend called to read a Christmas story to me over the phone. He couldn't wait to share the story "Season's Greetings to Our Friends and Family!!!", a satirical look at one family's annual Christmas letter. Throughout the letter recounting the absurd challenges of the previous year, the matriarch of the family maintains her perky tone. A good dysfunctional family story is the perfect antidote to homesickness.
Posted by Kate
How far would you go for a cup of joe?
Coffeehouse culture did not sweep through my small town until long after I graduated from high school and moved to a city. When I was a teenager and needed the jolt of caffeine and the heady aroma of bohemians to get me through the day, I had to drive to the nearest city to frequent my coffeehouse of choice. I have been a devoted coffee drinker and occasional coffee-slinger ever since. Though Michael Idov laments the long lost coffeehouses of Europe in his paean to the period when quiet talk in a coffee shop could signal revolution, I still think of the coffee shop as a cultural force. Today's chain coffee shops may attaract more Mom-Groups than splinter groups, but they will always attract anyone who needs a little pick-me-up, radical or not. I almost can't imagine a week without a trip to the neighborhood coffee shop, at the very least to pick up my beans.
Coffee-Slinger was my first job out of high school after moving away from my coffeeshop-less town. This may give you a clue about how long ago that was: I had pink hair for the interview and the owner made it very clear that "natural" was expected. I dyed it brown. When the coffee culture did finally hit my hometown, it rolled through with a vengeance, and now, in addition to the four sit-down shops in town, you can drive through at least three. Apparently, our fascination with the mobile cup is not ours alone. Ray Weisgerber photographs the region's drive-through espresso stands for his book, Driven to Espresso : Drive-Through Coffee Stands in the Northwest. These beautiful black and white photos showcase the amazing variety of drive-through coffee stands, from a double-decker bus to a trailer staffed by a bikini babe. I feel a certain kinship with these places because that first coffee job I mentioned--it was at a drive-through.
Someday I will go to Paris. I most likely will spend a day at the Louvre. I will probably make a trip to Versailles. I might walk along the Left Bank and I could even go to the Eiffel Tower. But the one thing I most assuredly will do is sit in a cafe. It sounds silly to travel the world and then hang out in a coffee shop, I know, but having a little time for reflection over a cafe au lait and a brioche is just my kind of itinerary item. I have never visited a city without researching and staking out a coffee or tea house as a break from the usual tourist attractions. When I go to Paris, I will bring Christine and Dennis Graf's handy guide, Café Life Paris: A Guidebook to the Cafes and Bars of the City of Light. The first time I held this lovely little gem I became so absorbed in my fantasy of Parisian life that I forgot I was actually supposed to be working in a library at the time. If you're skipping Paris but are still headed to the continent, you could also pick up Cafe Life Venice, Florence or Rome by different authors.
I don't think too much about how my coffee is produced. To relieve my ignorance, I've got Black Gold, a film by Marc Francis and Nick Francis which focuses on Tadesse Meskela, the General Manager of the Oromia Coffee Farmers Co-operative Union, who is a tireless crusader attempting to get fair prices for Ethiopian coffee farmers. I am crazy about Ethiopian coffee and have been known to travel to more than one coffee shop in a day in pursuit of a pound of Ethiopia Mordecofe, but the famine in the 1980s has left me with a warped impression of Ethiopia as a land of unrelenting poverty. The Ethiopia of this film is green, lush, and populated with people who are working hard for a fair shake in the global economy.
Posted by Kate
Last year, a spider built her web at our house in a very lucky spot: on one of the widows of our glassed in porch, affording her a smorgasboard of small insects drawn to our porch light. We watched her grow over the weeks and repair her web, a thing of beauty if ever I saw one. Textile maker Simon Peers obviously sees the beauty in spider webs, but he took it one step further. He paid local weavers to gather over a million spiders and "silk" them for what is called dragline silk, the strongest type of silk a spider makes. They make several types, did you know that? Me neither. Mr. Peers and his weavers created an 11 by 4 foot golden tapestry, now on display at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
This extraordinary story got me thinking about other ways we use animals in art, either as subjects or as objects themselves. Rarer, though, is the phenomenon of animals as artists. Monkey Painting is a serious look at monkeys, apes, and other non-human primates as creative beings. Thierry Lenain's volume explores attempts by researchers to connect the artistic abilities of primates to early art by humans. Monkey Painting also reproduces some of these works in full color. A delight to behold! Lest you think this is a tongue-in-cheek book, know that Mr. Lenain is a noted French writer of both art criticism and children's books.
A title that does play around a little bit is Why Paint Cats: the ethics of feline aesthetics. This is from the team that also brought us the original Why Cats Paint and later, Dancing With Cats, two titles that know how far to go in the pursuit of silliness. I'm sure some people took the phenomenon of cat painting very seriously as proof of cats' higher intelligence, but I'm not sure their intelligence can be vouched for if they were willing to sit still long enough for the creation of these startling images of cats painted as a butterfly, an American Flag, and a clown, among other things. Burton Silver and Heather Busch must be experts in the near impossible job of cat herders.
The first time I saw this book, I immediately sat down and started turning pages, despite the fact that at the time, I was supposed to be shelving books, not reading books. Outrageous colors, impossible shapes, and incredible animals fill the pages of Ernst Haeckel's Art Forms in Nature. I was sure these most of these creatures were imaginary, until I learned more about the man. He was a trained physician who changed careers when he read Darwin's Origin of Species and became an expert in comparative anatomy, specializing in invertebrates. These illustrations are now in the public domain and are available on several websites, but we also have a few versions of the book, including one that has a clip art CD-ROM so you can download the images to your computer.
Posted by Kate
Several weeks ago, a friend brought a case of candy cigarettes to a party and passed them around to the delight of all of us who remembered them from childhood. They still had the poorly-applied red dye at the tip to give the impression of a lit cigarette and they still tasted as awful as they did when I was a kid and could buy a pack for a quarter. But that stretch of road on memory lane is about to be closed forever. The FDA recently announced that they will prohibit the production of candy cigarettes as well as all flavored tobacco cigarettes except menthol. The case of candy cigarettes my friend has is now contraband!
I'm not sure if the pseudonymous authors of the Sugar Needle zine have reviewed any candy cigarettes, or if they have any secreted away in what must be a pretty impressive candy stash. Corina Fastwolf and Icona Phlox write candy reviews of the strangest, most amazing obscure candy you can think of. They also do interviews including one with Dishwasher Pete about writing a book versus writing a zine and they ask his advice about how to clean burnt sugar out of a pan (soak it for days or chuck the pan). They also write about the candy industry, candy memories, great named candy bars (Plopp or Corny bar anyone?), and imaginary candies that they'd love to see. Each issue has a hand-colored cover and recalls the golden age of zines, when the biggest zines were handmade gems that covered one topic and one topic only, but exhaustively. I don't think I'm revealing too much with the info that one of the authors, Corina Fastwolf, is a Multnomah County Library Librarian. I wonder if she has candy on her desk?
Straight from the sugar-drenched mind of Ms. Fastwolf comes a recommendation for The Emperors of Chocolate: Inside the Secret World of Hershey and Mars. I read the excerpt that is available in our catalog when you click on the book cover and I was absolutely riveted. Joël Glenn Brenner provides an inside account of the business dealings of the two largest candy companies in the United States. The history of their companies is the history of candy and chocolate in America, and her portraits of the two very different founders, Forrest Mars and Milton Hershey, describe two divergent paths to power and corporate growth.
You may not like Steve Almond's Candyfreak: a Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America. A mix of memoir and reportage about visiting candy factories, his book has some serious fans (me) and some equally serious detractors (I won't name names). Almond takes a most decidedly personal perspective on his visits and tells a larger story about candy through his personal lens. I know all about his likes and dislikes and some I agree with and some I'm definitely on the other side of the line. Candyfreak has made the rounds among my friends in the library and now we all know more than we ever expected to about The Enrober. What is The Enrober? The machine in the candy-making process that covers things in chocolate. Steve Almond is obsessed with The Enrober, so we learn all about it. And really, what isn't more mysterious and intriguing than how they get those candy bars covered in chocolate?
Posted by Kate
