Library Closed Saturday, May 25, through Monday, May 27.

Austin Public Library facilities and the Austin History Center will be CLOSED Saturday, May 25, through Monday, May 27. Recycled Reads, the Austin Public Library’s used bookstore, will be open Saturday and Sunday, but will be closed on Memorial Day.

Blog Archive

May 2011 Blogs

Friday, May 27, 2011
Fire Season
by: carolyn.rogers
The Texas Forest Service reports wildfires have scorched more than 2.2 million acres and more than 400 homes this year, and extremely critical fire conditions persist in Northwest and West Texas. Fires are also watched very closely in the national forests by the US Forest Service, but if a blaze is sparked by lightning, doesn't threaten communities, and isn't too intense, public lands managers can opt simply to monitor it. A new book, Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout,  captures Phillip connor's eighth summer as a fire lookout in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico.

A decade ago Philip Connors left work as an editor at the Wall Street Journal when he could not edit a 9/11 editorial that he objected to, and began working as one of the last fire lookouts in America. The U.S. Forest Service has decommissioned some 90 percent of its fire towers, but finds it less costly to staff a few hundred of its most remote towers than to put up drone aircraft. Spending nearly half the year in a 7' x 7' tower, 10,000 feet above sea level in the forest, Connors kept watch over one of the most fire-prone forests in the country. The landscape is rugged and roadless—it was the first region in the world to be officially placed off limits to industrial machines—and it gets hit by lightning more than 30,000 times per year.

During the fire season, April through August, Connors' schedule is 10 days on, four days off. A 5-mile hike and 80-mile drive separate him from a soft bed, a pool table and a cold beer. The monotony of the job is broken by the company of his dog, the occasional hiker, and visits from his wife.

A passage from the book:
I’m not about to tell two guys in leather chaps and cowboy hats about my very real and near-mystical hours of longing and nostalgia, alone in my little glass box, brooding over and exulting in my own mortality amid mountains silently magisterial in the late-day sun. Nor the hours of sitting and staring into the inscrutable heart of the desert, not thinking anything, not feeling anything.

Other books at APL that have been written by fire lookouts:
Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness by Edward Abbey
Danger on the Peaks: Poems by Gary Snyder
Young Men and Fire by Norman MacLean
The Dharma Bums by Jack Kerouac

Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Writing about Grief
by: reference

Grief possesses an incredible ability to sharpen and obfuscate thought. One moment the world is seen with perfect clarity while the following moment the griever can feel untethered and rapidly losing any mooring in this world. Writing about grief becomes paradoxically easy and difficult. The ease stems from the manner in which words effortlessly fill the page. The difficulty arises with the realization that no amount of words will ever draw close enough to an adequate description. I am grateful for writers who have attempted to make sense of their unique grief. Grief is individually unique, yet one person’s experiences can reveal so much about us.

A good grief memoir tells us: This path has been walked before. Yes, you have yet to walk it and your footprints might not fit the prints already present, but a path does not become a path until many many people have trudged the same swatch of land.

These five memoirs capture the confusion, heartache, fear, and nascent hope of grief.

Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking (loss of her husband)

Philip Roth's Patrimony (loss of his father)

Meghan O'Rourke's The Long Goodbye (loss of her mother)

Joyce Carol Oates' A Widow's Story (loss of her husband)

C.S Lewis' A Grief Observed (loss of his wife)

 

Monday, May 16, 2011
And now for something completely different!!!
by: reference

 

Who doesn’t remember the Ministry of Silly Walks, the Dead Parrot and the Argument Clinic? If those titles don’t ring a bell, how about the Life of Brian, the Meaning of Life and the Holy Grail  (with of course the amazing scenes of the Killer Rabbit of Caerbannog and the Black Knight)?
 

Well, if you don’t know by now what I am talking about it means that right after reading this blog you have lots of homework to do.   We are talking about Monty Python (of course!) a   group of English comedians that started a new trend in how comedy on television was done during the last part of the 60s and beginning of the 70s.  Because of the innovation in the way comedy was delivered to their audience and also the topics of their work, they are considered some of the most influential humorists not only in the UK but also in the United States and maybe the world.

They are also known for their "significant contributions" to the English language.  One example of that is the inclusion of the term “Pythonesque” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Other famous words used in sketches or movies are:  nee, ping, gumbys, semprini, and burma.  If you are a Monty Python fan, you can think of many more!!

But, stop the talking!! I am going to leave you with a small sample of Monty Python’s humor (I picked this one because it is short but there are better ones  :) ):
 
Hitler: My dog's got no nose!
Soldier: How does he smell?
Hitler: Awful!
 
If you want to watch some videos (or re-watch them) here are some ideas:
 
And for some reading (in case you haven’t memorized the scripts by now):
 

 

Friday, May 13, 2011
Feel Good Music - Gorillaz
by: carolyn.rogers
 
Gorillaz, the "virtual band" of cartoon characters that was founded anonymously in 1998 by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett, was both avant garde in its intentions and highly marketable. In a world of relentless self-serving publicity, it was refreshing to have musicians not be so concerned with celebrity. The band's music is a collaboration between various musicians; Albarn being the only permanent musical contributor. Their style is broadly alternative rock, but with a large number of other influences.

In 2004, the hip hop band De La Soul collaborated with Gorillaz on the single, Feel Good Inc. (De la Soul's album 3 Feet High and Rising, is being added to the Library of Congress' 2010 National Recording Registry.) They repeated the collaboration on the 2010 Gorillaz album, Plastic Beach, which has a song called Some Kind of Nature featuring Lou Reed that reminds you of Feel Good.

Gorillaz are now charging for their most recent album The Fall, which they released as a free download last Christmas . The Fall was made during Gorillaz's 2010 US tour, with Damon Albarn claiming it was recorded on an iPad. The group's fictional frontman, 2D, offered his thoughts on the The Fall. "It's mostly just me," he said, "something more gentle and just ... well ... it's just me and an iPad really mucking about ... trying out some stuff. Just looking at America and then tapping on the screen". Most of the song titles include an American city - it's like taking a musical road trip.

Blog note - This blog reminds me of another one I wrote titled Dangermouse - I don't know if the attraction is to groups that bring together various types of musicians or have cartoon personae.

To find more music to listen to for free, and some music to download for free, see the Library's new Information Guide - Listening to and Downloading Music.

Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Lighting Out for the Territory
by: reference

Spring, despite being my favorite season, has it kind of tough. For one, we expect the weather to be perfect all the time. But more difficult than high weather expectations, spring has a reputation for being a time of new beginnings and big changes. Sometimes spring just can’t handle the pressure and we’re forced to hit the road in search of our own opportunity and adventure.

If you’re not quite ready for a trip of your own, you might let someone else take the journey for you . . . by reading a book! Sure, a trip to Galveston can be fun but by reading Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles you can experience the trials and tribulations of exploring new planets! The protagonist in Virginia Woolf’s Orlando travels not only from country to country but also through time while experiencing life as both a man and a woman! Here are a few more travel stories to help you begin your journey!

 

All Blogs Archived By Month

May 2013 (30)
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