Double Digit Days

I've been looking forward to writing "12-12-12" all month. I know this probably sends you running for your "Nerd Flags", but you have to admit that it's kind of fun! It turns out that I'm not the only one with a peculiar proclivity for double digits. Today (12-12-12!) is also the last Bonza Bottler Day of the year.

In Australian English, bonza means fantastic or terrific; bottler refers to something excellent. Back in 1985, Elaine Freemont from South Carolina decided that these special days provided the perfect opportunity to celebrate. Bonza Bottler Day has been commemorated ever since. The Bonza Bottler Day website has some terrific ideas for ways to share double number days with your friends, family, and community. Still not sure how you want to get in on the act? Make a stop at your local library and checkout double the books!

2012 Chase's Calendar of Events
http://www.bonzabottlerday.com/Home_Page.html

2012-2013 FALIS Directory

We have just received our hard copy of the Financial Assisitance for Library and Information Studies (FALIS) directory for the 2012-2013 academic year! This valuable resource is published annually by the ALA Office for Human Resource Development and Recruitment (HRDR) and aims to assist both current and potential LIS students in their search for financial assistance.

You can find the full directory online (FALIS Directory PDF), and guidance on ALA scholarship opportunities here:

http://www.ala.org/educationcareers/scholarships

In this directory, you will find financial assistance offered in the U.S. and Canada by:

• National, state, and provincial library associations, foundations, and agencies
• Academic institutions
• Local libraries

National and regional awards in the U.S. and Canada are listed in this directory as well. In order to ensure accurate, and complete information, ALA encourages granting bodies to submit updates when information changes. ALA also encourages current and potential LIS students to look for financial assistance offered through local groups, clubs, and unions that may not be listed in this directory. You may also check with your local library for general scholarship books and college directories.

Advancing, promoting, and supporting libraries and the library profession is one of great importance to ALA, and the Mississippi Library Commission. We would be more than happy to assist you in your research!

Well, Bless Your Drumsticks - It's Thanksgiving

As Americans, Thanksgiving is part of our soul. It's family, and friends, and food, but much more than that. Thanksgiving leaves a mark on us: it is at once unique to each family, but still universal enough to convey a feeling of warm nostalgia far away from the actual day and trappings of festivity. Some of our favorite authors are fond of Thanksgiving as well. Along with them, we wish you the happiest of Thanksgivings:

As our house was the largest and most conveniently located, it was traditional for these relatives to aim themselves our way every year at Thanksgiving; though there were seldom fewer than thirty celebrants, it was not an onerous chore, because we provided only the setting and an ample number of stuffed turkeys.

-Truman Capote, The Thanksgiving Visitor

Thanksgiving dinner was good. Pa had shot a wild goose for it. Ma had to stew the goose because there was no fireplace and no oven in the little stove. But she made dumplings in the gravy. There were corn dodgers and mashed potatoes. There were butter, and milk, and stewed, dried plums. And three grains of parched corn lay beside each tin plate.

-Laura Ingalls Wilder, On the Banks of Plum Creek

Thanksgiving was coming, and Aunt Fay cooked around the clock in every spare minute. Cooking and baking and grating and freezing. I did some of it in an apron that swept the floor.
I suppose she was cooking for the McKinneys too. She was making enough for thrashers, as people say around here: a twenty-two-pound turkey and four pies. But then she said she was taking a Thanksgiving dinner to Mrs. Vorhees too. "She don't have anybody to eat with."

-Richard Peck, Strays Like Us

"I long to see my boys together, and have begged the wanderers to come home to Thanksgiving, if not before," answered Mrs. Jo, beaming at the thought.
"They'll come, every man of them if they can. Even Jack will risk losing a dollar for the sake of one of our jolly old dinners," laughed Tom.
"There's the turkey fattening for the feast. I never chase him now, but feed him well; and he's 'swellin' wisibly,' bless his drumsticks!" said Ted, pointing out the doomed fowl proudly parading in a neighboring field.

-Louisa May Alcott, Jo's Boys

Booker and Charlene invite me to Thanksgiving dinner with the Kanes. His grandmother lives in a small house in South Memphis, and evidently she's been cooking for a week. The weather is cold and wet, so we're forced to remain inside throughout the afternoon. There are at least fifty people, ranging in age from six months to eighty, the only white face belonging to me. We eat for hours, the men crowded around the television in the den, watching one game after the other. Booker and I have our pecan pie and coffee on the hood of a car, in the garage, shivering as we catch up on the gossip.

-John Grisham, The Rainmaker

Ellen, We Can't Quit You, Baby

Have you ever heard of Josephine Haxton? Born in 1921 in Natchez, she's the author of several soul-searching books about the South-Mississippi in particular. She passed away Wednesday (November 7, 2012) here in Jackson, MS.

Perhaps you're more familiar with her nom de plume. Back when Haxton began writing, she based her first book on two of her aunts. When it was ready to wing its way into the world, she didn't want her relatives to be recognized. Ellen Douglas, the author, and A Family's Affairs, the book, were both "born" in 1962. The book won a Houghton Mifflin Fellowship. Several other novels followed, in addition to essays and other nonfiction. Her novel Apostles of Light was nominated for a National Book Award. In 2000, she received the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature, and in 2008, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.

Haxton hobnobbed with some of the literary giants of Mississippi: Shelby Foote, Walker Percy, Eudora Welty, Charles Bell. She was well acquainted with newspaperman Hodding Carter, too. In their own small way, the Haxtons both tried to stave off the insanity of some Mississippians' response to the Civil Rights Movement. Josephine held meetings in her home and ignored color boundaries. Her husband Kenneth advocated school integration. The two stayed in Greenville and raised a family. These influences consistently appeared in Haxton's books.

One of Haxton's hallmarks was her honest prose. She didn't sugar coat. She didn't shy away from hard truths. Haxton consistently confronted tensions in her home state with a sharp eye and ear for the people who live there. She saw the faults, the quirks, the human foibles within all of us-even ones we didn't know we possessed. She painted authentic pictures-of the awkward relationships between men and women; of the stumbling unions between blacks and whites; of what the South used to be and what it is becoming-that we recognized as and in ourselves.

In her last book, a collection of essays entitled Witnessing, Haxton had this to say:

I remember saying to a friend of mine, joking one day while we sat in the Greenville cemetery, the unlikely but beautiful spot where we often went to share a beer and look at the headstones, that my own epitaph should be, "She was always willing to take a small chance."

I think she did better than that. Don't you?

Douglas, Ellen. Witnessing. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2004.
Inge, William, ed. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 9: Literature. The University of North Carolina Press, 2008.
http://www.clarionledger.com/article/20121108/NEWS/311070072/Writer-Josephine-Haxton-aka-Ellen-Douglas-dead-91

You're Named Where?

People name their children all sorts of things. Some choose a more traditional route with age-old standbys like Mary and George or John and Sue. Other people opt for a more unique name by changing an older name's spelling or adding punctuation marks or creating a new name entirely. The brilliant few, in my humble opinion, have chosen to name their offspring after actual things: plants, bodies of water, and, of all things, the United States. It appears this trend has been going on for some time. Check out this chart enumerating state names appearing in the US Federal Census over the years:

Name	Most Popular Census Year for State Name	Number with State Name That Year
Alabama	1880	1,682
Alaska	1930	177
Arizona	1930	2,158
Arkansas	1880	363
California	1880	518
Carolina (North and South)	1910	26,030
Colorado	1900	61
Connecticut	1930	8
Dakota (North and South)	1930	205
Delaware	1900	324
Florida	1930	5,576
Georgia	1930	108,629
Hawaii	1900	10
Idaho	1920	87
Illinois	1920	334
Indiana	1870	2,772
Iowa	1920	1,541
Kansas	1920	873
Kentucky	1900	69
Louisiana	1900	1,833
Maine	1920	3,152
Maryland	1940	3,314
Massachusetts	1900	2
Michigan	1910	33
Minnesota	1880	138
Mississippi	1870	105
Missouri	1900	9,035
Montana	1930	615
Nebraska	1930	358
Nevada	1930	2938
Hampshire (New)	1880	18
Jersey (New)	1900	343
Mexico (New)	1910	89
York (New)	1880	1,415
Ohio	1940	286
Oklahoma	1910	145
Oregon	1900	282
Pennsylvania	1900	53
Rhode Island	1920	4
Tennessee	1880	4,476
Texas	1900	1,445
Utah	1940	419
Vermont	1920	609
Virginia (Virginia and West)	1940	473,973
Washington	1870	21,977
Wisconsin	1920	14
Wyoming	1930	70

Have you ever met anyone actually named, for instance, Pennsylvanian Bullard? Real lady--she appears in the 1920 US Federal Census with her husband Jeff. Here are a few other real people we've come up with who are named after US States:

• Dakota Fanning is a child acting star from Georgia.
• William Faulkner named his first daughter Alabama after his aunt Alabama (Minter 127).
• Nevada Barr is an author whose father named her after a character in a book he liked (MWP).
• Montana McGlynn was a member of the reality TV show The Real World season six.

And because fiction can be more satisfying than real life, here are some fictional characters with US State names:

• Alaska Young in John Green's Looking for Alaska
• Nevada Smith in Harold Robbins' The Carpetbaggers
• Montana Wildhack in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five
• Wyoming Knott in Robert Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
• Arizona Ames in Zane Grey's Arizona Ames.
• The daughter named KIM in Edna Ferber's Showboat:
  

  And as Kim Ravenal you doubtless are familiar with her. It is no secret that the absurd monosyllable which comprises her given name is made up of the first letters of three states - Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri - in all of which she was, incredibly enough, born - if she can be said to have been born in any state at all (Ferber 1).

My favorite "stumble upon" in this search is by far this family:

Were they just patriotic? Or were the parents so pleased to find a like-named soul that they chose to continue the tradition? I suppose we'll never know.

Ferber, Edna. Showboat. G. K. Hall & Co., 1981.
Minter, David. William Faulkner: His Life and Work. Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 1980.
http://www.olemiss.edu/mwp/dir/barr_nevada/index.html

Automata!

I was scanning through our reference books the other day when I ran across a book called The Encyclopedia of Toys by Constance Eileen King. This book was a true delight to look through as it spanned 18^th, 19^th, and early 20^th century toys in the United States and abroad. One particular chapter that caught my eye was a chapter on automata. A very popular, award-winning work of fiction (and subsequent movie) that gave readers a fantastical glimpse into the mystery of one particular automaton was The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick. Here are a few fun facts about automata:

v  The New Oxford American Dictionary defines an automaton as “a moving mechanical device made in imitation of a human being” (110).

v  Automatons were particularly made for adult enjoyment because the lavish backgrounds, costumes, and construction made them quite expensive. They served as status symbols in the homes of those who could afford them. They were mostly used to amuse friends and visitors.

v  Automatons that were simply made, or had one or two movements were usually for children.

v  The most popular subjects for automata were animals (monkeys in particular), magicians, and illusionists.

Digesting Duck - Jacques de Vaucanson

v  Vaucanson, described as the greatest maker of automata, created an artificial duck made of gilded copper and realistically feathered. His creation mimicked a live duck by eating food, digesting it, and expelling the “excrement” from its body. “The duck was still exhibited as late as 1847, when a reporter complained that the smell given by the figure was almost unbearable” (92).

The Musician - Pierre Jaquet Droz (King 94)

v  Pierre Jaquet Droz, who was an inspiration to Vaucanson, created a sophisticated automaton known as the Musician. The Musician was a young woman seated in front of a clavecin. Her fingers, head, and eyes moved as she played, and her bosom would rise and fall to simulate breathing. This automaton was first shown to the public in 1774.

v  Some automatons were made to be a part of a group, such as a musical ensemble. One in particular involved a group of monkeys sitting around a card table. “One holds a cigar that is lifted to his mouth while another holds a box containing dice which it throws on to the table” (95).

Reconstruction of the Mechanical Turk

v  Baron Wolfgang Von Kempelen, created the most famous automaton made in the 18^th century – the Mechanical Turk. The Mechanical Turk, which was supposedly built in six months, was a Turkish automaton chess player. This automaton turned out to be an elaborate hoax. A dwarf hid inside a compartment and operated the machine. (Vitaliev, 87)

The Draughstman, The Musician, The Writer

v  Two well-known automatons were created by Pierre Jaquet Droz, and his son Henri Louis Droz. Pierre Jacquet Droz created The Writer, an automaton that inscribed phrases on a piece of paper. It would dip its quill in ink, shake it twice, and begin writing starting at the top of the page while lifting the quill between words. Henri Louis Droz created The Draughtsman, an automaton that could draw four different images.

Check out The Franklin Institute for information on the Maillardet  Automaton that inspired Brian Selznick’s book!

Image of Mechanical Turk: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kempelen_chess1.jpg

Image of Digesting duck: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vaucanson_duck1.jpg

Image of The Writer, The Draughtsman, and The Musician together:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Automates-Jaquet-Droz-p1030472.jpg

King, Constance Eileen. The Encyclopedia of Toys. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1978. Print.

Stevenson, Angus, and Christine A. Lindberg, eds. The New Oxford American Dictionary. 3^rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. Print.

Vitaliev, V. "Spontaneous Toys." Engineering & Technology (17509637) 4.15 (2009): 86-87. Academic Search Premier. Web. 31 Oct. 2012.