Library of Congress Blog
“Light and liberty go together.”

You can find out that answer to that question and many more in the August edition of the Library of Congress Wise Guide, which is now online.

Today is one of my favorite days of the year, because it is one of the most compelling versions of “show and tell” anyone will ever get to see!

Every year for the past few years, thanks to the generosity of the late Mrs. Jefferson Patterson and the James Madison Council, the Library of Congress’s private-sector advisory group, as many as 50 interns have come to the Library through the Junior Fellows program.

They spend several weeks during the summer combing through both uncataloged copyright deposits and collections acquired through gifts, looking for “hidden” gems. And every year they do not fail to impress.

Past finds have included a 1900 blueprint for a proposed expansion of the White House; a 1906 photograph of baseball great Cy Young; a typescript of Cole Porter’s 1916 debut Broadway musical, “See America First”; a 1954 home movie of Marilyn Monroe; and an orchestral score by Jerry Goldsmith for the 1968 film “Planet of the Apes.”

This year, 200 items were showcased, including Copies of the Virginia and New Jersey Plans (1787) upon which the current bicameral U.S. political system is based; a map of the proposed U.S. Capitol grounds by F.C. De Krafft (1822); selected items from the Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Collection (1841–1935); the April 21, 1865, issue of the Weekly National Republican, which details Abraham Lincoln’s assassination and its aftermath; a rare first-edition piece of instrumental sheet music for the “Maple Leaf Rag” by Scott Joplin (1899); a rare print of “The Rajah’s Casket” (1906) by Pathé Frères, one of the first companies to experiment with the use of hand-coloring in motion pictures; and items pertaining to the 1929 film “Applause,” directed by Rouben Mamoulian, along with personal snapshots of the director on holiday with Greta Garbo.

Check out some highlights after the jump.

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Yep, now it’s even easier to hear your favorite authors (interspersed, of course, with my best attempts at probing questions).

The 2008 National Book Festival author podcasts are now available via iTunes. (HUZZAH!) The direct subscription link is here (link opens in iTunes).

The 2007 National Book Festival podcasts have also been posted, but for some reason, I wasn’t able to get a direct link for those. If you have a burning desire to hear those, however, you can search iTunes for “2007 National Book Festival,” and it will pull up the subscription link. UPDATE: Here is the link for 2007 (link opens in iTunes).

I know, many of you are saying, “It’s about time.” Unfortunately, in the government, these things aren’t always as easy as flipping a switch. But we’re firmly committed to our march deep into Web 2.0 territory!

As always, you can also access all the NBF podcasts on our own site and download them or listen to the streams here.

And don’t forget, the 2008 National Book Festival is Saturday, Sept. 27, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. — free and open to the public! (If you listen to any of the podcasts, my apologies in advance for beating that particular message into the ground.)

There are still days in this job, even after two years, when I have to pinch myself. One such moment has come during the past few weeks with the opportunity to get to know Kay Ryan, appointed by the Librarian of Congress as the new Poet Laureate (official title: Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry).

I haven’t yet met her, but after several phone calls, emails, and a recorded podcast–to say nothing of all of her poetry I’ve now read–I’ve developed a fondness for her in several ways.

Ryan is fascinating to me, and often a study in contradictions. At the same time, while she lives a somewhat solitary, or what some have described as a hermit-like, existence, by dint of her voluminous published works and readings, she is to that extent a very public person. Her poetry is rarely personal, yet when it connects with the reader, can often elicit a very personal response. Despite her status as an author, she genuinely seems interested in avoiding great adulation or attention. She has been amenable to media interviews, to the extent that they fit her now-upended life, and she comes across as exceptionally genuine–telling the listener what she feels, not what she feels they want her to say. And, as has been widely commented upon, she has carved her unique place in the world while at the same time teaching remedial English for more than 30 years.

Suffice it to say that I am now probably one of her biggest fans.

Her poems are dense, thoughtful, witty and usually playful gems–so dense that a full appreciation almost always requires additional readings. Each is itself something of a modern proverb, using a philosophical economy that impels the reader to rethink the significance of things once taken for granted or thought of as commonly understood.

As a person, she is a complete delight: utterly modest, self-effacing, funny. She claims that she really only “turns on her brain” when she is writing, but anyone who gets to interact her would tell you that it’s completely untrue. In conversations and interviews, including the podcast above, it seems that the perfect metaphor is always in her grasp. (She described her reaction to being named Poet Laureate as like a frog that was boiled too quickly, noting that a frog in water doesn’t notice it is being boiled to death if the heat is turned up slowly.)

In all the conversations I’ve had with her and interviews I’ve read, I don’t really recall seeing the same metaphor or profundity repeated twice, a testament to her creative agility. Speaking as someone who lives in the realm of “talking points” and “staying on message,” I find that a refreshing and admirable trait.

But my real subject of this post is to encourage people to get to know our new Poet Laureate. Read her books, or at least whet your appetite with what can be found online. A few examples (aside from the podcast above, in which she read a couple of poems) can be found in this excellent online-resource page on our Web site. The page includes links to three Ryan poems from the Poetry 180 project and a streaming audio file of a 2001 reading she gave at the Library.

There is also an expansive list of articles, reviews and other tastes of her work a little farther down that page, here, and links on her book agent’s page here.

Her fans will also get a chance to hear and see her in person at the National Book Festival on Sept. 27 and at the Library’s event opening the literary season on Oct. 16. You can bet I will be there!

You heard right. The very much landlocked Library of Congress has been celebrating summer with its “Summer Surf” film series in the Mary Pickford Theater (third floor of the James Madison Building). And it is proving to be quite the hot (pardon the pun), albeit FREE, ticket.

This past Tuesday’s showing of “Endless Summer” was a full house, and next week’s showing of “Pacific Vibrations” is already “sold out”–although as I mentioned, tickets for Pickford screenings are free. The link in the previous paragraph tells you how to get seats for future showings and provides a link to the full theater schedule.

Jennifer Harbster, a Library of Congress staffer who volunteers as a programmer for the Pickford Film Series, recently interviewed John Severson — founder of “Surfer Magazine” and director of “Pacific Vibrations” — for his thoughts on the surf film genre and his own films:

I read that you were a high school art instructor, but were you also a surfer? What was the inspiration for your surf films?

I was a high school art instructor at Laguna Beach, California. Drafted into the Army in ‘56 and ultimately sent to Hawaii. I was a surfer from the late ’40s, and photography was a hobby. I had a 16mm camera that I used mainly for surf. In Hawaii I was exposed to bigger and better surf, and shot when I could afford a roll. I surfed big waves, and was on the US Army Surf Team. There were a couple of guys showing films at the times, but they had little sense of drama or production. I ushered at the San Clemente Theater for several years, and was a film nut. I learned a lot about filmmaking by watching.

Eventually I had enough film to show, and mixed with art and an interesting music track–plus live narration–I was in business. I revolutionized the surf movie film circuit with “Surf Safari” in 1960.

Were you ever approached by Hollywood to make surfing films? Or was your aim to make “pure” surfing films for the surfing public?

I was approached by Hollywood in ‘61 and spent several years with an MGM group trying to put together a surf film for general release. The main partners were Chuck Walters, Joe Pasternak, and John Darrow (an agent).

They liked what I had, but had to make “improvements,” which coming from a non-surfing point of view were disastrous. The film died in the vault, stinking of Hollywoodism. I went back to pure surf films. Three or four years later, Bruce Brown stuck to his guns and released his “Endless Summer,” which was a success.

When I was planning to exit Surfer in the late ’60s, I decided to make an environmental surf film celebrating the beauty of the ocean and our relationship, and at the same time, making the viewer aware that we needed to take care of this resource. “Pacific Vibrations” was never meant for Hollywood, other than perhaps art houses.

Its first incarnation was without narration or speaking parts by anyone. It floated from scene to scene with music as the vehicle to transport you. It worked well, and someone at Warner Brothers heard about it and asked for a viewing. They were coming off their Woodstock success. I was looking for a distributor. They loved it. “Just what we’re looking for … but … could you make a few changes here and there, and make some characters more important, and, and …” They set me up in an spacious editing room with help and encouragement and praise, and after changing the film as they suggested, they didn’t like it. A new production head from New York hated surfing. It wasn’t long before I was out the door.

I regrouped and opened the film in Santa Monica, Huntington Beach and San Diego. It showed for months to full houses and continued in Huntington for a year or so. American International Pictures became interested and signed a deal just as I was leaving the magazine for Maui. They did a typical Hollywood treatment by showing it in various theaters around the country without any advertising build-up to see if it would take off. If it did, they would put advertising money in. It didn’t.

This was followed by some 16mm distribution, piracy in Australia, and occasional shows of faded footage or poor quality video copies.

Are you still making films? Do you have any aspirations to make another film?

I make iMovies with my daughters and granddaughters, mainly arty family productions–teaching the little ones cutting, timing, music and sound, and the fun of it. I dropped out of filmmaking in the early ’70s because film was so expensive. You couldn’t play and experiment. By the time video came in, I was back into my painting career and loving the one-to-one relationship; not interested in all the “middle men” of filmmaking.

With the advent of video cameras, etc., are pure surfing films a lost art?

They seem to be evolving into wall-to-wall surfing with rap tracks. Some would say these are finally “pure” surf films. But evolving is the key word here. Look for change.

Do you have an opinion of any current “pure surf” films like “Riding Giants”?

I thought “Riding Giants” was very well done. My only disappointment was that they didn’t tap into all the footage that was available (including mine), and used a lot of soft footage, and missed some of the great moments. But you wouldn’t miss it unless you were there.

What do you think is the impact of your surf films?

My early films made a huge impact on surfers, if nothing more than a few hours of being stoked out of their minds. Some remembered them for years, and still remind me of this or that show. The fact that they were live, with taped music, and prints that were run until they couldn’t be repaired again, made them like ripples in a pond–slowly disappearing. Too hard to reconstruct, or not financially feasible, they’ll eventually disappear. Pacific Vibrations has a chance of hanging around, and I hope to reconstruct it, with some minor editing, leaving at least a copy for the future.

The Library will be showing the Warner Brothers film “Big Wednesday” that stars Gary Busey and Jan-Michael Vincent. You also had a film called “Big Wednesday.” Do you have any connection to the Warner Brothers film?

My fourth surf film was “Big Wednesday” (1961). South Bay gremmie John Milius was taken by the film and when he grew up and made his surf film, he bought the title from me. The name was daring at the time–without relevance to surf–but worked well, and my film was a success. I’m constantly surprised by (mainly ESPN) with the Big Mondays, Tuesdays, etc.

Was there a script or story board for “Pacific Vibrations,” or was it just a “fluid” shoot-at-the-moment type of film?

Cinema verité mixed with art and theater.

What type of equipment were you using with the filming of “Pacific Vibrations”?

I had just started shooting with a French Beaulieu, which lasted about as long as the film. My tripod was a Pro Jr with a Miller fluid head. I had lenses up to 650mm, and state-of-the-art water housings. For the interviews and sound pieces, we rented cameras and sound equipment.

Did you make any other type of films?

No other films, although I always thought I was heading toward art films, and was in particular inspired by the short Canadian art films and the Eames films. Also, Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympic film was influential, as well as a raft of old silent comedies.

The eighth annual National Book Festival (Sept. 27, 2008) has an outstanding lineup of authors, and I’ve been having the privilege of interviewing several of them for podcasts.

The subscription link is here.

I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so I have to disclose that I have been doing my own audio engineering (with practically zero training) on new equipment.  The good news is that the new equipment should significantly increase our capacity to do podcasts.  The bad news is that the first few I recorded weren’t quite so, um, “polished” as more recent ones.  There is a bit of “clipping” in parts, and I sometimes sound like I’m speaking into a coffee can.

Please bear with it, though.  I’ve found every one of the authors with whom I’ve spoken fascinating, and there are some great ones yet to come.

This week, we announced that the Librarian of Congress will award the fourth John W. Kluge Prize for the study of humanity on Dec. 10. But we also announced that nominations will be accepted for a few more weeks, until July 15.

The $1 million Kluge Prize recognizes lifetime achievement in fields not traditionally represented by the Nobel Prize, such as “history, philosophy, politics, anthropology, sociology, religion, criticism in the arts and humanities, and linguistics.”

There is no doubt that Nobel laureates in “hard-science” fields like medicine, physics and chemistry have made incalculable contributions to society. But there are also great thinkers, those who help us frame and answer important questions about ourselves as people, the people whose ideas and writings are no less significant to human progress. Those are the people for whom the Kluge Prize was created.

If you know someone who might fit the bill, you can learn about the nominations process here.

One of my favorite new RSS feeds or email subscriptions from the Library is put out by the folks who bring us “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers.” (RSS here, email sign-up here.)

The feed gives a daily look at what was going on in the news 100 years ago — something I tried a couple of times on my own (here and here).

Apropos of the current election season, I recently received this link to a page from June 19, 1908, in the Washington Herald, which proclaims the nomination of William Howard Taft for president.

There is plenty to note on the front page alone, such as Theodore Roosevelt’s peculiar use of the word “peculiar” in his congratulatory statement. There is also this little un-PC observation from a raucous GOP convention in Chicago: “That great audience, numbering to-day nearly 20,000 persons, was in a grand swelter. The lean people liked it–rather enjoyed it–and the fat folks swore under their breath.”

Maybe our modern-day conventions are cheerier affairs because of something as simple as air conditioning?

“Chronicling America” is a terrific resource, and it’s wonderful to have gems like that coming daily (oops, I meant “weekly”) via email.

A wonderfully innovative fan of the Library’s pilot project with Flickr photos decided to restage a World War II-era photo for the modern day, at the same exact location as the original. (The first thing you’ll notice, as the author points out, is that there are many more trees today.)

It immediately reminded me of another photo from the collection (”Factory buildings in Lowell, Mass.?”), on which a commenter posted a link to a photo taken recently from the same vantage point.

There are many interesting things about the Library’s Flickr pilot project, but I get a special kick out of these “then and now” photos. (Then again, stories about time travel were always among my favorites as a child.)

It’s fascinating to see how well a modern photographer can match the exact framing and composition of an original, and then compare the two images side-by-side — almost like looking back through a portal in time.

Wouldn’t it be great to see more of these??

I was saddened today to learn of the death of Tony Schwartz.

You might not immediately know the name, but many Americans — especially those who participate in or follow political campaigns — are undoubtedly aware of at least one piece of his work.

Schwartz was the creator of a famous and controversial 1964 TV ad for Lyndon Johnson, which showed a girl picking petals from a daisy and then a giant nuclear mushroom cloud.  While the ad did not mention the Republican nominee, Barry Goldwater, by name, the narrator said that “the stakes (were) too high” to stay home on election day.  Regardless, the implication was clear.

The ad itself and the techniques used still reverberate in American politics to this day.

But Schwartz’s legacy will prove to be much greater than a single ad.  For more than five decades, he was an avid collector of audiovisual material, including a vast collection of urban folklore and soundscapes from New York City, which found a permanent home last year in the Library of Congress.

As Librarian of Congress James H. Billington said at the time:

The collection is a treasure trove of unpublished audio-visual material to be explored and discovered by researchers, scholars and patrons. By acquiring and preserving this collection for the American people, the Library of Congress will serve generations of historians, archivists, documentary producers and the general public seeking to experience the voices, sounds and images of post-war America.

My condolences to Schwartz’s family and loved ones.  I hope at least there is solace in this important and permanent legacy that is now available to everyone.

(By the way, my apologies on the lengthy blogging absence.)