As of Tuesday morning, the Main Library continues to experience an Internet outage. No computers, printing, or phones. You must have your library card to check out materials. The Crown Branch is fully operational. Thank you for your patience.
March 18, 2010
Here is New York, by E. B. White, Persuasion, by Jane Austen, Dubliners, by James Joyce. These books may not appear to have anything in common, but they are all on my list of “Reading in Place Books.” There’s a particular thrill that comes from reading, or more likely, re-reading, a book in the location […]
March 18, 2010
This excerpt from John Steinbeck’s “Travels with Charley: in Search of America” started me wondering about the impact of media and technology on our speech, especially given the vast changes we’ve witnessed since this was written in 1962. “It seemed to me that regional speech is in the process of disappearing, not gone but going. […]
March 18, 2010
I ran across a short article in the Trib Business section this week on the popularity of book clubs and the value of hosting club meetings right at the store. It’s nice to hear about the growing population of book clubbers, and it’s nice to think that many of them might be frugal types who pop in to the […]
March 17, 2010
PANGEA Alliance Dear Libros Lege Participant: Another Libros Lege Contest is upon us. The signup for the Third Annual Libros Lege Read-Aloud Contest opens on today, Monday, March 1st and closes Wednesday, March 31st. The first day of readings will be on Saturday, April 10th. As usual, the entire contest will take place at Eisenhower […]
March 16, 2010
The entire senior class at Chicago’s only public all-male, all-African-American high school has been accepted to four-year colleges. At last count, the 107 seniors had earned spots at 72 schools across the nation. Mayor Richard Daley and Chicago Public Schools chief Ron Huberman surprised students at an all-school assembly at Urban Prep Academy for […]
March 16, 2010
By Ruth Manuel-Logan on Mar 2nd 2010 12:09PM Paula and Peter Imafidon are just like any other 9-year-olds. They love laughing, playing on the computer and fighting with each other. What sets these twins apart from their peers, though, is that they are, hands down, prodigies who are about to enter high school and make […]
March 14, 2010
Coolidge Senior High School in Washington, DC has just named Natalie Randolph as their head football coach. A biology and environmental sciences teacher, and former receiver for the DC Divas of the National Women’s Football Association, Ms. Randolph is only the nation’s second female head coach of a boys’ varsity high school football team. You […]
March 12, 2010
Tina Brown, founder and editor-in-chief of popular news website The Daily Beast, is hosting an historic three day summit of 300 “impressive, brave, pioneering” women leaders to address women’s issues. Brava! (SR) Read all about it
March 12, 2010
Who are the first people that come to mind when you think of the Montgomery bus boycotts of the 1950s? Rosa Parks played a pivotal role, to be sure. But nine months before Rosa Parks refused to surrender her bus seat to a white passenger, a 15-year-old girl named Claudette Colvin did the same. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZOpqtdd8nw&hl=en_US&fs=1&] […]
March 11, 2010
In another instance of a woman belatedly getting due credit for her work, the Society for American Baseball Research (SARB) decided to acknowledge Dorothy Jane Mills, right, as co-author with her late husband, Harold Seymour, for a highly influential three-volume history of baseball that she co-wrote and for which he took sole credit. This New York Times feature tells how Mills, 81, fumed […]
