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rainiervolunteersnps · 4 years ago

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It was with great sadness that we recently learned of the passing of Dixie Gatchel, a lifelong friend of Mount Rainier National Park and the architect of its modern volunteer program.

Dixie’s connection to Mount Rainier began in 1948 with her husband Clay, “in a leaky tent in the snow and the rain at the old Longmire Campground,” she said in a 2006 interview, “and so from that time on, that park was our playground... our special place.”

As the Gatchels hiked, camped, climbed and skied over the years, volunteers were not unknown in the park. Community members had helped out in ad hoc ways all the way back to the early days of the 20th century, when Boy Scout troops built trails, university scientists conducted research, and mountaineers delivered lectures and campfire programs alongside the paid rangers. The Gatchels, too, helped out from time to time, in visitor centers and on trails, between careers and raising a family. In 1970 Congress passed the Volunteers in Parks Act, formalizing the ways we work with volunteers throughout the National Park Service. Still, Mount Rainier’s program remained largely disorganized and unregulated.

In 1992, Superintendent Bill Briggle went looking for someone to bring order and direction to the park’s growing numbers of volunteers. He found two for the price of one: Dixie and Clay Gatchel, now retired and spending their summers since 1985 at the Mount Fremont Fire Lookout.

The deal was really two for the price of none, because the Gatchels agreed to manage the volunteer program as volunteers themselves. They launched into the job with gusto, first bringing the park’s existing volunteers into alignment with standard practices and regulations, documenting and tracking volunteer work, and unifying volunteers in common uniforms. Then, they set about growing the program, finding new ways for volunteers to extend the work of paid staff and recruiting community members to fill the roles. Partnerships with the Student Conservation Association and Geologic Society of America brought interns to conduct research and work in visitor centers. Volunteers helped organize the park’s library and cultural resource collections. Hiking and riding clubs came to work on trails, and schools to restore meadows. The popular “Meadow Rover” program was born, with volunteers on the trails above Paradise and Sunrise to educate people about the importance of staying on the trails in those fragile subalpine environments; today, 200 people a year help out, and studies show they make a positive difference. The Gatchels even facilitated a partnership with Waseda University in Tokyo, leading to a twenty-year relationship through which hundreds of Japanese students came to Mount Rainier for a few weeks each summer to work on projects and live with park employees or other community members.

Over the course of eight years, Mount Rainier’s volunteer program grew from 335 people to 833, and more than doubled the number of service hours documented. By 1999, the Gatchels, alone, had contributed almost 34,000 hours of time. With the celebration, that year, of the park’s centennial, it seemed like a good time retire again, and to leave on a high note. Clay and Dixie arranged 5,000 hours of volunteer time in support of the Centennial Celebration, and handed out 1,356 personalized Centennial Appreciation Certificates. Then they carefully organized their records – by now, computerized on floppy discs – and published their last newsletters and reports.

Not that they stopped volunteering, of course. Over the years, as the volunteer program was managed by others, they returned to help with trail patrols and planting parties and events on National Public Lands Day. In 2003, Clay and Dixie were selected as some of the first to receive one of the National Park Service’s most prestigious awards, the George Hartzog Jr. Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service, which is presented to only a single volunteer or couple each year. In typical fashion, when the award was announced at a park gathering, Dixie launched into the room, pointing out volunteer after volunteer who, she said, was equally deserving of the award, until Clay, bemused, finally stepped up to the microphone and said, “Dixie, I love you. Please come home.” A few years later, in 2007, those volunteers were recognized when the program the Gatchels helped build was selected for the comparable annual award for Outstanding Volunteer Program.

Clay passed away in December 2005, but as recently as September 2018, in her 90s, Dixie was helping out with her usual enthusiasm at the park’s booth in the Washington State Fair. She remained active, as well, in other community projects, working tirelessly on behalf of the Foothills Rails to Trails Coalition and Puyallup Riverwalk Trail. She wrapped up her service at Mount Rainier with 17,307 lifetime hours of service, but her legacy goes far beyond her own numbers. Today more than 2,000 people volunteer at the park every year when there isn’t a pandemic going on, each of them contributing in their own ways to the mission of preserving and protecting their national park for the enjoyment of current and future generations, and each of them making the kind of personal connection to a place that only comes from getting your hands dirty.

Dixie’s time on this good earth finally came to an end, but her generous and giving spirit lives on. ~klb

To learn more about Mount Rainier’s volunteer program, visit http://www.nps.gov/mora/getinvolved/volunteer.htm.

Photo: Dixie and Clay Gatchel, in their volunteer uniforms, at a ceremony in Washington DC to receive the George Hartzog Jr. Award for Outstanding Volunteer Service in 2003.

#Dixie Gatchel #Hartzog Award

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shalebridgecradle · 5 years ago

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I was tagged by @hiriahb!

Ten songs I’ve been listening to lately:

I’ve actually not had a lot of time to listen to music lately, so...a lot of my music listening has come either from: 1) video games, including stuff from my library that I’ve added into games like Morrowind myself, or 2) songs I hear on TV that I then listen to obsessively ‘cos I wind up really liking the song and tracking it down. (On a related note: Longmire is an amazing show, and I want to hug whoever did the music selections for it because it’s just...*chef’s kiss*)

1. “The Night of the Raven,” composed by Marvin Kopp & performed by Lauren Synger, Enderal: Forgotten Stories OST

2. “Up From the Ground,” Fort Atlantic

3. “Norupo,” Heilung

4. “Prophet,” composed by Marvin Kopp, Enderal: Forgotten Stories OST

5. “Semi-Sacred Geometry,” Prey OST (I can’t believe Bethesda released the soundtrack to this game...with the objectively inferior version of this song, not this version that you actually hear in-game. What the hell.)

6. “We All Fall Down,” Sweet Talk Radio

7. “Imidiwan Win Sahara,” Tinariwen (Tinariwen’s music fits in amazingly well with Morrowind’s atmosphere. 11/10 would add to the game again.)

8. “Take Us Home,” Alan Doyle

9. “Civilian,” Wye Oak

10. “Steel For Humans (Extended),” The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt OST

#meme nonsense #awesome music #'Ends of the Earth' from that other post you tagged me in is another Longmire based find #also 'We All Fall Down' is from another show but tbh #it always makes me think of Enderal

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celestialmazer · 5 years ago

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Such an interesting history and evolution to an impressive and overlooked form of art, and now some of them are in Glasgow!

The Backstory on a Hollywood Backdrops - CBS

In Hollywood's Golden Age, hand-painted backdrops played a vital role in the magic of movies, creating cities, sunsets, or any other setting a director could imagine. These massive artworks were some of the largest paintings ever created, by artists whose work often went unappreciated. John Blackstone reports on the Backdrop Recovery Project, an effort to rescue these works of cinema history, and talks with Karen Maness, coauthor of "The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop," and with Lynne Coakley, whose family business, JC Backings, has been providing the backgrounds to movies and TV shows for generations.

https://www.jcbackings.com/index.php

https://youtu.be/qvVc2i4euQY

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How 200 historic Hollywood backdrops were saved from the dumpster

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2019-12-20/saving-the-lost-art-of-hollywood

By MARY MCNAMARA - CULTURE COLUMNIST AND CRITIC - DEC. 20, 2019

On top of a hill in Valencia, where the wind blows most days, the buildings are big, new and absolutely nonforthcoming. They could house anything — a doctor’s office, a car dealership, a secret government agency. Inside one, against the back wall, lies a pile of large equally nondescript pieces of canvas. Most are long and tied up with string; some have been folded into thick squares and stacked. They could be anything — enormous window treatments or very thin floor coverings.

For the record:

3:56 PM, Jan. 06, 2020 This article says several backdrops went to the Royal Scottish Academy. They went to the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

Hillsides, houses, airports and cathedrals; cityscapes, landscapes and the ocean rocking toward the horizon; courtrooms and bedrooms, bungalows and castles; gas stations, skyscrapers, apartment buildings; the roofs of Paris and New York, corridors, tapestries, train depots and a mineshaft burrowing into an icy mountains.

These are the 90 painted backdrops that remain of more than 200 saved through the Art Directors Guild Backdrop Recovery Project, a two-year attempt to keep a relatively few pieces of irreplaceable art and Hollywood history from the fate of so many sets, props, costumes and backdrops: the studio dumpster.

“Hollywood started as a green industry and then became brown,” says former ADG president and Recovery Project founder Tom Walsh. “Everything was used repeatedly; nothing went into storage. Then when studios began to decline, they got rid of everything, sold things in auctions or just threw them away. And the first to go were backings. We will never know how many were lost, and if I go down that road I will just start to cry.”

“These, though,” he says, “we were able to save.”

There is no more iconic Hollywood image than the backdrop. Backdrops, or backings, are the enormous paintings that make the movie and television industries possible by stretching the confines of a studio set into endless possibility. With a good backdrop, western plains can stretch to the horizon, snowy peaks of mountains create the suspense of dizzying heights, jungles bloom, skyscrapers loom and cities wink through apartment windows. Sets cradle the action; actors, writers and directors create characters and drama; but backdrops build worlds.

Many are imprinted on our collective memory — the Georgian sunset against which Scarlett O’Hara vowed never to be hungry again, the island beaches of “South Pacific,” the view of the Danube from the Von Trapp family’s terrace in “The Sound of Music,” Mt. Rushmore in “North by Northwest.”

In the early years of Hollywood, studios hired artists to paint their own backings, which were sometimes used repeatedly and sometimes thrown away, depending on need, space and the studio’s financials. In the 1950s, a few scenic artists realized this was not a great system, that studios somehow sharing backings might work better, and a few artists began striking out on their own, painting and purchasing various backdrops they would then rent out.

Nowadays almost all backings, painted and otherwise, are furnished by rental companies.

JC Backings is one of the best known of the now handful of rental companies with the most notable collection of historic backdrops in the business. A business that has increasingly shifted away from painted backings to photograph and digital versions. Over the years, JC Backings has regularly, and out of necessity, culled its collection. Even when rolled or folded, backdrops are big, difficult to move, and require temperature-controlled storage. Those not making money as rentals are literally just taking up space.

Two years ago, President Lynne Coakley decided the company no longer needed 207 of its older backings. But this time, instead of filling up an oversize dumpster, she donated them to the Art Directors Guild, which unrolled, photographed and cataloged each one, and then set about finding each one a home.

Most of the more famous images went quickly. The film academy took the backdrop from the “Fit as a Fiddle” number in “Singin’ in the Rain,” the eerie landscape of “Forbidden Planet,” the tapestried walls of “Marie Antoinette,” the office from “Adam’s Rib.” Others, like the Sistine Chapel from “The Shoes of the Fisherman” were given to colleges; the Autry Museum of the American West has eight (including two from the 1947 Katherine Hepburn/Spencer Tracy Western “The Sea of Grass”) and a few went to the Royal Scottish Academy. (George Gibson, the legendary head of MGM’s scenic design department, where many of the backdrops were painted, was Scottish.)

In their new homes, the backings function in a variety of ways — as exhibits, teaching tools and occasionally theatrical backdrops, but all, including the ones still in storage in Valencia, mark another important shift in Hollywood. For many who work in the cinematic crafts, the real tragedy of the digital revolution and the end of the studio system has been the loss of so many iconic props and artworks. Now, as more studios are dismantled, absorbed or re-purposed, there is a growing demand that the working assets of old Hollywood, be they research libraries, backdrops or remainders of sets, be preserved.

In the short version of the story, the Backdrop Recovery Project began with a phone call. In 2017, Walsh was working in New Mexico as production designer on the Netflix western series “Longmire” when he got a call from Coakley.

She said: “Well, Tom, we’re going to move.”

He managed to not drop the phone, but it was a big and upsetting announcement. JC Backings was founded by the Coakley family, which has been part of the scenic art world for five generations. Over the years, the company acquired the collections of MGM, Universal, 20th Century Fox, Disney and Paramount.

For 40 years, the company operated out of the famous MGM scenic paint studio on what is now the Sony lot in Culver City and had a history with the studio for even longer. Lynne’s great-grandfather, John Coakley, was a scenic artist there, working under Gibson’s tutelage, when, in 1936, he fell to his death from a studio scaffolding. MGM’s method of compensation was to hire his son, John Harold Coakley, as an apprentice. John Harold eventually went to 20th Century Fox and, after “Cleopatra” nearly bankrupted the studio, he bought its backdrop collection. In 1962, he formed JC Backings with his son, John Gary Coakley.

In 1972, the company moved to MGM and its still gold-standard scenic studio.

JC Backings remains in the painted backdrop business — a backing from the 1958 musical “South Pacific,” for example, was recently used on an upcoming Netflix series and several equally venerable backings were recently rented for new Marvel projects (none of which Lynne can name because she signed nondisclosure agreements). But at least half of the company’s inventory is photo and digital, and it made no sense to pay for the MGM studio, which was built for painting scenic backings and did not have the storage space the company needed.

When Lynne Coakley decided to move the headquarters to a larger facility in Culver City, with a warehouse equipped for painting in Gardena, she eyed the 3,000 or so painted backings in the company’s collection and realized that more than 200 of them had not been used in years.

A decade ago, she says, she would have just chucked them; some were faded or damaged, some so specific they could never be used again.

“It’s only in the last 10 years that we’ve started thinking of them as having historic value,” says Coakley. “For years, we thought of backings as a commodity; that’s our business.”

In the long version of the story, the conversation that resulted in the Backdrop Recovery Project occurred almost 10 years ago.

An award-winning production designer, Walsh had worked with JC Backings for much of his career. As president of ADG, from 2003 to 2013, he was committed to making the public aware of scenic artists and preserving the historic work that remained. “I started as a pot boy,” he says, referring to the young workers who mixed the paints that scenic artists used for backdrops. “It was the last days of the old ways, and ever since then, I have a soft spot for scenic artists.”

And not just as a preservationist. Walsh believes that old Hollywood arts are crucial in developing the new ones and bemoans the fact that many cinema schools now view scenic painting as an elective for their arts programs.

“A lot of people are going into the digital arts,” he says, “but the best artists I’ve worked with, digital or not, are the ones who can pick up a pencil, who can look at something and see it before they start re-creating it. No matter how they do it.”

In 2012, he founded the ADG archives, which contains resources gleaned from old studio research libraries — books and photos, paintings and advertisements, anything and everything that could help artists of all types make the sets, props and backings beautiful and believable.

That same year, he approached Lynne about publicly displaying some of the iconic backdrops and the small paintings from which they were created; over seven years, the ADG and JC Backings co-hosted five open-house nights at the historic MGM studio.

The events were so popular, Walsh says, that he wondered if there was a book to be done. While giving a guest lecture at the University of Texas, Austin, he had met Karen Maness, a former scenic artist who loved backdrops almost as much as he did.

“I grew up in San Diego,” Maness says, “and I fell in love with all the murals in Los Angeles. When I saw my first theatrical backdrop, I knew this is what I wanted to do: I wanted to work big.”

She had been teaching theatrical arts at UT Austin for several years when Walsh approached her about doing a book, and she immediately said yes. “It was a passion project to understand these artists, to help them be seen for their work.”

For the next four years, she and Richard M. Isackes interviewed Hollywood masters and in 2016 produced “The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop,” a gorgeous doorstop of a book that tells the story of an art form that is at its best when it does not appear to exist

“The publisher said it was the most beautiful book they had ever made,” Walsh says. “Certainly it is the heaviest.”

“Tom saw the urgency,” Maness says. “A lot of the artists we interviewed for the book are gone now, and I am so grateful that I got to speak with so many. It’s changed the way I paint and think about painting. I have never seen painting with such sensitivity to color, temperature and value structure. I am so embarrassingly in love with it.”

The Coakleys and their unique collection are a big part of “The Art of the Hollywood Backdrop,” in which the family’s story was told publicly for the first time. Lynne’s parents are, she says, very private and reserved individuals. Working with Walsh and Maness, Lynne began to think of JC Backings’ collection of painted backdrops as something more than company assets.

“After the book came out,” Walsh says, “we started hearing from a lot of people who were also interested in preservation.”

During the early years of the backdrop exhibitions, Lynne had been surprised when Anne Coco, the motion picture academy’s graphic arts librarian, had asked if she would be willing to donate some of the small paintings done as blueprints for the backings, which she happily did. So when Lynne decided there was no point in moving the 200-plus backings that were no longer in use, she called the academy first.

“The academy took about a dozen right away,” Lynne says. “The cream, obviously. The rest went to the ADG, and,” she adds laughing, “Tom got them to take about 10 more.”

Although the academy will not reveal anything about how, or which, backings will be displayed in its new Museum of Motion Pictures, Walsh says he put together an exhibit for architect Renzo Piano and his staff when they were in the designing phase.

For the remaining 207, she called Walsh, who was thrilled.

Thrilled and a little daunted. Moving more than 200 backings, some of which are more than 30 feet wide and, affixed to wooden battens, weigh several hundred pounds, is no joke. Nor is the work of unrolling each one and trying to identify the films for which it was used. Especially when you have only a couple of weeks to do it.

“There were some of backings that hadn’t been opened,” says Maness, who, along with a dozen or so ADG members, helped with the moving and cataloging. “The reason they survived when so many assets were lost or sold off in auction was that they were able to keep them at MGM so they were up and out of sight.”

But if the three weeks it took to catalog and move the backings were difficult, they were also exhilarating. There was gold in them there rafters.

“No one knew the ‘Fit as a Fiddle’ backing was in there,” says Walsh. “Or the tapestries from ‘Marie Antoinette.’ And the ‘Forbidden Planet’ landscapes were so amazing. But even the ones that weren’t famous, are gems. If it weren’t for JC Backings,” he says, “this library, which dates back to the 1930s wouldn’t exist.”

He has spent the past two years finding homes for the original 207 and then an additional 65 donated by Scenic Express. As of publication, there are still 50 or so in the Valencia warehouse that he hopes will find homes at some film or theatrical school. The University of Texas, Austin took 47, including the 24 from “The Shoes of the Fisherman,” which Maness uses to teach painting and design to her students; one of her classes is reproducing the Sistine Chapel.

“Everything you need to know about how to paint is in those backdrops,” she says. “I recognize that we are living in a digital world, but there’s so much power in the painting. “After the book came out, it raised consciousness about preservation. Photographic backings are fine — I use them, we all use them — but painted backdrops are art. Some are so simply drawn that when you look at them closely they don’t look like anything.

“And then you step back and you see the world.”

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tinkertoysdamn · 6 years ago

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Do you have a ko-fi or anything like that? You put out such great stuff SO consistently (like honestly HOW) and I’d love to support

This is an excellent question. I don’t personally have a Ko-fi or Patreon because of my day job. I make a decent living working on media projects that I hope other people fall in love with the same way that I did Mob Psycho. (Some are just paychecks, don’t get me wrong.)

So how you can help me is by legally watching a few of projects I’ve worked on. I’m only going to recommend the ones that I think don’t suck.

youtube

Bless Me Ultima, based on the beloved novel by Rudulfo Anaya. Available for rent on Amazon, Vudu, Youtube or maybe pick up a copy at your local library.

Longmire, available for streaming free on Netflix, I think you have to pay on Amazon. :P Recommend starting with Season 1 Episode 5 “Dog Soldier.” If you like murder of the week shows that address Native American issues, this is a winner.

youtube

Frontera, you can watch it for free legally with ads on Vudu or Tubitv.com

youtube

The Last Stand would have to be a rental....but it’s an Arnold movie!

youtube

And most importantly a show coming to Netflix that doesn’t have a trailer yet: Daybreak. We finished filming first season earlier this year and I will (hopefully) be coming back for a season two later this year but the success of the show depends on people watching legally.

It’s supposed to premiere at New York Comic Con next month so I’m hoping that means the series drops soon after. This show is one of the reasons I’ve been so productive in my fandom work. It fed me creatively in a way that work hadn’t done in a long time.

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tabloidtoc · 6 years ago

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TV Guide, April 29-May 12

Cover: Jason Beghe, Taylor Kinney and Yaya DaCosta of Chicago P.D., Chicago Fire and Chicago Med

Page 1: Contents

Page 2: Ask Matt -- Modern Family, Supergirl, Your Feedback

Page 4: Will your favorite show be back?

Page 6: Sanjay Gupta of Chasing Life with Sanjay Gupta

Page 8: Tribute -- Georgia Engel, Ratings

Page 9: Blue Bloods’ big day

Page 10: The Roush Review -- The Red Line

Page 11: Gentleman Jack, Brockmire, Dead to Me

Page 12: Cover Story -- Chicago A to Z

Page 16: Alex O’Loughlin of Hawaii Five-0, Lucas Till of MacGyver and Jay Hernandez of Magnum P.I.

Page 18: Kellie Martin’s Hailey Dean Mysteries helps Hallmark corner the market on wholesome whodunits

Page 21: What’s Worth Watching -- Week 1 -- Kelly Clarkson on the Billboard Music Awards

Page 22: Petri Hawkins Byrd, the bailiff on Judge Judy

Page 23: The Voice, Nature: American Spring Live, The Show Must Go On: The Queen + Adam Lambert Story, Knightfall, black-ish, The 100, Kids Behind Bars: Life or Parole

Page 24: Best Room Wins, Liberation Heroes: The Last Eyewitnesses, Get Out, The Amazing Race, Impossible Engineering: Extreme Railroads, Whiskey Cavalier, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Party Challenge

Page 25: Camilla Luddington of Grey’s Anatomy, 2019 Miss USA Competition, iZombie, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Station 19, Beat Bobby Flay

Page 26: 3 disturbing findings in At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal, Emilio & Gloria Estefan: The Library of Congress Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, Masters of Disaster, Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell, Robert Osborne’s Picks

Page 27: The Predator, Elizabeth Harvest, Smurfs: The Lost Village, Die Hard, The Disappearance of Susan Cox Powell, Ransom, Saturday Night Live

Page 28: The Spanish Princess, 46th Annual Daytime Emmy Awards, When Calls the Heart, Major League Baseball

Page 44: Netflix -- Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil, and Vile

Page 45: More Creepy Killer Tales -- The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, Mindhunter, Dexter, Bates Motel

Page 46: Tom Ellis of Lucifer, More Must-See Shows Netflix Saved -- You, Longmire, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt

Page 47: Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini of Dead To Me, Chambers, Wine Country

Page 48: Prime Video -- Margo Martindale on Sneaky Pete, Must-See Margo -- Justified, The Americans, The Laramie Project

Page 49: Hulu -- The Best Mother’s Day Episodes -- The Golden Girls, Everybody Hates Chris, Raising Hope, The Goldbergs, 30 Rock, Britbox -- Shetland

Page 50: New Movie Releases

Page 51: Series, Specials & Documentaries

Page 53: What’s Worth Watching -- Week 2 -- David James Elliott on NCIS: Los Angeles

Page 54: Jared Harris and Emily Watson on Chernobyl, General Hospital, Shadowhunters, The Resident, The Biggest Bachelorette Reunion in Bachelor History Ever!, State of the Union

Page 55: Sixteen Candles, Assault on Precinct 13, NCIS: New Orleans, Texicanas, The Carol Burnett Show

Page 56: David Boreanaz on SEAL Team, Wheel of Fortune, The Goldbergs, Modern Family, Nova

Page 57: Single Parents, Pitch Perfect 3, Star of the Month: Paul Newman, Paradise Hotel, The First 48, A.P. Bio, Project Runway, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Klepper, Mom

Page 58: Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Blindspot, Dynasty, The Little Stranger, The Cool Kids, Blue Bloods

Page 59: Saturday, May 11 -- Trading Spaces, A Feeling of Home, My Dad Wrote a Porno, Night School, Adrift, Phantom Thread, Restaurant: Impossible, NASCAR

Page 60: Sunday, May 12 -- Veep, Movies for Mom, Valerie’s Home Cooking, Bob’s Burgers, Game of Thrones, Shark Tank

Page 80: Cheers & Jeers -- Cheers to Hoda Kotb, Billions, General Hospital, What We Do in the Shadows, Jeers to NCIS: LA, Schitt’s Creek deniers, Game of Thrones

#television #tv #jason beghe #taylor kinney #yaya dacosta #chicago pd #chicago fire #chicago med #tv guide

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hofculctr · 1 year ago

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Hofstra University

International Scene Lecture Series – Crisis in Gaza: A Perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with Peter Beinart Crisis in Gaza: A Perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict with Peter Beinart

Peter Beinart is associate professor of journalism at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and associate professor of political science at the CUNY Graduate Center. He is editor-at-large for Jewish Currents, a CNN political commentator, and a fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is also a nonfiction author and former Rhodes Scholar.

Introduction by Stephanie Nanes, Department of Political Science International Scene Series Co-Directors: Professor Carolyn Eisenberg, Department of History Professor Linda Longmire, Department of Global Studies and Geography Professor Martin Melkonian, Department of Economics

Thursday, March 28, 2:40-4:05 p.m. Leo A. Guthart Cultural Center Theater, Axinn Library, First Floor, South Campus

Admission is FREE and open to the public. Advance registration is required. More info and to RSVP visit https://tinyurl.com/yckd3pej

#Hofstra #InternationalScene

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elysiumwaits · 6 years ago

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1, 7, 8, 18

Yaaay, thank you! I love talking about myself and books. Mostly myself, but also books, and how I feel about books. Thank you for sending me the ask!!

Also - I rambled. Sorry.

1. book you’ve reread the most times?

Off the top of my head, probably Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s my favorite of the series and I was in third grade when I started the series, so that was like... what, 2001? I blew through the four that were out at the time, but I have super fond memories of PoA so I tend to reread it when I need some comfort reading.

More recently, as an adult, I’ve been rereading Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses pretty often, every few months starting a couple years ago.

7. is there a series/book that got you into reading?

So, fun fact about me, I was a remarkably advanced reader. I was reading “chapter books” when I started kindergarten, and then when they tested me again in second grade, I was “reading at a college level,” meaning that I could understand the vocabulary and comprehend the material, but not necessarily the context (because I was, you know, 7). At the time, the reading system at my school was pretty strict about reading at the level you tested at - which meant they had no idea what to do with me, because our elementary library didn’t actually have books at my tested level, nor were they actually appropriate for my age.

All this to say: I really didn’t like reading by myself until the end of second grade, because my teachers consistently tried to force me into books that I didn’t enjoy thanks to my tested reading level. They were handing me Little Women and Wuthering Heights, my mom was attempting to keep my interest with books I actually liked at home, but due to the grading system and point value, I was basically forced to suffer through a bunch of classics I could technically read but didn’t interest me.

And then the school district shifted, they reluctantly dropped my reading level from a 12 to a compromise of level 5 or 6, and I discovered The Hardy Boys. I devoured the 1957 revisions, all 58 of them, and then went onto the newer ones and the Nancy Drew crossovers. I tried the original Nancy Drews, but she didn’t get as many explosions and kidnappings and action scenes until the series in the 80s, so that’s my main area of interest there. So it’s pretty much thanks to the Hardy Boys that I enjoy reading at all, because that stupid school on the military base was totally ready to stomp it out of me because it looked good to have me read what the high school seniors were reading.

8. what is the first book you remember reading yourself?

It probably wasn’t actually my first book read, but it was my favorite book as a toddler - Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hatches the Egg. My mom bought it, and then later it became my favorite when I made the connection between Horton and the egg and my situation being adopted by my dad. I remember sitting on my mom’s lap and reading it to her for once.

Today, 20+ years later, I can ask her, and she can recite the whole damn book from memory. Complete with the voices still.

18. do you like historical books? which time period?

Honestly, it depends. I don’t tend to gravitate toward the official “historical fiction” section of the bookstore, as I’m not usually interested in the history itself, but rather a time period as a setting. I love things based in the late 1800s and early 1900s, before the Great Depression - my favorites in this time period are The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz (a marvelous Sherlock Holmes novel) and the Mary Russell series by Laurie R. King (also a Sherlock Holmes series, maybe I just like Holmes...).

The 1940s are great too, though I don’t care for WWII novels usually - I like to read about the people but not necessarily the horrors of the war. Instead, I prefer quieter, atmospheric reads. One fantastic book in this time period is At the Water’s Edge by Sara Gruen, about a woman discovering herself when her not-great husband set off to try and prove that the Loch Ness Monster exists. It’s a great exploration of becoming an adult, dealing with domestic violence, and finding a healthy love - set against a misty Scotland backdrop.

Last but not least, I love westerns - both historical and modern. True Grit is a popular one, of course, though I’ve also been known to pick up a Zane Grey or Max Brand and spend an afternoon with it. I’m not a Louis L’amour fan, much to my grandfather’s chagrin. My favorite “western style” is the Longmire mystery series by Craig Johnson, but I do love a good cowboy romance - Sarah McCarty’s Hell’s 8 series sits pretty on my bookshelf. (This does bleed heavily over into my movie preferences as well - I have, lined up in a row, True Grit, Young Guns, The Magnificent Seven, 3:10 to Yuma, and The Alamo. Yes, I know The Alamo wasn’t a good movie - I still like it.)

#homosociallyyours #yaaay ask #ely answers

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paypant · 2 years ago

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itsaboutbooks · 6 years ago

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Book Club, the novel adaptation

THIS WAS AN EXPERIENCE LET ME TELL YOU.

I roll on up at 6:55 for the 7pm book club. I walk in and there's an immediate flurry because my presence means we need another table. In point of fact, the new table added two seats and they were all filled by the in so whatever guys, you would have needed another table anyway.

I sit down and everybody is passing around these treats. There's no escaping Ernie's cornbread. He's VERY serious about the cornbread. But it's good cornbread so it's fine. But I successfully refused salami, mozzarella, oreos, milanos, some sort of ritz mix, and some chocolate covered mini cookies.

Mary comes in, wheeling in a book cart, upon which is a carafe of coffee, some paper cups and a pint of half and half. Another woman whose name I can't remember walks in right then and Mary pounces on her:

"Did you get my email??"

"No...? What was it about?"

"About coming at 6:30 so you could learn how to make the coffee."

"Oh," glances meaningfully at the clock where it says it's 7:02.

"GIVE ME YOUR PHONE NUMBER."

So we know Mary is a person to watch.

We're settling in and the last woman comes and sits next to me. She says to the person next to her, who is the one who was supposed to come at 6:30 but didn't, "I wonder if we can have decaf next time, I can't have caffeine this late."

The other woman addresses Mary, at the far end of the table. "Mary, Annette wants to know if we can have decaf next time."

"I'm sorry, I can't really hear you."

The message is passed up to Mary. Mary: "I just opened this container of coffee."

Annette's representative: "Well maybe we can get decaf next time?"

Mary: "Is that ok with everyone else? *I* don't drink coffee," (gestures meaningfully to her water bottle "so it doesn't matter to me."

Attention turns to the guy who leapt for the coffee as soon as it was wheeled in

Annette's representative: "I mean, we're all old. We shouldn't have caffeine this late anyway."

Silence.

Coffee guy: "I don't mind. I'll drink whatever's here."

Mary: "Well, the library provides the coffee."

Annette's representative: "But surely we could ask for decaf?"

Mary: "Except I think that they provide coffee for ALL the book clubs, so..."

Annette: "Oh, it doesn't matter, I can just bring my own drink."

Annette's representative: "Maybe we should just bring our own coffee. Coffee isn't that expensive."

Ernie: "We could run it like a club and take dues."

Mary: "Hahahahaha. Let's have the new people introduce themselves."

I fear Mary.

Anyway, it's me and another girl a little younger than me that are new. She moved her a year ago from San Jose. There were 16 people there, of which about 5 were in my general age demographic, another 3 were my parents age and the other 8 were my grandparent's age.

Ernie goes first, so I go last.

Ernie's book is about code breakers in WW2. This led to an amazeball side discussion between Ernie and Stan about their respective WW2 experiences (!) which took a long time for a book club that's supposed to be an hour and requires 16 people to give a book summary.

Then DeNell goes, she's talking about a thriller that she's only partway through.

Then Stan's wife goes. This woman is a retired physics professor, which is pertinent because this review makes her sound like an idiot. She's also had a stroke and is hard to understand but she goes for it.

Stan's wife: "Do you know how the amazon on the computer lets you have a sample of a book so you can decide if you want to buy it?" everyone nods. "Well, I got a sample of this book called The Master Algorithm and I wanted to read it because Stan and I watch this show, I don't know if any of you have ever seen it, it's called Numbers. It's about these two brothers and one is an FBI agent and the other is a math genius and the one brother gets all the cases and the other brother solves the cases using algorithms, and I wanted to know what an algorithm really was because I never had that in my math classes in school. So I read this sample and what I realized was I should have read the second part of the title which was the search for the algorithm that will unlock learning so it was about looking for a special algorithm and not what an algorithm is. What I learned was that I did not need to buy this book."

Silence.

Someone: "Did you read another book, then?"

Stan's wife: "No. I looked up what an algorithm is and I wanted to tell you because that's what I learned this month and also maybe no one else knows what an algorithm is either. What it is, is a set of instructions you give a computer. The example that I saw that made the most sense to me was doing the laundry. Doing the laundry is an algorithm because you decide if something is a white or not, and if it's a white it goes to the whites, and if it's not it goes with the darks."

Silence.

Then Stan talked about his book, a murder mystery set in the Shetlands.

Mary finally started reading the Agatha Raisin books. But because I fear Mary I do not mention that they go downhill pretty fast from where she's at.

The next lady talks about a book about a woman who went to Syria before the war on a Fullbright to study the Koran, and this is the sequel she read, about her life in Jerusalem with her Syrian husband and their child.

Then Paige, the other new girl, talks about a book she read that was historical fiction set during the Irish Potato Famine. She says, "I had no idea the English were so culpable for that, refusing to provide aid."

I nod because I've read some of that history and that's right.

Stan: "But didn't the Irish refuse help from other countries?"

Silence.

Stan: "I know that England didn't help but other countries offered to help and Ireland refused, right?"

Paige: "I can't imagine why, when they had so many people starving to death."

Stan: "I'll look it up."

Me: side-eyes Stan. I choose not to remind him to cite his sources.

Lois: "I should probably pass because I read two books and then I decided which one I would talk about and I put the other one away, and then when I got ready today I couldn't find the one I wanted to bring, and I don't remember the title or the author. It was ok."

I almost DIED.

Her husband read this book about the guy who created the Ultima video games. He went on and on and wasn't interesting.

The next guy is the coffee enthusiast, and he read a history of Scotland from 1700-2000, and he gives a ton of detail. Too much, because it's already past 8pm and there's 5 of us left.

The next guy read a book called "Hope Never Dies" an Obama/Biden murder mystery. I laughed out loud.

The next lady says, I should probably pass, I'm almost halfway through Lady Chatterley's Lover but I'll probably be done with it by next month.

And then there's an 8 minute discussion of it vs Bridges of Madison County and whether she should try to continue reading another book her mom gave her for Christmas.

The next woman is Annette's coffee advocate and she read a historical fiction book about an Iranian woman poet who had to live out her life in exile and there was some scandal about her romantic poems and between that more explicit than expected discussion and the conversation about Lady Chatterley's Lover, I have to tell you, I'm full up on my quota of minutes spent discussing sex with random octogenarians.

Then Annette goes and she talks about some random thriller she picked up and then says, "Sometimes I read more and sometimes I read less and lately I'm reading less so I'm also going to recommend a TV show that I've been watching. It's mysteries set in a modern day western setting, which I normally avoid westerns but it's very good, and it's based on a series of books, it's called Longmire. I haven't read the books and I don't want to because I like the show so much but I'm sure they're good."

Buddy: "They are!"

Annette: "And the library has the DVDs so you can get them here."

Stan: "They're streamable, too, I don't know if they're on Netflix or Prime but it's one of those."

Annette: "I don't do the streaming anymore, I only get the CDs because the streaming doesn't have enough old stuff but I like to get the TV shows from the library because you can get an entire season at a time instead of just one disc."

And then I went and it was over.

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scatteredwits · 7 years ago

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the SLOWEST BURN

So last month (oh my gosh it was was only LAST MONTH) I did a super fast binge of Longmire on Netflix. According to twitter, season 1-3 was coming down and it had been on my watch list for ages and I never got around to it. I binged the whole thing (six season) in like...two and half weeks.

At first I wasn’t sure, but I kept watching. Just in case. And you know, I’m halfway through. Why would I stop?

It wasn’t until one of the last seasons that I realised it was based on a book series. Don’t ask me how I missed it. I just did. Whatever.

I was then struck by the paralyzing question: do I attempt the books?

I didn’t even know how many there were. I was just worried it would be awful and the things I loved in the show would get sidelined by how terrible the books were.

Wow. Reader, was I wrong!

The books (by Craig Johnson) give us a front row seat to our favorite cowboy sheriff and the assorted Absaroka County citizens that make up his inner circle, including one Philly transplant, Vic Moretti.

In the show, from episode one, you get the hints that there is something between Vic and our beloved Walt Longmire, but you aren’t 100% sure. (Not until many seasons later, anyway.) But the books...Oh the books dump you right in it from books one. And if you thought the show gave us a slow burn relationship, well then honey, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

I’ve just finished book 9 and ever cell in my body is willing the next book to get to my library as soon as possible because I NEED TO KNOW WHAT IS NEXT.

Ahem.

(As a side note, it is interesting to see this relationship from a man’s perspective. I live with a woman’s brain. I know how we think sometimes. So there’s that too.)

So excuse me while I go bury myself in the Longmire tags until the next book gets here. Fingers crossed that these two crazy kids get their shit together long enough to get together.

#Walt Longmire #Victoria Moretti #Walt x Vic #all up here in the longmire tags forever #because why not #it's not like i'm at work or anything #Longmire #Craig Johnson

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seanpatricklittlewriter · 3 years ago

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Update on the New Book

It's hard to sell books. Almost impossible, really. It's even hard to give books away for free. The results of the five-day promotion in which I gave away the first two Abe & Duff books in their entirety to Kindle patrons resulted in only about 1700 downloads. That's not nearly the number I hoped for in this promotion, but it's better than nothing, obviously. If I can get a slew of good reviews out of it, maybe it'll be worth it in the end. As usual, your book does not exist to Uncle Jeff and the Amazon Avengers until you hit 50 reviews. Right now, I think #TheSingleTwin is holding steady around 23 or 24, so that's not ideal. There are just so many detective novels out there, and so many people competing for readers that it's almost impossible to get people interested in a new series. Not to mention, people have reported feeling overwhelmed by the events of the last two years so they have been seeking comfort items instead of risking seeking new items. New TV shows have been struggling, but meanwhile, The Office, Parks and Recreation, Scrubs, and MASH have been killing it on streaming services--people want things they know as a grounding technique. They are coping. They don't have the brain space to try new things right now. All things considered, it's a perfect storm of impossible odds. It's a good thing I don't do this for recognition. Or money. In other news, I did my first live event in years at the Germantown Community Library the other night. Only five people attended, sadly. Three of those five were friends of mine. And one of those friends was actually someone I brought with me from Madison. I've done events where no one showed up, so I am extremely grateful to those who did show. It was nice to get out and shill books again. It's so hard to program events during the best of times, and it's even harder to program during a pandemic. I'm hoping to get a few events scheduled in the next few months, but we'll have to see. I know a lot of book stores and libraries are choosing to do virtual events instead of live events, and I don't know if I could do one of those. One of my greatest fears is programming a virtual event and looking down at the little counter that shows the number of guests tuning in to see "0." It's like the nightmare about showing up pantsless on the last day of finals and you can't find your classes. Same level of fear and discomfort. Craig Johnson did an online event last fall when his latest Walt Longmire book launched. I tuned in and I was one of more than 1500 people watching. Those are some good numbers. Of course, if you hit the NY Times Best Seller list 15+ times, I guess you can generate that sort of interest. The pre-order link for Kindle version of the new Abe & Duff book, #WhereArtThou? is live now. Tell friends. If you're looking for the hard copy version, I'll post that as soon as it clears processing. I've okayed the final proof, so it's set in stone now. I'm both looking forward to its launch and being terrified of the future potential reviews. I know my sense of humor isn't everyone's cup of tea, so I always worry about jokes translating, especially through text where you don't get the benefit of performance and voice tones. Still, I think this is a really great book. It was fun to write. I really hope people will enjoy it. I'm working on Abe&Duff 4, as well. No idea on the plot yet. Or title. Stay tuned. Thanks for reading. --Sean https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09RTGZDSG

#Abe&Duff #Abe & Duff #mystery #books #book #novel #ebook #kindle #crime #crime fiction #detective #private eye #private investigators

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