NYPL Blogs

Last month, while reading the ever-elegant obituaries in The Economist, I ran across RPJ's. I knew the name through the Merchant/Ivory movies, but she was a writer-writer as well as screen-writer. She wrote over a dozen novels, with a "heroine [who] was almost always herself: trapped in a cross-cultural marriage, tipping between the old world and the new, observing from the outside some bewildering place." As so often happens, the next day I stumbled on a mention of her in the journals of the great Leo Lerman, who knew everyone, and enjoyed the rare gift of description in a paragraph.

The New York State Department of Labor and the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey will present an On-Site Recruitment for Police Officers.

A guest post by Ben West

“A young alumnus of the University of Minnesota and an old hand from Harvard and Broadway have turned out a wonderfully amusing musical comedy called Barefoot Boy With Cheek. A horde of exuberant young singers, dancers and actors, all of them bursting with vigor and brimming with talent, bounced it around the stage of the Colonial Theatre last night and rolled the customers out into the aisles. It’s the newest of the hits and one of the happiest.”

In my "real" life, I work here at the Morningside Heights Library, but outside of work, theater is my "thing." And, everyone says if you are going to write a blog, it should be about something you feel passionately about. So, every other Wednesday (hopefully) I plan to share some of my favorite theater-going memories and experiences, and point you towards some library materials that relate to those experiences. It will be interesting to see if readers share my tastes, and hopefully I can introduce you to new plays, musicals, actors or writers you may not know.

Today, the word adagio is rarely used to describe ballroom dancing. If you told someone that you were going adagio dancing, most likely, this would draw a blank stare. Substitute the words adagio dancing with ballroom dancing, the recognition factor would increase tenfold.

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of April 23, 30, and May 7 and 14, 2013.

Plant Patent plates for 2012 and 2013 have been listed, with links, in the table posted here.

As before, please be careful in using these—they're really not appropriate to use for prior art or other similar searches. Otherwise, please enjoy!

We will soon be wrapping up Writing Through Memory: Memoir and Storytelling, a ten week workshop we have been hosting at the Kingsbridge Branch, brought to us through the Creative Aging program from Lifetime Arts. After a recent class, I caught up with one of the students, Helen.

What brings you to the library today?

I'm here for another session of the Memoir Workshop taught by a fantastic teacher, Lauren Jost.

What made you take the memoir class?

Here are scans of the color plates of U.S. Plant Patents received at SIBL for the weeks of April 2, 9, and 16, 2013.

For 130 years, the Brooklyn Bridge has been an icon of the New York City landscape—longer if you account for the 13 years required to construct it. This beloved connection between boroughs is still in use while many of its contemporaries have been replaced or dismantled worldwide.

Welcome back to our online discussion of Will Eisner's The Contract With God Trilogy: Life on Dropsie Avenue. Throughout May, we'll be discussing the book as part of both Reader's Den and NYC Summer.

The New York State Department of Labor and New Partners, Inc. will present an on-site recruitment for Home Health Aides.

Job Summary

Trained and certified health care worker who provides assistance to a patient in the home with personal care (hygiene and exercise) and light household duties (meal preparation). Free Home Health Aide training is available!

How interesting could a book about a long walk possibly be? In the case of Cheryl Strayed's book Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail, the answer is very. Some may have foolishly initially shied away from this book because it's an Oprah's Book Club selection and a memoir, a combination that proved problematic for James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. Oprah's Book Club 2.0 is not alone in liking it, as Time magazine named it one of the ten best nonfiction books of 2012.

RecruitMilitary is a leading full-service military–to-civilian recruiting firm in the United States. They use online and offline products to connect employers, franchisors, and educational institutions with men and women who are transitioning from active duty to civilian life, veterans who already have civilian work experience, members of the National Guard and reserve forces, and military spouses. They serve veterans of all ranks, rates, and branches of the armed forces, and their services are free to all men and women who have a military background.

The prison is a structure. It has walls and it has smells and there are sounds you hear inside the prison. There are people who work and who live there. There are rules and there are gates and there are also friendships, and barbershops, and rabbis. I have been going to Rikers Island, which is a piece of land, on one end of a bridge, at the edge of the world.

The New York State Department of Labor will present the Dr. King Career Fair in New York City on June 6 and June 13. Events will run from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. and will be held at the following locations:

May 27th is Memorial Day. Did you know that this U.S. federal holiday goes as far back as the American Civil War in the 1860s?

Memorial Day, formerly known as Decoration Day, occurs ever year on the last Monday of the month of May and is the day of remembering the men and women who died while serving in the United States Armed Forces.

Horse reproduction! I never thought that I would learn so much about this subject by reading a book about wild horse scientists, but I guess that it makes sense. After all, managing the numbers of wild horses on islands, especially publicly protected land in which predators are few and far between, is a challenge.

What is Steampunk? For a way to explain a fantasy subgenre, Steampunk is not very descriptive. According to The Steampunk Bible (2011), it can be explained most easily by this equation:

Steampunk = Mad Scientist Inventor [invention (steam x airship or metal man/ baroque stylings) x (pseudo) Victorian (or Edwardian) settings] + progressive or reactionary politics x adventure plot. (p. 9)

Every spring, the NYC Teen Author Festival takes place at various locations around the city, including bookstores and NYPL locations. Teens, authors, librarians, and anyone interested in teen literature can attend for free and participate in the exchange of ideas about teen literature.