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In a previous post, we looked at maps of Brooklyn from the 19th and early 20th centuries of the neighborhood once called Weeksville, centered on Hunterfly Road. It was there, in 1969, according to The Weeksville Society, that researchers rediscovered the "Hunterfly Road houses," the neighborhood's only remaining residential structures from the period.

It seems that my idea of Richard Bruce Cheney as a two dimensional nefarious character was hardly original, but this manifestation of others’ lack of imagination is mind boggling. Exhibit A, the cover for Charlie Savage’s Takeover:

[img_assist|nid=57203|title=Premiere Issues|desc=|link=none|align=right|width=286|height=286]Want to know when a journal’s first issue was published? What that issue # 1 looked like? Need to track down the editor for those impossible to find back issues? Discover what new titles are missing from the collection?

Premiere Issues: An Archive of Magazine Firsts answers these questions and many more that persistently plague serials librarians. The site’s mission “to provide a home for those first issues to live, be read and shared by an international audience,” was begun in 2002 by Danielle Huthart and is a growing collection of 200 or so issues. Included are the often beautiful covers (Huthart’s concentration is art, fashion, design, and culture), launch issue statement by the editor, publisher & creative director contact, frequency and on & on. Although carefully curated, it feels like a collaborative effort with Huthart encouraging submissions, information on new magazines, and comments & feedback. It's fantastic - take a look!

All good writers of novels or lively nonfiction know that it’s crucial to pause their story at a certain point. Perhaps this can apply to the blogger, too. What have we learned so far in examining the path of Western fashion from antiquity to the nineteenth century? We know that clothing was modified for important class distinctions, that masculine bodies were celebrated while feminine bodies had to be concealed beneath numerous draperies, and men were given greater leeway with fashion. We’ve seen that rulers and their nobles protected the use of fine fashions as their prerogative, enacting sumptuary laws when necessary to enforce that privilege, despite those laws being broken again and again. Fashion could be used for social mobility, ideological identity, and social conformity. Fashion could even signal social control or a break with convention. I never intended to impose a long-winded costume history lesson on you readers. What I want to get across is the fact that as we grow closer to our modern era, fashion changes in several important respects. Fashion trends grow closer together, signaling quicker changes in popular culture. Men settle on a unified look, while women seek variety in a multiplicity of forms. Clothes now develop their own language. I want to resume my story of fashion by looking more closely at the nineteenth century when everything changed. And most of all, let’s have fun! When we start scrutinizing what happened to clothing in the 1800s, our contemporary choices look better and better. Are we going somewhere? Yes. All my efforts to explore the rise of modern clothing and fashion in last year’s posts will be brought home by the discoveries we make in the months ahead. As this excellent title in the Library collection suggests, we need to learn more about Dress, adornment, and the social order so that we may understand our own craving for fashion better. We also need to see exactly what kinds of dress we freed ourselves from in order to become what we are now. And what we are now can be epitomized by the most recent cover of Vogue featuring our lovely First Lady. And, like any hopeful blogger, I’d love to draw reactions out of you as I proceed with this new story… p.s. Happy Saint Valentine’s Day! I’m keeping an eye on New York Fashion Week, where the parties and glitz have been toned down, along with expectations.

From the dust jacket of Pigeon Feathers A number of summers ago I saw John Updike at the library. He was sitting in the back of the main reading room, leaning over the table, and writing with a small gold pen. I felt as oddly excited and privileged as someone else might feel who, in the course of day-to-day activity, had encountered Johnny Depp or Angeline Jolie. I ached to know what he was writing on that pad, if it was a story for the New Yorker, another episode in the chronicles of Harry Rabbit Angstrom or Henry Bech, or just a tally of his day’s expenses in New York. I didn’t ask. Library professionalism, New York sang-froid, or maybe just temperamental shyness kept me from saying anything at all. When I looked again a short while later, he was gone.

Did you know that jazz musician Jane Ira Bloom...

...prodded by her friend, the actor Brian Dennehy, wrote a letter to NASA to ask what they thought about the future of the arts in space and ended up as the first musician ever commissioned by the NASA space program and with an asteriod (6083janeirabloom) named in her honor?

 “Fashion is an odd jumble of contradictions, of sympathies and antipathies.” ----William Hazlitt (1778 – 1830)

The nineteenth century is when everything changes. Fashions accelerate along with the social, political, intellectual, and technological advances of each decade. Issues related to taste and aesthetics become more apparent. This is the century when men’s clothes change to take on the appearance we know today. The tailored man’s suit became the great social leveler, permitting the common man and the gentleman to share the same form of dress. The man’s suit exhibited staying power and authority, aided by the rapid development of modern nationalism. Men wore dark garments that were universally recognizable and devoid of any distracting ostentation. The same is not true for women’s wear, however. They were given an almost dizzying array of alterations in gown style, silhouette, padding and ornamentation with each passing decade of the nineteenth century. In fact, by mid-to-late-century, the sexes exchange fashion leadership roles: men with their democratic dress take a back seat to the haute couture dreams of the fair sex. Fashion belonged to women more than ever before in the history of clothing and dress. And yet the numerous details that defined and complicated feminine dress have a surprisingly disturbing social meaning…

I hope you have been enjoying the memoir A Piece of Cake by Cupcake Brown. Here are some discussion questions to get you started. Feel free to talk about other parts of the book as well.

This week's a big one for the craft-conscious of New York City, because Handmade Nation--which is both a film AND a book available at the Library--comes to town!

This long-awaited documentary of the indie craft movement will have its New York premiere at the Museum of Arts and Design on Thursday evening. In addition to the screening, director Faythe Levine will be there to talk with artists Mandy Greer, Kate Bingaman-Burt, and Callie Janoff. As of this morning, the event is 80% sold out. So if you plan to go don't delay in purchasing your own tickets. The Museum will screen the film two more times, though without the panel discussion, on Saturday the 14th and Sunday the 15th at 2:00pm each day.

But there is more! On the evening of the 11th, Powerhouse Arena in Brooklyn's hosting a great book launch event celebrating and exploring craft in America. Levine and Handmade Nation co-author Cortney Heimerl will be joined by Sabrina Gschwandtner of KnitKnit fame and Andrew Wagner, editor in chief of American Craft.

So, I recommend that you give yourself or a friend a very special valentine this week by checking out one of these events, or by

at the Library. You can also learn more about the film, the book, and the creative people behind both at this

.