Arts

117 posts

Symbols of Life And Death In Brooklyn, NY

My BFF is Bill. He is like a scary, funny Gremlin who’s been fed after midnight.  His mother recently passed away after a long illness, and though my friend is tough, this was significantly tougher.  For a while, anyway.

The family mausoleum is in the historic and very beautiful Green-Wood cemetery in Brooklyn.

Symbols abound in our lives.  If you got a bouquet of yellow roses from a dude in 1880, it meant “We’re pals and that’s it.”.  You see a stick figure of a guy on a door and you can probably pee standing up if you cross the threshold.   Victorian ladies would snap their lacy hand-held fans at you if you pissed them off.  These days, women don’t usually carry fans.  But I don’t know one who can’t give you the side-eye.  We use these things to communicate when speech is either not needed or welcome.  Let’s see how that went for me and a friend yesterday. Continue reading →

Rare Photo Stolen from NYPL Turns up on eBay Decades Later

Theft of materials from libraries and archives is more common problem than most people realize. One of the core tenets of librarianship (which includes archivists) is to allow–as much as possible–unfettered access to information. Unfortunately for libraries, archives and the people who patronize and manage them, some take advantage of such access by stealing artifacts. It’s difficult to strike a balance between open access and absolute security; libraries and archives continue to struggle with this clash of principle and need. There are well documented cases of thieves who stole rare books for their own personal collections, but more often than not, people steal these sorts of artifacts to try to turn a profit. Continue reading →