Please join Ben Willard (ITS) and Julie Fricke (Library) for an informative
overview of Facebook and social networking. Topics will range from basic
to advanced. We’ll cover Facebook’s origins and uses, and we’ll also
introduce you to events, groups, and developer applications. The fun is
nearly limitless! This presentation will occur at 11:00 a.m. on November
29th in Briggs 420.
Here are some alliterative topics for discussion: travel, time and twins.
There’s time travel: the great soprano Nellie Melba died in Australia on Feb. 23, 1931, but her death was reported in some New York newspapers on the 22nd.
There’s twin travel: Bulgarian composer Pantcho Vladigerov was born in Switzerland but his twin brother had arrived the day before in Bulgaria. Their mother did not care for the Bulgarian medical system so she hopped a train with one twin and hours later de-trained in Switzerland to give birth to the second.
And now…Twin Time Travel! Earlier this month a woman in North Carolina gave birth to a boy at 1:32 a.m. Thirty-four minutes later his twin sister arrived. But wait! Daylight Saving Time ended at 2:00 a.m. The second twin was actually born at 1:06 a.m. which makes her older. Or does it? In the famous last words of the mother, “We’ll let them work that out between themselves.”
We love to sing-a about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a. All of our CDs in today’s pile contain vocal music. We’ve got chants, art song favorites with violin obbligato, and opera excerpts. For good measure we’ve also got some chamber music with and without voice.
On this day in 1942 possibly the most famous interpreter of the United States national anthem was born. Listen to the greatest left-handed guitar version performed outside a stadium or arena.
The Mudd has several recordings of riffs on Jimi Hendrix.
You young ‘ns have probably only seen the word “phonograph” in history books. Conventional wisdom has it that on this date in 1877 Thomas Alva Edison publicly introduced the cylinder phonograph. It is not known the precise date Mr. Edison spoke the first verse of “Mary had a little lamb” into the contraption, but the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress puts the date somewhere August 12th and December 24th. We’ll go with the flow and say it’s today.
The New York Times ran a commentary on November 28 of that year stating that with the invention of the telegraph, telephone and now the phonograph “electricians had lost all self-restraint.” On the horizon was the wireless telegraph, the use of which could have dire consequences: “A mother, sitting in the nursery with her baby in her arms, may be struck by a violent speech by Wendell Phillips, and sustain a fatal injury.” “The aerial electrical current will be constantly full of Congressional speeches…which will be liable at any moment to…penetrate our houses.” Sounds very familiar.
Sometimes our CD collection has such depth and breadth we can hardly stand it. Today we offer CDs containing piano trios; choral music; an Orff work probably new to you; chants that are, to say the least, unusual and a ’50’s pop vocal quartet.
Todays’ new CD pile is prid near all Miles Davis. We threw in a little Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and a couple of Ben Allisons, too.
We completely missed another hugely interesting resource here at the Mudd: American Broadsides and Ephemera. Since this collection comes from the same company that gave us Early American Imprints, 1801-1819, you can do a “curiosities and wonders” search here, too. The Mudd: for all your curiosities and wonders needs.
We don’t often wish we were in Los Angeles, but we do now. The Hammer Museum at UCLA is hosting Extraodrinary Exhibitions: Broadsides from the Collections of Ricky Jay from now until November 25. The exhibit features “80 examples of 17th-, 18th-, and 19th-century ephemeral advertising sheets known as broadsides…with an emphasis on remarkable entertainers and visual deceptions.” Today’s New York Times has an interview with Mr. Jay along with some amazing examples and descriptions from the exhibit.
The Mudd subscribes to Early American Imprints, 1801-1819 which includes the subject category “Curiosities and wonders.” Here you can find your “Great anaconda or the terrific serpent of Java,” a little tamer fare than Mr. Jay’s singing mouse, enormous head, or living skeleton.
Glass harmonica? How about a water-organ? A Croatian architect has created a giant water-powered organ that is played by waves from the Adriatic Sea lapping onto steps. Now visitors don’t need to be bored by those dull sounds of nature.
