Library borrowers’ habits a century ago
What Middletown Read tracks borrowing records of Muncie Public Library patrons from 1891 to 1902 and shows how library use is not a lonely act but “part of the complex story of the social nature of reading.”
What Middletown Read tracks borrowing records of Muncie Public Library patrons from 1891 to 1902 and shows how library use is not a lonely act but “part of the complex story of the social nature of reading.”
My latest New York Times Magazine mini-column looks at a sandstorm — “Steinbeck-ish in its arrival,” according to a city councilman — that rolled through Lubbock, Texas last month, as the harbinger of a likely impending Southwestern Dust-Bowlification. “I expected at any moment to see a line of Model Ts coming through headed to California,” the councilman said. “It . . .
My second New York Times Mag mini-column is on the futuristic skyscraper Antoni Gaudí designed in 1908 for what is now Ground Zero. His Hotel Attraction (pictured) would be a lot more fun to watch going up outside my office window than the new glass towers are. But see Rowan Moore on the still-in-process Sagrada Familia: Is it really Gaudí?
Exciting: Poet and Silver Jews singer/songwriter/mastermind David Berman has a blog, Menthol Mountains, where he’s pondering “the phony gulp,” hooked-up verse, and other things. (Thanks, 5redpandas.)