On June 21, 1964 three young members of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) went missing in Mississippi. Their bodies were found on August 4, 1964. Listen to what Dr. Robert Spike and Arthur C. Thomas said the following day. To listen to the whole recording, click here.

As New York state struggles with its stance on drugs, listen to Seymour Siegel interview Seymour Boyer, a democrat from Queens, about the new dangers of “pep pills and goofballs,” and (perhaps) adopting the “British system” of de-criminalizing drug usage.

The Florida State University Digital Library now shares a selection of the cuneiform tablets held by the Florida State University Libraries Special Collections & Archives.

In 1922, Dr. Josiah Bethea Game (1869-1935) negotiated the purchase of twenty-five tablets for the Florida State College for Women (FSCW). The tablets range in size from one to two square inches, and are square, rounded and cone shaped. The tablets were found by archeologist Dr. Edgar J. Banks (1866 –1945)  while excavating in Babylonia (present-day Iraq) for the University of Chicago in 1903-1904. The ancient inscribed Babylonian clay tablets illustrate the oldest of writings and were are mostly temple records and business documents dating from over 4000 years ago.

Among the cuneiform artifacts are a ritual tablet from Warka dated 2100 BC; a memorandum from Senkereh, the ancient Larsa, 22 BC; a temple record, sealed with the royal seal of the King of Ur of the Chaldees, 2350 BC; sun-dried business contract, 220 BC; sun-dried exercise tablet, 2200 BC; butchers bill for four sheep, 2150 BC; a votive cone, King of Amanu, from the temple of the goddess Ishtar, which he built in the royal residence of his kingdom 2100 BC; a tax bill, 2350 BC; and a business contract dated in Nebuchadnezzar’s reign.

This selection of our cuneiform collection was digitized and translated as part of a project in 2008 and now join the growing digital collections in the FSUDL!

Thomas B. Morgan, the President of the WNYC Communications Group from April 1990 to April 1994, died today. Morgan was an honorary trustee of New York Public Radio. He had not been well for some time.

Morgan was a writer, editor and had been Press Secretary to Mayor John Lindsay from 1969 to 1973. Previously, he served in a similar capacity on behalf of the presidential candidacies of Adlai Stevenson in 1960 and Eugene McCarthy in 1968. From 1975 to 1976 he was editor of the Village Voice and from 1974 to 1975 he served as vice president and assistant to the publisher of New York Magazine.  He joined the Dinkins Administration as the city’s director of communications services. Here he is at his City Hall swearing-in ceremony.

In his first letter to listeners in the station program guide, Wavelength, Morgan wrote:

“To this day, the relevance and integrity of WNYC’s programs make the station a model for publicly owned and supported broadcasting systems in cities around the country. My appointment by Mayor David Dinkins gives me the opportunity to continue to build on that excellent tradition, and I welcome the challenge. I feel the way a Mets or Yankee fan would who suddenly has been chosen to manage the team.”[1]

During his tenure at WNYC, Morgan restructured WNYC-TV and continued the independent fundraising activities initiated by former WNYC chief Mary Perot Nichols. He bolstered the AM station’s commitment to news and talk and the FM station’s focus on music and a younger audience. 

Morgan’s most controversial act was the hiring of Curtis Sliwa as a program host in January 1994. Critics charged he was pressured to hire the Guardian Angels founder by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who was partial to Sliwa’s populist views. Morgan, however, denied the charge, saying he was only acting on “a hiring tip” and that Sliwa’s contract ran only to December, providing an “out” should things prove unworkable. The real threat, said Morgan, was the Giuliani Administration’s threat to sell WNYC.

A few weeks later, and shortly before his resignation, Morgan wrote an op-ed piece for The New York Times decrying the Giuliani Administration’s plan to sell WNYC AM, FM and TV to help close a $2.3 billion city budget gap. Morgan maintained that the loss of the city’s broadcast stations would be akin to the demolition of Penn Station –  particularly, he argued, because the stations were so close to self-sufficiency. [2]

Morgan appeared on WNYC’s On The Media with host Alex Jones on March 6, 1994, for a discussion about his tenure and the potential sale of WNYC, in a segment titled “Who Owns Public Radio?”

__________________________________________________

[1] Morgan, Thomas B., “A Letter From the New President,”Wavelength, May, 1990, pg. 5.

[2] Morgan, Thomas B., “Sell WNYC? Unthinkable,” The New York Times, February 23, 1994, pg. A 19.

A page from this volume.

There was some celebrating back in early May, when we completed the cataloging of the 1,397 titles in the Younghee Kim-Wait/Pablo Eisenberg Native American Literature Collection. Thankfully, no one got Gatorade poured on them, as had been threatened. I thought I would share in this post a little bit of the detective work that the last few titles required, and suggest questions that may be worth further research.

At first glance, a collection of poetry, stories, and art created in 1969 by students at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) certainly looked as if it were a one-of-a-kind manuscript. Indeed, a note from the book dealer had called it “a unique collection.” Closer examination revealed that the text was printed (probably by silk-screening), although some of the artwork may have been done by hand before the printing. With no title page on our copy, I searched WorldCat in several different ways before I felt confident that there are at least two other copies of this work in libraries, one at the New Mexico State Library, and one at UC Davis. I suspect no copy has an actual title page, and this can lead to different libraries accidentally cataloging the same work in different ways. The copy at UC Davis was given a title based on the first poem in the book…which can be a valid choice according to cataloging rules, but sometimes is confusing for researchers.

If I were looking for a research project, I might look into the history of the IAIA. When this book was created in 1969, the school was primarily a high school, and has since become a college. Did any of the creators of this volume go on to do other things in the arts? Is there anything in the student newspaper, Drumbeats, that mentions this project? How many copies did they create? Is there some connection between the IAIA or one of the authors to the Beat Generation poet Gary Snyder, who was the former owner of the copy at UC Davis? And our copy contains the inscription “For the Indian Room from M. M. May;” who was May?

The other mystery is about the author of a small pamphlet, self-published in 1948. I can find no other library holdings for “The Hollywood story 7.” As you can see from the pictures below, the author is only identified as “J. Gordon.” Thankfully, our copy is inscribed, so I had additional name information: “Jane Z. Gordon,” who also called herself “Who-shon-no.” The Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries from 1949 provided the middle name “Zane.” Some web searching led me to this short biography on the Wyandotte Nation page, which names her “Jane Zane Wallace Waters Gordon,” and provides a birth date but no death date. I am most intrigued by the statement that “Jane was a bookkeeper, weigh master, stenographer, hair dresser and play write by profession.” The biography does not list any of the plays that she wrote, mostly concentrating on her role as an activist in the 1920s. What name did she write her plays under? Were any ever published? And what’s the story behind “American Indian Unity, Inc.,” the sponsor of the publication? Are there Hollywood stories 1 through 6 out there somewhere?

This is the point where quality and quantity must be balanced. I have identified the author as “Gordon, Jane Zane, 1871-.” From my searches, I have not been able to identify her as publishing any other works under the same or a different name. Should more information come to light, I will pursue the authority work necessary to make cross references between her pseudonyms. But for now, I have far too many other things waiting in my “to do” list.

Every radio station has a government mandated station identification – a host is required to announce a station’s call letters every hour, on the hour. Here’s a look back at some of the most unique station IDs from the past 90 years. 

This station ID is from November 25, 1936.

Change came in 1938. With the storm of World War II less than a year-and-a-half away, the fascist governments of Italy and Germany were bombarding resource rich South American countries with shortwave radio broadcasts with the hope of gaining new allies. Mayor La Guardia and then Station Director Morris Novik decided to counter this propaganda. On May 27, 1938, WNYC initiated a series of half-hour programs extending ‘good will greetings’ to South America through General Electric’s shortwave station (W3XAF) in Schenectady, New York. Each program ended with this statement[1]:

“This program comes from WNYC, New York City’s own station, where seven-and-a-half million people, who have come from all parts of the world, are now living in peace and enjoying the benefits of democracy.”

Soon after it was slightly modified and adopted as WNYC’s regular station identification as heard in this February 22, 1941 clip, the one you now hear on our air a few times each day.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December, 1941, the phrase “in peace” was dropped. [2] It remained absent until the end of World War II. Sometime after the war the station ID was reworked to include the chimes from the clock at New York City Hall and sounded like this through much of the 1950s:

It is interesting to note, however, that as a consequence of WNYC’s effort to respond to fascist broadcasts, it decided to set up its own shortwave station W2XVP, operating with 1,000 watts of power at frequency of 26.1 megacycles. The original idea was to broadcast programs in Spanish or Portuguese to South America.[3] But it appears that by January, 1941 the notion of WNYC successfully countering the shortwave punch of the Axis powers was a bit over-extended. The facility instead went on the air for a couple hours a day following WNYC-AM’s regular sign-off at sundown, repeating the classical music program The Masterwork Hour, along with other selected music, news and commentary.[4] These shortwave broadcasts continued until WNYC-FM went into regular service in March, 1943.

____________________________________________________

[1] The New York Journal American, May 26, 1938.

[2] Associated Press report, December 13, 1941.      

[3] A History of WNYC, unpublished drafts of 1940 WPA manuscript, New York City Municipal Archives microfilm.

[4] “WNYC on Shortwave,” The New York Sun, January 4, 1941. p. 20.

Cover of the Documentary 47 programme of films screened in Edinburgh from 31 August – 7 September 1947 (ref. H3.P3)

As the Edinburgh International Film Festival gets ready to commence on 18 June, it’s interesting to reflect on how one the oldest and indeed the longest continually run film festival came to be.  Its roots date back to the postwar cultural revitalization of Scotland. In 1947 the Edinburgh International Festival of Music and Drama was established, and Norman Wilson realized that the medium of film was not going to be represented. Recognizing that this was a perfect venue to showcase film–as film historian Thomas Elsaesser later termed it, a ‘cultural clustering,’ a mixture of different art forms coming together for a rich community experience–Wilson, along with the Edinburgh Film Guild, went into action and took on the challenge of bringing a film festival together with limited financial backing.

“The aim of the founders, the Edinburgh Film Guild, was to have the cinema worthily represented at the first international Festival of the arts to be held in Britain” (ref. Grierson Archive, G7:44:61).The world was watching and they did not want to fail this challenge. In determining what their focus would be, they decided to showcase Scotland’s strongest contribution to film—documentaries.

“The first international Film Festival to be held in Britain will be devoted entirely to Documentary. This is no accident; for not only does Britain lead the world in documentary production, but the documentary approach—an innate feeling for reality—is now the distinguishing characteristic of British feature films” (ref. Hardy 3:9:8)

With the focus on documentaries, who better to invite to give the opening address and set the tone for the festival than Scottish-born John Grierson, the father of the British documentary movement?

A Time For Enquiry, John Grierson (ref. H3 P3)

The first film festival was modest, with only about seventy-five films shown during the eight day festival, but with the critically acclaimed films they did showcase, including Roberto Rossellini’s Paisan and Georges Rouquier’s Farrebique, they set the standard for what to expect at the festival.

Front of leaflet listing films shown at the First International Festival of Documentary Films, Edinburgh, 1947 (ref. H3.P3)

Norman Wilson, serving as Chairman of the Advisory Committee of the Festival in 1950 , explained what kind of films the festival looks for and the power of documentaries:

“It is the film of reality that the Edinburgh Festival is especially concerned with, and many people believe it is in this sphere that film-makers come nearest to the basic qualities of the cinema as a medium of creative arts. The great virtue of the film is that it can capture reality through the lens of the camera. By getting art into the country, and into the city streets among real people—into the world of everyday, which has within itself all the drama and romance of life without fabrication—the film can interpret and synthesis realities in its own creative terms. That is its unique quality as an art form, and that is what we look for in the films selected for showing at the Edinburgh Festival.” (ref. Hardy 3:8:1)

(Kelly Kloser, M.Litt. in Film Studies)

Reverse of leaflet listing films shown at the First International Festival of Documentary Films, Edinburgh, 1947 (ref. H3.P3)

The Public Interest Declassification Board (PIDB) will host a public meeting to discuss the recommendations included in its Report to the President on Transforming the Security Classification System, and its recommendation to re-examine the classification status of obsolete and historical Formerly Restricted Data (FRD) information. The meeting will focus on new processes to support the President’s commitment to implement a systematic review process for the declassification of this information.  In his Second Open Government National Action Plan, he directed the Classification Review Committee to work with Executive branch agencies to design a review process that allows the public to help identify priorities.  The Archivist of the United States, David S. Ferriero will offer opening remarks, and senior officials from Executive branch agencies will discuss the process and progress of the newly created “Formerly Restricted Data Declassification Working Group.”

This meeting is open to the public.  However, due to space limitations and access procedures, we require individuals planning to attend the meeting to register on Eventbrite.

WHEN: Thursday, June 19, 2014, 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

WHERE: National Archives and Records Administration, Room 105 – Archivist’s Reception Room, 700 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20408

Speakers will include:

• David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States
• Ambassador Nancy Soderberg, PIDB Chair
• Senior officials from the Executive Branch
• Current PIDB Members

In the Spring of 1982 The Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York City launched a series of sermons on nuclear disarmament for their Sunday service. Among those invited to preach were activist Dr. Helen Caldicott, retired Admiral Hyman Rickover, arms negotiator Paul Warnke, physicist Wolfgang Panofsky, and the writer Kurt Vonnegut. At the time, NYPR Archives Director Andy Lanset covered the Vonnegut sermon as a volunteer for the WNYC News Department, but the entire recording has not been available, until now.

Kurt Vonnegut’s literary reputation rests primarily on his novels, especially the ones he published in the 1960s: Mother Night (1962), Cat’s Cradle (1963), God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965), and Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). But he also wrote many, many great pieces of nonfiction–enough to fill three books with college graduation speeches, eulogies for fellow writers who had passed away, incisive analyses of American politics, observations on his German/American ancestry and his experience as a POW in World War II, tips on how to write well, and dozens of interviews over the years covering all these topics and many more. Along with Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, and Hunter S. Thompson, Vonnegut was one of the creators of the “New Journalism” of the 60s and 70s, in which journalists often made themselves an integral part of the subject matter they were exploring. No one who loves Vonnegut’s fiction should miss the compelling essays collected in Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons (1974), Palm Sunday (1982), Fates Worse than Death (1991 ), and A Man Without a Country (2005).

Fates Worse than Death (whose transcript appears in the book of the same name) is one of Vonnegut’s nonfiction masterpieces. All his signature writerly tropes–friendly humor, withering irony, outrageous hyperbole, an ability to be simultaneously distanced from man’s folly and desperate to correct it–all are on display in this remarkable Vonnegut “sermon” delivered at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine on May 23, 1982. A life-long religious skeptic, Vonnegut got this unlikely speaking opportunity because he had recently gone on a trip to the Galapagos Islands with Paul Moore, the Bishop of St. John the Divine. The two had enjoyed each other’s company enough for Moore to invite Vonnegut to speak, and for Vonnegut to accept the invitation.

Fortunately, the resulting homily was recorded: hearing it rather than just reading it is a significantly more powerful experience. While he never raises his voice, Vonnegut doesn’t pull any rhetorical punches just because he’s addressing people sitting in a cathedral. The old phrase “like a bull in a china shop” comes to mind, as does “be careful what you wish for (Bishop Moore), since you might get it.” Vonnegut’s edgy topic is the elephant in the geopolitical room of the day: namely, how thoughtful Americans might respond to renewed Cold War tensions during the Reagan administration.

Vonnegut begins with an easy joke: “This is a pretty small church, but I guess I have to start somewhere.” He gets an easy laugh. But the laughter soon fades as he gets down to business. Are there really any “fates worse than death,” he asks? Would having the Russians take over America and enslave us be one? (While Vonnegut doesn’t mention it, the old 1950s anti-communist bumper sticker, “Better Dead than Red,” must have been in the back of his mind as he composed his oration). Or would being crucified be a fate worse than death, at least until one expired? What are our thousands of nukes really for, if not to deliver all of humanity from suffering fates worse than death? But then why do people usually try so hard to keep living when they’re occupied by foreign armies, enslaved, or even forced into death camps?

Only Kurt Vonnegut would pose such questions in a cathedral, and only he could answer them with the kind of moral clarity that makes this wondrous sermon a worthy successor to Emerson’s “Divinity School Address.”

Special thanks to Dr. Mark Vonnegut.

Thanks to the volunteers and Dr Marlena Whiting for their help moving the Georges Tchalenko Archive to the Archive Room (7.50 m of boxes + 4 boxes of slides and card records transported down five staircases – this Georgian building has no lift!). There is increasing interest in this archive, so we have moved it to be more accessible to researchers.

Georges Tchalenko was a Russian-born archaeologist who carried out research and survey work in Syria between 1934-1975 on behalf of the French Institute in Beirut.

The archive includes research notes, photographs, letters and notebooks – a fascinating record of sites and monuments as they stood over half a century ago.

Amanda Casselton
Tuesday, June 10, 2014 – 10:57

The State Records Office of Western Australia (SRO) is conducting a survey to assess the records management training needs and interests across State and local government in WA. 

The survey consists of  ten questions and should only take around five minutes to complete.  All responses will be anonymous and remain confidential.

The Survey will remain open until 5pm on Friday 20 June 2014.  If you have any queries regarding the survey, please contact Amanda Casselton on 9427 3663 or amanda.casselton@sro.wa.gov.au .