Literary-Classics

Free Phone Calls, Free Classes, Free Fun! - WTVR-TV

2011-03-16T13:14:00.001-07:00

Free Phone Calls, Free Classes, Free Fun! - WTVR-TV

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RICHMOND, VIRGINIA

Check out the latest Free Stuff we found for you.

FREE PHONE CALLS: To help communicate with loved ones in Japan after the tragic earthquake and tsunami, AT&T and Verizon are offering free long distance calls and texts to Japan for the next few weeks. AT & T is also offering residential customers credits for up to 60 minutes of direct dial calling to Japan through the end of March. All calls made from a Verizon residential landline to Japan will be rated at no charge through April 10.

FREE CPR CLASS: Richmond Fire and the Greater Richmond Red Cross are holding a free CPR training, this Saturday (3/19) at three city fire stations. From noon to 1, get instruction in hands-only CPR and first aid training. You'll also receive a free first aid kit, safety information, and free lunch. Call 780-2250 for details.

-Event Locations:
-Fire Station #10 900 Hermitage Rd. Richmond, VA 23220
-Fire Station #15 2614 First Ave. Richmond, VA 23222
-Fire Station #22 2420 Broad Rock Rd. Richmond, VA 23224

FREE TENNIS CLINICS: The Richmond Tennis Association is hosting two free "tennis Night in America" events for area youth. This Sunday (3/20) at 3pm at Willow Oaks Country Club, and another on Thursday, March 24th at 6pm at the Ashe Center. Both events will feature tennis drills, games, instruction, prizes and snacks.

FREE ADMISSION: Busch Gardens Williamsburg has a special "buy one, get one free" ticket offer for Virginia residents. Tickets must be used by May 22nd. The deal is good only with on-line purchase. The park will be open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays during the spring, and daily April 1 - 10 and April 15 – 24.

FREE JAZZ: The Virginia Museum has free admission to it's Jazz Cafe program every Thursday evening from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. This week's featured performer (3/17) is the Larri Branch Agenda. Both Jazz Cafe and Museum admission are always free.

FREE ADMISSIONS: Get free admission to over 150 museums and cultural exhibits across America, thanks to the "Museums on Us" program. Your Bank of America credit or debit card and photo ID will get you in anytime the first full weekend of the month through the end of the year.

FREE LONG DISTANCE: Make free, 10-minute long distance and international calls, just by listening to a short, ten-second ad first. Get your local access number to "Freephone2phone" here.

FREE CREDIT REPORTS: This is a great time to get a copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus. This is absolutely free, as mandated by law. And your personal information is completely protected. This site is sponsored by Equifax, Trans-Union and Experian.

FREE PARK ADMISSION: The U. S. Department of Interior will once again offer you free admission to more than 100 national parks around the country several times this year. There'll be a total of 17 days in 2011 that you can enjoy some of the country's greatest attractions free of charge. Normally, entrance fees can range from $3.00 to $25.00.

FREE STUFF: If you're a Facebook member, a lot of restaurants are currently offering freebies, if you "like" them on Facebook. Search for your favorite and see if they have an offer. And while you're on Facebook, stop by the CBS6 page and "like" us too.

FREE QDOBA: Children eat free at Qdoba on Sundays with the purchase of an adult entrée.

FREE TEAM PARTY: Are you or your child part of an organized youth community sports team. Kick up your team morale with a free Team party at SkateNation Plus. Enjoy free pizza and beverages. Parties are offered Sundays through Thursdays from 5 to 9 p.m., pre-registration is required.

FREE FIREHOUSE SUBS: A lot of restaurants offer birthday clubs that you have to sign up for, to get freebies on your special day. At Firehouse Subs, just show up on your birthday with I.D with your birth date, and get a free medium sub. There are several locations in the metro area.

FREE APP: Catch up on your reading with a special offer from Barnes and Noble to build your e-book library. Download their free app to your computer or smart phone here, then download free literary classics.

FREE MUSEUM ADMISSION: The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts is open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., until 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday evenings. 365 days a year. Museum admission is always free.

FREE MUSEUM ADMISSION: The Virginia Historical Society is offering free admission all year long. The museum is at 428 North Boulevard in Richmond.

FREE STUFF: Watch for Cheryl Miller's weekly on-air "Free Stuff" segment Wednesdays at 5:30 p.m. on WTVR-CBS6, Richmond, Virginia.

LOTS OF FREE STUFF: How about getting and giving stuff free? The Freecycle Network is made up of nearly five thousand groups and nearly 70-thousand members around the world who are getting and giving away stuff free. Membership is free It's a great way to recycle, get rid of items you don't want, and get things you do.

FREE GIFT CARDS: Spend some of these warmer days reading, and earning a money. You can earn free gift cards and books for your reviews. Click the link here for more information.

FIND FREE WI-FI ACCESS: Want to know which local restaurants and coffee shops offer free wireless internet access? Get a directory for Greater Richmond or any city worldwide, by clicking here.

FREE 411 CALLS: Never pay to call information again. 800-FREE-411 works for both residential and business listings across America. All you have to do is listen to a 10-second commercial before getting the listing you want, but the service is free.

FREE E-BOOKS: Harlequin books has a free offer for you. Download up to 16 free e-books. Click here for the link.

FREE JEWELRY: The Silver Jewelry Club offers an assortment of free, pure sterling silver jewelry every day. From pendants to rings to earrings, all you pay is the shipping and handling.

FREE COMPUTER TECH HELP: If you have a problem with your computer, and no budget to fix it, Protonic offers free computer support and computer-related information online and by e-mail. This free service is manned by volunteers world-wide.

If you know of any event, or great free offer, e-mail is to us at freestuff@wtvr.com, and we'll pass it along. Thanks!

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Sexing Up Literary Classics - Hollywood.com

2011-03-11T13:36:00.001-08:00

Sexing Up Literary Classics - Hollywood.com

Posted:

We've all been there. It comes time to pick the Saturday afternoon movie and you really want to see that sweeping love story adapted from your favorite Jane Austen book, but as soon as you think the words, your friends or your boyfriend or that guy with the judgy face standing next to you in the ticket line start to groan loudly in protest and they think of fifteen different ways to tell you how boring they think the movie will be. Fret not, there is hope. These movies are actually pretty awesome and exciting if you explain them correctly.

First off, when you're lobbying to see Jane Eyre at the theater this weekend or you're arguing for putting Little Women next on the Netflix queue, you want to avoid words like "touching," "heart-warming," "tear-jerking," "thought-provoking," "classic," "feminism," and "literary." Basically, avoid anything that refers to the fact that the movie once came from a book that may have been required reading in your A.P. English class. That is wrong. That is the element producing your friends' groans of distaste. Instead, try our helpful, sexed-up descriptions of the canonical books turned super-awesome-fun-time movies to trick them. (Don't worry, this won't have any adverse effects.)

Jane Eyre
Jane's tough as nails. She's been tortured her whole life. She's been told she's no good. She's lost anything she's ever loved. But when she breaks out on her own, she finds a man who's just as un-tamable as she is. Rochester's smoldering magnetism is irresistible, but he's hiding a dark and terrible secret SO unforgivable, SO terrifying, that it may just rip them apart forever.Mrs. Dalloway
Take this journey through burning desire, sexual tension, untimely death and LESBIAN fantasies. Clarissa took the easy road. She chose the nice guy. But life's not that easy. All it takes is one day to send her careening through her past, reliving all her mistakes and former lovers until it all comes to a screeching halt.Pride and Prejudice
She can't stand him. Everything about her life enrages him. Yet, something draws them together. They're both so full of anger, but is it really anger? Or is it unbridled sexual tension building and mounting until it overtakes them? Will they resist, or will their unbearable lust demolish the obstacles between them?Little Women
Five women. One house. No rules. Jo and her sisters are left to their own devices when their father leaves to fight in the war. They share everything, space, beds – even MEN. But when the going gets rough, things get complicated and when things get complicated, shit gets intense.The Picture of Dorian Gray
What if you could be drop dead SEXY for eternity? It's like the fountain of youth, only ten times better. Dorian Gray is forever young, handsome, rakishly good-looking, and desirable and he's got the unrelenting freedom to do whatever he wants. JACKPOT. He answers to no one and nothing. He's got the power and the appeal, but can he handle it all?

To spread classic music and make the world know Chinese music - Xinhua News Agency

2011-03-09T13:13:00.001-08:00

To spread classic music and make the world know Chinese music - Xinhua News Agency

Posted:

By Wu Xiaoxiao

SINGAPORE, March 7 (Xinhua) -- "Imagination is more important than knowledge", 82-year-old Zheng Xiaoying, China's first famous female conductor for the opera and orchestra, likes to quote Einstein's words to express how important responsibility the classic music takes.

"I think music, especially the classic music can inspire people 's thinking abilities. It can make people feel their souls," she told Xinhua in an exclusive interview during her visit to Singapore, invited by Singapore Chinese Orchestra (SCO) to conduct concerts for the International Women's Day.

Zheng, also the first Chinese conductor to conduct in the western theater and now works as the Artistic Director and Principal Conductor of the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra, said she will insist on spreading the classic music like orchestra to the society and making the world know better about China's music of the date.

As one of the famous conductors and musicians in the world, Professor Zheng had helmed many important responsibilities as the conductor of the China National Opera House, the Central Conservatory of Music, and the Artistic Director of the Women Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra; and also won countless awards for her contributions.

And the word she prefers to describe the outstanding music pieces is "classic". She said: "I like 'classic' but not the ' classical' because that the previous one is more inclusive." She pays much attention to help common people improve their musical and cultural quality.

"Actually all the music pieces are inspired by the public, whatever from the Western classics or the Chinese folks. During the work, I've communicated with lots of people to understand that they are the origins of our music."

"A composer's job is to collect and select good music to make them pass down in a better way," Zheng said. She keeps learning from other musical styles like Peking Opera to combine with her knowledge of Western classics to promote her efforts on musical spread education.

She continued to give the better music to the public after she took the conductor position of the Xiamen Philharmonic Orchestra in 1997. Zheng not only made the orchestra national first class, but also improved the music appreciation level of local residents.

She said: "We have ten free concerts for students every year. I really hope that every high school student can attend one concert in the concert hall before the graduation. Students can know that the orchestra and the classic music are not too hard to contact. They are just another musical style to wait to be known."

In terms of the popular music which is the major part in the market, Zheng said: "I only hope people can know the classic music 's existence in the market. There are several musical styles and levels. I just want people to learn the basics about the classic music through our efforts. We open one more window for people to make more choices and pursue higher levels about their daily music. "

And life also rewards her efforts by giving her more confidence in her work. Once when she finished a concert in the U.S., she received a warm invitation from the Silicon Valley. Some engineers invited her to conduct their chorus. And some words in the letter moved her deeply, "I saw your concert when I was in the university, you and the music changed my life's pursuit." These engineers partly attended the concerts which Zheng Xiao Ying organized for the universities.

Meanwhile, Zheng is devoted to introducing the modern development and achievements of China's music to the western world. "The Resounding of the Earth Buildings", a Hakka symphony which shows the spirits and culture of Hakka, aroused the huge appreciation worldwide.

Zheng said: "We don't need to compete with German to play their own Beethoven's pieces. I'm the Chinese and I found that our ethnical music has lots of good elements. We can play the Chinese music by the orchestra as well. It can make the Western countries know that China has its own brilliant pieces and also has distinguished philharmonic orchestras."

The last movement of "The Resounding of the Earth Buildings" is the Hakka's folk song. Zheng leads the chorus to cooperate with the local chorus to sing this song. "They are just two sentences with simple music and so many foreigners are singing with us," she smiled.

Zheng insists on spreading Chinese music into its mainstream society. The audiences of her concerts are not only overseas Chinese and the western public, but also some officials like senators and governors of states. "I hope that Chinese music can be understood by more western people. I hope their people, especially the dominant society can see our development and learn about our achievements," she said.

The famous conductor established an opera center in 2011. "Many people don't understand this in terms of my age. But I think I can do something more for opera conducting which I really love. And I hope I can make people know better about opera," she said.

The professor will conduct two operas in Chinese version to spread the Chinese version operas. "Like the translation for the western literary classics, the translation for the classic operas also needed to be emphasized. Only when the audiences understand what this opera singing about, they can feel the beauty of the music at the same time. I know this is a hard road but I don't scare," she said.

This is Zheng's first cooperation with the SCO and the second visit in Singapore. She spoke highly of the development of the local classic music and said, "they take much count of fostering the professionals." And she also appreciated the support and assistance the two national orchestras - Singapore Symphony Orchestra and Singapore Chinese Orchestra - received.

She thought that music is a very important way to help cultural communication. "Music can conquer the language barrier. Singapore has lots of people who have the Hakka Ancients so that music pieces like 'The Resounding of the Earth Building' can strike a chord with them," she said.

Odyssey of the Mind Tournament - Albany Times Union (blog)

2011-03-08T13:32:00.001-08:00

Odyssey of the Mind Tournament - Albany Times Union (blog)

Posted:

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Students apply their imagination and ingenuity to solve problems that range from building mechanical devices to presenting their own interpretation of literary classics. "With its largely volunteer structure, the Odyssey of the Mind competition is a very ...

Odyssey of the Mind Saturday competition - Sparta Independent

2011-03-07T13:30:00.001-08:00

Odyssey of the Mind Saturday competition - Sparta Independent

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Odyssey of the Mind Saturday competition

TOBYHANNA � Students in Northeast Pennsylvania are taking the opportunity Saturday, March 5 to show off their abilities in Odyssey of the Mind (OotM), an international problem-solving competition in which creativity, mental stamina and teamwork are key.

Pocono Mountain West High School on state Route 940 in Tobyhanna will be teeming with creative students who are hoping to win the first step to represent Northeast Pa. at the OotM 2011 World Finals.

Not only do teams have to excel in their five long-term problems, but they must also perform well in a spontaneous problem, in which they solve a top-secret, never-before-seen problem on the spot.

The tournament starts 9 a.m. on March 5 and continues through the awards ceremony in the late afternoon. From several schools across the region, 75 teams of seven students each, or about 525 students total, will compete.

The top two teams in each division and problem will advance to state finals in Williamsport, Winners at state finals compete against teams from across the US and countries like China, Germany, Japan, Poland, and Singapore at the World Finals for a week in May at Iowa State University.

Spectators are welcome to join the rest of the supporters of OotM: parents, coaches, judges, teachers and students encouraging their favorite competitors.

DVSD Odyssey of the mind

competition schedule - March 5

The schedule shows competitors, divisions in which they are competing, the time for their long term problem competition and their spontaneous problem competition. All main problems will be in the main gym, except Problem 6, which will be in the auxillary gym. Spontaneous problems are staged in the "Spontaneous Wing."

Problem 1: Vehicle - Extreme Mousemobiles: Teams build a vehicle that travels around an obstacle course, but there's a catch: the vehicles can only be powered by mouse traps!

Ding-Del ES, Division I, 10:15 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

Ding-Del MS, Division II, 10:45 a.m. and 1 p.m.

DVHS, Division III, 1:30 p.m. and 9:45 a.m.

Problem 2: Technical - As Good as Gold�berg: Teams build extremely complicated devices that complete normally simple tasks as inspired by cartoonist Rube Goldberg.

Ding-Del ES, Division I, 9:30 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.

Shohola ES, Division I, 10:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

Ding-Del MS, Division II, 1:15 p.m. and 9 a.m.

DVHS, Division III, 3:40 p.m. and 10:30 a.m.

Problem 3: Classics - L� Tour Guide: Teams travel around the world to spots visited by tourists. Their tour guide is based off of characters from various literary classics such as Sherlock Holmes.

DVES, Division I, 9:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m.

Ding-Del ES, Division I, 1 p.m. and 10:30 a.m.

Shohola ES, Division I, 2 p.m. and 11 a.m.

Shohola ES, Division II, 10 a.m. and 12:30 p.m.

DVHS, Division III, 1:45 p.m. and 9:15 a.m.

Problem 4: Structure - Unhinged Structure: Teams design a balsa wood structure that weighs no more than 15 paper clips and supports weights. These lightweight structures are known to hold over 1,000 pounds. The structure is made out of two sections that are connected by a working hinge.

DVES, Division II, 12:50 p.m. and 9:45 a.m.

DVHS, Division III, 2:50 p.m. and 11:15 a.m.

Problem 5: Theatrical - Full Circle: Teams create an original humorous performance that focuses on something that changes form or appearance and then ends up exactly as it started! NASA sponsors this problem.

Shohola ES, Division I, 9 a.m. and 1:50 p.m.

DVMS, Division II, 10:55 a.m. and 2:15 p.m.

Ding-Del MS, Division II, 11:15 a.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Problem 6: Money Maker - Division I primary schools only

DVES Primary, 8:45 a.m. and 12:45 p.m.

Ding-Del Primary, 11:20 a.m. and 2:45 p.m.

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Crown Media Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call (Q4 2010) - YAHOO!

2011-03-03T13:36:00.001-08:00

Crown Media Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call (Q4 2010) - YAHOO!

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Live Call: Crown Media Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call (Q4 2010) - Yahoo! Finance

Crown Media Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call (Q4 2010)

Today's Calls

Call Details
Crown Media Holdings, Inc. Earnings Conference Call (Q4 2010) Thu, Mar 3, 2011, 11:00 am Eastern
About Crown Media Holdings, Inc. (NasdaqGM:CRWN)	Other Calls
Crown Media Holdings, Inc., through its subsidiary, Crown Media United States, LLC, owns and operates pay television channels in the United States and Puerto Rico. The company primarily operates the Hallmark Channel, the Hallmark Movie Channel, and the Hallmark Movie Channel HD that provide entertainment programming for adults and families. Its channels offer a range of entertainment programming, including television series, movies, miniseries, theatricals, romances, literary classics, and contemporary stories. As of December 31, 2009, the Hallmark Channel had approximately 88.3 million subscribers and the Hallmark Movie Channel had approximately 29.1 million subscribers. The company was founded in 1999 and is based in Studio City, California. Crown Media Holdings, Inc. is a subsidiary of Hallmark Entertainment Investments Co.

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UNDER THE NORTHERN SKY Reading The Future - First Perspective

2011-03-02T13:45:00.001-08:00

UNDER THE NORTHERN SKY Reading The Future - First Perspective

Posted:

Written by Administrator

Wednesday, 02 March 2011 11:35

by Xavier Kataquapit
www.underthenorthernsky.com
A friend of mine came to visit recently to ask for help with a new piece of technology. Her son had given her a Kindle, an electronic reader or ereader. She needed assistance in setting up her new device and was seeking some answers on how to load the latest books. I was happy to help and I spent a few hours on my own learning how the device operated.
I had read a lot about ereader technology and even downloaded books that I could view on my home computer screen. An ereader is a small electronic device that only provides the basic ability of being able to read documents in a light compact and portable format. It is like reading paper without the paper.
As I looked further into how to use my friend's ereader, I found a wealth of online information. I figured out the obvious task of how to purchase an ebook, load it on the ereader and use the built in features of reading, searching and other extras. However, I was surprised at what I also discovered online. As an option to buying new ebooks, there is an endless variety of reading material available for free online. Most of the major classical works from the past few hundred years are freely available online as being part of the public domain. I quickly downloaded 50 of the greatest literary classics in half an hour and loaded them onto the ereader using Project Gutenberg, a website dedicated to digitizing public domain books for others to download and read.
The process of being able to freely access a library of material made me think of what I had missed out on when I grew up on the James Bay coast. Back then, there was rarely any reading material in our home. Mom and dad were uncomfortable with the English language and we all spoke our Cree dialect every day. English was a foreign language and books had no practical use in our lives. If any book appeared in our home, it was usually a copy of the bible, which was not high on our list of priority reading. There were however comic books which we viewed for the images as much as for the copy.
One summer, I discovered a small paperback copy of 'Journey To The Center Of The Earth' by Jules Verne. I remember being fascinated by the book and the writing. It was something that was totally alien to me, yet it captivated me enough so that I read the entire book. As my imagination took over, I enjoyed the opportunity to visit Europe, Germany and Iceland through this book and I followed a group of characters as they wandered deep into the earth. Verne brought me to a time that was over a hundred years before me and to a place thousands of miles away. I was hooked because reading offered a way out of my own reality for a while. When I finished the book, the environment around me did not offer access to any more reading material. I forgot about reading for some time until I gained access to libraries and book stores when I attended high school in Timmins and North Bay. Then I became a book junkie.
The world is much different now. With ease I can find classic books by the greatest minds that ever wrote. An internet connection of any speed is all anyone needs these days to access multitudes of wonderful books. Many classic books, in basic text only versions, are less than a megabyte in size which means they download fast and take up little memory. An entire book is about a quarter of the size of an average music MP3 file. Many ebooks are offered for free in multiple formats that make it easy to view in the latest ereader formats from websites like Project Gutenberg, the Google E-Bookstore, Internet Archive and Open Library.
For a while I tried reading ebooks using my laptop while I was travelling. It's not easy to have a heavy electronic device in your lap while trying to lounge back in a chair or bed. It's also not safe to block laptop cooling fans with your pants, blanket or a pillow, as the heat generated will be enough to destroy your computer and perhaps even cause a fire. The latest ereader technology is making it easier for us to read what we want in a modern format. Ereaders are becoming less expensive and the average cost is under $150. Imagine for that cost you can take hundreds of book titles with you anywhere in the world. You can read on a bus, in an airplane, on a train, at home, out in nature and wherever your heart desires. If you had to carry those books with you it would be impossible. As the old saying goes "Its the wave of the future". The new generations don't read newspapers, magazines or books but they do love electronic toys so they will be getting their books on line. I am happy to see this and just wished I could have done it all when I was eight years old back in Attawapiskat.
www.underthenorthernsky.com

Great Gatsby 'Nintendo' game released online - Washington Post

2011-03-01T13:43:00.001-08:00

Great Gatsby 'Nintendo' game released online - Washington Post

Posted:

Give up all hope of getting any work done today. "The Great Gatsby" has come to a computer near you.

According to the game's Web site, a San Francisco developer found an old dusty Nintendo game cartridge at a garage sale, bought it for 50 cents and discovered a game never released in the U.S.

"The Great Gatsby" is old-school Nintendo in all its 8-bit glory. With dastardly villains, the requisite keyboard soundtrack and fantastic flat visuals. The advertisement on the site reads, "It's the roaring 20s, and trouble's in store for Nick Carraway. It's hard to enjoy a party when you're being chased by wacky waiters, dizzy drinkers, and crazy dancers! Now you have to find Gatsby, the mysterious man you saw disappear on the hillside ... or did he?"

The game has less mysterious beginnings than a garage sale discovery, but it doesn't make the game any less incredible. The San Francisco developer, Charlie Hoey, actually created, coded and published the game with the help of his friend Pete Smith as a tribute to their nostalgic love of old NES games. The duo started working on the game almost a year ago, beginning with the iconic Gatsby cover. They thought they would create an 8-bit tribute to it, but once they finished, they decided to try to create one level of the game. Four levels later, they decided to release their product to the world.

"There's not a single just-okay sentence in that book," Hoey said by phone, sounding more than a little shell shocked by the game's popularity. They only put the game online Monday morning, but by Tuesday it had ricocheted around the Web, bringing the site down with the number of requests to play the game.

They considered a full literary classics arcade, with their next submission being Jane Eyre (which would be amazing), but instead they put the source code online for any other developer hankering to create another classic NES game.

So, go let yourself be borne back ceaselessly into the past NES glory.

How about a library? - Deccan Herald

2011-02-26T13:23:00.001-08:00

How about a library? - Deccan Herald

Posted:

It took Thatcher Wine a year to amass 2,000 well-preserved white vellum and cream-coloured leather-bound books for a "gentleman's library" in the Northern California estate of a private equity manager.

Perfectly matched sets of books bound in antique vellum, a pale leather made from goat or sheepskin, are an elusive quarry, especially if they all have to be in English, said Wine, a former Internet entrepreneur who now creates custom book collections and decorative "book solutions," as he puts it, in his Boulder, Colo., warehouse. "German is easy – it's easy to find a complete set of vellum Goethe in the original German," he said. But Wine had to search long and hard to find clean copies of authors like Thackeray, Galsworthy and Conrad.

More than pretty buildings

For this client was after more than pretty bindings: He wanted the option of being able to read his books.The young Upper East Side clients of Jenny Fischbach, a design partner at Cullman & Kravis Inc., the tony Manhattan decorating firm, were similarly inclined – they wanted literary classics mixed with art books for a silver-inflected art library. So Wine chose works by Kate Chopin, Jane Austen and Robert Browning and wrapped them in matte silver paper, to match the silver hardware in the room.

Not all of Wine's clients, who include hotel designers and high-end builders, are so fastidious about content. For the spa in Philippe Starck's Icon Brickell, the icy glass condo tower in Miami, he was asked to wrap 1,500 books in blank white paper, without titles, to provide a "textural accent" to the space.

He chose mass-market hardcovers that flood the used book outlets – titles by John Grisham and Danielle Steel, or biographies of Michael Jackson, he said – because they are cheap, clean and a nice, generous size. For another Starck project, in Dallas, Wine used black paper to wrap the 2,000 vintage books he picked for their "distressed edges," so they could be displayed backward.Book lovers, you can exhale.

The printed, bound book has been given a stay of execution by an unlikely source: the design community. In this Kindle-and-iPad age, architects, builders and designers are still making spaces with shelves – lots and lots of shelves – and turning to companies like Wines' Juniper Books for help filling them up.Jeffrey Colle, a builder of vast Hamptons estates that mimic turn-of-the-century designs, wouldn't think of omitting a library from one of his creations.

Right leather-bound look

A 16,800-square-foot Shingle-style house on 42 acres in Water Mill, N.Y., comes with a $29.995 million price tag and a library Colle had built from French chalked quarter-sawn oak; with about 150 feet of shelf space, there is room for more than 1,000 books. It's up to the buyer or their decorator to fill that space, said Colle, who has collaborated with Bennett Weinstock, a Philadelphia decorator known for his English interiors, on some of his libraries. Weinstock still shops in London to find just the right leather-bound look, he said.

"Some people will insist that they be in English, because they want them to look as if they could read the books," Weinstock said. "Others don't care what language the books are in as long as the bindings are beautiful."

High-profile builders

Even a modernist builder like Steve Hermann in Los Angeles, who makes sleek multimillion-dollar houses for buyers like Christina Aguilera, includes acres of shelves in his high-end spec houses. Hermann designed a glassy, Neutra-like house with a 60-by-14-foot shelving system, which has room for 4,000 books, he said.

"But who has 4,000 books?" he said. "I always stage my houses, so it was up to me to fill the shelves." He ordered 2,000 white-wrapped books from Wine and deployed them in tidy, horizontal stacks (the white-wrapped book, it seems, is quickly becoming this year's design cliche).Why build such huge shelves?"I could have hung art," Hermann said.

"But I like the textural feeling of shelves, and of books on display."

So did the buyer: The place, books included, sold for $6.4 million to a British man in the fashion business.The old practice of buying yards of leather-bound law journals or Swedish medical texts for an instant library is out of favor. "I don't think you should have law journals unless one of you is actually a lawyer," Weinstock said.Instead, some designers are finding ever more elaborate ways to tweak books their clients already own.

Peter Pennoyer, a New York architect, is designing wooden boxes that look like perfectly bound books – "in sort of a tomato-soup-with-cream color," he said – to contain an unruly looking collection of literary classics owned by a client."A book," he pointed out, "is a meaningful, sensory experience. If we buy her all new Trollope, then she's suddenly looking at a volume that's foreign, that doesn't smell right or have the typeface that's familiar. If she doesn't have the memory of having read the book, it's not going to mean the same thing.

My thought is to elevate all these mismatched bindings and put them in these containers, so it all looks uniform and pretty, but the client can keep the books she's loved for decades."Other designers say their clients are asking for more personalised content: colour-coordinated regional histories, for example, or Western-themed titles with punchy, early 20th-century jackets."I don't think anyone says blatantly, 'I don't care' anymore," said Fischbach of Cullman & Kravis. "There are always parameters, even if it's what I jokingly call the typical intellectual collector's library."

Alexa Hampton, the New York decorator, remembers her father, Mark Hampton, buying "masses of random, leather-bound books to assemble libraries," she said. "But the people I work for don't want books just as backdrop or theater, which they did 20 years ago. Now they want books they actually might read."Two weeks ago, Alexa Hampton and a foreign client for whom she is decorating an Upper East Side pied-a-terre spent a morning at the Strand, picking out histories and antique sports books for a dining room, and contemporary fiction and biographies for the bedroom.

Making it pretty

"When people are reading less," Hampton said, "you think more people would say, 'Just fill it with books and make it pretty.' Instead, they are very involved."It's not always practical to haul the client off to a bookstore, however. Jenny McKibben, who runs the book-by-the-foot business at the Strand – which now accounts for 5 percent of the store's sales, she said – takes mostly phone and Internet orders.

Designers at the Rockwell Group asked for Rat Pack biographies, gambling and other "Sin City themes," she said, more than 1,000 books to spread about the 110,000-square-foot casino and 2,995 rooms of the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, the new casino resort there.

The designers of the new Bowlmor, a bowling alley-nightclub on West 43rd Street in Manhattan, envisioned the place as a TriBeCa loft – minimal and modern – and asked for a collection "that was young, fun and hip." McKibben said she procured "100 feet of brightly colored books on music, film, cars, games, retro-themed fun topics, NYC-themed topics, wine and spirits, architecture, modern art and design, contemporary fiction and, of course, bowling."

"I think I'm pretty good at extrapolating tastes from a small amount of information," said Wine, who created a collection of 4,000 books, packed them up in boxes labeled by room and topic – contemporary mysteries, for example, for the front hall – and sent them off to the house to be unpacked and styled by Fischbach.As she put it: "Architects build so many shelves into new construction – it adds warmth and their aesthetic stamp. Thatcher is a necessity at this point in these large homes," she said, ticking off five projects on which she and Wine have collaborated. "I couldn't pull off filling these miles of bookshelves without him."

For his work, Wine charges from $80 to $350 a foot. The rare vellum is more pricey, at about $750 a foot; the Northern California library he did for the private equity manager cost about $80,000, he said.

In the custom book business, you might call Wine a designer label and the Strand, ready-to-wear (prices there start at $10 a foot and range up to $400 for antique leather).The Maryland-based Wonder Book, then, with its 54,000-square-foot warehouse, represents the mass market. Chuck Roberts, its amiable owner, said he gets requests from developers, set designers, decorators needing 1,000 books for a holiday deadline, even wedding planners.

"We've had a great year – it's broken all records," Roberts said, noting that his book-by-the-foot business now represents almost 20 percent of his total sales. Though "earth tones" are his bestsellers, he said, last week a national builder asked for light blue and gray books to stage multiple homes.

It's a practice that irritates book designers like Chip Kidd, who creates noted covers for Knopf."It feels sort of needlessly complicated, like turning on the vacuum cleaner and going and finding a piece of dirt," Kidd said.

Last year, Restoration Hardware sold a decorative product called a book bundle. It was a fascinating modern relic, even a fetish item – a clutch of books with rough edges and the covers ripped off, stitched with twine. The company's website described it rather winningly: "Liberated from their covers, stitched and bound together with jute twine, the foxed and faded pages of old books become objets d'art."

Great Gatsby 'Nintendo' game released online - Washington Post

2011-02-25T13:06:00.001-08:00

Great Gatsby 'Nintendo' game released online - Washington Post

Posted:

Give up all hope of getting any work done today. "The Great Gatsby" has come to a computer near you.

According to the game's Web site, a San Francisco developer found an old dusty Nintendo game cartridge at a garage sale, bought it for 50 cents and discovered a game never released in the U.S.

So, go let yourself be borne back ceaselessly into the past NES glory.

“Not your ordinary Shakespeare - Gonzaga Bulletin” plus 1 more

2011-02-24T13:23:00.001-08:00

“Not your ordinary Shakespeare - Gonzaga Bulletin” plus 1 more

Not your ordinary Shakespeare - Gonzaga Bulletin

Posted:

Whether you're a fan or a foe, you will love the Gonzaga University Readers Theater Project's presentation of "The Complete Works of William Shakespeare."

"Complete Works" is a fast-paced and witty tour through all of the 37 works of Shakespeare that will have audience members engaged throughout the entire 70-minute performance. The production was first created in 1981 by a Californian trio who hoped to simplify the sometimes baffling work of the legendary playwright, and has since been performed by the creators and hundreds of other theater companies around the world.

It's difficult to pinpoint just one word to describe all the action and excitement intertwined into the storyline of "Complete Works," but if sophomore David FauntLeRoy had to choose one, it would be "wacky."

FauntLeRoy is among the 10 undergraduate actors starring in the show that brings literary classics like "Othello" and "Hamlet" to life. His modern-day spin on Romeo's character in "Romeo and Juliet" will have the audience gasping for air from laughter, and ladies, be sure to look out for him as he provides us with a little eye candy during the cast's replication of "Macbeth."

"Expect to laugh and get out of your seats," FauntLeRoy warns Zags attending "Complete Works" this weekend.

Is anyone else having difficulty remembering the last time that the audience was asked to participate during one of Shakespeare's plays? You're not alone, and there's a simple explanation for that.

"Any expectations you have will be thrown out the door," senior Beth Thompson said before her dress rehearsal Monday night.

"People's presumptions about Shakespeare often include men in tights and a lot of confusion, but this show will help people better understand his work in a way that is interesting and fun," Thompson said.

Unlike any other Shakespearean production, "Complete Works" is full of sword-slashing action, passionate love scenes and a head-bobbing rap.

Erin Fitzgerald is one of two freshmen eager to perform this weekend.

"This production is unique because it allows the audience to understand Shakespeare more easily through a modern lens," she said.

Leading the actors of the The Readers Theater is Fr. Kevin Connell, who is proud to identify himself as one of the three people who formed the club during the spring of 2007. He gives a lot of credit to his cast for the show they have put together for this weekend, especially given the little time they've had to prepare (the cast has only rehearsed once or twice a week for the last five weeks). Connell loves working with The Readers Theater because it allows students to explore plays they wouldn't normally perform, and "Complete Works" is no exception.

"If you love Shakespeare, you'll love this show," Connell said. "If you hate Shakespeare, you'll love this show even more."

Admission is a free-will donation for any show goers this weekend. Proceeds will be donated to St. Aloysius Gonzaga High School in Nairobi, Kenya.

Members of the GU Readers Theater Project couldn't be more thrilled to be next in line for the show's worldwide tour. Performances will be held at the Magnuson Theater Feb. 24-26 at 7 p.m. Those who plan on making it to the production should arrive early because The Readers Theater has a reputation of selling shows out quickly.

Conference, play highlight Islam’s Western legacy - Twin Cities Planet

Posted:

By Amanda Bankston, The Minnesota Daily

February 23, 2011

With the recent uprisings in the Middle East, University of Minnesota anthropology professor William Beeman has been able to say a lot about the region he knows best.

"I've been doing a lot of commenting on the contemporary situation," the Middle East specialist said, "and even though today we tend to think the Islamic world is behind the West, we wouldn't be where we are without its influence."

Beeman's point resonates with the theme of "Shared Cultural Spaces," a conference hosted by the University's religious studies program that starts Thursday.

An interdepartmental group of faculty designed the conference to highlight the Islamic influence on Western arts, architecture, philosophy, literature and sciences, said key conference organizer Jeanne Kilde, the director of the religious studies program.

She said the event has drawn together faculty, students and community members from a range of backgrounds due to a focus on Islam across University disciplines.

"We have drawn faculty from all over [the College of Liberal Arts]," she said. "We are able to do that in this particular historical moment where national identity depends on this type of discussion."

The conference will also feature the premiere of the play "Journey," which will be performed each night at 8 p.m. at Rarig Center.

Kilde said the play was not part of the vision for the conference until an initial brainstorming meeting with University faculty presented an opportune coincidence.

At the meeting, Beeman mentioned the play, which is New York director Mohammad Ghaffari's adaptation of the 12th Century medieval novel "Hayy ibn Yaqzan." Kilde said this was a surprise to English professor Nabil Matar, who has done a significant amount of research on the novel.

Beeman, the producer of the play, said the coincidence presented a good entry point for the theme of the conference, which is illustrated in the novel's influence on Western literary classics like "Robinson Crusoe" and "The Jungle Book."

"The literary influence of this work was very, very great for the West," he said. "The play brings the theme of the conference to life in a very important way."

Beeman said the performance, which follows a young boy raised without human contact on his quest for understanding, has a surprisingly contemporary look and feel despite its medieval origins.

"I'm hoping people will be able to realize that here we have a work more than 1,000 years old," he said, "and yet it is able to speak to a contemporary audience in very profound way."

Preparations for the conference, which is expected to attract 150 to 200 attendees per session, began last April when the National Endowment for the Humanities called for proposals for an initiative focusing on Islam and the humanities, Kilde said.

After drafting a proposal, the group submitted its idea for the conference, which received a $170,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Matar said.

He said the planning process incorporated focus on both the academic community, including the 17 scholars who will travel from around the nation to speak, and a public audience including community partners like the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Hennepin County Libraries and a number of K-12 educators.

"The NEH parameters for the project called for something not just exclusive to the academy," Kilde said. "We knew we had to include a community engagement piece."

The group brought together about 30 community representatives for a workshop on Feb. 4. To fulfill grant requirements, Kilde said, they will reconvene after attending the workshop to develop national programming in line with the themes presented in the conference.

Students are also getting involved. Twenty-five of them have volunteered to act as ushers and support staff for the conference, Derk Renwick, the conference volunteer coordinator, said.

Matar said he hopes members of the public are able to sense the intersection of cultures, particularly in the face of negative representations of Islam in recent media coverage.

"These are not two civilizations set apart from each other," he said. "Dialogue has been going on between them for centuries, and it has been very enriching for both civilizations."

All conference sessions and performances are free for the public and will take place in various locations on campus. After its campus premiere, "Journey" will run at the Children's Theatre Company March 3 through 13.

The Twin Cities Daily Planet is an edited news source produced by professional journalists working in collaboration with citizen journalists from the local community. We publish original reported news articles, articles republished from media partners, and some content (Free Speech Zone articles, reader-submitted blog entries, comments) that is moderated but not edited. Click here for a complete description of our editorial policies. Support people-powered non-profit journalism! Volunteer, contribute news, or become a member to keep the Daily Planet in orbit.

Mary Jurich, former prisons’ librarian, dies - Chicago Sun-Times

2011-02-21T13:26:00.001-08:00

Mary Jurich, former prisons’ librarian, dies - Chicago Sun-Times

Posted:

Mary Jurich, former prisons' librarian, dies

BY SARAH BARABA Feb 15, 2011 02:05AM

Mary Jurich, who died at age 83, led to effort to bring reading materials to state prisons.

Mary Jurich became a librarian with the Illinois Corrections Department not long after the agency was founded in the early 1970s.

Although she already had 20 years of library experience when she was hired, administrators at Stateville and the now-closed Joliet Correctional Center took time to warm to her ideas for expanding library offerings at the prisons.

"It contradicted their ideas and attitudes as to what type of resources should be available to prisoners," a former assistant warden at Joliet, once wrote in a personnel letter.

"The efforts of Mrs. Jurich provided the 2,600 prisoners with resources never before available to them. One of the most devastating punishments for a prisoner was to deny them library privileges," according to the letter, which was provided by Mrs. Jurich's family.

The facilities were marred by violence and riots, but Mrs. Jurich — who died Jan. 31 at age 83 of complications following hip surgery — managed to build up their libraries, put inmates to work and give them access to the world outside their cells.

"She believed just because a man's freedom was given up, they didn't have to give up their knowledge," said Edmona Gilliano, a librarian who worked with Mrs. Jurich for several years. "She saw to it that ... cells got a newspaper, the guys were happy to have her there."

According to her family, Mrs. Jurich was the first woman to be allowed behind the cell block at Stateville unescorted. Bringing with her two decades of experience working in the patients' library at a Downstate veterans hospital, Mrs. Jurich listened to inmates' interests and requests, and sought out contemporary best sellers, literary classics, legal research and niche magazines to stock her shelves.

"She would send a request around and either buy the books they needed or get them from another library," Gilliano said. "A couple guys worked in the library with her, filing books and helping her deliver to the guys on lockdown. There was always a guard sitting by the door."

Because Stateville's library was in a separate building from the main cell block, Mrs. Jurich and Gilliano had to walk across the prison yard to get to work.

"[The prisoners] were respectful to the librarians; the male guards may be another thing," Gilliano said. The inmates who worked in the library "that knew what was going on would be protective of us."

Earning the trust and respect around the cell block, inmates even warned Mrs. Jurich of impending riots to keep her out of harm's way.

"She was a tough lady," said her niece, Cathy Nagel. "Tough but loving."

Mrs. Jurich left IDOC in the late 1970s and worked as a secretary at a substance abuse treatment center in Woodridge. Honing her creative side, Mrs. Jurich was known for handcrafting decorations for the office, said friend Carla Mason.

Born Mary Piliponis on June 24, 1927, in Downstate Kewanee, Mrs. Jurich studied library science at what is now Dominican University. After graduating, she became a librarian at the VA hospital, and spent many years caring for her mother and twin brother John, who had a disability. In 1966 she married Joseph Jurich, who passed away in 1983. She was a longtime resident of Downers Grove.

"She spoke up for people that were being mistreated," said Mason, "and those who didn't have a voice."

In addition to her niece Cathy, Mrs. Jurich is survived by niece Mary Ann Karpowicz; three great nieces and nephews; one great-great-nephew, and several cousins.

Services have been held.

ObituaryChicago.com

Andrew Davies on how to adapt literary classics for TV - Daily Telegraph

2011-02-18T13:16:00.001-08:00

Andrew Davies on how to adapt literary classics for TV - Daily Telegraph

Posted:

1. Read the book, or better still, listen to an unabridged recording, and immerse yourself in the characters, the language, the emotions the book calls up in you. You'll note the high points that simply ask to be dramatised, and also problems that will need addressing.

2. Ask yourself: why this book, and why now? It may simply be that the book (Pride and Prejudice, for example) deals with themes of perennial interest: love, sex, money, class, generational conflict, and so on. But sometimes a particular note will reverberate across decades and even centuries. (Little Dorrit involves a financial scam almost identical to the Madoff case. And South Riding is set in the Thirties, in a recession, with lots of parallels to the situation we are in today.) If I find these parallels, I'll highlight them – for example in The Way We Live Now I wrote a speech for Melmotte the swindler which explicitly drew upon Gordon Gekko's "Greed is Good" speech from Wall Street.

3. Ask yourself: whose story is this, really? Not always obvious. Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice from Elizabeth's point of view. But the story is just as much Darcy's. So I allow the audience to see Darcy on his own, or with other men, enabling us to know him better, and like him more. In South Riding the main characters are Sarah Burton, the sparky young progressive headmistress, and Robert Carne, the diehard Tory horse-breeder, so it was important to keep them in the foreground. But the book is also a portrait of a whole community (like Middlemarch) and it's important to show how the lives of all the characters are interconnected.

4. Don't be afraid to change things, especially openings. Novels often have leisurely openings: a TV drama needs an arresting opening. Winifred Holtby began South Riding with a council meeting in which not much happens, but we get to know some minor characters. I wanted to get my two leading characters up front, and in action, so that the audience could get a sense of who they might be rooting for, and start anticipating what will happen when they meet. Similarly, in Pride and Prejudice, instead of a tea table, I started with Darcy and Bingley on galloping horses, with Elizabeth watching from a distance, intrigued and unaware of how her life is going to change.

5. Don't start without a plan. You might change it later, but you need a clear idea of how many episodes, and roughly where each one will end – preferably with a cliffhanger. Plan for each episode to be a satisfying experience, but still leave the audience thinking: "Oh, my God! Now what?" Cracking the structure is often the hardest part, especially with a massive rambling beast like Bleak House or Vanity Fair. (Jane Austen's plotting, however, suits a TV serial perfectly, and you meddle with her construction at your peril.)

6. Never use a line of dialogue if you can achieve the effect with a look. The most moving scene for me in Pride and Prejudice is the Pemberley music room scene: Elizabeth has just saved Darcy's sister from embarrassment and confusion, and as the music plays on, Darcy's look of gratitude becomes a look of love, which we see reciprocated in Elizabeth's eyes.

7. Though dialogue is important too, and all the great writers write wonderful dialogue – the trick is to crystallise dialogue to its essence. Sometimes you can get away with "copying out the best bits" – at these times adaptation feels like money for old rope. But at other times you will find you have to write scenes that aren't in the book, and for this you need to learn the individual tune of a character's voice, and be able to produce sentences for them that no one can tell from the original.

8. But why should you need to write scenes that aren't in the book? Because a drama is a different animal from a novel. Novelists use summary to cover anything from a few minutes to a few years. Here's an example from Sense and Sensibility: "This circumstance was a growing attachment between her eldest girl and the brother of Mrs John Dashwood…" But we never hear their conversations, and it's hard to see what attracts Elinor to Edward Ferrars. Jane Austen simply doesn't do the necessary work, so I had to do it for her. And in South Riding, we are told that Sarah Burton is a brilliant, inspirational teacher, and that Lydia Holly, the rough diamond from the Shacks, is a brilliant student. But Winifred Holtby doesn't show us these things. So I made up a brilliant poetry lesson for Sarah to teach, and wrote the poem that Lydia produced as a result. Inventing scenes like this, and making them seem an integral part of the book, is one of the great joys of adaptation.

9. Avoid voice-over, flashbacks, and characters talking directly to camera. Techniques like these draw attention to themselves, and distance the audience from the drama. Having said that, I confess to using all three (not usually at the same time) and sometimes, with the right actor (Alex Kingston in Moll Flanders, Ian Richardson in House of Cards), talking to camera in particular can be brilliantly effective. So, finally…

10. Break your own rules when it feels like the right thing to do.

'South Riding', adapted by Andrew Davies from Winifred Holtby's novel, begins on Sunday February 20 on BBC One at 9.00pm

Great Gatsby 'Nintendo' game released online - Washington Post

2011-02-17T13:46:00.001-08:00

Great Gatsby 'Nintendo' game released online - Washington Post

Posted:

Give up all hope of getting any work done today. "The Great Gatsby" has come to a computer near you.

According to the game's Web site, a San Francisco developer found an old dusty Nintendo game cartridge at a garage sale, bought it for 50 cents and discovered a game never released in the U.S.

So, go let yourself be borne back ceaselessly into the past NES glory.

Robin Hood, The Musical slated Feb. 24 at McKinney Performing Arts Center - North Texas e-News

2011-02-16T13:21:00.001-08:00

Robin Hood, The Musical slated Feb. 24 at McKinney Performing Arts Center - North Texas e-News

Posted:

Presented by Word of Mouth Productions as part of the Literary Classics Series. Robin and his band of merry men are at it again in this merry melodrama musical romp the entire family will enjoy!

The outlaw of Sherwood Forest is leading a merry life with his followers. Anyone needing a place to live or food to eat is welcome in the greenwood. Impoverished citizens led by Robin are waging a battle against the evil Prince John. He has taken the place of King Richard the Lion-Hearted, who has gone on a crusade.

Lady Merle of Cornwall, however, hopes to make John more acceptable to the people of England by forcing Maid Marian, Robin's childhood sweetheart, to marry the Prince. It's up to Robin to stop the marriage, defeat a nasty sheriff and secure Nottingham for the King's return.

Approximate running time: 1 hour. All age groups

Tickets are $9/Adults & $7/Children and Sr. Adults in advance. $2 more each at the door.

Weekday matinees before 6pm are $6/All in advance, $8/Door.

Purchase online at: www.mckinneyperformingartscenter.org

Box Office: 214-544-4630

Word of Mouth Productions - Theatre the ENTIRE family can enjoy!
www.womproductions.com

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Library DVD collection caters to all for no charge - Northern Star

2011-02-15T13:52:00.001-08:00

Library DVD collection caters to all for no charge - Northern Star

Posted:

Posted: Wednesday, February 9, 2011 10:29 pm | Updated: 12:50 am, Thu Feb 10, 2011.

In the same shelves that hold literary classics and timeless textbooks, there is an entry that is curious: Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Season 2.

On the first floor of the Founder's Memorial Library, right behind the escalators, are rows and rows of DVDs that any student can check out with a valid OneCard, free of charge.

The collection ranges from popular first-run movies to educational films to complete seasons of television shows.

Byron Anderson, the library's associate dean of public services, believes that students are taking advantage of the diverse selection for two reasons.

"Students are either looking for something specific, due to maybe a paper or presentation, or for something relaxing for their own pleasure," he said.

To stimulate the brain, there are hundreds of documentaries from the History Channel and PBS, along with contemporary fare from Michael Moore.

The other film collections are loaded with recently released films on DVD like Robin Hood, a whole selection devoted to Academy Award-winning classics and hard-to-find titles.

The television seasons contain new hit shows such as The Big Bang Theory, nostalgia like Dinosaurs and obscurity like The Weird Al Show.

Libraries professor David Lonergan has been requesting and buying DVDs for the library for the past 14 years.

Before recent budgetary constraints, Lonergan would take requests from departments, students and non-students about which films should be added to the collection. One time, he bought all of the Babylon 5 DVDs for some faculty members.

"I've purchased anime, he said. "I don't know other than a handful of them. I've purchased a number of them because people have requested them."

However, not every request is met, Lonergan said. It depends on a number of things, including availability, budget and cost. Some of the educational videos for specific colleges could cost more than $600.

This is only the second semester where students have had the opportunity to check out the DVDs. So far, Anderson believes it has been a success.

"It went way beyond our expectations," he said. "It has become one of the more popular collections."

Feb. 13 Ames Public Library calendar - Ames Tribune

2011-02-14T13:18:00.001-08:00

Feb. 13 Ames Public Library calendar - Ames Tribune

Posted:

Monday, Feb. 14

• Toddler Time, 10:30 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• Teen Anime & Manga Club, 4-5 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

Tuesday, Feb. 15

• Toddler Time, 10 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• BabyTalk, 1:30 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Winter Wonderings: Who's Gonna Care for Grandpa? 6:30 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. Family caregiving specialist Kay Vanags will talk about long-term care options, including in-home services by home health agencies, adult day care, assisted living facilities and intermediate care facilities (nursing homes).

• Let's Talk About It, 7 p.m., Community Room. Join Let's Talk About It to read and discuss works chosen from the theme "Nordic Mysteries and Thrillers." We'll start the spring series with "Smilla's Sense of Snow" by Peter Hoeg. Please call (515) 239-5656 or visit the library's Information Desk to register for this book group.

Wednesday, Feb. 16

• Toddler Time, 9:30 and 10 a.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• BabyTalk, 11:05 a,m, Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Books @ Noon, noon, Founders Suite. Drop in to share what you've read and hear about what others are reading. Be prepared to give a brief description and your opinion about one or two books.

• Booklets, 2:45 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• Chapters, 2:45 p.m., Founders Suite.

• Reel Connections: Other Voices/Other Views: "Quién Dijo Miedo/We Are Not Afraid," 7 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. This feature-length documentary film is about the 2009 military coup d'etat in Honduras and the resistance movement that has risen up. (2010; 108 minutes)

Thursday, Feb. 17

• Family Craft Storytime, 10 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• BabyTalk, 6 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Toddler Time, 6:30 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Family Movie Night: "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole," 6:30 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. All ages are invited to a free showing of "Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole" on the big screen. (2010; 97 minutes; MPAA Rating PG)

• Ames Public Library Board of Trustees, 7 p.m., City Hall Council Chambers.

Friday, Feb. 18

• Toddler Time, 9:30 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• Teen Writing Club, 4 p.m., Community Room.

Saturday, Feb. 19

• Smyles 5-Year Anniversary Party, 10-11:30 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. Celebrate five years of Project Smyles with crafts, music, literacy information and a visit from Smyles.

• Other World Language Storytime: Japanese, 10:15-10:45 a.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Teen Advisory Group, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Community Room.

• Russian Storytime, noon, Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Other World Language Storytime: Italian, 1-1:30 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Teen Roleplaying and Magic Club, 1-5 p.m., Community Room.

• Reel Connections: And the Nominees Are ... 2-6 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. Come to the library for a free afternoon of back-to-back 2011 Academy Award Nominated films on our big screen. We'll show "Alice in Wonderland at 2 p.m. and "The Social Network" at 4 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 20

• Great Books, 2 p.m., Community Room. Discuss literary classics with materials from the Great Books Foundation. This month, we will discuss "The Darling" by Anton Chekhov from "Great Conversations 4." To sign up for this series, visit the Information Desk or call (515) 239-5656.

• Readers' Theater: Leaders of Our Story! 2 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. Join us for a readers' theater that brings to life famous leaders that made an impact on the black community.

For more information on events at Ames Public Library, call (515) 239-5656 or visit www.amespubliclibrary.org.

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Feb. 13 Ames Public Library calendar - Ames Tribune

2011-02-13T13:16:00.001-08:00

Feb. 13 Ames Public Library calendar - Ames Tribune

Posted:

Monday, Feb. 14

• Toddler Time, 10:30 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• Teen Anime & Manga Club, 4-5 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

Tuesday, Feb. 15

• Toddler Time, 10 a.m., 10:30 a.m. and 1 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• BabyTalk, 1:30 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

Wednesday, Feb. 16

• Toddler Time, 9:30 and 10 a.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• BabyTalk, 11:05 a,m, Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Books @ Noon, noon, Founders Suite. Drop in to share what you've read and hear about what others are reading. Be prepared to give a brief description and your opinion about one or two books.

• Booklets, 2:45 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• Chapters, 2:45 p.m., Founders Suite.

Thursday, Feb. 17

• Family Craft Storytime, 10 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• BabyTalk, 6 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Toddler Time, 6:30 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Ames Public Library Board of Trustees, 7 p.m., City Hall Council Chambers.

Friday, Feb. 18

• Toddler Time, 9:30 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium.

• Teen Writing Club, 4 p.m., Community Room.

Saturday, Feb. 19

• Smyles 5-Year Anniversary Party, 10-11:30 a.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. Celebrate five years of Project Smyles with crafts, music, literacy information and a visit from Smyles.

• Other World Language Storytime: Japanese, 10:15-10:45 a.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Teen Advisory Group, 11 a.m.-1 p.m., Community Room.

• Russian Storytime, noon, Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Other World Language Storytime: Italian, 1-1:30 p.m., Davidson Storytelling Room.

• Teen Roleplaying and Magic Club, 1-5 p.m., Community Room.

Sunday, Feb. 20

• Readers' Theater: Leaders of Our Story! 2 p.m., Farwell T. Brown Auditorium. Join us for a readers' theater that brings to life famous leaders that made an impact on the black community.

For more information on events at Ames Public Library, call (515) 239-5656 or visit www.amespubliclibrary.org.

The following are comments from readers. They do not necessarily represent the views of The Tribune or Amestrib.com.

Chester Theatre Company Season Page to stage Playwrights reimagine literary classics - Berkshire Eagle

2011-02-11T13:27:00.001-08:00

Chester Theatre Company Season Page to stage Playwrights reimagine literary classics - Berkshire Eagle

Posted:

Saturday February 5, 2011

CHESTER -- Five classical works of literature -- from Jane Austen and William Shakespeare to Christopher Marlowe, Henry James and Fyodor Dostoyevsky -- get a contemporary makeover on stage this summer in Chester Theatre Company's 22nd season.

The season -- July 6 through Aug. 28 in the Chester Town Hall -- dubbed "Classic Stories/Contemporary Voices," features contemporary American plays adapted from or inspired by classic works of world literature.

"I'm really excited about the concept behind this year's slate of plays," CTC artistic director Byam Stevens said in a news release. "The classics continue to inspire the writers of today, so we're presenting a season of classic works re-imagined by contemporary American playwrights."

The season opens July 6 with the East Coast premiere of "pride@prejudice," Jane Austen's novel with added material adapted, edited and compiled by Daniel Elihu Kramer. Five actors play over 30 roles in this new version.

The production, to be directed by CTC newcomer Ron Bashford, will run through July 17.

CTC veteran Sheila Siragusa will direct the New England premiere of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (July 20-31) in a new 90-minute adaptation by Marilyn Campbell and Curt Columbus.

In this new version of one of the most famous murder mysteries ever written, Raskolnikov re-enacts the events that drove him first to a horrible

crime and then to a search for redemption.

"Crime and Punishment" will be followed Aug. 3-14 by Jeffrey Hatcher's stage adaptation of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw." Daniel Elihu Kramer will direct this two-actor adaptation of James' psychological thriller about a young governess who is dispatched to a remote house in the country that is haunted by the ghost of her predecessor, Miss Jessel.

The season comes to a close Aug. 17-28 with "Wittenberg (A Tragical-Comical-Historical in Two Acts)" by David Davalos. Set in 1517 at the University of Wittenberg, Davalos' ambitious comedy provides the back-story to Shakespeare's "Hamlet," Marlowe's "Dr. Faustus" and even the Protestant Reformation. Stevens will direct.

Single tickets and season subscriptions are available online at www.Chester Theatre.org.

Library DVD collection caters to all for no charge - Northern Star

2011-02-10T13:37:00.001-08:00