August 2009 Archives

3rd Annual Bookbinder's Ball: Literary Heroines
The Alexandrian Free Library Welcomes TX95
August 28th, 6-8pm slt
Toussaint L'Ouverture Library, New Toulouse
http://slurl.com/secondlife/New%20Toulouse/64/111/25

The theme of this year's Ball is...the Heroine in literature. Guests are invited to come as their favorite Heroine-centered novel, story, play, or poem.

Join us for dancing, literary schmoozing, and the latest edition of our Library Meet & Greet Game, where you literally check out you dance partner!

Sponsored by the Alexandrian Free Library and Info Island's TX950, hosted by the Toussaint L'Ouverture Library of New Toulouse, and produced by Radio Riel.

For those who can't join us in-world, you can tune in by opening http://newtoulouse.radioriel.org in any media player.

By Whitman, Biweekly!
Tuesday August 25th,  4pm SLT
Caledon Library, on the Hub in Victoria City
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/160/117/23

A Discussion led by Dame Kghia Gheardi of the works of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is one of the works at the foundations of American poetry. Its expansive attempt to capture the spirit and landscape of the 19th century United States has influenced an entire culture's self-concept, and its rich language continues to inspire readers today as it has for the century and a half of its existence.

"By Whitman, BI-Weekly" will provide an opportunity to look closely at this beloved work. Each time we'll spend an hour discussing its context and examining the poetry of the 1855 first edition.

The series will also give those who love Leaves of Grass, and those who would like to learn more, an opportunity to explore Whitman's vigorous and heartfelt poetry together.

This week, we will continue our discussion of "Song of Myself," the first poem to Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. 

Here is the passage we'll discuss

A gigantic beauty of a stallion, fresh and responsive to my caresses,
Head high in the forehead and wide between the ears,
Limbs glossy and supple, tail dusting the ground,
Eyes well apart and full of sparkling wickedness . . . . ears finely cut and flexibly
         moving.

His nostrils dilate . . . . my heels embrace him . . . . his well built limbs tremble with
         pleasure . . . . we speed around and return.

I but use you a moment and then I resign you stallion . . . . and do not need your
         paces, and outgallop them,
And myself as I stand or sit pass faster than you.

Swift wind! Space! My Soul! Now I know it is true what I guessed at;
What I guessed when I loafed on the grass,
What I guessed while I lay alone in my bed . . . . and again as I walked the beach
         under the paling stars of the morning.

My ties and ballasts leave me . . . . I travel . . . . I sail . . . . my elbows rest in the
         sea-gaps,
I skirt the sierras . . . . my palms cover continents,
I am afoot with my vision.

By the city's quadrangular houses . . . . in log-huts, or camping with lumbermen,
Along the ruts of the turnpike . . . . along the dry gulch and rivulet bed,
Hoeing my onion-patch, and rows of carrots and parsnips . . . . crossing savannas . . .
         trailing in forests,
Prospecting . . . . gold-digging . . . . girdling the trees of a new purchase,
Scorched ankle-deep by the hot sand . . . . hauling my boat down the shallow river;
Where the panther walks to and fro on a limb overhead . . . . where the buck turns
         furiously at the hunter,
Where the rattlesnake suns his flabby length on a rock . . . . where the otter is
         feeding on fish,
Where the alligator in his tough pimples sleeps by the bayou,
Where the black bear is searching for roots or honey . . . . where the beaver pats
         the mud with his paddle-tail;
Over the growing sugar . . . . over the cottonplant . . . . over the rice in its low
         moist field;
Over the sharp-peaked farmhouse with its scalloped scum and slender shoots from
         the gutters;
Over the western persimmon . . . . over the longleaved corn and the delicate blue-
         flowered flax;
Over the white and brown buckwheat, a hummer and a buzzer there with the rest,
Over the dusky green of the rye as it ripples and shades in the breeze;
Scaling mountains . . . . pulling myself cautiously up . . . . holding on by low scrag-
         ged limbs,
Walking the path worn in the grass and beat through the leaves of the brush;
Where the quail is whistling betwixt the woods and the wheatlot,
Where the bat flies in the July eve . . . . where the great goldbug drops through the
         dark;
Where the flails keep time on the barn floor,
Where the brook puts out of the roots of the old tree and flows to the meadow,
Where cattle stand and shake away flies with the tremulous shuddering of their
         hides,
Where the cheese-cloth hangs in the kitchen, and andirons straddle the hearth-slab,
         and cobwebs fall in festoons from the rafters;
Where triphammers crash . . . . where the press is whirling its cylinders;
Wherever the human heart beats with terrible throes out of its ribs;
Where the pear-shaped balloon is floating aloft . . . . floating in it myself and look-
         ing composedly down;
Where the life-car is drawn on the slipnoose . . . . where the heat hatches pale-
         green eggs in the dented sand,
Where the she-whale swims with her calves and never forsakes them,
Where the steamship trails hindways its long pennant of smoke,
Where the ground-shark's fin cuts like a black chip out of the water,
Where the half-burned brig is riding on unknown currents,
Where shells grow to her slimy deck, and the dead are corrupting below;
Where the striped and starred flag is borne at the head of the regiments;
Approaching Manhattan, up by the long-stretching island,
Under Niagara, the cataract falling like a veil over my countenance;
Upon a door-step . . . . upon the horse-block of hard wood outside,
Upon the race-course, or enjoying pic-nics or jigs or a good game of base-ball,
At he-festivals with blackguard jibes and ironical license and bull-dances and
         drinking and laughter,
At the cider-mill, tasting the sweet of the brown sqush . . . . sucking the juice
         through a straw,
At apple-pealings, wanting kisses for all the red fruit I find,
At musters and beach-parties and friendly bees and huskings and house-raisings;
Where the mockingbird sounds his delicious gurgles, and cackles and screams and
         weeps,
Where the hay-rick stands in the barnyard, and the dry-stalks are scattered, and the
         brood cow waits in the hovel,
Where the bull advances to do his masculine work, and the stud to the mare, and the
         cock is treading the hen,
Where the heifers browse, and the geese nip their food with short jerks;
Where the sundown shadows lengthen over the limitless and lonesome prairie,
Where the herds of buffalo make a crawling spread of the square miles far and
         near;
Where the hummingbird shimmers . . . . where the neck of the longlived swan is
         curving and winding;
Where the laughing-gull scoots by the slappy shore and laughs her near-human
         laugh;
Where beehives range on a gray bench in the garden half- hid by the high weeds;
Where the band-necked partridges roost in a ring on the ground with their heads
         out;
Where burial coaches enter the arched gates of a cemetery;
Where winter wolves bark amid wastes of snow and icicled trees;
Where the yellow-crowned heron comes to the edge of the marsh at night and feeds
         upon small crabs;
Where the splash of swimmers and divers cools the warm noon;
Where the katydid works her chromatic reed on the walnut-tree over the well;
Through patches of citrons and cucumbers with silver-wired leaves,
Through the salt-lick or orange glade . . . . or under conical furs;
Through the gymnasium . . . . through the curtained saloon . . . . through the office
         or public hall;
Pleased with the native and pleased with the foreign . . . . pleased with the new
         and old,
Pleased with women, the homely as well as the handsome,
Pleased with the quakeress as she puts off her bonnet and talks melodiously,
Pleased with the primitive tunes of the choir of the whitewashed church,
Pleased with the earnest words of the sweating Methodist preacher, or any preacher
          . . . . looking seriously at the camp-meeting;
Looking in at the shop-windows in Broadway the whole forenoon . . . . pressing the
         flesh of my nose to the thick plate-glass,
Wandering the same afternoon with my face turned up to the clouds;
My right and left arms round the sides of two friends and I in the middle;
Coming home with the bearded and dark-cheeked bush-boy . . . . riding behind him
         at the drape of the day;
Far from the settlements studying the print of animals' feet, or the moccasin print;
By the cot in the hospital reaching lemonade to a feverish patient,
By the coffined corpse when all is still, examining with a candle;
Voyaging to every port to dicker and adventure;
Hurrying with the modern crowd, as eager and fickle as any,
Hot toward one I hate, ready in my madness to knife him;
Solitary at midnight in my back yard, my thoughts gone from me a long while,
Walking the old hills of Judea with the beautiful gentle god by my side;
Speeding through space . . . . speeding through heaven and the stars,
Speeding amid the seven satellites and the broad ring and the diameter of eighty
         thousand miles,
Speeding with tailed meteors . . . . throwing fire-balls like the rest,
Carrying the crescent child that carries its own full mother in its belly;
Storming enjoying planning loving cautioning,
Backing and filling, appearing and disappearing,
I tread day and night such roads.

I visit the orchards of God and look at the spheric product,
And look at quintillions ripened, and look at quintillions green.

I fly the flight of the fluid and swallowing soul,
My course runs below the soundings of plummets.

I help myself to material and immaterial,
No guard can shut me off, no law can prevent me.

I anchor my ship for a little while only,
My messengers continually cruise away or bring their returns to me.
I go hunting polar furs and the seal . . . . leaping chasms with a pike-pointed staff
          . . . . clinging to topples of brittle and blue.

I ascend to the foretruck . . . . I take my place late at night in the crow's nest . . . .
         we sail through the arctic sea . . . . it is plenty light enough,
Through the clear atmosphere I stretch around on the wonderful beauty,
The enormous masses of ice pass me and I pass them . . . . the scenery is plain in
         all directions,
The white-topped mountains point up in the distance . . . . I fling out my fancies
         toward them;
We are about approaching some great battlefield in which we are soon to be
         engaged,
We pass the colossal outposts of the encampments . . . . we pass with still feet and
         caution;
Or we are entering by the suburbs some vast and ruined city . . . . the blocks and
         fallen architecture more than all the living cities of the globe.

I am a free companion . . . . I bivouac by invading watchfires.

I turn the bridegroom out of bed and stay with the bride myself,
And tighten her all night to my thighs and lips.

My voice is the wife's voice, the screech by the rail of the stairs,
They fetch my man's body up dripping and drowned.

I understand the large hearts of heroes,
The courage of present times and all times;
How the skipper saw the crowded and rudderless wreck of the steamship, and death
         chasing it up and down the storm,
How he knuckled tight and gave not back one inch, and was faithful of days and
         faithful of nights,
And chalked in large letters on a board, Be of good cheer, We will not desert you;
How he saved the drifting company at last,
How the lank loose-gowned women looked when boated from the side of their
         prepared graves,
How the silent old-faced infants, and the lifted sick, and the sharp-lipped unshaved
         men;
All this I swallow and it tastes good . . . . I like it well, and it becomes mine,
I am the man . . . . I suffered . . . . I was there.

The disdain and calmness of martyrs,
The mother condemned for a witch and burnt with dry wood, and her children
         gazing on;
The hounded slave that flags in the race and leans by the fence, blowing and
         covered with sweat,
The twinges that sting like needles his legs and neck,
The murderous buckshot and the bullets,
All these I feel or am.

I am the hounded slave . . . . I wince at the bite of the dogs,
Hell and despair are upon me . . . . crack and again crack the marksmen,
I clutch the rails of the fence . . . . my gore dribs thinned with the ooze of my skin,
I fall on the weeds and stones,
The riders spur their unwilling horses and haul close,
They taunt my dizzy ears . . . . they beat me violently over the head with their
         whip-stocks.

Agonies are one of my changes of garments;
I do not ask the wounded person how he feels . . . . I myself become the wounded
         person,
My hurt turns livid upon me as I lean on a cane and observe.

I am the mashed fireman with breastbone broken . . . . tumbling walls buried me in
         their debris,
Heat and smoke I inspired . . . . I heard the yelling shouts of my comrades,
I heard the distant click of their picks and shovels;
They have cleared the beams away . . . . they tenderly lift me forth.

I lie in the night air in my red shirt . . . . the pervading hush is for my sake,
Painless after all I lie, exhausted but not so unhappy,
White and beautiful are the faces around me . . . . the heads are bared of their fire-
         caps,
The kneeling crowd fades with the light of the torches.

The Heart of the Tale:  Key Moments from Your SL Roleplaying Stories
Summer Storytelling Session at the Falling Anvil, Caledon Tamrannoch
August 24, 2009 at 5:00 PM SLT
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Tamrannoch/230/108/22


Sponsored by the Clan of Seafarers and Storytellers, The Falling Anvil Public House, and the Caledon Library.

If you create and tell stories utilizing the tools of roleplaying (RP) in Second Life, do you have a favorite character you have developed?  Can you tell a tale that would help us understand who that character is and what motivates them?

A growing element of roleplaying community in Second Life is involved in “RP Storytelling” -- the use of rp to develop or advance plot lines for stories that cross over into written stories, to explore character interactions and relationships for these stories, and in many cases, to act out scenes from stories to be recorded visually.  At the heart of a successful RP storytelling project are well developed, engaging characters, and in most cases, what makes a character work is their backstory.  And at the core of that backstory there often lies a seminal moment -- a key story -- that provides essential insights into who the character is, and how they became who and what they are.

RP storytellers from throughout Second Life are invited to come to the Falling Anvil to tell a short tale that encompasses a seminal moment from their favorite character’s backstory.  

Each tale should take no more than ten minutes to present, and will be presented in text form (no voice).  If you wish to take part, please contact JJ Drinkwater or Aldo Stern to be be included in the lineup of storytellers.  While pre-registering is encouraged, drop-ins are still welcome the night of the session and will not be turned away: you’ll just get added on to the end of the list and go in order you sign up

By Whitman, Biweekly!
Tuesday August 11tht 4pm SLT
Caledon Library, on the Hub in Victoria City
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/160/117/23

A Discussion led by Dame Kghia Gheardi of the works of Walt Whitman

Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass is one of the works at the foundations of American poetry. Its expansive attempt to capture the spirit and landscape of the 19th century United States has influenced an entire culture's self-concept, and its rich language continues to inspire readers today as it has for the century and a half of its existence.

"By Whitman, Biweekly" will provide an opportunity to look closely at this beloved work. Each time we'll spend an hour discussing its context and examining the poetry of the the 1855 first edition.

The series will also give those who love Leaves of Grass, and those who would like to learn more, an opportunity to explore Whitman's vigorous and heartfelt poetry together.


We are currently working our way through "Song of Myself"  Here is the passage we'll take up this week:

To be in any form, what is that?
If nothing lay more developed the quahaug and its callous shell were enough.

Mine is no callous shell,
I have instant conductors all over me whether I pass or stop,
They seize every object and lead it harmlessly through me.

I merely stir, press, feel with my fingers, and am happy,
To touch my person to some one else's is about as much as I can stand.

Is this then a touch? . . . . quivering me to a new identity,
Flames and ether making a rush for my veins,
Treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them,
My flesh and blood playing out lightning, to strike what is hardly different from
         myself,
On all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs,
Straining the udder of my heart for its withheld drip,
Behaving licentious toward me, taking no denial,
Depriving me of my best as for a purpose,
Unbuttoning my clothes and holding me by the bare waist,
Deluding my confusion with the calm of the sunlight and pasture fields,
Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me,
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.
I am given up by traitors;
I talk wildly . . . . I have lost my wits . . . . I and nobody else am the greatest
         traitor,
I went myself first to the headland . . . . my own hands carried me there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? . . . . my breath is tight in its throat;
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.

Blind loving wrestling touch! Sheathed hooded sharptoothed touch!
Did it make you ache so leaving me?

Parting tracked by arriving . . . . perpetual payment of the perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

Sprouts take and accumulate . . . . stand by the curb prolific and vital,
Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
What is less or more than a touch?

Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.

A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.

Immodestly sliding the fellow-senses away,
They bribed to swap off with touch, and go and graze at the edges of me,
No consideration, no regard for my draining strength or my anger,
Fetching the rest of the herd around to enjoy them awhile,
Then all uniting to stand on a headland and worry me.

The sentries desert every other part of me,
They have left me helpless to a red marauder,
They all come to the headland to witness and assist against me.
I am given up by traitors;
I talk wildly . . . . I have lost my wits . . . . I and nobody else am the greatest
         traitor,
I went myself first to the headland . . . . my own hands carried me there.

You villain touch! what are you doing? . . . . my breath is tight in its throat;
Unclench your floodgates! you are too much for me.

Blind loving wrestling touch! Sheathed hooded sharptoothed touch!
Did it make you ache so leaving me?

Parting tracked by arriving . . . . perpetual payment of the perpetual loan,
Rich showering rain, and recompense richer afterward.

Sprouts take and accumulate . . . . stand by the curb prolific and vital,
Landscapes projected masculine full-sized and golden.

All truths wait in all things,
They neither hasten their own delivery nor resist it,
They do not need the obstetric forceps of the surgeon,
The insignificant is as big to me as any,
What is less or more than a touch?

Logic and sermons never convince,
The damp of the night drives deeper into my soul.

Only what proves itself to every man and woman is so,
Only what nobody denies is so.

A minute and a drop of me settle my brain;
I believe the soggy clods shall become lovers and lamps,
And a compend of compends is the meat of a man or woman,
And a summit and flower there is the feeling they have for each other,
And they are to branch boundlessly out of that lesson until it becomes omnific,
And until every one shall delight us, and we them.

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars,
And the pismire is equally perfect, and a grain of sand, and the egg of the wren,
And the tree-toad is a chef-d'ouvre for the highest,
And the running blackberry would adorn the parlors of heaven,
And the narrowest hinge in my hand puts to scorn all machinery,
And the cow crunching with depressed head surpasses any statue,
And a mouse is miracle enough to stagger sextillions of infidels,
And I could come every afternoon of my life to look at the farmer's girl boiling her
         iron tea-kettle and baking shortcake.

I find I incorporate gneiss and coal and long-threaded moss and fruits and grains and
         esculent roots,
And am stucco'd with quadrupeds and birds all over,
And have distanced what is behind me for good reasons,
And call any thing close again when I desire it.

In vain the speeding or shyness,
In vain the plutonic rocks send their old heat against my approach,
In vain the mastadon retreats beneath its own powdered bones,
In vain objects stand leagues off and assume manifold shapes,
In vain the ocean settling in hollows and the great monsters lying low,
In vain the buzzard houses herself with the sky,
In vain the snake slides through the creepers and logs,
In vain the elk takes to the inner passes of the woods,
In vain the razorbilled auk sails far north to Labrador,
I follow quickly . . . . I ascend to the nest in the fissure of the cliff.

I think I could turn and live awhile with the animals . . . . they are so placid and self-
         contained,
I stand and look at them sometimes half the day long.

They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied . . . . not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or industrious over the whole earth.

So they show their relations to me and I accept them;
They bring me tokens of myself . . . . they evince them plainly in their possession.

I do not know where they got those tokens,
I must have passed that way untold times ago and negligently dropt them,
Myself moving forward then and now and forever,
Gathering and showing more always and with velocity,
Infinite and omnigenous and the like of these among them;
Not too exclusive 

Great Ladies of Cookery
Exhibit: August - October 2009
Opening Tea and Conversation with the Curators
August 2, 1-3 pm
Jack & Elaine Whitehorn Memorial Library, Caledon Victoria City
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Caledon%20Victoria%20City/59/196/23


This exhibit on female cookbook authors in Britain and America, sponsored by Caledon Cuisine, takes the viewer from the kitchens of the mid-Eighteenth to those of the early Twentieth century.

During this period, publishing of any sort by women, cookbooks included, was relatively rare.  While the "glamor cookbooks" of the day, detailing the dishes served at the tables of the aristocracy, were written by men, there is a distinct chronology of vastly popular cookbooks written by women, for the women who, as housewives or hired cooks, were in charge of the majority of kitchens in both town and country.

Roughly once a generation, a cookbook would be published that would become a sort of standard kitchen manual, going through multiple reprintings.  The authors were a mixed lot, describing themselves variously as "A Lady," housewives, cooks in private service, and cooking teachers. What they had in common was that each captured the culinary idiom of her generation.

Beginning with the 1747 Art of Cookery by Hannah Glasse (who never said "first catch your hare, although that's what she's famous for), and the 1796 American Cookery by Amelia Simmons ("An American Orphan") we explore the careers and publishing of such figures as Sarah Heston Tyson Rorer (who is in some measure responsible for Thanksgiving day as it's celebrated in the US), ending up with the work of the two Very Great Ladies, both well-remembered today: Isabella Beeton and Fannie Farmer.  

Although the subject of cookbook publishing, even with the limitations "In Britain and America" and "by female authors" is far vaster than we were able to explore in this modest exhibit, we hope what we present will serve as an appetizer. We have included various resources we hope will be found useful by those who wish to pursue the topic further.

 The exhibit ends with a display of in-world versions of some of the works discussed here, for the reading pleasure of Caledon and Our Guests.  

All materials in this exhibit are either free to copy, or may be bought for $0, should you wish to take any of them home for further consideration.

Curators Eleanor Anderton, EppieBlack Wheatcliffe, and JJ Drinkwater invite you to look, read, savour, and enjoy!