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You know, as I was reading the stories about Ft. Hood, I really hadn’t thought about the incident from the point of view this writer takes in a fascinating essay from The Daily Beast…
What do think? Does he have a point?
And if he does, what could be done?
Since Wednesday, the Dayton Metro Library’s home page has sported a big, red-white-and-blue “Thank you” to voters for their support on Nov. 3 of the system’s tax levy — followed by, “We would hug you if we could. Really.”
That’d be about 80,000 hugs. The levy passed handily, throwing a $13.6-million-a-year lifeline to an institution that was foundering in the wake of heavy state budget cuts. The levy won’t make up for all that, but will help keep the doors open at the main library and its 21 branches.
Hugs and happiness aside, however, it seems worth considering what the victory says about us as a society — especially when you consider that according to the Associated Press, voters in Ohio approved levies for 30 library systems around the state last week.
Said the AP: “The Ohio Library Council had estimated that at least 15 percent of the state’s 251 systems had levies or a bond issue on Tuesday’s ballot and said only seven levies and one bond issue failed.” Those were by very slim margins.
Apparently, people still love their local library — even in our Wiki-Google-Yahoo age. With more information at our fingertips than we can possibly consume, why are people still so eager to pay for a big, expensive building full of books?
Tim Kambitsch, director of the Dayton Metro Library, has been musing on that very thing quite a lot this week.
He’s pretty sure there are two main groups who use the library and perceive it differently in this Internet era. One consists of people who want and need to be wired in but can’t afford it at home, and so use the library as their “only place to participate in the digital world.” That group, however, might not vote in great enough numbers to do the trick.
Then, he says, “there is that group of knowledge workers who are heavy Internet users, but may not be big library users for the things they used us for in the past — say, coming here to find that interesting piece of trivia you get so easily online now.
“But that group does see the intrinsic value of libraries; they know they’ve benefited from them in the past, and that other people do now, and they are supportive of that.”
That’s where this gets interesting — and a little abstract.
You may used the library for the audiobooks that make your commute a bit happier (I do), or a community group you belong to may meet there, or you may enjoy borrowing, rather than buying, picture books for your family’s young new reader. But after the practical, there’s something else, it seems.
The Internet, as it has broadened the web of information at our disposal, has also decentralized us — our interactions with each other are faster now, and less often face-to-face. We “meet” without actually going anywhere. We know more about each other, but seem to know each other less.
Do we still, possibly without realizing it, still crave a central place to go? Do we yearn for an emotional town square? And is the library the closest thing we’ve got?
“There is something to the idea of the library as that community gathering point,” Kambitsch said. “We found in our surveys that that informal interaction is one of the most important parts of what people think is important about libraries.
“There’s a writer who talks about ‘the third space’ people need, that isn’t work or home, but is somewhere else that you need to have, and I don’t think people get the same sort of intellectual satisfaction from having it be a lifestyle mall… But if you bump into somebody at the library, you almost feel proud of it — and you really aren’t celebrating the library itself, but the sense of community you both feel.
“It’s hard to nail down, but there is a sense of satisfaction, a sense of serendipity you get.”
Just think: If he’s right, a lot of people were willing to cast their votes, and put their money down, for something very intangibly, communally, cool. Either that, or the hugs.
They’re sort of the same thing, if you think about it.
Personally, I love mine.
But either way, there’s something in this interesting essay for you… Read all the way to the bottom, and see if you agree.
Well, now that we’re into November, voting happens tomorrow and the clocks are reset, it seems as though we’ve begun the slow slide into Thanksgiving and the holidays… A very nice time of year.
But dang, did anybody notice how much fun it was around here in October?
— DAYTON MUSIC FEST: The month started with a downtown bang when eight bars opened up to more than 30 local indie-rock bands for a great night full of music on Saturday, Oct. 3. The clubs were hopping as bands from the Smug Brothers to Yakuza Heart Attack to — hell, you name it, they were probably playing. My favorite of the night was catching up with the flat-out punk of Luxury Pushers, who rocked the ‘Weed and packed ‘em in. Seeya next year.
— YELLOW SPRINGS STREET FAIR: Where else do you get the mixture of people of all sorts and diverse varieties, than what you get at this event? Downtown YS bubbles over with folks, and this year the picture-perfect fall weather on Saturday, Oct. 10 made the event even more shoulder-to-shoulder. Whether you’re into belly dancing, petition-signing or munching a sloppy sandwich, this event gets better every year.
— MASQUERAGE: The best dress-up-and-dance-your-butt-off party in Dayton moved back to the round barn at the Fairgrounds this year, a great spot for the festivities. With an appropriate “freak show” theme, you got knife-throwers, bearded ladies and circus geeks galore to mix it up with the pole dancers and the barely-clad booty-shakers who kept it all interesting. Oct. 17 was the night, and yet again — the AIDS Resource Center sure-nuff knows how to throw a par-tay. Do not miss this one.
— CREATIVE SOUL OF DAYTON: This community art show of some 200 works from 130 artists was one of many cool outgrowths of the DaytonCREATE movement, and it filled the top floor of the Armory building with tons of great locallly made art. Closing reception and your chance to see it is this Friday, Nov. 6, from 5-10 PM on First Friday. Very good stuff on display, and from some artists you’ve not necessarily seen before. www.creativesouldayton.com for more. Oh yeah, it’s free.
— HARVEST TAVERN DINNERS: My wife and I had the chance, after years of association with Dayton History (full disclosure: I’m on the board) and Carillon Park, to attend one of the “Tavern Dinners” they throw there. You get to eat fare from recipes from the 1830s, right inside Dayton’s oldest building — Newcom Tavern. It’s a fun evening of learning and camaraderie with new friends. Roast bison cooked on an open fire? You want to try it.
OK, those were just a few of things that went on. You also had the Sauerkraut Festival and the Ohio Renaissance Festival, which I didn’t a chance to visit this year, alas. You had the opening of the new “Hello World!” show of attic treasure artworks at the Dayton Art Institute, a very fine show. You had the Garlic Festival at Cox Arboretum and tons of other festivals in the area…
And yep, you also had all that amazingly gorgeous autumnal color and wonderful weather, too.
October in SW Ohio? It’s my favorite month of the year; how about yours?
As you wander through its clean, spacious galleries, the Dayton Art Institute surely seems a big enough place to show off whatever artworks it has to, well, show off.
Ain’t so.
The museum has more than 22,000 items in its collection, from massive metal sculptures to tiny Japanese teacups. Relatively few of them are on regular display, for a variety of reasons — no space on the walls, or because an artwork is too fragile to keep up all the time, or because in some cases, the artwork isn’t actually in the museum’s hands yet.
That’s the case with the two eye-popping paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock that open the DAI’s new exhibition, “Hello World!” with a colorfully impressive kick. A promised bequest to the museum by the late Dayton industrialist and philanthropist Jesse Philips, they’re being shown at the DAI for the first time in more than a decade.
And they’re marvelous. The 1963 “The Painter and his Model” is pure Picasso, all loose and playful colors. Pollock’s “Night Dancer (Green)” from 1944, was created before he began dripping and spilling his paint, and shows clearly where his mind was before that breakthrough. It’s energetic and amazi
They’re surrounded by dozens of other works that DAI chief curator Will South has brought out of hiding for what is billed as a show of “Rarely Seen Art from Our Collection,” the idea being to mark the museum’s 90th birthday with a peek into the storage vaults.
t’s pretty impressive, what they’ve got in there, and South has made the most of it. The exhibition is organized by topics such as “Textiles,” “Landscapes” and “Florals,” which seems simple until you notice the sly ways South used the artworks to blend the topics together and move you easily through the show.
Each area has some stunners: a huge Irish quilt from the 1820s that boasts bold colors and an intricate, modern-seeming design; a delicate Cezanne lithograph of bathers, from 1898, that shows a lighter touch than one sees in his oils; a bright Picasso print of a woman in a hat, from 1962, nicely contrasted with African and Egyptian masks that reveal his influences; a fascinating Persian begging bowl, made of silver; Sheila Metzner’s astonishing 1980 sepia print of the Pyramids, which looks a hundred years older; a lushly erotic photograph of a calla lilly from Robert Mapplethorpe that makes one wonder, When is a flower not a flower?
One thinks, too, at the bittersweetness of knowing that so many fine works of art are here in our midst, in our fair city, and yet are under wraps — even if for good reason. “Please make this a permanent exhibit,” one visitor wrote in the guestbook, an understandable sentiment.
South, who’s been at the DAI about a year, foresees changes emerging from the responses to “Hello World!” A lot of visitors have responded well to the Islamic art in the show, “and we don’t have an Islamic gallery.” The DAI’s very strong photography collection is a big part of the exhibition as well, and he’d like to see more of it shown.
So stay tuned. Meanwhile, keep in mind that “Hello World!” is up until Jan. 3, 2010. For information on times and tickets, visit www.daytonartinstitute.org.
Correction: Several alert readers let me know that I mistakenly flip-flopped the names of two Jane Austen scoundrels in a post last week about local author Carrie Bebris, who writes mysteries featuring Austen’s Mr. and Mrs. Darcy. Talia Kolker wrote: “Mr. Wickham is actually the charming and deceitful slug of an officer who first dallies with Elizabeth and then elopes with her younger sister Lydia. It later comes out that he had also seduced Darcy’s younger sister Georgianna…. It’s Mr. Collins who’s the ‘squirrelly, irritating parson who keeps after Elizabeth Bennet….’ HUGE difference.” True enough, and a humbling reminder that my readers are smarter than I am. Thanks!
We all love a good scary flick, right?
Or actually, not all of us do … and yet, it seems they keep on coming in a pretty steady stream.
Here’s a pretty thoughtful, interesting essay on why we enjoy monsters, keep making up new ones, and recycle the old ones we enjoyed before…
What do you think? What is about it about being scared that we crave?
And while we’re at it, what’s the scariest movie you’ve ever seen?
Hard as it is to crack the very tough book business and make it as a published novelist, there are several Dayton-area writers who have pulled it off. Some, such as the literary writer Katrina Kittle and mystery writer Sharon Short, are pretty well known in town and have gotten a good amount of press.
One you may know not know quite so well is Carrie Bebris, who is pretty far along a witty series of period novels she calls the “Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries.”
Yes, Jane Austen fans, that Mr. Darcy. Bebris has reimagined the characters created in “Pride and Prejudice” and has recast them as amateur sleuths who pursue villains admist the moors and mansions of 19th-century Britain.
Mysteries always need a twist, and about five years ago when she was trying to come up with one, “I started with what I like to read. Jane Austen has always been my favorite author, and I wondered what kind of premise I could build off her, like a murder at a Jane Austen convention…
“And then I was rereading ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ and I realized Elizabeth predicted a lot of what happens in the action, and Darcy was a man of society who had the connections and resources to move about in the world and make things happen. So imagine what they could accomplish after their marriage! They could become involved in intrigue, they could meet other Jane Austen characters…”
And indeed, they have. First came 2004’s “Pride and Prescience,” and from there she’s had the intrepid, fast-talking, incurably romantic pair moving through mysteries that have spun off each of Austen’s books.
Bebris, 40, lives in Washington Twp. with her husband, Oakwood Public Safety Director Alexander Bebris, and their two kids. They moved here from Wisconsin about three years for his job, and Bebris now writes full-time, with the Darcy mysteries — published by Tor/Forge — front and center.
With an English-lit degree from Marquette, and once worked as an editor for TSR, the company that made the “Dungeons and Dragons” games. She started writing fantasy novels, tired of doing battle scenes and decided mysteries were more her style.
The fifth Darcy novel, “The Intrigue at Highbury,” just came out, and she’s enjoying the sales reports from the new paperback editions of her third and fourth in the series. Her Web site, www.carriebebris.com, has the details. The books are big in Italy, which amuses her, and she’s brainstorming the next one, which will be based upon Austen’s “Persuasion,” Bebris’ favorite.
She realizes, happily, that she’s riding a recent wave in renewed Austen interest, visible on movie screens and in other novels, such as the recent zombie knock-off that got some buzz.
“Every time I read her, I find something new,” Bebris says. “There’s a gentility and decorum in those books that’s been lost in our society. We live in a society where people go on reality TV and bare their souls for attention; I think a lot of us would rather live in a world where people held back some of themselves, out of propriety, like Mr. Darcy.
“She’s very contemporary in terms of talking about things that still matter. Plus, she’s very funny.”
Austen left six novels, of which “Persuasion” was the last, but Bebris expects to mix, match and combine characters from them all for future plots. “I don’t think we’ve quite seen the last of Mr. Wickham, do you?” she says with a laugh, referring to the scoundrelly soldier who keeps after Elizabeth Bennett and her younger sisters until Mr. Darcy saves the day, and her heart.
“As long as people continue being interested, I’ll keep writing them,” she says. “There are plenty more to come.”
Writer and editor Ron Rollins has covered entertainment and the Dayton arts scene for more than a decade.
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Typical PC liberal bullshit with psychobabble. We are a nation of 305 million people surrounded by