Showing posts with label Websites. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Websites. Show all posts

Monday, July 29, 2013

Staff Review: Adventure Time ... and cats!

Lately, I've been in a bit of a reading funk. While it seems impossible, I may have grown tired of YA dystopia (at least until Horde, Flame or UnSouled finally come out). In the meantime I've been picking up short, humorous books and graphic novels, many of them offshoots of television shows or websites and many of them about cats. Here are some of my favorites:

Adventure Time, vols. 1 & 2
If, by some chance, you're not an avid watcher of children's cartoons like I am, Adventure Time is an animated TV series on Cartoon Network created by Pendleton Ward. Imaginative, silly and subversive, the series follows Finn the human and Jake the dog and their adventures in the Land of Ooo. Adventure Time Volumes 1 and 2, written by webcomic veteran Ryan North and illustrated by Shelli Paroline and Braden Lamb, are wonderful companions to the TV show. I was a little wary that the show's magic wouldn't translate well onto the printed page, but I'm happy to say I was wrong. One of the best parts of the books are the hidden messages at the bottom of each page, some of which require decoding! Spin-offs the the original comic books have been published, including Adventure Time: Marceline and the Scream Queens by Meredith Gran and Adventure Time: Playing with Fire by Danielle Corsetto and Zack Sterling. Even if you haven't seen the show, I highly recommend the comic books!

Tiny Confessions: The Secrets of Dogs, Cats and Everything by Christopher Rozzi
Tiny Confessions is a collection of single-panel illustrations in which the subject - cat, dog or seashell- confess their most intimate secrets. Rozzi sells art prints of select confessions and maintains a Tumblr, dailytinyconfession. The book is funny, short and, on occasion, hits a little too close to home ...

Henri, le Chat Noir: The Existential Musings of an Angst-Filled Cat by William Braden
Henri, le Cat Noir, rose to Internet celebrity status through his series of black-and-white videos on YouTube, in which he expresses his special brand of angst-ridden feline philosophy (narrated in French, bien sûr). His book, written by William Braden, is a selection of his most profound observations and meditations. I challenge anyone to read this book without a French accent.


I Could Pee on This: And Other Poems by Cats by Francesco Marciuliano and Sorry I Barfed on Your Bed: And Other Heartwarming Letters from Kitty by Jeremy Greenberg
In the same vein, both I Could Pee on This and Sorry I Barfed on Your Bed are collections of humorous (unintentional of otherwise) writings by cats. I Could Pee on This is collection of poems written by comic strip author Francesco Marciuliano (he also writes Sally Forth and the webcomic Medium Large) that allows us to peek into the inner thoughts of feline companions. Not always profound (unlike Henri) but always hilarious, these poems are perfect for cat owners. Not to be left out, dog owners can look forward to I Could Chew on This: And Other Poems by Dogs later this month.

Sorry I Barfed on Your Bed offers similar insight into our cats' lives. A collection of letters written to the humans in their lives, such as "Clump Scooper" or "Enabler," they address such pressing issues as the need to sleep more than 12 hours a day, to concern over a perceived addiction to eating grass. Each letter is accompanied by a photo of the "author," presumably in mid-dictation.

Two upcoming web-inspired books that I'm looking forward to reading are Lil' BUB's Lil' Book: The Extraordinary Life of the Most Amazing Cat on the Planet (early September) and Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half: Unfortunate Situations, Flawed Coping Mechanisms, Mayhem, and Other Things That Happened (late October). Fortunately, I'm finding plenty of other books to occupy me in the meantime!

~ Allison, Adult Services

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Researching a Library Postcard


During the recent library haiku contest, I tried to write a poem about how Carnegie-Stout Public Library was here before any of us were born and would likely still be around after all of us have passed away, but I couldn't figure out how to say that within the required number of syllables.

Since then I found an item on eBay which reflects this idea about the permanence of libraries--and the impermanence of library users--as well as any haiku: a 100-year-old Carnegie-Stout postcard.

Postcard, Carnegie-Stout Public Library, Dubuque
click to enlarge image
I won the auction for the postcard with a bid of 70 cents, not a bad deal for a beautiful color image of Dubuque's public library from the turn of the century, close to the time when the Carnegie building first opened 1902.

The handwritten note on the back of the postcard is especially interesting. Arthur in Dubuque wrote to Miss Zoe Smith in Webster City, Iowa to say he was a free man now and working for the government and he'd like to come see her.

Postcard Back
click to enlarge image
I wondered about Arthur's newfound freedom. Did he just get out of jail? Or maybe he had divorced his wife? Would Zoe Smith be eager to see Arthur? Or would she be surprised, or maybe even frightened?

The card is postmarked December 27, 1912, and Arthur's address of 110 Center Place in Dubuque is legible, so I started my research with those bits of information in hopes of learning more about Arthur and Zoe.

Arthur

The 1910-1911 city directory at Carnegie-Stout Public Library shows that Arthur Kline lived at 110 Center Place with Joseph H. Kline, a postal clerk with the Railway Mail Service. Arthur worked at S. P. Wadley Company, a butter and egg wholesaler at 200 South Locust Street.

Joseph H. Kline was Arthur's father, according to the 1910 U.S. Federal Census. Arthur was 17 years old at that time, having been born around 1893. Before moving to Center Place, Arthur lived on Chestnut Street in Dubuque with his mother and father and younger brother and sister.

Google News ArchiveThe Kline's address on the postcard, 110 Center Place, is probably 1132 Center Place today. Some Dubuque streets were renamed and renumbered during the 1920s. The Klines are listed at 110 Center Place before those changes and at 1132 Center Place afterwards.

When Arthur's father Joseph died in 1926, his funeral services were held at home at 1132 Center Place. Arthur's mother Addie lived at the same address until she passed away in 1940, and Arthur's brother Russell Kline and his family lived in that house for many more years.

With a tip from Kris Gallagher, Teacher Librarian at Dubuque Senior High School, I found Arthur's senior portrait in the 1910 yearbook, The Echo. Arthur attended Central High School at 15th and Locust Streets. Arthur's full name was Joseph Arthur Kline. He appears to have gone by 'Arthur' until after his father Joseph died in the mid 1920s.

click to enlarge image
According to city directories and census records, Arthur's father Joseph was a railway postal clerk. This helped me figure out the handwriting on the front of Arthur's postcard: "Forgot to tell you I am a railway mail clerk."

So at the end of 1912, Arthur Kline, age 19, had an exciting new job with the government, in the same line of work as his father, which regularly took him at least as far away as Webster City, 167 miles from Dubuque. This must have seemed liberating to Arthur after attending high school, working for a butter and egg wholesaler, and living at home with his younger brother and sister.

I do not know if Arthur ever visited Zoe Smith, but less than two years after he mailed the postcard, Arthur married Mabel Irene Benedict in Fort Dodge, Iowa, about 20 miles west of Webster City. According to Iowa marriage records, Arthur was 22 and Mabel was 20 when they married in 1914.

When Arthur registered for the draft in 1917, he lived in Chicago and was employed by the "U.S. Gov." as a "R.R. Postal Clerk" at the LaSalle Street Station. At 25, Arthur was tall and medium build, with blue eyes and black hair. Although World War I lasted through 1918, later census records show that Arthur was not a military veteran.

Arthur and Mabel were still in Chicago in 1920. They were both employed as "terminal mail" clerks, and they lived with Mabel's mother Ida Benedict and Mabel's younger brother and sister in a rented house.

By 1930, Arthur and Mabel owned a home worth $8,500 at 21 Poplar Place in La Grange, Illinois near Chicago. Joseph was still a railroad mail clerk. They lived alone with their 9-year-old son, Robert.

Unfortunately, Arthur passed away a short time later. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, Arthur died suddenly on December 2, 1936. He was 44 and was still working as a railroad postal clerk.

Arthur's funeral was held at home at 21 Poplar Place, and he was buried in the La Grange cemetery. He left behind two sons with Mabel, Robert and Joseph.

Zoe

Zoe Smith of Webster City was harder to track down. Zoe, about age 5, appears with her family in the 1900 U.S. Federal Census at 1100 1st Street in Webster City. Zoe's father Nathaniel Smith was a day laborer.

By 1910, Zoe and her family had moved to 1162 10th Street in Des Moines, about 70 miles south of Webster City. At that time, Zoe was 14 years old.

One of Zoe's older sisters, Merle Smith, still lived in Webster City in 1910. Merle owned a  millinery shop there until the 1940s. An announcement in the Webster City Tribune on July 25, 1913 seems to indicate that Zoe Smith spent time there, too: "Misses Merle and Zoe Smith went to Des Moines this morning, where the former goes to buy part of her fall millinery stock."

Webster City Tribune
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I couldn't find much about Zoe Smith after 1913, around the time she was 17 and Arthur sent the postcard to her. Zoe Smith's name does not appear on a list of Webster City school graduates, so either Zoe did not graduate at all or she attended school somewhere else, maybe in Des Moines where she lived in 1910.

Oddly, a 'Zoe Smith' is mentioned in Bert Leston Taylor's humor column "A Line-O'-Type or Two" in the Chicago Daily Tribune on October 18, 1912: "LYLE BLACK and Zoe Smith were married in Liscomb, Ia., the other day, and no one thought to play the anvil chorus."

A Line-O'-Type or Two
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Iowa marriage records show that a 'Lyle J. Black' was born in Webster City in 1895, but he went on to marry Ruth Casler in 1920. I couldn't find any other records to verify that Zoe Smith married Lyle Black, so perhaps the blurb in the Chicago column was a joke or just a strange coincidence.

Since I was stuck, I sent an email asking for help to Reference Librarian Ketta Lubberstedt-Arjes at Kendall Young Library in Webster City. Ketta replied with a copy of pages from a Webster City funeral home index which show that Merle E. Kellogg (nee Smith) died in 1967, and that Merle's sister Mrs. Zoe Herbel lived at 188 East 19th Street in Costa Mesa, California.

With Zoe's married name, I found her in the 1930 census in Los Angeles living with her husband, Earl L. Herbel. Zoe G. Herbel, 31 years old, was a saleswoman at a drygoods store. Earl, age 25, was a repairman at an auto repair garage. Like Zoe, Earl was originally from Iowa. They were married in Los Angeles around March 1926, according to an announcement in the Adams County Free Press of Corning, Iowa.

Zoe Gladys Herbel died on February 6, 1972 in Huntington Beach, California, and she was buried in Glendale, California, almost 60 years after Arthur sent the postcard to her.

Resources

Most of the information above came from Ancestry Library Edition, a genealogy database accessible at Carnegie-Stout Public Library. I looked at other library databases, too, including HeritageQuest Online, NewsBank, and ProQuest Historical Newspapers. And I checked old city directories and the card index of obituaries at Carnegie-Stout.

Some online sites were useful, like Encyclopedia Dubuque, FamilySearch.org, IAGenWeb, Google News Archive, NewspaperARCHIVE.com, and THOnline.com's Obituary Archive.

Ketta Lubberstedt-Arjes, Reference Librarian at Kendall Young Library in Webster City, Iowa, and Kris Gallagher, Teacher Librarian at Dubuque Senior High School, were both very helpful.

These resources can't tell us how Arthur knew Zoe, why Arthur chose a Carnegie-Stout Public Library postcard to send, or if Zoe ever received the card and responded. But they can provide a little context to help us better understand people, like Arthur and Zoe, who lived before us.


Michael May
Adult Services Librarian
Carnegie-Stout Public Library

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Dubuque Newspapers in Google News Archive


Here's a list of some Dubuque, Iowa newspapers, approximately in reverse chronological order, which can still be accessed via Google News Archive.

Coverage is not complete, and many issues do not appear to be searchable by keyword, but if you have a specific date you might be able to find articles by browsing to those issues.

To find obituary dates, try the THonline.com Obituary Archive Search.

For tips and tricks, see How to Find Dubuque Obituaries Online and Who Can Use the Telegraph Herald Digital Archive.


The Telegraph-Herald
22,552 issues
Aug 17, 1903 - Dec 31, 2004

The Telegraph-Herald and Times-Journal
1,500 issues
Aug 1, 1919 - May 19, 1935

Dubuque Telegraph-Herald
1,207 issues
Oct 27, 1901 - Dec 20, 1931

Dubuque Daily Telegraph
293 issues
Jan 1, 1901 - Oct 27, 1901

Dubuque Daily Herald
4,897 issues
Sep 28, 1866 - Dec 31, 1900

Dubuque Sunday Herald
1,024 issues
Feb 15, 1885 - Apr 17, 1898

Dubuque Herald
4,973 issues
Jan 1, 1860 - Feb 14, 1885

Daily Dubuque Herald
222 issues
Oct 21, 1868 - Jul 12, 1869

Dubuque Democratic Herald
489 issues
Sep 10, 1863 - Sep 10, 1865

Daily Express and Herald
576 issues
Nov 17, 1855 - Jun 30, 1859

Weekly Express and Herald
61 issues
Oct 22, 1856 - Dec 30, 1857

Dubuque Weekly Observer
18 issues
Jul 1, 1854 - Nov 3, 1854

Iowa News
48 issues
Jun 3, 1837 - Jun 16, 1838



Friday, February 25, 2011

Read Alike: Laurell K. Hamilton

Laurell K. Hamilton

www.laurellkhamilton.org

(Caution: Hamilton's writing often contains explicit sexual content and language.)

Popular with Fantasy, Horror, and Mystery readers, early novels in Laurell K. Hamilton's Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series may also intrigue Hardboiled/Noir readers. In alt-reality St. Louis, vampires possess legally recognized minority status. Special enforcers, like tough-but-vulnerable Anita, keep them in line with the law. Sexual tension and violence simmer among unusual (often quasi-human) characters.

Start with Guilty Pleasures: When innocent vampires are found murdered, the city's most powerful vampire hires Anita Blake, a vampire hunter known as "The Executioner," to investigate the crimes.

More recently, Hamilton has applied her successful 'folklore-meets-gritty-urban-reality' formula to her Merry Gentry series, whose title character is a Faery royal-turned-private-investigator in L.A. Running away from her evil aunt, fairy princess Meredith Gentry hides out in the mortal world as a private detective specializing in supernatural crimes in this thrilling and sexy series.

Start with A Kiss of Shadows: Mixed-blood Princess Meredith NicEssus, however, has fled the faerie world to pass for three years as Merry Gentry, a human with some fey blood who works in Los Angeles with a detective agency that specializes in supernatural problems and magical solutions. Suddenly outed as the missing princess and fearing that her aunt, the Queen of Air and Darkness, will kill her, she makes a desperate run aided by her detective pals.

Fans of Anita Blake and Merry Gentry may also enjoy:

Jim Butcher’s Dresden files: Butcher's dry, laconic tone tempers highly supernatural elements with earthy believability. Harry Dresden, titular protagonist of the Dresden Files series, first attracted Fantasy fans: An unshaven Wizard and Private-Eye for Hire in alt-reality Chicago where the police often need his (unofficial) help. Fast-paced action and good story-telling abounds, interlaced with humor from wry to near-slapstick. Storm Front: With rent past due and a decent meal becoming an issue of some importance, Harry needs work, and soon. A call from a distraught wife, and another from Lt Murphy of the Chicago PD Special Investigation Unit makes Harry believe things are looking up, but they are about to get worse, much worse. Someone is harnessing immense supernatural forces to commit a series of grisly murders.

Patricia Briggs' Mercy Jackson series: Briggs writing style keeps the plot racing and she seamlessly mixes romance with fantasy, mystery and adventure. The characters are engaging and will satisfy both vampire and werewolf/shapeshifter fans. Moon Called: While trying to live a so-called normal existence, mechanic Mercy Thompson, a shape shifter raised by werewolves, gets into trouble with the gremlins, witches, and vampires with whom she deals on a daily basis.

Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark Hunter Series: Kenyon is a leading writer in Paranormal Romance, offering readers an addictive blend of mythology, magic and sexy love stories in her vampire-based Dark-Hunter series. Kenyon populates her world with complex characters. These characters are never clearly good or bad, and the villain of one book can become the hero of the next. Kenyon builds her world with vivid details of the setting, often New Orleans, and the characters' homes, weapons, and relationships. Night Pleasures: A handsome immortal finds himself drawn despite himself to the prim and proper Amanda Devereaux, a smart, witty, and conservative young woman who wants nothing to do with the paranormal, in the first novel in the Dark-Hunter series.

Charlaine Harris’ Southern Vampire Series (better known as True Blood): The Sookie Stackhouse novels feature a female protagonist living in avividly portrayed small Southern town. These Mysteries are not truly dark or disturbing. Dead Until Dark: Sookie Stackhouse is a cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana, but she keeps to herself and doesn't date much because of her "disability" to read minds. When she meets Bill, Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's the type of guy she's waited for all of her life, but he has a disability, too--he's a vampire with a bad reputation. When one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next.

Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series: Moning writes steamy hot romances with a strong supernatural angle. Her historical romances feature rugged Scottish settings and time travel that spans centuries, while her contemporary romances feature our own familiar world alongside the world of the Fae. Elements of mystery and suspense frequently figure in her stories, which are told in a captivating, page-turning style. Strong characters, vivid descriptive details, and sizzling sex scenes will seduce readers into Moning's Urban Fantasy worlds. Darkfever: Mac is stunned to discover that her sister's murder was far more than a random act of violence and resents the awakening of a mysterious ability to sense the Fae and their talismans, a talent that sends her on a quest to find a mystical book of dark power.

Kim Harrison’s The Hollow’s Series: Readers are charmed by Kim Harrison's deft mix of human and non-human characters living in an alternate world, as they follow witch and bounty hunter Rachel Morgan on her adventures. Smart-mouthed and strong-willed Rachel lives in a small unearthly community within Cincinnati called The Hollows, in which mythical beings coexist with their human counterparts. Readers are treated to highly imaginative facts and histories of these strange creatures as Harrison creates gripping and elaborate plots and subplots to keep her readers guessing. Dead Witch Walking: Sexy bounty hunter and witch Rachel Morgan prowls the dark streets of Cincinnati, keeping tabs on the vampires and other creatures of the supernatural that prey on the city's innocent and vulnerable inhabitants.

Jeaniene Frost Night Huntress series: New York Times bestselling author combines paranormal romance with urban fantasy fiction. Her Night Huntress series combines a winning blend of humor, sex, and real emotion that will leave readers eager for more. Halfway to the Grave: Half-vampire Catherine Crawfield pursues the undead with a vengeance in the hope that one of her prey will be the father who ruined her mother's life, but her plans go awry when she is captured by Bones, a vampire bounty hunter.

Please stop by the Recommendations Desk on the first floor, check out NoveList Plus on the library's website, or visit W. 11th & Bluff next week for more reading suggestions. Or submit a Personal Recommendations request, and we'll create a reading list just for you!