it and a

Personal blog. Formerly snkowns.

[myjetpack]

For the Guardian

[mangabookshelf]

Pick of the Week: Otherworld Barbara

Pick of the Week: Otherworld Barbara

SEAN: Another week, another really obvious pick. I’ve loved the other Moto Hagio volumes we’ve seen over here, and so absolutely cannot wait for the first volume of Otherworld Barbara, a story so good it won the Japan SF Grand Prize, the Japanese equivalent of a Nebula Award. It’s from Fantagraphics, so should look great too. And an omnibus to boot! ASH: Yup, no question about it. It’s Otherworld…

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[detroitlib]

Detroit Institute of Arts Inside-Out Program

The Detroit Institute of Arts brings framed reproductions of its most famous works to the main streets and landmark outdoor spaces of Metro Detroit.  By reimagining area cities and suburbs as a grand, open air gallery, the project aims to connect with audiences outside of traditional museum walls. For the next three months the communities of East English Village, Cornerstone Village and Morningside in Detroit will host 10 reproductions. The reproduction above is on the Alger Theater 16451 East Warren Ave, right next to the Jefferson Branch Library. The painting is called Mother and Child by Solomon Irein Wangboje, 1960. The art work and locations are listed below.

Blue Madonna-1961. Bob Thompson

16352 East Warren

The Wedding Dance-about 1566. Pieter Bruegel the Elder

The Wind Basket-16380 East Warren Ave

Head of a Woman-130-160 CE Unknown Artist

Fitness Park Cornwall St and Cadieux Rd.

Judith and Holofernes-1623/1625 Artemisia Gentileschhi

Cadieux Cafe-4300 Cadieux Rd

Seascape: Sunset-1861 Martin Johnson Heade

Messmer Park-17151 Gravier St.

Watson and the Shark-1777 John Singleton Copley

Balduck Memorial Park-5271 Canyon St.

Movement #27-2002-Kwesi Owusu-Ankomah

Balduck Memorial Park-5271 Canyon St.

Fourteenth Street at Sixth Ave-John Sloan

Bike Tech-18401 East Warren Ave.

Fire in a Haystack-1856-Jules Adolphe Aime-Louis Breton

Detroit Diner-17017 East Warren Ave.

Find them all and then visit the DIA and see the originals!

[michiganpast]

Coney: The Hot Dog That Fueled Detroit's Middle-Class Dreams

Hundreds of eateries selling chili-topped hot dogs dot Detroit. The story of how this food became the city's signature dish is deeply entwined with its auto industry and the workers who flocked to it.

[womenoflibraryhistory]

--via the Library of Congress on Twitter

It’s always nice to see one of our profiles become out-of-date for FANTASTIC reasons: Dr. Carla D. Hayden’s nomination as LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS has been approved today!!!

Congratulations, Dr. Hayden! (And congratulations to the Library of Congress, which will finally get to enjoy the first African American Librarian of Congress and the first woman Librarian of Congress.)

[detroitlib]

Fishfly invasion on the Eastside!! 

And they want to use the library!

[itanda]

One thing I don’t miss about SE MI.

[itanda]

Out of Print Clothing had a BOGO sale last week, so I finally got a couple shirts I really wanted. It was hard to narrow it down to 2, but these are both old favorites

[micdotcom]

Webster’s dictionary adds “cisgender” and “genderqueer”

On Wednesday, Merriam-Webster caught up to speed with two words people have been using to describe their gender identity for at least a decade, adding “cisgender” and “genderqueer” to its unabridged dictionary. Among the 1,400 words, you’ve probably seen a few of them across Tumblr for a while now

[micdotcom]

Update: Apparently these additions were too much for some people.

But Merriam Webster was having none of that.

They know what it means to throw shade.

And they’ve been trolling people who hate new words all week.

[libraryjournal]

A major step on the path for Carla Hayden to become the next Librarian of Congress will take place next week. On Wednesday (April 20, 2016) at 2:15 p.m. (EDST) Ms. Hayden will go before the Senate Committee For Rules & Administration for her confirmation hearing.

Mark your calendars! The hearing will be webcast live with an archived version available shortly after it concludes.

[itanda]

I am disappointed that tomorrow’s my offsite project so I can’t watch.

[nprbooks]

Today in Cool Stuff in the Mail – a new twist on the now-ubiquitous adult coloring books. We’re not entirely sure about this yet; it seems to require a LOT of fine motor skills. But the end result is really pretty!

– Petra

[detroitlib]

Celebrate National Library Week! (April 10 - 16, 2016)

Because libraries help young people excel. #LibrariesTransform

H.Y.P.E. Teen Center, Detroit Public Library

(H.Y.P.E. = Helping Young People Excel)

Photo: Doug Coombe

Source: http://www.michigannightlight.com/people/HeasterWheeler.aspx

[micdotcom]

Watch: Franchesca Ramsey explains how the 1% ended up so old, white and male.

[readingdate]

Attention audiobook fans! May 5th is the kick-off for SYNC Summer 2016! Read on to find out more about the program and to find the Sync 2016 Audiobook Listening Schedule!

For 15 weeks this summer, SYNC offers 2 FREE audiobook downloads to listeners age 13 and up. The audio selections include a current title paired with a related classic title that’s based on a weekly theme. This is a great way to try out audiobooks and I think this year’s selection may be the best yet!

//giphy.com/embed/CDoxe35inxhfO

Audiofile Magazine and the audiobook publishers sponsor this program to introduce the joys of listening to the YA audience. I look forward to this program all year and I know many of you have become hooked on audiobooks thanks to this program.

The audiobooks are in MP3 format so they work for both Mac and PC. Titles are available through the OverDrive App – and you can get the lowdown on the SYNC download prep here. Each download will be available for 7 days so don’t miss out on your free YA audiobooks from SYNC! After you download the audiobooks though you can listen to them at your leisure.

I recommend you text syncya to 25827 now so you are all set to receive alerts when the latest titles go live. Read more about the program at SYNC and follow their blog for updates. Some of the titles have international restrictions – go here to see availability by country.

New this year: The Audiobook Sync team is putting together discussion guides for a few of the titles. Plan an event and listen with your book club or library!

SYNC 2016 Audiobook Listening Schedule

May 5 – May 11:

VIVIAN APPLE AT THE END OF THE WORLD by Kate Coyle (Dreamscape Audio)

Read by: Julia Whelan

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

THE GREAT TENNESSEE MONKEY TRIAL by Peter Goodchild (L.A. Theatre Works)

Read by: Edward Asner, Bill Brochtrup, Matthew Patrick Davis, John de Lancie, James Gleason, Harry Groener, Jerry Hardin, Marnie Mosiman, Kenneth Alan Williams, Geoffrey Lower, Kyle Colerider-Krugh

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

May 12 – May 18

THE SIN EATER’S DAUGHTER by Melinda Salisbury (Scholastic Audiobooks)

Read by: Amy Shiels

DIVINE COLLISION: An African Boy, an American Lawyer, and Their Remarkable Battle for Freedom by Jim Gash (Oasis Audio)

Read by: Brandon Batchelar

May 19 – May 25

100 SIDEWAYS MILES by Andrew Smith (Tantor Media)

Read by: Kirby Heyborne

THIS BOY’S LIFE by Tobias Wolff (HighBridge Audio)

Read by: Oliver Wyman

May 26 – June 1

EVERY LAST WORD by Tamara Ireland Stone (Ideal Audiobooks)

Read by: Amy Rubinate

EGG & SPOON by Gregory Maguire (Brilliance Audio)

Read by: Michael Page

Winner of Audies 2015 Teen Audiobook

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

June 2 – June 8

WORDS IN THE DUST by Trent Reedy (Scholastic Audiobooks)

Read by: Ariana Delawari

THE BOY BORN DEAD: A Story of Friendship, Courage, and Triumph by David Ring, David Wideman, and John Driver (christianaudio)

Read by: Paul Michael

Finalist of 2016 Audies Award for Inspirational/Faith-Based Nonfiction

June 9 – June 15

ZAC AND MIA by A. J. Betts (Dreamscape Audio)

Read by: Kristin Condon, Nicholas Mondelli

I’LL GIVE YOU THE SUN by Jandy Nelson (Brilliance Audio)

Read by: Julia Whelan, Jesse Bernstein

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2015 Printz Award

June 16 – June 22

HOW IT WENT DOWN by Kekla Magoon (Recorded Books)

Read by: Cherise Boothe, Shari Peele, Kevin R. Free, Patricia R. Floyd, Avery Glymph, Korey Jackson, Hubert Point-Du Jour, Peter Jay Fernandez, Ezra Knight, Myra Lucretia Taylor, Brian Hutchinson

Finalist of 2016 Audies Award for Multi-Voiced Performance

THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN EX-COLORED MAN by James Weldon Johnson (Tantor Media)

Read by: Alan Bomar Jones

June 23 – June 29

BOY MEETS BOY by David Leviathan (Full Cast Audio)

Read by: Nicholas Robideau and a full cast

DONNY’S BRAIN by Rona Munro (L.A. Theatre Works)

Read by: Paul Fox, Jared Harris, Siobhán Hewlett, Moira Quirk, Sophie Winkleman

June 30 – July 6

THE OMNIVORE’S DILEMMA: The Secrets Behind What You Eat, Young Readers Edition by Michael Pollan (Listening Library)

Read by: MacLeod Andrews

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

GRASSHOPPER JUNGLE by Andrew Smith (Listening Library)

Read by: Philip Church

July 7 – July 13

THE YOUNG WORLD by Chris Weitz (Hachette Audio)

Read by: Spencer Locke, Jose Julian

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

SYMPHONY FOR THE CITY OF THE DEAD: Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad by M. T. Anderson (Brilliance Audio)

Read by: M.T. Anderson

July 14 – July 20

FAT ANGIE by e.E. Charlton–Trujillo (Brilliance Audio)

Read by: Angela Dawe

ON THE JELLICOE ROAD by Melina Marchetta and Rebecca Macauley (Bolinda Publishing)

Read by: Rebecca Macauley

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

July 21 – July 27

MANDELA: An Audio History by Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, and Joe Richman (HighBridge Audio)

Read by: Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Joe Richman

Winner of Audies 2015 Audiobook of the Year 

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

THINGS FALL APART by Chinua Achebe (Recorded Books)

Read by: Peter Francis James

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

July 28 – August 3

JUBA! by Walter Dean Myers (HarperAudio)

Read by: Brandon Gill

PENNIES FOR HITLER by Jackie French (Bolinda Publishing)

Read by: Humphrey Bower

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

August 4 – August 10

THE BOOK OF UNKNOWN AMERICANS by Cristina Henríquez (Penguin Random House Audio)

Read by: Yareli Arizmendi, Christine Avila, Jesse Corti, Gustavo Res, Ozzie Rodriguez, Gabriel Romero

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award

Discussion Guide to come

MOST DANGEROUS: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War by Steve Sheinkin (Listening Library)

Read by: Ray Porter

August 11 – August 17

BONE GAP by Laura Ruby (HarperAudio)

Read by: Dan Bittner

Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2016 Printz Award

CLASSIC AMERICAN SHORT STORIES by Jack London, Ambrose Bierce, Stephen Crane, Kate Chopin, James Fenimore Cooper, Mark Twain and O. Henry (Naxos AudioBooks)

Read by: William Roberts, Garrick Hagon, Liza Ross

Listen to audio clips of all the Sync titles:

Several of these audiobooks are on my To-be-listen list – which titles are you most excited to listen to? 

Sync 2016 Audiobook Listening Schedule #sync16 #audiobookSYNC Attention audiobook fans! May 5th is the kick-off for SYNC Summer 2016! Read on to find out more about the program and to find the…

[libraryjournal]

The Mass-Market Edition of “To Kill a Mockingbird” is Dead

Harper Lee’s estate will no longer allow publication of the inexpensive paperback edition that was popular with schools.

Without a mass-market option, schools will likely be forced to pay higher prices for bulk orders of the trade paperback edition—and given the perilous state of many school budgets, that could very easily lead to it being assigned in fewer schools. 

[obamawhitehouse]

Big news: President Obama just announced that he’s nominating Carla Hayden as our 14th Librarian of Congress. She’ll be the first woman and the first African-American to hold the position in its 214 year history.

[austinpubliclibrary]

A bit more on Dr. Carla Hayden, President Obama’s nominee for the next Librarian of Congress. We’re a little excited over here!

[riotrite-deactivated20171226]

So I know the crisis with lead poisoning in Flint, MI is bad. I don’t want to downplay how bad it is- many, many children will now grow up with an incredible array of developmental issues, most notably skeletal and neurological, perpetuating cycles of poverty and white supremacy, due to the willful and malicious negligence of people in power.

But it’s not just Flint.

Back in undergrad I was an intern with the public health department in another extremely poor and (overwhelming) majority black city. Specifically I was the intern of the lead poisoning enforcement team, which, at least at the time, consisted of one nurse and me. Our job worked like this: a hospital would get a child whose bloodwork showed the child was already poisoned (lead poisoning damage is permanent and irreparable, by the way, so we were always too late) and they would call us. We would investigate the child’s living situation with a digital camera and a handheld spectrometer and determine where the lead was coming from- lead makes paint more durable so usually it would be exterior trim, doors, windowsills, and radiators. I can actually identify it by sight by the way it peels. Sometimes it would be a local playground or empty lot since the city is built on top of the crumbling remains of failed and unregulated industries. Sometimes it was the water supply of old pipes hadn’t been replaced, but systemic lead poisoning through municipal water wasn’t an issue where I was, so the city and its poisoned children never made national news. I doubt it would have anyway; white America generally ignored us as much as possible.

Anyway, I digress. We would find out where the lead came from and then legally force the owner of the house to renovate to spec. I have been personally yelled at by more than one slumlord for this part of the job.

But more often than we could feel good about, it wasn’t a slumlord who owned the property; it was the child’s grandma or uncle or mom who, if they had enough money to renovate their home, wouldn’t be living where they did anyway. We did lots of community outreach and education, and we were constantly battling the slumlords, but all too often, our job boiled down to enforcing more financial hardships on families who already had one or more poisoned children and didn’t even come close to having the financial means to do anything about it anyway.

Name a bad psychosocial outcome and lead poisoning has been linked to it. Name a non-genetic skeletal or neurological syndrome and prenatal/childhood lead poisoning can precipitate it (this is honestly not that huge of an exaggeration). Essentially, your body mistakes lead ions for calcium and iron ions (mostly), which are absolutely vital building blocks for your body, and uses them for a thousand different wrong purposes, leading to irreversible and tragic damage, especially in children. It’s really horrific in terms of what it can do to a body and to a community. And it’s NOT just in Flint. Poor towns across the U.S. are filled with lead paint, and if there’s any grant money available for homeowners to renovate, it’s usually a drop in the bucket.

So I’m really glad to see people paying attention to the atrocity in Flint, but I also want people to know that this is an epidemic, and it’s specifically an epidemic of people in poverty/people of color. The cycle of poisoning and lack of remediation is caused directly by policies cutting back legal and financial services to the poor and enabling slumlords to dominate neighborhoods and cities with high interest and variable rate mortgages (among other things), and the complicity and corruption of regulatory agencies.

So again, it’s great to see all the righteous indignation directed at Flint. But I suggest you save some of that anger for your own lawmakers and local “real estate entrepreneurs,” because I promise you that lead poisoning is closer to home than you think.

[old-greighish]

Naomi Novik - Uprooted [Julia Emelin]

This is 3 for 3 for my book match from @bklynlibrary. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed each one I’ve listened to so far. Uprooted was so engaging that I sacrificed precious writing time to continue listening to it. Yet another story where language is a focus, this time Polish, it seems.

Keep reading

[itanda]

Two coworkers who generally have similar tastes to mine picked this as their favorite 2015 release, and I was a fan of her Temeraire books (though I haven’t finished the series), so this was already high on my to-read list. You just made it sound even more awesome.