Top of page

Archive: March 2016 (15 Posts)

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Easter Week Illuminations

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post by Levon Avdoyan, Armenian and Georgian area specialist in the African and Middle Eastern Division.) The feast of Easter is arguably the holiest of holidays for the various Christian denominations but especially for the Eastern Churches – among those, the Armenian Church. For it, Easter Week (Avag Shabat, the …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: It’s Bloomin’ Time

Posted by: Erin Allen

This week marks the beginning of the National Cherry Blossom Festival, an annual event held in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the gift of some 3,000 Yoshino cherry trees given to the city in 1912 as a symbol of friendship between Japan and the United States. The grounds of the Library of Congress Thomas Jefferson Building are home …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Congas, Sambas and Falling Plaster

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

I was 15 years old, sitting cross-legged next to my friend Mascha on a cork-tile floor at Mammoth Gardens, a roller-skating rink built in 1910. Plaster, occasionally, was falling from the ceiling – because the band on the stage that night was the drum-heavy Santana, which had just released its 1970 album “Abraxas.” That’s the …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Ask Us Anything: Reddit AMA on Rosa Parks Papers 3/29

Posted by: Jennifer Gavin

(The following is a guest post by Information Technology Specialist Michelle Rago.) Library experts involved in making the papers of Rosa Parks available online will answer your questions in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” (AMA) session beginning at 9 a.m. (ET) on March 29, 2016. Join us on the AskHistorians subreddit. The collection contains some 7,500 …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

A Gorey Story

Posted by: Erin Allen

The work of Edward Gorey has often been described as “macabre,” a word that his friend Alexander Theroux claims the noted author and artist didn’t like. While I would agree that it’s an appropriate word, Gorey’s drawings are something more – odd, whimsical, humorous, magical, mysterious, gloomy, eccentric – all rolled up in delightful pen-and-ink …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Hedge Coke Honored as Witter Bynner Fellow

Posted by: Erin Allen

On Wednesday, poet Allison Hedge Coke was honored as the 2016 Witter Bynner Fellow. She was selected and introduced by Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry at the Library of Congress, Juan Felipe Herrera. In his selection, Herrera said he sought to honor Hedge Coke “for her precision of Earth, of suffering in and out of …