But sometimes, more is more, as Walt Disney found out after he created Mickey Mouse  in the late 1920s and had trouble finding a home for Mickey’s first two cartoons (“Plane Crazy” and “The Gallopin’ Gaucho”), which were silent, before scoring a solid hit with the musical talkie “Steamboat Willie.” 

“You can run any of these pictures and they’d be dragging and boring, but the minute you put music behind then, they have life and vitality they don’t get in any other way,” Disney once said.

The Library of Congress today opens “Molto Animato!” an exhibition celebrating the winning combo of animation and music, in its Music Division Performing Arts Reading Room in the James Madison Building (101 Independence Ave., S.E., Room LM113, Washington, D.C.) The exhibition will be on view through next March 28 and will be open from 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Featured items include a pen-and-ink brush drawing of conductor Leopold Stokowski by caricaturist Miguel Covarrubias; the score from “Bambi,” with music by Frank Churchill and Edward Plumb and lyrics by Larry Morey; John Alden Carpenter’s manuscript piano score for “Krazy Kat: A Jazz Pantomime”; and the movie poster for “Walt Disney Pictures Presents Aladdin.”

Also on view will be items from the Library’s Art Wood Collection of Cartoon and Caricature, the David Raksin Collection of film scores (You can view excerpts, including the cartoons, from his scores for “Giddyap” and “The Unicorn in the Garden”) and the Howard Ashman Collection, including the draft script of Disney’s animated film “The Little Mermaid” and audio of Howard Ashman singing Disney movie songs of his own composing.

Let’s face it: sometimes silence is golden, but “Fantasia” wouldn’t have been nearly as fantastic without the power of music.  Here’s Mickey, in “Fantasia,” dressed to enact “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” a symphonic poem by composer Paul Dukas.

Generations of former kids who learned their ABCs on PBS will be celebrating today’s 40^th anniversary of the show “Sesame Street.”  (external link)

The Library’s been a fan right along! In April 2000, for example, when the Library of Congress celebrated its bicentennial, Big Bird was named a Living Legend by the Librarian of Congress.

In 2006, Elmo was our guest at the National Book Festival, along with his animator, Kevin Clash.  Elmo was also invited to the White House then.

And “Maria” (Sonia Manzano) appeared at the National Book Festival in 2004.

Of course, the many books, films and music that have come out of the hit series can be found in the Library’s collections.

Dr. Richard E. Cytowic of George Washington University Medical Center will deliver the talk, “Wednesday is Indigo Blue: Discovering the Brain of Synesthesia” at 6:15 p.m. Friday, Oct. 30 in the Members’ Room on the first floor of the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building at 10 First St. S.E. After the talk, he’ll sign his book on the topic.

Doors open one hour earlier! Don’t miss it!

Maybe the Irish tell better ghost stories: “Dooligan’s Ghost” (by Karst and Gibson, 1892) tells the cautionary tale of a man who emerged from the death-slab at his own wake, simply because he couldn’t stand to see his friends get drunk without him.  In another fin-de-siecle Irish ghost story, “The Haunted Spring” is visited by the specter of  “an enchanted lady [who] assumes the shape of a White Doe and lures hunters to Fairy Land.” Similarly, “The Haunted Stream,” in an unspecified far-away forest, is where a woman lures a “witless knight” to her underwater lair, “lined with gold.” Naturally.

Another spectral visitor was visited upon us in 1888 by the song-writing team of Arno Bley and the aptly named Edmund Mortimer. “The Dead Actress” “came’st in thy loveliness before us at night!” There is unlikely to be a 3-D movie in the works, but you never know.

Rounding out your dance card are piano arrangements for “Ghost’s Gallop” and “Goblin Galop.”  In a less scary vein, those kids who go out trick-or-treating as firefighters might vary the theme and dress up as “My Ragtime Fireman.”

(Thanks to Patricio Padua of the Library’s Collections and Services Division for this post!)

For something like four generations he’s been cracking us up, from his writing and skit performance on the legendary Sid Caesar’s “Your Show of Shows” (external link) to his creation of “The Dick Van Dyke Show” (external link) to his “2000-Year-Old Man” recordings with Mel Brooks; from his involvement in Steve Martin’s flicks to his role as Saul in the “Ocean’s 11” (external link) series of movies to his novels and kids’ books of recent years.

Carl Reiner is coming to the Library of Congress on Monday, October 26 at 1:30 p.m. to speak and sign his books. The event will be free and open to the public, and will be in the Montpelier Room on the sixth floor of the Library’s James Madison Building at 101 Independence Ave., S.E. in Washington.

We’ll move the ottomans out of the way …

While the baseball season winds down and the excitement of another World Series chase begins, we’re celebrating the national pastime with a new book, Baseball Americana: Treasures from the Library of Congress (drawing rave reviews in places like Sports Illustrated) and a two-day symposium on baseball at the Library October 2-3, 2009.

Long before TV and the Internet provided coverage of every game and at-bat, Americans saw images of their favorite teams and players in books, newspapers  and magazines.  They saw them on tobacco and candy packages, on sheet-music covers  and in the movies.  People were playing baseball everywhere, and we found baseball everywhere in our rich visual collections.

Images and artifacts from the game are as old as our country and mark its heritage and history–in a children’s book published in Worcester, Massachusetts the same year that that U.S. Constitution was written, in a depiction of Civil War prisoners actively playing in a North Carolina camp, in baseball cards showing the first heroes and stars of the game, in the first Negro League World Series in Kansas City in 1924, in the games we’ve played ourselves in sandlots and fields around the country.

As a member of the Library’s Flickr pilot team, I’ve enjoyed watching that community discover and enjoy baseball pictures they’d never seen before.  To make selections for the book, my co-authors and I also had fun poring through thousands of images to find even more rare surprises. Why is Babe Ruth lying unconscious on the field? It’s not what you might think.  We put the Babe and a sampling of 22 other photographs from the book into this week’s new Flickr set.  Enjoy!

To see more historic baseball resources at the Library, visit the America’s Pastime page and a resources page here.  You can also purchase the Baseball Americana book and other baseball-related items in the Library’s online shop.

On Wednesday, Sept. 30 from noon to 1 p.m., Larry Appelbaum, the Library of Congress’ jazz music specialist, will co-anchor “A Russian-American Jazz Summit – Conversations on the American Influence on Russian Jazz” with Cyril Moshkow, editor-in-chief of the site Jazz.ru.   The dialogue will be in Dining Room C of the Library’s James Madison Memorial Building at 101 Independence Ave., S.E. in Washington.  The event, cosponsored by the Open World Leadership Center and the Library’s Music Division, is free and open to the public.

Appelbaum says he knows Moshkow “because we’re both jazz journalists and have met in various cities around the world” at jazz events they’ve both covered.

“When I heard he was coming to Washington, I thought it would be nice to have a conversation with Cyril about what’s going on on the Russian jazz scene and specifically, how much of the language of Russian jazz is American, and how much is Russian? In other words, what is Russian about Russian jazz? So we’re going to try and get at that in our conversation.”

Sprawled on the lawn, curled up on the sofa, sitting on the steps in the piazza — they’re communing with a great author, or a funny author, or an author who’s telling them how to cook or knit or fix something in their life that’s broken. Some of them are reading poetry.  Some of them are reading it on e-book devices.

There are millions of them, all scattered around.  One book to a person, one person to a book.

Saturday, more than 120,000 of them are projected to be on one lawn, in one city, at one time: on the National Mall at the Library of Congress National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.  It’ll happen from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., rain or shine — free of charge.

YES.

More than 70 major authors will speak about their writing before happy crowds in pavilions dedicated to Fiction & Fantasy, History & Biography, Mysteries & Thrillers, Children, Teens & Children, and Poetry & Prose. The authors will also sign books for their fans.

Families can enjoy the literacy-promotion activities of the state and territorial Centers for the Book in the Pavilion of the States; kids can enjoy activities and presentations planned just for them in the “Let’s Read America” pavilions. The “Digital Bookmobile” will be there.  The Library of Congress will showcase its Library of Congress Experience and social-networking activities, including this blog , its Flickr page and its Facebook page. The whole thing will be on Twitter (@librarycongress, hashtag #nbf).  Also, our website for the book festival is a great place to plan for this feast, complete with fresh podcasts from more than a dozen of this year’s authors. There’s a Young Readers’ Toolkit there, too. And the day of the book festival, webcasts of many of the author presentations will be available on the festival website.

Here’s a tip — this “Lollapalooza” of the book world is going to open with a flourish. A team of young people’s authors, fronted by the irrepressible National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Jon Scieszka, will launch the new read.gov website that promotes reading and literacy for all ages as the festival opens at 10 a.m., in the Children’s pavilion.  You won’t have to be a kid to get a kick out of this one: The new site will premiere a serial story, with the first (completely zany) chapter to be read by Scieszka from the stage.  It’s titled “The Exquisite Corpse Adventure,” and to find out what happens next — this story will unfold every two weeks for a year — you’ll have to go to read.gov.

But to find out what the coolest event is in Washington D.C. is on September 26, 2009, you’ll have to go to the National Mall between 7th and 14th streets.  Wear comfortable shoes — and prepare to be swept away!

 It doesn’t have to be all about Hard Times.  Perhaps you’re just ready to do what you love, all the time – like the local woman who enjoys painting, and has converted her joy into a job converting former wine-bottles into hand-painted containers for oil, vinegar, soap or lotion, which are now being sold at craft festivals around the area. It’s her full-time employment.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau  she is one of the “nonemployer businesses” that saw an increase of 4.5 percent between 2006 and 2007 for a total of 21.7 million people.  Of those, 19.1 million were sole proprietorships – the self-employed.

 You might wonder what you could do from home, or where to begin. Could a hobby actually support you? Perhaps you have an aptitude in one area, maybe you worked in human resources – have you thought about helping others with their resumes?  Or you’re tech-savvy, good with web tools?  Maybe website development, computer consulting or programming is up your alley.  

 If you need more ideas, explore the U.S. Census’ “Nonemployer Statistics” to see what others are doing, explore some of the ideas presented in a number of books on the topic, and take a look at the Small Business Administration (SBA), especially its Small Business Planner that provides a number of online resources.

 Here at the Library of Congress, within the stacks in the Science & Business Reading Room in the Adams building, there are a number of publications providing practical information on businesses you can do from home.  There are tips for setting up your home office, assessments to help determine your readiness for a home-based business, and examples of what others have done.  Some books provide ideas and “how-to” steps.  To identify these books, try a catalog subject search for “home-based businesses” and explore the possibilities.  (Librarian tip: sort the list in descending order to see the most recent publications for this subject.)  If you would like to consult any of these books here at the Library, please contact a reference librarian, easily reachable through the Ask a Librarian service.

Thanks to Business Reference Specialist Donna Scanlon of the Science, Technology & Business Division for this post!