One night in the mid-1960s, while working as a bartender at the Village Vanguard, the storied New York City jazz club, Burt Britton found himself all alone with Norman Mailer at last call.“What do you want from me, Kid,” Mailer inquired. Screwing up his courage, Britton blurted out, “draw me your self-portrait.” MailerNow, over forty years later, that self-portrait by Mailer is one of 213 self-portraits of writers, photographers, musicians, and athletes that Britton solicited. His collection is now being offered at auction byBloomsbury – New York on September 24, 2009: Arthur MillerPortrait of the Artist: The Burt Britton CollectionBritton...
Philippines Thanks USAID For 70,000 Books While Book Fair Tanks In U.S.
36,000 books were distributed last week to 50 school libraries in the provinces of Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani and the City of General Santos in the Philippines.As reported by Mindanao Magazine’s blogster, Mindanao Bob, book distribution was implemented by USAID’s Growth with Equity In Mindanao (GEM) in partnership with U.S.-based Children International Foundation. Through its Education Awareness Support Effort (EASE), the GEM Program has awarded 777 education matching grants, valued at more than $820,000, to the PTAs of schools in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and other conflict-affected areas in the island-region, and PTAs have contributed the same amount.As...
City of Brotherly Love Can You Spare A Dime? Philly Free Library to Close
In a previous article on Book Patrol, Seattle Public Library's one week closure was noted as an example of the consequences of the desperate financial straits public libraries now face. But in a much more shocking development, the Free Library of Philadelphia's website now features a pop-up window telling visitors that it will close completely, forever on October 2, 2009 unless funding is forthcoming from the Pennsylvania State Legislature.The Free Library of Philadelphia was established in 1891. By 1898 the Library had the largest circulating collection in the world, 1,778,387 volumes. The Central Library, originally housed in Philadelphia's City Hall,...
Library of Congress Celebrates the Joy of Reading
The Washington Mall is the site of the Library of Congress ninth annual National Book Festival, held this year on Saturday, September 26th, 2009 in Washington D.C.Scores of authors, illustrators and poets will be making presentations throughout the day in pavilions for Children, Teens & Children, Fiction, Mysteries & Thrillers, History & Biography, and Poetry & Prose.The popular Pavilion of the States site is back. Festival visitors can learn about the reading and literacy promotion projects as well as the literary traditions of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. territories. Representatives from throughout the nation will...
Party Time! Excellent! Wade’s World Saves Library
Dwayne Wade has accomplished a lot in his career. He won a gold medal as a member of the U.S. Men's Olympic basketball team. He won an NBA championship as a member of the Miami Heat. He was even named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year. But to Edward Leonard Sr. all of this is overshadowed by another of Wade's accomplishments: he kept his boyhood library from shutting its doors.On September 10, 2009 Wade donated $25,000 to the William Leonard Public Library in Robbins, IL., a suburb of Chicago. The library, founded by and named for Edward Leonard's father, was...