Library Open

We've got power -- and air conditioning! -- and we're open until 5 p.m. today. We don't have wireless, however, and our public computers also got knocked out by the storm. But we can offer a cool place to sit this afternoon to read and to charge up your telephones, etc.

For regular updates, please check our twitter account @takoma for info on cooling centers and where to buy food.

Laurie and Fry

For the library staff:

Note: Fry also played a librarian in MirrorMask.

War of 1812

Required reading: Walter Lord's By Dawn's Early Light. War on the Chesapeake and Patuxent. Madison on the bridge. The burning of Washington and the attack on Fort McHenry. First published in 1972, it is still in print and yes, it is that good.

And follow the events of two hundred years ago, day by day, through 1812now.

The twitter feed is @1812now Great fun, but less extensive than the blog. From June 24:
"Dined at Lord Oxford’s. Met Sir Francis Burdett, Rogers and Lady Jane Harley, a delightful creature but un peu libre."— John Cam Hobhouse

Library Tech

Just up the road three or four miles, at the University of Maryland, the Information Policy & Access Center studies public libraries and their role in community access to technology.

Here are some of the recent statistics they have collected.

And here is an interesting infographic:

Bloomsday 2012

"O Jamesy let me up out of this pooh"

If you have the misfortune to be far from Dublin, you can still share the day.

• Take a walk. A long walk. Look around you. Consider. Muse. Remember. Sing a bit.


• Listen to a professional reading of Ulysses. We have a great one for you here in our streaming audio collection (unabridged). If you prefer CD's, find a copy of the Blackstone or Naxos audio recordings of Ulysses. Listen a bit at a time so the language can roll around inside.


• Join the global celebrations.


• Have some Queen Anne's pudding (or a kidney).


• Think fondly of Bloom and Molly and "how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes."


• Toast James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. This was their day.

"He kissed the plump mellow yellow smellow melons of her rump, on each plump melonous hemisphere, in their mellow yellow furrow, with obscure prolonged provocative melonsmellonous osculation. " You prefer 50 shades?

Quest 2012 - for Adults

Want your own set of book challenges this summer? Here is a good list from Reading Writers which we have modified slightly.

1. A book in an unfamiliar genre (read outside your comfort zone)

2. A book that is part of a series

3. A book that your friend or wider society has been raving about

4. A book that ‘could’ ...... (open to your interpretation)

5. A book from Modern Library's 100 Best Novels List

6. A book that reminds you of your childhood

7. A banned or contested book

8. A book you judged by the cover

9. Optional: A book turned into a movie

10. Optional: Free choice

Example: This is a personal version of the list one person created.

Although children have to follow a particular sequence, you can choose to do adult challenges in any order. Growing up does bring privilege.

Note: you can find other challenge lists online, for example you could read a book from each decade of the 20th century (or 19th, or whatever 10 decade span you want). We just happened to like the Reading Writers' list, which has some similarities to the ones we create each year for children. And certainly the same purpose.

Literacy, not just for kids anymore.

Our Blair Kids

Tolu Omokehinde, a senior, created this wonderful time lapse video.