Batman Display at the Library

Cardwell Vaughn is displaying selections from his Batman collection at the library through the end of June.  Vaughn started collecting Batmobiles in 1998.  His collection has expanded to include artwork, books, statues and figures.  The exhibit includes Batmobiles, Batman and Robin, Batman artwork, cards, books and even the villain Bane.  

The Dark Knight of Gotham City first appeared in issue #27 of Detective Comics in 1939.  Over the years, he has been drawn by a number of different artists. Batman & Robin have been featured in comic books, graphic novels, merchandise and movies, and their adventures have taken place in the past, present and future.

Decoration Day by H.W. Longfellow

Sleep, comrades, sleep and rest

On this Field of the Grounded Arms,

Where foes no more molest,

Nor sentry's shot alarms!

Ye have slept on the ground before,

And started to your feet

At the cannon's sudden roar,

Or the drum's redoubling beat.

But in this Camp of Death

No sound your slumber breaks;

Here is no fevered breath.

No wound that bleeds and aches.

All is repose and peace,

Untrampled lies the sod;

The shouts of battle cease,

It is the truce of God!

Flag on my front porch

Rest, comrades, rest and sleep!

The thoughts of men shall be

As sentinels to keep

Your rest from danger free.

Your silent tents of green

We deck with fragrant flowers;

Yours has the suffering been.

The memory shall be ours.

 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth. “Decoration Day.” Columbia Granger's World of Poetry Online. 2012. Columbia University Press. 28 May. 2012. .

 

I found this poem by typing "Memorial Day" into the search box of 'Columbia Grangers World of Poetry', an online poetry resource available from the library's "Databases and Articles" page. In the U.S., Memorial Day was commonly called 'Decoration Day' until 1967. Searching Grangers yielded 70 poems, many full text. 

Watching '60 Minutes' tribute "Honoring Our Soldiers" last night put a human face on the wars the U.S. is waging now.  As the young soldiers struggled to describe their experiences, I thought about how poets, artists and authors have also attempted to express the feelings that wars evoke.

Inspector Morse

It's hard to believe that it's been 13 years since the last book was published in Colin Dexter's Inspector Morse series - and 12 years since the TV episodes wrapped up. This summer, Masterpiece Mystery! on PBS will air a prequel, in which Morse is only a constable.  Readers who had to read the series for years and years in order to discover Morse's first name will be shocked - shocked! - to discover that the prequel has been given Morse's first name.  There's also an ongoing TV spinoff, Inspector Lewis, featuring Morse's former sergeant.

In case you are a bit late to the Morse mysteries, like me, they are set in Oxford, England. So the colleges of Oxford University and their students and dons are often involved.  Readers get to know the pubs of Oxford well too, since Morse, a bachelor, is quite a drinker.  He is good at crossword puzzles, loves opera and attended Oxford for a while, but otherwise his past is a mystery. As aforementioned, we didn't even know his first name.  The mysteries are also enjoyable for their very tight plotting.  I listened to The Daughters of Cain audiobook, downloaded from eLibraryNJ.com.

New App for Audiobooks

If you are a Berkeley Heights resident with an iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch, the library's audiobook service OneClickdigital has launched an app just for you.  (Android owners can find audiobook solace in the Overdrive Media Console app at eLibraryNJ.com instead.)

1.      Go to http://berkeleyheightsnj.oneclickdigital.com. Create your account (top right corner).

2.      Download the OneClickDigital app from the App Store.

3.      Log in to the app with the account you created in step 1.

4.      Tap “Browse Titles” to browse new titles or search for a title. Tap a book to select it.

5.      Tap “Check Out” (if you only see “Wish List” this means the book is checked out to someone else). The app will download the book.

6.      Press the + symbol after you pause the player to bookmark your place.  (Kind of a big deal since you don't want the audiobook to start at the beginning the next time.)

The fine print:

You can check out a max of 10 titles.  Audiobooks check out for 21 days or less, your choice. Oneclickdigital does not allow holds to be placed on unavailable titles but you can place them on a "Wish List".

Bill Cunningham New York

Bill Cunningham New York is the documentary about the octogenarian photographer you may know from his weekly feature in the New York Times, On the Street.  Cunningham is a very private person and it took the filmmakers years to get him to agree to the documentary.  In the 1950 he was a milliner to stars like Joan Crawford.

In the 60s, after women stopped wearing hats, and a friend gave him a camera, Cunningham started taking photos of people in public in New York.  He's saved the negatives of all of his photos in the filing cabinets that fill his one-room apartment in Carnegie Hall.
 

Cunningham rides a bicycle to get around New York. He rides without a helmet, at night and in the rain, often snapping photos at the same time, and this fearlessness is one of the freedoms that living an unconventional (and by American standards, monkish) life has given him.  Having his bike stolen 28 times hasn't stopped him, either: he's on his 29th.  You can place a hold on the DVD here.