Friday evening at the Library of Congress, our ongoing “Music and the Brain” lecture series will tackle a truly fascinating phenomenon: people whose senses sometimes cross-stimulate, causing them to “hear a color” or “taste a shape.” This phenomenon, known as synesthesia, has been identified in a surprisingly large number of people over the years, including …
Carl Reiner, whose influence on comedy in the U.S. may be unsurpassed, will speak at the Library of Congress’ Madison Building in the 6th-floor Montpelier Room on Monday, Oct. 26 at 1:30 p.m. Doors open one hour earlier! Don’t miss it!
Now that we have a couple of years or more of using social media to benefit the Library’s missions, we’re letting other folks around the institution get in the act. The “Books and Beyond” series in the Center for the Book launched a Facebook page, which is essentially an online book club, with the recent …
(The following is a guest post by Patricio Padua of the Library’s Collections and Services Division, h/t to Bryan Cornell in the Recorded Sound Reading Room.) Some years ago, a monk decked in an elegant black robe visited the Recorded Sound Reading Room in search of the music of his elders: Coptic Chant, which comes …
‘Tis the season to be frightened, and the Performing Arts Encyclopedia is full of ghastly tunes for the musical goblins in your life. We start with Jean Schwartz and William Jerome’s “The Ghost that Never Walked.” The team, best-known for the song “Chinatown my Chinatown,” put this 1904 number into the show “Piff! Paff! Pouf!” to tell the …
When it comes to laughter – flat-out, clutch your sides, tears-springing-from-your-eyes laughter – Carl Reiner is an American icon. 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” …
Chapter two is now online, exclusively at read.gov. This episode was penned by Katherine Paterson. What will happen next?? Find out in chapter 3, by Kate DiCamillo, on Oct. 23. And don’t forget our new social media sharing tool, so that you can easily alert friends on your social network of choice.
Have you caught the “Exquisite Corpse” fever yet? It’s catching on even halfway around the world!
(Ed. note: This post comes to us from Phil Michel, Digital Conversion Coordinator for the Prints & Photographs Division, and one of the authors of the new book Baseball Americana.) 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 …
East may be East, and West may be West – but music is universal, and if the music is jazz, it’s even open all night! 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 …