Author: Chad
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Columbus
Columbus, the first feature film of the talented film essayist Kogonada, calls enough attention to its subjects to captivate viewers but keeps enough distance to inspire pursuit, which is usually a formula for great cinema. Haley Lu Richardson’s Casey, a recent high school graduate, works at the library in Columbus, a small Indiana town that’s…
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I heard them on the radio
How often do you listen to honest-to-goodness radio anymore? Usually I go to it only if I’m not in the mood for podcasts, audiobooks, or my own music collection. I’ll spin through my station presets to see if I get lucky, though most often I get bad songs and ads. But not the other day. I…
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Raising Kings, pt. 1
Loved the first episode of “Raising Kings”, a three-part series from NPR’s Code Switch podcast on a new boys-only public school in Washington, D.C., filled only with freshmen students of color: All are determined to change the narrative. In Washington, and the rest of the country, that narrative says too many young black men are below-average…
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Inherit the Words
I was helping my parents clear out their bookshelves in advance of their living room being painted and in the process stumbled upon some interesting artifacts. Among the books, family photo albums, and LPs that had stuck around unplayed for decades, I spotted a small University of Wisconsin notebook. I opened it to find in…
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Tom Hanks, Olympia, and Me
I had the pleasure of seeing a photo of mine get the Ken Burns treatment on CBS Sunday Morning’s story this weekend about Tom Hanks, his new book, and his love of typewriters: One of my colleagues got an advance copy of Hanks’ book at a library conference back in June specifically because she knew…
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My Birthday Planets
Thanks to Fourmilab (via kottke), I discovered exactly how the planets were aligned on the day of my birth: You can find your own here.
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The People’s Machine: On ‘California Typewriter’
As was the case with Tom Hanks’s new typewriter-inspired short story collection, I was the easiest mark in the world for the new Doug Nichol documentary California Typewriter, which profiles the titular typewriter repair shop in Berkeley and the wider place of the typewriter in modern culture. Though I’ve been anticipating the film for a while, I…
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Refer Madness: Making Converts
Refer Madness spotlights strange, intriguing, or otherwise noteworthy questions I encounter at the library reference desk. One of the best things about having a digital media lab in my library is introducing eager patrons to what it provides. Since ours opened two years ago, the most popular feature by far is the converting software that transfers analog media to digital,…
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To aid your enjoyment, please eliminate
Spotted this sign on a run through a lakeshore park. “Dogs” and “litter” came after, but feel free to fill in the blank with better words. Or just leave it as is and use it as a maxim for life.
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The Diary of a Young Girl
In my ongoing quest to catch up with the “high school reading list” books I missed the first time around, I listened to the audiobook of Anne Frank’s The Diary of A Young Girl and, holy crap, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised due to its reputation, but it’s kinda amazing. Not sure how much…
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In the Mood for a Melody
The other day I came upon Brian Eno’s article about singing with other people: There are physiological benefits, obviously: You use your lungs in a way that you probably don’t for the rest of your day, breathing deeply and openly. And there are psychological benefits, too: Singing aloud leaves you with a sense of levity…
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Recent Views
More photography here. Just for fun I’ve started turning videos I take into GIFs using Giphy’s super easy GIF maker. This one was on a flight descending into Raleigh, North Carolina. The rain was streaking on the window like that for only about 10 seconds, so I’m glad I had my phone ready: The breeze…
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The Kelloggs: The Battling Brothers of Battle Creek
In the summer of 2013 I interned at the Leo Burnett advertising agency’s corporate library and archives. In the course of my work I came upon boxes of original conceptual artwork and copy from the 1950s and ’60s of the famous brands Leo Burnett created: the Marlboro Man, the Jolly Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy.…
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On Living in the Messy Middle
I can’t tell you how much I was nodding along to David Brooks’ column “What Moderates Believe”. The whole thing is quote-worthy, but here are some highlights: Politics is a limited activity. Zealots look to the political realm for salvation and self-fulfillment. They turn politics into a secular religion and ultimately an apocalyptic war of religion…
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Obit
Obit is an eloquent, observant, and superbly crafted documentary by Vanessa Gould on the New York Times obituary writers and the people they cover. One of the writers says writing obits isn’t sad because they are writing mostly about a person’s life rather than their death. I can see why that would be the case,…