Memories of childhood are often infused with fond recollections of favorite books, stories that transport us to faraway lands, imaginary worlds, and distant places in time. For many of us, the literature of childhood has worked to shape how we think and feel about the world, stretching the imagination and expanding our horizons to include the people, places, and things ...
This week’s blog is inspired by Valentine’s Day. In the United States, Valentine's Day is celebrated on February 14th, and traditionally involves the giving and receiving of cards, gifts, or flowers, the reciting of poems, the singing of songs, or similar expressions of love and friendship. While we don't usually equate Special Collections and Archives with Valentine's Day, keep reading...you might be surpised!
Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009) was a folk musician, folklorist, and professor of anthropology at San Fernando State College (now California State University Northridge). During her time as a musician she wrote many songs, including the Kingston Trio hit “M.T.A.” She also performed and collaborated with such American folk luminaries as Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. Her father, John Avery Lomax, and brother, Alan Lomax, were famous folklorists and musicologists who traveled across the United States collecting thousands of folk songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Songs in the Library of Congress...
The China Marines were originally defined as those who served as part of the 4th Marine Regiment assigned guard duty at the International Settlement in Shanghai from 1927 to 1941. Another group of Marines from the 1st and 6th Marine Divisions who were members of the U.S. occupying army in north China would also become known as China Marines. These Marines were stationed in China from 1945 to 1948...
Special Collections and Archives holds many unique and interesting diaries which chronicle the adventures of travelers from all over the world. One of these, entitled, Journal of a Trip from Liverpool to San Francisco, was penned by a young Englishwoman visiting the United States for the very first time. The journal chronicles her trip from April to June of 1895, beginning with a trip across the sea on the "luxurious" S.S Teutonic...
The John Tanno Collection holds 1,563 Lp's, primarily consisting of recordings of classical and flamenco guitar works. The collection includes recordings of classical guitar icon Andres Segovia performing music by J.S. Bach, Manuel Maria Ponce, and Fernando Sor, including his EMI Recordings 1927-1939, An Evening with Segovia, and Castles of Spain. Julian Bream is both a classical guitar performer and lutenist, and this collection holds a number of albums on which Bream performs repertoire on both instruments. Some of the more exceptional Bream albums include...
The ways in which individuals and collective groups have prepared and consumed food reveals the many dimensions of human experience, both within and across cultures. Special Collections and Archives' Culinary Collection holds more than 660 books and periodicals dating from 1839-1982 that provide a unique glimpse into the role of food in human society...
Fleming writes, "Here we are with no adequate guns or defenses, and trying to work as usual . . . If we put up a defense everyone will be killed, + we will put up a defense. I have a machete ready in the office." Later that same day, he learned they'd have a "blackout every nite, + no matches even are allowed..."
William Gaddis, born in Berkeley, California in 1920, was twelve years old when his father, a Captain in the US Navy, was posted to command a ship in the Far East. The William Gaddis Collection consists of materials saved by Gaddis during the two years he spent living in China and the Philippines, and traveling around the region with his mother and sister while his father was at sea ...
The Travel Scrapbook Collection consists of two scrapbooks from 1919 that contain numerous photographs, postcards, and clippings documenting a months-long vacation from British Columbia to Japan, China, Singapore, the Philippines, Burma, and India. Though we do not know who took the vacation or made the scrapbooks, they are typical of those from the early 20th century in that photos and clippings were glued to black album paper, and captions were written directly onto the photographs themselves as frequently as they were written on the album pages...
