"Fiction of Light"--Recent Paintings by Jack Stratton

Recent paintings by Greensboro artist Jack Stratton will be on display in the Jackson Library Reading Room beginning on September 12. Join us on Friday, September 23 at 5:00 pm for the exhibit's opening reception. A percentage of all sales will benefit the University Libraries.

Jack Stratton is no stranger to the University Libraries--he first started working in Jackson Library as a student. After receiving his BFA in Painting at UNCG in 1977, Jack joined the library staff full time as a bookbinder. From the library, Jack moved to the Weatherspoon Art Museum where he worked for 20 years as a preparator. Last year, after thirty years of service, Jack retired from UNCG, but not from the art world. He currently paints in his Greensboro studio, as well as teaches drawing and watercolor painting at the Art Alliance, an organization sponsored by the City of Greensboro. He also works as a freelance preparator, curator, art handler and lighting consultant.

We asked Jack about what connects the paintings in "Fiction of Light":

"This exhibition presents ten examples of paintings from the last five years of my life. In my work, I am interested in image making as a sort of apperception.* I am intrigued by the idea that seeing is more than an identification of images, but the application of knowledge and how what we know influences how we see the world. Life study is a major part of my work but the final product of a painting is the creation of a narrative, based on reality, that is actually fiction based on real experience - the nature of experience rather than documenting a specific thing.

*Apperception: Introspective self-consciousness; or, the process of understanding something perceived in terms of previous experience. (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary)

Calendar of Fall Events

See the library web page for information about public events and exhibits at the University libraries.

Kirby-Smith Creates Endowment for Modern Poetry at University Libraries

Tom Kirby-Smith has donated a collection of modern poetry books and established the Noel and Tom Kirby-Smith Poetry Fund in the University Libraries at UNCG. UNCG Dean of Libraries Rosann Bazirjian says of the gift: “We are excited to receive this impressive collection. Our students and faculty will also appreciate the alcove space being planned on the third floor of the Jackson Library Tower to house it. That area will be a comfortable place to read and reflect on these volumes. We are especially grateful for an endowment that will allow us to continue to add to the collection and to preserve these valuable books of poetry.”

Noel Callow Kirby-Smith came to Greensboro in 1968 as one of the first Randall Jarrell fellows in UNCG's graduate Writing Program. A graduate of St Xavier College in Chicago, she had already published poems in The Sewanee Review and The Denver Quarterly written during the five years she taught reading and English in Chicago Catholic and public grade schools. Soon after taking her MFA she began teaching writing and literature at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, where she worked for more than three decades, for some years as Assistant Dean of the Undergraduate Academic program. Knowing that many plays, dances, films, operas and other musical compositions originate with or are inspired by poems, stories or short dramatic works, Noel valued the opportunity to offer creative writing courses to performing arts students.

Tom Kirby-Smith grew up in Sewanee, Tennessee. He received his B.A. from Sewanee, an M.A. from Harvard and held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship at Stanford. He taught at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and was one of the early editors of the Greensboro Review. He has published several books including a guide to U. S. observatories, a book on the philosopher George Santayana, a book that examines free verse poetry and one on the emergence of poetry from music. His poetry and essays have been published in The Southern Review, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the Southern Poetry Review, Shenandoah, and Ploughshares, among other publications. Among his former students is Claudia Emerson, the 2006 Pulitzer Prize-winner in poetry. His online poetry tutorials have been used widely by poetry teachers for almost a decade. Now retired from the UNCG faculty, Tom is the current chair of the Friends of the UNCG Libraries.

Service Desk in Jackson Library Named in Honor of UNCG Alumna Elaine Penninger

The Service Desk at the entrance to the Jackson Library/EUC Connector is being named in honor of Dr. Frieda Elaine Penninger, a 1948 graduate of Woman’s College.Dr. Penninger, who majored in English at WC and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa, later earned M.A. and PhD. degrees at Duke. She taught at several institutions, most notably for many years at the University of Richmond, where she was head of the English Department. After moving back to Greensboro following her retirement, Dr. Penninger has made generous gifts to the general collection of the University Libraries to support teaching, scholarship and research.

Documentary Film "The Day Carl Sandburg Died" to be Screened and Discussed on November 1

Carl Sandburg died in July of 1967, but director Paul Bonesteel finds his life story and his creative legacy as relevant and provocative as it was in 1916 when his "Chicago Poems" changed American poetry. “Labor unrest, global wars, socialism, immigration and race issues… this was the subject matter that fueled Sandburg for much of his poetry and writing that shocked the world.” comments Bonesteel. “The intensity of his work was over simplified later in his life. He was both an anarchist and a deeply patriotic American.”

The Friends of the UNCG Libraries are pleased to present a screening of Paul Bonesteel’s new documentary film, “The Day Carl Sandburg Died.” Bonesteel will introduce and discuss the 82 minute film on Tuesday, November 1, beginning at 7 pm in the Elliott University Center Auditorium. Please join us in re-examining the life and work of the poet/biographer/ troubadour/ journalist/philosopher who spent the last years of his life at Flat Rock in the North Carolina mountains.

The Day Carl Sandburg Died was more than six years in the making. It has a cast of more than twenty notable scholars, performers and Sandburg family members. Sandburg’s daughter Helga Sandburg Crile, Pete Seeger, Norman Corwin and the late Studs Terkel contribute to the film along with contemporary poets Marc Smith, Ted Kooser and others. Also contributing significantly to the film is Sandburg biographer Penelope Niven, who lives in Winston-Salem.

Allen W. Trelease

Dr. Allen Trelease, Emeritus Professor of History and former member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of the UNCG Libraries, has died. Among other accomplishments, Dr. Trelease was the author of Making North Carolina Literate: The University of North Carolina at Greensboro from Normal School to Metropolitan University, covering the period 1892-1994. In doing so, he spent many hours over a ten-year period in the University Archives, and was a familiar sight in Jackson Library. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Friends of the UNCG Libraries for a total of six years. He was known to the Board for his generosity and wry sense of humor, and once told us, “I wanted to make the title ‘Making Carolina Literate,’ but was dissuaded from doing so in deference to the sensibilities of our colleagues at Chapel Hill.”

Trelease was also the author of the books Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century, White Terror: The Ku Klux Klan Conspiracy and Southern Reconstruction, and The North Carolina Railroad, 1849-1871, and the Modernization of North Carolina. He was editor of the UNCG centennial book Changing Assignments: A Pictorial History of The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He also served as head of the Department of History and as president of the Historical Society of North Carolina.

Pulitzer Prize-winning news photographer Matthew Lewis to exhibit and speak October 19, N&R columnist Jeri Rowe to moderate discussion

Sometimes, a picture is worth more than a thousand words.

Combine a picture with the story of four generations of African American photographers, and you have even more: an eye on history.

Matthew Lewis was the first photographer at the Washington Post ever to win a Pulitzer Prize when he did so in 1975 for a portfolio of his color pictures. Now “retired” and living in Thomasville, NC, Lewis is coming to the University Libraries at UNCG on Wednesday, October 19 at 5 pm in the Jackson Library Reading Room to display and talk about some of his favorite photos for an event moderated by News & Record columnist and Friends of the UNCG Libraries Board member Jeri Rowe.

The list of famous people photographed by Lewis ranges from Muhammed Ali to Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Included are politicians , musicians, celebrities and movie stars. All his photos, says Lewis, have a story. He is an enthusiastic man, with many stories. As he speaks, one senses that Lewis has enjoyed photographing the Thomasville Bulldogs football team as much as he did photographing Martin Luther King, several presidents, and the Queen of England.

Matthew Lewis joined the faculty of Morgan State College in 1957 as an assistant in the audiovisual department and a public relations photographer. He began free-lancing for the Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper in 1963, covering events such as the funeral of John F. Kennedy and the 1963 March on Washington. He became a staff photographer for the Washington Post in 1965 and was later the Assistant Managing Editor of the photographic department for eleven years before retiring from the Post in 1990 after 25 years. He became a freelance photographer for the Thomasville Times in 1994 and later became their staff photographer.

Lewis’s grandfather, Harvey James (HJ) Lewis, born in 1878 the son of indentured slaves, began making photographs for picture postcards in the Pittsburgh area in 1896, and built a studio in his backyard in 1905. There he became a noted chronicler of city life and social scenes, and established himself as a portraitist and color photographer, continuing to work until his death in 1968. Three more generations of his family, including Matthew Lewis, have been photographers, creating a legacy than spans more than a century. Matthew Lewis will display some of his grandfather’s photographs and talk about them as well.

Honoring Mom

Ms. Anne Courts Herman ’87 has established The Carol Walker Courts Children’s Literature Preservation and Acquisition Fund for the University Libraries in honor of her mother.

Anne’s mother graduated from Woman’s College with a degree in Physical Education in 1947. Because of her love of books and reading, she came back to UNCG to get her M.Ed. in Library Education in 1968. Mrs. Courts served as a librarian for almost 30 years in the High Point school system including Griffin Elementary School and Andrews High School. Anne received a Business Administration degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1981, then earned an M.L.S. at UNCG in 1987. She served as a librarian for 12 years at Summit School in Winston-Salem and currently works at Cash Elementary.

Anne honors her mother’s love of libraries with a gift that will continue to provide ongoing support for acquisitions and the preservation of children’s literature. The fund will be used to support the Girls Books and Series and the Early Juvenile Collection in the Special Collections of the University Libraries at UNCG. Says Bill Finley, Head of the Martha Blakeney Hodges Special Collections and University Archives Department: “This gift will not only enhance two important collections in Special Collections through future acquisitions but will enable us to take care of the significant books in these collections to ensure their perpetuity. Children's books are notoriously well used and fragile, and proper preservation--especially of older works--is as crucial as acquisition to the enrichment of these valuable collections. This thoughtful gift will enable these collections both to grow and to remain useable for future scholars and readers.”

Register Now for the 2011-2012 FOL Book Discussions

This year we celebrate ten years of the faculty-led Friends of the UNCG Libraries Book Discussions. Please join us as we peruse a history of Islam, a comic academic novel, an account of a brief life and immortal cells, a Victorian classic, a new analysis of cities, and a "story of stuff." Come for one; come for all--register today at http://library.uncg.edu/giving/friends_of_the_libraries/Register.aspx.

Schedule of Discussions
all discussions will be held in the Hodges Reading Room on the second floor of Jackson Library

Monday, September 26 at 4:00 pm
Dr. Omar Ali, African American Studies, selected No God But God by Reza Aslan, because it provides a comprehensive and highly readable overview of the history of Islam. As Booklist notes, "Beginning with an exploration of the religious climate in the years before the Prophet's Revelation, Aslan traces the story of Islam from the Prophet's life and the so-called golden age of the first four caliphs all the way through European colonization and subsequent independence. Aslan sees religion as a story, and he tells it that way, bringing each successive century to life with the kind of vivid details and like-you-were-there, present-tense narration that makes popular history popular.


Monday, October 24 at 7:00 pm
Dr. Richard Barton, history, thinks that Richard Russo's Straight Man is one of the funniest novels about academe. The novel follows the exploits of William Henry Devereaux, Jr., the grudging chair of the English department at a poorly-funded Pennsylvania college:

"In the course of a single week, Devereaux will have his nose mangled by an angry colleague, imagine his wife is having an affair with his dean, wonder if a curvaceous adjunct is trying to seduce him with peach pits, and threaten to execute a goose on local television. All this while coming to terms with his philandering father, the dereliction of his youthful promise, and the ominous failure of certain vital body functions" (from the publisher's description).


Monday, December 5 at 7:00 pm
Several Friends members requested that the book group read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the non-fiction account by Rebecca Skloot of an impoverished African American woman who died of cancer in the 1950s and whose cells were used in remarkable medical breakthroughs. As Skloot notes, "It’s a story inextricably connected to the dark history of experimentation on African Americans, the birth of bioethics, and the legal battles over whether we control the stuff we’re made of." Dr. Matina Kalcounis-Rueppell, biology, was delighted that we asked her to lead the discussion of the book, as it's one she is eager to re-read. Last Spring, the biology department presented copies of the book to the recipients of the Dr. Bruce Eberhart award. The award, established in 1997, honors "the memory and many contributions of Dr. Eberhart, a cancer victim, to the Biology Department and the community by honoring the students who are contributing to the department and the community in ways that were typical of him." The Immortal Life was selected because "The issues about medical and scientific ethics raised by this book are definitely what Dr. Eberhart would have been concerned about."


Monday, February 6 at 4:00 pm
Did you know that February 7, 2012 marks the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens's birth? We thought we would get a jump on the celebration by discussing Great Expectations the afternoon before, and we promise that if we serve cake, it won't be Miss Havisham's. Dr. Hephzibah Roskelly, English, who introduced the Friends to another Victorian classic last year, will lead the discussion. If you have read Great Expectations before, it's well worth re-reading. And if you haven't, join us as we follow the progress of the orphan Pip, a quintessential Dickens hero, as he stumbles across an escaped convict in a cemetery, falls in love, and finds himself possessed of a mysterious fortune.



Monday, March 26 at 7:00 pm
Professor Ken Snowden, economics, selected Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier, written by renowned economist Edward Glaeser. As the publisher describes, Glaeser proves that "cities are actually the healthiest, greenest, and richest (in cultural and economic terms) places to live. . . . More than half of American's income is earned in twenty-two metropolitan areas. And city dwellers use, on average, 40% less energy than suburbanites. . . . Even the worst cities--Kinshasa, Kolkata, Lagos--confer surprising benefits on the people who flock to them, including better health and more jobs than the rural areas that surround them."


Monday, April 23 at 7:00 pm
Rather than a book that became a movie, The Story of Stuff: How Our Obsession With Stuff Is Trashing the Planet, Our Communities, and Our Health--And a Vision for Change began as an Internet film. And it was on the Internet that discussion leader Dr. Spoma Jovanovic, communication studies, first encountered this work. In the book, author Annie Leonard "tracks the life of the Stuff we use everyday-- where our cotton T-shirts, laptop computers, and aluminum cans come from, how they are produced, distributed, and consumed, and where they go when we throw them out" (from the book flap).