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Friday, December 30, 2011




Under segregation black people were generally denied access to public libraries in the Southern United States. Rather than insisting on his libraries being racially integrated, he funded separate libraries for African Americans. For example, at Houston he funded a separate Colored Carnegie Library.
                                                                                                                                         -Wikipedia

Carnegie Libraries


Carnegie Library
Union, South Carolina

A Carnegie library is a library built with money donated by Scottish-American businessman and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. 2,509 Carnegie libraries were built between 1883 and 1929, including some belonging to public and university library systems. 1,689 were built in the United States, 660 in Britain and Ireland, 125 in Canada, and others in Australia, New Zealand, Serbia, the Caribbean, and Fiji. Few towns that requested a grant and agreed to his terms were refused. When the last grant was made in 1919, there were 3,500 libraries in the United States, nearly half of them built with construction grants paid by Carnegie.
The first of Carnegie's public libraries opened in his hometown, Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1883. The locally quarried sandstone building displays a stylised sun with a carved motto - "Let there be light" at the entrance. His first library in the United States was built in 1889 in Braddock, Pennsylvania, home to one of the Carnegie Steel Company's mills. Initially Carnegie limited his support to a few towns in which he had an interest. From the 1890s on, his foundation funded a dramatic increase in number of libraries. This coincided with the rise of women's clubs in the post-Civil War period, which were most responsible for organizing efforts to establish libraries, including long-term fundraising and lobbying within their communities to support operations and collections. They led the establishment of 75-80 percent of the libraries in communities across the country.
Carnegie believed in giving to the "industrious and ambitious; not those who need everything done for them, but those who, being most anxious and able to help themselves, deserve and will be benefited by help from others." Under segregation black people were generally denied access to public libraries in the Southern United States. Rather than insisting on his libraries being racially integrated, he funded separate libraries for African Americans. For example, at Houston he funded a separate Colored Carnegie Library.
Most of the library buildings were unique, constructed in a number of styles, including Beaux-Arts, Italian Renaissance, Baroque, Classical Revival, and Spanish Colonial. Scottish Baronial was one of the styles used in Carnegie's native Scotland. Each style was chosen by the community, although as the years went by James Bertram, Carnegie's secretary, became less tolerant of designs which were not to his taste.Edward Lippincott Tilton, a friend often recommended by Bertram, designed many of the buildings. The architecture was typically simple and formal, welcoming patrons to enter through a prominent doorway, nearly always accessed via a staircase. The entry staircase symbolized a person's elevation by learning. Similarly, outside virtually every library was a lamppost or lantern,meant as a symbol of enlightenment.
In the early 20th century, a Carnegie library was often the most imposing structure in hundreds of small American communities.

-Wikipedia

SIX MILE PRESS
Stephen T. Powell
Central, South Carolina
January 1, 2012

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

The Green Man



Green Man is a sculpturedrawing, or other representation of a face surrounded by or made from leaves. Branches or vines may sprout from the nose, mouth, nostrils or other parts of the face and these shoots may bear flowers or fruit. Commonly used as a decorative architectural ornament, Green Men are frequently found on carvings in churches and other buildings (both secular and ecclesiastical). 


"The Green Man" is also a popular name for English public houses and various interpretations of the name appear on inn signs, which sometimes show a full figure rather than just the head.
The Green Man motif has many variations. Found in many cultures around the world, the Green Man is often related to natural vegetative deities springing up in different cultures throughout the ages. Primarily it is interpreted as a symbol of rebirth, or "renaissance," representing the cycle of growth each spring.

-Wikipedia

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

AdBusters


       


The Adbusters Media Foundation is a Canadian-based not-for-profitanti-consumeristpro-environment organization founded in 1989 by Kalle Lasn and Bill Schmalz in VancouverBritish Columbia. Adbusters describes itself as "a global network of artists, activists, writers, pranksters, students, educators and entrepreneurs who want to advance the new social activist movement of the information age."
Characterized by some as anti-capitalist or opposed to capitalism, it publishes the reader-supported, advertising-free Adbusters, an activist magazine with an international circulation of 120,000 devoted to challenging consumerism. Past and present contributors to the magazine include Christopher HedgesMatt TaibbiBill McKibbenJim MunroeDouglas RushkoffJonathan Barnbrook,David GraeberSimon CritchleySlavoj ZizekMichael HardtDavid Orrell and others.
Adbusters has launched numerous international campaigns, including Buy Nothing DayTV Turnoff Week and Occupy Wall Street, and is known for their "subvertisements" that spoof popular advertisements.

                                                                                                                                       Wikipedia

http://www.adbusters.org/

EKKO STAMPS







   THE STAMP COLLECTING PROCESS

“The process was very simple. For only $1.75, the EKKO Company offered an album to the collector of new stamps. The album contains pages preprinted with an outline of each of the stamps currently available, a listing of broadcast station call letters and wavelengths, and a nice map on the inside cover showing the locations of these stations.
Spaces were also left for stations not yet participating, or stations that were just coming on the air. In addition, there was space to jot down up to four dial settings at your own time of reception.
"Proof of Reception" cards were furnished with the album.

Listeners needed only to send a few facts on these cards about when and where on the dial they had heard a broadcast, plus ten cents to cover mailing costs, to the station. There the card was checked against the station log for accuracy, and the listener was mailed a stamp with the station's call letters and design upon it.
An ad for this stamp album appeared in Radio News, April, 1925.

Interest in the hobby became so widespread that the February 1925 issue of Radio News featured the Ekko stamps on its cover.”

Credits: 

http://www.antiqueradio.com/gilbertcombs_ekko_6-97.html

http://pl703.pairlitesite.com/Ekko_Album.html