Over 1,500 digitized photographs are available from the Bee Ottinger Lesbian House Collection, a documentary archive of the Los Angeles Gay Community Service Center “Lesbian House” in Los Angeles between 1972 and 1973.
All posts by Rebekah Irwin
Middlebury Special Collections and JSTOR Unite!
Over 10,000 historic items from Middlebury College’s Special Collections are now freely available on JSTOR, your go-to research platform for journals and ebooks.
Welcome (back) Mikaela!
Mikaela Taylor returns to Special Collections and the Twilight Project!
Vermont Life Online archive
Vermont Life magazine is available online.
Visit http://go.middlebury.edu/vermontlife to visit the digital archive of Vermont’s iconic 72-year-old magazine.
Vermont Life magazine was a quarterly magazine, published by the State of Vermont, covering Vermont’s “people, places and culture.” The state-owned magazine was founded in 1946 and ceased publication in the summer of 2018.
The digitization of Vermont Life was undertaken to support the Middlebury College fall 2018 class: “Vermont Life’s Life,” taught by Professors Kathy Morse and Michael Newbury.
Vermont Life was digitized from originals held by Middlebury College Special Collections and the State of Vermont with funding support from the following: the Davis Family Foundation, Middlebury College Friends of the Library, Middlebury College Departments of American Studies, Environmental History, and History, Middlebury College Digital Liberal Arts Initiative, the Center for Research on Vermont, Saint Michael’s College Library, the Vermont Historical Society, and the University of Vermont Special Collections.
Military tanks move in. At Bread Loaf, 1941
Middlebury’s Bread Loaf campus is usually seen as a peaceful academic retreat nestled in the lush landscape of the Green Mountains, but 75 years ago, it was briefly home to a serious display of military might. College President Paul Moody (who had served in World War I and was a member of the National Guard) hosted the 754th Tank Battalion at the campus in the fall of 1941.
This compilation of footage from 16mm reels in the College archives are believed to show the visit, including a shot of a helmeted President Moody in one of the battalion’s vehicles (an unused title card on another reel in the archives reads: “Prexy Gets Tanked”). Other footage includes author and professor William Hazlett Upson with an unknown child dressed as a soldier, officers visiting the Middlebury Inn, and a procession of military vehicles through campus.
Lieutenant Colonel Robert J. Wallace thanked President Moody in a letter saying, “The quarters afforded us were excellent, and the party held for the Battalion at Bread Loaf by the girls of Middlebury College, will long be very pleasantly remembered by all the men of the Battalion.”
For more information or for permission to use this clip contact SpecialCollections@middlebury.edu. Compilation from original 16mm films in the Middlebury College Archives.
Stacks & Tracks the WRMC Radio Hour celebrates National Poetry Month with guest DJ, Karin Gottshall
Join us this Wednesday, April 13, 2016 at 12p-1p when Stacks & Tracks, the Special Collections & Archives radio show, celebrates National Poetry Month with Karin Gottshall, poet, Visiting Lecturer in English and American Literatures, and director of the New England Young Writers’ Conference at Bread Loaf. It will be music to your ears, promise.
Wednesdays 12p-1p, live at 91.1FM or live-streaming through iTunes or online.
A “first-rate beer” voucher, 2,000 years overdue
In special collections, visitors often ask us, “What’s your most expensive item?” Or sometimes: “What’s the oldest thing you have?”
In late November, we acquired our newest, oldest thing: a baked clay tablet that originated in ancient Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), from roughly 2,000 BCE. This small tablet (measuring just about 1 inch x 1 inch and pictured here) is incised with cuneiform script, considered to be one of the earliest forms of writing.
With the help of Middlebury alum Seth Richardson, Class of 1990, a historian of the ancient Near East at the University of Chicago, we’re learning more about our new acquisition. Likely in British and American hands since the early 20th century, our tablet is essentially a beer coupon. That’s right. Based only on preliminary examination, Dr. Richardson translated the first line: “3 liters of first-rate beer.”
And as it turns out, the Western tradition of beer brewing began in Mesopotamia between 3500 – 3100 BCE. How do we know? Largely from cuneiform tablets like ours, which contain detailed records around beer production, the delivery of raw materials (barley, yeast, bread, flour), and the trading of beer products. Like apple cider production in colonial New England, ancient Mesopotamians lacked clean water, but had an abundance of grains and the know-how needed to ferment them. And they had the earliest known written alphabet to boot.
Funds for the purchase of this item were gifted by Jeri Bapasola, French School, 1978.
References
“Beer in the Ancient World.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Accessed December 3, 2015.
Damerow, Peter. “Sumerian Beer: The Origins of Brewing Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia.” Cuneiform Digital Library Journal, no. 2 (2012).
Prof. Shalom Goldman, guest DJ on WRMC’s Stacks & Tracks
Join us and our first guest DJ, Professor Shalom Goldman (Religion)
Episode #4, Stacks & Tracks, the Special Collections & Archives radio show, Monday, November 2, 9am-10am
Tune-in to hear a half-century of popular music, inspired by biblical stories.
With commentary, of course.
91.9FM | iTunes radio | listen online | on your phone
Bread Loaf menu options, from the Archives
In honor of the return of the 2015 faculty plenary meeting and lunch to the Bread Loaf campus, we have some recipes to share. Late this summer, Patti McCaffrey from Dining Services delivered a mildly corroded metal recipe box to the Archives. Uncovered during the Bread Loaf renovations, the box was likely the property of Alfleda De Gray, a longtime cook at the College and Bread Loaf. (Alfleda’s start day was July 1, 1945 and her last day was February 9, 1987. We’ll do the math: that’s forty-two years of feeding mouths at Middlebury and at Bread Loaf.) At the time, female cooks were responsible for cold salads, punches, and appetizers rather than main dishes, which were the territory of male cooks. We’re not sure what’s on the menu for this year’s lunch, but we offer a few options from Alfleda De Gray’s Bread Loaf recipe box: A “Thirst Inviting” dip; Wagon Wheel Cheese; and a Fruited Cheese Salad with lemon and strawberry gelatin. Enjoy!
Clothing Guide 1944-45, from the Archives
For the 1944-45 school year, the Student Union published these handy HELPS AND HINTS as part of a clothing guide (for women). For example, “No Rubber Boots are to be worn to the dining-rooms, or to lectures and concerts unless the weather is very severe and there is no opportunity to change.” And don’t get us started on shorts. “Shorts are never to be worn in the dining rooms…they are never to be worn downtown unless one is going through town on a bicycle. Then don’t stop to shop or have a coke. Plan those shopping or coking expeditions for sometime when you don’t have shorts on.” Unless, of course, you remembered your leg make-up.
