by | March 17, 2016 · 8:38 am

Politics. . . As Usual

American Party of Kentucky documents

American Party of Kentucky documents

Since existing political parties do not offer valid choices to the voters, a new party is urgently needed.  The two existing parties, Democrat and Republican,. . . have deserted the principles and traditions of our nation’s Founding Fathers.

A clip from last night’s cable news?  Au contraire, as we look back almost 50 years to the policy declaration of the American Party of Kentucky, a copy of which is part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.

First convened in 1968 to “provide the vehicle through which responsible conservative candidates can be offered to the voters,” the American Party stood for allegiance to God, limited government, free enterprise, private property, and traditional morality.  It stood against totalitarianism of all stripes, foreign aid, the United Nations, and government-sponsored charity.  By early 1969, the Party was incorporated and tutoring prospective candidates on how to file for local, state and national offices.

For its presidential candidate, the American Party selected former Alabama governor George C. Wallace, who, despite his segregationist resume, electrified supporters with his fiery rhetoric.  “Yes, they’ve looked down their nose at you and me a long time,” he said on the campaign trail.  “They’ve called us rednecks — the Republicans and the Democrats.  Well, we’re going to show, there sure are a lot of rednecks in this country.”

After the 1968 election, the Kentucky American Party’s Richard H. Treitz wrote to the faithful on letterhead of the Wallace campaign to thank them for their efforts.  The best was yet to come, he declared, asking for support in turning a grassroots movement into a truly national political party.  While not victorious in ’68, the soldiers of God and country had “scared the two-alike parties like never before and . . . THEY HAVEN’T SEEN ANYTHING YET!”

Click here to download a finding aid for the American Party collection.  For more of our political collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | March 15, 2016 · 2:59 pm

Diane King’s “Kurdistan on the Global Stage: Kinship, Land and Community in Iraq”

Kurdistan-on-the-Global-Stage (2)

WKU Libraries’ Far Away Places series featured Dr. Diane King, Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kentucky. Dr. King spoke on her recent book Kurdistan on the Global State: Kinship, Land and Community in Iraq, published in 2014 by Rutgers University Press. The book explores how people in Kurdistan connect socially through patron-client relationships, patrilineage and citizenship. King offers a sensitive interpretation of the challenges occurring between tradition and modernity in a land where honor killings and female genital mutilation coexist with mobile phones and increasing education of women.

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by | March 14, 2016 · 11:43 am

The Meijer Used Book Sale produced high traffic to benefit SOKY Book Fest

Meijer Used Book Salehttps://library.blog.wku.edu/2016/03/14/www-flickr-comphotos13303252n0625692555131inalbum-72157665868089526/The Meijer Used Book Sale held on Friday, March 3 through Sunday, March 5 had a great turn out at the Bob Kirby Branch. Hundreds of people showed up for the three-day sale, leaving with heavy bags and big smiles. Meijer sponsored the annual event offered to raise money for the Southern Kentucky Book Fest scheduled on April 22 & 23 at the Knicely Conference Center. For more details on the event, go to sokybookfest.org.

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by | March 10, 2016 · 3:49 pm

Answering the Call: Nurses, Couriers and the Frontier Nursing Service

Answering the Call Nurses, Couriers and the Frontier Nursing Service (20)

WKU Libraries’ “Kentucky Live!” speaker series event featured Dr. Anne Cockerham at Barnes & Nobles Booksellers, Bowling Green, KY on the evening of March 17, 2016. Dr. Cockerham is Assoc. Dean of Midwifery and Women’s Health at the Frontier Nursing University in Hyden, KY and author of Rooted in the Mountains, Reaching to the World: Stories of Nursing and Midwifery at Kentucky’s Frontier School, 1939-1989 published in 2012 and Unbridled Service: Growing Up and Giving Back as a Frontier Nursing Service Courier, 1928-2010 published in 2014.

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by | · 8:44 am

A Confederate Rail-Splitter

Alexander Morse's letter from Bowling Green

Alexander Morse’s letter from Bowling Green

Our collection of Bowling Green-related Civil War resources in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections continues to grow with the addition of an 1861 letter of Confederate cavalryman Alexander P. Morse.

Camped near Bowling Green, Morse, a member of the First Louisiana Cavalry, tells his father of the influx of some 20,000 Southern forces to the area, with another 15,000 in striking range.  “We see nobody but soldiers, and nothing but guns & ammunition,” he wrote from his perch on a “well graduated hill.”  Despite the prevalence of measles among the men, he was “as well and hearty as a buck,” chopping wood with “as much ‘sang froid’ as Abe Lincoln or any other rail splitter,” and catching sleep on a mattress not yet consigned to the sick.

Although he noted that a force of Texas Rangers was attempting to engage Union troops at Green River, Morse was more excited by his dinner conversation with a fellow Louisianan who had witnessed the Battle of Belmont near Columbus, Kentucky.  Over a “great treat” of a meal, Lieut. Col. Daniel Beltzhoover showed Morse the sword he used in the fight, cut through with a minie ball just as he drew it.

An interesting postscript: After the war, Morse became a prominent lawyer.  One of his clients was Louisiana Judge John H. Ferguson, the defendant in Plessy v. Ferguson, the 1896 U.S. Supreme Court case that upheld racial segregation laws until overturned in 1954 by Brown v. Board of Education.  Morse’s principal contribution to legal scholarship, a treatise on the meaning of the phrase “natural-born citizen,” is best left to discussion in other blogs.

Click here to access a finding aid and typescript of Alexander Morse’s letter, and here to browse our Civil War collections.  For more of our manuscript collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | March 3, 2016 · 10:04 am

Letters to May

May Carpenter (right), with a friend

May Carpenter (right), with a friend

We previously heard from Virginia “Jennie” Amos in 1890, when she wrote to May Carpenter of Smiths Grove, Kentucky about going corsetless at a girls-only picnic that ended up being crashed by some local “town dudes.”

In other letters, Jennie also enlivened the short life of her former Cedar Bluff College classmate (May died at 20), with trash talk about friends, life and love.  Let’s hear some more from this paragon of late-Victorian female delicacy:

On her schoolteaching duties:  “Just imagine yourself with sixty brats, all under thirteen. . . . While I was lifting them by their ears. . . a half dozen in my class would be having a fist and scull fight.”

On a friend’s impending marriage:  “It is perfectly awful to think of her associating with such a scrub. . . . I can’t help but believe something will take place yet, and do most heartily hope it will be his getting drunk and breaking his neck.”

On another friend’s marriage:  “And Miss Sallie is married . . . . Did not think she would have A. Lawson. . . . It seems like good girls never get the kind of men they deserve.”

On yet another friend’s honeymoon:  “You must make Bettie tell you how badly scared Scott was the first night.  I can’t imagine him as being so immodest as to undress in a girl’s room and to get in bed with her.  Isn’t it awful to think of?”

On a date:  “My beau was one Mr. Walter Culley who was never known to speak a word unless asked a direct question.  He did not bother me very much though as we played cards most of the time.”

And this complaint, in the middle of a gossip-filled letter , about her friend “Emma’s” tale-telling behind her back:  “She never showed any sign of talking about other people to me, but then she knew I had such perfect contempt for people so inclined that may have prevented her from talking to me.”

These letters are part of the Carpenter Collection in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s  Special Collections Library.  Click here to download a finding aid.  For more collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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by | March 2, 2016 · 2:47 pm

Join us this weekend for the Meijer Used Book Sale

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by | February 26, 2016 · 4:08 pm

212° Academy students win Young Authors contest

212° Academy students Emma Jayne McGuffey and Shelby Cockrill have been selected as the winners of the SOKY Book Fest – 212° Academy Young Authors Contest. DSC_0485McGuffey, daughter of Karen and Steven McGuffey, wrote A Family of Spies: Sunrise – A New Dawn, and Cockrill, daughter of Wendy and Rhett Cockrill, wrote Game Warning. McGuffey is a 6th grader from Richardsville Elementary School, and Cockrill is a 6th grader from Oakland Elementary School.DSC_0466

SOKY Book Fest Coordinator Sara Volpi said there was a wonderful variety of books this year. “We were once again so impressed with the imagination and effort put into each book the 212° Academy students wrote,” said Volpi.

According to Jennifer Sheffield, teacher for the 212° Academy, the goal of this project was to experience the process of crafting a book for publication from start to finish.

“Students were given the assignment to write a book with an elementary school-aged reader in mind,” said Sheffield. “Each book was published through lulu.com, an online book self-publishing website, printed in full-color and assigned an official library ISBN number.”

The contest is a combined effort between the Southern Kentucky Book Fest partners (Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Warren County Public Library, and WKU Libraries) and the teachers at the Academy. The two students will receive certificates of recognition and are invited to sign copies of their books at the Southern Kentucky Book Fest on April 22-23.

For more information, visit www.sokybookfest.org or contact Sara Volpi at (270) 745-4502.

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by | February 25, 2016 · 10:55 am

Leap Year 2016

WKU Library Special Collections often commemorates leap year with an exhibit. This year, our efforts to educate our viewers about the legend of the 5th century agreement between St. Brigid and St. Patrick that allowed women the right to propose for 366 days every four years and subsequent beliefs about laws, have broadened.
Sue Lynn McDaniel published an article “Leap Year: Chance, Chase or Curse?” in the January 2016 issue of The Ephemera Journal. See http://works.bepress.com/sue_lynn_mcdaniel/ Last week, she was the “Talk of the Town” in our local Bowling Green Daily News for her research on leap year and has curated an exhibit that closes March 31st in Library Special Collections entitled: “Time to Leap!” displays a portion of our collection.

A case exhibit provides a hint of all the sources now in the Selected Works Gallery.

A case exhibit provides a hint of all the sources now in the Selected Works Gallery.

But most  exciting  for  us this  year is  our  new opportunity to go beyond our doors by opening  the Library Special Collections’ Worth A Thousand Words gallery “Leap Year Postcards and  Ephemera.”  This  site functions as searchable permanent sources for  users not  necessarily OPAC friendly. Enjoying exhibit cases are limited by schedules and  the viewers’ ability to travel to the destination.   Nancy Richey will continue to add  all our postcards to KenCat, while Sue Lynn McDaniel adds ephemera to this online catalog, but  we anticipate wider usage and visibility of our primary sources through this  TopScholar  gateway.  Please  explore the Leap Year Postcards and  Ephemera, via http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/ly_pe/  Once you have reviewed the materials, come hear Sue Lynn McDaniel’s presentation:  “Time to Leap” on Leap Day, February 29, 2016 at 4 p.m. in the Western Room of  the Kentucky Building.  For students, this  is  a swipeable event.

 

 

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by | · 8:59 am

Judgment Days

Samuel Carpenter's judgeship appointment, 1847

Samuel Carpenter’s judgeship appointment, 1847

As U.S. Supreme Court history turns a page with the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, we see irrefutable evidence of the personal and professional lives of other august members of the bench in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Circuit Judge (and Bowling Green mayor) John B. Rodes, Kentucky Supreme Court Justice Charles H. Reynolds, U.S. District Judge Walter Evans, and local judge John M. Galloway are among those represented in our collections.

In 1846, Judge Henry Ormsby Brown (1787-1852) wrote to his wife Lucy during his travels on the circuit in western Kentucky.  He was intrigued with the “thriving little town” of Cadiz, “with a better society than is generally found in such villages–a genteel courthouse & several churches.”  Anxious (a little whiny, in fact) for letters from home, Brown instructed Lucy to “ascertain by the time it takes this letter to reach you” whether she should write him there or address her letter to his next destination.

When Samuel Carpenter (1824-1900) was appointed in 1847 as circuit judge for the 13th Judicial District of Kentucky, his certificate noted his substitution in place of one John W. Helm, “who refused to accept.”  On the reverse was recorded Carpenter’s oath that he “would administer Justice without respect of persons and do equal right to the poor and the rich.”

Scrutiny of judges has, of course, become ever more contentious.  In 1987, Elkton, Kentucky attorney George Street Boone shared his thoughts with Senator Wendell Ford on the nomination of Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court.  Following the confirmation hearings closely, he found the controversial nominee “articulate, highly educated and intelligent,” but nevertheless more “radical” than conservative.  Given the Supreme Court’s “strong and stabilizing influence in this country,” he wrote, neither Bork’s record nor his performance at the hearings justified his appointment to the nation’s highest court.

Click on the links to access finding aids for these collections.  For more collections on lawyers and judges, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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