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Dig out your photos! Bring your IC-related pics to ScanIt@ICPL--May 9, 2-5 p.m.

Posted by Candice on Friday, May 1, 2015

tbt42315 I was digging through some boxes of photos the other day, and found this one that made me especially happy for two reasons. The first is because of the carousel--the Drollinger carousel in City Park. This is one of the rides that is still in the park, but when this picture was taken (I think in 1997 or 1998?) there were other rides that are no longer there. I like to think of all the times I was in the park, all the kids and families enjoying Iowa City's very own amusement park that used to be just a little bit bigger.

I'm sure there are many of you who have similar items tucked away at home--maybe some photos of picnics or ballgames in the parks around town, or of your kids messing about in the old fountain in the ped mall (that old, wonderful, vaguely dangerous, somewhat evocative fountain), of family outings to the Devonian Fossil Gorge right after it was created. Pictures of the floods, of the tornado's aftermath, of buildings that used to be downtown, old pictures from school, scenes of neighborhoods and homes from a while back. We want to see them! We're looking for photos and documents related to the history of Iowa City to scan and add to our Digital History Project, and we're hoping our patrons and community members can help!

The second reason I was happy to find this photo? Because the two tiny little children in it are turning 22 today--happy birthday, Peter and Rachel!

About the Author

Candice's picture

I work at the Info Desk on the second floor, and I select books for the adult nonfiction collection. I have a degree in anthropology, which really helps in selecting...well...almost anything. I also manage the Art To Go collection of framed prints and original art, and the nonfiction DVDs.
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  • Stalking Shakespeare : a memoir of madness, murder, and my search for the poet beneath the paint

    by Lee Durkee

    704.942 /Durkee
    Nonfiction, History, Art / Art History, Biographies

    "Following his divorce, down-and-out writer and Mississippi exile Lee Durkee holed himself up in a Vermont fishing shack and fell prey to a decades-long obsession with Shakespearian portraiture. It began with a simple premise: despite the prevalence of popular portraits, no one really knows what Shakespeare looked like. That the Bard of Avon has gotten progressively handsomer in modern depictions seems only to reinforce this point. Stalking Shakespeare is Durkee's fascinating memoir about an obsession gone awry, the 400-year-old myriad portraits attached to the famous playwright, and Durkee's own unrelenting search-via X-ray and infrared technologies-for a lost picture of the Bard painted from real life. As Durkee becomes better at beguiling curators into testing their paintings with spectral technologies, we get a front-row seat to the captivating mysteries plaguing the various portraits rumored to depict Shakespeare. Whisking us backward in time through layers of paint and into the pages of obscure books on the Elizabethans, Durkee takes us from Vermont to Tokyo to Mississippi to DC and ultimately to London to confront the stuffy curators forever protecting the image of the Bard. For his part, Durkee is the adversary they didn't know they had-a writer from Mississippi with nothing to lose-the "Dan Brown of English portraiture." A lively, bizarre, and surprisingly moving blend of biography, art history, and madness, Stalking Shakespeare is as entertaining as it is rigorous and sheds new light on one of history's greatest cultural and literary icons"--

    csmith's picture

    A fun little escapade through the major theories of who wrote Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, via the various portraits that are purportedly of him. There's a lot of very interesting stuff here, not just literary but also in the art history sense of who created the portraits, how they've been altered, and why they look the way they do. Lee Durkee is also a strong presence in this book, and tbh I veered between thinking of him as someone I felt sympathetic and appreciative towards, for his candor about his own mental health and personal issues, and then thinking that he'd be an absolute tour guide from hell. All in all, a very (VERY) well-researched and entertaining read. -Candice
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