Books, genes, and stranger things...

Crowley presenting as female to be Warlock’s Nanny? The way this was filmed, acted, and written wasn’t made to be funny whatsoever. She was stunning, I loved the hat!

Pollution using they/them pronouns while the postman used the gender neutral honorific of sir for them? What’s there to make fun of? They’re royalty.

Archangel Michael, who has a traditionally male name, played by a female actress? Never questioned.

Lord Beelzebub’s androgyny? Only respect for the Lord of Hell.

Aziraphale sharing Madame Tracy’s body? Crowley recognized his angel and accepted it no problem. He was right about the dress too, it did suit him!

Crowley’s pure, unfiltered non-binary/gender-fluid energy in general? Fucking fabulous. Who could seriously make fun of this demon’s style? As someone once pointed out to me, you could swap him with Tilda Swinton and I’d see no difference. What an icon.

For our angels and demons, it was intensely liberating having male and female actors auditioning for the same roles, and just picking the ones who we felt nailed the characters best.

Also, can I just hear a wahoo for the wonderful Archangel Uriel, Gloria Obianyo?

EDIT: NYT is reporting it’s 64 years before the 74th HG, not the quarter quell, making it the 10th games :(

crowley and aziraphale are fantastic but HAVE YOU MET PEPPER

thank you @neil-gaiman for blessing us with this lil character

So turns out my local library really likes Neil Gaiman….or he really likes libraries.

50 years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was fatally shot at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968. King had traveled to Memphis on April 3, to speak to an assemblage at Mason Temple (World Headquarters of the Church of God in Christ) in support of the Memphis Sanitation Strike. It was there that he delivered his “I Have Been to the Mountaintop” speech:

I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! 

And so I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

The next evening, Dr. King was assassinated.

Please join the Delgado Community College Libraries faculty and staff in remembering the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Chicago Freedom Movement: Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights Activism in the North, Pam Smith University Press of Kentucky, 2016 Online Collection /  323.1196073077311 Six months after the Selma to Montgomery marches and just weeks after the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a group from Martin Luther King Jr.’s staff arrived in Chicago, eager to apply his nonviolent approach to social change in a northern city.

This Day In History: March 25, 1965 – King Speaks in Montgomery - Full Video (01:35) The WPA Film Library Martin Luther King, Jr. speaks to marchers in Montgomery, AL.

Misremembering Dr. King: Revisiting the Legacy of Martin Luther King Jr., Jennifer J. Yanco Indiana University Press, 2014 Online Collection / 323.092 We all know the name. Martin Luther King Jr., the great American civil rights leader. But most people today know relatively little about King, the campaigner against militarism, materialism, and racism–what he called the “giant triplets.” Jennifer J. Yanco takes steps to redress this imbalance.

Civil Rights Historians Discuss Martin Luther King Jr. - Full Video (09:48) MacNeil/Lehrer Productions To mark the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday in 2005, PBS NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Brown speaks with civil rights author Nick Kotz and Roger Wilkins, history professor at George Mason University.

Events following the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. ca. 1968 - Full Video (01:13) The WPA Film Library The assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. by James Earl Ray on April 4, 1968, ignited a series of riots and protests throughout the nation. That evening, Robert F. Kennedy delivered a speech from a street corner in Indianapolis urging peace and calmness. On April 5 President Lyndon B. Johnson broadcast a radio address that declared April 7 a national day of mourning and called for an emergency meeting of Congress to discuss strategies for combating racial inequality. On April 8 Ralph Abernathy and Coretta Scott King led the march-the beginning of the Poor People’s Campaign - that King came to Memphis to lead. The next day King’s funeral was held in Atlanta, Georgia, where 100,000 people gathered to mourn his death. Eighteen years after his assassination, Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday was declared a national holiday. 

At the River I Stand: Memphis, the 1968 Strike, and Martin Luther King, Joan Turner Beifuss Carlson Pub., 1989 City Park Campus Library / 331.8928

At the River I Stand - Full Video (58:27) California Newsreel This documentary unravels the complex historical forces that turned a strike by Memphis sanitation workers into a national conflagration, ultimately leading to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Reconstructing two eventful months in the spring of 1968, the film brings into sharp relief issues that have become only more urgent with time: the connection between economic and civil rights, debates over strategies for change, and the fight for dignity for all working people. Stirring historical footage shows the community mobilizing behind the strikers, and retired sanitation workers recall their fear about going up against “the white power structure” when they struck for higher wages and union recognition.

Beginning with the best-selling I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou’s autobiographical books chart her beginnings in rural segregated Arkansas and urban St. Louis, her turbulent adolescence in California through her adult triumphs as a performing artist and writer, her work in the civil rights movement, her travels to Africa, and her return to the United States. “One of the geniuses of Afro-American serial autobiography,” according to Houston A. Baker in the New York Times Book Review, Angelou has been praised for the rich and insightful prose of her narratives and for offering what many observers feel is an indispensable record of black experience. Author James Baldwin wrote on the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: “This testimony from a Black sister marks the beginning of a new era in the minds and hearts and lives of all Black men and women.” In 2013 she published her last book, Mom &Me & Mom,which tells the story of her relationship with her mother. Angelou died at her home on May 28, 2014.

Maya Angelou. (1997). In Contemporary Black Biography (Vol. 15). Detroit: Gale. 

Join us in wishing the late Dr. Angelou a happy birthday! I’ve gathered just a few of the materials by and about Dr. Maya Angelou in the Delgado Libraries collection, but you can browse the catalog to find more.

Maya Angelou by Burns Library, Boston College

Even the Stars Look Lonesome, Maya Angelou Random House, 1997 City Park Campus Library, West Bank Campus Library, Sidney Collier Library /  814.54 A58e The renowned author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Heart of a Woman imparts compelling wisdom learned during a remarkable lifetime in Even the Stars Look Lonesome–a glorious continuation of Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now.

A Brave and Startling Truth, Maya Angelou Random House, 1995 City Park Campus Library /  811.54 A58b First read by Maya Angelou at the 50th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations, this wise and moving poem will inspire readers with its memorable message of hope for humanity.

By Brian Stansberry (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou Random House, 1994 City Park Campus Library / 811.54 A58c For the first time, the complete collection of Maya Angelou’s published poems-including “On the Pulse of Morning”-in a permanent collectible, handsome hardcover edition.

Life Doesn’t Frighten Me, Maya Angelou Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1993 City Park Campus Library (Oversize) /  811.54 A58l c.2 Maya Angelou’s brave poem is illustrated by the paintings of Jean-Michel Basquiat. 

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou Random House, 1970 City Park Campus Library, West Bank Campus Library /  917.30924 A58i

By Clinton Library (William J. Clinton Presidential Library) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Maya Angelou: Inauguration Reading (05:53) Educational Video Group At President Clinton’s second inauguration, Maya Angelou delivers her poem called “On the Pulse of Morning.” Her rich, melodious voice gives a magical quality to the reading.