This Week in History, Jan. 5th – Jan. 11th.

“Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

Zora Neale Hurston

This week we celebrate the birthday of Zora Neale Hurston, American anthropologist, filmmaker and author of books such as, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Born in 1891, Ms. Hursten was also a member of the Harlem Renaissance.  She is noted for her research and use of the dialect of average working class African-Americans in her work, a choice that proved to be unpopular with the politics of her peers at the time. As her work slid into obscurity, she died, penniless, but happy with her creative progress as an artist, in 1960.  It was author Alice Walker, who revived interest in Hurston’s work when she wrote an essay that was published in Ms. Magazine in 1974. She also paid for the headstone on her mentor’s unmarked grave. It’s inscription includes the praise, “Genius of the South”.¹

You can learn more about Ms. Hurston by reading, I Love Myself When I Am Laughing And Then Again When I Am Looking Mean & Impressive: a Zora Neale Hurston reader, which may be checked out from the Clark College Libraries General collection. (PS3515.U789 A6 1979)

“We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect.” Foreword, A Sand County Almanac.³

This week is the birthday of the person commonly regarded as the father of the conservation movement, Aldo Leopold, who is best known for his work,  A Sand County Almanac.⁴ 

Aldo Leopold “was an American author, philosopher, scientist, ecologist, forester, conservationist, and environmentalist. He was a professor at the University of Wisconsin“⁵  , a pioneer of the “Land Ethic” and a champion of preserving nature and the outdoors.

A Sand County almanac, and sketches here and there can be found in the Clark Library at QH81 .L56 1987

“How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four

It is elementary that we celebrate the birthday of Mr. Sherlock Holmes this week, even though the date of his birthday is never specifically stated in any of author Arthur Conan Doyle’s work. Admirers of Holmes have, however, deduced from clues left by Doyle that his birthday must be this week.⁶

To learn more about the creation of Sherlock Holmes, check out author Rosemary Jann’s study of the Holmes phenomenon, titled, The adventures of Sherlock Holmes: detecting social order. Your sleuthing will lead you to the second floor of the Cannell Library where you will find it at……….⁸

¹ https://www.writersalmanac.org/index.html%3Fp=9296.html
² https://www.arts.gov/big-read/2012/hurstons-voice-folk-voice
³ https://www.aldoleopold.org/teach-learn/green-fire-film/leopold-quotes/
⁴ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Sand_County_Almanac
⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldo_Leopold
⁶ https://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/06/the-curious-case-of-a-birthday-for-sherlock/
⁷ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Holmes_-_Steele_1903_-_The_Empty_House_-_The_Return_of_Sherlock_Holmes.jpg
⁸ PR4624 .J35 1995