We're Moving!

So long, Blogger, and thanks!

Dear readers, you'll now be able to find The Devil's Tale at http://blogs.library.duke.edu/dukelibrariesrbmscl/. Update your feed readers, change your bookmarks, and we'll see you soon at our new online home!

A Snowy Saturday at Duke

On Saturday afternoon, Durham saw its first snowfall of the season. Sadly, most of the snow melted before we made it to the RBMSCL this morning. Lucky for us, Duke Yearlook, the Duke University Archives' Flickr photostream, has come to our rescue with a flurry of photos of a snowy Gothic Wonderland.

There are funny ones...

And pretty ones...

Stop by the "Winter at Duke" set on Flickr for more pictures of the campus in snow.

Thanksgiving in Pittsburgh

A wooden postcard (ca. 1910) from our Postcard Collection. 

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! 

(Click images to enlarge.)

Charley the Bell

Visit Duke University’s West Campus any weekday at 5:00 PM and you’ll hear the 50 bells of the Duke University Chapel’s impressive carillon.

But there’s a 51st bell on West Campus. Hung in the Kilgo Quadrangle belfry sometime in October or early November of 1950, Charley came to Duke (according to legend) from Cherley Myncherry in Oxfordshire, where it had been part of this Benedictine priory’s set of bells. The bell was a gift of Furman G. McLarty (Trinity College Class of 1927 and Duke professor of philosophy from 1933 until his death in 1952), who had purchased it in 1929 while a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University.

Perhaps overshadowed by its Duke Chapel brethren, our Charley does have one particular point of pride: with Cherley Myncherry dating from the 12th century, the bell may very well be one of the oldest in the New World. We were lucky to record a peal from this historical treasure.



Additional Resources:

Duke Magazine "Retrospective" on Charley by former Associate University Archivist Tom Harkins

Rights! Camera! Action!: Rain in a Dry Land

Date: Tuesday, 16 November 2010
Time: 7:00 PM
Location: Rare Book Room
Contact Information: Patrick Stawski, 919-660-5823 or patrick.stawski(at)duke.edu, or Kirston Johnson, 919-681-7963 or kirston.johnson(at)duke.edu

Rain in a Dry Land (82 min.) chronicles the first 18 months of the new American lives of two families finally allowed to immigrate to the United States after over a decade in a Kenyan refugee camp. Beginning with "cultural orientation" classes in Kenya, where they are introduced to such novelties as electric appliances and the prospect of living in high-rise apartment buildings, the film follows the families as they learn that the streets in America are definitely not paved with gold. The families' sponsors—Jewish Family Services in Springfield, Massachusetts, and World Relief in Atlanta—have pledged six months of support, which makes for a daunting learning curve as the families settle into their new homes.

A discussion with director Anne Makepeace and Suzanne Shanahan, Associate Director of Duke's Kenan Institute for Ethics, will follow.

The Rights! Camera! Action! film series, which is sponsored by the Archive for Human Rights, the Archive of Documentary Arts, the Duke Human Rights Center, the Franklin Humanities Institute, and Screen/Society at Duke's Arts of the Moving Image Program, features documentaries on human rights themes that were award winners at the annual Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The films are archived at the RBMSCL, where they form part of a rich and expanding collection of human rights materials.