Into the Archives!

This week (Wednesday to Tuesday) has been about learning to use the Library of Congress. Have you ever used the Library of Congress? It is fucking amazing. Even when I can't find what I want, it is amazing! An example:

I am looking at published piano-vocal sheet music from the 1913 musical, The Tik-Tok Man of Oz by L. Frank Baum. The Library has 18 songs out of an unknown number (I think 19, actually, but I haven't quite figured that out), but it doesn't have a script. The New York Public Library has an early draft of the script, but it doesn't match the songs. What does the helpful librarian in the Performing Arts Reading Room suggest to me, when I ask about a script? Look in the copyright deposit. In the same building, a few yards away, they keep the actual copy that was dropped off when every single play was copyrighted (copywritten? copyritten?). All of them! Every published drama for the history of this country supposedly has a copy of its published script somewhere in the Library of Congress.

Sadly, the one I wanted seems not to have been submitted when the copyright was filed. In 1909. In Chicago. Under a different title. And yet I still was able to definitively find out that the copy wasn't submitted. And simultaneously find out that on the same day that L. Frank Baum submitted The Rainbow's Daughter for copyright (February 23rd, 1909), he also submitted for copyright a work called The Koran of the Prophet, a musical extravaganza.

Sadly, the work that in my head is already retitled Koran: The Musical! was also copywrote without depositing a printed copy. What a loss to the world! Or perhaps what a gain! Can you imagine what a white midwesterner in 1909 would have written on the subject? I can't. But now I'm trying, all thanks to the Library of Congress!

Next week, I will (hopefully) examine their photos of Charlotte Greenwood playing Queen Ann Soforth of Oogaboo in The Tik-Tok Man. You may (and I certainly do) remember her as Aunt Eller in the film version of Oklahoma!, forty-two years later. When I started this chapter, I had no idea that Oklahoma! and Tik-Tok of Oz had anything in common, beyond having played two too large roles in my childhood. Research is a fascinating business!

Eastern seaboard

Internet friends, I'm sorry I haven't written more. It's been a crazy few weeks. After my last post in NY, I went to a wedding in Vermont, had a week of camp in Massachusetts, and drove (well, passenged) through five other states to DC, whereupon I subwayed to Virginia where I am now living for the next few months. In honor of my grand eastern tour, I invite you to head over to Twitter and check out the hashtag #famousforyou. The overlap between musical theater fans and Rhode Island fans in my followers is fairly impressive, though unsurprising. And in case you didn't know, pencils come from Pencilvania, vests from Vest Virginia, and tents from Tentesee.

You know you're back in NY when...

Overheard at the Metro North station in Hartsdale, NY, while on my way into the city from Grandma's:

"Bubbe's taking me to get her name tattooed on my butt."

This was followed by a conversation about how many other relatives either didn't know she had any tattoos, or also wanted their names on her butt ("my butt's big, so I can fit all of them").

It's nice to be home?

Advances in malt technology

Go here. Read the recipe. Duplicate it at home. Revel in the joys of the malted whipped cream mousse studded with Whoppers.

That is all.

True confessions

Sometimes I am so lazy that I can't be bothered to stand up to take a Golden Girls DVD out of my DVD binder. That's when I scour YouTube for illegal uploads of full episodes. Google keeps takin' 'em down, and devoted fans keep puttin' 'em back up. I just watched "Blanche and the Younger Man" for the umpteenth time, while eating egg noodles in vegetable broth. I am an old lady.

Twice in one day

Posting again! I will make up for my lack of posts with a barrage of them now.

Jury duty is complete. I held my breath with hundreds of other people while they called out names for a more-than-a-month-long trial, and I was not called. I have a shiny new certificate that says no jury duty for a year!

Unrelated news:

My class at UCLA is four people. The first of us, the only one to start the program with a Masters degree, defended her dissertation today. She is, of course, a rock star (now Dr. Rock Star). The rest of us (or at least I) can now hear our academiological clocks ticking. Ticking. Ticking.

It doesn't help that I've been writing a lot about Tik-Tok of Oz in this chapter. I feel like Captain Hook.

The slave of duty

I'm off to jury duty this morning! I'm not sure if I want to be selected for a jury or sent home immediately. I know I don't want to sit around waiting to be selected (or not selected) for a very long time. I know I do want to take the Metro downtown because it's like living in a normal city for half an hour.

Sorry about the scarcity of blog posts lately. I've been busy much of the time, and watching Star Trek the rest of the time. Whoops.

BUT, BUT, AND ONCE AGAIN BUT:

I have crossed the halfway point in my dissertation! Two chapters drafted and one that is more than 50% done out of five total! I AM A SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF GRADUATE SCHOOL!