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April 28, 2006
Mary Pope Osborne
No wonder I haven't seen our neighbor Mary Pope Osborne around. According to Publishers Weekly, she's on the second half of a spring book tour and in Greensboro, NC, "the store manage there says the buzz on the appearnance is so strong that they think it will be bigger than last summer's Harry Potter event, which drwe more than 1200 kids." But Mary has been a wonderful supporter of Berkshire's Libraries We Love.
When I first wrote and asked her to join our advisory board, here's what she replied, "I am so indebted to libraries--as I used one for a writing space for years before I could afford a real office. My first 6 or 7 books were written in the Bobst Library at NYU. Because I was a resident of Greenwich Village, I had community privileges. My "magical" character in the Magic Tree House series who makes all the adventues happen is Morgan le Fay--whom I designated as the librarian of Camelot. Jack and Annie, the main characters in the series, have to work hard to get their Master Librarian cards from her. Which is all to say I am, indeed, a great lover of libraries."
Thanks, Mary, and I'm just sorry you're missing the glorious Berkshire spring.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:45 PM | Comments (0)
April 27, 2006
Bookworm blogs our new Good Library Blog
Enjoyed this blog about our new Good Library Blog, especially because Anne Weale picked up on the Du Bois connection and included a photo of him. Since my story and an extract from Du Bois appeared on the cover of our first Berkshire Savant, I'm getting used to this surprising joint appearance.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:37 AM | Comments (0)
April 21, 2006
W. E. B. Du Bois: Relevant as Ever
Working on both Berkshire's upcoming African American Heritage in the Housatonic Valley and our soon-to-be-ready website, www.duboisweb.org, I've been thinking a lot about W. E. B. Du Bois--Great Barrington's most famous native son. In my book group, we just read Philip Roth's The Human Stain about a bright, talented black man whose light skin gives him the chance to "pass" as white throughout his life. We discussed the decision that any number of African Americans may have wrestled with through the last century: whether to face a rascist society head-on or grab the chance to live without the barriers that prejudice brings.
None of us was sure what we would actually do if faced with this dilemma. But in his groundbreaking 1903 work, Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois makes it clear where he stands:
"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face."
Although clearly wishing for a society in which color made no difference, Du Bois faced the world head on. As Martin Luther King Jr. reflected, "History cannot ignore W. E. B. DuBois because history has to reflect truth and Dr. DuBois was a tireless explorer and a gifted discoverer of social truths."
Posted by Marcy Ross at 11:20 AM | Comments (3)
April 19, 2006
Hu would have thought?
We've been planning a China newsletter for two years. We started working in earnest in October, and at first planned to launch in February. Now we've got issue one at the printers, ready to be mailed next week, and guess who's visiting the United States?
President Hu's visit raises many of the questions that were on our minds as we planned the first issue of Guanxi: The China Letter, the theme of which is "The China Threat?" The lead story is called "China's Thirst for Oil," by Anthony Loh, and we also cover the valuation of the yuan and the Taiwan question. But we take a broad view, too, not just looking at pressing issues of today but at Chinese history, and China's role in the world. We're tremendous enthusiasts and are becoming acutely aware of the need for cultural literacy about China. We'd even used the term "Shanghai time" ourselves without recognizing immediately that there is no such thing, at least not in the sense we meant, Shanghai as distinguished from other Chinese cities, because all of China is on the same time.
Out in the west, though, schools and shops just open later!
I just talked to someone in Washington, who says the protesters are out in force. Falun Gong, in particular, has people on the subways. We'll be taking a close look at the role of religion and faith in China soon, and at Falun Gong as well. I've found Falun Gong proponents quite aggressive, both in the United States and Europe, a little out of keeping with the way they portray the movement. But I look forward to learning more, when we commission an expert to write on this for Guanxi.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:26 PM | Comments (0)
April 17, 2006
An Easter basket in China
Before we dive into the post-Easter period of burgeoning springtime, I feel I should record the fact that five years ago we spent Easter in China, in Dunhuang, a town far in the western desert. Dunhuang is famous for its Buddhist caves, from which the Russians, English, Americans, and Japanese (if I recall the four nationalities correctly) looted vast numbers of ancient manuscripts and other relics. I think that's the experience that led Rachel to say of the British Museum, as we headed there six weeks ago, "It has everything, Mum, because they stole everything from everywhere.”
We loved the desert and the caves, with their hundreds--or thousands--of Buddhas. At one cave Tom and Rachel, who had run ahead, made me close my eyes and swear not to open them as they led me inside. “Okay, now you can look!” they said excitedly, and I opened my eyes to a hundred-foot Buddha, constructed and painted inside a cave in the remote desert of China.
At Easter I got out the chocolate eggs I’d packed, and a carton of sugar eggs, those pastel creations with a hard sugar case and a hollow interior, with tiny bunnies or chicks bedded on icing. We’d had our meals in the hotel restaurant, where the Uighur girls waiting on us were no older than Tom (then 15) and perhaps even closer to Rachel’s age (12). I suggested they take the eggs to the girls at the restaurant, who had smiled so sweetly and been so helpful. That’s what they did, and Easter always reminds us of that cross-cultural gesture--though we all wonder what on earth they did with the strange, pretty mock eggs.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:16 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2006
Off the beaten track
I met Javier Diaz Reynoso when I was 16 and visiting my cousin Cheryl, who was studying in Guadalajara, Mexico. We reconnected 25 years later, after Cheryl died, and he was a gracious host when David and I visited Guadalajara two years ago for the International Leadership Association's conference. Javier is an architect but he paints and takes amazing photographs, too. Now and then he sends one he thinks I'll like. The photograph we used on the cover of our new catalogue is one he took, a rainbow arched above a quiet country road in the Mexican countryside. It shows the beauty of the back road, those unknown places far off the beaten track of tourism and global business, and somehow echoes what we at Berkshire want to show in all our works: the wonder and difference and familiarity of distant places.
But what I forgot to explain in the catalog is that all the buildings you see on the cover (though not on the back of the catalog, where you'll see the original photograph) were added by our very creative designer Joe DiStefano. Joe has an extraordinary knack for capturing our global vision. It took him only minutes to come up with this way of combining photos from our collection with Javier's open road to create an evocative mix that takes us from Mexico to Greece to China.
If you'd like a catalog, please write to us. We'll be happy to put one in the mail.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:40 AM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2006
The libraries we love
One librarian jumped up and down with joy when she heard that her library would be included in our book, Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love. And all over the country there are people rejoicing that others will be able to see the library they love. It was very difficult to pick the 80 to be included from an amazing array of submissions, and the job was even more difficult when it came to choosing Massachusetts libraries. We had four submissions from Berkshire County alone, and had to get help from our advisory board to make the selection. We chose the North Adams Public Library, and you can feel their excitement in this article from the North Adams Transcript.
The sample chapter we developed to show libraries what we were looking for (see it at LibrariesWeLove.org) is about our own town library. Mason Library is a beautiful building, and the photo my son Tom took of the interior couldn't be more lovely, or more evocative of the kind of public place we'll be celebrating in the book. Ironically, though, the Mason Library has a PR problem; a number of people told us emphatically that we should not include it in the book because the librarians are so unhelpful. Heart of the Community: The Libraries We Love will celebrate beautiful buildings, old and new, but much more important will be our celebration of the environment, service, and spirit that makes these great public libraries so vital to their communities.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 6:31 AM | Comments (0)
April 12, 2006
Walking China's Silk Road
Ever since I saw a detailed map of the Silk Roads of Eurasia in Berkshire's Encyclopedia of Modern Asia, I've been fascinated by this ancient trade route that also served as a network for exchanging cultures, ideas, and technology. In his wonderful article Silk Roads in the Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History, historian David Christian called these roads, "One of the most important of all long-distance exchange routes in human history."
So it was a real treat to find that I could take a virtual walk on China's Silk Road, courtesy of America on the Move, a website that encourages Americans to get and stay physically active. Right now, I'm almost at Jiayuguan, which is described as "a booming industrial city" with a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. I've got four more weeks to finish the challenge and complete the walk spanning more than 1,800 "virtual" miles (though only about 90 actual walking miles).
Posted by Marcy Ross at 2:06 PM | Comments (0)
April 11, 2006
Spring is sprung
Well, maybe. Fingers crossed. After thinking nothing but China China China, it occurs to me to look out my window at Town Hall and remember just where on the planet I am. Readers of this blog (it pleases me to hear from people who check in here regularly, by the way, so do drop me a line) might like to know that daffodils are starting to bloom in Great Barrington, and though the trees will be bare for more than a month, the grass is green and the nubby violet plants are starting to put out leaves. When I see them, I think of the first year I was here. I was invited to a birthday party in April, just about now, for a older and wealthy woman whom I barely knew. What to bring? Coming from California, and not knowing the flora of this area at all, I somehow thought of spring violets as an appropriate gift. I went to a nursery and asked if they had any potted violets. The nurseryman looked at me as if I were mad, but he explained kindly that although he had no violets there were some attractive hyacinths.... Within a couple of weeks, the lawns everywhere around were covered in violets. How foolish I felt!
This year, with a sustainability project in progress, I've taken to gathering spring weeds. We had a wonderful salad of garlic mustard and dandelions the other day. Now that I think about it, violets are edible, too: I could have tossed in a few leaves.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 4:32 PM | Comments (0)
April 7, 2006
My Chinese name
Liz Steffey, assistant for China projects, was concerned when she looked at my Chinese business card, produced before a trip to China in 2002 by a company that does such things. In those days, I didn't have Liz's expertise on hand, or designer Joe DiStefano who tackles Chinese characters and transliterations without batting an eye (when he swears he now says he is speaking Chinese). Liz emailed that the first few characters on my card meant "uncle, overcome, snow," Bo Ke Xue. Pronounced, they are a kind of transliteration of Berkshire, but not really filled with the kind of meaning one hopes for in Chinese.
On the other hand, the transliteration for my personal name, Karen, was Kai Lun, which means "triumphant human relationship." As Liz said, "It couldn’t be more perfect for Guanxi!"
I am about to embark on a more serious effort to learn Chinese, and Liz said the first step was to decide on my Chinese name. She thought I should check about whether Kai Lun was really okay as a name and that I should have something short for my family name. Liz suggested 'Shen,' to echo the last syllable of Christensen. We decided I should write to Ellen Wong, an editor from Guangzhou I met at the Frankfurt Book Fair and have been corresponding with, for advice. Ellen has kindly approved my new Chinese name: Shen Kai Lu. (Family name first, of course.) Now I have to learn to say it with the correct tones. But as we are encouraging readers of Guanxi: The China Letter to learn the language, I can see that I have to take the lead.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 3:24 PM | Comments (1)
April 6, 2006
Big domains that matter
There's so much going on right now that it's hard to know where to begin. "We are starting," I said this evening, "four businesses at once." But it makes sense, because publishing today, at least when you're tackling areas as big as world cultures and world history and sustainability, can't be a narrowly focused enterprise. Diversity, in markets and media and formats, is essential. But we are focusing on domains--important, interdisciplinary subjects--and working from there. It's amazing to listen to the buzz in the office, as new material comes in for our project on the future, on sustainability, on religious justice. The development of our publishing on religion is something I feel especially proud of, because we're working with serious people who see things differently from the way we do. If you happen to have access to the London Literary Review (a splendid magazine), do read the review in the March issue by Bernard Green of three books on religion. He accurately describes how many intellectuals see religion as something to be explained away and driven out, and shows the rather sketchy thinking behind this viewpoint. I am not a believer, but I have come to recognize the enormous importance and power of belief, and it's good to find that there are other who share our conviction that understanding, and accepting, religion as a major force in human society is truly essential at this stage in history. As my son said the other day, religious leaders are the people in the best possible position to get us, en masse, to do something about global warming.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 7:49 PM | Comments (0)
April 2, 2006
Goo-da April Fool's
Google can do anything. I guess that’s what our readers believe, since almost no one has caught my April Fool’s joke in our e-newsletter. Marcy says I should have added that all Google employees’ children will also be required to attend Chinese school-—no one, surely, would believe that.
China’s on my mind all the time. I was working at 5.30am on Guanxi, the newsletter that we’ll be launching next month, and my mobile phone rang. It was a friend of a friend calling from Beijing in response to an email I’d sent some weeks back, and we had a great talk about what’s going on there, intellectual property issues, and the centrality of relationships and trust in doing business in China. It seemed a bit of a gamble, giving the newsletter a Chinese word as its name, but guanxi actually means relationships and connections, and that’s what it's all about.
Here’s what I wrote in our newsletter (which you can sign up for at our website, with my guarantee: nothing about Google next April!).
Google China as Trailblazer from Berkshire Publishing News, April 2006
We were delighted to read that Google, like the French school system, has decided to make Chinese its second language. After its fumbling start with Google China (in the U.S., with people protesting Google’s caving to censorship, and in China, with the government indignant because Google announced the censorship on its homepage), the company has realized that if you can’t beat ‘em, at least learn to speak their language. All Google employees are to be enrolled in Google Chinese University (or Goo-da). Corporate representatives also see graphic design opportunities in using Chinese characters on all its homepages (104 languages/dialects and counting), and claim that this effort to walk in Chinese moccasins will improve its public profile and bring it closer to achieving its newly redefined mission, “To organize 1.3 billion customers.”
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:11 AM | Comments (0)
Blackwell Publishing goes carbon neutral
Credit where credit is due! First, to Peter Saugman for letting me know about this, and then to Blackwell Publishing which has announced that it is going carbon neutral. This means that the company is committing itself to balancing the CO2 (carbon dioxide, the main 'greenhouse gas') it releases through driving, flying, heating, shipping, etc. with carbon dioxide absorbing actions including forest planting. Read the press release here. This is a tremendous step to take for any company, and it is especially important that major and highly successful corporations such as Blackwell set an example. Given that Blackwell is one of the world's major scientific publishers, this is an important statement, too. I've heard that Nature is launching a separate journal on climate change, more evidence that the scientific community is clear that global warming is happening.
The World Land Trust provides a free carbon audit for companies (yes, I'll be taking it!).
Posted by Karen Christensen at 9:47 AM | Comments (0)
April 1, 2006
World music with Lucy Durán
A new highlight of my weekends is listening to Lucy Durán's program "World Routes" on BBC Radio 3. I thought I'd missed it today--forgetting that Europe changed its clocks last weekend and we wait till tomorrow--but the BBC offers the most recent program as a separate option. How wonderful.
I met Lucy Durán when I was in London early in March. She's an African music expert who teaches at the School of African and Oriental Studies, and my dear friends Mike Dibb and Cheli Durán thought we should meet after hearing about my interest in world music. What fascinating work she is doing, exploring and recording music that we might never know about without this kind of scholarship. And it connects with popular music, too, as world musicians begin to build a following outside their own regions.
Whether this exploration of music turns into a new publishing project or not, my world view is being expanded every week now, thanks to Lucy! If you haven't explored streaming radio on the Internet yet, I encourage it. There's some variation in the programs required by each radio station--iTunes or RealPlayer or QuickTime--but they are free and it's worth half an hour's fooling with settings to have access to a vast range of music and much more from around the world.
Posted by Karen Christensen at 10:03 AM | Comments (0)