Humanities Forum: Pronghorn Passage: Green River
Wednesday, May 17, 7:00 p.m., White Mountain Library
Emilene Ostlind and Joe Riis tell their story of walking the 150-mile migration corridor of the pronghorn antelope to document one of the world’s greatest long-distance animal migrations.

Humanities Forum: Pronghorn Passage: Cora
Wednesday, May 19, 7:00 p.m., Domek Home in Upper Green
Emilene Ostlind and Joe Riis tell their story of walking the 150-mile migration corridor of the pronghorn antelope to document one of the world’s greatest long-distance animal migrations.

Humanities Forum: Pronghorn Passage: Dubois
Thursday, May 20, 7:00 p.m., Dubois City Hall
Emilene Ostind and Joe Riis tell their story of walking the 150-mile migration corridor of the pronghorn antelope to document one of the world’s greatest long-distance animal migrations.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Kasebier: Cody
April 10- August 8, Buffalo Bill Historical Center, John Bunker Sands Photograph Gallery
In 1898, New York photographer Gertrude Käsebier embarked on a deeply personal project, editing a set of prints that were among the most compelling of her celebrated body of work. Käsebier was on the threshold of a career that would establish her as both the leading portraitist of her time, and an extraordinary art photographer. Her latest undertaking being inspired by viewing the grand parade of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West troupe en route to Madison Square Garden in New York. Within weeks, Käsebier began photographing, formally and informally, the Lakota (Sioux) people travelling with the show in her 5th Ave. studio. Since 1969, more than 100 of these photographs have been preserved in the Photographic History Collection in the National Museum of American History. Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Warriors: Photographs by Gertrude Käsebier represents the first time this important collection has been displayed together in over a century.  Also included are related ledger art drawings by Lakota artists, historical camera equipment, and more.

Paul Dyck Plains Indian Buffalo Culture Collection Preview: Cody
Now on View at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Eighteen beautiful objects from the Paul Dyck Plains Indian Buffalo Culture Collection are now on view in the Plains Indian Museum Land of Many Gifts Gallery. This is the second round of objects from the collection, totaling over 2,000 artifacts, to be displayed.

Splendid Heritage: Perspectives on American Indian Art
On view through September 6 in the Special Exhibitions Gallery, Buffalo Bill Historical Center
Splendid Heritage: Perspectives on American Indian Art features over 140 objects of American Indian art from the Northeastern Woodlands, Plateau, and Plains regions, all of unique artistry and powerful cultural expression. Organized by the Utah Museum of Fine Arts, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, from the collection of John and Marva Warnock. Funded at the Historical Center by a grant from MetLife Foundation’s Museum and Community Connections program, the Wyoming Humanities Council, and a donation from Naoma Tate.

Mystery Book Discussions
Wednesday, March 24, 6:30 pm
Register and pick up a copy of the book at the Library’s 2nd floor reference desk.  This month’s book is The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson.
Natrona County Public Library, Casper

Reading Wyoming: Canine Companions: Cokeville
Thursday, March 25, 7:00 p.m.
A reading discussion series of memoirs about the relationship between man and dog, facilitated by Steve Beck.
Cokeville Branch Library, Cokeville

Reading Wyoming: Living Between Fences: Jackson
Thursday, March 25, 7:00 p.m.
The books in this reading and discussion series consider fences and divisions both in their visible form on the landscape and as metaphors for the barriers that separate us.  Stephen Lottridge leads the discussions.
Old Public Library, Jackson

Thursday Night Thrillers
Thursday, March 25, 7:00 p.m.
This week’s film is Gods and Monsters.  Margaret Garner facilitates the discussions.  She has traveled to Medicine Bow for years to lead their humanities council book discussions and has also served as a discussion facilitator in Rock River and Encampment.  Garner is the director of the writing center at UW.
Albany County Library, Laramie

Humanities Forum: Stories, Songs and Sodbusters: Sundance
Friday, March 26, 7:00 p.m.
When settlers came west, they sang of hope, adventure and Eden on the plains.  They wised up quickly, and soon their songs featured alkali, snakes and stampedes.  Bill Rossiter is presenter.
Crook County Library, Sundance

Emerging Writers Minisymposium
Saturday, March 27, 5:00-7:00 p.m.
The University of Wyoming MFA program’s Visiting Writers Series is pleased to announce an evening of new poetry, fiction, and non-fiction by three writers on the rise. Gaby Calvocoressi, Nicole Walker, and Glen Pourciau will read their work on March 27th at 5 pm, at Second Story Books, 105 Ivinson Avenue. The event, which is free and open to the public, will feature a reception and book-signing with the authors after the reading.
Second Story Books, Laramie

Humanities Forum: Stories, Songs and Sodbusters: Sheridan
Sunday, March 28, 1:00 p.m.
When settlers came west, they sang of hope, adventure and Eden on the plains.  They wised up quickly, and soon their songs featured alkali, snakes and stampedes.  Presented by Bill Rossiter.
Sheridan Senior Center, Sheridan

An offshoot of the Reading the Past blog, Reusable Cover Art is a collection of book covers that incorporate the same image into their cover art. Some of the juxtapositions are funny; an image that inspired Chaucer’s Knight’s Tale is used for both an edition of the Canterbury Tales and a smutty historical romance (of which, now that I think about it, Chaucer would probably heartily approve). Others are a little more thought-provoking, as when the same image of a veiled woman is used for novels called Kleopatra and Scheherazade. In fact, the overwhelming majority of the images are of females looking feminine,  which makes Reusable Cover Art not just a curiosity, but a handy opportunity to reflect on how these images are used as a kind of shorthand, particularly when it comes to gender and race.

I dare anyone to resist the charms of Abebooks‘ Weird Book Room, a collection of, well, really weird books. Some, like We are the people our parents warned us against,  just have outrageous titles, but some are genuinely perplexing, like The Manga Guide to Calculus or this week’s Weird Book of the Week, Liberace: Your Personal Fashion Consultant:

Never underestimate a man in hot pants. Liberace, the globally-renowned pianist, swings his closet door open in order to coach you on the fine art of extraordinary dressing for ordinary occasions! Need something to wear to your sister’s wedding? Packing for your next Mediterranean cruise? Shopping for a new car? Rest assured, Liberace has the perfect gold lamé number or full-length cape to suit all of your needs.

Not only can you enjoy dazzling photographs of Liberace in the most outrageous of outfits, but you can also punch these photos out to play with twelve paper dolls in hilarious poses!

Ah, the cultures and subcultures that produced these artifacts! And if you happen to know of a weird book that hasn’t made it into the Weird Book Room yet, you can submit it for consideration, as people across the English-speaking world have done.

Finally, three cheers for the blog Curious Pages: recommended inappropriate books for kids, which features offbeat, out of print, abstract, and sometimes not-for-children children’s books. I was thrilled to see a new edition of The Wizard of Oz illustrated by collage artist Graham Rawle, whom I love (anyone who can create a novel exclusively out of clippings from 1960’s women’s magazines is okay by me). Curious Pages doesn’t neglect the classics; there is a post on Der Struwwelpeter (or Shock-Headed Peter), Heinrich Hoffmann’s 1845 collection of German children’s stories chock full of not-so-subtle messages about the dangers of playing with matches, sucking thumbs, going out in bad weather, etc. A nice reminder that children’s stories and fairy tales have rarely been as safe as we’ve tried to make them over the last several decades.

1. Critique them. Failing that, criticize.

The Cynical-C Blog regularly posts selections of one-star Amazon reviews of classic literature, film, and music. I’m all for questioning the canon. But most of these reviews are dedicated to the fine art of missing the point. I couldn’t help pulling out a few of my favorite assertions about books I’ve read and taught. Here they are, verbatim:

I dont care if Homer was blind or not this book is like 900 pages too long.

…every one says the aurthor george orwell is so trippy and wierd but i think he’s just trying to cover up for the fact that HE CAN’T WRITE. please george do us all a faver and stop writing books.

This book is a must if you wanna lull yourself to sleep. The opening was great, but then all these horrendous allusions kept popping up… I guess Melville should have decided if he wanted to write a book about hunting for whales or scientific stuff about them. Then the book would have been better.

I should mention, though, that the negative reviews of Anne Frank’s diary are less amusing than they are frightening…

2. Read them at work, stealthily

A couple years ago, the New Zealand Book Council created a sneaky little site called Read at Work, in which poems and short stories masquerade as Microsoft Office programs in folders on a faux desktop. So you can read Tolstoy, Dickinson, Twain, Wilde, Poe — all while seeming to be hard at work on a “PowerPont” presentation!

The way the texts are shoehorned into graphs and bullet points is amusingly inventive. I found the selection of New Zealand authors to be most informative, given that my grasp of Kiwi lit is pretty  shaky. Make that nonexistent…

3. Make sculptures out of them

One of my favorite moments in Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night, a traveler is when the Reader meets an artist who sees books only as raw material for sculpture and, instead of reading them, destroys them in the process of creating his art. It’s scathing. Surely even Calvino, though, would find something to love in Thomas Allen’s book art photography, in which he carefully cuts out and bends away the figures on pulp novel covers and combines them to create three-dimensional scenes, which he then photographs.