Anza-Borrego Desert by Edwin Way Teale from his 1965 book Wandering Through Winter.

“The dirt road we followed led us through a region of arroyos, desert washes and tilted plains scarred by runoff.  Clouds of fine dust trailed behind and billowed around us when we stopped.  And we stopped often.  Here we examined the purple-red of the Mexican rose prickly pear cactus, there the trails of wild burros crossing the road on their way to the water.  … We paused to watch red-tailed hawks hunting among the yuccas,” wrote Edwin Way Teale in Wandering Through Winter, his Pulitzer Prize-winning book from 1965 documenting a  20,000 mile journey from Silver Strand, California to Caribou, Maine.  Teale, a writer, naturalist and enthusiastic photographer, thrilled his readers with his discoveries and depictions of places and people he encountered along the way.  Many photographs from his travels have never been published.  Browse nearly 100 of Teale’s pictures now available in the UConn Archives digital repository.

In this month’s edition of “item of the month”, we take a look at a unique collection of Spanish magazines and newspapers that was assembled by renowned Spanish bibliophile Juan Perez de Guzman y Boza, Duque de T’Serclaes. Born in 1852 in the town of Jerez de los Caballeros, the Duke was well known by antiquarian booksellers in Spain for his exquisite taste and voracious appetite for all types of Spanish books and publications. His ability to find and acquire unique and rare materials was legendary and it was not uncommon to find specialized bibliographies of Spanish materials citing that the only copy available was in the hands of the Duke. Toward the end of his life, the Duke collection was in deposit at the National Library in Spain, but after his death in 1934, his collection was sold in sections by his heirs. In the 1960s the Special Collections Department at the Wilbur Cross Library (the predecessor to Archives & Special Collections) acquired this collection of periodicals and newspaper through the famous rare book dealer and bibliophile, Hans Peter Kraus, known for being one of the few private people to own a Gutenberg Bible way back in the 1970s. Learn more

Italian immigrants studying English

Similar to other states, a significant portion of Connecticut’s population came from somewhere else. The variety of available employment attracted immigrants from all over the world who came, worked, stayed and contributed their piece to the state’s rich ethnic mosaic. The resulting mix of traditions, cultures and languages has been documented in several oral history projects beginning with the WPA Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s, continued  in the mid 1970s by the Peoples of Connecticut project at UConn and, more recently, the Waterbury Area Immigrant Oral History Collection.

You have so many memories, if you were old enough and lived close enough and knew enough to get to the Newport Folk Festival in its great days in the 1960s….And, just as certainly, you remember the blues, which was one of the richest strands in the rich weave of music and culture that was the Festival….Part of the emotional response to the blues singers was that most of them had been forgotten in the years since they’d made their handfuls of recordings for the old ‘race’ labels of the 1920s….It’s true that memories can sometimes be insubstantial, or that time can change what you heard or saw, and maybe you’ve romanticized the playing you remember or the singers you shouted for — but here on this collection of live recordings from the Newport Festival blues concerts you can hear that the music was as great as you remember it was. And if you’re hearing it for the first time — this is what it was like to be there. — Sam Charters

Blues at Newport is a compilation of blues performances recorded live at the Newport Folk Festivals, 1959-1964, produced by Samuel Charters for the Vanguard Records label. 2009 was the 50th anniversary of the Newport Folk Festival, founded in 1959 by Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Pete Seeger and George Wein. Check out Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee at the 1963 Newport Folk Festival, performing Big Bill Broonzy’s standard Key to the Highway, available on the live recording.

Blues at Newport is part of the Samuel and Ann Charters Archives of Blues and Vernacular African American Musical Culture, donated in 2000 to Archives & Special Collections. For a detailed listing of the contents of the Charters Archives, visit https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/769

UConn alums who have misplaced their copy of the yearbook can now relive their college years online. In collaboration with the Nutmeg staff and the Division of Student Affairs, the UConn Library has placed the 1915-2001 electronic Nutmeg. Anyone can access individual issues of the Nutmeg from the Archives & Special Collections at:http://hdl.handle.net/11134/20002:02653871

Summer vacation for school children around the country will soon be upon us, a time when we look forward to the excitement that summer brings.  It is also a good time to reflect on the importance of our educational instutions, and today we will do that with a brief look at the Montessori school system.

Copyright Cowles Magazines and Broadcasting, Inc. publishers of LOOK Magazine

Dr. Maria Montessori, an Italian physician, inspired the birth of this worldwide educational movement. Dr. Montessori became interested in education while caring for mentally challenged children in a psychiatric clinic in Rome. There she combined sensory-rich environments and hands-on experiential techniques in the hopes of reaching children previously labeled “deficient and insane.” The experiment was a resounding success and with it the start of what today is a network of nearly 1,200 schools across the country that have incorporated core elements of her model—multi-age classrooms and early childhood education.

The UConn Archives holds the records of the American Montessori Society, founded in 1960  by Nancy McCormick Rambusch and has succeeded in reviving the Montessori method in the United States and gaining recognition for it as a valid educational system. The society has become the foremost resource in America for Montessori education and teacher training. Check out more information at https://lib.uconn.edu/location/asc/collections/amsrecords/

An excerpt from Connecticut Campus, May 9, 1945:

So in this moment of triumph in Europe, when human nature practically compels us to feel that the worst is over and apathy is now in order, let us stop and consider. If ever America and the world needed moral, physical, and financial support – it is now. Now is the time to dig in the hardest for there is a long torturous road ahead.

It is so easy to delude ourselves into feeling anything we could do would make no perceptible difference, but if anything we can do even helps shorten the war by one second and save one boy’s life – it should not have been in vain.

Published by Kent Popular Press and Kent Left Studios Forum in 1980. Cover photo from the Kent State University Archives.

On May 1, 1970, over 500 students gathered at the Commons at Kent State University to rally against the invasion of Cambodia the day before. This started a train of events over the next few days that culminated in the death of four students and nine others wounded on what is known as the May 4 massacre.

What has become is a powerful and pervasive symbol of many things to different people, it is at the very least a fascinating event for research. The strength of the Alternative Press Collection at the UConn Archives pertains to the Vietnam era and related unrest with alternative tabloids from the 1960s and early 1970s include Georgia Straight, The Berkeley Barb, and East Village Other.  It’s a great resource to learn more about the anti-war struggle that sparked the events of May 1.

For more information about the Alternative Press Collections visit https://lib.uconn.edu/location/asc/collections/alternative-press/

As the first Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection, Attilio Frassinelli would have had many stories to tell. In this case, it would be about a housewife from Connecticut who saw an ad to buy a car for 1,395 bananas and decided to bring the bananas to the dealership. When they didn’t honor the ad, she went to Commissioner Frassinelli for help.

In a dedication ceremony in 2009 the Frassinelli family donated the papers of the late Attilio “Pop” Frassinelli to the UConn Archives. Frassinelli’s biography is full of wonderful and interesting surprises.

A life-long resident of Stafford Springs, he was a mill worker, business owner, President of the Rotary Club, Justice of the Peace, insurance agent, the Connecticut Boxing Guild’s “Boxing Man of the Year”, dancer and First Selectman to name a few. In 1955 he was appointed as the first Commissioner of Connecticut’s Department of Consumer Protection and in 1966 elected Lieutenant Governor of Connecticut.

In the words of his granddaughter Dianne Bilyak, family and friends gathered in the Dodd Center “not just to honor, remember, and celebrate Pop, but also to gather as a family and be reminded of our collective history.” We are pleased that the family has chosen the UConn Archives to care for and house this important collection to the history of Connecticut.

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day, Oh yeah
I got a Nikon camera
I love to take a photograph
So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away

Although recorded 37 years after the release of Kodachrome 35mm silde film, the song “Kodachrome,” written by Paul Simon captures the feeling many people have about the remarkably stable film stock. “Makes you think all the world’s a sunny day….” Kodachrome slides from the late 30s, 40s and 50s have retained their ture color with no fading or color shifting. If you want to see what University life really looked like in that period, make sure you visit the exhibition The University of Connecticut in Kodachrome, 1939-1959 scheduled to open May 26, 2009, in the HBL Gallery on the Plaza. These photographs make those decades seem like yesterday. It’s cliche to say history will come alive, but it will.

What does a round puzzle of a bowl of popcorn have to do with Herman Wolf?   What about an assortment of brightly colored shapes?

We’re not sure.  Herman Wolf’s earlier years were filled with membership in the Socialist Party and government employment.  During the second World War, Wolf’s governmental employment was extensive. He directed labor-public relations for the British Management-Labor Commission, wrote a war handbook entitled Labor Defends America, and directed a staff for the War Production Board, which supplied  war plant Labor-Management Production Committees with ideas and materials for improving efficiency.  After the war, Wolf spent two years as Director of the Fuller House, Inc. of Wichita, Kansas, a corporation created to promote the building of R. Buckminster Fuller’s Dymaxion Dwelling Machine (the Fuller House). In 1946, he moved to Connecticut and began Herman Wolf Associates, a public relations firm. He was involved in politics, serving as chief campaign aide in the successful campaigns of Abe Ribicoff, John Dempsey and Ella Grasso. 

In 1972, Wolf closed down his public relations firm for a brief time to become Executive Vice President of the Design Science Institute of Washington D.C., a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the philosophy and works of R. Buckminster Fuller.   

These puzzles are a part of his collection, and could be public relations pieces, architectural designs, or maybe just a hobby.  I think they are examples used for the war plant committees of how a staff spending time doing puzzles can be inefficient (thanks Megan and Dan!)  For more information on Herman Wolf, please see his online finding aid.

For those that keep honey bees, or enjoy reading about those who do, Spring is a busy season spent studying, observing, and nourishing healthy bee activity. And as we learn, much remains unknown about the wonderful world of bees.

The UConn Archives holds a large collection of historic books, pamphlets and periodicals on beekeeping and apiculture and includes a set of unique, handwritten journals by Connecticut resident Charles Pease. “Charlie” as he was known, was born in 1866 and in 1923 moved his successful printing business to Canaan, Connecticut, where he lived most of life. A naturalist and advocate of self-sufficient homestead living, Charlie grew proficient in keeping bees and goats, educating others about his practices as well as the medical benefits of honey and goatsmilk. Charlie’s journals date from 1919 to 1949 and are a fascinatingly personal document of bee-keeping practices, hive behavior, seasonal observations, and inventiveness.

You can read more about the Charles Pease Papers at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/repositories/2/resources/102

Charlie Pease’s 1946 journal

Charlie Pease’s 1927 Journal