Finding aids for four newly cataloged collections have been added to the OASIS database this month:
Processed by: Michael Austin
Progressive Party records, 1908-1920 (MS Am 3078)
Minimally Processed by: Adrien Hilton
Christopher Durang papers, 1957-2013 (MS Thr 1379)
Processed by: Erin Mernoff with assistance from Andrea Cawelti
Sheet music by performer, circa 1800-2000 (TCS 93)
Processed by: Alexis Dinniman and Dana Gee
Houghton Library collection of sheet music related to Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War, 1850-1920 (MS Lincoln 4)
New on OASIS in May
Champion of counterculture
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.
Actuel may just be the magazine equivalent of a cat with nine lives. This French publication has seen some three iterations, beginning as a jazz and alternative music review in 1967. Taken over by Jean-François Bizot in 1970, Actuel became a staple of the underground press in France. After a trip to the United States, where he witnessed firsthand the music, people, and substances of the Counterculture Movement, Bizot returned to Paris. A journalist at L’Express, Bizot realized that an article in that publication could not cover all that he had witnessed in the States. Further propelled by the civil unrest in France in May of 1968, where massive demonstrations and strikes were accompanied by the occupation of factories and universities, leading to a freeze of the French economy and widespread concerns of civil war, Bizot was inspired to begin a French underground publication.
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The one-pull press and printing on half sheets
By David Shaw
One of the first things fledging historical bibliographers are taught is to identify formats: take a sheet of paper and fold it once to give folio format, fold again to make a quarto gathering, and once again for an octavo. Then they need to know about chain lines, wire lines and where to find watermarks for each format. More advanced students will tackle the varieties of 12mo, 24mo and other tricky small formats.
Students are then given information about the traditional ‘two-pull press’ which could print an entire folio sheet even though its platen was not large enough to print an entire sheet with a single pull: the paper and type were rolled under the press in two successive operations, with the press bar pulled to print the first half of the sheet, and then the carriage, with the type and paper, was advanced for the second pull which printed the second half of the sheet; the two successive pulls printed the entire sheet in a two-stage operation. All of this is (relatively) straightforward for the ‘classic’ period of book production. (more…)
Flying carpet
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.
Richard Halliburton was an American adventurer, journalist, and travel writer who may be best remembered as swimming the length of the Panama canal and only paying 36 cents for his toll. He apparently caught the travel bug while in college at Princeton. For a time he left school to travel as a seaman sailing from America to Europe. Though he did return to finish his studies Halliburton decided upon graduation to travel the world and write about it so he could make a living. The Flying Carpet chronicles his adventures with aviator Moye Stephens whom he hired to fly them across the world in an open cockpit biplane.
They left on Christmas day in 1930 and it took them 18 months and 34 countries. Halliburton’s book was a best-seller at the time and included fascinating anecdotes of the places and people he met during this adventure. For instance in Timbuctoo he encountered the Tuareg, a tribe that requires all men be veiled, while the women, who go about unveiled, are in control of all social life. 
There is also a fascinating chapter about their time in the Imperial Prison in Teheran. As it turns out it wasn’t because they committed any crimes, but that they wanted to see what life was like inside, so they appealed to the Shah. After establishing that they wanted to live as prisoners for a few days, thereby getting to know the “Persian scene” their request was granted. Inside the prison they encountered many types of people including an older gentleman named Babadul, pictured on the right side of the photograph with Halliburton in the middle. Apparently Babadul was a quite bothersome bandit and was serving a life sentence for killing a tax collector, only being spared death by his advanced age.
After covering 33,660 miles Halliburton and Stephens ended their trip in Manila Bay before taking the S.S. President McKinley back to San Francisco. Halliburton continued to write extensively on other travels and topics mainly through newspaper commissions, including the Boston Globe.
In 1939 Halliburton undertook his last adventure sailing a Chinese junk from Hong Kong to San Francisco. The Sea Dragon set out in March and three weeks later they encountered a typhoon and Halliburton was lost at sea.
The flying carpet / by Richard Halliburton. Garden City, N.Y. : Garden City Pub. Co., 1932. G440 .H25 1932. can be found in Widener’s collection.
Thanks to Alison Harris, Santo Domingo Project Manager, for contributing this post.
Free love, free land
This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items recently cataloged from the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection.
Free love and communal living dominated the Counterculture Movement throughout the United States, nowhere as widespread as in San Francisco, California. Young people fled to the Haight-Ashbury district in the late 1960s and early 1970s, seeking to escape capitalism and the Vietnam War, changing American society in the process. In 1966, word in the Haight spread that a “Digger ranch” was forming further north in Sonoma County. Folk musician Lou Gottlieb had purchased land in the area, and was offering to share the land to any and all people interested in a communal lifestyle.
The Morning Star commune existed in Sonoma County from 1966 to 1973, at one point housing over 100 people on the 31-acre property. Residents of the commune called their lifestyle choice “voluntary primitivism.” They committed to growing their own organic food, much of which was sent to the Diggers in San Francisco. Residents practiced free love and often roamed the land in the nude, prompting various complaints from their neighbors. A 1967 Time Magazine article about the commune led to a population boom, and drew the attention of local authorities.
Beginning in 1967, local authorities began searching and raiding the property, sending Gottlieb cease and desist orders, citing unsafe and unsanitary living conditions. Allegedly, federal authorities also began visiting the commune, searching for draft evaders. For the next several years, Gottlieb and the other residents of Morning Star would repeatedly face shut downs, including the bull dozing of their shelters in 1971.
After half a decade of fighting for the open land movement, Gottlieb abandoned Morning Star for India. He deeded the property to “God,” a final act which would go all the way to the state Supreme Court and cost Gottlieb nearly all of his life savings. The courts would finally deciding that deeding land to a higher power was impossible, especially considering no one would be available to pay property taxes.
To learn more, The Morning Star scrapbook:’n the pursuit of happiness can be found in Widener’s collection: Occidental, California: Friends of Morning Star, 1973.
Thanks to Irina Rogova, Santo Domingo Library Assistant, for contributing this post.