F.B. Purity Cleans Up Your Facebook Homepage

From the F.B. Purity website:

F.B. Purity is a browser extension/script that removes the stupid quiz messages and other silly application spam from your Facebook homepage, leaving only those messages which you are actually interested in, including statuses, links and photos. You may select the types of messages that you wish to see; the extension is customizable.

The download page includes an F.B. Purity Help/FAQ and an F.B. Purity User Guide.

The download link is here: F. B. Purity Download Page

The latest features include a hide the ticker/happening now option, an increase font size option, and a hide Facebook questions option.

Freeware.  And F.B. stands for Fluff Busting.

Five of the Dead Sea Scrolls Go Online

The Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Project has completed digitization of five of the Dead Sea Scrolls. The digitized scrolls include Great Isaiah Scroll, War Scroll, Commentary on the Habakkuk Scroll, Temple Scroll, and Community Rule Scroll. The direct link for this resource is Digital Dead Sea Scrolls.  The site includes tools for examining the digital images.

This effort is funded by George Blumenthal and the Center for Online Judaic Studies, which first envisioned the project in order to make these manuscripts widely accessible and to create an innovative resource for scholars and the public alike.

Tens of thousands of fragments from 900 Dead Sea manuscripts are held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has separately begun its own project to put them online in conjunction with Google by the year 2016.

The most complete scrolls are held by the Israel Antiquities Authority, which has no announced plans for digitizing the manuscripts.

from The Spartanburg Herald Journal Online and The Dead Sea Scrolls Digital Project website

Banned Books Week 2011 starts Sept. 24!

Remember to celebrate your right to read during Banned Books Week, Sept. 24 - Oct. 1.

Why are books banned? Have you read a banned book? Which is your favorite?

Take our survey and see how your favorite compares, and check out our Banned Books Week research guide:

Banned Books Week 2011 - Research Guides at Wofford College

Mrs. Smith's Floating Island Recipe

Another classic recipe from Mrs. G.C. Smith's 1880 recipe book:

Floating Island

To a quart of milk add ¼ lb. loaf sugar
4 glasses Lisbon wine, + yolk of an egg
Beat the yolk and sugar together + pour wine on it. Beat the whites of 6 eggs stiff with a gill*of currant jelly for the top.

*A gill is equivalent to a quarter of a pint.

For some variation, Mrs. Smith can also recommend this one:

Put a qt of milk over the fire + while coming to a boil, beat the yolks of 4 eggs with 2 tablespoonsful [sic] flour and sugar to the taste. Put this in the milk as soon as it boils, stir it until it becomes the consistency of cream [.] [S]et it away to get cold. Beat the white stiff with currant jelly + sugar.

According to Wikimedia Commons, this is what a Floating Island is supposed to look like:

Have you ever had a Floating Island? How do Mrs. Smith's recipes sound to you?

Troublesome help in individual cases

courtesy of Library of Congress

The Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College has a letter written by Albert Einstein to a friend in Germany. In the letter, Einstein alludes to the anti-Semitism spreading across Europe in the 1930s and 40s.

[Transcription, translated from German:]

The 31st of March 1940

Mr. Lionel M. Ettlinger
Hotel Delmonico
New York City

Dear Mr. Ettlinger:
Sincere thanks for your congratulation and the pipe you sent me. -- Meanwhile terrible things happen and one cannot do anything about it, except for troublesome help in individual cases. You are quite right, it is hard to understand that the people in England Anno 33 did not earnestly consider your materials. How easy it would have been to avoid the present calamity.
Fondest regards
Your
A. Einstein

Not much is written about Lionel Ettlinger. He frequently corresponded with Einstein about Jewish refugees in the years leading up to and during World War II. Both men helped Jews through their international connections and their personal wealth. Einstein refers to this in his letter when he writes “terrible things happen and one cannot do anything about it, except for troublesome help in individual cases.” Einstein would often give his research prize money to German-Jewish immigrants who came to America.

 Einstein — a Jew, a democrat, a scientist, and eventually a socialist — had always been a target of right-wing German nationalists, even before Hitler entered the picture, and he faced anti-Semitism throughout his career as a scientist. Some even speculate that he would have won the Nobel Prize ten years earlier if he hadn’t been a Jew.1

By 1932, Einstein and his wife, Elsa, had received many warnings and threats. They left Germany in December 1932 to spend a semester at the California Institute of Technology where Einstein was a guest faculty member. Though Einstein was quoted saying that he was not abandoning Germany (to the New York Times), he left for America with thirty pieces of luggage and a string of death threats. With the Nazi party gaining strength every day, Einstein had to suspect that there was some possibility he’d never return to Germany.2 By 1933, the Nazis had put a $5,000 reward on Einstein’s head.3 In this way, Einstein became a refugee, saying “as long as I have any choice in the matter, I shall live only in a country where civil liberty, tolerance, and equality of all citizens before the law prevail.”4 He had many job offers around Europe, but he didn’t feel safe anywhere in Europe. He moved to Princeton, New Jersey.

Being Jewish was perhaps Einstein’s most enduring commitment outside physics. He said “my relationship with Jewry had become my strongest human tie.”5 Yet Einstein’s Jewish identity was slow to evolve and didn’t mature until his late thirties. In fact, his interest in anti-Semitism directed him back to his Jewish roots.6

As if conducting one of his science experiments, Einstein tried to understand the nature and motives of anti-Semitism, and he hoped to find a way to cope with and combat it. He spent long hours pondering the question “Why do they hate Jews?” In 1938, he published an article in Collier’s Magazine that outlined his opinions and thoughts regarding this question. While still in Germany, Einstein had often spoken out against the Nazis and anti-Semitism, as well as racism in America. Throughout his time in America, Einstein was a strong supporter of African-American rights and anti-lynching.7

While science was a life-consuming puzzle for Einstein, the treatment of Jews across Europe during the first half of the 20th century was much less complicated. He ends his letter: “how easy it would have been to avoid the present calamity.”

- Hannah Jarrett ‘12

1 Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, Einstein on Race and Racism, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2005, p. 3-4.
2 Jerome, p. 6.
3 Jerome, p. 7.
4 Ewald Osers, trans., Albert Einstein: A Biography, New York: Penguin Group, 1997, p. 659.
5 Osers, p. 488.
6 Hanoch Gutfreund, “Einstein’s Jewish Identity,” in Einstein for the 21st Century: His Legacy in Science, Art, and Modern Culture ed. Peter L. Galison et al., Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 28.
7 Jerome, p. 7-8.

You can be mayor!

We're on Foursquare!

You can also check-in at the library using Facebook, of course.

Mrs. Smith's Best Ginger Snap Recipe (from 1880)

Earlier this year Special Collections received a donation that included a really cool item: a recipe book from 1880 kept by a Mrs. G.C. Smith of Columbia, S.C.

We share with you today this first recipe in the book: ginger snaps!

Ginger Snaps, best.

3 pounds flour
1 pound sugar
1 pound butter
1pt. molasses
½ cup spices.

And that's it!

Yield? Not so sure. Oven temperature? Wing it. Preparation? Good luck!

Stay tuned for more epic Southern recipes from Mrs. Smith.

Ms. Manami Matsuoka, Wofford's expert on Japan

All of Wofford's incoming freshmen know that this year's Novel Experience book is Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden. What they may not know is that the Wofford community has a rich resource on campus for the next two years in Japan Outreach Coordinator Manami Matsuoka.

Manami Matsuoka, Japan Outreach Coordinator

Ms. Matsuoka, who holds a bachelors degree in Contemporary English from Nagoya University of Foreign Studies, has come to Spartanburg as an ambassador of Japanese culture. She visited the library last week to speak with us about geisha culture and Memoirs of a Geisha.

Manami Matsuoka describes geisha makeup and costume to Hannah Jarrett ‘12.

Ms. Matsuoka explained to us that geisha are highly-trained entertainers hired for party entertainment at a tea house or traditional Japanese restaurant. The geisha will sing, dance, and play the shamisen (a traditonal Japanese instrument). As festivities become more boisterous, geisha may lead games among the revelers.

Ms. Matsuoka is not only knowledgeable and enthusiastic about Japanese culture, but also curious about Western culture.

She asked us: "What is geisha for people here?"

What do you think?

If you're interested in Japan or Japanese culture, seek Ms. Matsuoka's counsel. Her office is in the Campus Life Building and her contact information is here. And if you see her on campus, please welcome her to the Wofford community.

A Private's Wilderness

Germanna Ford Rappahannock River Virginia. Grant's troops crossing Germanna Ford Date: c. 1864 on Flickr

Today at 4 pm we received orders to be ready to march at 4 in the morning[.] we met in our chapel tonight for the last time and many were the sincere and fervent prayers that accended [sic] to heaven for the wellfare [sic] of those we love and for our safety[.]
-Private Jesse Easton Bump, May 3, 1864

The Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College is home to the journal of Private Jesse Easton Bump, a Union soldier during the American Civil War. Bump was a soldier in the 119th Regiment, or the Pennsylvania “Gray Reserves.” He wrote a short entry almost everyday between September 1863 and August 1864. The entries below describe Bump’s experience during the Battle of the Wilderness which took place near Orange County, Virginia from May 5 to May 7.

The Battle of the Wilderness was the beginning of Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant’s Overland Campaign. The objective of the battle was to gain possession of General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. The Union and Confederate armies had spent the winter in close proximity; the Confederates were camped on one side of the Rapidan River at Mine Run and the Union army on the other side of the river near Culpeper.1
Private Bump and the rest of the VI Corps left their winter camp and crossed the Rapidan River on May 4, 1864. He wrote in his journal,

We were awakened by the drum this morning before daylight but did not start until 6 o clock[.] Our line of march was the same as that last fall when we went to Mine Run[.] We have now halted for the night in what is called the Wilderness[.]

In order to avoid the strongly fortified Confederate camp at Mine Run, Grant decided the Army of the Potomac would have to fight in the wilderness surrounding the Rapidan River. The Wilderness was riddled with gullies and tangled underbrush. An individual would find the terrain difficult to move through, yet Grant ordered an entire army to march through it. Because of the wild landscape heavy artillery and cavalry (which were among Grant’s main advantages against the Confederates) could not be used effectively.2

Page from journal of Union Private Jesse E. Bump, 3 May - 8 May 1864 on Flickr

Union General John Sedgwick’s VI Corps crossed at Germanna Ford, about eight miles below the Confederate camp at Mine Run. The Confederate army did not oppose the crossing for lack of food and fit soldiers, as well as a clear plan of action.3 After determining what Grant’s strategy of attack might be, General Lee sent Lieutenant General Richard S. Ewell and his soldiers to confront the Union army in the Wilderness.4 On May 5 Private Bump wrote in his journal

By the way we were moveing [sic] around this morning it was apparent to any old Soldier that our enimy [sic] were somewhere concealed in the thick underbrush[.] at 11,30 Am we suddenly came upon them[.] heavy skirmishing was kept up for some time when the whole line became engaged which lasted until dark[.] an occasional shot was fired during the night[.]

By late morning on May 5, Grant sent VI Corps to hold the strategic Orange Plank and Brock crossroads at any cost until reinforcements could arrive.5 The battle was unlike any the soldiers had seen so far. The wild landscape made fighting more chaotic than usual; lines between divisions blurred among the tall trees and the dry forest caught fire on many occasions. Bump’s journal entry on May 6 details the number of men lost in the Wilderness:

Early this morning we received orders to advance our line first[.] as we fell in one of our best men (in the Co) was killed by a ball supposed to be that of a sharp shooter[.] The loss in my Camp to this time is 8 wounded one killed[.] that of the Regt is said to be 120[.] The sharp shooters are annoying our Pioneers who are building brestworks [sic]

By the end of the battle, about 15,000 Union soldiers were killed, wounded, or missing. The Confederates lost about 11,400.6

Neither side was able to gain a permanent advantage by the second day of fighting because everyone had trouble maneuvering and maintaining order.7 In a last attempt, Ewell ordered a surprise attack on VI Corps on May 6, but the Confederates quickly became disorganized and struggled to gain their objective. Bump recounted these events the next morning in his journal:

Last night the Rebels charged in front of us three times but were handsomely repulsed each time[.] They finally turned our left flank held by our 2d Division & we were compelled to fall back we fell back to within six mile of Chancelersville [sic] with orders to march at nine o clock to night[.]

As Bump states in his journal, Grant ordered the soldiers to prepare for a night march on May 7. The Army of the Potomac was to move to Spotsylvania,Virginia in order to gain an advantage: the open fields surrounding Spotsylvania would be better for fighting and, if held, would be important in securing Richmond, the Confederate capitol. Already exhausted from two days of hard fighting, the army marched all night to Spotsylvania where fighting continued.

- Hannah Jarrett '12

1 Joseph P. Cullen, “Battle of the Wilderness,” Wilderness and Spotsylvania, Harrisburg: Eastern Acorn Press, 1985, p. 4.
2 ibid.
3Cullen, p. 5.
4 Noah Andre Trudeau, “Battle of the Wilderness.”
5 Cullen, p. 9.
6 Cullen, p. 15.
7 ibid.

Google Doodle Honors Argentine Author Jorge Luis Borges | PCWorld

The latest mysterious Google doodle honors what would have been Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges' 112th birthday. Aside from being a pioneer in the genre of magical realism, Borges also imagined some of the foundational concepts of the Internet, such as "hypertext," long before the dawning of the digital age.

Full story: Google Doodle Honors Argentine Author Jorge Luis Borges | PCWorld