On Rememberance of Things Past: Woodstock and the Counterculture

The natural disposition of mankind is to want Utopia. In literature from the very beginning, from our most primitive to our most sophisticated verses, from the pens of atheists to acolytes, the human spirit has always scratched out, searched, even longed, for Utopias. When Utopias can somehow be linked to a political entity, the subsequent delirium from would-be followers numbers millions.

Ah, Libraries: How I Love the Smell of... Electronic Access?!

In the olden days, we Baby-Boomers would walk into our university or college libraries and pause just long enough to take in that wonderful smells of high grade cowhide leather and aging papyrus before rushing off to study. There was something about opening any leather bound edition of anything and being transported by the smell to some distant land, not unlike Charles Swann in Marcel Proust’s famous French novel, A La Recherché du Temps Perdu, Remembrance of Things Past.

Surasky Family Papers - Accession 250 - M115 (147)

The Surasky Family Papers consists of correspondence, newspaper clippings, reminiscences, poetry, and other papers mostly photocopies. Of particular interest are a reminiscence by Esther Pinck entitled “Remembrance of Things Past”, concerned with the Jewish experience in Aiken, SC; papers related to Mina Tropp, a painter who developed a unique medium of painting with flora and who is also published poet; and letters of Judge Justine Wise Polier, well known Juvenile Court judge in New York. Collection is almost all photocopies.