Happy Birthday, Studs
Posted by: Keir Graff
Studs Terkel (my neighbor, even though he doesn’t know it) is 95 years old today. His publisher is trying to organize the biggest cross-country party in history. Right here in Chicago they’ve hired a skywriter to — literally — laud him to the skies. It’s been cloudy all morning, but it looks like it might clear up just in time. I’ll have to poke my head out the window and let you know how it goes.
May 16th, 2007 at 10:21 am
Thanks, Keir, for your Happy Birtday to Studs post, and the link to that birthday greetings site. I was remembering the ALA Conference program in Chicago a few years back when I had the honor of moderating a panel with Studs, Sara Paretsky, and Alex Kotlowitz. I was worried that Studs wouldn’t be able to hear well enough to participate easily, but he is so attuned to people, and to the architecture of conversation, he knew exactly what was being discussed and where everyone was headed. It was an incredible rush to sit next to him before a large, loving audience. The applause for Studs, especially after he spoke about librarians as champions of freedom, was so powerful it put me in an altered state.
May 17th, 2007 at 10:21 am
[...] Well, even though the skies turned blue yesterday, I never did see any skywriting. And leave it to The Weekly Standard (”Wrong for 95 Years,” The Scrapbook) to rain on Studs’ parade: But does a bilious radio DJ who turns a tape recorder on and off, and hires somebody to type up the transcripts, qualify as a “historian,” even an “oral” historian? And while we’re impressed by Studs’s longevity, and love skywriting, it’s worth pointing out that 74 of those 95 years were spent extolling the virtues of the Soviet Union, in print and on the air, at the expense of Studs’s native country. [...]