Bookfest Explorer Series # 1: Boston, Massachusetts

Bookfest Explorer Series # 1: Boston, Massachusetts

Boston waterfront (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Here at Detroit Bookfest we are starting a new series called the Bookfest Explorer Series.

This will be a collection of travel experiences whereby we will periodically document our literary travels, both domestic and abroad, to help highlight the global community of books.

First up, Boston.

Founded in 1630, Boston is the 7th oldest city in the United States. Featuring sunken red brick sidewalks and beautiful old buildings aplenty, the city is loaded with history and rows of opulent townhouses for blocks.

Heading from Logan Airport to the Park Plaza Hotel (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

 

Boston Athenæum

10 ½ Beacon Street

https://www.bostonathenaeum.org/

Open since 1807, non-members can tour the first floor of this exceptional private library for $10.00. All 12 floors are open to members.

The focus of the collection is arts and humanities. World-class paintings grace the walls and there are marble busts of philosophers on stands.

Through the rear window, you can see the grave of Paul Revere in the Granary Burying Ground! This old cemetery opened in 1660 and there are several historical grave sites here.

Also, as a bonus, check out the Paul Revere House (19 North Square). Built in 1680, it’s Boston’s oldest building. Paul Revere’s famous 1775 Midnight Ride started here.

Boston Athenæum (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Boston Athenæum (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Boston Athenæum (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Image courtesy of James Cole

Boston Athenæum (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Paul Revere’s Grave @ Granary Burying Ground (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Paul Revere’s Grave @ Granary Burying Ground (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

old grave @ Granary Burying Ground (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Granary Burying Ground (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

 

 

 

Brattle Book Shop

9 West Street

http://www.brattlebookshop.com/

Open since 1825, this great three-story used & rare bookstore also features an outdoor open-air courtyard full of books.

The third floor is the Rare Book Room. Marvelous stuff. Owner Ken Gloss is impressively knowledgeable.

Brattle Books (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Brattle Books (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Brattle Books (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

 

 

Boston Public Library

700 Boylston Street

https://www.bpl.org/

Open since 1848 and smartly situated in beautiful Copley Square, the BPL was the first large free municipal library in the United States.

Be sure to check out the gorgeous 2nd floor Bates Hall reading room.

Also located on the 2nd floor, the Abbey Room, looks medieval European ornate, walls adorned with giant murals of the Holy Grail tale and 150 life-size figures from Arthurian legend ring the room, staring down at you. Who says paintings can’t talk?

Boston Public Library (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Bates Hall reading room @ BPL (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Abbey Room @ BPL (image courtesy of BPL)

 

Parker House Hotel

60 School Street

https://www.omnihotels.com/hotels/boston-parker-house

This beautiful 14-floor hotel opened in 1855. Charles Dickens lived here on the 3rd floor from 1867-68. He read ‘A Christmas Carol’ in the Last Hurrah Bar inside the hotel for the first time in America. They have his original door (view it in the basement) and gigantic mirror (view it on the mezzanine level) here.

Also, of note, Ho Chi Minh was a pastry chef here 1911-13, Malcolm X was a busboy, the Boston Cream Pie was invented here, and President JFK was a frequent guest!

Parker House Hotel (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Parker House Hotel (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Parker House Hotel (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Parker House Hotel (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Parker House Hotel (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Parker House Hotel (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

 

 

Ars Libri

500 Harrison Ave

https://www.arslibri.com/

Cool bookstore specializing in academic library collection development. You can buy books from the private research libraries of art scholars.

I bought a book called ‘Ancient Roman Monuments’ by Pignatorre with 61 beautiful hand drawn plates, very mild foxing and spotting.

Ars Libri (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Ars Libri (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Ars Libri (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

 

 

The Mapparium @ Mary Baker Eddy Library

200 Massachusetts Ave

https://www.marybakereddylibrary.org/project/mapparium/

Located next to the worldwide home of the Christian Science Church (which also houses the world’s 9th largest pipe organ), the Mary Bakery Eddy Library features a one-of-a-kind experience inside The Mapparium.

For only $6.00, you can tour The Mapparium for a delightfully psychedelic experience. The Mapparium is a 30-foot stained glass globe built in 1935 and features 608 glass panels. A walkway bisects the center of it.

At one point, they turn the lights off and there’s a light show around the world. Crazy how sound travels in here, sounds like every whisper is microphone-amplified, incredible.

Please note that photography is not allowed inside The Mapparium.

Mapparium (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Mapparium (image courtesy of Mary Baker Eddy Library)

Hope you get to check out Boston!

Boston (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Exclusive: Two Military Research Libraries are Hidden Gems at Detroit’s Fort Wayne, a circa 1840’s military fort!

Exclusive: Two Military Research Libraries are Hidden Gems at Detroit’s Fort Wayne, a circa 1840’s military fort!

Fort Wayne

Detroit is a mysterious city.

Filled with hidden gems galore and deeply laced with history, Detroit is like some kind of unexplored video game realm awaiting a protagonist whom, swept up in the spirit of adventure, eagerly unearths its treasures to win the game.

One such beautiful example of Detroit’s fascinating history lies in the oft overlooked neighborhood of Delray in the Southwest part of the city, near the cavernous underground salt mines.

Between spooky Zug Island and the old Boblo Docks, stretched out along the Detroit River in an area soon to be populated by the nearly 2-mile long Gordie Howe International Bridge, is historic Fort Wayne.

Fort Wayne aerial photo c. 1980 (photo courtesy of Historic Fort Wayne Coalition)

This beautiful national treasure is also located down the street from Flor-Dri (5450 W. Jefferson), which was once the original site of Michigan’s first printing press in 1809, thanks to Gabriel Richard.

Fort Wayne is an old military fort comprised of around 40 buildings and sits on 96 acres.

87 acres are owned by the City of Detroit Recreation Department & run by the all-volunteer Historic Fort Wayne Coalition (HFWC).

9 acres are owned by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and is referred to as the Detroit Boatyard.

 

Exploring the HFWC’s Two Military Research Libraries

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

I’m exploring the libraries at Fort Wayne with Will Eichler and Tom Berlucchi.

Will and Tom are the two fearless leaders of the Historic Fort Wayne Coalition, a non-profit group of around 20 volunteers who run weekend operations at the fort and whom have been fixing up the fort and fighting to save it from neglect and decay, since Tom founded the coalition in 2001.

Will and Tom are historians and historical preservationists. They are Civil War reenactors and passionate about Living History and honoring the richness of Detroit’s military history, which is why they’re created and curated two outstanding (and growing) military-themed libraries here at the fort.

Will

The two military reference libraries here are not lending libraries, they’re private appointment-only and designed for research. We’re currently accepting donations of military books and we’re hoping to open the libraries up to the general public sometime in the next five years.”

“I would say our largest concentration of books is Civil War material. Our next largest segment is World War II. Beyond that, we have military-related books, maps and ephemera from all over the world and all different time periods.”

Tom

“These libraries help deepen and expand our appreciation of the tremendous amount of history here at Fort Wayne.”

In 1812, the British landed at Fort Wayne on the spot where kids play soccer nowadays.”

“1838 was the Patriot War. Some Detroiters sailed from here into Amherstburg, Ontario on a schooner and shelled Fort Malden and they also took the barracks in Windsor. At the time, there was a revolution going on within Canada. Officially, the USA stayed neutral, except for some private individuals who got involved. Some were executed, some were sent to the Hudson Bay Barges.”

“Then in 1840, there was an initiative by the government to build a series of Northern Frontier forts and the property of Fort Wayne was acquired at that time.”

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Will

“Fort Wayne was designed by Lt. Meigs and construction began in 1843. It was finally completed in 1852. The fort was actually dormant until the Civil War erupted, then it reopened. In the interim, an old Irish couple were the caretakers.”

“We’ve been trying to fix up the fort and bring it alive with military reenactments in ways that are as historically accurate as possible. It’s difficult to generate revenue for preservation. The Fort Adams Trust in Rhode Island might be a good model to follow in terms of making Fort Wayne sustainable long-term.”

What I love is that everybody has a different reason for wanting to visit Fort Wayne. Part of the joy of interpreting this place is finding out for yourself the best way you personally connect with history.”

Tom

“In terms of maintenance, we’re looking to establish a professional service agreement with the City of Detroit. This would provide much needed funds for our ongoing restoration efforts.”

“And for the record, Fort Wayne is not a star-shaped fort.”

“It’s a four-bastioned square fort with an external fortification, which is the 5th part, thus, it’s technically not a true star-shaped fort.”

 

Who are Will and Tom?

Will Eichler & Tom Berlucchi @ Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Will

“Being apart of the Historic Fort Wayne Coalition is my passion.”

“My interest in Living History started when I was 15. I read a book called ‘Rifles for Watie’, a fantastic kid’s book about the Civil War. I read it and I’ve been hooked ever since.”

“I attended the James Madison College of International Affairs at Michigan State University, where I studied political theory. I have a 1,000-volume personal library at home, mainly Civil War and political books.”

“Currently I work in television as camera and Steadicam operator on NBC’s Chicago Fire.”

“I also shoot a bi-weekly video series called Civil War Digital Digest where we cover all aspects of Civil War History.”

Tom Berlucchi @ Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Tom

“My first exposure to Fort Wayne was back in 1974 when I started doing Civil War reenactments here with the Loomis Battery.”

“In 2001, I founded the Historic Fort Wayne Coalition, a non-profit of which I’m chairman. In 2003, we were granted our 501(c)(3) status on Christmas Eve.”

“Prior to that I served in the U.S. Navy from 1979-83.”

“I’m most interested in documenting the history of the Red Scare in Detroit during the 1920’s-30’s. We held 300 Communist prisoners right here at Fort Wayne from 1920-21. It’s a largely unknown history lesson.”

 

Why is Fort Wayne Historically Important?

Fort Wayne historic aerial (photo courtesy of Historic Fort Wayne Coalition)

The land that Fort Wayne sits on used to be known as the Springwells Mounds, a series of old Native American burial mounds dating to at least 1,000 AD. Only one mound still exists at Fort Wayne.

During the 1700’s, the area was a Potawatomi Indian village until around 1780, when they moved away. At the time, the area was prized for being a large sand hill and thus, a good vantage point.

In 1781, Irish fur trader, John Askin, moved to what is now Fort Wayne. He traded furs here until he became Justice of the Peace in Detroit from 1789-1802. Then he moved to Canada.

Shortly after the War of 1812 started, the British entered the US via Sandwich, Canada and landed where Fort Wayne is now and stayed here for over one year.

In 1815, the Treaty of Spring Wells, a 6-foot long parchment roll, was signed here by eight Indian tribes and future president Gen. William Henry Harrison, formally establishing peace between the native tribes and the new occupiers of the Michigan Territory.

old Fort Wayne (courtesy of Historic Fort Wayne Coalition)

Then in 1841, Congress wanted to build fourteen Northern Frontier Forts as a barrier against potential British attacks. Based on the survey of Lt. Macomb, they selected this spot for Fort Wayne, because it was the closest point on the Detroit River to Canada.

Fort Wayne was constructed over an eight-year period from 1843-51. It was named in honor of American Revolutionary War hero Gen. “Mad Anthony” Wayne.

During this time, future president Ulysses S. Grant lived nearby at 253 East Fort Street, Detroit from 1849-51. It is not officially known if Grant spent any time at Fort Wayne but the general consensus is that he most likely did due to his military involvement and close proximity to the fort.

On April 12, 1861, the Civil War exploded when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumpter, South Carolina. Two days later, President Lincoln began mobilizing the Union into action.

Fort Wayne immediately became a training center and infantry garrison for Michigan’s 1st Infantry Regiment, including the Coldwater Cadets, some 780 men, who fought in the First Battle of Bull Run.

Several other regiments, totaling an estimated 14,000 troops, passed through Fort Wayne during the Civil War.

old Fort Wayne schematic (courtesy of Historic Fort Wayne Coalition)

In 1885, Springwells Township, where Fort Wayne was located, was annexed to the city of Detroit.

During World War I, over 500 African American troops were stationed at Fort Wayne.

In the 1930’s, the Great Depression hit the country hard and hundreds of homeless families lived in the old Civil War-era limestone barracks.

During World War II, the city of Detroit was the “Arsenal of Democracy.” Some 2,000 people moved to Fort Wayne and helped coordinate the supply of military vehicles and tanks to the U.S. military overseas via the Fort Wayne Ordinance Depot.

Fort Wayne was also used as a training and induction center. POW’s from Italy were housed here. Several of them, including Eduardo Barbieri, became permanent residents of Detroit after the war ended.

Fort Wayne (courtesy of Historic Fort Wayne Coalition)

In 1949, the U.S. Federal Government officially transferred ownership of Fort Wayne to the City of Detroit and the property was run by the City of Detroit Historical Commission.

During the Cold War, Nike Ajax missiles were installed here in 1957 and replaced by Nike Hercules missiles in 1959.

The Fort served as an induction center during the Vietnam War.

In 1967, Fort Wayne was officially deactivated.

From 1967-71, families whose homes were burned down in the Detroit Riots, lived in the old limestone barracks.

Over 200 years after its construction, the fort was officially listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1971.

The empty fort fell into decline and decayed for almost four decades before the Historic Fort Wayne Coalition stepped in in 2001. Then in 2006, the City of Detroit Recreation Department assumed ownership.

 

Unknown Facts about Fort Wayne

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Will

“Fort Wayne still has the original limestone barracks from 1845 and also the original 1880’s houses on Officer Row.”

“There used to be a cemetery here. Over 150 graves were moved to nearby Woodmere Cemetery (9400 W. Fort St, Detroit) around 1896.”

“Also, not many people know this, but there were three jails, called Guard Houses, on-site here at Fort Wayne. They weren’t here all at once, so it depends on the decade.”

Tom

“In 1887, a man named Arthur Stone tried escaping Fort Wayne and Sgt. Clark shot him dead here.”

“A woman named Elsie Woline committed suicide in Building 108, the Commandant’s Building. She was African American in the employ of Captain French and was jilted by a lover. She took her own life by drinking carbolic acid.”

“One of the most incredible things about Fort Wayne is that we’ve had somewhere between 23-27 Medal of Honor recipients tour the fort, including Surgeon Irwin, a U.S. Army surgeon during the Apache Wars, whom had one of the first ever-issued.”

My personal goal is to obtain copies of all of these medals and display them here with stories.”

Tom Custer, George’s little brother, was in the 6th Michigan Cavalry and was the only person in the entire Civil War to win two Medals of Honor.”

 

Annual Civil War Reenactments @ Fort Wayne

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo courtesy of Historic Fort Wayne Coalition)

Will

“Tom and I are both huge Civil War fanatics. I follow Michigan’s 5th Infantry and the 3rd Regiment the most.”

“In the library here, we have a framed photo of Texans retreating from Maryland to Virginia after the Battle of Antietam, which was the single bloodiest day in American history.”

“We also have a ton of great Civil War books in the reference library, including a series of pamphlet-size blue books, which talk about small arms used by Michigan troops in the Civil War.”

Tom

“Our reenactments are extremely specific recreations. The soldiers even stay in the original barracks and pay in period script, not modern money.”

What does it for me, what brings history alive, is getting to walk on the same floors, the same stairways that those soldiers did. Thinking of how many thousands of people have passed through here over the years, it’s incredible.”

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Will

“During our reenactment, Maj. Gen. Israel Richardson, killed during the Battle of Antietam and whose grave is under a big oak tree at Oak Hill Cemetery in Pontiac, Michigan, his original jacket was here in the museum inside our Visitors Center.”

“The 2nd Michigan Regiment is here and we garrison the fort the way it was in the 1860’s.”

“I’m also hoping to have my documentary about Fort Wayne completed at some point this year. The documentary is produced by my own company, Ravelin Films.”

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Tom

“I cried back when we opened the barracks for the very first time and the Union reenactors marched through. It was a touching moment.”

“I also cried when we fired a salute with real canons here in honor of a man named Luiz who drowned in Lake Erie back in 2008. Luiz went to Southwest High School and played soccer here and a ton of his friends and family came out for the memorial.”

“As for the fort, I’m a preservationist but I’m also realistic. It’s not all going to be saved. We still have WWII-era electrical here, no insulation on the power lines. The plumbing needs updating. There’s probably $250 million dollars’ worth of restoration needed. But we’ll continue doing what we can.”

Will

“If you haven’t been to Fort Wayne yet, make plans right now to come visit us. It’s a must-see destination!”

 

To donate your military books to Fort Wayne, please contact:

[email protected]

 

Fort Wayne

6325 West Jefferson Ave.

Detroit, MI 48209

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

 

Historic Fort Wayne Coalition

https://www.historicfortwaynecoalition.com/

 

HFWC Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/HistoricFortWayneEvents

 

Annual Civil War Reenactment (2nd weekend in June)

https://www.historicfortwaynecoalition.com/cwdays.html

 

Civil War Digital Digest (bi-weekly; run by Will Eichler)

https://www.youtube.com/civilwardigitaldigest

 

Hold My Horse: A Short Film about Israel Richardson by Will Eichler

https://www.facebook.com/groups/HoldMyHorseMovie/?ref=group_header

Hold My Horse: A Short Film about Israel Richardson by Will Eichler

 

Detroit Parks & Rec

https://detroitmi.gov/departments/parks-recreation/fort-wayne

 

National Register of Historic Places (Fort Wayne tracking # 71000425)

https://npgallery.nps.gov/NRHP/AssetDetail?assetID=7edfca5e-4fb0-4644-95fd-912173c5d0f4

 

Civil War Medal of Honor database (1,522 recipients)

https://www.battlefields.org/learn/medal-of-honor

Historic Fort Wayne Tours

Flor-Dri (5450 W. Jefferson, Detroit), which was once the original site of Michigan’s first printing press in 1809, thanks to Gabriel Richard (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Fort Wayne Research Library (photo by Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Civil War Days @ Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Detroit’s historic Fort Wayne (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

 

 

Exclusive Interview: University of Michigan’s Papyrology Collection, worth an estimated $100 million dollars, is the largest collection of papyrus in North America and run by Archivist BRENDAN HAUG!

Exclusive Interview: University of Michigan’s Papyrology Collection, worth an estimated $100 million dollars, is the largest collection of papyrus in North America and run by Archivist BRENDAN HAUG!

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

The University of Michigan’s Papyrology Collection is a fascinating hidden gem.

Housed on the 8th floor of the South Stacks of the Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library, the Papyrology Collection contains 18,000 pieces of papyrus.

Estimated to be worth $100 million dollars, it’s the largest collection of papyri in North America and the 5th largest in the world.

I’m standing in 807 Hatcher with the head archivist, Brendan Haug. Also present is manager, Monica Tsuneishi. Brendan has been archivist since 2013, taking the helm from a position started by Traianos Gagos, who was the first archivist in 1991.

This 8th floor hidden perch offers a spectacular vantage of campus as well. There’s a clear view of the Burton Bell Tower and Hill Auditorium to the north and a stunning panorama to the south, which includes the Big House and the Law Building.

The view from 807 Hatcher (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Brendan and I are sitting in a reference library next door to a chilled room full of 3,000+ year old treasures in the form of papyri (pap-eye-ree; the plural of papyrus), that great preserver of everyday writing from the ancient world.

U of M’s papyrus (pronounced pap-uh-russ) is written in Ancient Greek, Ancient Egyptian: Hieroglyphs, Hieratic (cursive hieroglyphs), Demotic (a still-later stage of Egyptian), Latin, Coptic (Egyptian language written in Greek characters with a few additional symbols), Arabic and Hebrew.

Most of the papyri here range in size of fragments from pinky-nail size to full document size.

Egyptian Book of the Dead (11th cen BC) @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Papyrology is the study of everyday writing on papyrus and other surfaces like broken pieces of pottery (ostraca), wooden tablets, and stone.

Thanks to the dry Egyptian climate, these objects were preserved for centuries, giving Michigan plenty to study. The goal of papyrologists is to produce complete transcriptions of ancient papyri, thus, bringing long dormant documents back to life.

The work of papyrology can also be incredibly frustrating, since many of those teasing half-there scraps of papyri are damaged beyond translation.

To give you an example of the manifold difficulties of papyrology, only about 5% of Michigan’s Papyrology Collection has been studied, accurately translated and published academically. The rest sit there, waiting to be explored.

Brendan explains more about the Collection

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Papyrus was used from the fourth millennium BC to around 1000 AD. It lasted 4,000 years, until being phased out by parchment and paper. Papyrology, the study of handwritten texts on papyrus and other writing surfaces, is a specialized sub-discipline within Classical Studies.”

“The University of Michigan’s Papyrology Collection was founded in 1920 by Francis Willey Kelsey. He was a Latin professor and polymath, interested in everything from music to archaeology. Because Ann Arbor was so far from the Mediterranean, Kelsey wanted to bring back antiquities for students at his Midwestern public university to study.”

“Although Kelsey died in 1927, there was still a great deal of money available during this period, particularly before the Stock Market Crash of 1929, so we were able to continue acquiring papyri until the 1940’s. Also, because more people were exposed to Greek, Latin, and the Classics in school during this period, and there was rather more popular interest in the recovery of ancient texts on papyri than there is today.  If you’re interested in Michigan’s history of antiquities collection and archaeology, the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology here on campus is a great place to visit.”

U of M’s Francis W. Kelsey (photo courtesy of UofM)

“All of Michigan’s papyrus came from Egypt and our Papyrus Collection began with the purchase of 534 papyri, which was curated by Kelsey himself. After that, U of M continued to purchase texts on the Egyptian antiquities market, many from the famed Egyptian antiquities dealer Maurice Nahman.”

“Since dealers never kept accurate records of where they acquired their papyri, we rarely if ever, have good provenance for texts acquired on the antiquities market. Controlling the circumstances of recovery is therefore extremely important.”

“With this in mind, Michigan obtained permission from the Egyptian government to excavate the ancient Graeco-Roman village of Karanis for eleven seasons, from 1924-1935. Located in Middle Egypt on the northeastern margins of the Fayyum, Karanis is known for producing mass quantities of Graeco-Roman antiquities, which offer great insight into everyday life in a country village.”

The Fayyum was at that time already well-known to antiquities dealers and European academic institutions as major source of papyri.  In fact, a major find of papyri from the region’s central capital city had been dispersed to Paris, Berlin, and Vienna in 1887-88.  So, we knew that excavation in the Fayyum was likely to be very fruitful.   And it turned out to be even more productive than we could have imagined.”

“Over 11 seasons, we acquired thousands of papyri and other artifacts, which we split with the Egyptian government. Fortunately, the desert margins of the Fayyum, where Karanis is located, are hyper-arid, so perishable organic material like papyri are well-preserved in an almost laboratory-perfect environment.  If you visit the Kelsey museum, you’ll see that they have everything from wooden artifacts to foodstuffs, perfectly preserved!”

c. late 1920’s University of Michigan in Karanis, the Fayyum, Egypt (photo courtesy of U of M)

“As for the papyri, Karanis gave us many fragments of Greek literature, including pieces of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey and Hesiod’s Works and Days and Theogony. It also gave us thousands of documents of great significance, such as the Karanis Tax Rolls from 171-175 AD, which allow us to reconstruct the population and demographics of the village during these years.”

“We also have a great many papyri from elsewhere in the Fayyum, including about 150 papyri from the Archive of Zenon, which is largest ancient archive to survive. Zenon was a Greek functionary in Egypt during the early Ptolemaic period (3rd century BC) and the papyri provides us with considerable insight into a period during which Greeks were still consolidating their power over Egypt.”

“But we don’t just have texts on papyri. We also have a great many parchment fragments, such as a piece of a codex of Demosthenes, the from 4th century BC Athenian orator, along with a great many ostraca, pottery sherds that people used for quick notes or short texts like receipts.”

“In 1972, Cornell University also donated all of their papyri to U of M, which had better facilities for the continued care and storage of such fragile material. So really, we have just a major collection, maybe 18,000 fragments. Let’s go take a look at some of this stuff.”

The Environmental Room

Environmental Room @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

“This room was specially designed in 1993 by Maria Grandinette and since it’s full of organic material, the stability of temperature and humidity is the most important thing, so we keep it at a cool 65 degrees F and about 45% humidity.”

“The majority of the papyri are stored in acid-free archival folders but we do have a few hundred “glazed” papyri, texts that have been put between two archival glass panes.”

“The great thing about this documentation is that it puts you in contact with ancient people. Although ancient people were in many ways very different from us, they are identical to us in the most important and fundamental ways.”

“For instance, we have two letters on papyrus written in Italy by a young man and sent back to his mother in Karanis.  He had joined the Roman military fleet and was very far from home so, of course, he wrote to let his mother know where he was and that he was safe and well.  What could be more relatable? Still, papyri like these can be a tease, revealing tiny, brief glimpses of the past and leaving us wanting more.  But usually we can never know more, as in the case of this mother and her son. These two short letters are all we have.”

Abstracts of Contracts papyrus (c. 40’s AD from Tebtunis, Egypt) @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

“But despite this shortcoming, we still have all sorts of material here: the tax rolls from Karanis, papyri from the Tebtunis notary office in the south of the Fayyum, a birth certificate for a young Roman-citizen girl from 190’s AD Alexandria, a drawer full of wooden mummy tags in Greek and Egyptian.” 

“We also have fragments of a book-binding where discarded papyrus was used to stiffen the covers, a large fragment of book 18 of the Iliad, almost anything you could imagine. It’s just so rich that you are constantly seeing something that you could spend hours investigating and only just begin to understand fully.”

“Our oldest piece is in fact a fragment from the Egyptian Book of the Dead from the 11th Century BC. It was purchased in 1925 in Egypt. The papyrus came from the tomb of a woman who is referred to as a Chantress of Amun. She was a temple singer and you can see her making an offering to a hawk-headed god named Re-Harakhte (pronounced ray ha-rock-tey) in the illustration on the papyrus.”

“Basically, the text is a collection of magic spells to ensure that the deceased person’s soul survives the underworld. There are hieroglyphs on the right and hieratic on the left. Some of the sentences are, “Thoth has come, fully equipped with magic” and “who gave jackals to those who are in the watery abyss.” It’s a neat piece and, in fact, it’s still not published since the surviving bottom portion of the fragment isn’t here but in Germany.”

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

“By far, however, our most popular papyri are the 30 leaves, i.e. 60 pages, of one of the earliest known copies of The Epistles of Saint Paul. Dating anywhere from the late 2nd-early 4th century AD, they’re written in Greek on papyrus.”

“Known as P46 to New Testament scholars, the pages were part of a large collection of early Biblical manuscripts, most of which were purchased by the businessman and antiquities collector, Sir Alfred Chester Beatty.”

“Another 56 leaves of this book survived and they are now in the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, Ireland. Beatty bought them in 1930, U of M bought some in 1932 and two years later, Beatty purchased the rest.”

Epistles of St. Paul papyrus @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

What is Papyrus?

Papyrus growing along the Nile River in Egypt (photo courtesy of Pinterest)

Papyrus, which is a sedge, grows in Egypt and Sicily, however papyrus plants grew predominantly in marshlands along the Nile River, which is why Ancient Egypt had a veritable monopoly on papyrus production.

Papyrus plants can reach 15 feet tall. To make papyrus sheets for writing, you strip the green husk from the stems and then carefully cut the white pithy interior of the stem into thin strips. You then soak the strips in water for a time and afterwards line the strips up side by side vertically to form one layer, then you create another layer on top with strips running horizontally.

You then use either a mallet or, these days, a hand-cranked press, to smash the layers together and expel the water. The sheets are then and dried. In antiquity, these sheets could then be used singly or glued together to form a long roll.  These rolls could be of any length you wanted.

Papyrus in the dirt (photo courtesy of Rossella Lorenzi @ Archaeology Magazine)

Papyrus was an extremely valuable export commodity, especially for the Roman Empire. Papyrus was also used as cartonnage filler for mummy cases, those form-fitting cases which held mummies inside their sarcophagi.

Water and humidity are the enemies of papyri. Modern paper comes from wood pulp from ground up pine trees and has the same enemies.

To write on papyrus, the Egyptians would most commonly use either a rush pen or a Greek reed pen known as a kalamos. The ink was a mix of lampblack (fine charcoal soot from burning oil in lamps), gum from the acacia tree (gum Arabic) and water, somewhat similar to modern India ink.

The Edwin Smith Papyrus (photo courtesy of the New York Academy of Medicine)

How old are you?

Okay, now subtract your age from 4,500. Odds are, you’re probably somewhere in the 4420-4485 range. The oldest known papyrus, fragile yes but inexplicably resilient and durable enough to survive, is about that old.

Cool! What does that mean? It means that most papyrus pre-dates the Julian (46 BC) and Gregorian (1582 AD) calendars. Zero became a number around 3 BC in Mesopotamia. That’s right, papyrus predates the number zero by about 3,000 years! Mind = Blown. Canite Sapiunt.

Fast-forward to 4,500 years from now. Year 6,500 AD. Space archaeologists and paper-ologists revisit the old planet Earth to do some digging and uncover a 5,500-mile-long paper artifact. Upon closer inspection it turns out to be an insanely long CVS Pharmacy receipt from the year 2020 AD!

This is what they would be doing… if it were written on papyrus. CVS receipts long enough to wrap a mummy in will not be around in 6500 AD. However, papyrus from Ancient Egypt will most likely still be around.

Egyptology

Egypt (photo courtesy of Google)

“In 1798 when Napoleon invaded Egypt, the country was still terra incognita to Europeans. He brought scientists and engineers on his expedition to learn about Ancient Egypt. Through their scientific surveys they created The Description of Egypt (23-36 volumes), which comprises the foundation of Egyptology, the study of Pharaonic Egypt.”

“Thus, Western political conquest of Egypt opened the country to international study. In 1882, the British took over and started the Egypt Exploration Fund. In 1922, Egypt was made “independent” by the Brits but they still controlled the government.”

“That same year, 1922, amateur archaeologist Howard Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb at a time when Egypt was beginning to be fed up with Western domination. King Tut’s Tomb was of a quality and quantity unseen before.”

“In response to popular pressure, the French scholars in charge of the Antiquities Service did not allow Carter to take any of Tut’s treasures out of Egypt. The discovery captured the world’s imagination. This sort of grand, romantic, Egyptomania gripped the entire world, including the Egyptians themselves. Art Deco design also started incorporating Egyptological elements.”

Howard Carter discovers King Tuts Tomb c. 1922 (photo courtesy of Smithsonian)

“After that, it became harder to get antiquities out of Egypt and other countries. The 1920’s-30’s was the last major era for getting stuff out of the country. This question started being asked heavily: To whom does this belong?

We owe the survival of documents to climate. Alexandria is on the Mediterranean Coast, it’s wet, eroding, and a lot of ancient Alexandria is actually today underwater. Regarding the big Library of Alexandria, we don’t know the size of the collection, how they were stored, etc. We are therefore dealing with the “survival of the least fit,” as the papyrologist Roger Bagnall has said. ”

“That is, we get the overwhelming majority of our papyri from small sites that were on the very edges of Egypt’s cultivated land, right along the margins of the desert. So, the Library of Alexandria was the literary and cultural center of the country and its contents tell us a lot of information about their culture, it would be a time-machine. There are no more ancient libraries to discover, sadly.”

“There’s not as much interchange between Papyrologists and Egyptologists as there could be. The disciplinary divides that exist are linguistic. Knowing all the ancient languages, knowing 8,000 years of history, etc, it’s just not possible, so you inevitably have to divide up the discipline. Languages alone, you must have expertise in Egyptian (hieroglyphs, hieratic, demotic, Coptic), Greek, Latin, Aramaic, Arabic, etc, it’s too much for any one person to master in a lifetime.”

Biography of Brendan Haug

Wooden mummy tags @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

“My academic interests include the environmental history of Graeco-Roman Egypt, the history of Egyptology and Egypt during the European colonial period. I work largely in Greek and Arabic although I have some training in Coptic.”

“I graduated from the University of Washington in 2004 with a B.A. in Classics and the University of California-Berkeley in 2012 with a PhD in Ancient History and Mediterranean Archaeology.”

“Berkeley has the other large papyrus collection in the United States, the Center for the Tebtunis Papyri at the Bancroft Library, which is where I did my grad work. Overall, U of M has a more diverse collection than Berkeley, whose papyri largely come from a single site.”

Fragments of a leather hand-carved book where papyrus was used as paperboard (c. 3rd cen) University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

“It was by accident really that I became a papyrologist. I was majoring in Classical Studies and doing my undergrad work at Seattle, studying Greek and Latin. One of my history instructors was going to teach a grad seminar on the Hellenistic World and she invited me to join it. She assigned each student a region to research for the semester and I was given Egypt. I ended up sticking with it, pursuing an honors major, and wrote an honors thesis on certain aspects of Ptolemaic Egypt.”

“After that I got into Berkeley (barely) and began to work at their papyrus collection. The director, Prof. Todd Hickey, needed a student assistant and I was hired on and ended up working there for eight years.”

“Over time, I evolved more into an environmental historian, not a pure papyrologist. Specifically, I’m interested in the human-nature interactions in rural Egypt from the Hellenistic to the early Islamic periods.”

“The world’s largest collection of papyri has to be the 500,000 fragments from the Egypt Exploration Society. It’s housed at Oxford University in the Sackler Library.”

“The papyri came from the city of Oxyrhynchus (oxy-rink-us) in Egypt, which has produced the greatest number of surviving papyri of the Roman period.”

Brendan’s Final Thoughts

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

“There’s still a small black market for papyrus but it’s far harder to create monetary values for it because antiquities smuggling is easier to track now. Hobby Lobby, for example, was recently caught importing cuneiform tablets, which they labeled ‘roofing tiles.’”

“Every once in a while, something incredible pops up on Sotheby’s or somewhere but it’s fairly rare. Nowadays, you must have a permit to dig in Egypt, nothing is expatriated and anything you find goes to the government.”

The Classical world in general is not as big a part of the mental landscape as it used to be when it was a part of every educated person’s schooling. The thrill of the hunt and musing on what treasures are potentially buried in unexcavated urban centers is still fun though.”

Book 18 of Homer’s Iliad @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

The ultimate goal of papyrology is publishing texts in an effort to reconstruct the culture and society of ancient civilizations, slowly refining our assumptions and arguments as more and more evidence accumulates. The difficulty is simply that there are so, so many documents out there, most of which are very fragmentary. Therefore, it might literally take until the year 4,000 AD for us to publish every papyrus in all the world’s major collections, that’s how slow and difficult it is.”

“Much of what we do these days is online, thanks to emerging digital technology. In 1996, our archivist Traianos Gagos helped create APIS, the Advanced Papyrological Information System, a digital catalog where all images of our photographed papyri are open-access to anyone in the world, it’s a tremendous resource.”

“Beyond that, I recommend that you come up to 807 Hatcher and visit us in-person to see the collection. We’re in the South Stacks, which is a sort of book storage and study space area. I also recommend checking out the 6th floor Special Collections Reading Room while you’re here.”

Epistles of St. Paul @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection

https://www.lib.umich.edu/papyrology-collection

 

Contact

[email protected]

 

U-M Papyrology Collection APIS (Advanced Papyrological Information System)

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/a/apis

 

Top 20 Most Impressive Ancient Manuscript Collections

https://www.onlinechristiancolleges.com/20-most-impressive-ancient-manuscript-collections/

 

LHPC (directory of over 3,000 known papyrus collections worldwide; around 230 are in the USA)

https://www.trismegistos.org/coll/index.php

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

 

Incomplete Timeline of Papyrus, Papyrology & Allied Interests

Compiled by Place from a variety of sources

Egypt (332 BCE) Alexander the Great conquers Egypt. Koine Greek becomes the official language of Egyptian power.

World (4000 BC) Clay tablets are all the rage.

Abydos, Egypt (3400 BC) The earliest known Egyptian hieroglyphs date back this far.

World (3000 BC-1000 AD) Papyrus is created in Egypt and replaces clay tablets. Papyrus lasts 4000 years until being phased out by parchment paper.

Egypt (3000 BC) Egyptians invent papyrus. Papyrus proves far more portable than heavy clay tablets, which had been the primary writing surface prior to papyrus.

Egypt (2562 BC) The Diary of Merer is the world’s oldest surviving writing on paper. Found by Pierre Tallet in 2013 AD. According to the Diaries, Merer worked for Pharaoh Khufu as head of transportation of the massive blocks of white tura limestone for Khufu’s Great Pyramid at Giza. Merer was also getting copper at Wadi-el-Jarf. His diary also contains the first known spreadsheet.

Egypt (2500 BC) Carrier pigeons carry messages written on scraps of papyrus.

Mesopotamia (Iraq) (2500 BC) Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets are used for record-keeping. An estimated 500,000 tablets survive today, mostly in broken chunks.

Egypt (1700 BC) Egyptian Book of the Dead spells and occult symbols and writing start popping up in tombs.

Thebes, Egypt (1633- 1552 BC) The sarcophagus of Queen Mentuhotep features some of the earliest known examples of the Book of the Dead.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Egypt (1550 BC) Copies of the Book of the Dead start being written and passed around. The Book of Coming Forth By Day.

Mount Sinai, Egypt (1200 BC) Moses atop Mount Sinai. The Torah is copied by Moses onto a papyrus scroll.

Athens, Greece (399 BC) Socrates says papyrus scrolls are for sale everywhere in the local market, the Agora of Athens, their central public Forum.

Alexandria, Egypt (300 BC-48 BC) Ptolemy I Soter founds the legendary Library of Alexandria, the most important library of the ancient world. The library contains 500,000-1 million scrolls of papyrus. The library’s main mission was to collect a copy of every book in the world. Any works not written in Greek are translated.

Alexandria, Egypt (284 BC) Zenodotus of Ephesus is the first recorded librarian of Alexandria. He developed an organizational system of arranging books by subject matter, then organized alphabetically by the author’s name. Some of his compiled glossaries were found during the excavation of Oxyrhynchus.

Alexandria, Egypt (246 BC-222 BC) Sometime during this timeframe, Ptolemy III builds the Serapeum Library of Alexandria. An offshoot branch of the main library, the Serapeum contained around 50,000 papyrus scrolls.

Alexandria, Egypt (245 BC) Greek scholar Callimachus of Cyrene creates the world’s first library catalog at the Library of Alexandria. The cataloging system of Callimachus was based on alphabetical subject classification and his system was so effective that it was copied throughout the entire Roman Empire. His famous 120-volume Pinakes (Greek for “Tables”) was a master list of information on the books at the Library of Alexandria.

Rome, Italy (240 BC) Livius Andronicus pens the first known literary works written in Latin when he writes his two stage plays.

Pergamum, Turkey (197-159 BC) Eumenes II expands the Library of Pergamum, one of the top libraries of the ancient world. Eumenes also invents parchment paper as a replacement for hard-to-obtain papyrus.

Pergamon, Turkey (150 BC) Crates of Mallus, scholar of the Library of Pergamum, creates the first-ever globe representing Earth.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Greece (146 BC) Roman takeover of Greece.

India (150 BC) Bookbinding originates here in the form of Sanskrit texts bound by sewing palm leaves with twine. Traveling Buddhist monks helped spread the technique.

Rome, Italy (131 BC) the world’s first newspaper, the Acta Diurna, is first chiseled on stone and displayed in the public Forum for the public to read. It is soon copied by slave-scribes onto papyrus and distributed around Rome.

Rome, Italy (87 BC) The Tabularium, official records office of ancient Rome, was housed inside the Roman Forum and consisted of thousands of papyri scrolls.

Athens, Greece (86 BC) Roman General Sulla is Master of Athens and manages to steal the remains of Aristotle’s famous personal library of hundreds of papyri scrolls.

Edfu, Egypt (57 BC) The Temple of Edfu is completed. Inside the temple are two rooms of books comprising a private temple library, called the House of Books of Horus. The Archive of the library is chiseled on the wall and you can still view it to this day!

Alexandria, Egypt (48 BC) Roman Emperor Julius Caesar invades Alexandria, his fire ships attack Egyptian ships. The fire spreads to the shore and the famous Royal Library of Alexandria is torched along with 500,000 papyrus scrolls. The Ptolemies built the Library in 300 BC.

Rome, Italy (46 BC) Julius Caesar implements the Julian Calendar.

Rome, Italy (39 BC) Rome’s first public library is built atop Aventine Hill by Gaius Asinius Pollio inside the Atrium Libertatis. Pollio also organized literary clubs where authors read their works aloud. Virgil would read his Aenied here.

Egypt (30 BC-640 AD) Romans rule Egypt. Thus, most legal documents from that period are written in Latin.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Mesopotamia (Iraq) (3 BC) Zero becomes a number.

Rome, Italy (64 AD) The Great Fire of Rome includes the destruction of the Palatine Library inside the Temple of Apollo.

Rome, Italy (77 AD) Pliny the Elder publishes instructions on how to make papyrus paper.

Herculaneum, Italy (79 AD) Mount Vesuvius erupts. It’s path of destruction incudes the Villa of the Papyri, which was the luxury estate of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (Julius Caesar’s father-in-law) and contained a world-class library of 2,000 or so papyrus scrolls. The papyrus scrolls were carbonized in the eruption and discovered mostly intact in 1752. Some of the scrolls included those from philosophers Epicurus and Philodemus and were written in Greek. You can see them on display at the National Archeological Museum in Naples, Italy.

China (105 AD) Cai Lun invents paper.

World (2nd  Century AD) Parchment begins eclipsing papyrus as the most popular paper of choice.

Rome, Italy (113 AD) Trajan opens the Ulpian Library around his famous column.

World (3rd century AD) The Codex becomes popular. A codex is pages of papyrus or parchment compiled into a book.

Tabennisi, Egypt (320 AD) Saint Pachomius establishes the first monastic lending library in Egypt, consisting of hundreds of scrolls of papyri.

Istanbul, Turkey (350 AD) Sometime hereabouts, the Imperial Library of Constantinople is built by Constantius II. He created a Scriptorium to preserve the ancient Greek classics, where an army of scribes transferred them from papyrus to parchment. The Library at one point contained 100,000 volumes. It was destroyed in 1204 AD during the Fourth Crusade. It was the last of the great libraries of antiquity.

Drawer full of wooden mummy tags @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Rome, Italy (388 AD) Saint Augustine confesses his love of papyrus over parchment.

Europe (4th -15th Centuries AD) Medieval European scribes write on parchment paper, not papyrus.

World (6th century AD) Papyrus rolls gradually vanish and codices become the main medium.

Squillace, Italy (538 AD) Cassiodorus, after succeeding Boethius, establishes the Vivarium Monastery library and scriptorium. Shortly afterwards, he moves to the walled city of Constantinople. Cassiodorus remains a lifelong believer in the supremacy of papyrus.

Seville, Spain (600 AD) the quill pen comes into vogue and its popularity spreads.

Egypt (639 AD) Egypt is conquered by the Arabs.

Talas River Valley, Kyrgyzstan (751 AD) Arabs capture Chinese paper-makers. They’re brought to Samarkand, Uzbekistan and begin teaching others.

Baghdad, Iraq (794 AD) Arab paper mills are built using the Chinese method of paper-making. In less than 300 years, Chinese paper totally eclipses papyrus throughout Arabia.

Vatican, Rome (1083 AD) the last papal bull written on papyrus. They are henceforth written on parchment.

Spain (1100’s AD) The secret art of paper-making finally reaches Europe.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Chichen Itza, Yucatan, Mexico (1200 AD) The Dresden Codex and its fabulous Venus Tables is published. Consisting of 39 sheets (front and back), it is the oldest Mayan manuscript and was written on Mesoamerican bark paper (Amate). You can view it on display at the Saxon State Library in Dresden, Germany.

Runnymede, Surrey, England (1250 AD) The Magna Carta is written on sheepskin parchment.

Strasbourg, France (1440) Gutenberg invents the moveable type printing press, which quickly revolutionizes the world. His famous Gutenberg Bible is published in 1455 on vellum.

Italy (1490) Leonardo Da Vinci supposedly hunts for “rare” papyrus.

Europe (1582) The Gregorian Calendar is implemented.

England (1623) Shakespeare’s First Folio is published on rag paper.

Herculaneum, Italy (1752) Papyri is discovered in this south Italian city. They had been buried by the eruption of Vesuvius 79 BC.

Vatican, Rome, Italy (1755) Padre Antonio Piaggio, noted Vatican calligrapher, begins deciphering the charred papyri from Herculaneum.

World (1788) Papyrology as a discipline begins when Danish classicist Niels Iversen publishes a papyrus written in Greek, the Charta Borgiana (aka: the Schow Papyrus) from 193 BC detailing daily work in Faiyum, Egypt. The papyrus was a roll with 12 and ½ surviving columns. It was bought in 1778 near Memphis. The Papyrus is donated to Cardinal Stefano Borgia. You can view it on display at the Museuo Nazionale Archeologico in Naples, Italy.

Egypt (1798) Napoleon invades Egypt. Egyptology starts in the 1800’s after Napoleon’s information about the fascinations of Egypt spreads around the world.

Homer’s Iliad (2nd cen AD) @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Rosetta, Egypt (1799) The Rosetta Stone (created 196 BC) is discovered at Fort Julien in Rosetta, Egypt. In 1801, the British seize the stone and it’s now on display at the British Museum.

Luxor (1820) The Turin King List papyrus is purchased by Bernardino Drovetti. You can see it on display at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy.

Thebes, Egypt (1822) Drovetti buys the Turin Papyrus Map of Egypt from 1160 BC, it’s the oldest surviving map of the ancient world. You can see it on display at the Museo Egizio in Turin, Italy. Drovetti later dies in an insane asylum in Turin in 1852.

Egypt (1824) The Westcar Papyrus is purchased. Dating from somewhere in the 1800-1650 BC range, it contains five stories about magic at the Royal Court of Cheops and is often called ‘King Cheops & the Magicians’.

Berlin, Germany (1828) Germany establishes the Egyptian Museum of Berlin.

Halifax, Canada (1838) Newsprint (paper from wood pulp) is invented by Charles Fenerty.

London, England (1842) the Illustrated London News becomes the world’s first illustrated weekly news magazine.

Germany (1842) German Egyptologist Karl Richard Lepsius publishes a collection of ancient mortuary texts, which he calls Totenbuch (“The Book of the Dead”).

Karnak, Egypt (1843) Prisse d’Avennes rescues the Karnak Kings List, a list of 60 kings carved on tablets from 4,000 BC and a papyrus scroll from 1800 BC later named the Prisse Papyrus. Widely considered the oldest literary work on paper, it is 18 pages of The Maxims of Pthahhotep by the Grand Vizier Ptahhotep. You can see it on display at the Louve in Paris.

Cairo, Egypt (1851) French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette becomes famous for finding the Serapeum of Memphis. He then founded the Egyptian Department of Antiquities.

Homer’s Iliad (2nd cen AD) @ University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Nineveh, Iraq (1851) Sir Austen Layard discovers the ancient Royal Library of Ashurbanipal. This was the kings two-room private library inside the Palace of Ashurbanipal, which was built sometime 668-627 BC. It once contained some 30,000 cuneiform clay tablets, including the Epic of Gilgamesh. The library was noted for being the world’s first systematically organized reference collection. You can view several of these tablets at the British Museum.

Turin, Italy (1852) Drovetti dies in an insane asylum.

Cairo, Egypt (1858) Egypt’s Department of Antiquities is established by Frenchman Auguste Mariette. This department still exists today under the name Supreme Council of Antiquities.

Luxor, Egypt (1858) Alexander Henry Rhind purchases a 16-foot-long roll of papyrus, which comes to be known as the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus. Written in Hieratic in 1550 BC, it’s the world’s best-known example of Ancient Egyptian mathematics.

Luxor, Egypt (1862) The Edwin Smith Papyrus is purchased. The contents prove that Egyptians invented medical surgery. You can view it on display at the New York Academy of Medicine.

Boston, Massachusetts (1863) Wood is pulped and turned into paper, creating the Boston Weekly Journal.

Kiman Faris, Faiyum, Egypt (1877) Peasants digging in ancient mounds find thousands of papyri. Called the ‘First Faiyum Find’, most are purchased in Cairo by Austrian dealer-collector, Theodor Graf. He sells them to Archduke Rainer in 1884. Rainer ends up donating the collection to the Austrian National Library.

Alexandria, Egypt (1880) Herbert Greenfield purchases the Greenfield Papyrus, an 121 foot long copy of the Book of the Dead and one of the best surviving examples of a funerary papyrus. Dating from 970 BC it was a funerary papyrus for Princess Neisitanebtashru. His wife Edith donated it to the British Museum, where you can see it on display.

Egypt (1881) Russian Egyptologist Golenischcheff purchases the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor. It’s a papyrus dating from 2000-1710 BC and is possibly the oldest fantasy text ever written. You can see it on display at the Imperial Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia.

Egypt (1882) British military occupation of Egypt. The Egypt Exploration Fund is created to fund excavations in the Nile Delta area.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Hawara, Egypt (1888) British Egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, excavates the area and discovers a fabulous rolls of papyrus containing most of Homer’s The Iliad. Dated to 150 AD, this document is now called ‘The Hawara Homer‘ and is currently kept at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, England.

Luxor, Egypt (1888) Wallis Budge swipes the Papyrus of Ani. Dating from 1250 BC, the 78-foot-long papyrus is from Theban royal scribe Ani, who was also governor of a large granary at Abydos and inventory tracker of temple property at Thebes. It is the world’s most complete surviving version of the Book of the Dead. You can view it on display at the British Museum in London.

Gurob, Faiyum, Egypt (1889-90) Whilst digging in the ancient Ptolemaic cemetery, Sir Flinders Petrie finds papyri written in Greek inside Ptolemaic tombs from 250 BC. The papyri includes Plato’s Phaedo and Homer’s Iliad. He finds mummies covered in cartonnage of demotic and Greek papyri.

World (1891) The “miracle year” for papyrologists in terms of papyri being translated and published. Poems of Herodas and Aristotle’s ‘Constitution of the Athenians’ are published from papyrus at the British Museum.

Thebes, Egypt (1892) Russian Egyptologist Golenischev purchases the Moscow Mathematical Papyrus from 1850 BC, Egypt’s oldest math text. You can view it on display at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, Russia.

Abu Gorab, Egypt (1893) The Abusir Papyrus is purchased. Dating from 2500 BC, it is the largest and most important papyrus on Ancient Egyptian administration from the Old Kingdom.

Egypt (1890’s) Egyptomaniac Wallis ‘Budgie’ Budge acquires 47,000 artifacts from Egypt for the British Museum. “In doing so, he committed almost every crime of cultural thievery in the book,” says John Gaudet, “Budge left a record. He and possibly Napoleon had taken the largest number of items ever removed from Egypt.”

Oxyrhynchus, Egypt (1896) Two Brits, Grenfell (Egyptologist) and Hunt (papyrologist) find papyri, then Jan 13, 1897 they hit the mother lode while digging in rubbish mounds. They find a codex leaf, the Logia Iesu, containing the “sayings of Jesus” from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. The Egypt Exploration Fund sells it to the Bodelein Library. “The flow of papyri soon became a torrent,” said Grenfell. They dig until 1907. These excavations are the source of the world’s largest collection of papyri, including fragments from the Gospel of Thomas, Euclid’s Elements, plays of Menander, writings of Pindar, Sappho, Sophocles, the Apocalypse of Baruch, etc.

Egypt (1896) Wallis Budge acquires a 15ft long papyrus containing 20 poetic Odes of Bacchylides.

University Chicago (1898) Papyrology in the USA begins with Greek papyri from Egypt via Edgar J. Goodspeed who sells them to Chicago Egyptologist James H. Breasted. You can view them on display at the University of Chicago’s Regenstein Library.

Tebtunis, Faiyum, Egypt (1899-1900) The Tebtunis Papyri are found by Grenfell and Hunt in an expedition financed by Phoebe Apperson Hearst at the University of California-Berkeley. They find papyri from mummies and also crocodile mummies, including Sobek the ancient Egyptian crocodile god, also known as Soknebtunis (Lord of Tebtunis). You can view these at UCal-Berkeley’s Bancroft Library.

World (1900) Papyrology finally becomes an accepted and respected discipline.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Susa, Iran (1901) The Code of Hammurabi is found. Dating from 1754 BC, it’s an ancient Babylonian code of law carved into a stone slab. You can view it on display at the Louvre in Paris.

Germany (1902-14) Germany creates the Deutsches Papyruskartell to purchase papyri from dealers in Egypt and sell to German institutions.

England (1908) Grenfell and Hunt produce the first volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri where they gave every papyrus a name and number.

Armann, Egypt (1912) The famous Nefertiti Bust is found by German Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt inside the ancient workshop of sculptor Thutmose who created it in 1345 BC. It is now housed at the Neues Museum in Berlin. Borchardt also found the Timotheos Papyrus in a wooden sarcophagus at Abusir.

Faiyum, Egypt (1914) Archives of Zenon discovered. Some 2,000 papyri from 258 BC, detailing life in early Ptolemaic Egypt.

Egypt (1920) Oxford papyrologist Bernard Grenfell and University of Michigan scholar Francis Kelsey visit several archeological sites across Egypt.

Egypt (1922) Howard Carter discovers King Tuts Tomb.

Karanis, Egypt (1924-35) Francis Kelsey, University of Michigan Latin professor and philologist, starts excavating Karanis, Egypt. Kelsey dies in 1927 and the digging continues. Finds are sent back to U of M to Elinor Husselman, the curator of manuscripts and papyri.

Michigan (1927) The University of Michigan Department of Manuscripts and Papyrology is founded.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Brussels (1930) Papyrologists first assemble internationally for the first time.

Tebtunis, Egypt (1931 and 1934) Enormous amounts of papyri found during Italian excavations.

Saqqara, Egypt (1935) Walter Emert finds two blank yet fully intact rolls of papyrus in the Tomb of Hemaka. At 5,000 years old, they are verified as the most ancient paper ever found.

California (1938) the UC-Berkeley papyri collection starts.

Nag Hammadi, Egypt (1945) The Nag Hammadi codices on papyrus are found, 13 total, bound in leather.

Khirbet Qumran, Israel (1946-56) The Dead Sea Scrolls are found in 11 caves. 930 documents total: 800 written on parchment 130 written on papyrus. 590 documents alone are found in Cave Four. The stash was thought to be from the Essenes.

University of Michigan Papyrology Collection with Brendan Haug (photo by: Ryan M. Place)

Nahal Hever, Judean Desert (1960-61) Archaeologist Yigael Yadin finds cave of letters in Judean desert from the survivors of the Bar Kockhba revolt, who hid here in 132 BC. The papyri are written in Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic.

Derveni, Macedonia, Greece (1962) the only papyrus found in Greece is the Derveni Papyrus, which consists of 266 fragments of an ancient Macedonian papyrus from 340 BC and widely considered to be Europe’s oldest surviving manuscript.

Vatican, Rome (2006) The Bodmer Papyrus Codex (renamed the Hanna Papyrus) containing the Gospels of Luke and John (c. 175 AD) is donated to the Vatican by Frank Hanna. The papyrus was originally found in Dishna, Egypt and sold to Martin Bodmer Foundation, library of the famous collector, who had 150,000 works in Geneva, Switzerland in his private collection.

London (2011) Two heretofore unknown poems of the female Greek lyric poet Sappho are discovered on papyrus written in ancient Greek. Her poetry was once collected into 9 volumes at the Library of Alexandria but was lost to history.

Egypt (2013) Digging since 2011, Pierre Tallet finds 30 caves hidden in a limestone hill. It was a boat storage area 4,600 years ago. In 2013, he finds papyrus written in hieroglyphics and hieratic (ancient Egyptian cursive script). Turns out to be the world’s oldest known papyrus. Written by two Egyptians who helped build the Great Pyramid (Pharaoh Khufu’s tomb) at Giza. He found 30 papyri at the Red Sea port of Wadi-al-Jarf. The Diary of Merer (4500yrs old) are logbook-diaries, telling of his transporting limestone to Giza. They are now on display at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.

Egypt (2019) The Egyptian Ministry of Antiquities operates 72 antiquities warehouses in Egypt. Egypt recently announces they are imposing life imprisonment and millions in fines for antiquities smuggling.

Exclusive Interview: Detroit music legend & founder of rock band The MC5, WAYNE KRAMER, on his new memoir ‘The Hard Stuff’!

Exclusive Interview: Detroit music legend & founder of rock band The MC5, WAYNE KRAMER, on his new memoir ‘The Hard Stuff’!

*Special thank you to Book Beat & Street Corner Music for allowing us in your stores*

Wayne Kramer probably shouldn’t be alive right now.

A normal human would’ve folded up and exploded decades ago from a pulverizing combination of “Hard Stuff,” like hard music, hard drugs, hard living and hard lessons. Thankfully, however, Wayne is here with us, alive and well enough to tell the ongoing tale of his fascinating existence.

Wayne Kramer and his Detroit rock band the MC5 changed rock music by cranking the dial to totally immersive no-holds-barred high-intensity levels of DNA-mutating volume and they’re also widely credited with inadvertently creating what was later labeled as the genre of ‘punk music’.

While the band itself disintegrated in 1972 in a cyclone of heroin, revolutionary Sinclair politics, disenchantment and becoming alienated and disconnected from each other, the MC5’s music has withstood the brutal and purifying test of time. They came, they saw, they melted faces with blistering full-body knockout attack music and helped forge Detroit’s enduring sobriquet, Detroit Rock City.

It has been said that listening to the MC5 live was like having an out-of-body experience, like exorcising daemonic barnacles and freeing your soul, like a psychedelic journey to pre-birth regression, a glorious stripping away while being thrashed to the point where you suddenly Wake Up, Fully Emerged.

I’m sitting here right now with Brother Wayne Kramer in the back room at Book Beat bookstore.

Wayne is in town from Los Angeles and bookstore owner Cary Loren, formerly of Ann Arbor arthouse band Destroy All Monsters, has kindly given us a fun space to chat.

We’re discussing Wayne’s life and memoir ‘The Hard Stuff,’ which will be published on August 14th by Da Capo Press.

Buy The Hard Stuff here 

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/wayne-kramer/the-hard-stuff/9780306921537/

Later this year, Wayne is going on a 35-city tour with his band MC50 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of MC5’s Kick Out The Jams. Their tour will culminate in an October 27th show at the newly renovated Fillmore Detroit.

Wayne is also a prominent solo recording artist and has done countless collaborations with people like David Peel, Johnny Thunders, Don Was, etc.

Parts of my life have been written about extensively, especially my time in the MC5. Less so my time in prison and my work with Jail Guitar Doors. Just wanted to have a record from my perspective, straight from the horse’s mouth.”

“I wanted to understand myself better and chronicle the realizations. To sort out the order that things happened in and review some of the stupendously terrible things I’ve done in my life. For years, my friends have prodded me to write a book but I could never figure out how to end it, since the story isn’t finished. The arrival of my son Francis, who is turning five soon, the whole life I’ve lived up to his arrival was one life, so now I can begin the other life. If I die tomorrow, I want my son to have a record of my life straight from me not vicariously from news articles.”

I started writing the book in 2006. Started just casually jotting down thoughts and memories in a notebook. A lot of stuff was in the front of my thoughts and therefore easily accessible. Then I got about forty 3 x 5 cards and put them on a corkboard and created a chronology of events.”

“After a while I had the shaping of what looked like an actual book on my hands, so we engaged an agent and secured a publisher. I’m a musician. Telling stories is my business and lifelong passion and it’s always a pleasure. The book was completed in November 2017.”

MC5: The Motor City 5

Born April 30th, 1948, Wayne Kramer was the founder and guitarist of rock band The Motor City Five, which was later shortened to MC5 in honor of being more in tune with the Detroit auto industry.

Wayne started the band in 1963 at Lincoln Park High School in Lincoln Park, Michigan, a Downriver suburb of Detroit.

At the time, Wayne was the band leader of The Bounty Hunters. He met Fred Smith of The Vibratones and Fred soon merged his band with Wayne’s band into The Bounty Hunters. They played venues like The Crystal Bar on Michigan Ave & Central in Southwest Detroit until changing their name to The Motor City 5 in the Fall 1964.

The MC5 consisted of:

Wayne Kramer guitar, Rob Tyner vocals, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith guitar, Michael Davis bass, and Dennis ‘Machine Gun’ Thompson drums.

Wayne explains:

It started off innocently enough with ‘Hey, any kids want to be in a band with me?’ Ultimately, we ended up with the MC5.”

“The MC5 started at Helen and Gregory avenues in Lincoln Park, Michigan. Tyner lived 4 blocks away, Dennis lived 10 blocks, Fred lived 10 blocks in another direction. My Mom’s house was the center for all of us and she kindly let us practice in the basement.”

“Rob Tyner and I could draw. Rob’s friend Gary Grimshaw could draw chrome, the finish on hot rod cars. So, Gary and Rob ending up designing a lot of our handbills and posters, especially the Grande Ballroom ones. Rob was indeed a gifted artist and cartoonist, not many people know that.”

And yes, it’s true, Rob reinvented everything. He nicknamed Fred ‘Sonic’, shortened our name to the MC5, nicknamed Dennis ‘Machine Gun’, even renamed himself from Bob Derminer to Rob Tyner. He was a very creative man.”

“The MC5 used to play everywhere: school cafetoriums, dances, record hops, bars, clubs, outdoors, indoors, sideways, upside down, you name it, we were there. When you love to play music, it doesn’t matter where you play it. You just establish a good band and put your 10,000 hours in playing your asses off anywhere-anyway you can.”

The MC5 played 400-500 performances over the lifespan of the band. I was 16-20 years old when all this happened, my formative years. At 19 or 20, you’re pretty crazy since your brain isn’t done growing. You’re basically insane until 30.”

“We all have powerful experiences and changes at that age and to be in the center of larger forces at that time like the youth culture movement, government oppression, phonetaps, the FBI building a file on us (yes, I have a copy of the file), was just overwhelming. I remember when I caught my federal coke case, the officer said to me, ‘Kramer, we got shit on you going back to the Sixties’.

“What set the MC5 apart from our contemporaries is we addressed the audiences concerns directly. Since we all shared the same concerns, we felt it our responsibility to help voice these concerns and voice them LOUDLY.”

We were a rock band in a time when rock music came of age and we were a part of a community of young people in agreement to reject the established ideas of how life should be. The hypocrisy and corruption we saw was unbearable as a community. We were being forced to fight a war 30,000 miles away when there was no direct threat to the United States. It was illegal, it was immoral and America, which claimed to stand for equal rights, didn’t give equal rights to all citizens, only a chosen select few.”

“And even 50 years ago, we felt and knew that weed was less toxic than the government claimed. We were commenting directly on this stuff and we were the only band doing so heart to heart, face to face. You felt our music, boy, and you could never un-feel it. Hearing the MC5 live touched you deeply and forever.”

“In terms of people considering the MC5 and The Stooges as the “godfathers” of punk music, I can see where you can connect the dots. The Clash, The Damned, The Ramones, etc, when you asked all those early punk bands who they listened to and were inspired by, almost all of them say the MC5 and The Stooges. To me “punk” has always been around, we just didn’t use that expression. Beethoven, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, all those guys were punks in the sense that they had to reinvent music for their generations. It’s important to have your own sound and be original.”

“The MC5 was not frilly, not snobby, not elitist, it’s just in your face, grab you by the throat, rock and roll.”

MC5 played opening night at the Grande, Detroit’s psychedelic ballroom, thanks to Russ Gibb. The Grande was a magical place.”

We all lived together in the same house as a band. We lived in Detroit, then we moved to Ann Arbor to a place called the Hill Street House for a while, then we had a house in Hamburg, Michigan on Hall Road. It was not far from Hamburg Lake. Beautiful, remote spread in the middle of 10-acres of wooded land, just absolutely spectacular. We loved it. We were a bunch of maniac musicians. You could run around with no clothes on, shoot guns, smoke weed, do whatever you wanted to do, it was great.”

“Our bassist Mike Davis wrote a memoir about his life and MC5 and many stories in Mike’s book are consistent with mine, at least, the fundamental facts. I don’t blame Mike for some of the stuff that was written. I’m sure I was an absolute nightmare to be around. The bad behavior was rampant and eventually, the MC5’s shared creative vision had disintegrated into drugs. Heroin was all-pervasive in Detroit back then and we were young musicians, so everywhere we went, it was already there waiting for us, in our face, you couldn’t escape it.”

“Rob tried quitting the MC5 for 2-3 years. Every year, he’d make a declaration that he didn’t want to be in the band anymore, but he never left. Finally, he and Fred got into a fistfight, and he said he’d had enough. Our last show was New Year’s Eve 1972 at the Grande. I walked off stage mid-show and that was that. The end of an era.”

 

The MC5 Eat LSD with Timothy Leary at Tim’s House in California

“On March 23rd, 1969, we played a free concert in Provo Park. Timothy Leary was there, he liked our show and invited us back to his house in the Berkeley Hills.”

“He had all this liquid LSD that we poured into a big bottle of dark red wine and we drank LSD wine with him in front of a roaring fire in his living room, while his mother-in-law was there!

“The band wanted to go out carousing. I wanted to stay with Leary and have the total LSD experience with the guru and then the funniest thing happened.”

Machine Gun Thompson and I are sitting in front of the fire with Tim’s mother-in-law, Tim walks in with his wife Rosemary and announces “welp, we’re going to bed, you guys have a good night.” He walks away, Machine Gun and I look at each other and I’m thinking, ‘Whoaaaa. I’m tripping my brains out with Timothy Leary’s mother-in-law’. Then I say to Dennis, ‘Maybe we should go back to the hotel.’ Dennis agrees and he somehow drives us back to the hotel.”

 

Wayne’s Favorite Authors

“Dozens of favorites. I read a lot. They run the gamut: Philip Roth, Christopher Hitchens, Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Hemingway, Sam Harris, Luc Sante, etc. My son is going to be five soon and he’s reading some elemental stuff already. I told him that the whole world will open up to you through reading. Plus, you can travel in time through books.”

 

Wayne’s Parents

“The MC5 was formed during our teen years when we were young and trying to break out and establish our own identity beyond our parents, which is important.”

I had a father that abandoned our family when I was little. I was an angry little boy who grew into an even angrier young man. I thought changing my name to “Wayne Kramer” was the perfect revenge, since he would never share in my glory.”

“Later, in my 40’s, I met my father. He was a community activist in Elizabeth, Pennsylvania and he was in the hospital. We built a relationship, I mean you can’t dial it back and recover what was lost to time, but I got to have a more mature perspective on this man whom I was biologically connected to.”

“He had been a U.S. Marine in the South Pacific during WWII. He came back profoundly damaged and treated what we now called “PTSD” with alcohol, which he said kept the daemons at a distance. It didn’t stop the endless horrors, but it helped create a cloudy buffer.”

“The hole in my development as a boy, not having a model of what manhood is, being left to deal with challenges, responsibilities, dangers without a father was very difficult.”

My Mother did a great job as a single working mom. She’s my hero to this day. I also had 2 younger sisters. My Mom raised us three kids on her own. Single working mothers are the hardest working humans on planet earth.”

 

Wayne Helps Iggy & The Stooges Get Signed

“I was responsible for getting The Stooges a record contract with Elektra Records. Danny Fields asked me if I knew any other group like the MC5. I said ‘No Danny, there’s nobody like the MC5. But, you should see our brother band The Psychedelic Stooges.’”

“We loved Iggy and The Stooges, all of us hung out together, got high together, listened to the same free jazz music. Before then, Iggy was a drummer in a great blues band called The Prime Movers.”

I actually tried recruiting him into the MC5 one time but he left for a brief stay in Chicago with The Prime Movers. Iggy and I are still great friends to this day and I’m proud of how successful he is.”

 

Wayne Gets Arrested During the Detroit Riots

“In July 1967, we were living on Warren and Forest in Detroit by Wayne State University and we had a telescope in our upstairs window. The Riots kicked off and the cops saw the telescope and thought we were snipers.”

“Next thing I know, my doors being busted down and there’s a U.S. Army tank pointing its canon at our house! It’s in the street, right outside our front door! The cops swarmed in, slammed us down and took us to 1300 Beaubien Street, the Detroit Police HQ. They eventually let us go but it was an experience that stuck with me.”

 

On Being Incarcerated in America

From 1975-77, Wayne Kramer did time at Lexington Federal Prison in Lexington, KY for selling cocaine. The experience had a profound and negative impact on him.

MC5 bassist Mike Davis, Stooges roadie Hiawatha Bailey, writer William S. Burroughs, actor Peter Lorre, musicians Red Rodney, Sonny Rollins, Chet Baker, etc, all did drug time at Lexington.

Going to prison is a traumatic experience. You are discovering for the first time what it means to not have liberty, to not be free, to be totally under the control of systems and people.”

You never feel safe. You’re surrounded in very close quarters by dangerous people with mental health issues constantly. You have no power over your own life. The sort of helplessness and hopelessness you experience in prison is impossible to accurately communicate unless you yourself have experienced it directly.”

The prison experience is embarrassing and shameful and I don’t know anyone whose come out better. Prison has never helped anyone, myself included. It’s a medieval concept that just lives on and on and on and on. 90% of inmates can be held accountable for breaking the social contract in their communities but imprisoning people runs against a sense of fairness, which really doesn’t exist in America.”

 

Jail Guitar Doors USA

In 1978, London punk band The Clash wrote a song about Wayne Kramer called ‘Jail Guitar Doors’. That song title served as inspiration for Wayne Kramer, his wife Margaret Kramer and his friend Billy Bragg in naming his non-profit Jail Guitar Doors USA in 2008.

“Jail Guitar Doors is a non-profit with a mission to help rehabilitate prison inmates by teaching them to express themselves positively through music.”

“Since my release, I’ve watched the prison population rise for over 40 years. There were 350,000 people in state and federal prisons combined back then. Today, in the United States, we have 2.3 million people in prisons.”

“This tragedy has deeply affected every single community in the country. Sending people to prison is not a deterrent. You come out worse, not better. With Jail Guitar Doors, we try to mitigate the damage by helping the individual rehab through music and change for the better.”

“Just think about it: 600,000 prisoners are released every year. Who do you want standing in line with you at the store? Someone bitter, defeated, revengeful or somebody who has hope and music?

“Earlier today, we took some local musicians to the Ryan Reentry Center in Detroit to establish a songwriting workshop. Today we wore a song about freedom, we helped inmates there talk about childhood trauma and forgiveness. Doing the work itself is the reward.”

“I don’t ever expect to see true justice reform in my lifetime. It’s like turning the Titanic away from the iceberg. But we will continue doing what we can to help.”

 

Detroit to Los Angeles

I’ve been in L.A. for 25 years, it suits my activities. I pay the rent by writing film and TV music. You have to go where your job skills are marketable.”

“Most of the year the climate is spectacular, but it’s been very hot lately. Great community in L.A., lot of friends there.”

“Jail Guitar Doors is based there. We’re on 10 prison yards in California and we have acoustic guitars in 120 prisons in America.”

I visit Detroit often to see family and friends and play gigs and the city will always be in my heart forever.

 

Wayne Kramer Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/waynekramer/

 

Wayne Kramer @ Industrial Amusement

http://industrialamusement.com/artists/wayne-kramer/

 

Buy The Hard Stuff here 

https://www.dacapopress.com/titles/wayne-kramer/the-hard-stuff/9780306921537/

 

MC5 Calendar of Shows

http://makemyday.free.fr/mc5calendar.htm

 

MC5: An Incomplete (But Interesting) Timeline

  • 1963-Wayne Kramer forms The Bounty Hunters. Fred Smith merges his band The Vibratones with Wayne’s band.
  • 1963-Gary Grimshaw moves to apartment building 633 Prentis St, Detroit. Michael Davis moves to the same building and Rob Tyner’s girlfriend lives across the hall from him. Mike meets Rob and gradually becomes the bassist for the MC5.
  • December 1963-The Bounty Hunters play The Crystal Bar (Michigan Ave & Central St, Detroit)
  • Fall 1964-The Bounty Hunters are re-named The Motor City 5
  • May 1965-Rob Tyner shortens the bands name to MC5
  • 1966-MC5 move to the Warren Forest neighborhood in Detroit’s Cass Corridor near Wayne State University at apartment (659 W. Canfield)
  • September 1966-Plum Street (Detroit’s Haight-Ashbury psychedelic district) opens
  • October 7th, 1966-Russ Gibb opens the Grande Ballroom. MC5 plays opening night.
  • October 1966-LSD made illegal
  • November 20th, 1966-MC5 & Velvet Underground play ‘Carnaby Street Fun Festival’ @ Michigan State Fairgrounds, Detroit

  • 1967-MC5 move to Detroit Artists Workshop building and live upstairs (1252 W. Forest) and The Lodge at Warren
  • 1967-John Sinclair morphs Artists Workshop into Trans-Love Energy Collective
  • April 30, 1967-Trans Love produces Love-In concert on Belle Isle @ Remick Music Shell. MC5 plays for 6,000 people. The Outlaws motorcycle gang starts riot.
  • Summer 1967-The Stooges live at first Stooge house (1324 Forest Ct, Ann Arbor)
  • June 9th, 1967-MC5 blow main act Cream offstage at the Grande.
  • July 1967-Detroit Riots
  • August 1967-John Sinclair becomes manager of the MC5
  • Halloween 1967-The Psychedelic Stooges first show ever @ UofM Student Union
  • November 22nd, 1967-The Who play Southfield High School
  • November 24-26, 1967-The Fugs & MC5 play the Grande
  • January 4th, 1968-Russ Gibb finances the MC5 recordings of Looking At You and Borderline @ United Sound System studios (5840 2nd Ave, Detroit). Gary Grimshaw designs the cover. Jeep Holland’s A-Square label releases only 500 copies.
  • February 23rd, 1968-Jimi Hendrix, MC5 & Soft Machine play the Masonic in Detroit
  • March 3rd, 1968-The Stooges first play the Grande
  • April 11th, 1968-MC5’s first-ever show with The Stooges @ UofM Union Ballroom
  • May 1968-Trans-Love move from Detroit to Ann Arbor’s Hill Street House (1510 and 1520 Hill Street). MC5 join the commune.
  • July 1968-MC5 play free concert at the West Park bandshell in Ann Arbor
  • August 25th, 1968-MC5 play Lincoln Park, Chicago during riot
  • September 7th, 1968-JC Crawford first introduces the MC5
  • September 21st, 1968-Danny Fields sees MC5 live at the Grande
  • September 22nd, 1968-Danny Fields sees The Stooges @ the Union Ballroom, Ann Arbor
  • September 1968-Danny Fields gets Elektra Records to sign both bands: MC5 sign to Elektra for $20,000 and The Stooges sign for $5,000. Elektra is known as the label of The Doors.
  • October 30-31, 1968-MC5 record debut live album ‘Kick Out the Jams’ at the Grande Ballroom. The Stooges were the kicker act. Free show.
  • November 1st, 1968-John Sinclair creates White Panther Party based on idea from Pun Plamondon
  • November 1968-The Stooges move to The Fun House (2666 Packard rd, Ann Arbor). MC5 hang out here frequently. Nico lives here for a bit.
  • December 12-14, 1968-MC5 plays on bill with Velvet Underground for 3 days in Boston
  • December 23rd, 1968-MC5 opens for The Crazy World of Arthur Brown @ Olympia
  • January 4th, 1969-MC5’s Rob Tyner is on the cover of Rolling Stone Magazine
  • February 1969-Detroit’s famous Hudson’s department store refuses to stock MC5’s albums. In response to this, MC5 runs a full-page ad entitled ‘Fuck Hudson’s’ in local magazines The Fifth Estate, Ann Arbor Argus, The Sun. As a result, Hudson’s department stores pulls all Elektra Records albums from their shelves.

  • March 1969-Creem Magazine debuts
  • March 1969-Elektra Records drops the MC5
  • May 1969-John Cale brings The Stooges to NYC to produce their first album
  • June 1969-MC5 sign to Atlantic Records and get a hefty $65,000 advance
  • October 18th, 1969-Led Zeppelin, MC5, Grand Funk play Olympia in Detroit
  • January 15th, 1970-MC5 release their 2nd album ‘Back in the USA
  • May 1970-MC5 move from Hill Street House (Ann Arbor) out to Hamburg, Michigan
  • August 3rd, 1970-MC5 @ Mt. Clemens Pop Festival in Sportsman Park
  • August 7-9th, 1970-MC5 and The Stooges play Goose Lake Music Festival (200,000 people)
  • April 1971-White Panther Party dissolves
  • July 6th, 1971-MC5 release ‘High Time’ album
  • 1972-Rob Tyner and Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith get into a fistfight
  • December 31, 1972-MC5’s last show ever. Grande Ballroom. Wayne Kramer is so disgusted, he leaves mid-show.
  • MC5’s proposed 4th album, ‘Live on Saturn’ never comes to fruition.
  • 1975-Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith starts Sonic’s Rendezvous Band
  • 1975-77-Wayne Kramer does time at Lexington Federal Prison. Fellow inmates include Mike Davis and Hiawatha Bailey

 

 

 

How to Read More BOOKS! (Bill Gates reads at least 50 books per year! If he can do it, so can you!)

How to Read More BOOKS! (Bill Gates reads at least 50 books per year! If he can do it, so can you!)

How to Read More BOOKS!

 

BOOKS ARE FUN! BOOKS ARE FOR EVERYONE!

Sure, Bill Gates is worth a measly $90 BILLION DOLLARS.

He’s the world’s 2nd richest person and instead of being less busy than most people, Gates is far busier with traveling, speaking engagements, diving Scrooge McDuck-style into mountains of gold coins and more.

Despite his intense schedule, Bill Gates still manages to read at least 50 books per year.

 

How to Read More BOOKS!

 

That may not sound like alot, but it is. 50 books per year is an average of 4 books per month. Now, Gates reads mostly non-fiction.

Non-fiction averages around 200 pages (ie: 55,000 words). So, Bill Gates reads over 9,000 pages per year, which is an incredible accomplishment and inspiring example for anyone.

Gates says, “One of the things I love about reading is each book opens up new avenues of knowledge to explore.”

We here at Detroit Festival of Books (aka: Detroit Bookfest) encourage you to explore your willpower and limits and READ MORE BOOKS! You can do it!

 

How to Read More BOOKS!

 

Ryan’s strategy to read more books:

1.) Create a Book Log for notes (and subsequent Book Fund to purchase books). Over time, you’ll find the money in the Book Fund does not keep pace with the # of books you want to read in your Book Log! This is a good thing. It means your curiosity is flourishing. Keep moving.

2.) Make some lists: books you want to read, books you have read, your favorite books, etc.

3.) Prioritize the books you want to read and try reading at least one book per month. Since we are all insanely hyper-busy nowadays, this will not be as easy as it sounds. But it can be done and sometimes book planning helps.

4.) Schedule some Designated Reading Time for yourself either daily, nightly or weekly. For myself personally, I read at night, usually for 1-2 hours before bedtime. Nighttime is when I find that my mind is most relaxed and perceptive. Morning is for coffee and busywork.

5.) There are thousands of genres of books out there. Yes, something for everyone. Once you find a genre (or genres) you really like, and you stick to your reading schedule, you’ll find yourself reading more and more books in less and less time. You will find that books are not boring cures for insomnia, but fascinating, wonderful, mind-expanding resources that can help you in your daily life.

 

How to Read More BOOKS!

 

Ryan’s fun book recommendations to get you started (these are just personal suggestions):

1.) Tao Te Ching (500 BC) Lao Tzu

2.) Man’s Search for Meaning (1946) Viktor Frankl

3.) Bleak House (1853) Charles Dickens

4.) Ubik (1969) Philip K. Dick

5.) Meditations (180 AD) Marcus Aurelius

6.) Hamlet (1600) Shakespeare

7.) The Rose of Paracelsus: On Secrets & Sacraments (2015) William Leonard Pickard

8.) Jane Eyre (1847) Charlotte Bronte

9.) Smiley’s People (1979) John Le Carre

10.) The Haunting of Hill House (1959) Shirley Jackson

 

How to Read More BOOKS!

 

If the successful billionaire co-founder of Microsoft can read 50 books per year, you can read at least one book per month or more. We believe in you! Don’t dream it, do it!

I don’t care who you are, where you live in the world, how old you are, etc, just remember BOOKS ARE FUN, BOOKS ARE FOR EVERYONE!

 

GatesNotes (Bill Gates reading blog)

https://www.gatesnotes.com/

 

$90 bil and counting

https://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/?list=billionaires

 

The Giving Pledge 

https://givingpledge.org/Pledger.aspx?id=199

 

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

https://www.gatesfoundation.org/

 

How to Read More BOOKS!

 

 

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