Hello and welcome to Episode Forty Two of Page Turn: the Largo Public Library Podcast. I’m your host, Hannah!
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The English Language Transcript can be found below
But as always we start with Reader’s Advisory!
The Reader’s Advisory for Episode Forty Two is Incense and Sensibility by Sonali Dev. If you like the sound of Incense and Sensibility you should also check out: While We Were Dating by Jasmine Guillory, The Heiress by Molly Greeley, and When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon.
My personal favorite Goodreads list Incense and Sensibility is on is Sense and Sensibility – Inspired by and Sequels to.
Happy Reading Everyone
Today’s Library Tidbit comes to us from the Sarah the adult programming librarian and is all about learning to paint, specifically painting along with Bob Ross and the Joy of Painting.
Bob Ross was born in 1942 in Daytona Florida. He joined the Air Force in 1960. While he was stationed in Alaska he took a USO painting lesson and the painting bug bit hard. When he left the Air Force Bob moved back to Florida and was introduced to the wet-on-wet painting technique through a class by William Alexander. William Alexander was a German painter who’s The Magic of Oil Painting ran on PBS from 1974-1982. William Alexander created the specific style of wet-on-wet that made Bob Ross famous and as Bob Ross became more famous his relationship with William Alexander became more strained. William Alexander believing that Bob Ross betrayed him by copying the technique. He also claimed that Bob Ross had borrowed some of the verbal patter that we all recognize today.
The wet-on-wet technique that both painters use is a modern take on an old technique that’s also called alla prima. This is a technique that requires fast oil painting as the entire painting needs to be finished before the first layer of oil paint dries. Painting alla prima means adding layers of oil paints on top of each other. This style of painting allows for the ability to create fast oil paintings as you do not have to wait for the previous layer to dry. It also allows for some mixing of colors on the canvas.
Bob Ross tweaked the wet-on-wet technique by adding a layer of thinned white paint across the entire canvas before starting on the painting. This primes the canvas for quicker alla prima painting. Priming the canvas in this way would allow Ross or Alexander to paint a landscape within the 30 minute run time of their shows.
Bob Ross was passionate about sharing his love of painting. He started The Joy of Painting on public television in 1982. To promote the show Ross would tour the country doing live classes at shopping malls and art stores. As the popularity of the show grew so did the audiences at the classes.
Most of Ross’s success and appeal was persona, almost everything people love about Ross was a carefully put together persona. This is not to say that he was not being genuine, but that Ross wanted to make sure that his show was accessibly, enjoyable, and timeless. He specifically chose to wear jeans and button-down shirt because he believed that it would be a timeless look for future viewings of the show. Ross also consciously spoke as if he had only one viewer so that that everyone watching felt that he was teaching just them.
The biggest appeal of Bob Ross for people was his calm and smooth voice. It is often joked that Bob Ross started painting ASMR. ASMR stands for autonomous sensory meridian response and is a tingling sensation, typically from the scalp down the back, that is triggered by some people due to specific stimuli. Not everyone experiences ASMR, but a popular genre of ASMR videos include brush strokes and soft calming whispering. Both of which are key facets of The Joy of Painting.
Bob Ross was also unrelentingly positive. Something that is best shown in quotes, some of these sayings appeared often and some less so but here are a few to illustrate his positivity.
“We don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents.”
“There’s nothing wrong with having a tree as a friend.”
“I can’t think of anything more rewarding than being able to express yourself to others through painting. Exercising the imagination, experimenting with talents, being creative; these things, to me, are truly the windows to your soul.”
“The secret to doing anything is believing that you can do it. Anything that you believe you can do strong enough, you can do. Anything. As long as you believe.”
“Let’s build a happy little cloud. Let’s build some happy little trees.”
Bob Ross sadly died on July 4th 1995 at the age of 52 from lymphoma. Ross was a lifelong smoker and hid his health problems from the general public until after his death. While Ross was alive he was beloved television personality. After he passed his popularity was slightly waning, until in 2015 the streaming service Twitch, which up until that point was pretty solely just used for video game streaming, streamed a nine day marathon of The Joy of Painting and introduced Bob Ross to a whole new audience. Since that time interest and love for the painter has continued.
We hope you sign up for one of our The Joy of Painting programs and spend a relaxing and smoothing time beating the devil out of your paint brushes.
And now it’s time for Book Traveler, with Victor:
Welcome to a new episode of Book Traveler. My name is Victor and I am a Librarian at the Largo Public Library. Today I am going to talk to you about a non-fiction book that we have in our Spanish collection, Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity by Paola Ramos.
Synopsis: Young Latinos across the United States are redefining their identities, pushing boundaries, and awakening politically in powerful and surprising ways. Many of them—Afrolatino, indigenous, Muslim, queer and undocumented, living in large cities and small towns—are voices who have been chronically overlooked in how the diverse population of almost sixty million Latinos in the U.S. has been represented. No longer.
In this empowering cross-country travelogue, journalist and activist Paola Ramos embarks on a journey to find the communities of people defining the controversial term, “Latinx.” She introduces us to the indigenous Oaxacans who rebuilt the main street in a post-industrial town in upstate New York, the “Las Poderosas” who fight for reproductive rights in Texas, the musicians in Milwaukee whose beats reassure others of their belonging, as well as drag queens, environmental activists, farm workers, and the migrants detained at our border. Drawing on intensive field research as well as her own personal story, Ramos chronicles how “Latinx” has given rise to a sense of collectivity and solidarity among Latinos unseen in this country for decades.
A vital and inspiring work of reportage, Finding Latinx calls on all of us to expand our understanding of what it means to be Latino and what it means to be American. The first step towards change, writes Ramos, is for us to recognize who we are.
Opinion: Paola Ramos organizes Latinx geographically, traversing the United States from the West Coast to the South, the East Coast, and finally to the Midwest. In addition to providing research and her own personal anecdotes, she includes accounts of the many Latinx people she met across the country. Voices of young, committed and ordinary people that are just beginning to be heard.
Besides being a gender inclusive term, Latinx is meant to capture all groups that are underrepresented and forgotten. Latinx is for everyone within the LGBTQ + community, indigenous peoples, people who do not speak Spanish as their mother tongue or at all, people facing addictions, people of different faiths, people with mental illness, people of different political identities, and more. LatinX ingeniously achieves its goal of defining Latinidad as an opportunity to create political and cultural coalitions that recognize common struggles.
Outro: That’s all for today, until the next edition of Book Traveler. Bye.
Stay safe everyone out there! Check out our programming page here as our planned programming has changed!
For everyone interested our intro music is by Break the Bans and the outro music is by Jahzzar, both artists can be found on Free Music Archive.
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