Pages of History
The newsletter of the Naturist Education
Foundation and the Naturist Action Committee.
Volume 1, Number 3. March 2020.
A Little Behind in the Library.
Doug Hickok, NEFRL Director
The shelf you see in the photo above is a subset of the incoming
donations, thanks to all our wonderful donors! With our limited
volunteers, we've been behind in merging these donations into the
collection. It's fair to say our behinds are now in gear and we're
making good progress!
After a full weekend before the COVID-19 lock-down, we managed to clear
off the top three shelves. I'm estimating it'll take another two
full weekends to complete merging in the new magazine donations, and our
trips tend to be about once every two months. I'll announce when the
revised magazine list is published.
This isn't an easy task either. For each issue, we need to find
it in our index. If it's new, we add it to the index and add it to
the shelf, shifting the existing items to make room if needed. If
it's a duplicate, we still need to find it on the shelf so we can compare
the quality and keep the best one.
At one point, I needed to shift nearly all the magazines starting with
"S" by two shelves. In a naturist collection, "S" is a significant
letter, almost as big as "N". I was also constantly walking back and
forth, moving heavy boxes of magazines, bending, squatting, and crawling
on the floor to find issues on the low shelves. It's an exercise
program I like to call "library yoga". Soon enough I will be as fit
as the cover model on the 1934 La Culture Physique I'm holding in
the photo above.
Keep me in shape by keeping those donations coming!
If you're doing a little house cleaning and would like to make a
donation, please get in
contact
and lets figure out the best way to make it happen. Remember that
any donation to NEF, either money or material, is tax-deductible.
Digital Lending and Self Quarantine
Doug Hickok, NEFRL Director
Are you getting bored while avoiding COVID-19? Sign up
to be a library member, and start making requests. We have some
interesting things to listen to that may not exist elsewhere
online. During the lock-down, we're allowing patrons to finish
their loan early (instead of requiring it to be 14 days per loan).
Enjoy an album or three, and then request a few more to enjoy at your
own pace.
Did I mention that becoming a member is FREE?
Click
here to read how it works and how to sign up.
New Arrivals
Doug Hickok, NEFRL Director
How many vinyl records have you listened to lately? Chances are, not
enough!
NEFRL has a pretty large collection of vinyl records. They were
loosely split into two separate sets: Set One is "skinny dipping", and Set
Two is "streaking". Both of these topics were pretty popular when
vinyl was the norm.
I'm pleased to announce that
Set One is available for digital loan.
Check the
Audio
Materials page for the newly available items, and feel free to give
them a digital whirl if you're a library member.
Also, I created a "
demonstration page" with a
NEFRL video and
our
oldest Edison record that I reviewed in the February
newsletter. Check it out!
Treasures of the Library
Doug Hickok, NEFRL Director
Over the next few issues, I'd like to highlight some of the
interesting items from our audio CD collection, which has been available
since February. If you're a library member, you can listen to any
of these albums by requesting the audio tag numbers.
Perhaps one of the most common naturist themes for artists to sing
about is skinny dipping. Although we have several, three albums
stand out.
The most interesting, in my opinion, is a CD by Edens Edge
(audio135). They are a religious country band who normally have
song titles like "Amen", "Last Supper", and "Christ Alone". They
are all natives of Arkansas and were performing from 2006-2013.
Their self-titled album peaked at #51 on the Billboard Top 200,
and at #9 in the Billboard Top Country Albums. Edens Edge
have been on four tours with numerous big-name country music stars, and
even did the National Anthem at a Monday Night Football game.
Believe it or not, the album contains a cute Skinny Dipping song where
they positively say they're "pretty sure it ain't no sin" and "let's
just hope nobody sees, but if they do so what." This song, despite
being from a religious artist, would fit in perfectly at a nudist dance.
Speaking of nudist dance parties, the Vengaboys did a Skinny
Dipping song as well (audio233). You may not recognize the name
because they were a two-hit wonder in the USA during the late
1990's. "We Like to Party" was their big dance hit, hitting #26 on
the Billboard Hot 100. "Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom" was the
second hit which topped at #84. After these hits, in 2000, the
released The Platinum Album which has the Skinny Dipping
song. Interestingly, they are still active and just re-released
this album on digital platforms this year. The song itself
describes rounding up a group of friends and having fun skinny dipping
"all night long" or at least "until the cops show up, then we gotta
run".
Lastly, I can't say it's the worst, but "Robby & Friends"
(audio205) stands out as being notably bad. (Not to be confused
with "Robbie Krieger & Friends", an album by a former member of The
Doors which I'm sure is excellent.) The lyrics are quite positive
to skinny dipping, but the phrase "paddling around in my embryo pool"
seems a bit much. All-in-all the off-key voices of the vocalists
and the simplicity of the music just doesn't make a pleasant recipe.
An album I'd fully expect to have a Skinny Dipping song, but
surprisingly doesn't, is "Songs for Naturists: Live from the Naked
Front" (audio239), performed by Helene Williams and Leonard Lehrman who
were part of the Opera/Musical Theater Special Interest Group (SIG) of
TNS. Not only was this a TNS SIG performing at the TNS gatherings,
but the CD itself was at least partly funded by NEF about 20 years ago.
NAC News
Doug Hickok, NAC Board Member
With the COVID-19 crisis, and many state legislatures shutting down
early, there hasn't been much news on the NAC legislative front. It
remains unclear what will happen to the bills being tracked by both NAC
and GAT (the AANR government affairs team). Does this mean we'll be
twice as busy this Fall? Only time will tell, but it's likely.
Here are a few interesting links detailing the impact of COVID-19 on the
legislative sessions:
Help us prepare for a busy legislative session this Fall by getting
involved now. Since you have extra time, why not sign up to be a NAC Area Representative? If that's too formal,
you can always volunteer in other ways and help out behind the scenes --
just get in contact with us. Or, if you're too busy, another
critical piece is monetary donations. The Naturist Action Committee relies entirely on
generous donors like you, which helps us advance and protect the rights of
naturists throughout North America.