RAMble, the University Libraries' blog

I have had the opportunity to watch several movies on my list since my last posting, but I’ve decided to just talk about a couple of them. The first movie, Tampopo, was actually recommended to me by a patron several weeks ago, and then I discovered that it was on my list as well, so I made that a priority. The second movie, Under the Shadow, was an Iranian suspense/terror film that I had been eyeing on Amazon for a bit now. And third was Straight Outta Compton, a film which I had no expectations for. All three of these movies surprised me.

Tampopo is a Japanese film classified as a “spaghetti western”. Never having heard of that term, or understanding exactly what it meant, Tampopo ended up delighting me in the best possible way. It is a western in the sense that there are some “face-offs” between two characters in the film, and the main male protagonist is a cowboy in a sort of a way, but he drives a truck, not a horse. However, this movie is mainly about food, more specifically about a housewife’s dream to cook the best bowl of ramen ever. Goro, the cowboy, decides to help Tampopo, the housewife, achieve her dream by teaching her about the soul of ramen. It was a charming film about food and following your dream.

Under the Shadow was a film that I had added to my watchlist because I love horror/thriller movies and have come to love foreign films as well. Under the Shadow was unique in that it had a very long build up to the climax of the film, but wonderful in that the build-up didn’t feel so long. A mother and daughter are living in Tehran during the war, and the daughter discovers that something has begun to haunt their home. The relationship between the mother and daughter is strained as they try to deal with both the nightmare of war and the horror of their house. I was fairly impressed with this movie, and definitely felt it was worth watching.

Finally, Straight Outta Compton. It was interesting talking to people before watching this movie, because I got a variety of reactions, ranging from “That was a great movie!” to “Really, you’re checking that out?”. Because of this, I decided to watch it with an open mind. Again, I ended up being pleasantly surprised. While there was a lot of drama as the main group began to split up, I enjoyed learning about how Hip Hop music was influenced by the existing culture and social atmosphere of the time period. In addition, I thought the actors did a very good job in their portrayals of a very real story.

As always, feel free to leave comments or suggestions for next week’s post. Follow along in your own list at https://letterboxd.com/peterstanley/list/1001-movies-you-must-see-before-you-die/ .

by Neal Kenney, Special Collections Library Assistant II

Unbeknownst to many of us, the Philadelphia Eagles of the National Football League have a long history of preseason training camps being held at West Chester University and its predecessors. Training camps usually last about three to four weeks from late July until mid or late August.  The goal of training camp is to prepare the players, coaches and teams for the upcoming regular football season. 

The first Eagles’ training camp held at West Chester State Teacher’s College was in 1938.  The team practiced at Wayne Field, ate their meals in the dining room of Old Main Hall and slept on the third floor of the men’s dormitory, Old Wayne Hall. (1)  See the aerial photo of WCSTC campus from 1936.  Wayne Field, the Wayne Field Grandstand and Old Wayne Hall are located at the top left, and Old Main Hall is the large building on the bottom front of this photo taken from the 1936 Serpentine Yearbook, pages 200 and 201. 

Eagles training camp was again held at West Chester State in 1940.  Although the Eagles ended up with a dismal record of 1-10 in 1940, wide receiver Don Looney lead the NFL with 58 receptions. (2)

1n 1944 and 1945, the Eagles flew back to West Chester State Teacher’s College for preseason training camp.  In the 1940s, NFL players were not millionaires.  Many had other jobs – especially during World War II.  In a 1944 Eagles press release quoted in the August 24, 1982, Daily Local News, page 22,  West Chester was selected as their training camp site due to its excellent field and lights at Wayne Field which allowed the players to attend practices at night and “remain at their war jobs during the day.”

Note the advertisement on the right for the Eagles intersquad game to be held Tuesday, September 5, 1944. (The advertisement was in the 9/5/1944 issue of the Daily Local News, page 10.) The scrimmage was held at Wayne Field and was attended by an estimated crowd of 3,000 people, according to the September 6, 1944 issue of the Daily Local News on page 6.

After 35 years and much speculation,  The Philadelphia Eagles returned to West Chester State College for their preseason training camp in 1980.  Read the exciting details on the front page of the April 15, 1980 issue of The Quad. 

The first year the Eagles returned to West Chester, the Eagles won the NFC championship and went to the Super Bowl – more than a coincidence?  

From 1980 – 1995, The Eagles training camp was held at West Chester University.  The team practiced at the South Campus athletic fields and facilities.  The Eagles’ players used Schmidt Hall as  their sleeping quarters.  Schmidt became the first dorm with air conditioning.  The Eagles ate their meals at the cafeteria in Lawrence Center.

Having the Eagles at West Chester had many positives.  It was very prestigious that the Eagles selected West Chester to be their summer training camp home.  One could not beat the free publicity that went along with it.  It helped West Chester University with recruiting college athletes – not just for football, but for all sports. The Eagles training camp provided a number of student athletes employment during camp in such areas as security, housekeeping and other jobs.  For example, WCU great and future NFL star Lee Woodall had a job driving a van that drove the Eagles players to-and-from the playing fields to the dorms. (3)

Having the Eagles’ players including Eagles greats such as Ron Jaworski, Wilbert Montgomery, Reggie White and Randall Cunningham practicing on the South Campus fields of West Chester University and seeing them up close and personal was a thrill to many Eagles fans locally, regionally and beyond.  (See “Camp Kotite” photos to the right from Daily Local News, July 20, 1993, page B-1.)

There were some negatives also.  Keeping the Eagles funding and expenses separate from University funding for a state funded school like West Chester was sometimes difficult.  There was the wear and tear on the fields and facilities the Eagles used, and the rush to prepare campus for the West Chester University students attending classes in the fall. (4)

In 1996 the Philadelphia Eagles and West Chester University had a mutual parting of the ways.  The Eagles flew off to Lehigh University for their training camp.  Their training camps were held at Lehigh through 2012.  Since then, the Eagles training camp has been held at their NovaCare Complex in South Philadelphia. 

Go Eagles!  Go Golden Rams!  Go West Chester University!

Notes and Additional References

Philadelphia Eagles Training Camp Locations taken from Pro Football Reference. 

(1) "Philadelphia Eagles Set Up Training Camp at West Chester." Quad Angles July 8, 1938, pg. 3. 

(2) Ray Didinger, and Robert A. Lyons,  The EAGLES Encyclopedia (Philadelphia:  Temple University Press, 2005, p. 258.

(3) Neil Geoghegan, “Birds would look good at WCU” Daily Local News, 8/16/2003, page C-1.

(4) Ibid., page C-2

As we approach the new school year, we’re excited to share with you some new changes and improvements that we’ve made to the University Libraries.  

First, we’d like to warmly welcome our new University Librarian, Mary Page, to West Chester.  Mary has over 30 years of senior-level experience and leadership in library administration, research and services in a variety of public higher education settings. We are looking forward to the next Page in our collective story! Be sure to say hi if you see her!

In addition to new leadership, we have made some cosmetic changes to the library over the summer.  Take a look at our new University Libraries website (library.wcupa.edu) and share any feedback you might have via the “Feedback” form found in the navigation bar.  We also relocated the Research Help Desk so that it is next to the Library Help Desk so we can more easily assist patrons who may have questions that overlap our service areas. Stop by during your first week to meet your librarian or catch up from last semester!

In our continuing effort to improve services, we have also extended the loan periods for most of the items in the library.  Most books from our general collection now check out to student for 35 days and to faculty and staff for 6 months! The loan period for books in the Reserve Collection has also been increased to 3 hours to give students more time with the resources they need.  

Students are used to having 125 free pages to print per week, but because we’ve changed the default setting on the printers to double-sided, it’s even easier to conserve your pages now, so you’ll be sure not to run out! Still need something printed single-sided? Don’t worry, it’s easy to change the settings and we’re happy to help you!

In an effort to ensure that on demand books are returned on time and made available to everyone, we’ve increased our fines schedule slightly.  This is the first time in more than 20 years that we’ve raised our fines and they are now more consistent with fine rates for other libraries within the PASSHE system.  We hope that it will encourage everyone to return items on time and in good condition so that we can share them with everyone who needs access to them.

Our new library management system also accommodates requests and renewals online! Log into your library record using your WCU credentials and see what you have checked out, when it’s due, and renew all without leaving your dorm. Now you can also request items directly from the catalog! Submit a request from your laptop wherever you are and stop by the Library Help Desk to pick it up after you receive notification.

This week I found myself watching two movies on complete opposite sides of the spectrum: Victoria, and 13^th. I had done some research on Victoria before watching it and discovered that it was a one-take movie, meaning (perhaps obvious to some) that they filmed it all in one “take” or shot. This is extremely impressive from a technical point of view, and first came to the limelight with Birdman a couple years ago. I was excited to see how well they executed it. The second movie, 13^th, is a Netflix documentary that had been in my queue for a while, but was recently added to my “1001 Movies to watch before you die list”, so I decided that this would also be a good next film.

Victoria ended up being fairly disappointing for me. I felt that they did a good job technically with the one-shot take, but it felt like the actors’ character portrayals lost something as a result. There was a good, long buildup to the action part of the movie, but then it was over quickly and felt as though it dragged as Victoria and her group of friends struggled to escape. Overall, however, it was a fairly enjoyable plot, but had some confusing and unnecessary scenes thrown in.

13^th, on the other hand, I absolutely loved. This is a documentary on the prison system and how it came to be that “the U.S. holds only 5% of the world’s population, but holds more than 20% of the world’s prisoners”. 13^th takes you on an engrossing historic tour of how the prison system changed and grew into what it is today, but also addresses the issue of the 13^th Amendment which states “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States”. In this film, multiple academics and scholars argue that the prison system has taken advantage of this aspect of the 13^th Amendment. The entire film is filled with discussions and narrative that make you question what you knew (or thought you knew) about the system. As a whole, I thought it was extremely well put together as well as engaging for the entirety of the message.

Feel free to comment with your thoughts or suggestions, or follow along yourself at https://letterboxd.com/peterstanley/list/1001-movies-you-must-see-before-you-die/ .

After a lot of reflection, I decided to begin my movie adventure by watching some newer movies on my list—this way, I could talk to patrons about the new movies coming into the IMC, but also try to learn some of these film concepts before watching some classics. This past weekend, I took home Hell or High Water, Slumdog Millionaire, and I, Daniel Blake. 

Hell or High Water was the movie I was most unsure about—I haven’t watched a lot of westerns in my time, but since Chris Pine was in it, I decided to give it a chance. Again, I haven’t had much experience with the western genre, but this movie was very different from the stereotypical western. It felt gritty, but also believable. Having spent some time out in Kansas and Oklahoma, a lot of the movie resonated with me, especially the small, half-deserted towns. This was a western for the modern century, and I felt that they did a wonderful job in its portrayal. 

Slumdog Millionaire was also enjoyable, but I found myself less engrossed in this movie than in Hell or High Water. It was an interesting premise, and Dev Patel did a great job as Jamal (see also Lion). 

Finally, my favorite of the week—I, Daniel Blake. Unfortunately, this movie isn’t out in the U.S. yet, but I was able to get a U.K. version and switch region settings on my laptop (Thanks ILL friends!). This film was well worth the wait—a story about an older man who has a heart attack and has to sign up for unemployment benefits befriends a young mom who is going through the same difficulties in traversing the system. A wonderful parody of the governmental benefits system, I was captivated for its entire duration. The only downside was the occasional difficulty of understanding the British accents. 

And thus ends my first foray into 1001 Movies to Watch Before You Die (figure out how many you’ve seen here: https://letterboxd.com/peterstanley/list/1001-movies-you-must-see-before-you-die/ ).