The United States Library of Congress has selected The University of Michigan Law Library website on Supreme Court nominee John Glover Roberts, Jr for inclusion in their historic collection of Internet materials related to the Supreme Court. This site provides comprehensive information about and writings by John Glover Roberts, Jr., including Department of Justice and White House records, Majority Opinions (D.C. Circuit), Oral Arguments before the Supreme Court, Party Briefs, articles about Roberts from the New York Times, and articles by Roberts from various journals.

Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson has been diagnosed with liver cancer and told a newspaper in his native Pittsburgh that he is dying.

Wilson has recently been completing his 10-play cycle chronicling the black experience in 20th-century America. Two of the plays in this cycle – “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson” earned Pulitzer Prizes. The 10th and final play, “Radio Golf,” is now running at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles.

Wilson was diagnosed with the ailment in June. He is 60 years old and lives in Seattle.

No new play or dance events on the horizon for The Play Ground to report on so, while the nice weather is still here, we will continue to cover outdoor events. Dawn Farm, a facility that assists addicts and alcoholics in achieving long term recovery, is hosting a Dawn Farm Jamboree on September 11 at their farm in Ypsilanti. It is a family event with activities for all ages.
If you wish to brush up on the topic before you go, here is a book you may be interested in: The Wellness-Recovery Connection: Charting Your Pathway To Optimal Health While Recovering From Alcoholism And Drug Addiction by John Newport.

Spoon has thrown down a helping of unbelievably good music in their latest offering, Gimme Fiction. While listening to this album, you know you are listening to something special. Even better, you're not going to hear this album looping all over the airwaves, so it's almost like you've found your own private beach in the tropics with a tiki bar serving ice-cold Coronas for a quarter.

Sherlock Holmes--what other literary character has appeared in so many stories not written by his creator, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? Four notable additions to this Conan Doyle sub-genre have appeared in the past year:

In Mitch Cullin's A Slight Trick of the Mind, Holmes is 93, no longer sure of his memory or of his interpretation of events. His post-atom bomb visit to Hiroshima with a Japanese correspondent is haunting.

Michael Chabon's The Final Solution: A Story of Detection, also taking place after WWII, introduces a mute young refugee from the Third Reich. Caleb Carr's The Italian Secretary takes Holmes and Watson to Edinburgh, where murderous scoundrels are profiting from historic events at Holyrood Castle.

There were no new fiction titles on the list last Sunday. But a few new titles that the editors recommended are always worth a look.

Lunar Park by Bret Easton Ellis has provoked a lot of attention. Ellis has written a novel with a protagonist named Bret Easton Ellis. How much of it is real? Does it matter?

The Good Priest’s Son by Reynolds Price can be added to the small but growing list of 9/11 novels. Once again the prolific Price wrestles with the role of religion in everyday life.

Sean Astin, erstwhile hobbit and son of Patty Duke, is slated to join the cast of 24 this fall. For those who can't wait, Astin's book There And Back Again: An Actor's Tale gives a gritty and honest (too honest?) look into life on the ground during the making of the Lord of the Rings movies.

Nostalgic for high school? Can't wait for it to end so you can get on with your life?

If you don't run with the Heathers, or if your Breakfast Club persona is more Judd Nelson or Anthony Michael Hall than Molly Ringwald or Emilio Estevez, then Freaks and Geeks might be for you.

Set in a northern suburb of Detroit during the 1980-81 school year, the show traces the lives of a group of high school burnouts and their D&D-playing younger siblings as they try to figure out the answer to life, the universe and everything. As heartwarming, cringeworthy, and funny as real life, Freaks and Geeks is solid -- it didn't run long enough to Jump the Shark.

Creator Paul Feig, raised in Mt. Clemens, has just released a new book and is signed on to direct a movie adaptation of Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl. McKinley High "alumni" have gone on to appear in projects from Spider-Man and its sequel to ER to The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

There have been numerous accounts of Waterloo, the famous, final and decisive battle of the Napoleonic era fought in Belgium on June 15, 1815. Alessandro Barbero, an Italian historian and novelist, has penned a new and exciting history of the encounter in The Battle: A New History of Waterloo. This truly fresh, balanced and appealing narrative of the battle, drawing on first-hand recollections from participants of all ranks and nationalities, presents new insights along with intense, colorful descriptions of the various skirmishes, charges and defensive stands that decided the outcome.

If you're waiting for classes to begin and looking for some entertainment, try listening to How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Music Theater. The title perfectly describes the plot, with a little David Sedaris and a little Catcher in the Rye thrown in. I'm not sure I would listen to it in public, unless you can keep from snorting when you laugh. Here's my favorite quote from our hero's high school english teacher:

"Oedipus Rex. A heartwarming little family story in which our hero
kills his father, sleeps with his mother, and gouges his own eyes out.
If it had been written last year, the school board would be burning it
on the front lawn, but since it's two thousand years old, it's deemed
acceptable for your impressionable little brainlets" (pg. 58).

Have fun moving in, and remember all the dorm beds are extra long twin!