I look like a librarian

Weirdly, I'm dressed less like a librarian than usual - I'm wearing jeans and a blue v-neck t-shirt. But twice in the last half-hour, I've been stopped by people asking questions. One nice old guy wanted to know how to get to his granddaughter's FAA? FFA? thing. I have no idea where it is, but people in the archives kept giving me maps my first week, so I passed one along and helpfully oriented him. ("We're here, and we just passed this street, and so you need to go...").
So then I got into the archives and signed myself in, as I go, and was borrowing a pencil when a pair of undergrads started asking me questions: is this library closing? what are the hours? wouldn't it be great if this were open 24/7 for finals studying? does this room have, like, old books? All of those were questions I could answer (no; 9-6 M-TH, 9-5 F; yes!; yes). I started moving toward a table to start working, which is when they sussed out I don't actually work there. They apologized, I explained that I am a librarian, just not here, and I make a joke about looking like a librarian. So - hunh, I guess I do.

Feast of the Day, 26 April

Usually, I wait until the end of the day for this feast, and indeed I might regret it later, when I read about Katy and Clover's amazing gift box in What Katy Did at School. But this is all the more staggering for being unexpected. For Fourth of July at this school, the girls can send away for as many snacks as they like. Here's one girl's staggering order:
"Two pounds of Chocolate Caramels.
Two pounds of Sugar Almonds.
Two pounds of Lemon Drops.
Two pounds of Mixed Candy.
Two pounds of Maccaroons.
A dozen Oranges.
A dozen Lemons.
A drum of Figs.
A box of French Plums.
A loaf of Almond Cake."
The girl is found on her bed, "ghastly and pallid", 24 hours after the sweets arrive. How much did she eat?

shibboleths

What I'm going to say sounds more clever in my head than it will here, I swear. Along with my lengthy musings on habit lately, I've been thinking about shibboleths. Yesterday, some friendly man greeted me with enthusiasm, apologizing because he hadn't realized I was here, and would have said hi earlier. Then a different man yesterday said hello in the way that you do when you think you know someone, but can't place them.
Here's the thing: I don't know either of them! Of course I don't, how could I? I don't live here. But I looked as though I belonged in this building with the archives. My glasses, my messenger bag slung crosswise across me, my loafers, the colors I was wearing all made me look like someone who belonged there.
I think there must be loads of these little shibboleths that indicate inclusion in whatever group you're in, or indicate that someone belongs where they are. I just happened to do well at whatever shibboleth bingo was in these guys' heads yesterday.
Anyway, as I said, I think there's an interesting (if not startlingly original) idea somewhere in here, but I don't know that I've managed to convey it here.

Feast of the Day, 25 April

Sorry I didn't post yesterday. Here's a food-related thought to make up for it, though. Today in the archives I'm re-reading a couple of old favorites, What Katy Did at School and Little Men, because of course my research is based on what I read here at the Library, so if I want to include them I should look at them here, y'know?
So anyway: I was thinking about Little Men and the chapter in which Nan and Daisy are given a little kitchen to work in, so they learn to cook. I was thinking about how this is probably one of the first Domestic Science lessons in a school story, because of course before this girls would have learned to cook before school, right? Well, wrong, because Daisy's mother, Meg, didn't know how to cook until she was married, which throws this theory out the window.
And here's the thing: why on earth didn't Meg know how to cook? Was Marmee assuming all of her girls would be able to keep a servant? I swear, for girls who cry poor as often as those March girls did, they sure were entitled!
So no Feast of the Day for yesterday, because Meg wouldn't have been able to cook one when she was a schoolgirl.

Feast of the Day, 24 April

Today's books were almost literally without mention of food at all. So I'm going back to what would have been my Feast of the Day, if I had been doing Feasts of the Day on April 11th. I read a really disarming book called Bob Knight's Diary at Poplar Hill School, published in 1900. Bob befriends the cook at his school and does all sorts of work for her so she'll cook doughnuts for him and his classmates. His obsession with doughnuts reads as follows: "There is nothing like being on the right side of the cook. Doughnuts! Doughnuts!! Doughnuts!!!" If I make it to the super retro-looking Krispy Kreme while I'm here, I'll eat one in Bob's honor.

"read my lips: al-lee-gay-tor"

One of the very nice people from the archives here invited me to lunch near the Student Union here, which has a sinkhole right near it. A very nice sinkhole, mind, with a fountain and amphitheater seating so one can look at the water. Anyway, she pointed out an alligator! So I went closer to the fence and took this blurry picture.
This was more exciting than we knew; both of us told people "hey, we saw an alligator!" as we went back to our respective tasks. The person I talked to, after I excitedly told him about the alligator, said something about a nearby lake. I said, "well, no, we were at the sinkhole".
My lunch companion came to me later and said that one of her colleagues had told her there weren't supposed to be alligators in that sinkhole, and this one must have walked over from that lake. Dude! I didn't know they did that.
The title for this post is fron The Muppet Movie, by the way.

Ring of endless light

I was playing around on imdb just now, as one does, and I saw that Jared Padalecki was in A Ring of Endless Light. "Oooh, he'd be a really cute Adam!" thought I, and headed over to youtube to watch a clip. He played Zachary Gray instead, and was a convincing jerk (the guy who was playing Adam was not even close to amazing enough, unless the Leo character in the movie also spends time with dolphins. He would have been an okay Leo).
I thought the actress who played Vicky looked familiar, so I went back to check it out, and then thought: "oh! attractive? wooden line readings? yep, that was Mischa Barton all right!"

Feast of the Day, 23 April

I'm disinclined to have a Feast of the Day today, because nothing was especially exciting. One book I read hardly mentioned food at all, the other just wasn't very interesting about it. Except for this: every pic-nic (yes, they hyphenated it!) that these children went on featured them starting a fire and then roasting apples. I don't really get this - it seems that part of the value of apples (aside from yumminess) is their thirst-quenching, very handy on a pic-nic! Starting a fire and waiting around for apples to roast seems very strange. Not the weirdest thing by far about The Great Elm, but it didn't help any.

the phaeton

I can't really describe why one of the books I read today (Jacob Abbott's The Great Elm, 1856) was so unsettling, but I'd guess it's a cognitive dissonance issue. Candidly, I'd prefer to discuss it face-to-face, so ask me sometime, if you're curious. But I will share this picture with you, in hopes that this will help. For what it's worth, Blogger crashed my web browser just now, as I was starting this blog post, in what I can only assume was an editorial comment.

ads in a book from 1866

Ads in the back from a religious book from 1866, which made me curious or amused me:

THE INFIDEL. Reminiscences of the West India Islands. Second Series, No. IV. Two illustrations. 18mo., pp. 137.

STORIES OF SCHOOL-BOYS. Second Series. Five Illustrations. 18mo., pp. 228.

TOO LATE Or, the Fatal Effects of Procrastination. Illustrated in a Series of Authentic Sketches. By Rev. J.T. Barr, A.M., Author of “Recollections of a Minister", etc., etc. 18mo, pp. 115.

THE BRANDY DROPS; Or, Charlie’s Pledge. A Temperance Story. By AUNT JULIA. 18mo., pp. 103.

we're all in the mood for a melody

Last weekend, at the house I visited in Mississippi, there was a keyboard. I was startled - heaven knows why - by how clumsily I ran through some scales. It was as though I hadn't played for years, and of course I hadn't. This bothered me so much that I found a very inexpensive keyboard and brought it home this weekend. I can't get the volume as low as I'd like, so now I'm a bit worried that my neighbors will hear, and be annoyed by, the ineptly played scales.

Feast of the Day, 20 April 2012

I didn't post this yesterday, but I read it then. It's from a book called Miss Howard's School, by the improbably-named Glance Gaylord. This book is set in a rural community, so the kids at school have comparatively less money than in most of the books I read. So this feast sounds less lavish, but given the standards of the community, it really is a feast: "The cup-custards were so delicious, and the pound-cake second to none! and the peaches and biscuit and butter were praised even higher; and Aunt Hetty’s tea, being made by one so fond of tea, was of course faultless. The little girls liked it all the better for drinking it out of little china cups with gold rims, the relics of Aunt Hetty’s younger days." I like this one, too, because the author takes pains to assure the reader that this is very good food, not just a huge quantity.

Feast of the Day, 19 April

So, yeah, today wasn't as bad as I thought it might be. This morning's archive work was really good: I had a really interesting idea (though I says it as shouldn't) about substitutes for religion in schools, and I got through the work I'd wanted to do today by lunchtime. So instead of staying just for the sake of it, I went home super crazy early! At home this afternoon I read and took notes on about 200 pages of the secondary material I'd borrowed, so that was good, and then I watched a couple of Supernatural episodes just now, because obviously I want nightmares.

But none of that is relevant to the Feast of the Day! Here it is, from Bobby Blake and His School Chums - a description of a lunch packed for four people and eaten, by the way, after snacking on apples in the morning: "A whole roast chicken was dragged to light amid shouts of glee. Then there were ham and tongue sandwiches, peach and apple tarts with plenty of filling and with golden, flaky crust, and biscuits, freshly baked that morning with a pot of honey to spread on them." Seriously: each boy ate, on average, a sandwich, a biscuit, a tart, and a quarter of a chicken, after snacking on apples! These kids are 11 or 12, by the way.

something's gotta give

If you don't want to read whining, stop here.
In the evenings, I want to have a life. I want to be able to spend two hours watching ANTM without guilt - or, if I feel guilt, it should be guilt at giving attention to the increasingly erratic Tyra Banks. But I feel as though I should spend at least an hour or two every evening looking at secondary sources and typing up notes and writing my paper, because it's becoming increasingly clear that I will need that context soon. But heavens, I give eight hours a day to this time in the archives, and I would like to spend some of that time typing and reading secondary sources. Yes, yes, I know. But it's stupid for me to feel stressed-out and behind on what is, essentially, a working vacation. It took some considerable effort to talk myself out of bed this morning in anything like a reasonable mood. Which is why I'm deliberately planning to be about half an hour late this morning, thanks to spending 20 minutes on the computer while eating some breffa (no vanilla Kashi in Florida, so far as I've seen, but honey nut Cheerios are a tasty substitute).

Feast of the Day, 18 April

This one might be cheating, because the school serves it as Thanksgiving dinner. But they serve it to no more than 25 people, so I think it still counts. This is from One Year at Our Boarding-School, from the mid-1870s:

"Soups, roast and boiled turkey, oyster sauce, roast beef, chickens, scalloped oysters, tomatoes, beets, turnips, potatoes, apple fritters, currant jelly, cranberries, celery and pickles. For dessert: Meringue pudding, mince-pie, apple-pie, cream-pie, cherry-pie, lemon-pie, cranberry-pie, pumpkin-pie, custard-pie, dried-apple-pie, plum-pie....Then came ice-cream, cake and candy...a cup of coffee, nuts and raisins finished the dinner."

I love that they serve apple fritters as part of dinner! And then serve apple pie afterward. Just staggering. This makes the Sucrerie de la Montagne's menu slightly less impressive, though it was, perhaps, close.

OK, off to my lunch - a PBJ and a plum - which seems sad and meager now, though I'm sure it will be yummy.

new feature: Feast of the Day, 17 April

Yes, I know today's the 18th. Bear with me. I meant to blog this yesterday, but I was (funnily enough) out late at a yummy dinner of my own. Yesterday I read a description of a feast sent from home to a boarding school that, I felt sure, had inspired a young Enid Blyton to pick up her pen. ("I'll see you this feast, and raise you lashings of ginger-beer! Bring it on!")
Today, I read about a feast that might actually have been more staggering, so I decided on a new feature: the Feast of the Day. Here's yesterday's Feast of the Day, courtesy of Cathalina at Greycliff, a book I finished yesterday. Cathalina's roommate gets a box from home containing the following, which the roommate and Cathalina serve to ten guests: fried chicken, salad, blackberry jelly, birthday cake with candles, nut bread, pimento & cheese sandwiches, butter, rolls, fudge, divinity, "cream candies, made with fondant", blanched almonds and hickory nut meats, olives, pickles, oranges, apples, chocolates, and cocoa.

Olive Garden

Oh, I miss Olive Garden! In particular, the dinners there with the friend of mine who likes Olive Garden more than I do, if that's possible.
But really, too, I'm mentioning Olive Garden here because I don't have the e-mail address of the person whose couch I slept on this last weekend, and to whom I promised this link of Harry Potter people saying American phrases. So if you're reading this, here you go . (And if you're not that person, watch it anyway! It's funny).

pointless jargon

I went to a lecture tonight, and it was so jargon- and theory-filled that I didn't understand much of it. Thankfully, I liked the speaker's voice, and I thought some of what he said was interesting. He was wearing a lined jacket which reminded me of a magician, and I found that distracting. Also - and I wish I were making this up - he used the word "intentionality", which just boggled the mind. In context, "intent" would have worked just as well, and saved four syllables! It's even worse, to my mind, than "functionality", which is also awful.

bizarre book description

I can't read books without at least a five-minute break in between them first; otherwise, they blur together. So I checked my e-mail and looked up Daisy Summerfield's Style in this library's catalogue; I still want to re-read it. They have a copy, which delights me, not least because of this incredibly disapproving item desciption: "An aspiring young artist squanders money and rationalizes the use of unethical methods to create an artistic air around herself, not realizing that artistic skill, not surroundings, make an artist."
Um, well, yes? Maybe? I mean, the book is about Daisy becoming an artist. She squanders money on things like food and "egg shampoo", whatever that is. When she's extravagant, she returns the items almost immediately. And oh yeah, she becomes a good artist. And the person from whom she steals the luggage doesn't mind at all, as it turns out.
But really, I don't think I've ever read a book description in a library catalogue that was so disapproving! Makes me want to write some of my own, like this: "A "fable" written in three days that, through an improbably naif character and several inaccuracies, trivializes the Holocaust." (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas really was written in three days, by the way, which explains a lot).

Pensacola

On the way back from Mississippi yesterday, I got lost in Pensacola for a while; I couldn't be bothered to look at a map to get to the beach. This is as close as I got. I'm ashamed to say I don't know what sort of bird this is, but he was an agreeable fellow, turning his head so I could get a profile shot.

am I a troll?

I just did something I rarely do on Facebook: called someone out for sexism. Here's a news flash: if you compare a male athlete's poor performance to playing like a girl, you're being sexist. You're trying to say that women are worse athletes. People say this who would never, presumably, say that an athlete played like someone of a different race.
I might be unfriended for this, I might get angry responses. I don't think I deserve anger: seriously, if you don't want to get called for being sexist, don't post sexist things on Facebook. But I'm tired of going on Facebook and seeing people be stupid.

century-old fanfic

Those who know me well will probably know about my affection for and fascination with fanfic. If not, well: okay, I have an affection for and fascination with fanfic. You're all caught up now.
I was reading a book from 1911 yesterday (The Girls of Dudley School), and two of the girls presented a play to some of their friends. The girls had decided that Juliet wasn't right for Romeo, and he wouldn't have wound up dead if he were to fall in love with someone else. They choose “that jolly Miss Rosalind... ready for any kind of a joke or good time” from As You Like It. Their play proceeds with Romeo acting like Romeo, and Rosalind being Rosalind, to great comic effect. I thought it was funny, but was also delighted to find century-old fanfic, essentially! The SO pointed out that not only is it fanfic, but also that these two girls were shippers.

no carbs!

I'm in Mississippi, in a really charming house with a screened-in porch and lots of windows and a couple of vaguely run-down buildings in the back, which seems very Southern to me. This house also has wireless! So here I am.
Last night I was at a gas station in Alabama, filling up and checking on my directions. I wandered around in search of a snack and found a display of seven different flavors of pork rinds. This horrified me, because I'm not a fan, but I loved that the packaging says, "No Carbs!" Well, yes, that's truth in advertising for you.

Edible books - children's titles

I've learned from the previous post that I need to mention the titles in reverse order. Hmmm. Okay, so: Winnie the Pooh, The Stupids Die, The Sneetches and Green Eggs and Ham.

Edible books - adult titles

Dude, not that kind of adult title! The library here had an Edible Books contest: people made edible cake-like things inspired by a book. I don't have permission to post these - didn't know who to ask - so I assume it's okay. No one stopped me from taking pictures, anyway. Just so there aren't too many in one blog post, here are the adult books: Gibbon, a book about Marie Antoinette, an Agatha Christie, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and, weirdly for cake, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.

I have to 'fess up

Okay, here's something that happened on Monday, but I was too embarrassed to confess it until now. See the door? Well, that's the door into the building with the archives. Monday morning, I couldn't get in. I tried to open the door with no success. I noticed that there were wheelchair placards on the door, so I thought that perhaps one had to press the button to have the doors work. I couldn't find the button! A girl inside the building saw my plight and came to let me in, and I thought: "oh, of course! It's an archives, and those are secure. Of course I have to be let in from the inside!"

It wasn't until a day later that I realized that I needed to pull, not push, on the door. School for the Gifted, indeed!

"rowdyish actions of a rowdy"

One of my books from today was written by a Jesuit, and was very Victorian. At one point in the book, to teach a lesson about the Evils of Cheap Literature, a professor at the school reads a chapter about a prank. Most of the boys laugh, but then they are corrected: "you have been laughing at the rowdyish actions of a rowdy." I love this phrase because it sounds like something I'd make up when I'm just talking at random!

college-ruled paper

Why did I buy a sketchbook, of all things? I'm the worst artist I know. I bought it because I'd run out of scrap paper to take notes on, and because my laptop is too heavy to carry comfortably all the way to campus if I'm riding my bike. I went to a campus bookstore to look for paper, but all of their paper, even stationery, was college-ruled. I dislike college-ruled paper any time, but especially if I have to take my notes in pencil (which, of course, I do - it's an archives). So - yep, I went for the one pad of paper with no lines at all.

more 19th-century slang

I've moved from reading about Methodists to reading about Jesuits. The last Methodist book I read was super intense at the end: the villainess was eeevil and manipulative, but the comeuppance completely rocked.
The Jesuit book I'm reading - Percy Wynn, or, Making a Boy of Him - has one excellent bit of slang. Two bad guys, an Irish-American and an Italian, appear almost randomly (I swear, this isn't the set-up to a joke!). The Irish-American calls the other bad guy an "outlandish Garibaldian" - which isn't catchy at all. No wonder the guys are trying to make a living being wicked in Eastern Kansas of all places.

slang, circa 1862

These are recopied verbatim from the publishers' book advertisements (for religious and non-fiction works) in the book with the corn and rice waffles (see below). Can you find the bizarre word? And can you explain it to me? I have no context at all, except a very modern one:

BOOKS FOR SUNDAY-SCHOOLS.
200 Mulberry-Street, New York.

SWITZERLAND:
Historical and Descriptive. 18 mo, pp 214

HENRY'S FIRESIDE,
with Peeps at his Grandpa's Farm. By the Author of "Little Ella." Two illustrations. 18 mo.

corn and rice waffles?

The second book I read today was published in 1862, and was notable for never mentioning the Civil War at all. The SO suggested that perhaps the publishers thought the war would be over soon, and that's possible. But I still think it's insensitive to publish a book where a girl complains about the bread & butter and tea she is serves, saying that she wants coffee and meat and "corn or rice waffles" as they eat at home. I can't get my head around "corn or rice waffles", especially the latter.

tempted by apples

I promised myself I wouldn't complain about anything on this trip, because I feel very lucky. So that saves me from complaining about being sleepy while reading today, and my legs being tired from biking. And it frees up space to blog about what I read today.
I'm reading school stories, as I do, but today they were all evangelical Methodist ones from between 1840 and 1870. I usually don't read school stories like those! Anyway, in one, our heroine is tempted into bad behavior by a classmate. They - gasp! - steal a few apples. Let me say that again: it's a Christian book, and the heroine is tempted by the apple. Remarkably, despite the Bible verses in the footnotes, the anonymous author lets this one sail right on by, choosing some boring New Testament reference to good behavior instead of the blindingly obvious, hello!, reference to Eve and the apple. Also, it's a lot of fuss about a few apples.

no Fannie May?

OK, I'm listening to Blake Shelton and having a mild moment of regret: there's no Fannie May here! I'd assumed that anywhere east of the Mississippi would have one.
(For those of you from the West Coast, Fannie May is like See's, but better).
But no: there's only one in Florida, about 250 miles away. After that, the closest one is in Indiana, which is, obviously, nowhere even close to here.
It's even sadder - in that mild "sadface" way - because all the Easter candy will go on sale tomorrow. Not that I wasn't amply provided with yummies by the SO, but it would have been fun to go there.
On a brighter note, I had a really yummy Easter brunch at the hotel down the street. I threw on the one dress I'd packed, just to be polite, and I'm glad I did; there were some very-well-turned-out Easter churchgoers there!

just like Daisy Summerfield!

Ever read Daisy Summerfield's Style? I think only one person I know has - the person most likely to be reading this. Anyway, Daisy is this terribly Midwestern naif who is going to NYC for fashion school, even though she has no interest in this. On the train there (it was written 30 years ago, at least, so it's a train) she steals luggage from this madly artsy woman who has the same initials - and who also has the alpaca sweaters, hammered tin earrings, and Mexican embroidered skirts that Daisy craves. She holes up in a little walk-up in NYC and becomes a successful artist within a few months, using the clay and other sculpturing materials she finds in the luggage. (I must see if there's a copy here in the library!)
Why is this relevant? Because there's a staggering level of detail about Daisy's day-to-day life: the shampoo she buys, the spaghetti she eats, the bemused-but-helpful locals who give advice that anyone less naive wouldn't have needed.
Anyway, this little shopping-and-Steak-n-Shake trip was very Daisy to me, so I took a picture of my purchases. You'll note I have burners! I hadn't expected that, and it broadens my cooking options while I am here considerably. Spaghetti sometime soon, I think: I have a taste for it now.

overpacking

I just unpacked and now I have a question: how did I manage to pack fourteen pens and pencils and two copies of Sense and Sensibility? Last I checked, they have both in Florida.

Internet!

I got to my apartment here around 1:30, after getting the last seat on the last flight to Gainesville that day. I went to bed within half an hour. No idea why I'm awake already - I'm still really tired. Anyway, it's a nifty apartment, and "furnished" here meant having things like the modem already set up, just waiting for my computer. Yippee!

OK, going back to sleep now.

whining

A delayed flight (which led to me missing two possible connecting flights), a connecting flight, and another delayed flight. I've been in airports or airplanes for 15 hours, and I'm beginning to think I will never get there. At best, by the time I get there, this trip will have taken 18 hours, and I'd be seven hours later than the itinerary said. At worst - well, I'm on standby for this delayed flight, so it might be even longer. Sigh.
On the other hand - dude, I suck. Seriously? I just had a yummy quesadilla, and I found an outlet so my laptop can start recharging, and - I'm on my way to Florida.

rocking chairs

There are lots of windows in the Charlotte airport. Well, okay, there are lots of windows in any airport, but perhaps I noticed these more because some of them have rocking chairs nearby for people to hang out in. It's insanely Southern and charming!

Pinkberry!

The travel hasn't been ideal so far - my first flight was delayed for an hour and a half, so I missed two connection flights from Houston to Charlotte, where I am now. I'll get in hours later than I had thought; I'm on stand-by for a flight that takes off three hours after I should have landed.
But here's why I'm chuffed, anyway. I'm eating a delightful lunch! There's a little gourmet deli here, so I got a banana and an apple, and it's right across from Pinkberry, which I haven't had for months, and which I love. Who knew that there would be such a delightful thing in an airport?
(Pinkberry, btw, is like frozen yogurt, but with crazily yummy toppings. For a while, it was a fad, and Us magazine had pictures of celebrities eating it. That's not why I like it - just providing context, because I'm helpful that way).

tired, but packed?

I think I've packed everything, but weirdly enough I had space left over at the end. That never happens to me, so now I'm spooked that I forgot something.
This is boring, but that's because I'm so tired. I never sleep well before I go on a trip, and this was no exception: to bed at 2, up at 6:30. This wouldn't be so bad if I were travelling* all day, but I have to be intelligent at work for 8-10 hours first. On the bright side, it might mean that I sleep on the plane.

*I'm mildly annoyed that I have a red underline under this perfectly acceptable British spelling.