Botanical Daydreaming
21 November 2009
When I was a kid, I would, on rainy weekend afternoons such as this, take the large color copy of Audubon’s Birds of America off the shelf and spend hours flipping through the color plates of fancy birds (and some not so fancy birds).
Maybe that is why I was so delighted when I discovered that the Missouri Botanical Garden Library has digitized over 3,000 volumes of historic botanical literature. Access is totally FREE and can be found at Bonaticus.org. You can browse by subject, author, year (the earliest being 1480!! Fifteenth Century plant research!! Am I the only one who thinks this is astonishingly cool?), or region which is presented as a great big map and you can just click on the area you are interested in. Very user friendly. I particularly like that their subject browsing page utilizes the subject cloud, which I am sure we have all seen on one blog or another. (wink wink. I use one here – it is at the bottom of the page.)
So here are three highlights, in no particular order. But oh…the choices! There are so many amazing texts and prints available in this archive.
Les Fleurs Animees (The Animated Flowers) by J.J. Grandville, from sometime during the 1840′s. From Paris. The title of this print is Bleuet et Coquelicot. (Blueberry and Poppy.) I love the playful fairy-like quality of these prints, and I am enamored with the serenading insects.
Edward’s Botanical Register, Vol. 15 by John Lindley from London,1829. I particularly like these prints because they remind me so much of the Audubon plates. I may have to print some of these off and frame them. 
Finally, the cover page of a text titled Adam in Eden,or, Nature’s Paradise by William Coles, from sometime in the seventeenth century. I just love, love, love the fact that we are still reading books of the same subject as the people in the 1600′s. Also, the title page is just a lovely example of how our language evolves. Overall, this page is a wonderful juxtaposition of the constant and the changing. 
What a discovery. And what a project this must have been for the folks over at the Missouri Botanical Garden Library. I am giving them a round of applause.
If anyone knows of other archived treasures, share them with us! I would love to explore more sites such as this.
Required Reading For Your ‘Destination Vacation’
9 November 2009
Jamaica Kincaid’s book A Small Place, reminded me at first of a travel journal, and then of a personal journal. The function of the beginning ‘chapter’ which mimics a travel journal, is to put the reader in the position of tourist. In doing so, the reader is implicated with the ignorance of all the non-native people who visit Antigua. This got me thinking. I thought that I needed a vacation. And then I instantly felt terrible for that, and realized that this book has quite possibly changed the way that I am able to view destination vacations forever. I have never actually taken a ‘destination’ vacation: those are only things that I daydream about, but now that blissful ignorance has been taken away and Kincaid’s book has held up a mirror to the entitlement and suppression that permeates the western idea of ‘holiday.’ It is similar, in effect, to a picture by Banksy:
It seems that there is nothing that this society takes for granted that can be simply separated from its role in the world. Everything has its equal and opposite balance, so a ‘simple’ vacation carries with it the suppression and exploitation of a region and its people, in order to create a false paradise. At every All-You-Can-Eat Buffet, there are people starving in the alley behind the restaurant.
The end of Kincaid’s book changes from an anti-travel guide to a personal journal of frustration, and I feel that as the reader, I have followed that model. The more information that is given, the more complicated and upsetting a situation can seem. The question of what to do next, and how to fix past mistakes, seems so important once the curtain has been lifted, but the answers remain elusive. Kincaid writes about the assassinations of leaders in Antigua with a confusion that translates to the reader. The events and actions are all interconnected, but we cannot see the threads to cut: there is no clear path to rectification. Other readers might say, at this point, that Kincaid is unjustly passing blame to her readers (and alienates the very readers that buy her books) for something that happened before their time. Although Antigua’s history with colonization is not something that the average reader can control, Kincaid’s direct confrontation of the reader asks them to look at what they CAN control.
Kincaid’s book ends with a description of the ‘European Disease’ – the use and exploitation of other people in order to feel better about one’s own lonely and empty existence, and I am left to ponder the cure for this disease. If I never take that ‘destination’ vacation, am I sufficiently doing my part to counter – act the effects of suppression and exploitation? Probably not, but as J. Kincaid writes, we are all just human beings: we do what we can and hope that it will make a difference.
A Bountiful Samhain
29 October 2009
This weekend is Halloween. I will be dressing up as an academic professional and infiltrating the MWPCA/ACA conference on Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Humor this weekend in downtown Detroit. I hope there is candy.
This fall is proving to be incredibly hectic, and I do want to keep in touch amidst the chaos, so over the next few weeks, I am going to be posting some short “thoughts on file” from various books that I have read. I say this because one day I may post something about World War Z, and the next day may be a reflection on Anna Karenina. You might get whiplash from the topics flying out of opposite ends of the spectrum with no warning, and so here is a little heads up.
My long term goal – to begin after the upcoming holidays – is to begin conducting read-alongs. When that starts, I will announce a book (or you can suggest one!), and we can all read along together.
For now, let’s all ambrace the randomness…and have a happy and safe Halloween weekend!
That’s Shorthand For…What?
28 October 2009
I logged in this morning with a few ideas for a post topic, but I was not entirely sure what I wanted to write about. So there I am, in my pajamas, clutching a cup of coffee (made with milk….but that’s a different story, trust me) and I start rereading and reviewing yesterday’s administrative stuff. That’s when I notice that the post yesterday was really hard to read.
I took another sip of my coffee and looked again. Yup. It wasn’t me, it was the post. Dropped letters, truncated words, extra spaces. It was like reading a drunk person talking. (well, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea.)
Oh, and hopefully I fixed all of the errors so there is nothing to see there… move along. We can pretend it didn’t happen.
So I started thinking about how I write…you know, penmanship. I have my special occasion writing that comes out when I write sentiments in cards, or when I am making food or place cards for a cocktail party. Generally, it makes an appearance when the people who have to read my writing are either holding a gift that goes with it, or if they had to change out of their pajamas to come over to my place and socialize. In both of those scenarios (especially the latter), they deserve some good penmanship.
For myself…well. Forget it. I take notes and write my lists and the end result looks like a hybrid between Old English and TXT Speak. There are words that I can blend: with the becomes withe and connect to becomes connecto, and then there are words that I can turn into symbols, like behavior, psychology, and because. Behavior and psychology turn into b and Ψology. Because becomes b/c and the @ symbol stands in for at, about, all and area. (Hmm, I wonder what other people’s shorthand is like…if it is like a signature…)
I can read my own shorthand. Usually. And if I can’t, then I can sleuth it out by its context. It is when I can’t read what I typed 12 hours before on a keyboard that I start to worry. And I am not talking about ‘Ohai, im txting so itsin cntxt, KWIM?’ I am talking about when I am typing an equivalent to my special occasion writing, and it comes out looking like my shorthand. You see, I don’t have a set shorthand for keyboards yet, not like I do for scrawling out a note. This means that when I go back to read and proof what I typed out, I don’t catch a lot of what I blended together, as I don’t have a conscious recognition of my shorthand. One would think that means I can recognize the typos and mistakes easier because they would stand out more – they are not yet assimilated into the way I process. But nope.
Apparently that is not the way it works for me. Apparently, my brain has its own online shorthand, with its blended words, dropped letters and extra spaces…it just hasn’t informed me yet.
……
Or, I just need to have more caffeine before I edit.
Enjoying the View
1 July 2009
Sometimes a journey is about taking a moment or two to look at your surroundings. A literary journey can extend beyond the printed page, and often times what is beyond the page can be more influential than the words themselves. The setting, context, scent, the tactile sensations of the pages or buttons (for those of you with Kindles), rain hitting the window in the background, or the sun and the tree above you casting shadows on your page as you read…all of these create our journey as readers. And so I bring you this sighting, titled ANIMAL INDEX by Hiroshi Sasagawa for the folks over at greenergrassdesign:
Oh yes. Those would definitely enhance my experience on this journey.
