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In a recent guest talk I did to prepare students at Notre Dame for a Rare Book Room visit, I was very tempted to play this classic of the YouTube book history clips (of which there are so many). I'm quite sure it would have been a runaway hit. Really, I am.

Last night in Besse 1

Things I'll miss about 'ye olde booke club':
1. Having a "buttery" bar in our hall
2. The satisfaction at cracking another layer of the Bodleian's cataloging system
3. Indecisive weather
4. Shakespeah
5. Battling for Muesli in the morning
6. Oblong books
7. Images "not for the faint at heart"
8. Lord Nuffield
9. 6:15 a.m. runs next to cows
10. Nightly potatoes


To Mark, Jim, John, Matt, Dennis, John, Kathleen, Lex, Rabia, Chris, Sue, Phil, Anne, Marlo, Tim, Lara, & Emily--cheers & happy travels home!

Wizards and more old books

We show-goers (what I've dubbed Marlo, Lara, Tim, & I after our adventures in London...and those to come in Stratford this week) finished out last week in true Oxfordian form: catching the new Harry Potter movie. After forcing Lara to stuff my gummy worms in her coat pocket to avoid the leering eyes of the ticket collectors (I, alas, was pocket-less), we made our way to the theater--albeit amidst swarms of pre-teens and their parents. But that's not the point. Wizardry and horcruxes and such. That's what it's all about. Well, that and the gummy worms.


Quite a fun show, and well-worth the ridicule we faced from our peers the next day at breakfast. Friday brought us to our last library tour at St. John's College, and, to drop a total cliche, one worth the wait. Jim Bracken, one of the seminar leaders and Assistant Director of Libraries at Ohio State, organized a fabulous exhibit of a range of early printed books and manuscripts, including William Caxton's (the first printer in England) 1483 copy of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales and John Eliot's so-called 1663 "Indian" Bible (translated into a Native American language). We even got our first, and probably last, group shot and had time to dig into the books resting in their almost-authentically-early-modern library stalls. Most important of all, though, were the many individual "reading Chaucer" pictures taken that day.

'Tis Pity...really.

In round two of "Marlo, Emily & Laura hit the town," we went to see John Ford's rarely performed revenge tragedy, 'Tis Pity She's a Whore, last night. If you're not familiar with Ford, don't get scared by the title...well, I take that back. It's a pretty disturbing play--but, not in the way you might think. Granted there's eye gauging and conniving secretly-Spanish servants and a bloody still-beating heart (and did I mention the incest??), but it really is--in theory--quite good. Sadly, we decided to take our chances with the local theater scene, hoping above hopes that it's England after all and this is where theater should be good everywhere, in a permeating-the-English-genetic-pool kind of way. Oh, and did I mention we walked two miles to get there? Yeah.

The program should have been our tell-tale sign. First, the director proudly brandished the fact that they put this together in a mere 39 days when it would normally take several months. Second, the group of actors became a company. Note: after they started rehearsing for the play. Third, and the biggest clue, this was to be a perfect blend of amateur and professional actors. Um, amateur??!?? Ok, now I'm feeling guilty. This was the problem actually: a constant pull and tug from being slightly horrified to feeling guilty for being horrified and turning instead to feeling proud of them for doing it, but really just embarrassed in a only-a-relative-could-sit-through-this-and-smile kind of way.

To understand how we felt afterward, take a look at Marlo's dramatic reinactment pictured above, in which she poses with the program for the play, all while Emily empathizes with her pain.

Why Jude Law...I mean Shakespeare is always worth it

Thursday began with a taste of the UK commuter life: a 2 1/2 hr bus ride from Oxford to London at 7 a.m. Lara, Tim, Marlo, and I set off like true hardcore Shakespeare fans to get day-of tix to the new production of Hamlet playing in London's West End. And let me tell you, our fanatical early morning trek had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that Jude Law was playing the title role. Nothing. Nada. Nope. Definitely not.

Tim & Marlo had the right idea with how to pass the time (see above). Once we arrived, the line had already started forming (freakish fans came at 5 a.m.), but we still secured some standing room tickets. These were no mere "groundling" spots, though--but more on that later.

After the ticket purchase, Tim & I headed to the library only to find that it was, like Wyndham's Theatre, apparently the place to be. The manuscript room was...how did they put it? Ah, yes. FULL. Um, what?! Full? As in no way to work after taking a 2.5 hour pukey morning commute into London full?! I had a silent hissy fit (it was a library after all), regrouped and contemplated defeat. But in true form, I devised a plan B: stalk the readers in a casual "I'm just walking around looking at random books until one of you slips and leaves your space undefended" way. Sooner or later my plan worked.

For dinner, Marlo had an awesome Indian restaurant picked out in Covent Garden. The whole place was decorated with hanging dolls (see left)--creepy or colorful? You decide. After dinner, we made our way to the play. Tickets have been sold out for ages, so we were thrilled to get standing tickets. Of course, I had my Jersey elbows ready to throw if anyone tried to take my spot on the railing. Luckily, no such threat was necessary and the performance was fabulous. Jude didn't disappoint, and there were some other memorable elements (stage design, Ophelia's insanity, doing yoga poses amidst the skull scene to keep my legs from going numb...). Luckily, the bus ride back was uneventful, owing large part to the fact that it took place between 11 p.m. and 1:15 a.m. Rebels that we are, we even had to enter the college through the clandestine "late gate".

When in Oxford...

I felt initiated into generations of literati today as I sipped my first glass of sherry, surrounded by old books in St. Edmund Hall at Oxford. Ok, that sounds really pretentious. But, really--it seems that part of the "pass Go" aspect of academia has something to do with sherry, or at least some sort of hard alcohol consumed amongst volumes of literature. Why? Simply a residual aspect of the "old boys club"? An admission that we need massive amounts of liquor to sweeten the realization that an entire day was wasted wrestling with an antiquated online catalog? Because we're in Oxford and that's just what the natives do?

Well, pretention or not--sherry or not--once a bibliophile, always a bibliophile.

Click here to view these pictures larger

A few things I learned in Oxford

1. Walking around medieval streets never gets old...though it does do a number on the knees.

2. There will always be a market for the nautical/preppy look.

3. Oaths must be taken to enter libraries: "I will not set flame to the building (presumably with my candle that I'm reading by), nor will I smoke next to my 16th-century manuscript. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye."

4. "Magdalen" is pronounced "Maudlin" in ye olde Oxford-lish.

5. The inklings are everywhere...& Harry Potter. Really. Kids in black robes with glasses and scars above their eyebrows...ok, maybe not that last part.

Just when you thought you were stuck with me

Sue, a fellow seminarian (and special collections librarian) is keeping a nicely detailed travel blog during the trip. I'm envious of her commitment to the cause or at least to regular, informative posting.

NEH - London Pictures

NEH - Antwerp Pictures

Who needs computers when you've got 17th-c printing presses?

Everyone I talked to who had been to Antwerp--not the longest list, but a list nonetheless--had one comment in common: The Plantin-Moretus Museum (a name I can know actually pronounce...with a Dutch accent or a French one). Ah, how right they were. Of course, it didn't hurt that the NEH crew had already carefully orchestrated a VIP tour of the place and its amazing holdings, including several original printing presses from the 17th century. In true "field trip" style we even got to ink & press a piece of paper using one of the original machines. A few personal favorites included the small Mercator atlases during our VIP book exhibit and holding the small piece of type mere seconds after it came out of molten metal. Sound dangerous? risky? shocking, perhaps? That's because it is. Bookishness has its risks, you know. (I'm feeling the need to quote some super hero line--or to make some cliched point about knowledge and power--but I'll resist).

Top five ways to avoid/beat jet lag

1. Don't sit next to a ten-year old girl traveling solo on an overnight flight, otherwise you'll be "playing school" (in Dutch) and remarking with forced enthusiasm to every comment about how the wing looks--all instead of sleeping.
2. Avoid six legs of mass transit when carrying three jumbo pieces of luggage where signs are in non-romance-language-no-way-I'm-gonna-understand-this Dutch.
3. Drink espresso--asap.
4. Block out all light coming in from window (midsummer nights, wha?!), and go to bed at 8:30 p.m. like said ten-year-old.
5. Don't do #3 right before #4.

[Picture: View from my room in Antwerp.]