Librarians can help you avoid huge ships

For today's post, I have a couple of fun links for your reading pleasure.  The first is a project started by The Atlantic, asking readers to explain what people don't get about one's job.  If you are a librarian, or know one well, you are most certainly having a proper chuckle over simply considering the numerous things that people don't get about working in a library.  And, in fact, The Atlantic has already compiled a list of submissions available here.  You will no doubt be nodding your head in agreement as you read through people's surprise that librarianship requires a Master's, librarians don't simply sit around reading books all day, and that new technology is not, in fact, threatening the existence of the library.  These are all things that I myself have been asked and explained far too many times to count.

The second link is pretty much pure fun.  I have found it to be absolutely hilarious, so much so that I had to stop reading it on my work break because I was laughing so hard that I was worried people would come in thinking I was upset from the tears streaming down my face.  This is a compilation of the best (read: most gut-busting) reviews for the book How to Avoid Huge Ships.  It's just as funny the second and third time you read it, so you may want to bookmark it in case you ever need a pick-me-up.

Today's mileage: 2.34 mi.

Keeping it rollin'

My primary goal of the day was to visit and explore the Morgan Library & Museum which just so happens to be located near a number of other New York City landmarks.  So I took the subway to Grand Central (landmark #1) and wandered from there to the New York Public Library (#2) which wasn't open due to the holiday weekend, but I figured the facade is enough of a landmark to count.  I continued west past Bryant Park (#3) to Times Square (#4) mostly just to say I'd been there - being a dreary Sunday, there wasn't much going on outdoors.  And speaking of the dreary weather, I've found that New York City weather has somehow figured out a way to be both cool and disgustingly humid at the same time, which makes for difficult decisions in the attire department.

But anyway, I finally made it to the Morgan Library & Museum which was fantastic.  This is another small museum like yesterday's Frick Collection which I quite like.  There were a number of things I took note of while there.  First, in the Illuminating Fashion: Dress in the Art of Medieval France and the Netherlands exhibition, there is one illustration described as "Saint Julian accidentally kills his parents."  Now, I don't know about you, but at this point I'm thinking, "This kid accidentally murdered his parents and he still became a saint?  Really, Catholic Church, really?"  I did some investigation and found that the story of Saint Julian the Hospitaller is somewhat similar to that of Oedipus.  That being said, I still don't quite understand what got him sainted.

The next item that sparked my interest was in the Lists: To-dos, Illustrated Inventories, Collected Thoughts, and Other Artists' Enumerations from the Smithsonian's Archives of American Art exhibition.  One of the lists was written by one Robert Smithson with notes for his Spiral Jetty piece.  And why might this have caught my attention, you ask dear reader?  Well, both Robert Smithson and his Spiral Jetty are mentioned in a song by one of my favorite bands, Vampire Weekend.  The song I reference was not officially released except on the internet so you may not recognize it, even if you are a Vampire Weekend fan as well.  It's called "Giant" and you can listen to here (you can ignore the accompanying slide show/visuals). 

Finally, once I made it to the library portion of the collection, I spent quite some time browsing the shelves for titles that I recognized or seemed interesting.  The books are beautiful, or their spines are at least - everything is behind glass so it's not like I could actually look at anything.  But anyway, one book that made me chuckle a bit read "Heywood History of Women 1657" on the spine.  After a bit of research (I am almost a librarian, after all), I found that the book's title is actually The generall history of women: containing the lives of the most holy and prophane, the most famous and infamous in all ages [sic].  Sounds interesting, does it not?

Today's mileage: 2.89 mi

It's not every day that I get to rip a book up

Yeah, that's right, I ripped a book apart today.  Is your jaw on the floor?  It was totally sanctioned and my boss even gave me the instrument of destruction: a letter opener.  Ok, ok, I was tearing it up because the pages didn't get cut apart when it was printed so they were all folded up on each other.  So really I was helping the book out.  I'm not gonna lie, it was kind of fun but I was glad that the book was only about 80-some-odd pages as it got kinda old after the first 70.  I found a couple of other neat books today, too.  One was just postcards.  It wasn't really bound, but rather in a sort of portfolio kind of thing with 7 postcards in it.  The other book find of the day was a book that had 2 original lithographs in the back of it.  Needless to say, that got added to the rare books collection. 

Today's mileage: 3.01 mi

Longest title I've ever seen

I pulled this book today.  The whole title is The college of life; or, Practical self-educator, a manual of self-improvement for the colored race, forming an educational emancipator and a guide to success, giving examples and achievements of successful men and women of the race as an incentive and inspiration to the rising generation, including Afro-American progress illustrated, the whole embracing, business, social, domestic, historical, and religious education.  Pretty crazy, huh?

But the part I like best is the publisher.  This book was published by Mnemosyne Publishers Inc.  In case you are a little rusty on your Greek mythology, Mnemosyne is the goddess of memory and the origin of the word mnemonic.  Funny, because you would indeed need a mnemonic if you ever wanted to remember the title of this book in its entirety.