strange radiation: the pool of radiance archive
Adventures with an unreliable narrator.
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Mar 31 06: field report: oxford
We are in England. We arrived last night, after an uneventful flight (watched Prime and Breakfast on Pluto and Goodnight and Good Luck). England is green and pleasant and even intermittently sunny. During our postlunch stroll, we poked about Christ Church Cathedral, which is small but interesting (resting place of St. Frideswide, stations of the cross done as multiscreen video installation, nicely gothy memento mori, etc.). Following that, Robin got us past the gates at the otherwise-not-open-to-nonstudents Christ Church College. We walked around the quadrangle, with its lawn so lush it seems like a carpet of moss; we poked our noses into the dining hall, which doubles as the dining hall for Hogwarts in the Harry Potter movies. Our real target, though, was the library, which is a whole ‘nother layer of inaccessible, but we got into anyway because Peter and Robin know half the library staff. The eighteenth-century library at Christ Church is spectacular, with huge and ornate gilt-and-plaster ornaments high on salmon-colored walls. The books in the collection are grouped by donor (rather than oh, say, by title or by subject) and are shelved pretty much just as they were when the library was completed—the building was intended to have room for the collection to expand, but took sixty-plus years to complete, and was at capacity from its first day of official use. It’s not open to browsers; unless you’re a pre-screened researcher, you’ll only get inside in conjunction with a special event of some sort. So this was cool.
While there, we got to see a document that was being prepared for restoration: a copy of Johann Remmelin’s Catoptrum Microcosmicum, dated 1619. The poor thing looked like it had been forgotten for a while in a cabinet under somebody’s bathroom sink, but once you got past the first page or three, you reached the good bits, which were astonishing. CM is an early anatomy text, with ‘flap book’ style illustrations. The engraved plates have different layers attached to them in places, sometimes twenty-five sheets deep: faced with a human torso, you could fold back the skin, the muscles, the organs, etc. Well, one could fold them back. We could only watch the librarian do the folding, but I’m not sure I could blame her.
These guys know how to show a geek a good time.
The boys are all presently napping; after that, probably tea. There is a bag of damn-tasty Thai sweet chil(l)i flavo(u)red chips—sorry, crisps—in the kitchen with my name on it. The wedding is tomorrow, and all is well. Wedding-finery photo will be provided anon.
Commentary
Oh, now you’ve made me miss Oxford. Birmingham is lovely, but it’s mostly industrial grit not antique beauty. Sometimes I miss the antique beauty bit. And then I remember that I could never afford to live there, and grit doesn’t seem so bad.
Have a great time at the wedding!
posted by bsag, Apr 2 06 4:55 AM
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