Riba Rambles:
Musings of a Mental Magpie

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:00 AM

I was thinking the other day about the 2004 election and what issues Bush & Co. have to run upon. Although I know that turnarounds are possible, but right now, the GOP isn't looking so good:

• The wars against Iraq and Afghanistan are going poorly; they can't run on their military record.
• They've pissed off many veterans, current service members and military families; can't run on that.
• The economy is in the toilet; can't run on that.
• They've exploded the budget deficit; can't run on being more fiscally conservative.
• Given recent revelations, they can't run on being more trustworthy than the Democrats.

In fact, a recent Gallup poll shows that on most issues voters feel are important -- education, health care, and other domestic issues -- the majority feel the Democrats would be better at dealing with them.

So, what issues does the GOP/Bush administration have left to run on?

The White House (through the departments of Justice and Homeland Security) control the issuing of terror alerts. They choose when to issue warnings and when to lift them.

The 2004 Democratic Convention will be held from July 26-29, 2004.

Who is willing to bet that there will be some major terror alert that weekend or shortly beforehand? The 24-hour news channels constantly need new "urgent" material, and these warnings suck up all the media attention. Time it right, and the Democratic convention speakers won't have time to react. And with all the Dems booked at the convention, they won't be free to appear as opposing viewpoints on the news shows, giving an even more lopsided tilt to the conservative talk media. All combined, this could suck the oxygen out of the convention and thus eliminate the traditional post-convention bounce the party normally picks up.

And what are the risks? Sure, they can be accused of manipulating the alerts, but:

1. if the timing is right the Democrats at the convention won't have time to react.
2. if Democrats yell but nobody hears, does it make a ripple? [See here for an answer.]
3. unless the charge can be made quickly and strongly, media attention will shift to the next urgent story, blunting its impact.

The benefits are so great for the GOP, that I'm willing to wager on this. Any takers?

[I had this thought on July 15th, but deferred posting it (a) until I could research further some of the supporting facts and (b) so it wouldn't get lost in an LJ crowd.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 3:35 AM

So, had dinner at my husband's parents because his sister was back in town for the weekend. About a dozen for dinner, including grandparents, Ian's cousin, and several of Leila's friends. Met her boyfriend for the first time. I really like him and I think we hit it off.

Late into the evening, we had a rousing discussion of the recent crop of films based on comic books, and the conversation turned to other series that might translate well.

Somebody suggested Ghost Rider as a promising character/story.

  "Yeah, but who would they get to play him?"

  I replied, "Michael Jackson?"

I am a very bad girl.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:59 PM

Oh, I am so torn...

More news is emerging about BloggerCon, hosted by Harvard on October 4th.

Quoting from an email sent to the local SLA mailing list

After emailing with Jessica and poking about their site, I discovered that registration is $500 ($250 for students) with targeted attendance around 110, meaning I may have to decide quickly.

I first heard about BloggerCon last month and desperately wanted to attend (for the attendees, the subject matter and because it's local). I still do.

But $500? I spent less than that for WorldCon membership, and that's a five-day event.

As I said, I'm feeling so torn about this. Advice is welcome.

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:11 PM

Does anybody else experience paralysis when you have several books you desperately want to read, but can't decide which one to start first?
Or is it just me?

Definitions/etymology: Ugol and seebling
[And there goes that timeconsuming unproductive writing habit of mine: I spent more time looking up these definitions for the benefit of those who might be unfamiliar with them than I did writing the darned post.]

Added slightly later:

In case anyone is interested, the books currently in my possession that I'm feeling torn amongst are:

70 pages into:	Borrowed from library; about 10 pages in:	Borrowed from library; not started:	New purchase I've enjoyed flipping through:	Read many times before; one of my favorites:
Six Wives David Starkey	Dynasty John MacLeod	Chasing Shakespeares Sarah Smith	The First Folio of Shakespeare Peter W.M. Blayney	The Armor of Light Melissa Scott & Lisa Barnett

And that doesn't include books I've heard about and want to read but haven't yet obtained.
[And coding that further extended the time I spent what should've been a simple 2-minute post.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:01 PM

Last night, I was talking with Ian about the Marlovian authorship claims. The general belief seems to be that Marlowe faked his death in Deptford so his subsequent writings were under Shakespeare's name instead of his own. Some think he wrote them from abroad and mailed them in to Will who took the credit, others think he stayed in London disguised as "Will Shakespeare."

I'll confess. I definitely think there's something fishy about Kit's demise as described in the coroner's report (see Kalb's comment), and I wish Kit had lived longer and wrote more, but it's just too implausible in too many ways for him to have gone on to write Shakespeare.

Regarding the notion Kit stayed in London, Elizabeth Bear wrote it best:

[T]he idea that Kit changed his name to Will Shakespeare and came back and wrote plays from London is about as bright as the idea that if I were a high school student I could change my name, dye my hair, go back to my high school, and pretend to be somebody else. We're talking about a community of maybe at most 350-400 people among the players of London at that time, and their hangers-on.

As for the idea that he wrote the plays from abroad... That's where I think there's been a fundamental shift in mindset between period and modern times.

I think modern Americans think of plays as static things. Maybe they undergo modifications during previews, or a particular production may cut some scenes/bowdlerize a few lines in rehearsals, but they're more-or-less fixed texts. There's a certain expectation (or ideal) that performances will be identical -- opening night shouldn't be that different from closing night, particularly for a pre-existing play. Isn't that part of the reassurance conveyed when the leads leave Broadway productions or when major shows go on tour? [Hey, Jeff -- you're an actor; how does this map to your experience?]

Whereas, I get the impression that revision was much more common among troupes in the period. [Taking this from nonfiction and fiction books I've read about Shakespeare and Marlowe, as well as Edward Marston's Nicholas Bracewell mysteries.] A new actor joins and they tailor supporting characters to his talents. Somebody isn't available for a performance, so they trim their role/scenes when the actor isn't available. Nowadays, you're more likely to see an understudy reading from a script (as happened to a run of the Odd Couple in Stoneham last month) than for the producers to rush a rewrite to minimize that character. People expect to see Sondheim or Neil Simon or Mel Brooks, and don't want somebody else's words instead.

That's a fundamentally different notion of authorship than seen in period, where some plays were revised so often and by so many people that we no longer can tell who's responsible.

For people who think that scripts are static, it's much more plausible to believe that somebody wrote them from a distance. But understanding how plays were written (and rewritten) at that time makes that highly implausible. [If any Marlovians see this, are there any other examples within the century of playwrights providing scripts from such a distance from the actors and company?]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:15 AM

Don't mean to sound like a broken record, but it's now been 19 hours since LiveJournal last successfully read my feed. Anybody want to place bets about how long it will be before it updates again? How about a pool for when LJ next fails to parse my feed and how long that outage will be...

Posted by Lis Riba at 12:29 AM

People are misusing the term "Judeo-Christian" and using it to refer to solely Christian beliefs/concepts. Earlier this evening, Ian wrote this letter to one blogger who misused the term. I just found somebody else defending Bush's "we're all sinners" remark, by calling it a part of "the Judeo-Christian tradition."

I posted a response in his blog, but just in case any of you come across somebody misusing the term, here's the essay I wrote on the subject. Quoting myself:

The term "Judeo-Christian" was invented during World War II, when Christians started realizing how rude it was to rail against the Nazis for violating "Christian decency" since so many of the Nazi victims were Jewish. It was a superficial attempt to appear diverse and inclusive.

Judaism and Christianity are very different religions, and it does a disservice to both to conflate them.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:46 PM

Those of you with LiveJournals might be interested/amused in this Trust metric, measuring which accounts are closest to your friends list. [Of course, by the time this propogates again, it will probably be old hat, but right now when I discovered it, only one of my LJ friends made mention... And I think it's nifty and want to remember the URL.]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:21 PM

I am in awe over the Folger Shakespeare Library. I want to go back. Often. I don't know whether I can capture the experience in words, but I'll do my best. I'm placing purple stars (^*) within the text as a personal reminder of personal action items for once I have more time.

The building and history

Despite its proximity to the LoC and central location, Folger Shakespeare Library is a private non-profit establishment, and not governmental. As a college student, Mr. Folger attended a lecture by Ralph Waldo Emerson. He was so inspired, he went on to read other works by Emerson, including an essay on Shakespeare which (legend tells) led Folger to discover Shakespeare. It sounded like a story right out of the Goldstones' books about the progression of book collectors (Used & rare and Warmly inscribed) He started by buying a Fourth Folio, but wasn't satisfied so started accumulating First Folios. Lots of them. Because so few First Folios are 100% complete, it's hard to accurately state how many they have, but they generally claim to have 79 numbered copies -- out of about 240 believed to exist in the world. Not bad.

I was also impressed by the background of Mrs. Folger, who earned an M.A. in English literature after marriage, something I gather was not too common in the 1890s.

At any rate, although the building exterior is fairly plain (with some nifty relief sculptures from the plays), the main interior rooms were designed to replicate Tudor architecture. This includes an indoor theater. It's not a replica of the Globe or other outdoor theaters as period drama is commonly pictured. People (myself included) often forget that Shakespeare and his contemporaries often performed inside inns and private halls, particularly after James' accession when they became the King's Men. That's what this was designed to replicate.

Of course, like all modern recreations of Elizabethan theaters, fire codes mean that there's far less seating than there would've been in Shakespeare's day. We're just not allowed to cram that many people into a venue anymore. While I'm glad things are safer today, I do wish that some of these places would for a one-time-event pack them with as many people as they would've in period, then take some photos or videos of how crowded things really were. Display the photos as one enters, with a note that the theater experience has been modified for safety reasons, but here's how things would look with authentic period crowds. And for your comfort, aren't you glad we don't normally seat so many? It's just so hard to get a sense of scale otherwise, don't you think?

The rest of the architecture was impressive, but not terribly interesting to write about. I was amused that the drink coasters in the Founders' room (a lounge for members to read the newspaper) were all emblazoned with catty quotes from Much Ado. Apparently (and quite unfortunately) the workmen hired to tend the Elizabethan garden were either ignorant or lazy, so the garden doesn't currently look Elizabethan in the slightest. Alas.

The docent for our guided tour noted that the Folgers were extremely interested in collecting contemporary paintings of the Bard, but every one that's been found has been revealed as a forgery. So far, there are no reputably proven portraits of Shakespeare painted during his lifetime. [The closest posthumous images are the Droeshout, which illustrates the First Folio, and the bust that adorns Shakespeare's tomb. Neither artist knew Shakespeare personally, but both likenesses were approved by friends or family, which gives them some claim to accuracy.] Anyway, this reminded me of the recent discovery of the Sanders Portrait in Canada (see image and article) and made me curious as to the current research on its authenticity^*.

The exhibit on Elizabeth

This March was the 400th anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's death. In honor of that, they put some of their best and most representative items about Elizabeth on display. This may be somewhat scattershot:

• The day before Elizabeth's coronation, she rode through the streets of London in a procession with pageants along the way. The exhibit had a map of the city, showing her route with descriptions of the events at each location. Media savvy Elizabeth hired a reporter to walk alongside and take notes, hurriedly publishing a pamphlet describing the day: The Quene's Majestie's passage through the citie of London to westminster the daye before her coronacion. Last year, after fruitlessly searching online, I found a book with a transcription. Since it must be public domain by now, I'm strongly considering either transcribing or OCRing (and correcting it) to ensure that there is a copy online^*. Just for what it's worth -- it sounds like it was a fascinating day.
• They had one of Elizabeth's Great Seals on display. That sucker was huge! [Over 5.5 inches in diameter]
• I was impressed by the free "Family Guide" to the exhibit; more-or-less a find-and-seek within the exhibit to entertain children. ["Find the Queen in this picture: how does she travel differently from everyone else?"] Through that, I discovered that the Nicholas Hilliard miniature of Lettice Knollys had a little lettuce leaf on her dress as a pun on her name.
• Really amazing seeing actual original portraits of Elizabeth and Essex. I've seen reproductions in books, but so much is lost by the reduced scale. For example, in the painting of Essex (on loan from the National Gallery) I could actually make out the image of Saint George on the small medallion Essex was wearing.
• Queen Elizabeth gave nicknames to many of her favorite courtiers. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was her "Eyes." And thus, in his letters to Elizabeth, he often drew little eyebrows over doubled-Os. Neither of them dotted their I's with hearts, but this is almost as cute.
• One of Queen Elizabeth's New Year's gift rolls was on display. Wow. It's one massive scroll, not a sheaf of papers. The portion displayed was longer than I am tall, and there was still plenty more rolled up at the bottom. Impressive.
• Susan, if you're reading this you might be interested to know that the Folger has a copy of Cesare Negri's 1604 dance manual Nuoue inuentioni di balli on display...
  Whoops, when I went online to confirm the spelling and names, I discovered you've already done work transcribing facsimile scans from the LoC. Oh well. We figured you'd know about the book, but here's another source if you should need to examine an original edition.
• For my friends who took part in Ian's Elizabethan fantasy GURPS campaign, they had a copy of John Knox's First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. It was an octavo, smaller than a paperback for compact reading. Such a cute format...
• I was amused by a handwritten letter from Elizabeth to James. For all that people complain about the recent decline in penmanship, her handwriting was atrocious and hardly legible. In fact, she concludes with an apology "Now do I remember your cumber to read such scribbled lines." and to the best I could make out, she hoped that he'd be able to read it.
• Also on display was the Herald's book of precedence with the order of procession for the Queen's funeral.

I bought the catalog of the exhibit, Elizabeth I: Then and Now. Lots of photos of the items on display (though the real physical objects were superior to these flat images). It includes a "Chronological list of manuscripts at the Folger Library signed by Elizabeth I" and a fascinating essay on the language of court portrature discussing how Elizabeth used imagery throughout her reign.

Ian and I had some fascinating talks on the drive home. How Elizabeth's public virginity was in part a defense against the accusations against her mother. A book on hunting (which appeared to be bound in some type of fur!) had woodcuts of Elizabeth taking enthusiastic part of the hunting, including making the final kill with a knife. Besides showing her as taking proper part in kingly rituals, it also provides an allusion to the goddess Diana. Talk of how well Elizabeth used the media and got along with the public, thus making the merely adequate James look bad by comparison led to some discussion of the current royal family, and whether Charles will have similar problems succeeding his more popular and less scandal-prone mother.

Anyway, if you want to see this exhibit, hurry, because it closes on Saturday.

The gift shop

I'm genuinely amazed and impressed with myself that I only purchased two items. Walking through the store, I was like Jack Skellington discovering Chrismastown (from The Nightmare before Christmas). "Look at this! Look at this! Ooh! And this, and this, and this!" Everything was enticing.

I was intending to write more about some of my finds, but this is getting long and I'd like to post before my next visit to DC, so I'll hold off for now. If you're curious, here's their online museum shop.

The First Folio

So, aside from the exhibit catalog, the other book I bought was a catalog of a 1991 exhibit on the First Folio. The First Folio of Shakespeare by Peter W.M. Blayney. Fascinating stuff.

As the library director points out in the introduction, the First Folio has attained a certain mythic status "almost totemic... like a ritual object", but it was hardly as monolithic as people suggest.

This book traces the history of the First Folio and discoveries that have been made about it.

In a bit of research that's insane and obsessive in an impressive way, a man named Hinman examined the various First Folios in the Folger collection in the early 1960s, and managed to determine such details as the order pages were printed and which compositors worked on the book. ["The pages set by Compositor E are confined to the Tragedies and the last of the Histories, so he cannot have started working on the Folio before March or April 1623. One of his most striking characteristics is his extreme lack of skill: errors of every kind are far more frequent in his pages than in any others. ... On 8 November 1622 William Jaggard took on the first apprentice he had bound since 1614. There can be little doubt that Compositor E was that same apprentice: John Leason, son of..." You know, reading further I feel somewhat sorry for John Leason. Imagine being remembered throughout history solely for the mistakes you made as a teenager when new to the job.] The book also includes information on every part of the publishing "industry" in Jacobean England from how rights were obtained and how books were printed to how they were sold and bound, including a map of St. Paul's churchyard showing where all the booksellers were! [I've read so much about St. Paul's, that I find this immensely cool!]

It then goes on to describe notes found in the text, presumably by owners, and impressions of things found within the pages -- "One Folger Folio contains the rusted outline of a pair of spectacles; another, what appears to have been a large key." So many books have been found with rusted traces of scissors that they think these were probably caused by the binders.

Basically, this book is the whole history of First Folios from the original decision to publish them until they were actually recognized as a valuable artifact for collectors (rather than outdated old books). So far, I've merely been flipping through at random, just catching the nifty things that caught my eye, but I have to read this one all the way through...

The future

As I mentioned, the Elizabeth exhibit closes on August 2nd.

On the drive home, I flipped through the "Folger News" which describes the next exhibit, starting late August through next January: Fakes, Forgeries and Facsimiles. Quoting from the description on the website:

The Folger's curators join forces to display items from their respective collections that may deceive the viewer-some by design and some unintentionally. The exhibition explores the differences between forgeries and fakes, fakes and facsimiles, the techniques employed to produce them, and the use of scientific analysis to detect them.

This sounds utterly fascinating on so many levels -- the scientific detective work used to determine authenticity. The human dimension of what drove people to create and to fall for such deceptions. (They say they will display some actual faked "Shakespeare relics" -- cool!) One of the more enlightening college classes I took was in meta-Shakespeare, so I've learned and find it interesting how people in later periods view Shakespeare. In short: I want to go!

I also just want to find some excuse to get into the reading room as a researcher. After we finished with the public areas, I considered going around to that entrance and just saying that I was a librarian and was curious to see the reading room. But we were tired, so skipped it. But, I thoroughly intend to go back there and I will find some way.

Honestly, what excites me most is not the collection of First Folios nor all the items written in Elizabeth's hand. [She's got a cool signature; Ian wants me to learn to emulate it.] What I'm most fascinated by and most want to delve into is their collection of early English books from 1475 - 1700, which they describe as "one of the largest collections ... in the world."

Given all I've read about the various pamphlets in Elizabethan, Jacobean and pre-Civil War London (pamphlets were crosses between tabloid journalism and interpersonal flamewars), the idea of actually reading the originals excites me no end. Getting to go beyond the excerpts other authors think might be relevant to the context...

I could go on and on and on. So many things I discovered, and more after poking around their website to ensure the accuracy of this post.

Finally, this reminded me that I have to send a nag over to the BPL. A while back, I combined together several disparate facts and got intensely curious:

• It is known that John Adams (Declaration of Independence author and 2nd President) was a fan of Shakespeare -- to such an extent that when he and Jefferson were touristing across England, they not only stopped at Shakespeare's house, but secretly carved a few slivers off a chair claimed to have been Shakespeare's.
• John Adams is well known for writing in the margins of books -- often engaging in arguments with the authors that have been very educational to scholars seeking to better understand John Adams.
• John Adams library is available at the Boston Public Library.

Late last year, I wrote to the BPL asking whether they had any Shakespeare owned by John Adams, and if so, were there any marginalia. At the time, I got an initial courtesy note, but I just realized that they still owe me an answer. I'll have to do something about that^*.

Posted by Lis Riba at 10:40 PM

Hey! Bill Maher has a Weblog! Cool! [via Avedon via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 9:29 PM

Via AICN, The Sun has some advance photos of HP 3. I don't know. Mixed feelings. The kids are wearing street clothes instead of robes, so at first I thought these were photos of rehearsals, but no. The article states, "Our amazing stills from the movie show Harry and pals Hermione and Ron adopting a different look as new director Alfonso Cuaron boots out the blazers for a more casual style." But to me, they look sloppy and not quite right. Also, for Draco fans, Tom Felton is wearing his hair down instead of moused back. We'll have to see how it all looks next summer when the film is released, I suppose. [via BT!]

Added slightly later, here's one of the photos, to give you a better idea of what I'm talking about:

angry Hermione threatens Draco with her wand after he insults her

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:30 PM

I'm still catching up on news and current events (and other mundane life matters) since my trip, but had to remark on Mark Kleiman's latest on Valerie Plame. In the midst of a lot of good stuff, he wrote:

Representative Rob Simmons (R.-CT), himself a former CIA official, asserted to The Hill (*) that such revelations are against the law only if they form part of a pattern. I can't find anything in the law that says that, but perhaps I haven't looked in the right place.

Early in this story, I had read that journalists receiving and reporting such info were safe unless they made a pattern of exposing agents, but that protected those passing along the information, not those who initially leaked it.

The major portion of the law, which I blogged last Monday, is Section 421 of Title 50. Reading forward, the following section lists some defenses and exceptions.

There is a defense against "Conspiracy, misprision of felony, aiding and abetting" so long as it's not part of "a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States."

But that pattern defense is only for conspiracy or aiding & abetting. That defends Robert Novak and other journalists, but not the person who leaked it to them.

More interestingly (and the reason I decided to blog this rather than just emailing Mark) is Section 423:

The President, after receiving information from the Director of Central Intelligence, shall submit to the Select Committee on Intelligence of the Senate and the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence of the House of Representatives an annual report on measures to protect the identities of covert agents, and on any other matter relevant to the protection of the identities of covert agents.

This says to me that whether or not the White House wants to support an investigation, they're going to have to write something up on it within the year. It may be classified so the general public can't see it, but they can't simply ignore it.

[BTW, has there ever been any updates on who sent the anthrax mails in late 2001? I know we only just got the report on 9/11, but there at least we knew who did it all along -- they were mostly investigating background conspirators and overlooked clues. I don't think we even have a suspect yet for sending the anthrax...]

Posted by Lis Riba at 1:08 PM

Just appending to my previous post, I've found some favorable reviews of these plays by the Boston Phoenix: Publick's Midsummer Night's Dream, and Twelfth Night and the CMC's free MacBeth. It looks like Boston.com has changed their A&E page, so I can no longer find their reviews.

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:40 AM

Thinking about Two gentlemen of Verona in Lenox this weekend, I was reminded of all the other Shakespeare performances this summer. Oh my:

• If I want to see Commonwealth Shakespeare's free Midsummer Night's Dream in Boston Common, that's 3pm Sunday (and only three other showings in other parks over the coming week before it closes)
  And their Macbeth is only playing through next Sunday in the Common, Tuesday - Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 7 p.m.
• The New England Shakespeare Festival's touring Twelfe Night is in Lowell tonight. I think that's the closest they come to Boston, though they'll be elsewhere around New England for the next couple weeks.
• Requiring a purchased admission, Publick Theatre will be running Twelfth Night and Midsummer Night's Dream for the rest of the month.

So many choices, so little time.

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:15 PM

Cedar Librarian, one of my LJ friends, pointed out this Publishers Weekly cover story on Neil Gaiman. Lots of nifty info, but somehow, this phrase caught my eye: "Gaiman drives us in his cluttered Toyota Camry." Our new car is a Camry! We drive the same model car as Neil Gaiman! Geeky coolness!

Of course, we still need to name our car. [We never named our last car, and my superstitious side wonders whether that's one of the reasons it died so utterly.] Suggestions are welcome. [via BT!]

Posted by Lis Riba at 11:25 AM

Just a quick update on a few happenings since the trip.

• I'm in a bit of a shock today; came back to work after 3 days absence to discover they reorganized the department around me. My manager's last day is tomorrow; my mentor is gone; and the coworker in the adjacent cube whom I've been pestering all along with most of my tech questions is now my supervisor. My head is spinning. Oddly enough, shortly afterwards I checked my horoscope at Free Will Astrology:

  Many fantastic beasts that are known to Harry Potter and his fellow wizards are invisible to Muggles, the ordinary people. They include the yeti, also know as bigfoot; the clabbert, a tree-dwelling animal that's a cross between a monkey and a frog; and the phoenix, a bird that periodically bursts into flames, dies, then resurrects itself from its ashes. But my favorite magical creature is the billywig, a mosquito-like insect whose sting causes its victims to become giddy and levitate off the ground. Even if you're a Muggle, I predict you will have an experience that resembles a billywig bite in the coming week. An annoying prick will lead to a pleasant floating sensation.

  Though I do feel disoriented, somehow I don't think this is quite what he had in mind. [Actually, it more accurately describes my reaction to the Folger Shakespeare Library on Monday; which I do still intend to write up, though after I'm back home from work.]
• Minor grumble: I've just started taking a medication that's dispensed as a gel from a tube. On-label, men are supposed to use an entire tube a day. I'm on a lower dose and supposed to divide one tube evenly over ten days.
  Well, I just finished the first ten days last night, and still have about a quarter to third of a tube left. Very annoying trying to estimate a tenth by volume. I wish I could pre-divide it evenly and then take a dose a day, but it's alcohol-based and will dry out. Grump.
• BTW, if anybody wants to get together for either of these:
  1. Mendon Drive-In is running a double feature starting Friday of Spy Kids 3D followed by Pirates of the Caribbean. $15 a car, no matter how many people we squeeze in, and we'll probably go Saturday night to avoid Friday rush hour. I don't know what the view would be like from our back seats, but if anyone's got a good stereo and a blanket or some comfy transportable chairs and wants to go out, reply and we'll see if we can work something out.
  2. Alternately, I just got an email from Shakespeare & Company out in Lenox, MA. They are beginning "discounted previews this week of Shakespeare's first romantic comedy, THE TWO GENTLEMEN OF VERONA, directed by Dave Demke, outside under the tent at the Rose Footprint Theatre." [They're constructing a 'historically accurate' replica of the Rose Playhouse; for now, they're showing plays at "a temporary board and scaffold approximation of the playhouse dimensions on the building site."] Preview tickets will be $12 with recommendations to bring a "pre-show picnic." Since it's the other side of the state, we can't attend any of the weekday performances, but they've got shows at noon this Saturday, Sunday, and the following Saturday that might be a possibility.
  Is anybody interested in either, that we could ride out together? We could even pick up people in Worcester, particularly for the play in Lenox. No guarantees, but let me know if you're interested.

I think that's it for now; but then again, isn't that enough?

Posted by Lis Riba at 7:14 PM

...Did anybody miss me?
Based on the (complete lack of) comments to my Thursday magnum opus, I get the feeling long posts aren't as appreciated as short ones, but, well... tough! This is my journal, and I'll write as I please.

Fun trip; busy trip; trip where a lot of things happened. Ian wrote a couple of posts (one and two) at various points along the way (and he completed three in the time I've been writing this) . I decided to bottle it all up and just post everything after I got back. Let's see how well I can recount it all...

The flight (Friday morning)

• For starters and as usual, we packed too many books. Since the only real block of reading time would be the flight down to Florida, the only book I had planned to bring along was David Starkey's Six Wives: The Queens of Henry VIII; the companion to the PBS series. Then, Thursday night after work and before we finished packing, Ian and I (somewhat unwisely) went to the library, where I found and simply had to check out Chasing Shakespeares and Dynasty: The Stuarts, 1560-1807. And Ian brought along a comparable number of books.
  Needless to say, over the whole trip I only got about 70 pages into Six Wives -- I'm still in the marriage of Catherine and Arthur. It's interesting and enjoyable -- this is the first book on Henry I've actually been able to get into, the rest failing within the first chapter for feeling so remote that I'm unable to relate -- but in his introduction Starkey trumpets so many new discoveries and different interpretations he claims are more accurate that I feel rather distrustful of his scholarship. But it is entertaining at least and even if his projected motivations are inaccurate, I'll still hopefully pick up the basic historical facts.
  Ian finished one of his books. And the other books were basically just shlepped along without me even opening the covers. Oh well.
• And, to further diminish my reading time, the airport newsstand had a new issue of Cooks' Illustrated which Ian & I bought and had to read. And then the in-flight magazine included an interview with Google's VP of product management, Jonathan Rosenberg, which contained the following remember-worthy quote:

  My dad is a Stanford professor, and one of the problems he has with his students is they do so much of their work on Google, they don't have a good understanding of where some of the underlying information comes from. In one sense, this is a very positive development, instant access to the world's knowledge. Alternately, I think that if people don't take the time to understand the underlying role of libraries and other information systems, then they don't get the full depth of a foundation on which to perform research. Yes, I think Google has changed the way people access information, and we want to make more of that information available, but not as a complete substitute for getting into the bowels of library stacks and card catalogs.

Florida with my family (Friday evening thru breakfast Sunday)

• Friday night dinner was at my grandparents' place. I haven't had flanken this good in I can't remember how long! Ian got the recipe steps from Bubbe, so hopefully he can make me something similar.
• We also saw and picked up our new car (and the putative reason for the trip) that night. It's a lovely greyish-purple that Ian calls lavender. I think it's a little too grey to be lavender, but haven't yet managed to think of a color-word that works.
  Wonderful car. Impressively good ergonomics and affordances. Only design problem I've found is that when I'm driving, my view of the digital clock/thermometer is obstructed by the steering wheel. However, Ian can see it without problem, so it must be my height. I also need to get a bolster pillow for my neck for more comfort when driving, but otherwise it's absolutely perfect.
• Spent some time with Bubbe and Zayde. Ian got instructions from her on a few more of her dishes, with an offer for her to come up sometime and teach Ian cooking. [I can think of some friends who might love to learn from her, too.]
  I don't stay in touch with them as well as I probably should -- I get the impression I'm the worst at communicating of all their grandchildren. They gave me a guilt trip about it... and it was actually working pretty well until Zayde made the comment that if I was better at calling them regularly, maybe Bubbe might get me some nice jewelry. I didn't say anything outwardly, but I think Ian felt me bristle at that one. Completely the wrong motivator for me. Not only don't I wear jewelry, but the moment bribes or rewards are mentioned, I feel an innate resistance towards making any change from my current behavior. Because now, if I do start calling them more often, it may appear that I'm doing it only for the money they offered, rather than out of the love that I genuinely feel.
  Does that make sense to anybody outside my head?
• We talked with my folks about how their business is going, and watched some TV on their giant-screen. We don't have cable at home, so over the weekend caught three episodes of Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Fun show. I'd love to see what they could do with Ian and our apartment, but based on their application they're only looking at New Yorkers right now. Dang.
  I may still try. I'm thinking (and I just told Ian this so it's not a surprise) that this might make a marvelous birthday gift for him. Given how often he kvetches about feeling old and fat and unstylish, their kind of makeover might be just the thing. And I'd love to see what they could do with our house.
• My parents' cat, Freckles, has mellowed out a lot since my last visit. Not only was she much less skittish around us, not only did she let us pet her and even rub her belly, but she actually made like a lap cat for me. Awww...
• Unfortunately, due to his work schedule, we didn't get much time this trip with my brother and his wife. I wish we were closer. We had a lot of sibling rivalry problems when we were kids, but now that we're both older, I think that if we could spend some time together we'd find a lot more in common and a lot to like with each other. And I've had very little time to get to know his wife. Regrets that need to be rectified...

The drive (Sunday)

• So, we set out from St. Petersburg at about 8:45 AM Sunday morning, after breakfast with my family. And we stopped somewhere around 11pm on the south side of Fredericksburg, Virginia.
• I suspect that the bulk of the drive -- the late lunch at a Georgia Steak & Shake, the outlet store we stopped at, my inability to find a Dairy Queen after suppertime -- would probably be pretty boring to recount, even for my own edification.
• Lots of interesting conversation. At one point, the radio was talking about Bush's plan to thin the forests as a means of preventing fires. But, Ian realized, thinning the forests won't prevent forest fires. In fact, reducing the density of trees increases the risk of fire! More sunlight to the ground allows smaller, more flamable things to grow. Actual fire prevention techniques include fire breaks wide enough that flames can't jump from one tree to another and clearing some of the undergrowth. Maybe if Bush thinned the forests such that each tree was hundreds of feet away from any other trees, maybe that would reduce the fire risk, but then you wouldn't have a forest any more.
  Is anybody looking at this as a blatant giveaway to the logging companies???
• We also talked a lot about history and place names. The more I read, the more enlightenment we found. Driving past Raleigh, we discussed how, despite the lack of standardized spelling, Sir Walter never spelled his last name as the North Carolina city does. We noted the signs of other early English exploration: Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, Lancaster & York in Pennsylvania. Given the way New York was acquired and renamed from the Dutch, we wondered whether the "Empire State" motto might relate to Charles II's imperialist desires. At any rate, it's really nifty how the more I learn, the more everything fits together.
• We also spotted several raptors of various types during the drive. Ospreys in Florida, of course, but I wish I had brought along my bird book to identify more of them. On our way into DC, we saw one swoop low over the highway either with a snake dangling from its talons or wearing jesses. Really neat.

DC (Monday)

• First of all, apologies to those who contacted us about getting together in DC. Between the winging-it nature of our trip and the steps we were taking to preserve Ian's health and physical well-being (and our own incompetence at forgetting to copy down phone numbers), we didn't get ahold of or together with anybody. Maybe next trip.
  And I do expect to take further trips to DC. Too many things that I didn't get a chance to see or do. I want to go back!
• Our hotel was about an hour south of DC. We waited until rush hour would be mostly over (a little after 9am) and headed into the city, arriving there about 10:20 AM.
• I did pretty well at finding a parking lot and coming up with places I wanted to visit that were all geographically adjacent. Here's an annotated aerial view of where we went; you should be able to recognize the Capitol building near the center:
  

  pink dot: parking garage fuschia outline: GPO bookstore yellow outline: Supreme Court red outline: Folger Shakespeare Library blue outline:Library of Congress

  Not bad.
• Rather than rewrite, I'll just quote Ian's post on what happened once we got into the city:

  We got to DC around 10 or so, and had no difficulty finding the parking garage that Lis had been planning on parking in. It was RIGHT across the street from the Government Printing Office, a few blocks from the Supreme Court, Library of Congress, and Folger Shakespeare Museum, and had a daily max rate of $11. It was perfect.
  It was full.
  We spent probably a good minute laughing at ourselves for never even CONSIDERING the possiblity that the garage would be full when we got there, and then tried to figure out what to do from there. Eventually, we decided to ask the attendant at the garage where the nearest other garage was. So we did. He looked at us, decided that he liked us, and told us to go in, there were still a COUPLE parking spaces down there. We found one no problem -- a "FULL" garage in DC apparently has more parking spaces than one with vacancies in Boston.

• Our first stop was the Folger Shakespeare Library, just in time for their 11 o'clock guided tour. As we hurriedly walked down the street, the Capitol came into view. We joked how much it looked like the backdrops used on news shows. Then, as Ian stopped at a corner to take a picture, I noticed the names on the building across the street parallel to us: C-Span and Fox News. Maybe those aren't static backgrounds, but just the views from their windows. I no longer have cable, but anybody care to tune into C-Span's Washington Journal and check whether the trees and clouds are actually moving?
• As we approached the capitol, I noticed that several of the trees had small signs attached to their bark at about eye-level, identifying their species. We quipped about how tight security had gotten that even the trees needed name-tags. Then, Ian noticed that they were all cherry trees -- the famous ones that blossom! We are impressed by the most mundane and obvious things.
  A bit closer and to the side, I noticed a small bleachers labelled for the press corps facing a podium, with the capitol behind the podium. We snapped a few photos there, just for fun. We walked around the Supreme Court Building -- cool -- before finally reaching the Folger, about ten minutes before the 11 o'clock tour.
• I think I'm going to describe my experiences at the Folger in a separate post, because for as much space as I'm spending on this trip report, I could spend an equal or greater amount describing what we found and found out at the library. Suffice it to say, we spent three hours there, I want to go back, I want to get researcher access so I can read from the collection, and I'm incredibly impressed with my self-discipline that I walked out of the gift shop with only two items, one of which was the catalog to the current exhibit.
• After that, we headed over to the Library of Congress. First, we walked into the Jefferson Building, which holds the Main Reading Room and most of the exhibits. There was a huge line before the security gates (I don't know when Bob Hope's illness/death was announced, but the LoC is having a Bob Hope exhibit) While we were waiting, I decided that I didn't just want to see the touristy areas; I wanted to actually register as a reader. So, we left the line and walked across the street to the Madison building. Unfortunately, Ian forgot to take his Leathermen off his belt that morning and security denied him admittance. We could've walked back to the car to drop them off and then come back, but he was starting to fade and I was getting hungry, so we decided to just grab lunch and skip the LoC for the day. [Another reason we simply have to go back!]
• As we were walking back to our car after lunch, a deluge opened up. We got soaked so much we couldn't get any wetter. Fortunately our bags with our purchases remained watertight. We hopped into the garage to drop off some of our things and for Ian to grab a dry shirt. Then we headed across the street to the GPO Bookstore. Unfortunately, this branch did not have everything on sale. That's only for the branches that are closing immediately and some of the online material. But, we browsed anyway. A few interesting finds: a series of five giant posters -- one for each color of the Homeland Security rainbow; Congressional directories with photos (for those trying to place a face); Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election -- both the official commission report (148 pages) and the much longer (328 pages) appendix. Nifty stuff, but nothing we wanted enough to buy.
• And then, at about 3:30 PM, we left the garage and headed north, out of DC. Some really poorly designed intersections and some crowded traffic on the way up to Baltimore, but otherwise smooth sailing. [If rush hour really begins that early, I wonder about their work habits...]

The Final stretch (Monday evening and Tuesday)

• Trying to beat rush hours, we kept driving pretty much non-stop until about 6pm or so, when we crossed the Pennsylvania border. Then we got out to stretch at the welcome station. I was somewhat tired and didn't want us to push things too much. I also didn't want to get caught in some area without hotels when we did get tired, so we asked the man working there for a good place to spend the night about three hours hence (stopping at about 9:30 PM or so). He helped us book a room in Wilkes-Barre, and after more stretching and rearranging of the contents of the car, we resumed driving.
• We didn't bother much with the radio, so besides listening to music on the CD, I kept Ian entertained by reading him things from the books I bought at the Folger library. [More on this in a later post.] A half-hour south of Wilkes-Barre, Ian still wasn't terribly tired, and we briefly debated just driving all night to get home that much quicker. We didn't. [In the end, I think the clincher was handling the twisty mountainous roads during the daylight, when we were fresh.]
• Incidentally, why do SUV drivers so often park outside the lines? It's not that the spaces are too small -- I saw pickup trucks, vans and other SUVs all parked perfectly inside the lines. But somebody in a shiny luxury SUV with leather seats and trim was either too lazy, stupid or rude to bother centering his own vehicle, causing us problems getting in and out of our parking space at the motel. I was tempted to leave a nasty note under their wipers, but I was afraid that the owner might key my car in retaliation. Still, I'm tempted to make up a little coloring book to give away in these situations, with instructions that if you can color within the lines, you should know enough to park in the lines as well.
• The drive was relatively smooth, and we crossed the border into Massachusetts at about 11:30 AM. Since there was really little reason to rush at that point, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice lunch at the Publick House. Yum. We realized that it wouldn't be too far out of the way to stop there for dinner some night before going to the Mendon Drive-In. [And yes! This weekend's double feature is Spy Kids 3D followed by Pirates of the Caribbean, movies I want to see and see again.]
• After lunch, we drove home along the Mass Pike, getting back some time after 2pm.
  Based on the trip odometer, our total trip was 1476 miles. Not bad.
• Impressively enough, upon returning home, we don't see any signs that our cat pissed anywhere inappropriate, either through illness or displeasure. Of course, that may not mean we're scot-free. Several times in the past we've come home to a clean house only to have her leave a mess on the bed the day after we got back. It's her way of telling us that she was not amused, while minimizing the time she has to live with her own stink.
• Finally, I started writing this post at about 3:20 PM (with some interruptions) and that's been our trip.

And that's all she wrote -- until I get started on describing the Folger Shakespeare Library, that is!

Posted by Lis Riba at 2:57 PM

I'll post a full account of my trip in a little bit, but for those who are interested, we have returned!