December 12, 2001

Philly trip report, Part II

This is Part 2 of my trip report -- if you're not one the eight people who read Part 1, just hit the back arrow.

After the show, I stayed with an old friend and once again had a flareup of House Envy. His is a three-story twin, built in the 1880s, with gorgeous original cherry and mahogany woodwork. It's been painted over, neglected, and otherwise messed up, and he'll be restoring it probably for the rest of his life. But what a thing to restore! The downstairs is pretty much done, and is just beautiful. The neighborhood is only barely beginning to be gentrified, but it's not far off Penn campus and has a lot of potential. There are lots of very nice houses not more than a block away, and scary ones not more than a block the other way.

Monday was the highlight of my trip. First, I walked around the Penn campus all
morning, astounded at how much something that looks so permanent has changed. Of course, most of this change is new buildings for the Wharton school, and to other stuff being moved around to make room for them. Also, there's a new bookstore, run by Barnes and Noble. Stone and mortar are no match for the might of money, apparently. I guess I knew that, but hadn't seen it demonstrated so graphically. I stopped in to see a friend who professes there, but found she's on leave this semester, and then made an appointment for a phone consultation with a career counselor, just on the principle of making use of resources available.

I had planned to visit the Rodin Museum, which houses the largest collection of Rodin's work outside France, but halfway there, I realized it was probably closed on Mondays. I headed to the Parkway anyway, and decided to stop in at the central location of the Philadelphia Free Library, which I hadn't visited since grade school field trips. I was disappointed in the Children's section, and in small (very, very small) exhibits of crafts and Wodehousiana outside the Art and Literature departments, respectively. Therefore, my hopes weren't too high entering the Rare Book area, where I wanted to see the books themselves, as well as a Beatrix Potter exhibit. You have to ring a bell and wait a few minutes to be let in, then submit to having bags and backpacks locked up while in there. The librarian who let me in was quite friendly – he seemed to be having a slow day. He left me alone to peruse the exhibit, which was quite good, giving accounts of the writing of all her books, along with letters, stories, and various issues of Peter Rabbit &co. There was a modern copy of each book, in an edition very close to the original one, outside the cases for visitors to page through. All of the books in the Rare Book collection were also visible, locked up behind glass.

At the far end of the area, there were locked doors behind which I could see a beautiful wood-paneled library room. According to a sign, the original owner of the room (a Mr. Elkins, I think) had donated his collection to the Free Library, and after his death, his wife and daughter decided to donate the library itself. I had to go find the friendly librarian anyway, to get my backpack and be let out, so I asked him if I could see the room. OhmyGod. I want one. It was about 60' by 20' wood-paneled throughout, bookshelves alternating with paintings and comfortable, though fancy chairs. Most important, it was clearly a reader's library, not one created primarily for reference or for show. The primary collections were of Dickens, Goldsmith, and American exploration books, but there were plenty of others, and they were all of either the sort you'd want to read or for reference into the reading books. And it was beautiful. The original owner must have hated having to do work that took him away from that room and from his books. Unfortunately, my camera was in my backpack, locked up way at the other end of the section, so I couldn't take photos to bring home to Rudder. It may be just as well though if I showed him that library, he'd be trying to design one like it for our eventual house. Not that I wouldn't like that, but I don't think it would fall within any budget we'll ever be able to afford.

According to a pamphlet they had there, the basis of the collection of rare
children's books is the personal library donated by A.S.W. Rosenbach. I've been
interested in him since noticing that he features prominently in just about every
book I've ever seen on bibliophiles and book collecting, so I asked the friendly
librarian to show me that collection. On the other side of the nook containing the
Rosenbach collection stands the collection of incunabula. Of course, I had to look at those, because Peter Wimsey collects them. The librarian (who did not say, "Ook! Ook!") offered to take one out for me, "Even though I don't normally do that, because you seem so knowledgeable." I refrained from mentioning Lord Peter.

Partly due to my mother's recent influence, and partly because I was standing in front of it, I chose a Latin edition of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews and The Jewish War (De antiquitate Judaica. De bello Judaico). I couldn't touch it, of course, but he turned the page for me and we had fun guessing at the meaning of the Latin, a task made easier because I recognized the stories he was telling. The text on each page was very dense; each capital letter at the beginning of a sentence was filled in in red and the first sentence of each paragraph was underlined in red. The librarian told me that this was a common practice, in order to make early printed books look more like manuscripts. I pointed out, though, that the noted in this particular edition looked more like notes a reader would jot in to make the dense pages easier to read. Since the red markings petered out after the first third of the book, and after noticing a few marginal notes in the same red, we concluded my theory was correct.

After all that, I pretty much floated to the subway, and headed home. Dinner was an odd conglomeration between what my mother wanted to cook for me (stuffed chicken breasts and potato latkes) and the two meals' worth of leftovers I had stashed in her fridge (shrimp and shrimp, Chinese and Italian variants). Afterwards, I headed down the block to hang out with some old friends; a kid I babysat, now 22 years old with ambitions to open a dessert restaurant, his mother, who was like a big sister to me as a teenager, and his father, a gifted musician and a truly terrible lyricist. Of course, an hour over there became two (and then two and a half, when I asked, out of courtesy, to hear a song from the CD that S had just put together
and he insisted on playing me bits of every song on it). But despite a 5:30 wake-
up call, I got almost enough sleep that night, as I'd finally convinced my parents
not to keep yelling to each other after I went to bed. Or at least to yell less.

A neighbor had offered to give me a ride to the airport the next morning, since
she works near it. We grew up together, and were best friends until we
reached the age where friendship demands shared interests beyond dolls and
playgrounds. She and her husband bought her parents' house, and live there with their two-year-old. It was odd calling her to set up a time to meet, because her phone number is the same as it was when we were six (of course, so is my parents' number). Before going to the airport, we had to go drop off her son with her mother, who now lives in an apartment nearby. A. hadn't told her mother I was coming, and she was shocked to see me. Also very happy – I can't remember when anybody has been so excited to spend ten minutes in my company. I think she still misses the old street and all the neighbors she' known for 30 years. She kept offering me breakfast, and telling me how wonderful it was to see me, and passing on gossip about all of our mutual acquaintances.

Now that I'm home again, I'e spent the whole day doing laundry. Every piece of clothing I took, even the ones I didn't wear, smelled of smoke. The real reason not to smoke isn'tto save your lungs, it's to keep your clothes and hair from smelling of it. I still have so much to do here around the house now that I'm glad I don't have to go to work. (Which doesn't mean I don't want to be hired, if anyone reading this has a job opening!) I have concluded that our society is still based on a model whereby one member of a couple goes to work and one stays home and does everything else. We need to change things. A shorter work day, maybe?

Posted by dichroic at December 12, 2001 04:59 PM
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