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post-cleaning frenzy
Jul. 24th, 2006 11:14 amAll the books are moved. It's rather amazing, but Camp now has a library. We have about 8 boxes of stuff to get rid of, from which I rescued a mouse-eaten 1840's Vergil and a Cicero. In the former, they have the poetry rearranged into standard (English) word order in the margins. Tee hee, but it does make it easier. I love old books.
I also found a fountain pen. It is much easier to get pretty flourishes and curlicues (I have been feeling ashamed of my ugly handwriting since looking at so many old copperplate-written journals) with a proper nib. It's also much easier to smudge the ink, though. It makes one realize that it wasn't just a love of conformity and superstitions about the sinister side that made them switch lefties -- before ball-point pens there was a very good reason for writing right-handed.
I was rereading Anne of Windy Poplars yesterday, and I made a Harry Potter discovery. Well, at potential one at least. Windy Poplars is the one where Anne has a three year stint as a principal in another (larger) town while Gilber is at medical school. It has always struck me as very episodic -- one eccentric family with whom Anne becomes entangled after another. One of these is Miss Minerva Tomgallon. Tomgallon is not an exact anagram from McGonagall, of course, but the characters not dissimilar. There was one particularly striking scene with her cat. Miss Tomgallon is the last of an illustrious family and lives all alone in the old family mansion, full of dusty rooms,old portraits, and six generations of hair-raising stories. A slightly less dark version of Grimauld Place, perhaps. I'm almost sure JK Rowling pulled a few things from here. Or perhaps it's all a coincidence. Are the Anne books even popular in Britain, or are they a North American phenomenon?
I also found a fountain pen. It is much easier to get pretty flourishes and curlicues (I have been feeling ashamed of my ugly handwriting since looking at so many old copperplate-written journals) with a proper nib. It's also much easier to smudge the ink, though. It makes one realize that it wasn't just a love of conformity and superstitions about the sinister side that made them switch lefties -- before ball-point pens there was a very good reason for writing right-handed.
I was rereading Anne of Windy Poplars yesterday, and I made a Harry Potter discovery. Well, at potential one at least. Windy Poplars is the one where Anne has a three year stint as a principal in another (larger) town while Gilber is at medical school. It has always struck me as very episodic -- one eccentric family with whom Anne becomes entangled after another. One of these is Miss Minerva Tomgallon. Tomgallon is not an exact anagram from McGonagall, of course, but the characters not dissimilar. There was one particularly striking scene with her cat. Miss Tomgallon is the last of an illustrious family and lives all alone in the old family mansion, full of dusty rooms,old portraits, and six generations of hair-raising stories. A slightly less dark version of Grimauld Place, perhaps. I'm almost sure JK Rowling pulled a few things from here. Or perhaps it's all a coincidence. Are the Anne books even popular in Britain, or are they a North American phenomenon?
