Greetings, fair reader! If you’re here, I assume you want important information about the Newberry Library Seminar in Chicago. And the absolute most important information I can give you is this: I’m waking up every morning in Gotham City. (Seriously, The Dark Knight was filmed here.) Yeah, you’re jealous now.
On a more serious note, I’ve been here a little over a week, and I have fallen madly, soap-operatically in love with the soaring skyscrapers, lined with windows, the super-modern right next to aged-stone and cathedral-like architecture, unexpected alley mouths opening up between them like secret passageways, interspersed with parks that wouldn’t be out of place in a castle garden. I’m so overcome by love I’m writing run-on sentences. If what precedes or follows sounds a little too glowing, I would like to remind you I’m from Colorado Springs. Enough said.
But there are three things that deserve special mention in my first blog entry. The first is the L. Coming from a sprawling semi-city in Colorado that thought so hard about its McCondos that it forgot about everything else a city usually has, the public transportation in Chicago was actually what I was most excited for. The L did not disappoint. Occasionally, it is a subway. And then, without warning, it will leap from the earth and go flying along wooden-and-steel tracks high in the air, giving everyone inside a view of the brick roofs below and the cityscapes from horizon to horizon on either side. And it goes absolutely everywhere. It is so easy to get around in this city, it’s ridiculous.
Secondly, the lake. Within walking distance of the apartments they put us all up in. People tried to give me a sense of this lake, but I heard “lake” and imagined a quaint little body of water lined by grass and picnics. I walked down there because I had nothing better to do and promptly felt my brain explode. It is the SEA, complete with sandy beach and water, water, everywhere. Also seagulls. I looked at it, texted all my friends about it, took a picture of my bare feet underwater. Then I ran through it laughing like a little girl and got my shorts soaked from knee to mid-thigh. Then I threw myself into the sand with my book, water before me, city at my back, life, for the moment, quite complete.
And third, because it is the whole reason for my being here, the Newberry Library. An intricately carved stone arch over the door, marble-floored halls and stairs, dark wood-paneled reading rooms. Wow, that’s all very… Yeah, but what about the books? My own projected topic was one my professor and I had thought up, that seemed pretty hopeful to me now: the spread of printing to Eastern Europe. I came up with a back-up topic, just in case. My professors ignored this and told me my first topic sounded quite good. I was growing doubtful. Sure, they had some old stuff here, but I’d learned from painful experience that in libraries, England and France outnumber Poland and Hungary a million to one.
I sent a tentative e-mail off to the man in charge of the collection on the history of the book. Is this even possible? I asked tremulously. The response was a matter of fact, Well, a cursory glance says we have thirteen printed manuscripts from before 1600 from Poland alone. Oh, that’s… wait, what? I… wow. I take it back, the Newberry may be some kind of wormhole that contains everything in the universe. They even have an Academy Award buried in the stacks somewhere.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to bury my nose in a 1450s Chronicle of Poland. Or perhaps bury my feet in the sand at the lakeshore. One of those.
Until next time!
