Category: Random Thoughts

It’s been a strange year. It’s flown by like no other year I can remember, and yet more has happened than in any other year I can remember. Here are some of the stand-outs, in the order I thought of them:

• My best friend fell in love and moved just about as far away from here as she could get and still be in the U.S. Then she got engaged.
• The Library Society of the World got started and is now pretty much the cornerstone of my social life (sad, I know, but these people are amazing and I’ve made some wonderful friends).
• Swing dancing re-emerged as a hobby.
• My library survived consultants and reorganization (very minor reorganization, but it entailed many meetings and some uncertainty anyway).
• I totaled my car and bought a new one, which also introduced me to the new experiences of dealing with insurance companies, negotiating with car dealers, and making car payments.
• My computer died and so I bought a new one… and learned Vista and Office 2007 in the process.
• Librarianship and my place in it started to make more sense. Most of the time, I’m even reasonably competent now, which is great!
• My sister graduated from college.
• My youngest brother started ask my librarian-self for help with his research… and got a healthy dose of my sister-self’s help into the bargain.
• Twitter happened. ‘Nuf said about that.
• I wrote a chapter of a book with one of my co-workers and discovered two things: that she and I work very well together, and that chapter writing is a pain in the neck…. and inordinately time-consuming.
• I figured out how to direct a vocal choir, and started directing the college handbell choir.

Meanwhile, what with all this stuff going on, I’ve had an increasingly hard time writing. I haven’t kept my paper journal, haven’t written here very much, haven’t written in any of the places I normally wrote before. Currently I don’t know what I think about that. I’ve been staring at the screen trying to think of something coherent to say about it, but I can’t seem to find my way through to a complete thought. All I know is that I hope this changes, and soon. And I hope that I can manage my workload and personal life such that writing becomes the seamless part of my life that it was a year ago.

Meanwhile, I’m going to kick back and enjoy my last Sunday before the beginning of Winter term. Fall Term took a lot out of me, and I don’t think I’ve completely recharged my batteries yet, but Winter Term waits for no librarian. And I’m actually kind of excited about the coming term. We’ll begin with round two of trying to hire a social sciences librarian, and there are some really interesting classes coming up that I can’t wait to support.r

Congratulations to Jason and Betsy, and welcome little Eliza!!!

This is the first birth I’ve ever followed on Twitter. I’m sure most of Jason’s 100+ followers were obsessively checking their Twitter feeds for baby updates throughout the day yesterday. I know I was. Then there was the tense 5-hour absence of updates while friends posted things like “not seeing any baby updates, hope everything’s ok,” or, “really falling asleep now, I’ll check for baby updates first thing tomorrow.” And finally, we heard that Eliza was born and everyone was doing well, and there was much rejoicing in Twitter Land.

Happy Birthday, Eliza.

Back when only a few people in each town were literate (and therefore conducted most of the written business of the town and wrote any letters that townspeople had to send), the French devised a system whereby these appointed literate folks would also keep their town’s records.

A professor here acquired a over 100 years of these records from Esternay, spanning from the French Revolution to 1895, and has been digitizing and transcribing the letters from that collection for the last many years (with the help of students in the French department). Now, the collection is online (though still under construction). The Esternay Project includes scans of over 800 letters, their transcriptions, and then their translations.

From the page describing the project:

The core of the collection is the familial, business, political and patronage correspondence of three generations of notaries and landowners Jean François Poirrier, Louis François Poirrier and Louis Alfred Poirrier who consecutively held office at the municipal, cantonal, departmental and national level from the time of the French Revolution down to 1895 when Alfred Poirrier, while sitting in the Senate of the National Assembly, died. Apart from the letters of their wives and daughters (Louise Eulalie Poirrier, Sophie Guillemain Poirrier and Denise Poirrier) and Alfred’s two brothers (Charles and Paul Poirrier) and assorted friends and kin, the archive contains a selection from a much larger mass of notarial documents including the correspondence of various clients of the notarial office of Alfred, his father and his grand-father . We have also included a small sample of items from the documentary remains of Alfred’s political and administrative career which provide insights into the everyday workings of electoral politics in the first three decades of the III Republic. Aside from the personal correspondence of the family, our site now offers only a sample of what could be included in a much expanded version of the Esternay Project but even so we believe the site can serve as a window into the lives of French men and women as they lived through what was certainly one of the most tumultuous periods in their nation’s history.

I’ve always been intrigued by family letters. I covet a copy of the family letters my maternal grandfather’s family kept, and my favorite book is 84 Charing Cross Road. Unfortunately, I am terrible at writing letters, myself. I don’t now if that lack of talent feeds my obsession with reading other people’s letters, or if it’s just natural curiosity, but a project like this calls out to that deep part of me that loves letter writing above all other genres.