Goodbye Grad School

I planned to start with "life is chaotic of late", but I recall few times over the last years when life hasn't been chaotic. I seem to breed projects and lists like bunnies. I don't usually do the sane thing and simplify either. Everything is done the right way, while researching and selecting that 'right way' are tasks in themselves. It is no wonder I feel so fractured. Of late I'm reminding myself frequently of this quote from James E. Faust, "...my dear granddaughters, you cannot do everything well at the same time. You cannot be a 100 percent wife, a 100 percent mother, a 100 percent church worker, a 100 percent career person, and a 100 percent public-service person at the same time." I may not be able to do everything all at once, but when done sequentially I hope to fit a lot in this only life of mine. I need to graduate and clear my formal education time for other opportunities. To ensure graduation I received approval this week to switch from a thesis to an exam. Which I could have done all along, but I wanted to write the thesis...and make things as difficult as possible. Because I couldn't just write an 80 page paper. I prepared a 20 min visual presentation, did research to compile a bibliography of over 60 books and 35 articles, and outlined 15 potential chapters for my thesis. And that's before seriously absorbing what was in those books and articles. It wasn't a thesis. It was a dissertation or a life's work. I burnt out. And I've already done this once, I wrote almost 200 pages over something like 5 months last time, though most sections weren't directly connected, making it easier. Time to give myself a break this round. (Can you tell I'm still trying to justify it to myself a little? Despite the fact that in a few months it won't matter if I wrote a thesis or not.)

The exam will suit me better - a three hour exam on three themes, each involving multiple books and all the research I can do on each topic. It's doing research for three theses but only having to write for an hour each, rather than over 80 hours of thesis writing. It's the research and discovery part I enjoy most. And it's a huge relief. Yesterday I delivered all my paperwork to graduate studies. After running around campus all week, resisting my thesis advisor's sweet efforts to convince me to write the thesis because he's disappointed not to work with me on it and get read it, and spending a ridiculous amount of time sitting in hallways, I hope I've written my last check to the university. Burden lifted and I can now plan on graduating in May 100%. 

Goodbye university hallways!

Book to Box

A few years ago I made my first book box and sent it off to T for her birthday. I've been saving up books ever since to convert into boxes. I've only managed to finish a handful though - due to the fact that it is absurdly time-consuming to cut out all the pages of a book by hand. It became apparent I would need a more efficient way to operate. Enter the parent's barn full of power tools. Specifically M's scroll saw. Though I have broken more saw blades than boxes I finished, it is vastly more effective than cutting the pages out by hand. And the inner paper is preserved intact for other projects.

Not that I don't already have more projects than I have time for. G's quilt is still sitting at the foot of my bed.

Wax paper rolls for gluing

 Stack of glued books

Saw in action - 10 seconds before the blade broke

 Finished box.

(I've totally got one picked out for you B.)

Book Sale 2013 - Part 3: Book Art

This is going to be a long one. Hold on.

In another life I am going to be a book designer. Have you seen this Ted talk by Chip Kidd? It is one of my many favorites.

I'm sure it has something to do with the maps of the hundred acre wood found just inside the cover of A. A. Milne's Winne-the-Pooh books, E. H. Shepard's drawing is the one I always think of, but I love unexpectedly lovely illustrations in a text. Some examples from the latest haul.

 From Inside U.S.A. by John Gunther, besides being a beautiful map, all the red lines show the author's travels across the country. How amazing would it be to travel all those routes?

 

 The title should be lower, but that ship illustration is fantastic.

On the inside:

 Looks almost like a Longfellow paper doll.

 Cover of Prince of the Ghetto, which is a great book name for a collection of folktales by a Polish Jew.

Darling cover of one of my favorite books of all-time, I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith

These next three are all from the same book.

Another translation which according to the dust-jacket is a "gay ... amusing ... slightly terrifying! A first-hand account of what happens when the Red Army 'liberates' a country."

 Looks like a charming town, no? Can you spot the two poor folks on foot fleeing soldiers on horseback coming down the road towards the bottom left?

Love the caricature.
I still dream about his studio in Aix, one of my favorite places.

I still have not figured out what that kid is holding...

But here are some of the stories you are supposed to remember:

 A perfect illustration for a collection of Kipling.

 Parade of the Civil Guard as a cover.

I was a little disappointed there were not more images in this book beyond these.

 The little Mexican mountain village of La Vista, from A Miracle Every March (which if you read the inscriptions post, has NOTHING to do with people who have birthdays in March). Not to abbreviate too much, but a young teacher from the capital arrives to set up a school and gets the following response from the villagers, “How can anybody eat reading and writing?”

 Another amazing boat cover. Title approximately translates: Columbus of Australia: the narrative of Pedro Fernández de Quirós

Book Sale 2013 - Part 2: Inscriptions and Bookplates

Due to my own impatience with the crowds I neglected to look through the books last Saturday for great inscriptions. Thankfully choosing them based on their covers still brought a handful of inscriptions to my shelves. A favorite potential aspect of a used book is what owners or gifters have written inside. Especially since it opens a whole world of possibility for getting a glimpse into someone's world.

But before the inscriptions, here are two of my favorite bookplates:

This is not an inscription or a bookplate – but intrigued by a book of poems belonging to a “Sister Marian” I looked her up. She was a Deaconess of the United Lutheran Church and appears to have acquired this volume of poems while attending the Baltimore Lutheran Deaconess Motherhouse and Training School – at a location where now stands Coppin State University. Since the university moved to this address in 1950, Sister Marian would have been there some time before that and apparently long enough to have address labels made. There is a lovely collection of just over 800 photos from the Motherhouse on flicker and you can get an idea of what Sister Marian’s life was like – she could even be in one of the photos (link to photo collection).

 I had come up with this whole story in my head about the little nun sitting in her comfortable but austere little room reading from this collection poems about life outside her religious existence - but according to photos they played badminton, just like the nuns at the Sacre Coeur do in Amelie - so I now must re-frame my entire conception of Sister Marian.

On to the inscriptions!

 Any guesses on that name? Babbe, Bobbe, Bobbi? I'm going with Bobbe, but pronounced ridiculously.

The above is perfect -

To Our Darling Elly on her graduation from Syracuse University in gratitude for all the joy she has brought us.
Mother
Dad

June 2, 1952

This one made me laugh - flipping through the book I was seriously confused how "This book is especially written for people with birthday's in March...". This is 100% something my grandmother would write in a book she was giving as a gift.

To: Patty on 51st birthday - Patty obviously retired at the early age of 50 and has spent the last year enjoying her garden, Butch and Sue thus gave her the perfect book.

I wish they would have written in black rather than red ink:

Dear Folks -
This book is about friends & co-workers of Jane Phillips Cody and worked with her in Ecuador. Merry Christmas.
With Love,
Mom
Maude
Grandma O... (I'm pretty sure it says Oakes, but the 'O' appears to have been turned into a person wearing a tasseled fez and sitting in a canoe or on a surf board...I'm now disappointed I have been missing so many creative opportunities with the 'o' in my last name, I have never once put a fez on it.)

Dec. 1965

That's the end of the inscriptions - but I'll hopefully find time to post some of the great cover art and fantastic titles - here is a preview of one of my favorites!

The outfit, the exclamation mark - it's perfect, makes me giddy.