Irony

I am annoyed when my friends do not update their blogs, and yet I rarely update my own.

an amazing, inspiring blog that will make you even more angry at society's stupidity

http://womenagainstsarahpalin.blogspot.com/

Parsing Sarah Palin

I think Sarah Palin expects John McCain to die in office. Here's what she said when she was introduced as his running mate:

"It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

As we know, Hillary Clinton was running for the Presidential nomination, and her comment referred to the glass ceiling which has thus far prevented women from attaining the office of President. Thus, if Palin intends to shatter that glass ceiling and become President herself, when she is in fact running for the office of Vice President, it can only mean that she plans to do so over John McCain's dead body.

I also found it interesting that through her statement, Palin clearly positioned herself as far weaker than the pioneering Clinton. She seems to imply--rightly--that she herself wouldn't have the ability to break through the glass ceiling had Clinton not first rendered it structurally unstable.

London Journal--British Library

Since the days have become so much alike, I decided to stop enumerating them. Instead, here's my typical day at the British Library.

Since I'm staying in Chelsea this time, it takes me AN HOUR to get from my place to the BL: first walk to South Kensington tube, then take the oh-so-slow Piccadilly Line nine stops to King's Cross, then emerge onto the Euston Road just two blocks down from the library. As I enter the courtyard, I see an immense sculpture based on one of William Blake's prints. Turn right toward the front of the library, and go in the center doors and queue for the mandatory bag search.

Head downstairs to put things away in the locker room; only certain items may be brought into the reading rooms: notebooks, pencils, laptops and mobiles (with sound off--oh the scorn heaped upon those who don't know how to mute the "Windows" sound on their laptops). The locker room is the first place one notices the unspoken but strict conventions that regular readers follow. Select a locker, hope that it isn't someone else's favorite locker, and stick with it. Mine is #342. Right now, the library is full of Uni students working on final projects, so the locker room is experiencing a bit of anarchy. However, most non-regulars go straight down the middle aisle, which is almost always full.

I always go to the Rare Books Reading Room, which is on the second floor. Sometimes I head up to Manuscripts, which is just above Rare Books. There are also two Reading Rooms for Humanities, which I dislike because they are always crowded; they are also rumored to be place to go if you wish to "meet" other scholars. There are also rooms for boring things like Science, which I have never visited.

The Rare Books Reading Room is shaped like an L. I like to sit around the corner, in the little part of the L, near the Issue Desk and the Catalogue Terminals. Again, regularity typically reigns and once a desk is chosen, one is expected to sit at it every time. Of course, a major difficulty is selecting a desk that, seemingly empty at the current moment, in fact turns out to be someone's regular seat. One day this week a woman came and set up directly next to me, even though there were many empty desks available. The normal etiquette is to leave an empty desk between you and the next reader whenever possible. This is not only to be polite, but also because working with rare books takes up quite a bit of space, with the stack of books, the book cradle, the notebooks, the laptop, the extra sweater (it does get cold in those Reading Rooms!). This trip has been so short that I haven't been able to settle at a regular desk, which I find rather disconcerting.
This is the lobby of the BL. Of course, one can't take take photos inside the Reading Rooms.

Order books, pick them up at the issue desk, get chastised for not following the rules (yes, you can ORDER ten books per day, but you can only have SIX on reserve at any one time), take notes and/or transcribe passages, head out intermittently for a coffee from the cafe, a sandwich from Pret, or a plate of cheap and delicious chips from the Restaurant, or for yet another expensive mechanical pencil from the shop, come back and work some more until closing time.

Hmm. It's really much more fun than it sounds.