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We made our way to the Chelsea Physic Garden yesterday. This so-called ’secret garden’ was founded in 1673, and is one of the oldest and most interesting gardens in the UK. They recently opened up a section dedicated to the work and life of Linnaeus. Apparently ol’Linnaeus was once a visitor to the gardens and this is marked with a big, red sign that says “Linnaeus was here.” The sign even has an arrow pointing to the ground, indicating the spot where he might have stood. For some reason this totally cracked me up!
And in other celebrity place-related news, the Chelsea Physic Garden is right around the corner from Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant. For some reason I love Gordon Ramsay — he comes across as rather gruff in his shows, he has nothing good to say about vegetarians and just this week he made the news in the UK for telling a television presenter that she had bad breath on air, yet still I still like the guy. So, I took a tourist snapshot of the front of his restaurant. I didn’t immediately realize the connections between this image and the “Linnaeus was here” sign, but I think these two photographs fit quite perfectly together!
We also went to the Tate yesterday and saw the most amazing photography exhibit called “How We Are: Photographing Britain“. That makes one more exhibition catalogue I have to find room for in my suitcase…
Which archive has the A.F. posters I am looking for? Did they vanish into thin air? Why is it always so hot on the Victoria line? Seriously, how am I going to get all these books to fit in my suitcase? How many more days until my credit card is maxed out? It costs how much to get digital files of images from the British Library? Do they have a 10 year payment plan? Why don’t we dedicate as much advertising space to books in Canada as they do in the UK? Is it a really bad idea to eat chocolate biscuits for dinner?
I had a whirlwind day and managed to get to the V&A, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum all before 5pm. I’m totally wiped out, but had a great day! The one thing that I was a little disappointed about was that the ‘wildlife garden’ at the Natural History Museum was closed because it was raining — that was, in fact, one of the things that I really did need to visit on this research trip so I’ll have to try and get back there before we fly home next week. The silver lining was that since I couldn’t poke around the wildlife garden I had time to check out Mark Dion’s exhibition, systema metropolis – very cool! Of course I had to buy the catalogue. I’ve been on a book-buying spree and have no idea how I’ll get them all home! Another highlight of the day was enjoying a pint in the ‘Green Dining Room’ designed by Morris & Co. at the V&A. Yay!
Yesterday was my first visit to the British Library and I’m in love! It is the most magical place. In addition to having the most amazing research collection (I read some statistic that if you were to look at 5 books from their collection per day it would take 80,000 years to get through it all!), it is just a really lovely space. The shops, the exhibition galleries, the excited hush of the reading rooms, the helpful staff, etc. were all more wonderful than I had anticipated. When they took my picture for my reader’s card I was grinning like an idiot!
I spent the day reading a 19th century periodical called The Animals’ Friend — published by a break-away group of the SPCA (before they became the RSPCA). I wanted to order copies of some of the images from the various issues, but since they were pre-1850 they needed to be scanned by the staff at a cost of £1 per page. I ended up spending £36 on copies! Yikes! This is pretty rare stuff though, so I handed over the cash and tried not to automatically convert the price to Canadian dollars in my head as I didn’t want to faint on that lovely carpet in the rare books reading room!
Less than 48 hours after returning from the ASLE conference in Spartanburg I boarded a plane for the UK. I barely had time to wash my clothes and repack! I’ll be blogging from an internet cafe for the next 2 weeks and, given the conversion rate from $ to £, I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to post! I’m here for a whirlwind research trip, working on two separate projects. The first one continues the research I presented at ASLE and has to do with 19th century animal welfare activism. I’ll be heading over to the British Library to look at gory pictures of animal death in the Victorian era. The second project involves spending time in public gardens — I’m heading off to Kew today. I didn’t plan it this way on purpose, but I’m glad to have a cheerier topic to balance out the horror of the other.
As a Canadian I have to admit that I have not spent a whole lot of time thinking about the landscape of South Carolina. However, prior to this trip If I had been pressed on the issue I would have likely guessed that the landscape would be characterized by big mossy tree trunks. There are trees with mossy trunks in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but this was certainly not the predominant view of the area around Wofford College. I wish I’d had time to take a side trip out from Spartanburg, to see more of the vegetation in this region.
My preconceived notions as to what I would encounter in terms of landscape and vegetation in the American South are informed, at least in part, by the mystery novels of Nevada Barr. Barr’s heroine, a park ranger named Anna Pigeon, fights crime in a number of different US National Parks, the specific setting changing with each novel. I’ve been reading Barr’s detective fiction for years now. I’ve found these books to be a fun way to relax and unwind after a long day. I was, therefore, delighted to be able to attend a panel at ASLE called “Nevada Barr and Other Eco-Sleuths.” One of the most interesting themes that came out of the presentations and the discussion that followed afterwards had to do with regulatory boundaries and expectations in certain spaces. For instance, many of the crimes that Anna Pigeon fights are activities that would not automatically be illegal outside of park borders (i.e.: hunting), and so there is this interesting relationship between how certain landscapes dictate certain patterns of behaviour. This, of course, is not a new observation and there has been much writing on the subject over the years, but what was neat about this discussion was that we were given the opportunity to think about the ways in which objects of popular culture reinforce and sometimes challenge these patterns of human behaviour as dictated by landscape.
I have enjoyed blogs and blogging for years. As a grad student I blogged about such things as recalled library books, new ideas, worries about the future, my dissertation, and other randomness. This was back in the day when it was not that common to blog or read blogs or even think about posting things on the web for others to see. That blog sort of fizzled out when I graduated and moved to a new location. That blog was primarily a place to write about the uncertainties, excitement and stress of being a graduate student. If I’m honest, it was also a really great way to procrastinate! A few of my friends were playing with blogs at that time too, so it was kind of fun. I did not, however, have a sense of the blogosphere community as I would later come to know it. I don’t know if that was because I was still uninformed about how the whole blog thing worked or if that level of critical mass had not been reached yet.
In my first job after graduation I found myself reeling from the stress of being a newly-minted PhD working as an adjunct in a city far from the one that had come to feel like home. I was lonely, miserable, exhausted and frustrated. One evening when I was feeling particularly low I googled something like “burned out professor” and was delighted to find a number of academic bloggers who were posting about some of the very things I was thinking and feeling. I signed up for a new blogger account, created a profile and jumped right back into the blogging world with two feet. It was exactly what I needed at that time. I was still miserable, exhausted and frustrated (many of the posts were on such subjects as student loan debt, the alarming trend of relying more and more on adjunct instructors in North American universities, and my own insecurities as an instructor, writer and researcher fresh out of grad school), but I no longer felt alone with these stresses. For a little over a year I was very active in the academic blogosphere and I’m sure it helped keep me sane. I posted pseudononymously, not because I was trying to hide my identity but because it was fun to have an online alter ego identity. At the end of that contract I took the blog down as I was moving on to a new job and location and it no longer seemed relevant. The last post was almost exactly a year ago.
At many times over the past year I thought about returning to blogging, but have been pre-occupied with settling into my new job and new location (both of which I love!). I also wanted to spend some time thinking about what I would like my new blog to be if and when I did return to the blogosphere. In grad school blogging was a shiny, fun new way to waste time; when I was adjuncting it was a life line. Neither of those models of blogging are relevant in the same way to me any more. Of course I have goof-off time like everyone else, and it would be Pollyanna-ish of me to suggest that life is all sunshine and roses now, however I could feel a change in the air in terms of my reasons for wanting to blog.
I have spent the past week at the ASLE conference in Spartanburg, South Carolina. I love ASLE conferences — unlike many other conferences, I leave this one feeling happy, refreshed and inspired. This year’s meeting was no exception. I won’t go into detail in this post about all the wonderful things that I experienced at this conference this year (I will save that for another post!), but there is one panel that I must mention here as this is the panel that inspired me to return to blogging. The speakers talked about blogging as an important way to connect with the world around us. In many ways the act of blogging encourages us to notice detail around us with fresh eyes and to think about our day-to-day experiences with our environments, one of the panelists argued. Lorianne from Hoarded Ordinaries spoke eloquently and passionately about how ideas of place are already necessarily intertwined with the personal. Hearing Lorianne speak about these issues solidified a lot of the half-formed thoughts I had been recently having about returning to blogging. With all due respect to all of the other wonderful speakers I have heard at this and other conferences I have to say that this panel was the most inspiring and exciting panel I have ever had the pleasure of attending at an academic conference. To Lorianne and the others involved in the session — THANK YOU!
