Fun Little Gems
So, still living in Louisville. Interviewing for jobs and keeping my fingers crossed and all that.
One interesting thing, though, is that I've decided it's time to get a library card since...you know, books. Anyway, I went looking for libraries within walking distance and found one about a mile away that I wandered off to today. Now normally a trip to the library wouldn't be all that interesting...but as I got my card, the library remarked that I ought to see the downstairs room. So I found another librarian to take me since...hey, I have time and why not?
Apparently the library was founded as a colored library, back in 1908, and is one of the first of its sorts. (If not *the* first. I'm forgetting all the details.) The downstairs room is filled with this odd amalgam of books that in some way relate to African American history.
What's fun is that it's *such* an odd amalgam. In the very rare, please don't touch section, are original books of essays on "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and an original "The Confessions of Nat Turner", as well as something about "Negro Soldiers Regiment" (which regiment? Which war? Yargh, I'm curious!!!!). But then even the non-rare books sections has all kinds of odd ball stuff. There was one that described a lengthy study trying to explain whether black or Italians made better farm laborers (and, of course, used new fangled industrial engineering techniques to try and prove the difference), books of plantation songs, and an odd treatise from 1919 decrying Christianity as an imperialist cultural conquest of the blacks. (Which is interesting as it used a lot of language being found in Russia and Germany at the same time to complain about English/French cultural imperialism. I'd actually like to go back and read the whole thing. Really curious about its author.)
The librarian, too, was really entertaining. She took so much pride in showing off her collection. (Which really is a gem. I have to imagine that there aren't copies of some of those books, which really does make them precious.) It's always pretty cool to go off wandering and find something like that...
One interesting thing, though, is that I've decided it's time to get a library card since...you know, books. Anyway, I went looking for libraries within walking distance and found one about a mile away that I wandered off to today. Now normally a trip to the library wouldn't be all that interesting...but as I got my card, the library remarked that I ought to see the downstairs room. So I found another librarian to take me since...hey, I have time and why not?
Apparently the library was founded as a colored library, back in 1908, and is one of the first of its sorts. (If not *the* first. I'm forgetting all the details.) The downstairs room is filled with this odd amalgam of books that in some way relate to African American history.
What's fun is that it's *such* an odd amalgam. In the very rare, please don't touch section, are original books of essays on "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and an original "The Confessions of Nat Turner", as well as something about "Negro Soldiers Regiment" (which regiment? Which war? Yargh, I'm curious!!!!). But then even the non-rare books sections has all kinds of odd ball stuff. There was one that described a lengthy study trying to explain whether black or Italians made better farm laborers (and, of course, used new fangled industrial engineering techniques to try and prove the difference), books of plantation songs, and an odd treatise from 1919 decrying Christianity as an imperialist cultural conquest of the blacks. (Which is interesting as it used a lot of language being found in Russia and Germany at the same time to complain about English/French cultural imperialism. I'd actually like to go back and read the whole thing. Really curious about its author.)
The librarian, too, was really entertaining. She took so much pride in showing off her collection. (Which really is a gem. I have to imagine that there aren't copies of some of those books, which really does make them precious.) It's always pretty cool to go off wandering and find something like that...