Sybilla Oritur

All the Romance languages are read from left-to-right - that other languages don’t follow this rule isn’t really news to anyone although, i have to admit, that the most daunting aspect of planning to learn Hebrew, i think, is learning to read in another direction.

The Latin alphabet, however, was not always read in left-to-write orientation. From the seventh to the fourth century BC, we find it written not only right-to-left but also in lines of alternating direction: Boustrophedron.

I can’t help but think of the notes Veronica and I use to send back and forth in high school - with alternating lines of colour - in which you read all the red first and then went over and read all the blue… There is something so aesthetically pleasing about the patterns created - even if it’s at the loss of intelligibility.

There are bookmarks for websites across the top of my browser. Postcards are slipped into volumes i convince myself i am returning to “soon.” I am particularly fond of an embossed leather bookmark i picked up at the Frick back in 2003 - but what about bookmarking before, well, books?

It may be obvious to point out, but the layout of a book’s page isn’t what a manuscript looked like. In fact, manuscripts looked a lot more like magazines - two (or three or four columns), often using different scripts and sizes to offset commentary from text. The gothic scripts are purposely very condensed (and difficult to decipher) to get more onto the page (the page which, incidentally, might be 25% of an unborn lamb’s skin - parchment was NOT cheap). How did readers keep track of where they were on the page - or even more interestingly, how did scribes keep their places when talking a break from the detail-oriented task?

Readers as well as copyists used as bookmarks little wheels of parchment with the numbers I to IV (representing the columns); the wheels could be rotated and moved along a thread. Quite a number of these have been found dating back from the thirteenth to the fifteenth centuries. (Bernard Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, p. 22-4).

You might be asking yourself how, if parchment was so expensive, they were able to get their hands on pieces to make bookmarks out of it… The size of a book was determined by the smallest skin available - the others would have their edges trimmed down. These clippings end up being used a bindings and BOOKMARKS.

Waste not want not.

PhD Comics, one of my favourite web comics, is running a great series on the adventures of thesis-land. Yesterday was QUITE a day, preceded by a day more arduous and today - it wouldn’t look much better if i weren’t being compensated for three hours of editing a French student’s paper for our French Revolution class last semester with crepes… CREPES! Made by someone with my favourite accent… and a mini-break. I need a mini-break.

I spent 14 hours on campus on Monday. There was a milk-run, some photocopying and time on the treadmill in there - but i was awake at 5:30am, doing Latin by 6am and out the door by 8am. Something is very weird with my sleep schedule and i am not pleased. Did i manage to accomplish anything? Well, i translated about ten references to the word “Italy” or “Italian” in Rucellai’s De Bello Italico, getting me about 25% closer to the end of my “citation collecting phase.” I also edited the aforementioned paper for FL - and was running on Red Bull and skim latte when i got home at 10:30 and indulged in an episode of season 1 of House. I do not know what i would do without crap TV.

Tuesday, or yesterday, although it feels much farther away already, began with dropping off an article for a professor pre-9:30am. Then into palaeography class where we covered late antique scripts and i, rather stupidly thinking back, volunteered to present for an hour next week on pre-Carolingian medieval scripts. They aren’t legible - in case you were wondering. In fact, some of them are so, um, eccentric, that they are referred to by using the actual script. I might have a better chance reading Arabic. One of the assigned readings is in German, and luckily a Swiss friend of mine, DR, is my presentation partner. Combined we can read the materials (another article is in Italian). After 2.5hrs of palaeography, i ran frantically to my carrel to attempt to schematize the De Bello based on 37 fully-translated pages and another 60-some-odd pages of first, last and middle sentences of paragraphs. About page 80 this totally broke down - but it was a good exercise because i also came up with a tentative writing schedule that just MIGHT get this thing completed for the due date of March 1st. Then i had a meeting with my psychiatrist, where we tried to address some side-effects i am having (see sleep schedule comments above). THEN, after about 40 minutes of gabbing with other masochist grad students in the history department, had an hour meeting with CC discussing, essentially, just how far i am from being at the writing stage. Sadly, it was a horribly productive meeting even if it is a little discouraging. I tried to get in 2 hours of work in my carrel, but that was a FAIL. Came home, should have eaten dinner, but made cinnamon-raisin bread and brownies instead. My oven and i are currently not speaking over the burning of the latter. Still managed to complete my allotted five sentences of the day and get another 20 pages of a secondary source i have been reading FOREVER done.

Today i have class in the afternoon, must go for a run and need to read for a palaeography prep meeting tomorrow, translate the last six Latin sentences and try to finish Power and Imagination.

Oh… and i am out of white flour - no more bread-baking until that’s addressed. Sniff.

You’re bored, i know. I’m exhausted.

We see them all the time - the logo on the bottom of the TV screen telling you that this CSI episode is playing on CTV. Digital watermarking, “the process of possibly irreversibly embedding information into a digital signal. The signal may be audio, pictures or video, for example. If the signal is copied, then the information is also carried in the copy,” may be so much a part of post-modern life that we almost don’t notice, but it has a rich heritage going back to the 1300s.

Already before 1300 the custom began of distinguishing paper by the use of watermarks. These trademarks, consisting of a wire outline fastened to the grid of the mould, made many shapes: letters, animals, tools, emblems of all kinds. They are charming in their variety and useful as well, for they enable us in many instances to determine the provenance of the paper and to date a manuscript approximately. (Bernard Bishoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, p. 13.

Before paper, or rather in the days of parchment, you could tell a lot from the piece of parchment: Smoothness, the visible (or not) hair follicles, the animal it came from, were all clues to the quality of the scriptorium and the region of its providence - but it is difficult to be sure. Paper changes that - and is a more cruelty-free option.

As if the number of hours spent in my carrel everyday weren’t indicator enough… or the insane thrill i got when i was able to decipher an entire hand in Visigothic script earlier today… ZS sent me a link to the most awesome item ever!

BookBook: The laptop cover that makes your Mac look like a leather-bound edition of something you probably can’t afford since you buy things like laptops.

It was a timely suggestion. Sunday i spent a good hour trying to find the PERFECT laptop case - but decided that i didn’t really need to spend more money than i am already on things like… actual books. Of course, if i had found the cover with my favourite Van Gogh (one of the cherry tree in blossom paintings) i might be singing a different tune. I also might be less tempted by the $80 leather option which, unfortunately, also appears to offer the most actual protection. I hate that my laptop cover is bright pink - it screams STEAL ME.

Particularly irritating in the latest $400-some-odd book spending spree is the large number of booksellers on Abebooks who seem to think i am dumb enough to pay more than the amazon list price PLUS shipping for expensive monographs on, you guessed it, palaeography.

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• BookBook provides a novel cover for your MacBook (macworld.com)

My love affair with Banana Yoshimoto’s work continues unabated. Somehow, her narratives, in which nothing really happens, distill a sense of loss and love into the perfect bittersweetness. Sparse yet still passionate.

I began reading Hardboiled and Hardluck back in November. The first novella kept me up until 3am on a weeknight - which wasn’t the brightest move ever. I had thought after a few pages, i would be able to put the book down and fall asleep. Nope. Hardluck was an even darker tale - about a woman studying Italian literature whose sister suffers a stroke and is slowly dying although already brain-dead. How loss can be so beautiful, i will never fully grasp. A quick read, you paradoxically find yourself feeling very alive with the realization that sadness is life. A good realization really.

I realized last week at some point that the slow cooker was making a liar out of me… i used to avoid eating meat at home, but stews and soups are “oh so yummy.” Furthermore, i had an excuse to go to my favourite, but not often enough visited, grocery store - Punjab’s - for chickpeas and garam masala. The recipe makes four VERY large servings - and although i am sure would be very nice with naan or rice, i served it with homemade whole wheat… omnomnom. Also worth noting - reheats particularly well. If you feel adventurous - add some peas or perhaps some paneer?

Ingredients
2 cups dried chickpeas
8 cups baby spinach leaves (that’s a big bag)
2 (15-ounce) cans diced tomatoes
2 teaspoons ground coriander
2 teaspoons ground cumin
1 teaspoon garam masala
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

Directions
In large bowl, combine chickpeas and enough cold water to cover by two inches. Cover and refrigerate 8 hours or overnight.Drain chickpeas, then combine in slow cooker with 1 cup water. Cover and cook on high, stirring occasionally, until just tender, at least four if not five hours. Add spinach, tomatoes and their juices, coriander, cumin, garam masala, turmeric, 1 1/2 teaspoons salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to low and cook 1 hour more. Sprinkle in remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, stir in cilantro and serve.

I’ve had to institute a rule with respect to visits to The Book Thing of Baltimore. Only the number of books i drop off can be taken away. I am always enthralled by which authors show up the most: Le Carre, Mitchener, Grisham. Although DR was looking for a copy of Walden, we did not find one - last time there were three. Thinking i had a copy on one of my own shelves, we came back for tea (and homemade cinnamon-raisin bread) to discover i was wrong. Nevertheless, the world’s problems were solved - even if my afternoon was stolen. The big find of the trip was Lives of the Popes. One must never forget to peruse the Christianity section in bookstores/book exchanges - One day i will find that copy of St. Aquinas that i know is just waiting for me.

Friday evening, while wandering around Hampden during the first leg of a multi-hour trek involving JHU students, non-JHU students, fried chicken, beer and, eventually, one of my favourite wines, either G or D (i can’t remember which) told me about the new service offered by a Holiday Inn in London - Human Bed Warming.

Besides the obviously disturbing idea of a stranger dressed in a onesy hopping into my bed to warm it up - i want to know why the Holiday Inn doesn’t just offer hot-water bottles? Or better yet - why am i the only person to still use hot water bottles? When did it become a dated tool for the obvious discomfort of cold sheets?
I realized, after waxing poetic about my rubber friend for about five minutes, that i am not even sure where one purchases a hot water bottle anymore; Amazon to the rescue! Rubber HOT Water Bottle & Plush Ducky Duck Cover

Are you going to tell me that this cute little guy wouldn’t be more welcome in your hotel bed than a hotel staff member dressed in a ridiculous outfit? If there are going to be ridiculous outfits, they should involve animals.

I haven’t been driven to buy an academic book “just because” in a long, long time. It was supposed to be skimmed for a paper, but as i couldn’t put it down, i ended up having to ask for an extension. I can’t recommend it enough.

Imperial City: Rome, Romans and Napoleon, 1796-1815 focuses on the relationship between a single city and the Emperor. Susan Vandiver Nicassio acknowledges this in a detailed bibliographical essay included at the end of the work: “This is a book about Rome and Romans rather than a book about Napoleon, though Napoleon is the never-present but always dominant figure who overshadows it” (237). Although Imperial City has a personable, accessible tone, “the popolo in general, and everyone’s grandmother in particular, had their own ideas about what to do about physical problems,” there is a footnote on almost every page, albeit in a tiny font face, that at the very least refers the reader to a more exhaustive account in the secondary literature, if not to a primary source (135). Quality scholarship can be reconciled with palatable narrative style.
The first half of Imperial City describes Rome and its occupants. They are depicted as an eccentric people mainly through descriptions by well-traveled foreigners like Mrs. Eaton. With a focus on their chosen professions, with ample opportunity for independence, an unparalleled system of charities, fierce loyalties to individual neighbourhoods as well as their city and scorn for wealth, the Roman are set up a formidable opponent to Napoleon’s attempted reforms. Critical of any change, but particularly ones that were associated with anti-clericalism and the Enlightenment, the years of Napoleonic rule and the Emperor’s treatment of the Pope galvanizes a population into outright resistance. The nuns barricade themselves in their convents in opposition to the abolition of regular orders. Patrician families, like the Patrizzi, following the example of the Pontiff, permit themselves to be taken hostage rather than submit. These examples, taken from the most Catholic of cities, in many ways stand in for the smaller cities of Bologna, Ferrara, Perugia, Orvieto and Urbino that are missing from other scholarly works. The reader has a framework for understanding why the assault on the Catholic Church was so deeply troubling to the Italian peoples and undermined the legitimacy of French imperial rule. It also provides a description of how Italian urban life could be drastically opposed to Napoleonic reform in much the same way that Davis’ book on Naples provides the reader with a sense of how large landowners in the countryside were able to manipulate the changes in regime to bolster the power-structures that supported them. Despite a limited focus, Susan Vandiver Nicassio offers a wealth of information for the entire peninsula.