The cases compounded their own utility by being used onboard ships to transport fragile plants from overseas. And, as indicated by Hibberd, their design suited the Victorian taste for features like aviaries and aquariums. Wardian cases could support flowers, moss, and ivy. The Wardian case was one of the many manifestations of the Victorian fern craze, along with the cultivation of rockeries, the collection of pressed specimens , the creation of cyanotypes and nature prints about which I will write further in an upcoming post , and other manifestations in decorative art.
The cases, unlike some of these other technologies, could host living ferns and could remain on display as part of the furniture of a tasteful drawing room. What is coal? It is, ironically, the product of ferns. Over million years ago, our earth was inhabited by giant insects and ferns the height of trees.
When those ferns died, they sank into the swampy ground and compressed, first into peat and later into coal. This fossil fuel, when burnt, filled cities with smog and necessitated new technologies to protect fashionable plants. Allen, David Elliston. London: Hutchinson, Heath, Francis George. Sixth edition. Hibberd, Shirley. London: Groombridge and Sons, Lindley, John. New edition. London: Longmans, Green, and co, Ward, N. London: John Van Voorst, Because this book proved very popular, it was reprinted numerous times in the seventeenth century, usually with updates to keep the text current.
Before I picked up the Generall Historie last week, I had done some background research. I was informed that this history was told through the lives of each Ottoman sultan, so that the history becomes a series of biographies, from Osman I in the early fourteenth century to Mehmed IV in the late seventeenth. When I started looking at the text, I thought I knew what I would find. One facet surprised me, however: the poetry. At the beginning of each new chapter of the Generall Historie , on the page where the next sultan ascends the throne, the reader encounters both a portrait of the sultan and two poems about him.
In volume 1, which Knolles wrote, the author composed a poem in Latin and a poem in English summarizing the life of each sultan he described. Because the text is small, I include my transcriptions of the English poems after the images. A barbarous Empire his Ambition founds, His cruel scepter staind with bloud, and wounds. I who to kingdomes, Cities, brought their fate, The terrour of the trembling world, of late, Yield to the greater Monarch Death, but am Yet proud to think of my immortal fame.
The Assyrian, and Arabian felt my hand, Nor could the Persian my dread power withstand. So haughty man, and all his hopes decay, And so all sublunary gloryes pass away. Valiant I was not, none deserve that name But those, whose generous minds bespeake their fame.
For it cannot escape you that no other will touch you since I think you shall never be rich in oxen or sheep and shall never produce vintage nor grow an abundance of plants. If you have a temple for Apollon who shoots from afar, …you shall feed your dwellers from the hand of strangers, since your soil is barren. A scrappy bit of rock set in the waters of the eastern Mediterranean, the island of Delos overcame its barren soil and its size less than 2 square miles!
It was sacred to Apollo, the legend goes, because it sheltered his mother, Leto, when she needed to give birth. As a religious site, Delos flourished, both independently and under the control of Athens, from the 5th to the 1st centuries BCE. After a devastating raid during the First Mithradatic War in 88, followed by another blow by pirates in 69, Delos diminished to a shadow of its former glory.
Although some inhabitants held on for a while, the island was deserted by the middle of the first millennium. The once-rich site lay abandoned for centuries. Kynthos, the highest point on Delos, today.
July In the seventeenth century CE, European travelers found this abandonment very convenient. Paired with the prominence of Delos in Greek and Roman myths and poetry, this convenience helped kindle their interest in the site.
Beginning in the early s, as I have been seeing in my work, an increasing number of western Christian travelers started making a point to stop in ancient Greek lands as they went about their business in the eastern Mediterranean. These travelers liked to collect antiquities, whether coins, statues, or pieces of architecture, taking them back home as souvenirs. In the seventeenth century, therefore, Delos provided a particularly attractive opportunity for acquiring ancient Greek objects, so it drew a disproportionate number of travelers with antiquarian interests.
Not everyone, however, could go to Delos. It was a long and expensive trip, beset with the risk of shipwreck or piracy. A market existed, however, to see Delos and other Greek islands from afar, which brings me to the images I wish to share with you. Aphrodite and Poseidon are in the foreground, while the figure on the right represents the Colossus of Rhodes. The figure on the left may represent Apollo, to whom Delos was sacred. To help their readers imagine the far-flung locales through which they passed, early modern travel writers, like travel writers today, would usually include some illustrations.
As the circulation of printed books expanded, it had never been easier for European readers to get a glimpse of life elsewhere. Sometimes artists traveled abroad, like Guillame-Joseph Grelot or Cornelis de Bruijn, whose accounts were illustrated with engravings based on drawings they themselves had made, or an author could hire an artist to journey with them.
Even in these cases, the quality of images could vary, if the artist was in a hurry, or was poorly trained, or if he saw just what he wanted to see. Dapper was born in Amsterdam and never traveled farther from it than Utrecht.
It was an expensive trip! She mentions a painting of a butterfly where the husk of an empty cocoon was in the bottom lower corner. They require the courage to let go and spin the chrysalis. Waiting is both passive and passionate. It means descending into self, into God, into the deeper labyrinths of prayer. What do I do? It just takes time. Before I write what I underlined in her chapter of letting go, first think about what is keeping you from entering your chrysalis.
Your change. Your cocoon. What are you not wanting to leave, but that you would like to not be holding your spirit back from? A location? Do you always cling to a place that you believe makes your soul alive? The changes we make of who we are as those in our home change their shape? We must change with them…letting go of our role as infant changes into toddler who then changes into child who then changes into adolescent who then enters the chrysalis of the change into adulthood?
Are we not letting the changes others are going through change us into a new role? Letting go of friendships? Friends that no longer need you as they enter a new phase of their life?
Are we willing to let that particular friendship go, appreciating the time that they were part of us? Our friends and family go into their own changes — do we let them? What about letting go of desires we have for others? Are we having a hard time of letting go of a time period in our lives?
Letting go and accepting that those that have moved or died are no longer present in our reality. Are we ready to accept that? Or, are we keeping our minds in a time that is no longer our reality? Are we having to let go of being healthy? Of accepting the chrysalis of change that is a different, older body? I do not ever, ever keep something because it's got great packaging, or because it "seems really neat. I usually ask these questions of any item coming into the archives: 1 Is this item already being preserved by another institution, or can I safely assume it is being preserved elsewhere?
If it does not, what is the exceptional circumstance which is compelling me to keep this item rather than passing it to an institution into whose scope it does fit? See how far down the list "beholden" comes? Because in truth, I am beholden to keep very, very little in the grand scheme of archives. But if I am not careful and vigilant, I could end up keeping all kinds of things which are thrust upon me by nostalgia. Special Collections have this problem too: "Oh look how pretty the binding is on this edition of Alice in Wonderland!
We should keep it! If my collection scope is strictly American South in the 20th century, then it doesn't matter how pretty the binding is, it does not fall into any category under which I am entitled to keep it. Now, getting back to archives, this same problem applies. The right question is "Do I have the space to keep these 50 posters which offer no new information, but only duplicate exactly the information I already have in my files and in the actual transcriptions and video recordings of these convocations?
An archives which does not fight against nostalgia, which embraces it instead, is probably not a very good nor useful archives. It will be an archives with a huge backlog or unprocessed material, with more coming in all the time, which has no sense of itself or what community it's supposed to be stewarding. It will try to be all things because it assumes that no one else "cares" about these things as much as it does.
All of which are dangerous to an archives' long term health. Older Posts Home View mobile version. However, the last few years has seen a decline in my own readerly life. What is a readerly life you might ask? Although there is not one set definition, having a readerly life means being immersed in reading, excited about books, and eager to share your reading.
As a graduate student, I am currently doing research in an elementary classroom. During the first quarter of the year, the students explored what it meant to have a readerly life. They learned about choosing books at their appropriate level, having a plan for reading, responding to what they were reading, and sharing their reading with others.
This is something very typical for many elementary classrooms that are using the reading workshop format. Lucy Culkin is the guru of the readerly life for elementary teachers.
However, I am much more well-versed on the reader workshop model by Nancie Atwell and Linda Rief, who are better known at the secondary level. In my own classroom, I have tried to set up an environment where students are immersed in books of their own choosing, given time to read, and have the opportunity to talk with their peers about their reading. Strangely, as a graduate student I have not had these opportunities.
I have been told what to read, how to read it and how to respond to it. The only time in the past few years that I have read" fun" books was at the and of the semester or on vacation.
0コメント