The Lions' Birthday

On Monday. my friend Daniela and went to Celebrating 100 Years at the New York Public Library. I've spent many hours of the life in the Main Reading Room there, doing research and waiting for books and microfiche to come up from the stacks.
The exhibit has some books, but also a lot of stuff (ephemera, I guess you'd say). Malcolm X's diaries from his journey to Mecca, Katherine Cornell's make up box from 1947 (the base looks quite disgusting), a first edition of poems by Phillis Wheatley, a Gutenberg Bible, a 15th century Dante's Inferno, some of Jack Kerouac's notes, Virginia Woolf's walking stick, Pound's annotated manuscript of "The Wasteland," a whole bunch of dance video clips (I saw a Katherine Dunham piece from the '50s or '60s), unfortunately the audio part of the Performing Arts Library presentation wasn't working when I was there.
But by far the strangest thing there is Charles Dickens' letter opener. It consists of an ivory shaft, and a taxidermied cat's paw that originally belonged to his pet, Bob. The accompanying quote is something like "What is so great as the love of a cat?" I would say the love of a dog!
Photo lifted from www.neatorama.com.

The Times of London

When I was younger and worked for a now defunct division of Time-Warner, I was a serious news junkie. I would read the Irish Times, the Reuters newsfeed, the English version of Frankfurter Allgemeine, CNN's website (in its earlier, more world news friendly incarnation) and the Times of London every day.
I went back to the Times of London on Saturday and found three interesting stories. First, that Faber & Faber is moving into the offices it has when TS Eliot ran it (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article4974645.ece). I have a soft spot for the romance of English publishers. My first published work was by the US incarnation of Heinemann, which published Siegfried Sassoon's work. I think I grinned for a week.
Second, that Barbara Cartland's (she of the romance novels; in my teens I consumed many) guide to entertaining is back in print (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/court_and_social/article4834182.ece). She insists that a dinner party consist of no fewer than eight people, and assumes one has servants as well. Beyond me.
And last, the death of Scottish playwright Stanley Eveling, who I didn't remember at first. Then realized I'd heard at least 20 performances of "Dear Janet Rosenberg/Dear Mr. Kooning" because I'd been the dresser for it at Dobama Theatre in Cleveland in my youth (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article5548640.ece)