It's time for holidays! Your suitcase is packed, you're ready to leave, and cannot wait to get a proper tan to show on social media. Mark Twain used to say that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness”, but unfortunately the health problems we may come across while travelling are far less poetic. Danger is always lurking, especially in far-flung and unexplored destinations.
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Yes, I'm in London. Which is wonderful, especially as I'm with family, about to go on an amazing trip to celebrate my dad's 80th birthday ... yet a wee bit frustrating as well, as I'm missing two whole weeks of the e-course that I've been so thoroughly enjoying ... But yes, I am definitely counting my blessings.
I did manage to take some time off and doodle. We're having a few internet connectivity problems so I'll keep this short and sweet, and post it before I get cut off. Here's the black and white sketch:
I'm not sure if I'll be able to carry on blogging much till I get back home, but I'll be posting photos and updates over at the Floating Lemons Facebook page so pop by there if you'd like to accompany me to Istanbul ...
Have a wonderful day. Cheers.
By Alice Northover
Friday procrastination is back! Apologies for the absence loyal followers but this blog editor has been jetsetting, mysterious, and then trapped in an email prison as a result of the mysterious jetsetting. What did I miss? Well here are some things you may have missed:
A brief history of taxi words.
Underground NYPL is now on Google Plus.
Textscapes in airports. The words, the words!
If you like it [the libary], then you should have put a pin on it [your coat]. (h/t LJ)
How Facebook engineers grapple with how people actually speak versus how computers speak.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Dude, you can ride waves in the sky.
Conspiracy theories in literature.
An OED Appeal for bookmobile.
A Future of Libraries infographic.
Websites can be creepy. (And I should stop saying ‘Howdy!’ in emails.)
Dali controversy. Art claims. Confusion.
Septuagenarian Akutagawa Prize Winner. (h/t The Millions)
William Blake work rediscovered.
Newark Library’s painting is on display once again.
Tweet! Tweet! World’s largest natural sound archive now fully digital and fully online.
Click here to view the embedded video.
Granta is going to produce its next once-a-decade list of British novelists under 40.
Harvard should admit more poets.
The Guardian’s higher ed chat tackled the role of university librarians in access to research.
A Town Like Alice and the Australian vernacular.
There are many myths of weight loss.
Chinese readers are crazy for crazy James Joyce.
The post-treatment health for cancer patients.
How are we doing on those Millenium development goals?
Alice Northover joined Oxford University Press as Social Media Manager in January 2012. She is editor of the OUPblog, constant tweeter @OUPAcademic, daily Facebooker at Oxford Academic, and Google Plus updater of Oxford Academic, amongst other things. You can learn more about her bizarre habits on the blog.
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The post Friday procrastination: mysterious jetsetting edition appeared first on OUPblog.
Here are the cutouts I designed and cut out of large pieces of cardboard. This years VBS theme is New York ‘Big Apple Adventure’. If i have time tomorrow I might do a large apple cutout and maybe a traffic light.
Not every piece of art is a picture book illustration. Here's one image that's part of a phonics program for kindergarten students. It's just one of dozens of different spots. A fun challenge - creating lots of individual images instead of dealing with the consistency of illustrating a 32 page picture book.
The Oxford English Dictionary is 80 and there are celebrations taking place all week in Oxford, England. Sarah Russo, Associate Publicity Director, was lucky enough to travel to Oxford for the celebrations and below is her letter home to us, the poor colleagues still at our cubicles toiling away. Sarah and Kirsty, my UK counterpart, will be posting about the celebrations all week so be sure to check back for more OED fun. (Don’t forget to check out Sarah’s twitter updates about her trip!)
Sigh…what a day! So many things have happened I hardly know where to begin. I suppose I’ll start at the beginning. Sure you don’t want some popcorn before I start? Okay then.
I started my day off with a very peaceful and delicious breakfast in the hotel. The Old Parsonage is just that: the house where the parson lived. A big place for a parson (the head of specifically an Anglican church which for obvious reasons is right next door). When you walk in the gate there is a courtyard filled with tables where you can have tea on nice days and the walls are covered in a plant that is not ivy, but much as you would imagine buildings to be covered in England and just beginning to change color. You walk in a small wooden door and you are met with the smell of the fire burning cheerily surrounded by chairs and tables to sit and congregate. The bar is just past the fireplace and altogether it is warm and just a little dark as a very old (built in 1660) house should be. So just past the bar are a very few steps up to the room where I sat having a cup of coffee white (with warm milk that is) and toast (with marmalade that is literally the most perfect bittersweet marmalade all orange rind and jelly) and waited for my eggs and Cumberland sausage. Suffice it to say this would be the last moment of relative stillness all day.
Shortly after breakfast I met the group of journalists congregating near the fire (a very good place to congregate) and we all walked over to the Oxford University Press offices for the scheduled start of the events. We were missing one, she had just landed at Heathrow and was on her way by taxi. So after I walked the group over, with the help of Claire from the office who actually knows the way, I doubled back. Well, her taxi driver was lost and I nervously paced back and forth for nearly an hour, frequently checking the email updates from her about how the driver is saying they are “only a mile away”, before she finally arrives. The bellboy was incredibly helpful in renegotiating the fare (by the way his name is Hugh and his dad works for OUP, isn’t that a stroke of luck? So he’s my new friend). So we checked her bags and turned right around, back to the press. At this point I’ve missed most of the morning, the introductions and the tour of the OUP museum led by archivist, Martin Maw.
Lunch was at the Eagle and Child pub and I got fish and chips and a half pint of beer called “bare ass,” I kid you not. At lunch were three men, Edmund, Jeremy, and Peter, the authors of our book Ring of Words about Tolkien and the OED as well as Simon Winchester (who wrote The Professor and the Madman about the first editor of the OED, James Murray) and Ammon Shea who just wrote Reading The OED. Now the bird and baby is famous. It is where Tolkien and Lewis Carroll met with their group called The Inklings and drank and talked of literary things. It is sort of like Puck Fair but small and old and very…curious would be the right word. It really is like falling down Alice’s rabbit hole. Oxford is a place that has existed in my imagination from history and novels for ages now and it is so much like I imagined it (without McDonald’s and Gap) that it feels just a little disquieting.
This will have to be the first installment. It’s quarter past midnight and I’m hardly near the best part of the day…
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