Pop Culture

Gainesville

As I was cleaning up the terrible kitchen mess the pork roast made late last night, Bill informed me he didn't want to take Moonbeam in to the shop after all, so if I wanted to go in to work in the morning, he had to be there at 9:00. Yipes! I wasn't ready for that. He tried to tell me we could do the original two-car plan Thursday or Friday, but I was having none of it. I'd made up my mind I was going to start this comics thing Wednesday or else.

So I went in on very little sleep. Turned out to be a auspicious day for it. When I went to see Rita, she closed the doors to her office so she could tell me news that had not yet been announced. They are reorganizing Special Collections to create a Popular Culture Collection that would include the comics and the Belknap Collection for the Performing Arts, which is mostly ephemera, lots of neat stuff. It will be curated by a nice guy I know fairly well, who knows nothing, but nothing, about comics! My offer to volunteer comes at the perfect time. There will be some problems with the transition to the new structure, but it should improve the situation we have now.

Previously, comics have been part of Rare Books, and/or the Children's Lit collection. They don't fit in well in either collection. Pop culture is a much better rubric for them. Things are kind of a mess, though. They've been handled in a haphazard way by interested students without library experience and library assistants without much comics expertise. There are nearly 200 big boxes of comic books (a gigantic Excel spreadsheet, used as a descriptive list rather than data, is all that controls them, and it's not quite finished) plus 25 boxes of Don Ault's Disney books and more boxes of his newspaper comics clippings, plus a bunch of boxes of the Davidson Collection, mostly old Sunday funnies, but also Little Big Books and some other unusual comics manifestations. It's a daunting task! And clearly a full-time job for someone. Not me, at least not this year. I need to make a strategic plan of what needs to be done to get this stuff under control, and then turn it into a usable scholarly collection. This should keep me busy for awhile. And there is quite a bit of it I can do from home.

Obviously I got charged up by the day's interactions, and the possibility for an interesting long term project. The comics collection has acquired a web site since last I looked, and it gives an idea of its scope and status. Be prepared for more blathering on my part about this, as I think it through in the coming weeks. I tend to use the blog as a project record, at least in the beginning. When it becomes too oppressive for the rest of you, I'll move it elsewhere.

Since we had a big lunch today at the Copper Monkey, I didn't cook tonight-- the Brussels sprouts/ smoked sausage dish I had planned will keep for a few more days.

Let the record show that for some reason, Sunday's NYT crossword intrigued me when I looked at it Monday morning, and... I did the whole thing. Very rarely do I even start a Sunday one, let alone finish one.

How frustrating that you can't post yourself, Mom. I'm sure we'll get this solved, though. I'll try to work on it tomorrow. I'm glad you made some progress on your hot spots and the bug invasion.

Thanks for posting another Sandy letter. Fun hearing about the fabulous Paris meal. I'm wondering if Marty's boyfriend Brian was the one I met when I visited MSP in 1986? Did they meet in Chicago then move?

Hey! Chris checked in-- thanks for the test data, guy. Nice to know you're still out there. I have some minor Gator stuff all packed up and ready to send you (you too, Sandy) as soon as I can get my act together for another run to the P.O.

Oops. Bill just dumped his Manhattan on the floor of his office. At least the stem glass didn't break. I need to go build him another, and refresh my See-Through as well. I expect the 5 hours of sleep last night will catch up with me in short order, and I will hit the hay hard and long.