Wednesday report

Today, Ellen and I got up in fairly good season and I got my breakfast smoothie made before Emma and Betsey came downstairs. We both got showered and Ellen got some wash in, we said "Hi" to Betsey and Emma, and went into Boulder.

Emma fixing breakfast for Betsey

We went to our favorite stop first, Alfalfa's Market, for a coffee and scone, and then I went to the main library of the University of Colorado: Norlin Library. My thought was that this was a chance to look up some things relating to Frederick B. Tolles' manuscript that I normally do not have easy access to:  e.g., some books by the other four authors in the 5-volume series he was writing Vol. 1 for, plus, a couple of books by a Univ. of Colorado history prof, Robert Athearn,  whom Alfred A. Knopf absolutely panned as a writer (back in 1959). I wanted to get a sense of whether Knopf's criticisms were just.

Norlin Library is huge. It took me a while to get oriented and then decide where I wanted to settle in. I ended up in the stacks on level 3B at a table near several of the books I was looking for. Boy, I could have easily just gotten totally absorbed there. I love libraries, especially the stacks. It's like you're surrounded by an almost infinite number of universes just begging to be explored.

I found six books: (1) Walter Johnson's How We Drafted Adlai Stevenson; (2) a collection of essays honoring Kenneth Stampp, titled New Perspectives on Race and Slavery; (3) and (4) two books by Athearn, In Search of Canaan: Black Migration to Kansas, 1879-80 and The Mythic West in Twentieth-Century America; (5) a book by Thomas Cochran, The Great Depression and World War II;  and (6) The House of Knopf, 1915-1960, which I hope may give me an overview of the kind of publishing house Alfred A.Knopf was running. I dipped into all six, spent a bit more time with Athearn and Johnson. Knopf was actually very critical of the writing style of both of these historians. I found their writing quite engaging. The book on black migration to Kansas during the Reconstruction period looks especially interesting. But the opening of Athearn's The Mythic West, in which he describes his boyhood in Montana, was riveting. And Johnson's first-hand account of how Adlai Stevenson got drafted as the Democratic nominee for President in 1952 is really fascinating, especially in light of our current political campaigns. Johnson was co-chair of the committee that drafted Stevenson, so it's written from the trenches. I hope I get to read these books, but I can't take them out as a non-UofC person (maybe I can use Rob's borrowing privileges). I was able to leave them on a 24-hour shelf so they'll be there when I go back tomorrow.

Walter Johnson

Robert Athearn

 I walked from Norlin Library to the College of Engineering where I was to meet Ellen at 1:30p.m. It turned out she had had a sort of frustrating time of it, including having the iPhone do what it has often done for me - the screen suddenly "blows up," i.e., everything gets many times its normal size, and you can't get it to function. So she couldn't call to tell me she would be late. But it all worked out - she was there in time to get Betsey at 2 p.m., and we came home and Betsey rested, Ellen ironed, and I grilled chicken for dinner. Rob had a dinner meeting so it was just the three of us, and we had a delicious meal of chicken with peanut noodles and all the trimmings! After dinner we binged on season 5 of Downton Abbey which Betsey had recorded ages ago but not actually seen. We had a good time!