We made two trips to Amherst this past weekend. Saturday, Ellen had a lunch date with Wallace at the Haymarket Restaurant in Northhampton and I tagged along and she dropped me in Amherst near the Amherst College Library. I had about six hours altogether, and it went by very quickly. I had two "topics" I was exploring. One was commentary on Gospel of John, chapter 4 - the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. This was because I am participating in a pulpit exchange within the Windham - Union Association on March 15th, and I will be preaching in West Dover, VT, and I want to have the option of preaching on the Gospel lectionary reading for that Sunday, which is John 4. My library used to have several commentaries on John, but no more - downsizing has eliminated them. I have reduced my holdings to concentrate on Luke, which was the subject of my doctoral dissertation. So I needed to find commentaries on John at the Amherst College Library, which I did, and photograph the appropriate pages, which I also did (although the one commentary I wanted to see specifically - by Raymond Brown - was also (oddly) missing from the shelves at Amherst. But I found three-four others. My second topic was "anti-semitism." I have been doing a lot of thinking and reading on this topic lately. (also a spin-off from my dissertation), and I wanted to see what was there. There was more than I could begin to absorb.
Yesterday, we went to a performance of Mozart's
The Magic Flute in Bowker auditorium at U-Mass - put on by U-Mass Opera. Mostly student performers. We enjoyed it a lot - more on that later.
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| Frost Library at Amherst College |
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| Just a small portion of the books on anti-semitism in the stacks |
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