Finally!

I did something today I have not been able to do for over three years - because of the COVID pandemic - I went to the Amherst College Library, the Robert Frost Library. For quite a while it was closed to anyone not connected to the college. But it is open to the public again and Ellen dropped me off and went on to spend time with Katie and Savanna, and I got a bit over three hours in one of my favroite places on eaerth - the stacks of a good library. I had the place to myself. I had told Katie I would call her at two (1:00p.m. her time), and when we talked, I didn't have to find a private place - there waa not another soul on the entire floor. I was on the third floor of the stacks, where the books on rhe Bible are. I decided to look ahead to what may be my next Bible STudy at the Guilford Church - the Old Testament book of Jeremiah. I thought that after the Gospel of John, it would be a good contrast to take on an OT prophet, and Jeremiah is one of my favorites. I have a lot of notes on Jeremiah in the files, but of course, they are all based on traditional historical criticism, which is what I was trained to do back in the 1960's, and still has something to say, but there is so much more that one needs to be aware of today. And luckily, I found the perfect book in the stacks, titled Prophecy and Power: Jeremiah in Feminist and Post-Colonial Perspective (Bloomsbury, 2013). It is a collection of essays by scholars from all over the world, edited by Carolyn Sharp, who is at Yale Divinity School, and Christi Maier, who is a German scholar, at Marburg, I think. Their introduction to feminist and post-colonial hermeneutics is one of the best I've seen. I photographed that introduction, and also went on line and found three books by Carolyn Sharp at Abe Books, very reasonably priced, so I ordered them. I took note of several other books on Jeremiah as well. Here is the stack:

Books on Jeremiah I took a look at today. ********************** Behind the Frost Library there was a little place where there were some benches, and that is where I waited for Ellen to pick me up at 5:00p.m. To my surprise, there was a large statue there, sort of hidden from the road. I don't know who it is, but it is quite striking.

Bronze statue at Amherst College. I'll do some research and see if I can find out who it is. LATER The figure in the statue is Noah Webster, one of the founders of Amherst College (which I did not know). The statue was erected in 1913. A little more research uncovered a vintage Postcard of this statue, but with a completely different background. Has the statue been moved? Or has the building behind the statue been tcorn down to make room for the Frost Library, which is what is there now?

Vintage Postcard. That looks like a chapel behind the statue of Webster.

A more recent photo of the statue (not mine): you can sort of see the Frost Library behind the trees.