First the Library…
My husband’s and my first dates were study dates at our university library, an old brick structure with high ceilings and tall windows. We climbed a dozen concrete steps to enter through massive, ornate, wooden double doors. Once those doors closed behind us, they shut out all sounds but our footfalls echoing up from the lobby’s marble floor.
Our college library, which has since been replaced with a new one. The entrance is on the left, hidden by the evergreens.
The library’s main study room was quiet, even when filled with students. There were no clicking keyboards, no personal phones jingling or vibrating, no jacks connecting ears and iPods.
No noise but the turning of pages, the shuffling of feet, chairs being moved out and in. The occasional cough, or discretely whispered comment between friends.
Mostly it was quiet.
Books, Paper, Pencils and Pens…
- Research was done in the stacks, from books. There was no Internet, no Google or Bing.
- Writing was done in notebooks — the paper kind, not the web kind. With pen in hand. Once a paper was finished, it was typed on a typewriter — the kind with black ribbon. There were no laptops.
And Now Netbooks in the Coffee Shop…
Wes and I still have our study (reading) dates — not in libraries, but in coffee shops wherever we go. Sometimes it’s quiet, though more often it’s not.
People come and go. They sit for a bit of conversation.They study on their laptops or netbooks.They read their books or e-readers. News can be had on most phones, and everyone has a phone. Did I mention the ring tones added to whatever music is playing?
We do that too. We take our laptops and books. And we keep our phones at the ready so we don’t miss an incoming message or newsletter. Or heaven forbid, a text or phone call.
Technology brings about interesting changes, doesn’t it? We’re still about being who we are and doing what we do, but modern gadgets put us on faster ground, I think. Certainly noisier…
Do you have “back then” memories that contrast to your daily life now? Do you need to step out and away sometimes to find your own quiet space? How do you adapt to changes technology brings?
I’d love to have this conversation with you in the coffee shop…
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HI Barb,
I love the memories you bring back and the picture that you paint with your words — but I wouldn’t go back to those days for anything.
I grew up in a town so small (population 2,000) that we had to go to the next town over (population 8,200) to go to the library. It really was a disadvantage. As you can imagine that library didn’t offer a lot! And getting the reference books you needed was certainly challenging. Now I can visit online libraries all over the world from the comfort of my office — drinking coffee.
Glad you are back. You were missed! Kc
I love living in the C0mputer Age and having so much information at my finger tips.
Grandma Kc´s last blog ..Can Amara come out and play?
Hi Kc,
You know, I wouldn’t go back either — I am spoiled by today’s technology, even though sometimes I feel I’m running faster than my legs allow to try keeping up. Which I don’t — but the adventure of something to learn always draws me.
Our college population was 8000 back then, with no cars allowed on campus. We walked everywhere, and the library was rather in the center of things. I worked there several hours a week, running the stacks to get books students needed for their research. Not just a great workout — I loved every minute of being there. I’d have library shelves everywhere if I could.
I have an online account with my own library consortium, but it doesn’t give me access to the books’ contents. I’ll have to look for that. (Valerie mentions this too, a couple comments down.) I certainly favor the coffee while reading!
Thanks, Kc — it’s good to be back. I’ve been focusing on writing a monthly column, tutorials included, for Digital Paint Magazine. (Link in upper right corner, if you’re interested.) I’m learning to multi-task.
Barb
Hi Barb.
Not that I don’t appreciate my computer and the Internet, but I could easily go back to ‘those’ days. I think I’ve become more impatient the easier things get. Used to be pleased with seemingly getting things done faster with the computer, but the faster things get done, the faster I want them to be done. Seems to be like a never ending race of fast-forward and get it done yesterday. Satisfaction has sort of gone out the window. Sounds like I’m due for an unplugging break, doesn’t it?
Hi Davina. Yes, maybe you do need to unplug for a week — go do what pleases you, at a pace that doesn’t overwhelm you. Fill your soul with wonders.
You seem to be a little like me in that you ask questions. You wonder about things. I have questions like scattered salt all through my journals. I read even a novel, and somewhere in it I will have a “wonder if” moment. I jot it in my journal.
We’re poetic, I think, and poetry — whether written as such or not, whether written at all! — takes time. You don’t barbecue a chicken on a spit over an in-ground fire in twenty minutes.
Just because today’s technology allows speed doesn’t really mean we have to race. I’d far rather take the byways, get close to the ground occasionally, than hurry up so I can do more stuff more quickly.
I do love technology — I must keep up if I’m to stay relevant to my own grandkids and to myself!
But somewhere in the day, the bird-song calls, and for my sanity as well as for the way my mind processes, I stop to listen. What I hear in the quiet is not silence.
Last night on Bones — a TV show I watch now and then — Dr. Brennan’s boss ask her if she were familiar with the concept of ‘mulling.’ She was, she said, but thought it a waste of time.
Mulling is NOT a waste of time — it’s a way of processing. We’re all different. And we’re all valid.
My dear Davina, take what time you need. You are cared about.
Barb
Davina’s wonderful blog…
I didn’t often study in the libraries when I was a student. I preferred – and still do – to read undisturbed (or so I hope) in my own room.
Ungrateful of me I suppose, especially when the great and ancient libraries of Oxford University were open to me on the doorstep. I was lucky, too. Not many years before, those libraries would have been forbidden ground. Women were not permitted to study there.
Now, as Grandma Kc says, I can visit libraries all over the world from my own studio – yes, while drinking coffee!
Valerie Beeby´s last blog ..iPhone Photo Art
Hi Valerie. Not ungrateful at all! I jealously guard my early morning alone hours in my ‘reading chair’ with my coffee mug on its warmer next to me, a book in my lap, and a journal close by.
I have all the outdoors to see when I look up — windows that come nearly to the floor and cover the room’s west wall. In summer, birds chatter among themselves over breakfast I suppose, and keep me company. In winter, snow lays its blanket on my evergreens, sometimes icicles hang from their branches. The sun comes up behind me and paints lights and shadows on the house across the way and the lawns between us.
And I read and focus my energies on what’s to come that day.
But boy do I wish I had the Oxford library to wander around in! To have been a student at University when Lewis and Tolkien were there and to have been part of The Inklings — a discussion group that met at the Eagle and Child Pub on Tuesdays. That is a fantasy of mine… to sit with great and creative minds, on the sideline, to listen and learn.
As it was, I went to University 20 miles from my home, in a tiny town called Oxford. My first semester there I stayed in a dorm that years ago had been a women’s college: Oxford College. That’s as close to my fantasy as I’ve ever been.
Now I’m going to have to find those online libraries you and Kc mention…
Thanks, Valerie! You are my GB connection!
Barb
Hi Barb .. I have to say I prefer myown space .. and I hate noise – particularly when I’m working .. the day to day noises are fine – but anything shrill .. voices, mobiles .. irritate me to distraction – expecially when I can hear conversations from the street and I’m in the back room!
I love communicating – but just that .. good full on conversations and not this constant banter – seems so unnecessary to me!
Valerie says she used Oxford Uni .. I was at school there and occasionally went into the hallowed halls .. but loved our school library for its smell of books and wood ..
Great you & Wes .. still meet for coffee .. – enjoy your weekend … Hilary
Hilary´s last blog ..Food, Food, Glorious Food … What could possibly go wrong …?
Hi Hilary.
Hahaha — I have to chuckle when you talk about distractions. If I can hear specifics in conversations, I leave. Because whatever they’re saying is will get put into my writing somewhere. Words travel and get jumbled up. I also don’t write seriously with vocals playing, however soft. So I’m like you in loving my quiet space.
When Wes and I go for coffee, I expect to be interrupted. He reads all the time and wants to share and talk about whatever he’s reading. Sometimes he interrupts so often I just close up whatever I brought, sip on my coffee, and wait for him to share the next thing. Sometimes though, we’re both busy doing and the background noise goes to white. Noisy, but white. That I can handle for an hour or so.
For what it’s worth, I LOVE conversation. I’m not good at banter — it’s a little like putting a light chocolate glaze over brownies. Sweet, and a nice addition, but thin. (How’s that for simile???
)
I read to my husband your comment about loving your library for it’s ‘smell of books and wood ..’ He laughed out loud and said that only I would understand exactly what you meant. Ahhh — how I relate.
Thanks so much, Hilary. I hope you enjoy your weekend too.
Barb
I love your descriptions Barb, and your welcoming approach to life. I sometimes find myself thinking of you when I drink my first cup of coffee in the morning. You have conveyed so well the feelings of waking up to a new day!
I was lucky to be up at Oxford when Tolkien and Lewis were there. Tolkien was one of the examiners for my Anglo Saxon paper. It was my tutor, Miss Griffiths, who persuaded him to publish his first children’s book, The Hobbit. A fearsome lady, Elaine Griffiths, small, wiry and sharp as a needle. I was terrified of her! I expect Tolkien was too and didn’t dare disobey her!!
As to entry to the contents of online libraries – well, I dunno. Grandma Kc and I may have been a little over-expansive. Project Gutenberg and many university libraries do offer a huge range of books to download and refer to. I haven’t recently done any serious research so I don’t in fact know the extent of availability elsewhere. Google’s pretty good though, as long as you keep a large salt cellar reasonably close at hand.
Valerie’s Blog…
Now I can add your presence at Oxford to my fantasy then — we’d have been friends.
We had our own Miss Griffiths in high school, by another name of course, in the form of geometry teacher. (My dad had had her and insisted I have her too.)
I thought she was a little over the top in her need to control us. I didn’t learn geometry from her. What she taught me was to obey her, whatever she said to do. I was so intimidated by her rules and the consequences of not following them, that the math concepts just got beyond me. I got A’s — for memorizing formulas and format, not for understanding. And math is total understanding! Seeing how things fit! Not how wide the left-hand margins were on the paper.
At our last class reunion, a whole bunch of us met in that old school room and enjoyed telling and hearing stories of “Miss B____.
Thanks, Valerie. (And I will edit for you and then look for a plugin that allows editing comments.)
Hmmm … I miss the turning of pages.
J.D. Meier´s last blog ..3 Take Aways from The Karate Kid
Haha. I would miss that too — will miss it when I finally get an e-reader. Don’t think I’d ever give up a real book to hold, however. The e-reader would be for convenience.
Thanks, J.D.
Barb
Barb -
I love it when you post. You put a real smile on my face – I met the love of my life at college a long time ago and I remember study dates with a bottle of red wine and one desk. I went to university just as computers were starting to emerge, but hand wrote every single essay I wrote during that time. It was a real mind blower to have a hotmail account! Now I love my iphone and mac and they are my window to the world as well as the tools for my livelihood. Things do change – but mostly for the better. Thanks for the memories.
Phil
Phil – Less Ordinary Living´s last blog ..Be a Black-Belt Motivational Master
Thanks, Phil!
Love the image of the red wine and one desk. So you’re a mac-user. I’m leaning that way… the iPad with apps plus its ability to wirelessly ‘connect’ to your mac’s desktop hard drive from another state makes it look oh so good!
I love change too — there’s no growth without it. Yet still, it’s fun to look back and grab a happy memory, isn’t it? Thank you for sharing yours.
Barb
Your post brings back such memories. I loved doing research in school. There was something about being in the stacks in the library. Index cards, a fresh notebook and pens. I am such a geek. Change is good but sometimes I miss the past. Thanks for the trip down memory lane.
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