#regenstein

[universallyarbiterinternet]

1958 im Harz auf der Burgruine Regenstein oberhalb Blankenburg.

[abwwia]

Else Regensteiner, Red and Blue, 1969, wool and other fibers, 57 × 35 7⁄8 × 1 in. (144.8 × 91.1 × 2.5 cm), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Helga Regensteiner Sinaiko, 2006.29.2, ©, Helga Sinaiko

Else Regensteiner (April 21, 1906 – January 18, 2003) was a German weaver, textile designer, writer, and teacher who was primarily based in Chicago, Illinois. (...) From 1940 to 1941, at the School of Design in Chicago, Marli Ehrman, a graduate of the Bauhaus, taught Else drafting and weaving on a fly-shuttle loom and introduced her to the ideals of the Bauhaus movement. Via Wikipedia

[bhrm555]

Fudo Myo-o, 13th century

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

AUM magazine, Vol. 5, No. 6, Regensteiner Pub., July 1969 (cover art by Henry Diltz)

[lowrankness]

Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago.

[whencyclopedia]

Interview: Dithmarschen Republic

Located in what is the present-day German province of Schleswig-Holstein, the Dithmarschen Republic (1227-1559) was a republic by commoners who developed quasi-democratic institutions, including their own written constitution. Fiercely independent and freedom-loving, these peasants successfully defended their political independence against the forces of Holstein and the Scandinavian Kalmar Union as the Middle Ages came to a close.

House in Burg, Dithmarschen

Z thomas (CC BY-SA)

James Blake Wiener speaks to Dr. William L. Urban, a medievalist and the author of Dithmarschen: A Medieval Peasant Republic, to learn more about the Dithmarschers in this interview.

JBW: Dr. William L. Urban, many thanks for speaking with me. As your main research interest is that of the Teutonic Knights and the Northern Crusades, I am curious to know how you first became interested in the history of the Dithmarschers. What was it that led you to Dithmarschen?

WLU: In a very real sense, this book began at the University of Hamburg in 1964-1965 when I met a retired school teacher named Maria Krüger. Of Dithmarscher extraction, she often entertained my wife and me for tea, with cookies and tales of her native land. At her suggestion, I later read some of the local color novelists in the library of the University of Kansas. Thereafter, I went to the works of serious historians where I discovered that the novelists’ descriptions of Dithmarschen and its people were not exaggerations.

I was lucky enough to be able to travel to the countries north of the Elbe. After cycling across Germany three times, I lived in Hamburg and the neighboring town of Ahrensburg for almost a year. This gave me the confidence I needed to write a very rough draft of this manuscript before turning to the revision and completion of my dissertation, which appeared in 1975 as The Baltic Crusade. In the same year, I received a Fulbright-Hayes research grant for supplementary studies at the Johann Gottfried Herder Institute and the Philipps University in Marburg/Lahn. The opportunity arose for me to visit Dithmarschen twice that summer and again in 1976. In 1976-77, the University of Chicago awarded me a part-time faculty research grant in its main library, the Regenstein Library, to further develop my manuscript in discussion with Prof. Karl Morrison.

In the fall of 1982, Monmouth College provided me with a student assistant, Janet Fox, who typed the manuscript into the computer for editing. In the summer and fall of 1983, I was back in Marburg/Lahn with the help of a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service and a sabbatical from Monmouth College. At that time, Professor Walther Lammers was kind enough to read the manuscript and discuss it with me at his home. I really appreciated his support and friendship. In January 1988, with the help of my wife and a new student typist, Kris Wang, I began a two-year editing process. Hardly a sentence remained unchanged. Eventually, after being tutored to use PageMaker by Daryl Carr and Marta Tucker, I prepared the manuscript for publication during my spring semester sabbatical. In June 1990, my wife and I took a car tour of Dithmarschen to visit places I had previously missed. In the fall of 1990, Monmouth College provided another small grant to cover the cost of preparing the manuscript for publication, and Erik Midelfort (with whom I had discussed the Dithmarscher project on several occasions in the past) responded to my request for a final reading with several helpful comments on the text.

JBW: It is true that there was a notable absence of feudalism and serfdom in nearby Frisia during the Middle Ages. Were the political traditions in Dithmarschen similar to what many historians would term as 'Frisian freedoms'? If so, how 'free' were the Dithmarschers?

WLU: There were many similarities, but the Dithmarschers had a more strongly developed clan system. This communal spirit made it possible to build dikes and canals, to develop a legal system capable of dealing with crime, land disputes, and inheritances; it also made it easier to raise a fighting force of men who could stand up to feudal cavalry and neighboring militias.

16-century Map of Dithmarshen

Abraham Ortelius (Public Domain)

This evolved over time so that local communities (Kirchspiele) became more important, and then the more prosperous farmers became a quasi-aristocracy that dominated the 48 representatives of the final government.

JBW: Many of the characteristics of Dithmarschen – the presence of clannish families, a militia, and a fiercely independent populace – strike me as similar to other medieval peasant republics, like that of the Old Swiss Confederation or the Icelandic Commonwealth. Are such comparisons worthwhile or even valid?

WLU: In my book, I tried to analyze why most peasant republics failed. The Swiss survived because they had geography and poverty on their side. That is, the mountain cantons were difficult to attack and hardly worth the effort, while the other members of the Swiss Confederation managed to negotiate the complex political and military challenges by raising a well-drilled military force large enough to defeat the regional powers, then providing mercenaries to more powerful neighbors who became allies.

What Dithmarschen lacked was numbers, and both the Dithmarschers and the Hanseatic League failed to see the advantages of allying against their common enemies as the Swiss had done.

JBW: Relations between Dithmarschen and the medieval Hanseatic towns, like Lübeck, were close. Was this so that they could protect their common interests in commerce while maintaining a degree of political independence?

WLU: Yes, but their common interests were limited. There were Dithmarscher fishermen, just as there were in Lübeck, Hamburg, and Bremen, but no international network of trading partners for selling their catch. There were also too many tensions, especially Dithmarschen traditions that bordered on freebooting (and sometimes crossed over it)! Dithmarschers defended their citizens even when they were in the wrong, which was not always the case with the Hansa.

JBW: John I of Denmark (r. 1481-1513) and his brother, Duke Frederick of Holstein, attempted to subdue the peasantry of Dithmarschen in the 1490s. At the Battle of Hemmingstedt in 1500, Danes and Holsteiners were soundly defeated by the Dithmarscher peasants. What ensured their victory of what was seemingly a more powerful and better organized military force?

WLU: First, the invaders did not have the money to pay their mercenaries and allies for a long war, so they needed a quick victory.

Second, dumb luck. The king sent his army north from Meldorf toward Heide along a narrow road on a dike, expecting that the good weather would last. Instead, a winter storm blew into the invaders’ faces, making it difficult to see until they finally blundered into fortifications the Dithmarschers had hurriedly thrown up across the road. When they trained their artillery on the redoubt, the wind, snow, and rain doused the wicks and ruined the power.

Battle of Hemmingstedt

Max Friedrich Koch (Public Domain)

Lastly, Dithmarscher fighting skills were more appropriate to this battlefield – they opened the dikes, waded barefoot and half-naked through the freezing water to get at the foe, and then pursued the panicked enemy relentlessly.

JBW: What became of the Dithmarschers following the Protestant Reformation? Moreover, how did they ultimately lose their cherished freedoms?

WLU: The Dithmarschers were very pious, but because they had always been suspicious of clergymen, they had limited their authority. Since they had long managed their local religious affairs themselves and used the churches for schools and political assemblies, they found the change to Protestantism easy, which is quite something.

JBW: Are there any unique characteristics of the medieval Dithmarschen Republic that merit further consideration and study? If so, what are they?

WLU: First, we should not think of every European society as an inferior reflection of England and France, but of each possessing characteristics that are still important today. Second, these characteristics can be good or bad, or both at the same time. People are complicated. Third, not everyone can be moved by what they see in others.

Dithmarschers admire Britons; Americans are liable to see in the Dithmarschers what they once were, and everyone can remember that freedom is not free but must be earned and defended by patriot blood.

JBW: Finally, if there is one thing that we ought to remember about the Dithmarschen Republic, what is it in your opinion?

WLU: Someone inscribed a motto on the organ in Hemme, Germany: "Dithmarsia libera fuit." The implication was that it could be again, and today it has become so again.

JBW: Dr. William Urban, many thanks for lending your time and expertise!

Professor William L. Urban was educated at Baylor University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Universität Hamburg. He received a Ph.D. 1967 at the University of Texas, taught at the University of Kansas and Monmouth College, Monmouth, Illinois, at Knox College, Fort Hays Kansas State College, the Estonian Institute for the Humanities, and the Eastern Michigan University Cultural History Tour in Europe. He was Director of the Arts of Florence, then the Yugoslav and Czech programs of Associated Colleges of the Midwest. He received a senior Fulbright grant for research at the Herder Institut in Marburg/Lahn, Germany; several DAAD grants, NEH grants for summer study, and a United States Military Academy Military History Workshop. He is a corresponding member of the Historische Kommission für ost- und westpreußische Landesforschung and the Baltische Historische Kommission. He has published The Baltic Crusade, The Prussian Crusade, The Livonian Crusade, The Samogitian Crusade, Tannenberg and After, Lithuania, Poland, and the Teutonic Order in Search of Immortality, The Teutonic Knights: a military history, Medieval Mercenaries, Bayonets for Hire: the Business of War, 1550-1763, Matchlocks to Flintlock, Mercenaries in Europe and Beyond, 1500-1700, Bayonets and Scimitars, Arms, Armies and Mercenaries, 1700-1789, and Small Wars, and their influence on the Nation State. With Jerry Smith, he translated The Livonian Rhymed Chronicle, The Chronicle of Balthasar Russow, and Johannes Renner's Chronicle.

Continue reading...

[chicago-geniza]

Coworker suggested I apply to an entry-level position in special collections archives at the Regenstein and I would be SO good at it but have no training in library science or archival work :(

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

"HE IS EQUIPPED TO GUIDE THE SPIRITUAL TRAVELER PAST TEMPTATION ON THE PATH TO ENLIGHTENMENT."

PIC INFO: Resolution at 843×1080 -- Fudō Myōō, a Buddhist deity and guardian of the Buddhist law. His name translates to "The Undefeatable Enlightened King of Buddhism," or "the immovable or unshakable one."

DATE: 13th century (1199-1399)

ARTIST: Japan

DEPARTMENT: Arts of Asia

TITLE: Fudo Myo-o

ORIGIN: Japan (Artist's nationality)

MEDIUM: Wood with polychromy and gilt-bronze accessories

CREDIT LINE: Gift of the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Foundation

OVERVIEW: "The name Fudo Myo-o means “the immovable or unshakable one.” He is one of five myo-o, or lords of light, whose threatening appearance guards the Law of Buddhism. He is equipped to guide the spiritual traveler past temptation on the path to enlightenment. Fudo’s bulging eyes, piercing stare, and protruding fangs express the intensity of his wrath against evil. Seated on a stylized rock formation that symbolizes his steadfastness, he once held his attributes, a rope and sword (these have been removed for conservation), which were used to subdue evil forces and to cut through the ignorance that is the source of suffering. This finely modeled figure reflects the highly detailed, realistic direction taken by Japanese sculptors in the Kamakura period (1185–1333)."

-- THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Source: www.artic.edu/artworks/8085/fudo-myo-o.

[soillodge]

Regenstein Library building

1964-70

Chicago, USA

Architect: Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill

[worldsandemanations]

At the University of Chicago, the 1968 Regenstein Library. Architect Walter Netsch designed the project in the brutalist style

[uchicagomagazine]

Library staff gather in the Far Eastern library. In 1961 two adjacent study rooms on the first floor of Harper Memorial Library were converted to house this library, which brought together two existing collections. The Far Eastern collection, with its then 135,000 volumes, had been housed in what is now the Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures; the 5,000-volume South Asia reference collection had been located in the classics library. Today the East Asian collection, occupying most of the Regenstein Library’s fifth-floor stacks, includes extensive holdings in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean; numerous rare books in Tibetan, Mongolian, and Manchu; and much more. The Southern Asia Collections include a reference collection on the Reg’s fifth floor, as well as over 10,000 maps of South Asia on the third floor, among other resources.

UChicago Photographic Archive, apf2-06273, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library

@uchicagoscrc

[weirdanecdotes]

I Learned to Hate in Nursery School

This is not an anecdote I share casually. Lovers and husbands have heard it, best friends, a therapist or two. It’s not the kind of story you tell to just anyone. But then, no one who’s heard it has ever believed it so…

In my earliest memories, Papa was going to Georgia Tech and working nights, Mama worked as a bookkeeper for Rhodes Furniture Store, and I got sent to a nursery school when I was two. Small children don’t see the big picture, don’t understand the good reasons behind the arrangement of their lives. They only know what they need and resent not getting it. Maybe I needed more love and attention than other children did. But, I doubt that. I knew for sure that I wasn’t happy being put in a system that only noticed me if I deviated from the prescribed regimen.

O how I cried! And begged! And pleaded every morning, “Please, I don’t want to go, please, don’t make me. Please, Mama, take me to work with you, please don’t leave me in that awful place!”

In retrospect, I feel bad about dumping all that guilt on my poor Mama; she really had no choice. Papa was in college and worked double-shifts at a greasy diner. But they needed more.

From my childish point of view, my parents were as cruel as Cinderella’s, dropping me off into that teeming play yard to be jostled about by other babies whining, “Please don’t leave me here.” It was really a very high-class school located in a white frame house in Buckhead across from Regenstein’s Fine Clothing Store on Peachtree Road. All the very best struggling two-income families sent their tot-bodies to be warehoused there.

The Art Room and Rainy Day Playroom were downstairs in the basement and the other classrooms and an office were upstairs. The facilities were as nice as nursery schools can be, I suppose, and the curriculum wasn’t much different than the way Kindercare’s are run today. I could have been happy if I had accepted the situation, but that was the problem; I just couldn’t get used to having somebody telling me what to do almost every minute of the day.

It was the uncompromising schedule I disliked the most. Everyday followed the same routine without inspiring any moments of joy or wonder. Even in “art,” pressure was applied to make you stay inside the lines.

Lunch was gruesome in its blandness. The dietitian splatted scoops of nutrition on top of each other upon the plates. Hard under-cooked green peas rolled over mounds of over-cooked macaroni and cheese. Chunks of raw pineapple peeked out like the tips of yellow icebergs in seas of green Jell-O. It was simply disgusting.

I always had indigestion after lunch; it was a combination of my seething resentment and nausea over being forced to eat this mess. Yes, forced! At this point in the day, the Director appeared. Scowling and glaring, she patrolled the tables like a storm trooper.

The Director of the school was not a kind, loving woman devoted to small children. Maybe she had been when she started out but some bitterness or disappointment in her life had transformed her into a cold, autocratic despot. She held a wooden ruler in her hand at all times and would slap it against her palm. Slap! Slap! Slap! Like the beating wings of an angry hornet.

Slap! She’d pop her palm right next to my ear and make me nearly jump out of my skin in fright. And if you really resisted eating your canned, sliced, slightly heated carrots, she’d pop you! On the thigh, or the calf, or your shoulder, whatever was handy.

I hated her, purely and with such passion and purpose, and to such an end, as you will soon see, that I have never been capable of hating anyone so much again in my whole life.

After lunch, we heard a story delivered by the Director. She transformed storytime into a boredom to be endured when it should have been a life-enhancing experience. Papa was far more entertaining. The stories were chosen not for any value other than sleep inducement. Because right afterwards came nap time, the break the Director and her assistants waited for all day — and the ordeal I most dreaded commenced.

I was a delicate, little bird-child, vibrating with nervous energy. I only missed being labeled hyperactive and addicted to Ritalin because my parents weren’t rich enough to take me to a fancy doctor. I stopped taking naps when I was 18 months old and still had trouble getting to sleep at night. My imagination was developed during the long hours between the time I got put to bed and the time I finally managed to fall asleep. Maybe I wasn’t exercised enough or maybe I was hyper-adrenal, I don’t know. Sleeping was not something that came easily to me then nor does it now.

Now this Director had a fixation on children actually sleeping during nap time. It wasn’t good enough to lie quietly staring at the ceiling until this period of forced inactivity had passed. Oh no, every little eye had to be closed and if you couldn’t sleep you’d better learn how to fake it!

“Close your eyes, Jackie,” the Director would stand, menacingly, over some small child, “I said, close your eyes!” Pop! She’d swat the kid with that ruler. “Don’t you dare cry! I said, be still and go to sleep!”

Somehow I evaded her notice but right after my third birthday, I got caught. I remember actually trying to reason with this crazy woman, “I’ll be quiet. I won’t talk to anyone, I promise. I just can’t sleep. Just let me look out the window and I won’t bother anybody else.” How pathetic I was. This was a real issue for me. I couldn’t figure out how to explain everything else I hated about the school but I could make my mother understand this part of it.

“I just can’t sleep, Mama, you know I can’t. Tell her not to make me try to sleep.”

“Couldn’t you just try, darling.”

“I do, Mama, I try but I can’t and she makes me pretend and it’s boring!”

My mother complained on my behalf and that made the situation worse. I imagine the Director explaining that it was important to establish discipline in young children, that we needed to learn to eat, draw, and sleep when we’re told and not to question the authority of our elders.

“Well, well, well,” the Director said to me after lunch the next day, “You’re having trouble sleeping, are you? Well, we’ll have none of that, do you understand? When it’s nap time, you go to sleep. Understand?”

“But, I can’t.” I protested.

“Oh yes you can and you will.” Her eyes glittered with malice.

Defiance swelled in my chest and I retorted petulantly, “You can’t make me sleep if I’m not sleepy.”

“Don’t talk back to me, young lady. If you can’t follow the rules then you can’t be with the other children. We’ve got a special place for problem children like you.”

That was ominous; I swallowed hard. “Come with me,” she snapped while grabbing my arm and jerking me along beside her. I didn’t cry or whimper. I matched her willful glare for glare. I was cold with anger. She yanked me down the hall and shoved me into the bathroom. After saying, “This will take care of you,” she shut and locked the door.

I couldn’t believe it. She had locked me in the employee bathroom! It didn’t seem real. I put down the seat on the toilet and climbed up to sit. My skinny legs dangled over the sides of my high perch. The bathroom was a windowless, white tile cubicle. There was a grubby bar of soap, a dirty hand towel and a partial roll of toilet paper.

At first, my punishment didn’t seem too bad. I hummed a little tune and listened to it echo around the room. I began to tell myself a story like I always did when I was alone and bored. I was starting to build up a plot line about being a princess that gets stolen by Gypsies when discomfort began to interfere with my concentration.

My perch on the toilet was cutting off the flow of blood to my feet. I tried crossing my legs and leaning back against the cold ceramic tank but it was hard not to slip off and the chill edged into my back muscles. I got up and paced around my little cell. There aren’t any comfortable places in a bathroom, really. I tried lying down in the tub but it was hard and cold. Ditto the floor. Even sitting on the floor became intolerable after a few minutes because of the cold tiles.

“Solitary confinement.” I’d heard the term in a prison movie I’d seen on our neighbor’s TV set. It drove the guy in the movie crazy. I wondered if I was going to start raving and screaming like he had done. I wondered if other “problems” like me had pounded on the door and begged to be let out.

I washed my hands for want of anything better to do. I managed quite a bit of play out of the soap bubbles and that got me humming again. I decided I wasn’t that unhappy with my punishment. It beat lying on my mat with my eyes squeezed shut.

Drying my hands, I got the idea of laying the towel out on the floor and lying down on that. The floor was still hard but the towel took the chill out of it. I lay down on my side and studied the caulking between the tiles in the floor. I rolled on my back and imagined clouds on the ceiling. Then I started up my story again.

The princess was about to be rescued by the mysterious prince when the Director jerked open the door suddenly as if to catch me in a criminal act. I jumped up startled.

“Come along,” she said cheerfully, “It’s time for Outdoor Play.”

As I followed her out to the play yard, she confidently asked in a sickly sweet sing-song voice, “Have you learned your lesson?”

Her attitude and her question so surprised me that I laughed incredulously. I couldn’t think of anything to reply. She stopped and turned on me, all sing-song gone, “I said — have—you—learned—your—lesson?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. I couldn’t figure out what she meant. I hadn’t learned how to sleep on command if that’s what she wanted to hear.

“You were asleep when I came in,” she declared smugly.

“I was not,” I shot back without thinking.

“You were!” She hulked over me, clutching the ruler up in the air like she was going to swing it and chop my head off.

I shrank from her anger but held to the truth with a feebly muttered, “Was not.”

She started hitting me with the ruler. After beating me until she was red in the face, she demanded, “Are you going to be a problem at nap time again?”

I had cried during my beating; it hurt and I was still sniffling and swallowing hard from the sting of it but I clenched my jaw and narrowed my eyes, “No. You can lock me in the bathroom again.”

“Ha!” I think I surprised her, “Okay, we’ll see who wins this little test of wills.” Then she turned on her heel and went off to pick on somebody else.

I whispered to her back, “I’ll win,” I smiled with my certainty, “Cause you’re gonna be dead.”

In my childish mind, the Director was crazy. The Director was mean. And the Director deserved to die! As soon as possible, some how, some way, I was going to kill her dead and that was that.

“I had to give Sally a spanking today for lying,” she told Mama later.

In case you were born decades after I was and don’t understand why Mama accepted this and didn’t sue the school or call CPS to report child abuse, the answer is: Almost everyone beat their children! This was The South where “Spare the rod; spoil the child” was the guiding rule.

Driving home Mama wanted to know what I had lied about and I told her, “I can’t sleep at nap time so she locked me in the bathroom. It was cold and hard but okay. I played by myself. She came in and said I was sleeping and I wasn’t. Then she hit me.”

Seeing that this little telling had disturbed my mother, I tried to reassure her, “It’s okay. She’ll be gone soon.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s gonna die,” I stated.

“Oh, Sally,” Mama moaned, glancing at me anxiously, “Don’t say things like that.”

That night I hardly gave a thought to the Director. It was a given, a done thing. First chance, I’d kill her. It never crossed my mind to figure out how a small child was going to overcome a grown woman. I thought nothing of guns or knives or poison. I was going to do it. Period.

The very next day we were downstairs in the Art Room. I was sitting at a table pasting magazine cut-outs onto a piece of construction paper when the door upstairs opened and I looked up to see the Director coming down the stairs ahead of her usual schedule. I had a clear shot at her and I fired. A raw, uncivilized bolt of primal hatred lanced out of my eyes and hit her squarely in the stomach. She doubled over, lost her footing, and fell with a scream down the length of the stairs to land with a terrible thud on the concrete floor.

I jumped up, knocking over my chair. Everyone did. The Director was a twisted heap on the floor, convulsing, twitching blindly, frothing at the mouth and spitting blood. The crumbled mess moaned horribly.

I threw up my breakfast. Children started screaming and running out the back door into the parking lot. Teachers and assistants ran frantically about, some after the children, others to stand a foot or so away from the Director, fearful of touching her. One of them had to jump over her to race up the stairs to the phone to call an ambulance.

The Director’s thrashing diminished to a rhythmic rocking from side to side and her moans rose into wails of agony. Tears blinded me. I stumbled a few steps toward the mess that I had made and it looked up at me, not really seeing. I wanted to say something to her. I wasn’t sorry; I didn’t feel at all sorry or guilty—not then. But I didn’t feel triumphant either. Everything I felt in that moment was summed up in three words I said to her, “I didn’t know.”

I didn’t know!

Jimmy Cagney said, “Aaaargh,” and fell over when the FBI riddled him with machine gun bullets. He didn’t turn into a spastic, blood-spitting, pain-wracked heap of broken bones. Movies and TV weren’t at all realistic in my youth; nothing had prepared me for the reality of life and death and mutilation. What I had done to the Director was a horrifying, nauseating, bad thing.

The power of the mind is an awesome force, dear reader. I tell you I knocked a woman down a flight of stairs without ever touching her. By the sheer force of my hatred, I brought terrible grief to another human being. I didn’t know such things were impossible. Before I knew I couldn’t or shouldn’t, I did.

As I stood there looking down on what I had done it was like I was an empty jug being filled with the cold waters of guilt. I began to sob uncontrollably and beg, beg, beg the Universe to undo what I had done.

The nursery school was closed while staff, parents and children waited for the Director to be taken out of intensive care. But I found no joy in staying home with Mama given the circumstances. I tearfully confessed but she didn’t believe me. I reminded her that I had told her the Director was going to die.

Her reassurances were rather odd. “You’ve done that before,” she used the kind of nervous but cheerful tone that always crept into her voice when she entered areas of thought that disturbed her, “Remember. You said my friend Norma was going to be sick and she got appendicitis, remember. Did you make that happen to Norma? No, of course not. And Jill, you said her baby was going to come when it wasn’t due and she went into labor that night. You said it’d be a boy, too. Now, did you do that? Of course, not. It’s just coincidence.”

I tried to repeat the word. “Co-in-C-denz,” and she explained, “A person says something and then it seems to come true but not because the person said it.”

“But this is different,” I insisted, “The other times I just knew something, this time…”

“Not really,” my mother interrupted, “You’re always talking, always saying funny things, sometimes, well, just a couple of times, well, anyway, like I said, it’s just coincidence.”

Mama was actively censoring her data to conform to her reality view, which did not include premonitions or psychic phenomena. I was left without guidance in a torture chamber of guilt. A couple of days later, I overheard my mother telling a friend, “The Director’s going to survive. Her leg was broken in multiple places, her hip fractured, her arm broken, her shoulder dislocated, but the worst damage -- this is interesting -- was caused by a wooden ruler; it broke two ribs and punctured her lung. She carried it around with her all the time.”

This last bit of ironic justice eased my guilt. Yes, I had done a bad thing and vowed to never hurt someone like that again. But, the Director was a bad person, a mean woman who tormented small children and someone needed to do something about that. It had fallen on me to save myself and the other children.

The Director needed over a year to mend so I never saw her again. By the time she returned, I had moved on to a public kindergarten program. But, the school re-opened without her and was improved by her absence. The same schedule was upheld; the food was still bland. The overly cheerful teachers and their assistants were still overt in their mock enthusiasm. When I told one of the assistants that I couldn’t sleep during nap time, she asked me not to disturb the other children and gave me a book. After that I spent all my nap times flipping through illustrated books and other children did, too. Without the menace and the malice of the Director, their system was tolerable.

[themuseumwithoutwalls]

MWW Artwork of the Day (8/13/23) Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883) Berthe Morisot (c. 1874) Watercolor on off-white wove paper, 20.9 x 16.8 cm. The Art Institute of Chicago (Helen Regenstein Collection)

French Impressionist painter Berthe Morisot (1841-1895) was the daughter of a top civil servant and a great-niece of the Rococo painter Fragonard. In 1868 she became friends with Manet, who gave her advice and used her as a model in several works (e.g. "The Balcony"). In December 1874, she married Manet’s brother, Eugène. For a decent sized selection of her works, see the exhibit "The other Impressionists I: Caillebotte, Cassatt and Morisot."

[vmohlere]

I worked at Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago in the mid-1990s, and I can’t even tell you how many times the damned basement ghosts knocked books down on my head.

They never knocked modern poetry on me from the fourth floor or French feminists from the second floor - only dusty South American government records in the basement.

(And once a book of Greek magic spells that fell on my foot & opened to the page on migraines. That time they were being helpful.)

honestly kinda unfortunate that the only spooky library aesthetic is the victorian fancy bookshelves dark academia one bcos like. ok here's some library stories.

while i was at the university the library was undergoing a major refurbishment so for a little while the print journals were being stored temporarily down in the basement.

basically nobody event consulted the print journals bcos 99% of stuff undergrads would be looking up is online these days so every time i went down there it was dead fucking silent & empty. you had to walk through what felt like several miles of empty basement to reach the collection, which was in a room w a photocopier shoved in the corner and a bunch of these:

u turn the handles to move these around (saves space) and every time you had to go and check the aisles first on the offchance that someone was in there so they wouldn't get u know. Compacted.

many years ago i did a week's work experience with the National Library of Scotland. here it is:

but that's just the tip of the iceberg. it keeps going down the side of the bridge, like so:

i got a tour of the stacks while i was there. it's floor after floor of this:

the bookshelves are made of metal & i was treated to the 'fun fact' that the shelves are, bizarrely, load bearing. for this reason they have to be constantly vigilant about fire hazards because even a relatively small fire could cause a bookcase to buckle from the heat, which in turn could cause the whole building to collapse in on itself like a house of cards.

this has haunted me ever since!! thank you.

[gravediggersreliquary]

Clouds over Lake Michigan, 1974

Ruth Duckworth

Regenstein Library, University of Chicago

[globalnews1]

Getty ImagesIndia used local currency to buy US grain, later funding book purchases for US universities.In 1996, Ananya Vajpeyi, a history doctoral student, discovered the fabled South Asia collection of books at the University of Chicago's Regenstein Library."I've spent time in some of the leading South Asia libraries of the world, at Oxford and Cambridge, Harvard and Columbia. But nothing has ever matched the unending riches held at the University of Chicago," Ms Vajpeyi, now a visiting professor at India's Ashoka University, told me.The 132-year-old University of Chicago houses more than 800,000 volumes related to South Asia, making it one of the world's premier collections for studies on the region. But how did such a treasure trove of South Asian literature end up there?The answer lies in a programme called PL-480, a US initiative launched in 1954 under Public Law 480, also known as the Food for Peace, a hallmark of Cold War diplomacy. Signed into law by President Dwight D Eisenhower, PL-480 allowed countries like India to buy US grain with local currency, easing their foreign exchange burden and reducing US surpluses. India was one of the largest recipients of this food aid, particularly during the 1950s and 1960s when it faced severe food shortages.The local currency funds were provided at minimal cost to participating US universities. These funds were used to purchase local books, periodicals, phonograph records, and "other media" in multiple Indian languages, enriching collections at over two dozen universities. Institutions like the University of Chicago became hubs for South Asian studies as a result. (Manuscripts were excluded due to Indian antiquity laws.) Getty ImagesThe University of Chicago's Regenstein Library was a major beneficiary of the PL-480 programme "PL-480 has had amazing and unexpected consequences for the University of Chicago and for more than 30 other US collections," James Nye, director of the Digital South Asia library at University of Chicago, told the BBC.The process of building an impressive library collection from South Asia was no simple task. A special team staffed by 60 Indians was established in Delhi in 1959. Initially focused on picking up government publications, the programme expanded over five years to include books and periodicals. By 1968, 20 US universities were receiving materials from the growing collection, as noted by Maureen LP Patterson, a leading bibliographer of South Asian studies.In a paper published in 1969, Patterson recounted that in the early days of the PL-480, the team in India faced the challenge of sourcing books from a vast, diverse country with an intricate network of languages.They needed the expertise of booksellers with a reputation for good judgement and efficiency. Given India's size and the complexity of its literary landscape, no single dealer could handle the procurement on their own, Patterson, who died in 2012, wrote. Instead, dealers were selected from various publishing hubs, each focusing on specific languages or groups of languages. This collaboration worked seamlessly, with dealers sending titles they were not certain about for approval. The final selection rested with the Delhi office, Patterson noted. University of Chicago Photographic ArchiveA file picture of the reading room of the Joseph Regenstein Library The programme was keen on picking up a comprehensive collection of Indian fiction in all languages. "The policy netted a huge number of detective stories and novels of no lasting value," wrote Patterson. In 1963, the choice for acquiring books was narrowed down to "research level material" - and intake of fiction in many languages was halved. By 1966, more than 750,000 books and periodicals were sent to American universities from India, Nepal and Pakistan, with India contributing more than 633,000 items."We've sent works like History of India from 1000 to 1770 AD, Handicrafts in India, Hindu Culture and Personality: A Psychoanalytic Study, and more," a report on a meeting in an US library on the programme in 1967 said.Todd Michelson-Ambelang, librarian for South Asian studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, wonders if vast collections from the region in US and other Western libraries took away literary resources from the Indian sub-continent. Founded during Cold War tensions and funded by PL-480, his university's South Asia centre grew its library to more than 200,000 titles by the 21st Century.Mr Michelson-Ambelang told the BBC that the removal of books from South Asia through programmes like PL-480 "creates knowledge gaps", as researchers from there often need to travel to the West to access these resources. It is unclear whether all the books acquired by US universities from India at that time are still available there. According to Maya Dodd, of India's FLAME University, many books now unavailable in India can be found in the University of Chicago's library collections, all marked with the stamp saying "PL-480"."For the most part, books that came through the PL-480 programme are still available in South Asia. But preservation is often a challenge due to white ants, pests, and a lack of temperature and humidity control. In contrast, most materials in the West remain well-preserved thanks to the preservation and conservation efforts in our libraries," Mr Michelson-Ambelang says.Ananya Vajpayee'Unmatched riches at UChicago,' says Ananya Vajpeyi, pictured at the university in 1996Another reason why Mr Michelson-Ambelang calls the Western libraries colonial archives "partly is because they serve academics, often excluding those outside their institutions. While librarians understand the disparities in access to South Asian materials, copyright laws limit sharing, reinforcing these gaps".So, what happened when the PL-480 programme ended? Mr Nye says the end of the programme in the 1980s, shifted the financial burden to American libraries. "Libraries in the US have had to pay for the selection, acquisition, collection, and delivery of resources," he said. For example, the University of Chicago now spends more than $100,000 annually on buying books and periodicals through the Library of Congress field office in Delhi.Ms Vajpeyi believes the books-for-grain deal had a positive outcome. She studied Sanskrit, but her research in University of Chicago spanned Indian and European languages - French, German, Marathi, and Hindi - and touched on linguistics, literature, philosophy, anthropology, and more. "At the Regenstein Library, I never failed to find the books I needed or get them quickly if they weren't already there," she says."The books are safe, valued, accessible and used. I've visited libraries, archives and institutions in every part of India and the story in our country is universally dismal. Here they were lost or destroyed or neglected or very often made inaccessible."