three exhibits, five trips, two visits

I am awfully far behind on blog posts, mostly due to a rather hectic schedule involving three exhibits, a grant proposal, and five trips - all in two months. Interspersed, we also had some great visits with friends and family. I might add more stories or pictures on some of these topics later, but for now, here is a snapshot of my May and June.

Exhibits

In the beginning of May, I helped to coordinate an exhibit of the St. John's Bible Heritage Edition, a beautiful, art-quality reproduction of an entirely hand-written, hand-illuminated Bible. It's a fascinating project, and you can find out more here. We displayed one volume and several leaves in Pepperdine's art museum, and an additional volume and leaves in the special collections reading room.

At the same time, I hosted two small exhibitions in the reading room - one of rare Bibles, to coordinate with Pepperdine's annual Bible Lectures, and one of rare hymnals, to coordinate with a conference on sacred music. We have some great examples of early Bibles, including the first edition of the Geneva Bible (1560), which was the Bible used by Shakespeare, Milton, and the pilgrims. The exhibit brought in more than 350 people in four days - way beyond my expectations.

Conferences

Library conferences got me to two new cities this summer, and a couple more that I enjoyed re-visiting. The first was in Montgomery, Alabama, where I presented on the new Churches of Christ Heritage Center at Pepperdine. I didn't have a lot of time to explore, so my impressions of Alabama are mostly limited to what I experienced on the college campus where the conference was held: heat, humidity, and fried food. I got to meet archivists and librarians from several other colleges and had an excellent time comparing notes.

The second conference was in Nashville, and I participated on a panel for archivists. I'd only driven through and had dinner in Nashville once before, so it was fun to be back for a few days this time. Some of the main highlights for me there were the three plenary speakers: James Elkins (art historian/critic), Dana Gioia (poet, former director of the National Endowment for the Arts), and John Patrick Shanley (playwright, specifically speaking about play/movie Doubt).

The third (Rare Book and Manuscript Section) and fourth (American Library Association) conferences were in Philadelphia and Washington, DC. Professionally, these were invaluable. The sessions were relevant, and the conversations with colleagues were immensely helpful. Personally, they were really fun too. I got to see a lot of my old library school friends and colleagues, and it was great to catch up.

Fun Trips

In between exhibits and conferences, Jesse and I flew up to Sacramento where we met up with my brother and sister-in-law and went to Sonoma for a few days. The wine was good. The scenery was beautiful. It was a much-needed break.

This technically happened in July, but after all of the conferences were over, I just couldn't get enough of the LAX airport. I flew up to Reno for a weekend and Jesse, Joe, Christina, and I spent the fourth of July on the shores of Lake Tahoe.

Visits

Early on in May, my friend Sarah came to visit from Wisconsin. It was a perfect weekend. :) We shopped in Beverly Hills, walked on the beach, went to a movie, and talked a lot. Couldn't have been better unless she had stayed longer!

Also technically in July, my parents came for a week. We took a trip to Catalina Island for two days (very interesting) and went ocean fishing. My mom and I also got to Laguna Beach for a day. I'm hoping to share some more photos of that later. It was a great time.

And that brings us up to date! Jesse and I realized last week that we have nothing big planned from now until whenever. It's a pretty weird feeling. I am definitely keeping busy with work, and we have a lot of things that we'd like to do - but no flights scheduled. Which is odd, but I think nice for now.

neighborhood

Jesse and I must truly love our neighborhood. Our apartment (while cute) is a little cramped for the three of us (including one large dog). We generally don't mind, although we have had to get a storage unit, and we feel badly not being able to offer more space for our guests. But we always figure the 5-minute walk to the beach makes up for it (for us, and hopefully for them too).

Our lease is up in a couple of weeks, so we have been casually looking for other apartments to see what's out there. Tonight we looked at a two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in a different part of town (which is very nice). In addition to the extra bedroom and bathroom, there was amazing closet space. I don't think we could even fill it all. We lingered for a long time, dreaming about what life would be like with so much space.

But as we drove away, and got closer to home - I think we both realized that we are not ready to leave our neighborhood yet. The neighbors and neighbor dogs, the local parks, markets, sandwich shop, coffee shops, and pub - all of these things have become a really comfortable part of our routine and all the closets in the world (or at least at Idaho and 11th streets) can't drag us from here.

So far. I know there will come a day when we feel ready to leave, and feel drawn to a different place. But for now, we are going to try our hardest to stay within a few blocks if we end up moving at all.