Friday, September 12, 2008

Friday Family Photo--Latin Class Doodles

When my husband left for exercise class this morning I had strict instructions to start cleaning off the bookshelves in his office. He had found mold on a number of the books, so he's in high gear today. I started with my sophomore Latin book and got no further. I found a band assembly program and just had to scan it and put it on my class blog (and also since I have a new computer the scanner is acting up, so that took about 30 minutes to figure out).

So when he got home, he asked how much I'd done. "I stopped after one book," I explained. "It was just too interesting." "You can't do that! How are we ever going to get done if you look at every book?" Obviously, the man never had to withdraw thousands of books from a library collection--it's like drowning puppies for a librarian.

I looked up cleaning mildewed books on google, and it seems I need some alcohol and some sunlight, or if the book is really valuable, I can put it in the freezer. Several people who had never tried it suggested 10 seconds in the microwave, but I'm already sneezing. I remember that freezer trick from my working days. Our library roof leaked spring and fall and also winter when the ice thawed (bad roof drain), so the preservation office dubbed its freezer, "The Veternary Memorial Freezer."


Latin class doodles. I think my girlfriend Tina drew Gene Autry to go with my horse and a note about "wrigglies spearment gum". We sat together and giggled a lot. She's now a great-grandmother! Still giggles.

Also written on the back cover of the lst year Latin book, "Living with the Romans":
    Latin is a language
    as dead as it can be.
    First it killed the Romans
    and now it's killing me.

    Will ya won't ya can't cha
    Don't ya wanta
    Won't your mother let cha
    Oh go on you said you would
    Won't cha Huh?
They were not in my handwriting, so I flipped to the front to see if it was a used book. This book had been used by my two sisters in 1951 and 1952.

No comments: