Rebecca

mmmm, stapelia

A Black-capped Chickadee showcasing winter fashion by donning a snowflake accessory.

Outside the Level 2 Reading Room in @bodleian.ox.ac.uk there is a wellbeing display. Here are some it's little zines that genuinely made me smile.

about-ness is complicated

A colorized image from 1588 showing dancing people, a musican, and a few very big dabbers.

Just giant dabbers flying around while people are dancing. I am unsure what they are celebrating, but giant ink-balls were used in #earlymodern printing offices in the last step before printing. Such dabbers consist of pieces of leather filled with wool or hair and a wooden handle. #bookhistory

(Source: Peter Schöffer’s Latin Herbarius, 1484.

www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/288763 )

a much, much higher resolution image showing a 15th century woodcut picture of some lovage

I am now tall beyond measurement, and beautiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful

potato quality photo of a book open to something that might be a plant, maybe

attempting to take pride in having been able to identify this image in well under an hour (nb: it is one hundred pixels wide; this is a zoomed in version)

super appreciate people clearing their sidewalks! but like. can you not manage five more feet of alley on either end??

Carefully cleaned sidewalk, ten feet of horrible snowy alley, another nice clean sidewalk.

i just.

this is how i feel about so many books

simply cannot picture Henry II going all “Us Lions” about anyone, at any age

does this make the Anarchy always winter and never Christmas?

My mother says he needs Aslan, so now I’ve got a weird Henry II / Narnia crossover running in my head

A concrete lion, seated, helmeted and cloaked in snow

The Lion in Winter

plus the little nagging voice in the back of my head saying “will anyone even let Americans into their country in a few months?”

and then there’s the hurdle of “wait let me check to see if it’s cheaper to purchase through the credit card portal”
…
“these options do not actually match”

“maybe i should try to do the cheaper fare where i don’t have a checked bag or a selected seat”

no. three weeks is too many. it is worth $100 to make sure you get a window seat on a transatlantic flight.

“is this a bad seat??” well yeah you’re not paying for super duper premium suites whatever

(General acknowledgment of privilege and world being on fire preface)

why do travel logistics make me so anxious? like. north or south side of the airplane is not a decision that should be so difficult!

Live view of the Air Force One pilot.

before a gravestone with the images of a hammer, anvil, crowbar, and hand saw on it, a cow kneels down and throws a mocking peace sign to the camera while showing off it's cow tools: a lump, a lump with a handle, a hooked twig, and a crude saw with irregular teeth.

the age of human tools is over

I want more stories about the bandit with beer colored eyes in the world of the white rat.

he makes me happy every time he shows up

Panel One. Two figures walk up a hill in a park. One walks in front and the other is walking a dog Front "My new year's resolution is to stop lending books" Dog-walker "Really?" Panel Two. Front, becoming agitated "It's just not worth the risk: cracked spines! Bent corners! Torn pages! Grubby fingers! Crumbs! Baths! Burglars! Rats! Children!! I can't allow such precious artefacts to fall into the careless hands of clumsy philistines!" Panel Three. Dog-walker "And how do the other librarians feel about this?" Front "Less supportive Than I'd hoped."

My books cartoon for this week’s @theguardian.com

😍 the colors are so good!!

A look at some of the most beautiful and unusual examples from the first 100 years of the "modern" book cover, since the rise of publishers' bindings circa 1820: https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/the-art-of-book-covers-1820-1914

I am in love with these weird teal windows

Yeah watching this on repeat it’s pretty much going to be the rest of my day.

This bobtail squid burrowing into the sand is already adorable, but please watch till the very end!

It sticks out its little arms and earnestly sprinkles sand over itself 🦑𓂃◌𓈒𓐍

Colorado Springs has the charming intersection of Carefree and Nonchalant