Week Four: Aspirational Places, Inspirational Ladies

Outside of the Library this week I have been sampling and assimilating myself into the LA lifestyle.

Driving, Dinner and Discovering 'Celeb Cool': Los Feliz Boulevard

Lauren and I drove over to Loz Feliz for dinner after a long and difficult day working at the Library: we saw Robert Pattinson's, now Jim Parson's, home, trendy shops of the Boulevard and the Griffith Observatory all lit up, a sparkling delight on the skyline.

Devilishly indulgent dinner at Il Capriccio on Vermont, Los Feliz

The Three Tomatoes, LA Launch Party

8th February 2014

http://www.thethreetomatoes.com

This weekend my Pasadena home played host to the launch of The Three Tomatoes on the US West Coast. It is an online “Insider's Guide” for, as they put it, “women who aren't kids”. The event was full of smart and successful women. Myself and my gorgeous guest Rosie loved the friendly atmosphere. The sun shone as the chocolate and wine circulated.

The event was fabulous and I am now very proud to be a Cherry Tomato!

 

Posted with Blogsy

Week Four: Hiking the Hakluyt Trail with Burton

I have officially reached my one month anniversary as a Huntington Library Fellow! As a reward, I have been burying myself in Burton's Library this week. The hike through the Hakluyt Society publications has been a slow plod as every page needs to be turned and each slight mark scrutinised. Whilst this may sound intellectually tiring, it is worth it when the views Burton offers into his exploring mind are unexpected and visually wonderful. My two favourite sights this week have been:

1. Burton's busy indices: in certain editions, that Burton takes a particular interest in, he constructs his own index. These are full of notes and pages numbers on the fly leafs of his books. I am still in the long process of transcribing these scribbled side notes…

2. Calling cards affixed to fly leaf: these cards appear and their owners are, as far as I can tell, unrelated to the publication they sit upon. Could this perhaps suggest the mobility of the Hakluyt works in this library into Burton's social circles and active spaces?

Anyone who has come into contact with similar practices from c19th (or earlier) readers, I would love to hear about them!

Coming to Cal Tech

At the beginning of this week I walked from the Huntington to Cal Tech (only 20 minutes and you parade past some truly amazing architecture) to hear John Brewer talk on “Playing with fire: lava, politics and the circulation of Vesuvian minerals in nineteenth-century Europe.”

Cal Tech Campus is beautiful!

 

 

Luckily I arrived early so got to take a look around and enjoy the wonderful Mediterranean style buildings, which were steeped in sunshine with views that extended straight up to the San Gabriel Mountains.

The wonderfully named “Treasure Room” inside Dabney Hall was the site for Brewer's tales of lava. It was attended by faculty and grad students from Cal Tech and Huntington Fellows. It was a great opportunity to meet some new people and I actually ended up talking to someone on a Post Doc between Cal Tech and the Huntington, who did his PhD at St Catharine's College, Cambridge while I was there doing my undergrad – he swears he remembers me! It is lovely to have that connection when you're all the way across the Atlantic. Such a small world!

 

 

Posted with Blogsy