Easter Without Eggs

My neighbor and I went to the MFA to see the Quilts and Color exhibit.  Fortunately, Easter-related activities kept the crowds elsewhere, so we could see the quilts easily.  I bought the catalogue for this exhibit.

Next, after a lovely meal at Cafe Jaffa, Rosemary and I strolled to the Marathon finish line to check stuff out.

On Patriots' Day I am back at work, since Harvard is not patriotic enough to give us the day off.  Chris has used rubber bands to make love beads.

Tipping Point

JB's boxes of CDs are dangerously unstable.

More Petting Zoo Pictures

Animals, Cont.

A goat chews on my bag handles.

That's my knee.

Laureen befriends a piglet.

Lynn holds a Lionhead rabbit.

Laureen holds the other kind.

A Miraculous Bloom

This plant has been in our office for years; then suddenly it decides to bloom.  JB freaks out and insists that I put it on my blog. Okie doke!

Late Bloomer

Well, it's the last day before winter break, and this is how my amaryllis looks:

 

It's just about to bloom, but I won't take it home because it is toxic to cats.   I hope it will keep itself fresh until January 2nd.

Off to a Better Place

Today was Vida and Ranald's last day (before retirement).  So we sent them off properly with a party.

We had pizza from Otto and cake from Finale.  Naturally, since many of us have been around for longer than we care to think about, a flood of reminiscences spewed forth.  Then Charles dropped in, and the reminiscing got really serious, since he knows the history of everybody.  He recalled many scandals and was able to satisfy my curiosity about one old one.  I had heard that a German bibliographer had gotten money from Harvard to go to the Frankfurt Book Fair and get Widener some books, but he didn't actually go, and so he got canned.  But then Jon said that wasn't true.  I wanted to know what was true.  Charles said that the bibliographer had made appointments to see all sorts of book dealers in Frankfurt; but he didn't show up for any of the appointments.  So the dealers e-mailed Harvard asking "Did this guy die or what?"  This question led to the discovery that the bibliographer had used the Frankfurt-Book-Fair money to take his family to Switzerland for a ski vacation.  He got canned.  However, this goofy behavior had not prevented him from getting high-paid library jobs elsewhere.

This is a sobering story to hear at the end of one's working life!

A General Update

 Now that it is warm again, everything is blooming like crazy.  We've had such wild temperature swings: I hope these hopeful buds don't get zapped by another drop.

 JB brought in a bunch of treats, including gluten-free and gluten-rich muffins.  This is just what we need to get us over that Wednesday hump!

 A robin built a nest in the Pusey pit tree.  The best views are from Map Collection offices.  The mapsters will be making videos when the chicks hatch.

 JB also added to his rotted fruit sculpture, which he now claims is a totem pole.  Anthropologists of the future will be puzzled!

CD Creep

Somebody has let his CDs creep all over the office.  It's a stealthy way to take over!

The Office Beautiful

Here are some more office decorations.

A Piet Mondrian left here by John Collins.

A Map showing Stalin's plans for cutting up Russia into rectangles.

A Map mixing geography and genealogy.

MAPS: We'd be Lost Without Them

When the Map Room mounts a display, they make reproductions of the maps they want to display.  So when they take the display down, I can take the discarded reproductions for interior decorating purposes.  I've manage to brighten up many of our boring office walls.

Here's one that takes the world's highest mountains and longest rivers out of their geological context and puts them side by side for comparison.

This map is an American product made during WWII.  It had propaganda value and was beautifully designed.

This map isn't so pretty, but it interests me.  Another American product from WWII, it is a paranoid's dream document.

You may have to click on the image to read the key.

Look how innocent New Mexico was!

But now look at Massachusetts.  Wow!

NOTE:  I fixed the links so they work now.  And I also browsed some of the other works of Joseph P. Kamp, compiler of the last map.  He was quite productive: The fifth column in Washington! By Joseph P. Kamp, It isn't safe to be an American, We must abolish the United States : the hidden facts behind the crusade for world government / Joseph P. Kamp, Behind the plot to sovietize the South, and
 many more.

Attribution Can Be Hell (or The Web of Deceit)

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Some months ago we got an attribution question from a Professor who wanted to use the quotation above in an article or book (I can't remember which).  The internet attributes it to Leonardo da Vinci; but the internet does not give a citation.  So I looked in every quotation book and every online quotation thing, but it's not there.  I did a JSTOR search in art history titles.  No results. Then I did Google Books searches and found Leonardo's notebooks and Thoughts on Art and Life (translated into English).  But I couldn't find anything like it in there.  Finally I asked an art librarian who asked a friend of hers who is a Leonardo da Vinci scholar.  The scholar had never heard that quotation.

Widespread quotation misinformation predates the internet.  William Safire got himself embroiled in just such a scandal.  He had used a quotation attributed to Edmund Burke in a column, and then a reader wrote him a letter asking when and where Burke had said said quotation.  Safire checked his copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 14th edition, which placed the quotation in a certain letter.  Safire sent a reply.  The guy wrote back: he'd examined that letter, and the quotation wasn't in it.  So then Safire embarked on a fruitless quest to prove that Burke really wrote, " The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."*
The 16th edition of Bartlett's lists this under Burke as "Attributed."

Now it is possible that Leo from Vinci said something that could be translated as the above quotation and that somebody found it somewhere written down by Leo on some forgotten manuscript in a hidden archive.  So if you are that somebody, I wish you would identify yourself and cough up a citation.

It is also possible that some person has, through error or evil design, perpetrated a web-lie.  If you are that person, please fess up.  And tell the world who really said "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication."

* William Safire On Language, NY: Times Books, 1980, pp 224-227.

UPDATE 11/08/11 I find a reference to this problem in Wikiquote.
ANOTHER UPDATE 4/3/15 Quote Investigator did a thorough investigation!