Darth Duckie Big Books and Gravity

My mom’s high school friend asked why I would write on a blog if I have no time. It gets ten minutes and it counts as writing warm up. No book this week thanks to an entire week in special collections. That I only figured out I had to do this talk a week ago turns out to have been a good thing. My favorite moment involved the 15th century choirbook. The special collections librarian and I had to crawl under the table to place it in the middle of the floor so all could see it. Since I regularly stand on the table to turn on the projector in the music seminar room I’m used to undignified postures.
In addition to working on this talk this week inaugurated the 10 days of Halloween which features in our house Darth Duckie, Cleopatra, and Blue Jedi. Thankfully Clopatras head dress covered up the fact that her hair had not been washed for a week. She has ordered up a lite saber too and is apparently not plagued by the allergy to anachronism that prompts her twin to go nuts when I strategically places batman in a cage in his play mobile coliseum.
Darth Duckie was utterly fearsome at the school costume party at Barnes and Noble until he saw anyone with a mask on and dissolved into a blood curdling “Someone is trying to kill me scream” and insisted on being carried with head buried in my shoulder and lite saber in my purse. Darth Duckie also doubles as a rock star and after a rousing round of This Land is Your Land complete with guitar slapping and rock star gyrating informed us that he does not sing We shall Overcome because “that’s for girls” (another victory for feminism)
Darth Dukie’s operatic demise was followed for me by an undergraduate Opera Gala in which our industrious and talented singers managed to stage about five opera scenes and got over 50 people to spend $70 a plate for the event. (My colleague and I got comp tickets) The nice Wagnerian soprano who has sung at Bayreuth wanted to know which of the students singing “is yours” We claimed the one that would be genetially impossible, the six foot tall blond one.
In addition to being totally blown away by their talent and indusriousness I was fascinated by the undergraduate boob. They all had on amazing dresses with very little fabric across the chest and no room from bras. Their boobs stood strait out. Anyone who has nursed understands that twenty something boobs defy gravity but they also provide insulation. By the end of the evening I had on my dress, my sweater, a scarf and my colleague’s suit jacket and was still cold enough that my fingers started to turn white at the tips. The undergrads were not cold.